How should we describe the process of the medieval reception of the De re militari from the manuscripts which have survived into our own time? How was the text read and understood? A manuscript, of course, will not talk about its life, about those who have owned, read or merely handled it. Yet, if examined closely, its folios can reveal a good deal about the use to which it has been put, whether it has been much read or has simply taken up space on a shelf, not to speak of its contents which have been either appreciated or criticised by past readers.

Of the 200 or more Latin manuscripts examined, about a third show little or no evidence of having prompted their readers to leave evidence of their labours; sometimes the folios remain uncannily clean. Are we then to conclude that these texts will have played little part in the transmission of Vegetius’ ideas? Others bear the marks of having been read, sometimes closely, and of having encouraged readers to respond by marking the folios in different ways. It is these manuscripts, the remaining two-thirds of the total, which provide us with the material upon which to form judgements regarding the interest provoked by the De re militari in the Middle Ages.