Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I The medieval reception
- 1 General remarks on the manuscripts
- 2 Analysis of the manuscripts
- 3 A particular response to the De re militari…and its influence
- 4 Bedfellows
- 5 Owners and their texts
- Part II The transmission
- Part III The legacy: the De re militari in medieval military thought and practice
- Appendix I Table of select terms used in translations of the De re militari
- Appendix II List of manuscripts of the De re militari
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
3 - A particular response to the De re militari…and its influence
from Part I - The medieval reception
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I The medieval reception
- 1 General remarks on the manuscripts
- 2 Analysis of the manuscripts
- 3 A particular response to the De re militari…and its influence
- 4 Bedfellows
- 5 Owners and their texts
- Part II The transmission
- Part III The legacy: the De re militari in medieval military thought and practice
- Appendix I Table of select terms used in translations of the De re militari
- Appendix II List of manuscripts of the De re militari
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
The manuscript now Vatican, Vat. lat. 2193, copied in Italy (possibly at Verona) in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, written in two columns on both sides of the folio, also contains the Strategemata of Frontinus and a number of other works by, among others, Apuleius, Cicero and Palladius. Part of the papal library since the mid-fifteenth century, it is a manuscript of the greatest interest and significance to us as, moving from the general and the anonymous, we seek to understand how a particular known reader responded to the ideas and urgings of the De re militari. For here, written on the copy which he owned, we have the glosses of a single person, no less than one of the great European scholars and thinkers of his time, Francesco Petrarch.
Book I was to provide Petrarch with references to many famous names from classical antiquity: writers such as Virgil (one of his favourites), Homer, Sallust and Cato; historical figures such as Cincinnatus, Pompey and Scipio Africanus; while his interest in historical topography and the identification of ancient place names is reflected in the notice of Illyricum.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The De Re Militari of VegetiusThe Reception, Transmission and Legacy of a Roman Text in the Middle Ages, pp. 47 - 55Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011