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Vegetius De re militari - the origin and purpose of military literature - Printable Version

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Vegetius De re militari - the origin and purpose of military literature - Bernd - 16-05-2026

We have looked at Kyeser, Taccola, and other late medieval engineers as an inspiration for the VM, noticing they all contain highly similar illustrations. I would like to find the source for these illustrations. But while Kyeser as a person clearly pre-dates Taccola, this is hampered by the fact that manuscripts of those authors were copied over a considerable time-frame, likely copying from each other.

The main source of medieval siege and military literature was You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., a Late Roman writer from the 4th century. His work De re militari, or Epitoma rei militaris remained a popular military literature until the 19th century. However, for different reasons that one might think. Jorge asked why many illustrations in the works of all authors who copied him make no sense and look like the artist had no idea about the machine depicted. The reason is the same as for fantastic and widely inaccurate plants in herbals. Vegetius himself was, as far as we know, nether a historian, soldier nor an engineer - but an aristocrat. Modern scholars are critical of his descriptions of the Roman army and note that he carelessly compiled material from different sources and time periods and is full of inconsistencies and obvious mistakes. Vegetius lived at a time of decline of the Roman Empire and reminisced a better (and obviously fictious) 'Golden Age', much like Plato's description of Sparta as an ideal state. In other words, even the original work was - basically a fake.

Quote:Although the text was historically taken at face value during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as an accurate contemporary work on the Roman army and as a valuable military manual, modern historians have questioned the accuracy of the claims that Vegetius made about the state of the Roman army in his time. According to Michael B. Charles "many details that he provides about the [Roman] military are simply wrong", and said that it was "doubtful" that he had any military experience, arguing that the work was "not meant to be an accurate exposition of Roman military history, or indeed [then] present-day military activities", and that only "small but nonetheless valuable nuggets" of information in the text are actually valuable for understanding the Late Roman Army. The work has also been criticised on stylistic grounds. Sydney Anglo stated that the work was "mediocre" and that "its coverage of Roman military institutions is derivative, patchy, inconsistent and repetitious", and that Vegetius blended information from vastly different time periods in an unclear and confused way, with Anglo stating that "Vegetius's account of Roman military usage was not so much anachronistic as extra-chronistic. It was outside any specific time."

Now why would such a faux military guide be popular for 1500 years? First, it did contain some valid organizational and strategical advice, second, it was not intended to be used by military officers. Vegetius was an aristocrat, and his audience was nobility. We must see such works in a more abstract way. The historian Werner Leng wrote about the reception of Vegetius works from the middle ages to modernity that Vegetius was rarely seen as a military field guide for officers, but more of a cultural and aesthetic guide for nobility who sought to present themselves as the successors of the Roman Empire. Also as a political and moralistic guide on leadership and organization in line with the teachings of Aristoteles or Plato.

This is something we often tend to forget when we look at medieval manuscripts from a modern perspective. A herbal like Dioscorides was not created to be used by a physician to treat patients. A manuscript on warfare and engineering like Kyeser was not created to be used by a military officer or engineer. They were conversation pieces and collectibles for nobility that were meant to show the owner was familiar with the teachings of the re-discovered authorities of antiquity. Even the obviously practical notebooks of engineers like Taccola and Ghiberti were also representational. The machines are mostly useless. They are fantastic ideas, like one would draw a martian colony nowadays. Inspirational, aesthetic, fashionable. This is why we have all those copies of impossible machines. They were fancy. The question is who came up with the illustrations first? Like Dioscorides, the oldest copies of Vegetius appear to have been un-illustrated. At some point, an artist tried to create more-or less accurate illustrations of war and siege machines from the text, which were then copied further. But these were never technical drawings in a modern sense. Ideas at best, like Taccola's sketches. I'd say the Ghiberti cipher falls in the same category. It was a hot topic at the time. Something you'd incorporate into your works because it was the thing to do. Protecting ideas from casual readers surely also played a role, but not the main one.

In a harsh way you could say all those high-end manuscripts were fakes, pretending to be something they were not. Which was fine since the buyer did not use them for their alleged purpose anyway.

I'd still like to find early illustrated copies of Vegetius work and compare them to Kyeser's war machines. Early Kyeser illustrations are mostly flat and straight full medieval, while Taccola's drawings are much more organic and humanistic, more in line with VM drawings. Yet some elements like the wavy shore line are already present in Kyeser. So the question is - were Vegetius copies illustrated before Kyeser's 'Bellifortis' or did Kyeser invent those illustration and they found their way itto later Vegetius copies - and Taccola? The origin of the illustrations appears to be complex and cross-linked but paradoxically it appears all the war machine illustrations originate from Kyeser (who copied Vegetius' text), not from an illustrated Vegetius copy. Later ones like those of Valturius from 1470s (Rosenwald 5+6), likely copied from Taccola. And Ghiberti from either of those. But I'm not sure yet.

RE: Vegetius De re militari - the origin and purpose of military literature - Koen G - 16-05-2026

Very interesting, I had not read about Vegetius' situation before. 

Now it's important to keep in mind what we're actually after. For me personally, the best matches are in Taccola's hydraulics and civil engineering: how do I lead water across this chasm? Of course, there is overlap with military engineering (armies also need water), but I don't see much of the VM in the actual siege equipment. Q13 sans ladies is mostly about interconnected bodies of water and water flowing through series of pipes. 

And then there is the matter of the use of patterns and the "Tuscan Sun", as we may call it until we understand its origins better.  

So I wonder if hydraulics, civil engineering and military engineering often went hand in hand and you just get the whole package of inventor types presenting their broadly applicable ingenuity. Or if perhaps there are specific precedents in hydraulics and the management of bodies of water.

RE: Vegetius De re militari - the origin and purpose of military literature - Bernd - 16-05-2026

Roberto Valturio (1405–1475), the author of the Rosenwald 5+6 copies of Vegetius' De Re militari, wrote it around 1460. As far as I found out he drew on Taccola's illustrations from the publicly available books (excluding Palatino 766). So the similarity in imagery can be explained by Valturio copying Taccola. Ghiberti probably did the same
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It all boils down to the question whether Taccola invented those drawings, or, as I believe, also copied them from elsewhere. Including the Tuscan Sun. But from where exactly? And could the VM author have used such a precursor manuscript as inspiration instead of Taccola's Palatino 766?

The absence of any technical illustrations in the VM is indeed striking. But I think the author, despite being a bad artist, was quite good in adapting source imagery he liked to his needs while ignoring the rest.

RE: Vegetius De re militari - the origin and purpose of military literature - ReneZ - 17-05-2026

Which books borrowed from which other books is indeed quite complicated, and I have not looked into this very deeply. Just to point out that Valturius' "De Re Militari" is not a copy of Vegetius. It is loosely based on it, but has quite different contents.

I don't know how reliable You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is, but it shows the complication of sources and copies.

RE: Vegetius De re militari - the origin and purpose of military literature - Bernd - 17-05-2026

Yes, I should have mentioned that because it complicates things further. Valturio made his own version of a military treatise with the same name as Vegetius'. Interestingly I have found conflicting opinions on how far Valturio's work is independent of Vegetius. Sean Roberts states:
Quote:Valturio’s book on military strategy was, in many ways, a wholly conventional project. Indeed, while it promised privileged and tactically useful knowledge, the text represented little more than an adaptation of a late fourth-century work of the same name by Vegetius. Yet, if the humanist’s treatise offered few martial secrets, its translation into print a decade later in nearby Verona was a technological triumph.
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Unfortunately, a lot of sources I found are not Open Access.

RE: Vegetius De re militari - the origin and purpose of military literature - Pierre Dumont Himself - 23-05-2026

(17-05-2026, 12:21 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Which books borrowed from which other books is indeed quite complicated, and I have not looked into this very deeply. Just to point out that Valturius' "De Re Militari" is not a copy of Vegetius. It is loosely based on it, but has quite different contents.

I don't know how reliable You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is, but it shows the complication of sources and copies.


 This is the full passage from  "Printing and the mind of Man". Apparently, the images from the first Valturio print run in Italy were reused for the first Vegetius print run in Germany
  [Image: 2026-05-23-19h57-59.png]

RE: Vegetius De re militari - the origin and purpose of military literature - Pierre Dumont Himself - 23-05-2026

This is the section on Alberti:
[Image: 2026-05-23-20h11-11.png]
[Image: 2026-05-23-20h13-42.png]

RE: Vegetius De re militari - the origin and purpose of military literature - Pierre Dumont Himself - 23-05-2026

William Ivins's book can be found at the link below. The relevant pages are 31 and 32.
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I have also found page 63 of "The Painted Poet":

[Image: 2026-05-23-21h51-26.png]

The search continues for the 1979 publication.

RE: Vegetius De re militari - the origin and purpose of military literature - Pierre Dumont Himself - 23-05-2026

De rebus bellicis, ed. M. W.C.Hassall and R.I. Ireland. 1979. 
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Look for pages 11-15.

RE: Vegetius De re militari - the origin and purpose of military literature - Bernd - 23-05-2026

Excellent, much appreciated! I'll have to read through all this.
So far I was not able to backtrace VM-like imagery further than to Taccola. In the earlier works that did have imagery, it resembles Kyeser with a strict and straight formal style.The 'wavy shoreline' is present in both Kyeser and earlier Duch works like from the Limbourg Brothers. But the organic tubes appear to be mostly a Taccola thing.