4
Homeric Taktika
Poseidonius of Apamea, who produced a Technē Taktikē in about 90 BCE, seems to have been the first philosopher to have founded the tradition of writing a new genre which we call ‘The Greek Tactica’ and which seems to be an attempt to describe and divide up contemporary, that is late Hellenistic, armies according to a philosophical and taxonomical system, looking for geometrical symmetry in military organisation.1
Although Poseidonius’ work is lost, the tactical works of Asclepiodotus, Aelian, and Arrian, all of which were ultimately derived from that of Poseidonius, either directly or through an intermediary, have survived.2 Of these three works, those of Aelian and Arrian both include an identical list of earlier writers on the military arts. Alphonse Dain thought that the works of Aelian and Arrian were both derived from a common prototype, later than Asclepiodotus, and intermediate between both authors and Poseidonius.3 The first folio of Arrian’s Tactics is missing, but the corresponding section of text is preserved in Aelian, and this includes a list of writers of Homeric Taktika. These authors are mentioned, to my knowledge uniquely, at the very beginning of the Tacitics (Taktikē Theōria) of Aelian (1.1–2), immediately following the Preface:
There follows a list of Greek military writers dealing with Taktika, beginning with Aeneas Tacticus (included in this translation), and finishing with Poseidonius. The speculation that the tradition of writing ‘Greek Taktika’ was based on a lost work of Poseidonius is largely based on the fact that this list in both authors finishes with the name of Poseidonius himself. The list in Arrian provides more detail on the individual authors mentioned than that in Aelian does, from which it is clear that the list has been drawn up in chronological order. Unfortunately, the beginning of this list is missing from the manuscript of Arrian, which begins abruptly with [Alexander] the son of Pyrrhus of Epirus. Presumably the list in Arrian contained the same names in the same order as the list in Aelian, but with more detail.
The appearance of the three authors of Homeric Taktika in Aelian’s list before Aeneas Tacticus seems to be determined by the antiquity of Homer himself, not of the three authors. This is confirmed by the fact that one of them, Frontinus, was a contemporary of Aelian himself. There is no way of knowing whether the information about Homer, and the works of Stratokles, Hermias, and Frontinus was repeated in Arrian or not. More broadly, reflection upon the nature of Homeric Taktika can provide insight into the emergence of the military manual as a genre, especially as ancient military authors themselves reflected upon the literary-historical tradition in which they sought to work.
I Homer as a military writer
In the absence of any sacred book, to the ancient Greeks the writings of Homer, and the Iliad in particular, fulfilled the role of a vade mecum for human conduct.5 The implication that Homer was the first writer of Taktika should, therefore, not be taken too literally.6 In labelling Homer such, Aelian doubtless had in mind such passages as when an anonymous speaker advises Agamemnon to ‘draw up the men by phylai and phratries’ (2.363).7 Neither, obviously, should Aelian be taken as saying that Homer wrote a specific work entitled Taktika: it seems that Pyrrhus of Epirus should be credited with that literary achievement.8
A good example of Homer serving in place of a sacred book comes in Xenophon’s Symposium (3.5, 4.6) where Nikeratos tells how his father, Nikias the Athenian commander, who, indeed, was profoundly religious in real life, bade him learn by heart the whole of the Iliad and Odyssey, because, as Nikeratos says (4.6), ‘the sage Homer has written about practically everything pertaining to man … the art of running a household, or public speaking, or generalship’ (4.6).9 Aristophanes, too, sees Homer as an authority in military matters. For example, in Frogs he has Aeschylus say:
and the divine Homer, what did he get his honour and renown from, if not from the fact that he gave good instruction about the tactics and virtues and arming of soldiers?
(1034–1036)10
Commentators on this passage have pointed to a similar passage in Plato’s Ion 540 D–541 B, a dialogue between Socrates and Ion the Ephesian rhapsode, a professional performer of epic poetry, Homeric and other, to the accompaniment of a lyre. Egged on to an argumentum ad absurdum by Socrates, Ion claims that he is the best rhapsode in Greece and also the best general thanks to his study of Homer. As Alan Sommerstein points out, ‘before Socrates sets to work inveigling him into absurdity, he asserts only, reasonably enough, that his knowledge of Homer has taught him “the right things for a general to say when encouraging his troops”’. In Frogs, Aeschylus wants to claim that he is a great poet and that all great poets have been teachers, and teaching military virtue is all important. The Iliad was an epic of war, and therefore, so Sommerstein’s argument runs, ‘it is, then, not surprising that Aeschylus is made to present Homer as a teacher of military virtues and the military arts’.11
Against this we have Aristotle, Politics 4.13.10 (1297b20–21), where it is stated in the context of the drawing up of hoplites in order, ‘and the crafts and tactical rules connected with the above-mentioned matters did not exist among the ancients’ (αἱ δὲ περὶ τῶν τοιούτων ἐμπειρίαι καὶ τάξεις ἐν τοῖς ἀρχαίοις οὐχ ὑπῆρχον), and therefore that in former times the strength of armies lay with their cavalry.12 The Politics seems to have been composed between the years 335 and 322, the period from when Aristotle was resident in Athens and head of the Lyceum which he founded there, to his death. At any rate, it seems certain that the Politics appeared well after the works of Aeneas Tacticus had been published. For the first time, the works of Aeneas met the perceived ‘need for a comprehensive handbook on the subject’.13
Aeneas was considered by Casaubon to be identical with Aeneas of Stymphalos, whom Xenophon mentions participating in the second battle of Mantineia in 362 BCE (Hellenica 7.3.1). Most modern scholars support this identification.14 The sole surviving work with which he is credited is entitled the Poliorkētika (How to Survive under a Siege). The majority of the historical incidents in this work date to the two decades between 370 and 360, and a further four incidents to the following decade, during the years 359–355, which suggests the work was composed in the latter half of the 350s.15
At this point, it is worth remarking that this does not constitute a date for the composition of the whole range of Aeneas’ works. In the Poliorkētika at 14.2, he refers the reader to his Poristikē Biblos (ἡ ποριστικὴ βίβλος), a book covering military finances, which was therefore earlier, and at 40.8 Aeneas promises us a discussion of naval affairs, which is presumably a book which he has not completed yet, and we do not know whether this did in fact appear or not. It is entirely plausible that Aeneas compiled his works over a decade or more. Aeneas makes no mention of Homer as a military writer, and neither does Aristotle.
II The nature of the Homeric Tactica
At this point it seems appropriate to ask what was the nature of these Homeric Taktika mentioned by Aelian? Wheeler has suggested that they constituted ‘military instruction through Homeric quotation’.16 Although he nowhere develops his thoughts further, Wheeler is presumably thinking of examples such as that in Frontinus’ Strategemata (Stratagems), which has Pyrrhus at the battle of Asculum in 279 BCE stationing the Samnites and Epirotes on the right wing, the Bruttians, Lucanians, and Sallentines on the left, with the Tarentines in the centre (2.3.21). He did this, according to Frontinus, in line with the stricture contained in the Iliad:
First he ranged the mounted men with their horses and chariots, and stationed the brave and numerous foot-soldiers behind them to be a bastion of the battle, and drove the cowards to the centre that a man might be forced to fight even though unwilling.
(4.297–300)17
The Homeric allusion does not appear in the corresponding passages in either Plutarch’s Life of Pyrrhus (21.5–6) or Dionysius of Halicarnassus (20.1–4), which might indicate that Frontinus is using another source tradition, and it is perhaps possible that a parallel passage appeared in Frontinus’ On the Tactics Found in Homer (see also later, 90).
According to the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, the very same Homeric passage inspired the Emperor Julian in his dispositions for battle (Homerica dispositio) before Ctesiphon against the Sasanian Persians in 363 CE, where he allotted the centre space between his two lines to his weakest infantry (24.6.9). Lendon has commented on this passage:18
Pyrrhus had picked it up from Homer and used it, although he interpreted it as a matter of left, right, and center rather than front, middle, and back. (So well known was this ruse that the term was used in rhetoric to denote a speech with a weak middle section.) Julian, the better philologist, corrected Pyrrhus: by Julian’s day it was important to get such things right.
Polybius (15.16.3) quotes the same Homeric passage to describe Hannibal’s disposition of Carthaginian forces at Zama in 202 BCE.19
The use of Homeric quotation was ubiquitous in the Greek and Roman world. As far as military authors are concerned, Onasander quotes from Homer twice (at 1.7; 23.1), Arrian includes an extensive series of Homeric quotations at one point in his Tactica (31.5–6), and Polyaenus laces the Preface to the first book of his Stratagems (Strategemata) with a string of Homeric quotations taken from both the Iliad and the Odyssey (Preface 3–4).20 I think this is simply motivated by the desire of contemporary authors to display their high level of culture and, as we have already seen, by the ubiquitous role played by writings of Homer in ancient life. I suspect that the Homeric Taktika were something more than a gathering together of Homeric quotations which could be used for military instruction. I suggest that they were commentaries on military passages dealing with tactics in Homer’s works.
III Aristarchus of Samothrace
Given the great interest in the study of Homer in Alexandrian literary and intellectual circles, which, for example, manifested itself in the re-creation of the epic form in Hellenistic literature, it is only natural that the first Homeric commentaries would have been compiled in that city. The easy availability of the resources of the Alexandrian library would have both encouraged scholars already resident in the city to attempt such an undertaking and would have drawn anyone attracted to such work to the city.
Around the second quarter of the second century BCE, Aristarchus of Samo-thrace held the post of head of the Museion and Library at Alexandria.21 As the figure of Aristarchus is intimately bound up with the writing of Homeric commentaries, and as I have suggested that the Homeric Taktika were commentaries on military passages dealing with tactics in Homer’s works, I would like to take this opportunity to establish the career of Aristarchus in some detail. Only when the chronology of his career has been established will it be possible to establish whether the persons either directly named as authors of Homeric Taktika by Aelian, or proposed as the same in this text, are disciples of Aristarchus or not. One of our principal sources on the life and achievements of Aristarchus is his entry (A 3892) in the Suda Lexicon:
Aristarchus, an Alexandrine by adoption, but by birth a Samothracian, his father was Aristarchus. He was active during 156th Olympiad in the reign of Ptolemy Philometor, whose son he taught. It is said that he wrote over 800 books that were commentaries alone. He was a pupil of the grammarian Aristophanes, and he hotly contested very much in Pergamon with the grammarian Krates, the Pergamene. About 40 grammarians were his students. He died in Cyprus, having been overtaken by lack of the means of maintenance, from dropsy. He lived 72 years. And he left behind Aristarchus and Aristagoras as children; both being feeble-minded, and Aristarchus had even been sold: the Athenians redeemed him, when he had come to them.
If Aristarchus died at the age of 72, and if it is correctly surmised that this took place around 144 (see later), then Aristarchus should have been born around 216.22
No information survives regarding his early life, and no indication of when he changed his civil allegiance (if indeed he did, and it is therefore quite uncertain whether he was born in Alexandria of Samothracian parents resident there, or was brought up on this remote and rocky island in the north Aegean (then a Ptolemaic dependency), and later moved to Alexandria,23
writes Fraser, who elsewhere suggested that Aristarchus became Librarian about 175 BCE.24
Eichgrün argued that Aristarchus was tutor to both the future Ptolemy VI Philometor (180–145 BCE) and Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II Physcon (145–116 BCE).25 In support of Eichgrun’s argument, Physcon is credited with writing a work on Homeric criticism,26 a work very much in the genre of Aristarchus. Furthermore, according to Athenaeus (2.71b), Ptolemy Euergetes, the King of Egypt (by which we can only understand Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II), was a student of Aristarchus. On this passage, Fraser has commented ‘I feel very uncertain that this last phrase indicates that Aristarchus was the formal tutor of Euergetes. It probably means no more than Euergetes as a youth had heard lectures by Aristarchus’.
Aristarchus ‘first appears on the scene as tutor to the son of Philometor, the Crown Prince, Ptolemy Eupator, and also probably to his younger brother, who reigned briefly as Neos Philopator’.27 Ptolemy VI Philometor ‘Mother-Loving’ had no children until about 165 BCE.28 His eldest son Eupator was appointed King in Cyprus on the failure of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II to take the island 153 BCE. He died in Cyprus in 150 BCE. Philometor also had a younger son, born probably in 162/1 BCE.29
The 156th Olympiad runs from the years 156 to 153 BCE. It was presumably during this period that Aristarchus was appointed tutor to the royal children, and this is why the date appears in the Suda Lexicon as the date when Aristarchus was ‘active’.
Philometor died in the late summer of 145 BCE, having in June the same year made his 17-year-old second son king, with the title of Ptolemy VII Neos Philopator ‘Father-Loving’. Euergetes moved from Cyrene and, according to Justin (38.8) as soon as he entered Alexandria, ordered that all the supporters of the young prince be put to death, as well as the young king himself. We next find Aristarchus in Cyprus. As both Pfeiffer and Fraser have pointed out,30 we should not entertain any idea that Aristarchus ‘escaped’ there, as the island was loyal to Euergetes at the time. Rather we might think that Aristarchus was transported there for safekeeping and punishment, dying of disease there, brought on by a reduction into a state of poverty, probably around the year 144 BCE.
To the information contained under the name of Aristarchus in the Suda Lexicon, we can add the evidence supplied by Oxyrhynchus Papyrus no. 1241.31 This is a chrestomathy, in other words a treatise containing lists and catalogues, dating to the second century CE. The second column contains a short account of the Alexandrian librarians. The translation is that supplied by the editors.32
[Apollo]nius son of Silleus, of Alexandria, called the Rhodian, the disciple of Callimachus; he was the teacher of the third king.33 He was succeeded by Eratosthenes, after whom came Aristophanes son of Apelles of Byzantium, [and Aristarchus]34 then Apollonius of Alexandria the so-called Classifier, and after him Aristarchus son of Aristarchus, of Alexandria, but originally of Samothrace; he became also the teacher of the children of Philopator,35 He was followed by Cydas, of the spearmen; and under the ninth king there flourished Ammonius, Zenodotus, Diocles, and Apollodorus the grammarians.
Fraser suggested that the text of Oxyrhynchus Papyrus no. 1241 should be emended to mean the children of Philometor, and so referring to Eupator and Neos Philopator.36 It is debatable whether the error occurred through scribal error. It is easy to see that the original compiler of the list might have made a simple mistake, writing Philopator for Philometor.
As well as seemingly writing a new critical edition of the text of the works of Homer, Aristarchus, who was known as ὁ Ὁμηρικός,37 wrote a number of commentaries on the works of Homer (and of other writers of course): over 800 according the Suda Lexicon. But, in the words of Rudolf Pfeiffer, ‘Towards the middle of the second century the imperative demand was not for editing the text anew, but for explaining it in its entirety’.38 It was in the age of Aristarchus that the genre of Homeric commentary really began. As well as a number of commentaries (ὑπομνήματα) on Homer, Aristarchus seems also to have written a number of treatises (συγγράμματα) clarifying specific problems arising out of the Homeric works.39 We know that one of them, entitled περὶ τοῦ ναυστάθμου, was composed upon the naval camp of the Greeks.40
I have previously suggested that the Homeric Taktika were a subgenre of the Homeric commentaries, dealing with the military formations and tactics contained in Homer. It is unlikely that Aristarchus himself produced a work (commentary) on the Homeric Taktika. If this had, indeed, been the case, it would be difficult to believe that Aelian made no mention of it. If Aristarchus was not responsible for writing the first work in this subgenre, it is easy to see how pupils of Aristarchus, and according to the Suda Lexicon he had about forty, would be encouraged to produce such works.
IV Hermolytos the Tactician
I believe a fragment of one of the Homeric Taktika has been preserved in Eustathius. The Commentaries on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey by Eustathius, who lived in the 12th century, is a vast compilation of earlier commentaries or scholia on the two Homeric works by earlier authors. In a passage in the Iliad, the poet describes the Greek army thus:
spear by spear, shield against shield at the base, so buckler leaned on buckler, helmet on helmet, man against man, and the horse-hair crests along the horns of their shining helmets touched as they bent their heads, so dense were they formed on each other.41
On this passage Eustathius contains the following comment:42
Hermolytos the Tactician says that Lycurgus later ordained a synaspismos of such a type for the Lakedaimonians, while Lysander the Lakonian taught this in his deeds, just as Epaminondas also (taught it) to the Thebans and Charidemos to the both the Arcadians and Macedonians.43
The vetera scholia have a slightly different version of the text:44
This synaspimos, as Hermolytos the Tactician says, Lycurgus ordained, Lysander the Laconian and Epaminondas taught it, then the Arcadians and Macedonians learned it under Charidemos.45
Eustathius calls Hermolytos, who is only known from this single reference, a τακτικός, a term which is used in other authors for a writer of Taktika. For example, Josephus describes Philostephanos the general (Jewish Antiquities 13.340), whom we know to have also been a military writer from a passage in Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus (23.1), as a military writer (ὁ τακτικὸς). So the fact that Eustathius calls Hermolytos a τακτικός, and the very fact that he appears in his Commentary in the first place, indicate that Hermolytos was the author of a work on the Homeric Taktika.
The actual contents of the citation indicate what the nature of these Homeric Taktika may have been. They seem to deal with literary passages concerned with military matters in Homer. This fragment constitutes, in effect, a commentary on the word synaspismos. Others may have sought to explain military terminology in Homer which had become obsolete. This was, presumably, one of the principal roles of the Homeric Taktika: they were in fact commentaries on the military sections of the Iliad. Indeed, the elucidation of obsolete or obscure vocabulary was a principal aim of the Homeric commentaries as a whole. In a wider sense, the Homeric Taktika may have sought to explain, or deepen the reader’s understanding of, military practices or phenomena described in the Homeric works beyond lexical obscurities.
The citation of three historical characters belonging to the Classical period (Lysander, Epaminondas, and Charidemus of Oreus) indicates that Hermolytos must have been writing in the Hellenistic period or later. Perhaps Hermolytos was one of the pupils of Aristarchus.
The statement that Charidemus of Oreus taught the technique of fighting in synaspismos may refer to a period in Charidemus’ career that has previously been unclear. During the early 360s, he may well have found employment among the Arcadians as a military instructor, and later among the Macedonians. He may have been responsible for teaching these two peoples the fighting methods of the ‘Iphicratean peltast’, which may have in turn involved fighting with shields locked together in a closer formation than previously.46
The name Hermolytos, which means ‘freed by Hermes’, is otherwise unknown in the ancient Greek onomasticon, though the comparable names Hippolytos,47 Timolytos,48 and indeed Theolytos49 are attested. One is, therefore, tempted to suppose that the name given in the text is a corrupted form of the much more common name Hermolykos. The name must stand however, given that it is cited in a single source, with no possibility of establishing a different reading. Emendation of the text would also be contrary to the normal, though not invariable, preference for lectio difficultior. An emendation in this direction would do little to help us identify or date the author however. The name Hermolykos is a very common one, and there would be no reason to prefer an identification of our tactical writer with any particular one of them. It is to be hoped that the name Hermolytos may occur elsewhere in the future. This would not only confirm the form of our author’s name, but might also give us some clues as to his date and place of origin.
V. Stratokles
Returning, then, to the preface in Aelian, he lists (Taktika Theoria 1.2) first Stratokles, then Hermeias, ‘and in our time Frontinus a man of consular dignity’ as writers of Homeric Taktika. Frontinus is writing shortly before Aelian, but the other two individuals listed may have both been active from any date around the middle of the second century BCE to the first century CE. The sole mention of Stratokles as an author of a book on Homeric Taktika comes in the introduction to Aelian, and with this meagre information he is listed as the seventh holder of that name in Pauly-Wissowa.50
Loreto has suggested that the Stratokles mentioned by Aelian could ‘hypothetically’ be identified with one Stratokles,51 the Athenian general who commanded the left of the Greek army at the battle of Chaeroneia in 338 BCE.52 This would be to place the composition of the Homeric Tactica before the earliest composition of the Homeric commentaries, of which I have argued they were a subset. This would be too early in my opinion.
Another possibility to find a match for Stratokles, the author listed by Aelian, would be to search among those who bore the same name and served in the Ptolemaic military. One Stratokles son of Stratokles is attested as serving as a military grammateus of the τῶν κατιό[κων ἵππέων] in the Arsinoite nome in papyri dating to the last two decades of the third century BCE.53 This must be considered an unlikely match, though it is also possible that a descendant of this Stratokles was Stratokles the author of a Homeric Taktika.
The personal name Stratokles, a name which has military connotations,54 is especially popular in Rhodes (and, as we have seen earlier, at Athens as well), where it is borne by a number of individuals prominent in the Rhodian military forces and administration.55 One of them is the philosopher Stratokles of Rhodes,56 who is mentioned by Strabo (14.2.13) as among the most eminent Rhodian philosophers, and as pupil of Panaitios of Rhodes in the Index Stoicorum Herculanensis.57 The latter source informs us that Stratokles was the author of ‘books’ in the plural, and Max Pohlenz apparently believed that Stratokles also wrote a history of the Stoa which was ultimately ‘sunteggiata’ in the Index Stoicorum Herculanensis, which was, in turn, part of the History of the Philosophers (Σύνταξις τῶν Φιλόσοφων) of Philodemus.58
Panaitios of Rhodes was a pupil of Dionysius ‘Thrax’, who was, in turn, a pupil of Aristarchus. Dionysius Thrax was an Alexandrian, though as suggested by his soubriquet, probably of Thracian origin. Born in about 160, he must have listened to Aristarchus as a young man. He may have been caught up in the expulsions of 145. He migrated either to Rome or to Rhodes (which is the widely favoured manuscript emendation): ‘He was a man of varied culture, whose interests were not wholly linguistic or grammatical; he is known to have been interested in the arts, and he also published a history of Rhodes’.59
Panaitios of Rhodes (c. 185–109 BCE), the pupil of Dionysius Thrax, recognized the primacy of Aristarchus as a critic and interpreter, and was so familiar with his work that he called him a ‘seer’.60 This indicates that Panaitios, though primarily a philosopher, also had an interest in the works of the grammarians. He first studied at Pergamon and then at Athens, and moved to Rome in the 140s. He became leader of the Athenian Stoa in 129 BCE on the death of Antipater. He died in Athens in 110/09 BCE.61 It is probable, then, that Stratokles studied under Panaitios at Athens between these dates.
A section of Index Stoicorum Herculanensis has been interpreted as listing the pupils of Stratokles, one son of Stratokles himself, whose name is lost, as well as [–]ων of Alexandria and Antipatros of Tyre.62 Stratokles of Rhodes is listed as a philosopher, of course, and not as a grammarian, but this would not preclude him from writing a work on the Taktika in Homer. Poseidonius of Apamea, who produced a Technē Taktikē about 90 BCE, was classified primarily as a Stoic philosopher. Asclepiodotus is designated a philosopher at the title page of his book, although there is no way of knowing whether this designation is by the author himself, or due to a Byzantine editorial intervention. He is generally identified, however, with an Asclepiodotus whom Seneca (Natural Questions 2.26.6) mentions as a ‘listener’ of Poseidonius.63 A generation later Arrian thought of himself primarily as a Stoic philosopher, and only secondarily as a practical man of affairs – and a writer of Taktika.64
VI Hermeias
Likewise, the only mention of Hermeias as an author of περὶ τῆς καθ᾽ Ὅμηρον τακτικῆς comes in the introduction to Aelian’s Taktika Theoria (1.2), where he is listed between Stratokles and Frontinus. He is simply listed with this information in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real-Encyclopädie.65 Nothing more is known of his work than its genre.
The large gap in time which separates Stratokles from Frontinus in Aelian’s list does not allow us to ‘fix’ Hermeias firmly chronologically. Assuming that the list of these three authors is given in chronological order, then it follows that Hermeias is later than Stratokles: at the earliest he may possibly be given a date towards the end of the second century BC. It does not seem to be possible that Hermeias was another of the ‘about forty’ students of Aristarchus.
Loreto has also made a hypothetical suggestion for the identification of Hermeias,66 as the Hermeias who was the Seleucid ‘chief minister’ (ὁ ἐπὶ τῶν πραγμάτων) during the reigns of Seleucus III and Antiochus III.67 Again, I think this identification is unsuitable for the same reasons as was the case in the identification of Stratokles proposed by Loreto. He is too early and is neither a grammarian nor a philosopher.
There is no grammarian or philosopher of the same name which lends itself to identification with our figure. On the other hand, the name is common in Ptolemaic Egypt. One Ἑρμίας Ἀλεξανδρεύς68 honours the Egyptian gods Sarapis, Isis, Anoubis-Hermes, and Apollo-Harpokrates in an inscription from Delos erected during the priesthood of Demetrius son of Demetrius.69 The editors dated the inscription after 166 BCE and thought that perhaps the Demetrius attested holding the priesthood was the son of the Demetrius who is attested as holding the priest-hood together with one Telesarchides in two other inscriptions (2116–2117) in the same volume. The latter is given a date of circa 166 BCE by the editors of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names,70 so we could give a date of the third quarter of the second century to Hermias, but there is still nothing to connect him with Hermeias the author of Homeric Taktika mentioned by Aelian other than a coincidence of name.
VII Neoteles
One Neoteles is cited in the Homeric commentaries to the scene in Iliad where, as Teucer is drawing his bow, he is struck in his hand by a rock thrown by Hector:
and went straight for Teukros, heart urgent to hit him.
Now Teukros had drawn a bitter arrow out of his quiver,
and laid it along the bowstring,
but as he drew the shaft by his shoulder,
there where between the neck and the chest collar-bone interposes, and this a spot most mortal;
in this place the shining-helmed Hektor struck him with all his fury with the jagged boulder,
smashing the sinew, and all his arm with the wrist was deadened.
He dropped on one knee and stayed, and the bow fell from his hand.71
The commentary in Porphyry, writing in the later third century CE, on this passage, runs thus:
In these lines spoken about Teucer, they inquire in which hand Teucer has been wounded and whether he draws the string towards his shoulder like the Scythians. For Neoteles, who wrote a whole book about archery among the heroes (ὄλην βίβλον γράψας περὶ τῆς κατὰ τοὺς ἥρωας τοξείας), supposed this, claiming that the Cretans draw the bowstring to the breast but make the extension [of the bow] round, whereas the Scythians draw [the bowstring] not to the breast, but to the shoulder, <so that> the right side of the archer does not project beyond the left side.72
In the other commentaries on this passage in the Iliad, the name of Neoteles is mentioned, once by the scholia vetera,73 in a citation that Erbse apparently thought ultimately went back to Nicanor of Alexandria, a grammarian who was working in the second century CE,74 and twice by Eustathius,75 but neither of these sources credits Neoteles with the authorship of a whole book on the subject. Manuel Baumbach suggests that it was not a whole book, but rather a lengthy digression within the commentary.76
Didymus, in his commentary on the Iliad 24(Ω).110, lists Neoteles and another grammarian Aretades between Apollodorus (born c. 180 BCE) and Dionysius Thrax (c. 170–90 BCE), both of whom are known to have been pupils of Aristarchus (Ἀπολλόδωρος καὶ Ἀρητάδης καὶ Νεοτέλης καὶ Διονύσιος ὁ Θρᾷξ).77 This means that Neoteles wrote prior to Didymus, who lived in the first century BCE. In fact, August Blau argued that Neoteles and Aretades were both pupils of Aristarchus.78 Martin West is more cautious, stating that the ‘juxtaposition may perhaps suggest that Aretades and Neoteles were also Aristarcheans of the later second century’.79
Blau’s suggestion was accepted by Susemihl80 and by the editors of the Prosopographica Ptolemaica, where Neoteles is listed as a ‘disciple d’Aristarque’, based in Alexandria, and given a date in the second half of the second century BCE.81 This is the only entry for any person named Neoteles in the whole of the Prosopographica Ptolemaica, and so it is not possible to link the individual to any other figure in the Ptolemaic establishment.
The name Neoteles is rare. This Neoteles (a grammarian) is the only entry under that name in Pauly-Wissowa.82 In the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, the name Neoteles occurs only in two cities. Neoteles son of Eualkides occurs on one side of a military catalogue from Eretria dating to the turn of the fourth and third centuries BCE, and on the other side an individual named Eualkides son of Neoteles is listed.83 Both are from the deme Styra, and we are probably dealing with a father and son.84 One Agathon son of Neoteles and his brothers are recorded as being proxenoi of the Thourians at Delphi in an inscription dating to the fourth century BCE.85 In the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, the inscription is given a date of after 373 BCE.86 It is possible, therefore, that the family of Neoteles, or Neoteles himself, came originally from one of these two cities. If Neoteles was, in fact, a pupil of Aristarchus, then it is not known if Neoteles moved from the city, like his teacher, on the accession of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II.
Given that Lorimer, who only partially accepted Blau’s suggestion that Neoteles was ‘possibly’ a pupil of Aristarchus,87 was able to devote some 11 pages (289–300) to the subject of ‘Bow in Homer’ in her Homer and the Monuments, we should not doubt that an erudite Hellenistic scholar was able to write a whole book on the subject. The very title of the work of Neoteles makes it certain that it took the form of a Homeric commentary. In any case, it is extremely doubtful that it would have borne any resemblance to an instructional manual on archery.88 If Neoteles was, in fact, the author of a commentary on archery in Homer, but, as we have seen, this has been disputed, then it is perfectly possible that he was also the author of a περὶ τῆς καθ᾽ Ὅμηρον τακτικῆς, and hence his inclusion in this article.
VIII Frontinus
The most authentic recension of Aelian is the Codex Laurentianus 55.4 in the Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana in Florence. The new critical edition of Kai Brodersen, which is based on this manuscript,89 has done a great service to scholarship, not least in confirming that the name Frontinus, and not Fronto, should be read among the list of writers of Homeric Taktika.
Previous academic debate on the identity of this individual has been based on the edition by Francesco Robortello of the defective text of the Codex Venetus Marcianus 516, on which the text and English translation recently published by Christopher Matthew is based.90 Instead of the Greek Φροντίνῳ, this manuscript in this place reads Φρόντωνι, which should be rendered as ‘Fronto’ not ‘Frontinus’.
Köchly and Rüstow in their 1855 edition stuck to the textual reading of Φρόντωνι, and identified the individual called Fronto with one Ti. Catius Caesius Fronto, attested as consul suffectus in 96 CE.91 This identification was not accepted by Richard Förster, who felt that the attribution of a work dealing with military matters to Ti. Catius Caesius Fronto would be inappropriate, for Fronto as ‘Ein Kriegsschriftsteller ist nicht bekannt’, and the work could be more appropriately attributed to Frontinus.92 W. A. Oldfather’s and the Illinois Greek Club Loeb Classical Library edition retained the Fronto of the text in their translation of this same passage of Aelian in the testimonia of Aeneas Tacticus gathered in the Loeb translation of that author.93 Dain thought that the Φρόντωνι of the text was a scribal error for Φροντίνῳ.94 A. M. Devine in his 1989 English translation followed Dain, noting that the manuscript reading was Fronto, but retaining Frontinus in his translation.95 The reading of Fronto and the identification with Ti. Catius Caesius Fronto was accepted by Luigi Loreto.96 The 2012 translation of this passage offered by Christopher Matthew retains the Frontinus of John Bingham’s translation and omits the author Hermeias from his translation (but includes him, incorrigibly, in the text offered) again copying the translation of Bingham on this point.97 The new critical edition of Brodersen has finally cleared this problem up.
Frontinus was the author, as well as a book of the Strategemata which has survived, of at least one other earlier book upon the military art, which he refers to (without a precise reference to its title) in the beginning of Book 1 of the Strategemata. It is presumably this same work to which Vegetius refers at 1.8 of his Epitome (Epitoma Rei Militaris), which implies that the work is an epitome, and at 2.3 which states it deals with the military science. It is presumably this lost work that is again referred to by Johannes Lydus (de Magistratibus 1.47), who renders its title in Greek as περὶ στρατηγίας. Wheeler has emphasised the difference between works bearing this title and Strategemata:98 accordingly, this should be a different work from the Strategemata. According to the editor of the text of the de Magistratibus of Lydus, Anasasius C. Bandy, this should correspond to a Latin title de officio militari.99 Presumably, the work of Frontinus on The Tactics Found in Homer (περὶ τῆς καθ᾽ Ὅμηρον τακτικῆς) was of a completely different nature to his de officio militari and was a separate work.100
In Section 2 earlier, when writing on ‘The Nature of the Homeric Tactica’, I discussed suggested a passage in Frontinus’ Stratagems (2.3.21), which has Pyrrhus at the Battle of Asculum in 279 BCE stationing his forces in accordance with the advice of Homer Iliad 4.297–300. Whilst denying that the nature of Homeric Tactica were collections of Homeric quotations, I accept that this passage may have found a parallel in his work on The Tactics Found in Homer. It may, in fact, have inspired it.
IX. Conclusion
As well as the authors named in Aelian – Stratokles, Hermeias, and Frontinus – from whose works no fragments have survived, I believe that the fragment of Hermolytos, who is described as ὁ τακτικός, comes from a commentary of this very type, on the description of synaspismos contained in the Iliad 13.130–34. I also believe, although with less certainty, that the work of Neoteles entitled Archery among the Heroes (περὶ τῆς κατὰ τοὺς ἥρωας τοξείας) could possibly be another work of this type.
The demand for Homeric commentaries was at its height around the second quarter of the second century BCE, when Aristarchus of Samothrace held the post of head of the Museion and Library at Alexandria. I suggest that it was in his wake that most of these commentaries were written. Hermolytos, unfortunately, cannot be further identified, and Hermeias is nothing more than a name, but it has been plausibly suggested that Neoteles was an Aristarchean of the later second century, and if my identification of the Stratokles named in Aelian with Stratokles of Rhodes is accepted, then this Stratokles is also an Aristarchean of the later second century.
Frontinus comes much later, when, as I have argued, the times for Homeric commentaries were well passed. He is best known an author of works of a practical nature. Aelian tells us at the beginning of his Tactics that the work arose out of a conversation he had with the Emperor Nerva at Frontinus’ house at Formiae. We can but imagine that he was encouraged to try his hand at an obsolete genre after contact with such figures.
In this work, I have tried to gather together all the evidence relevant to a genre of military writing which we call ‘The Homeric Taktika’. To my knowledge, the only person who has advanced any opinion on the nature of this subgenre of ancient military writing so far is Wheeler, who has suggested that they constituted ‘military instruction through Homeric quotation’.101 Although quotation from Homer would have made up a considerable portion of the texts of these Taktika, I have rather suggested that they consisted of commentaries on passages in Homer which dealt with the tactics used by the Heroes.
Notes
[κ]αλοθμενος Ροδιος Καλ
λ[ι]μαχου γνωριμος· ουτος
εγενετο και διδασκαλος του
πρωτου βασιλεως· τουτον
δ[ι]εδεξατο Ερατοσθενης
μεθ ον Αριστοφανες Απελ
λου Βυζαντιος και Αρισταρ
χος· ειτ Απολλωνιος Αλεξαν
δρευς ο ïδογραφος καλουμε
νος· μεθ ον Αρισταρχος Αρι
σταρχου Αλεξανρευς ανω
θεν δε Σαμοθραξ· ουτος και
διδ[α]σκαλος [ε]γενε[το] των
του Φιλοπατορος τεκνων·
μεθ ον Κυδας εκ των λογχο
φ[ο]ρωμν· επι δε τωι ενατω
[βα]σιλει ηκμασαν Αμμω
[νι]ος και Ζηνο[δοτος] και Διο
[κλ]ης και Απολλο[δ]ωρος γραμ
[μα]τικοι.
Abbreviations and bibliography
Abbreviations
FGrHist | Jacoby, F., et al., eds. 1923-. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Leiden: Brill. |
IG | 1924-. Inscriptiones Graecae. Berlin: De Gruyer. |
LGPN | Fraser, P. M. and Matthew, E., eds. 1987-. Lexicon of Greek Personal Names. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
OCD | Hornblower, S. and Spawforth, A., eds. 2003. Oxford Classical Dictionary. Third revised edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
RE | Pauly, A., ed. 1894-. Realencyclopädie der classichen Altertumwissenschaft. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler. |
SEG | Chaniotis, A., et al., eds. 1923-. Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. Leiden: Brill. |
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