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Aeneas Tacticus

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AENEAS TACTICUS (4th century B.C.), one of the earliest Greek writers on the art of war. According to Aelianus Tacticus and Polybius, he wrote a number of treatises (' T7rowinlara) on the subject; the only one extant deals with the best methods of defending a fortified city. An epitome of the whole was made by Cineas, minister of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. The work is chiefly valuable as containing a large number of historical illustrations. Aeneas was considered by Casaubon to have been a contemporary of Xenophon and identical with the Arcadian general Aeneas of Stymphalus, whom Xenophon ( Hellenica, vii. 3) mentions as fighting at the battle of Mantinea (362 B.C.).

Editions in I. Casaubon's (1619), Gronovius' (1670) and Ernesti's (1763) editions of Polybius; also separately, with notes, by J. C. Orelli (Leipzig, 1818). Other texts are those of W. Rustow and H. Kiichly (Griechische Kriegsschriftsteller, vol. i. Leipzig, 1853) and A. Hug, Prolegomena Critica ad Aeneae. editionem (Zurich University, 1874). See also Count Beausobre, Commentaires sur la defense des places d'Aeneas (Amsterdam, 1 757); A. Hug, Aeneas von Stymphalos (Zurich, 1877); C. C. Lange, De Aeneae commentario poliorcetico (Berlin, 1879); M. H. Meyer, Observationes in Aeneam Tacticum (Halle, 1835); Haase, in Jahns Jahrbuch, 1835, xiv. 1; Max Jahns, Gesch. der Kriegswissenschaften, i. pp. 26-28 (Munich, 1889); Ad. Bauer, in Zeitschrift fur allg. Geschichte, &c., 1886, i.; T. H. Williams in American Journal of Philology, xxv. 4; E. Schwartz in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopadie (Stuttgart, 1894).