Aineias the Tactician: How to Survive Under Siege (Classical Studies)

Aineias Tacticus (mid-fourth century B.C.) is not only the earliest but also the most historically interesting of ancient military writers. Uniquely important, too, as a social commentator, he sheds valuable light on the nature of life and the psychological and strategic preoccupations of a typical Greek city-state at a time dominated by two extraordinarily atypical ones, Athens and Sparta. In Aineias’ work we see what conditions were like in a city-state obliged to play a minor and much more passive role in the history of its age -- not laying siege like the big players but suffering it. His practical recommendations derive clearly from accumulated personal experience in the first place; but at the same time he also draws copious illustrative material from both Herodotus and Thucydides.