A bibliography of English military books up to 1642 and of ...

and Julius Africanus, the Greek text of Hero the Younger, and
another treatise of Hero the Elder, were first printed by Thevenot,
sub-librarian of Louis XIV., in 1693, under the title, " Veterum
Mathematicorum Opera ", with Latin translations to all but the
fifth and sixth. Thevenot used a MS. which contained also ^Elian's
" Tadics ", Onosander's " Stratagems ", and part of Maurice's
" Stratagems." But his edition, which has not only become excessively
rare, but is also obscure and inaccurate, is superseded by
*the " Poliorcetique des Grecs " of Wescher. The most important
source of M. Wescher's edition is the tenth century MS., brought
from Mount Athos in 1843 by Minoides Minas, comprising a colledtion
of technical writings on the defence of places ;
namely, the
treatises of Athenaeus, Bito, Hero the Elder, Apollodorus, and
Hero the Younger ; to which are added sixteen extracts from the
historians, Polybius and Dionysius, relative to famous sieges.
It is
supposed that the colle6tion is a compilation made in Constantinople
about the ninth or tenth century, probably by command of the
reigning emperor. The discovery of this MS. enabled Wescher
to fill
up the gaps in the edition of Thevenot, and, with the help of
other MSS. in various libraries of Europe, to make such substantial
alterations as to render the readings in many cases entirely different.
There are few English translations of the Greek and Latin
technical writers.^ But, by 1632, Philemon Holland had translated
twelve or thirteen of the histories.
Until his time the rendering
was made, almost without exception, through the French or
Italian versions.
Of the technical writers of antiquity, the only one studied
during the middle ages was Vegetius ; and he was translated into
French by de Meung in 1284. After the invention of printing,
when other MSS. of the same class were disinterred, Frontinus,
Modestus, and iElian came to the fore, but none of them ever
attained to equal popularity.
* There is a German translation of all Greek and Latin works on tadics, by
Frankenthorn and Mannheim, 1779, 4".
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