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Polyaenus

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Polyaenus (in Greek Πoλυαινoς) was a Macedonian author of the work on Stratagems in War (in Greek Στρατηγηματα), which is still extant, who lived about the middle of the 2nd century CE. The Suda calls him a rhetorician, and we learn from Polyaenus himself that he was accustomed to plead causes before the emperor. He dedicated his work to Marcus Aurelius (161–180) and Verus (161–169), while they were engaged in the Parthian war (162–165), about 163 CE, at which time, he says, he was too old to accompany them in their campaigns.

This work is divided into eight books, of which the first six contain an account of the stratagems of the most celebrated Greek generals, the seventh of those of foreign people, and the eighth of the Romans, and illustrious women. Parts, however, of the sixth and seventh books are lost, so that of the 900 stratagems which Polyaenus described, only 833 have come down to us.

The book has come down to us in a single copy of the 13th century, which once belonged to Michel Apostolios and is now in the Laurentian Library in Florence. The work is written in a clear and pleasing style, though somewhat tinged with the artificial rhetoric of the age. It contains a vast number of anecdotes respecting many of the most celebrated men in antiquity, and has preserved many historical facts of which we should otherwise have been ignorant; but its value as an historical authority is very much dimi­nished by the little judgment which the author evidently possessed, and by our ignorance of the sources from which he took his statements.

There are no less than five Byzantine abridgments of this work, the most important in the same library of the original, the Laurentian. This compendium, titled Yπoθεσεις εκ των στρατηγικων πραξεων, contains fifty-eight chapters and three hundred fifty-four stratagems and is useful to elucidate and explain many passages of the original, lost or not. We should not deduce from the existence of the abridgements that Polyaenus' treatise was popular in the Middle Ages; far from it. The original is rarely cited by Byzantine sources, which suggests that it had ceased to circulate, and that the abridgements had replaced it. To this it must be added that only the Yπoθεσεις derives directly from the original, while the other four versions seem to be summaries of the first.

Polyaenus also wrote several other works, all of which have perished. The Suda has preserved the titles of two, On Thebes (Περι Θηβων) and Tactics, in three books (Τακτικα); and Stobaeus makes a quotation from a work of Polyaenus, Υπερ τoυ κoινoυ των Mακεδoνων, and from another entitled Υπερ τoυ Συνεδριoυ. Poly­aenus likewise mentions his intention of writing a work on the memorable actions of M. Aurelius and L. Verus.

Polyaenus was first printed in a Latin trans­lation, executed by Justus Vulteius, at Basel, 1549. The first edition of the Greek text was published by Isaac Casaubon, Lyon, 1589; the next by Pancratius Maasvicius, Leyden, 1690; the third by Samuel Mursinna, Berlin, 1756; the fourth by Coray, Paris, 1809. The work has been translated into English by R. Shepherd, London, 1793; into Ger­man by Seybold, Frankfurt, 1793-94, and by Blume, Stuttgart, 1834.

References

Notes

Suda, s.v. "Polyainos" Polyaenus, praef. lib. ii, praef. lib. viii Ibid., praef. lib. i Stobaeus, xlviii. 43 Ibid., 53 Polyaenus, praef. lib. vi

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