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Aelianus Tacticus (fl. 2nd century CE). Peri strategikon taxeon Hellenikon [in Greek]. De militaribus ordinibus instituendis more graecorum liber a Francisco Robertello Utinensi nunc primum graece multis que imaginibus & picturis ab eodem illustratus. [8], 77, [2]pp. Woodcut title border and 53 woodcut text illustrations, including a double-page woodcut and 3 full-page illustrations; woodcut printer s device on the final leaf. Venice: A. & G. Spinelli, 1552. 230 x 161 mm. Original limp vellum, pigskin ties, minor worming on last two leaves. Wax stains on two blank margins, otherwise very good to fine. Old stamp on the verso of the front free endpaper, later owner s signature on title, old library stamp on title, early owner s signature on title cancelled. First Separate Edition in Greek; First Illustrated Edition in Greek. Peri strategikon taxeon Hellenikon [On military arrangements of the Greeks], by the Greek military writer Aelianus Tacticus, is a handbook of military drill and tactics as practiced by Alexander the Great and his Hellenistic successors. The treatise, most often referred to as Aelian s Tactics or Tactica, is of particular value for its explanation of the operation of the Macedonian phalanx, an infantry formation developed by Alexander s father, Philip of Macedon, and used by Alexander to conquer much of the known world. Aelian s work remained influential long after his death: An Arabic translation made circa 1350 was used to train Muslim armies, and in the 16th and 17th centuries the Tactics was one of the primary training aids for Europe s pike-and-musket armies. Aelian s Tactics is the earliest known document to contain diagrams representing human activity, as noted by Sydney Anglo in his The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe (2000). The earliest known manuscript version, contained in the 10th-century Codex Laurentianus graecus 55.4, includes non-figurative diagrams to represent infantry formations; similar diagrams appear in most of the printed editions, beginning with the 1487 Latin translation by Theodorus Gaza. The present first separate edition in Greek, edited by Italian humanist Francesco Robortello (1516-67), may have been the first to employ small woodcut figures in its diagrams to depict the various types of infantry and cavalry. The Greek text of Aelian s work first appeared in print in 1532 in Onomaton Attikon eklogai, a volume of Greek works edited by Michel de Vasconsan, but Vasconsan s edition did not include any diagrams. C. Matthew, The Tactics of Aelian: A New Translation of the Manual the Influenced Warfare for Fifteen Centuries (2012), pp. xiii xx. . Seller Inventory # 43183
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