Aeneas Tacticus

Aeneas Tacticus was a Greek military writer of the mid-fourth century BC, probably the Aeneas of Stymphalus mentioned by Xenophon as a general of the Arcadian League around 367 BC. If the identification is correct, he was a working soldier who wrote from experience.

His surviving work, the Poliorcetica (On the Defence of Fortified Positions), is the earliest Greek military treatise to survive. It is a practical manual: how to organise watches, detect treachery, use fire signals, handle refugees, prevent coups during sieges, and manage the civilian population of a besieged city. The advice is concrete and unsentimental — Aeneas discusses everything from the proper width of streets to the management of slaves during a crisis. The work draws on real incidents from Greek history, making it a valuable historical source as well as a military handbook.

Aeneas apparently wrote several other treatises on military topics, all now lost. The Poliorcetica survived because it was useful: soldiers kept copying it.