Polyaenus

Polyainos (also Polyän, Polyaenus or Polyaenus; * 100 ) was a Macedonian orator, lawyer and writer in Rome.

Life

Polyainos was around 100, possibly born in the in Asia Minor Roman province of Bithynia in the city of Nicaea. His family was of Macedonian descent. To 161, he worked in Rome as a rhetorician ( speaker) and lawyer. This means that he probably lived there for some time, so he possessed Roman citizenship and Latin as well as Greek ruled. How long has he lived in Rome, and how he received the Roman citizenship, is not known. 161 he published the first book of his Strategemata (see plants).

Information about his life can be found in the Suda, a Byzantine lexicon entstandenem around 1000, a few scattered fragments and in the prefaces to his work Strategemata.

Works

Polyainos ' single handed- work are his Strategemata, a collection of military stratagems, which he dedicated to the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.

In the sources (see life ) there are notes on other works that have been lost:

• A speech for the Macedonian Assembly, with whom he won a case for the Macedonian Provincial Assembly as an attorney,

• A treatise On Thebes, in which he described the famous sound-producing statue of Memnon in Thebes in Egypt (Egypt) and

• A work called Taktika in three books.

The Strategemata

161 Polyainos published on the occasion of the beginning of Partherkriegs ( 161-166 ) the first book of Strategemata. The next five of eight books published individually by the summer 162 This haste is to be noted the work. Polyainos dedicated his work to the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus and wanted to give them a guide military knowledge to the hand with this. It contains about 900 examples of stratagems of a period of time ranging from mythological times to Augustus. The work is structured according to peoples. Book I -IV deals with the Greek mythology, the Greeks, Macedonians and Successors, Book V of Sicily, Book VI of different peoples, Book VII mainly living in Persia peoples and Book VIII Romans and women.

Polyainos used as sources historian, older Strategemsammlungen and, according to his own words, his own research. The different value of his sources means that some of his examples are fictitious or implausible. Polyainos ' aim was not historical accuracy, but he wanted to convey principles of successful military leadership.

During the ancient times probably circulated a series of writings with Strategemsammlungen. Besides the Strategemata but only the stratagems of the Roman Frontinus are preserved.

Expenditure

• Polyaenus: Stratagems of war. Edited and translated by Peter Krentz and Everett L. Wheeler. 2 volumes. Chicago, 1994.
• Polyaenus: Polyaeni Strategematon libri VIII.Ex rec. Eduardi Wölfflin iterum rec. Ioannes Melber. Addenda adiecit Klaus Reinhard. Teubner, Lipsiae 1887. ( Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubnerian ). Reprints: Stuttgart 1970.