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Polyaenus or Polyenus.( Polyainos,
"much-praised") was a 2nd-century CE Macedonian author, known best
for his Stratagems in War ( Strategemata), which has been preserved. The Suda
calls him a rhetorician, and Polyaenus himself writes that he was accustomed to
plead causes before the Roman emperor. Polyaenus dedicated Stratagems in War to
the two emperors Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180) and Lucius Verus (r.
161–169), while they were engaged in the Roman–Parthian War of
161–166, about 163, at which time he was too old to accompany them in
their campaigns. Polyaenus, Stratagems in War, 1821
Stratagems:
This work is divided into eight books: the first six contain accounts of the
stratagems of the most celebrated Greek generals, the seventh book contains
stratagems of non Greeks and Romans, and the eighth book those of the Romans
and of illustrious women. Parts, however, of the sixth and seventh books are
lost, so that of the 900 stratagems which Polyaenus described, 833 have
survived. The book has survived in a single copy made in the 13th century,
although there exist five abridged versions, which will be discussed below. The
full copy 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 uniquely preserved many historical facts. There are no less than five
Byzantine abridgments of this work, the most important one of which is held in
the same library of the original, the Laurentian. This compendium, contains 58
chapters and 354 stratagems, and is useful to elucidate and explain many
passages of the original, lost or not. Despite the existence of the
abridgements, Polyaenus' treatise was not popular in the Middle Ages. 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 version that derives directly from the original, while
the other four versions seem to be summaries of the first.
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 Adamantios Korais,
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.
Other works Polyaenus also wrote several other works, all of which have
perished. The Suda has preserved the titles of two, On Thebes and Tactics, in
three books. Stobaeus makes a quotation from a work of Polyaenus, (For the
koinon of Macedonians), and from another entitled (For the Synedrion).
Polyaenus likewise mentions his intention of writing a work on the memorable
actions of M. Aurelius and L. Verus.
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