Hello and welcome to another ancient warfare magazine podcast. I'm Angus Wallace. Today's topic was suggested by

Patreon backer, Vim Sondermans, who suggested we might look at training manuals and handbooks,

which is a great topic for us, as it is something our very own Mary Dam has previously researched.

If you're interested in becoming a patron of the podcast, you can find us at patreon.com slash

ancient warfare podcast.

As a patron of the show, you will be invited to watch us record live and even comment or ask

questions as we're doing so. We thank those who already support the

show. It is very much appreciated. So with me today is Jasper Othage, Murray Dame, Mark McCaffrey, Mark

Sandis and Lindsay Powell. Good evening chaps. So let's kick off. Before we get to military manuals, I wondered if

someone would like to start by explaining how ancient text have been preserved and passed down and survived.

Let me try and have a stab of that then. Because I was studying, I think it's Livy's, I can't remember, it was the animals or the histories.

But anyway, it doesn't matter which one.

Each book has its own unique path to the present, and it's quite fascinating.

When you pick up these translations, they normally have right at the front.

This is a translation of the manuscript of the such and such of the

edition of the such and such translated by, with annotations by 15 other people you've never heard

of and they all seem to date to 1,500 and 1,500 and 1,700 and that's part of the clue. Sometimes,

for example, in the case of some of Tacitus's books, at some point they get broken up and they go off from different paths.

And by the time they go from monasteries to, for example, places like Germany where they start printing books, they get translated and then different editions of those things come into circulation.

And then suddenly someone realizes, hey, they've got books 7, 8, and 9 in Leipzig,

and in Milan they've got books 1, 2, and 3.

It's the same thing. Why do we join them up?

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