ERRATA

Everett L. Wheeler, the author of “Rome’s Dacian Wars: Domitian, Trajan, and
Strategy on the Danube, Part II,” which appeared in The Journal of Military History
75,1 ( January 2011): 191–219, has submitted the following corrections to the
footnotes.

114. The basic tenets of the “no strategy” school were addressed and found
lacking at Wheeler, “Methodological Limits and the Mirage of Roman Strategy”:
a defense of a Roman concept of strategy, not a defense of Luttwak (above, note
110), as often alleged: e.g., K. Kagan, “Redefining Roman Grand Strategy,”
Journal of Military History 70 (2006): 333–62, see 334, 335 with n. 3; cf. Wheeler,
“Methodological Limits and the Mirage of Roman Strategy,” 8 (“Luttwak’s extreme
schematization of archaeological data and his rationalization of Roman policy over
four centuries”), 10 (“Roman strategy [not necessarily identical with Luttwak’s
views]”). The two works are now available between the same covers: Edward
Luttwak, La grande stratégie de l’empire romain: suivi de Everett L. Wheeler, Limites
méthodologiques et mirage d’une stratégie romaine, trans. P. Richardot (Paris: Institut
de Stratégie Comparée and Economica, 2009). Debate continues. Luttwak’s own
(too) brief defense of his 1976 views in The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), esp. 421–22,
aimed primarily at Whittaker (Rome and its Frontiers, below) and Mattern (Rome
and the Enemy), invokes concepts from his Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001) to obscure
retreat from various positions of the 1976 work; he scarcely offers a status quaestionis:
some of his distinctions of Byzantine from Roman strategy are exaggerated, and
Wheeler, “Methodological Limits and the Mirage of Roman Strategy” (besides
other relevant studies) is unknown to him. Among other work, P. Heather, “The
Late Roman Art of Client Management: Imperial Defence in the Fourth Century
West,” in The Transformation of Frontiers: From Late Antiquity to the Carolingians,
ed. W. Pohl et al. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001), 15–68, although ignorant of Wheeler’s
discussion, independently reasserts many of the same arguments as Wheeler
for Roman strategy; his contention, however, that Roman efforts to control and
manipulate client-kings were new in the fourth century is blatantly false; see also
the strong pro-strategy paper of G. Greatrex, “Roman Frontiers and Foreign Policy
in the East,” in Aspects of the Roman East: Papers in Honour of Professor Fergus Millar,
ed. R. Alston and S. N. C. Lieu (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 103–73. Note also (most
recently) M. Colombo, “La forza numerica e la composizione degli eserciti campali
durante l’alto imperio: legioni e auxilia da Cesare Augusto a Traiano,” Historia 58
(2009): 96–117 at 113–15 for additional arguments reasserting the well-known
trend that Roman emperors consciously increased (heresy to the “no strategy”
school) the army’s proportion of cavalry to infantry, although his unconvincing
suppositions about numbers (precise sizes of units, etc.) invite criticism, and his
ideas about Vegetius’s antiqua legio ignore the discussions of many, including E.
L. Wheeler, “The Late Roman Legion as Phalanx, Part I,” in L’armée romaine de

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 Wheeler Errata

Dioclétien à Valentinien I, ed. Y. Le Bohec and C. Wolff (Paris: De Boccard, 2004),

309–58, and Wheeler, “The Late Roman Legion as Phalanx, Part II,” Revue des
études militaires anciennes 1 (2004): 147–75. C. R. Whittaker’s final salvos appeared
in Rome and its Frontiers: The Dynamics of Empire (London: Routledge, 2004), esp.
28–49, where his views are considerably more pro-strategic (although still in denial)
than in his 1994 volume (Frontiers of the Roman Empire). Luttwak (Byzantine
Empire, 17 n.1) curiously cites Whittaker (Rome and its Frontiers) as authoritative
on how the limes functioned, although Whittaker detested the limes concept. K.
Kagan’s recent (2006) assessment, “Redefining Roman Grand Strategy,” unaware
of Whittaker’s Rome and its Frontiers and many other studies, misrepresents the
status quaestionis; a more accurate (if brief ) view of the status quaestionis at E. L.
Wheeler, “The Army and the Limes in the East,” in A Companion to the Roman Army,
by P. Erdkamp (Malden/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 237–38, 263–64.
Kagan’s basic points, strategy as troop transfers and use of resources (as opposed
to planning), were already essentially in Wheeler, “Methodological Limits and the
Mirage of Roman Strategy,” 231–34. Unaware of the French conference (Y. Le
Bohec and C. Wolff, eds., Les légions de Rome sous le Haut-Empire, 3 vols. [Paris: De
Boccard, 2000–2003]) updating the basic study on legionary movements by Emil
Rittering in 1925, from which she profusely copied (354–57), Kagan’s superficial
discussion is both out-of-date and often misleading in details and interpretations.
A reliance on her fellow Yale alumna’s dissertation, Mattern, Rome and the Enemy,
as the new benchmark of the strategy debate is also questionable. Mattern’s views
did not impress Whittaker, Rome and its Frontiers, 30; see also the brief rebuttal of
Mattern’s thesis of a common mentality about defense and foreign policy issues in
the Roman ruling class at E. L. Wheeler, review of J. Allen, Hostages and Hostage-
Taking in the Roman Empire, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2007.02.04 (http:/
ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2007/2007-02-04.html): text with n. 4; cf. Wheeler, “The
Army and the Limes in the East,” 264; Luttwak, Byzantine Empire, 422.

181. Wheeler (“Methodological Limits and the Mirage of Roman Strategy,”

235–39) discussed Roman strategy and geographical issues and collected the relevant
literature, works subsequently overlooked rather than addressed. For the probable
use of cunei (wedges) at Tacitus, Annals 1.51.1 to indicate (presumably on some sort
of map) the planned trajectories of distinct strike forces (cunei as wedge-shaped
units do not fit the context), see Wheeler, “The Late Roman Legion as Phalanx,
Part I,” 342, a work (if known, along with its Part II above n.114) that would have
enriched Luttwak’s discussion of the transition from Roman to Byzantine tactics:
Byzantine Empire, e.g., 301–2, 348.

183. A. Strang, “Explaining Ptolemy’s Roman Britain,” Britannia 28 (1997):

1 with nn. 1–6. Luttwak (Byzantine Empire, 288; cf. 145) erroneously believes that
Romans relied on Ptolemy’s Geography and, in contrast, to the Byzantines, had no
ethnographic interests. Ptolemy’s Geography does not include ethnography, and a
supposed lack of Roman interest in foreign peoples is thoroughly debatable.

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Wheeler Errata

184. See Strobel’s polemic against those claiming Roman geographical

ignorance of Dacia and a lack of maps in Roman military planning, a thorough
rebuttal: K. Strobel, “Die Eroberung Dakiens—Ein Resümee zum Forschungsstand
der Dakerkriege Domitians und Traians,” Dacia 50 (2006): 106–7; note also Stefan
527–29. The realities of the sophistication of Roman operations in both Domitian’s
and Trajan’s wars do not support a view of geographical ignorance. Note also
Luttwak’s meager defense of Roman geographical knowledge: Byzantine Empire,
6 with n. 8, 421, largely inspired by A. D. Lee, Information and Frontiers: Roman
Foreign Relations in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993),
81–105.

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