Onasander

According to Oldfather: Traces of Platonic philosophy have been sought in the [Strategikos], especially in the admonition that friends should fight beside friends (Ch. 24), and in the distinction made between φθόνος and ζῆλος (Ch. 42.25). But the essence of the first idea is as old as Nestor's advice in the Iliad (Β 362 f.); it was practised among the Eleans, Italic Greeks, Cretans, and Boeotians, being characteristic of the Sacred Band of Thebes, and something similar may not have been unknown at one time in Sparta, hence it can hardly have escaped the attention of military writers. The same topic is treated also in extant literature from before the time of Onasander by Xenophon in his Symposium, VIII.32, 34, 35, so that, although Onasander can hardly have been ignorant of the famous passage in Plato (Symposium, 178E ff.), it is hardly necessary to assume that this was its immediate source. As for the discrimination between φθόνος and ζῆλος there is no real parallel in Plato, whereas an almost exact counterpart exists in Aristotle.... such definitions, however, were the stock in trade of philosophers, and do not presuppose a specific source unless there is some marked similarity in expression. On the contrary, one would rather be inclined to wonder that, in an ethical study of warfare like the present, a commentator upon Plato's Republic should have failed to show at any point some trace of the not infrequent references to war and its basic cause, the character of the good soldier, the need of constant military exercise, the style of life of the soldier, the professional aspect of successful military preparation, mathematics as a necessary element in an officer's education, proposals looking toward the elimination of certain of the more cruel aspects of warfare, at least between civilized states, and similar topics discussed in that great work. Such silence on the part of Onasander, although not sufficient, perhaps, to cast doubt on the identity of our author with the writer mentioned by [the Suda], would more naturally suggest that in The General we have a study anterior to a period of preoccupation with Plato.

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According to Oldfather, the influence of Onasander in antiquity was considerable. Most subsequent military writers are indebted to him, notably Maurice and Leo VI, of whom the latter in a large measure paraphrases Onasander. In the Renaissance he enjoyed a remarkable popularity. Translations, beginning with the Latin translation by Niccolò Sagundino in 1493, appeared in rapid succession in Spanish, German, French, Italian, and English, and such a demand, for these were no mere philological exercises, shows that many a practical soldier took to heart his counsel, and that much of it has passed thereby into the common body of military science. Towards the end of the next century the first edition of the Greek text, by Rigaltius, appeared.