Aineias Tacticus in his intellectual context

[From 1st paragraph] Much effort has been expended in the attempt to identify the author of the late classical treatise known as Poliorketika, generally by deduction from the meagre evidence in the text itself. As far as this goes, the likeliest candidate remains the younger Aineias of Stymphalos, militarily active in the 360s.3 This, however, remains unconfirmed, as the range of views in this volume shows. Accordingly, I sometimes refer to our author as ‘Aineias’ (in inverted commas). Whoever the author was, the work seems likely to belong to the mid- or late 350s.4 Aside from questions of name and date, what persona does ‘Aineias’ convey through his text? What identity, or identities, does he intentionally assert or unintentionally reveal? In the light of this, what can we further ascertain about the cultural and intellectual context within which the work was composed, and about the author’s aims? To what extent, indeed, were those aims military, scientific, political—or even rhetorical and literary? As we shall see, recent advances in the understanding of the polis, 5 of Arkadian politics and identities,6 and of the nature of oligarchy7 allow us to fine-tune our appreciation of his self-presentation.