‘Quod ipsi dicunt’: some Terms and Expressions of sermo castrensis in Vegetius’ De re militari

Abstract

The anachronism which mainly characterizes the De re militari by Vegetius is particularly clear in the technical military vocabulary used in the work. But next to a underneath a continuous mixing of old-time and current terminology, there is the author’s effort to indicate the equivalence between old unusual or even outdated terms and those which have replaced them. Secondly, such a military language appears several times in the work as a specialized language which is fed with a large number of technical own expressions and terms, and also —at least in a certain way— as a special language only used by a group of professionals in opposition to the rest of speakers, who understand it as if it was some kind of jargon that needs glosses and paraphrases. Finally, the great interest of this vocabulary lies in the fact that, in some cases, it is just documented in the De re militari as an only source.