Aeneas Tacticus

Aeneas Tacticus (; fl. 4th century BC) was one of the earliest Greek writers on the art of war and is credited as the first author to provide a complete guide to securing military communications. Polybius described his design for a hydraulic semaphore system. His only surviving work, ''How to Survive Under Siege,'' covers how to defend a fortified city that is under siege. The work gives instruction to not just military commanders but also the citizens of the city under attack, providing secure communication, internal security, and how to keep morale high. This work is what credits him with having the oldest known book on defense warfare in Greek literature. He also provides a lot of insight into the politics within the classical polis.

According to Aelianus Tacticus and Polybius, he wrote a number of treatises () on the subject. The only extant one, ''How to Survive under Siege'' (, ), deals with the best methods of defending a fortified city. Aeneas describes how one should choose trustworthy guards to maintain the secure communications to detect internal conspiracies, as well as simpler tactics like securing the surrounding walls and gates. An epitome of the whole was made by Cineas, minister of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. The work is chiefly valuable as containing a large number of historical illustrations.

Aeneas was considered by Isaac Casaubon to have been a contemporary of Xenophon and identical with the Arcadian general Aeneas of Stymphalus, whom Xenophon (''Hellenica'', vii.3) mentions as fighting at the Battle of Mantinea (362 BC). Most modern historians agree that there's little that can be confirmed about Aeneas's life, and details about him are suggested from themes reflected the surviving treatise.{{Cite web |last=Whitehead |first=David |date=2014 |title=Aeneas Tacticus |url=https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6NDgwMTQwMQ Provided by Wikipedia