The manuscript now Vatican, Vat. lat. 2193, copied in Italy (possibly at Verona) in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, written in two columns on both sides of the folio, also contains the Strategemata of Frontinus and a number of other works by, among others, Apuleius, Cicero and Palladius. Part of the papal library since the mid-fifteenth century, it is a manuscript of the greatest interest and significance to us as, moving from the general and the anonymous, we seek to understand how a particular known reader responded to the ideas and urgings of the De re militari. For here, written on the copy which he owned, we have the glosses of a single person, no less than one of the great European scholars and thinkers of his time, Francesco Petrarch.

Book I was to provide Petrarch with references to many famous names from classical antiquity: writers such as Virgil (one of his favourites), Homer, Sallust and Cato; historical figures such as Cincinnatus, Pompey and Scipio Africanus; while his interest in historical topography and the identification of ancient place names is reflected in the notice of Illyricum.