Consideration mainly of the manuscripts themselves, but also of information gleaned from wills and inventories, can reveal much about other texts with which the De re militari was closely associated in the Middle Ages, thus adding to our understanding of the way the work was regarded by its owners and readers. If the copying of a text is always deliberate, the accompanying text(s) given to it within a single codex, or ‘bed’, may not always be so. It can, none the less, often indicate how that text was regarded, and the (sometimes new) context within which its owners saw it. Although some 20 per cent of manuscripts are of the De re militari on its own, codices containing more than a single text can help us appreciate individual works through the eyes of the person who arranged them with particular bedfellows.

No surprise will be caused by the revelation that the text with which the De re militari is, by a very large margin, most frequently bound is the Strategemata of Julius Frontinus. Compiled in the first century AD, this comprised a collection of ‘exempla’ of military stratagems derived from both Greek and Roman historical sources, arranged under headings into four books, to support a work of military theory (also probably called De re militari) now lost. It cannot be determined whether Vegetius was familiar with this work, or depended on another for his knowledge of it. Frontinus is referred to twice in the De re militari, the relevant passages often bearing his name in the margins of manuscripts. The Strategemata proved to be a popular work in the Middle Ages; well over 100 manuscripts are known to have survived, including collections of excerpts and translations into at least three languages.