A handful of men, inured to war, proceed to certain victory, while on the contrary, numerous armies of raw and undisciplined troops are but multitudes of men dragged to the slaughter.

Despite Eutropius' location in Constantinople the scholarly consensus is that Vegetius wrote in the Western Empire. Nothing is known of his life or station beyond what he tells us in his two surviving works: Epitoma rei militaris (also referred to as De Re Militari) and the lesser-known Digesta Artis Mulomedicinae a guide to veterinary medicine.