# CHAPTER 39 — A Commander Must Be Knowledgeable About Localities

Among the other things necessary to a commander of armies is the knowledge of localities and countries, because without such general and particular knowledge, a commander of armies cannot undertake any action. In fact, all the sciences require experience in order to master them completely, and this is one that requires enormous experience. This experience, or rather this particular knowledge, is acquired more through hunting than through any other exercise. Accordingly, ancient writers say that those heroes who ruled the world in their time were brought up in the woods and in the hunt, because hunting, besides providing that kind of knowledge, teaches us countless things necessary in warfare. In his life of Cyrus, Xenophon shows that when Cyrus went to attack the king of Armenia, he reminded his men, in planning that undertaking, that this was nothing more than one of those hunting expeditions they had gone on many times with him. He reminded those he sent in ambush on the mountain-tops that it was similar to the times they had gone to set up nets on the mountain ridges, and those who went to scour the countryside would be like men who went to rouse the wild beast from its lair, so as to drive it into the nets.

This is said to show that hunting, according to what Xenophon confirms, is a simulation of a war, and for this reason great men consider such an exercise honourable and necessary. Nor can this knowledge of different countries be learned through any more convenient means than by way of hunting, because the man who engages in hunting becomes acquainted with the lay of the land in the place where he hunts. When one is well acquainted with one region, he later on will easily comprehend all the new territories, because each country and each part of it, taken together, have some similarity, so that from knowledge of one part one can easily pass to knowledge of another. But anyone who remains unfamiliar with one country can never, or only over a long period of time, come to know another; and anyone who has this experience knows, in the blink of an eye, how that plain lies, how that mountain rises, where that valley goes, and all other similar things, of which in the past he has gained a solid understanding. That this is true is demonstrated to us by Livy through the example of Publius Decius, who was tribune of the soldiers in the army led by Cornelius the consul against the Samnites, for when the consul had led the Roman army into a valley where they could be trapped by the Samnites, and seeing it in so much danger, Publius said to the consul: ‘“Do you see, sir,” he said, “that hilltop rising above the enemy? There lies the bulwark of our hope and safety, if we are quick to capture it, as the Samnites have been so blind as to neglect it.”’ * Just before these words spoken by Decius, Livy declares: ‘a military tribune, Publius Decius, espied an isolated hill which rose above the wood and dominated the enemy’s camp. It was difficult of access for an encumbered army, but easy for lightly equipped men.’ Hence, after being sent to the top of the hill by the consul with 3,000 men and saving the Roman army, as he is planning, once night comes, to leave and to save himself and his soldiers as well, Livy has him speak these words: ‘“Come on now, follow me, and while there is still some daylight let us see if we can find out where they put their guard-posts, and where there’s a way out of here.” All this he then investigated, wrapped in a common soldier’s cloak and taking with him the centurions, also dressed like men from the ranks, so that the enemy should not see that the commander was in the reconnaissance party.’ Anyone, therefore, who examines this text will see how useful and necessary it is for a commander to know the nature of different lands, because if Decius had not known and recognized these things, he would not have been able to judge how useful it would be for the Roman army to take that hill, nor would he have been able to recognize from afar if the hill was accessible or not; and once he had brought his men to the summit, then, wishing to leave to return to the consul with the enemy surrounding him, he could not have searched out from afar the paths of escape and the places guarded by the enemy. Thus, out of necessity Decius had to have such perfect knowledge: it enabled him to save the Roman army by taking the hill; later on when he was besieged, he knew how to find a path to safety for himself and for those who had been with him.