Reference edition:.

P. Vegeti Renati digestorum artis mulomedicinae libri; edidit Ernestus Lommatzsch, Lipsiae, in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1903, pp. 3-277.

It was traditionally thought that Vegetius wrote only two technical treatises, one on military techniques, the Epitoma rei militaris, and another on veterinary medicine, the Digesta artis mulomedicinalis (or Mulomedicina, the work’s titulus uulgatus), both in four books. More recently, however, another hypothesis has come to the fore and became dominant: the fourth book of Digesta artis mulomedicinalis was in fact an independent text on bovine illnesses, which was probably entitled De curis boum epitoma (ex diuersis auctoribus).

Vegetius’ hippiatric treatise is transmitted, in its entirety or in parts, in about twenty codices. E. Lommatzsch, who put together what is even now the reference edition, knew of only ten. However, there is a more recent critical edition of the first book by V. Ortoleva (Catania, 1999), which also contains a general preface to the work. The manuscript tradition presents the work under three different titles: Digesta artis mulomedicinae, Digesta artis mulomedicinalis and Mulomedicina.

Once we accept the fourth book as, in fact, a free-standing pamphlet (libellus) on bovine medicine (De curis boum epitoma), the Digesta artis mulomedicinae proper is reduced to three books of unequal length. The first book is preceded by a prologue, which serves as a general preface for the work, and it contains 64 chapters: these address equine glanders (1-20), illnesses involving fever (29-36), internal diseases (39-52), other illnesses (52-55, 61-63), the care required to maintain good health among animals (56), and various potiones (57-60, 64). The second book discusses the rest of the equine diseases, arranged a capite ad calcem throughout 149 chapters. The third book is formed of 27 chapters: anatomy (1-4), physical characteristics (5-6), life expectancy (7), and then the remedies and medicinal preparations for treating various illnesses (7-27). Some manuscripts are interpolated and also include other preparations recommended for treating different symptoms and maladies.

In the work’s general preface, Vegetius justifies his intention to address veterinary medicine related to horses in a concise but comprehensive manner, extracting useful material from authoritative sources and summarising it in an organised fashion. He recognises that there are precedents in the Latin tradition (Pelagonius, Columella, Chiron, and Apsyrtus), but he does not think that these writings always deal with veterinary medicine in a satisfactory manner, for several reasons. The first two writers possess abundant dicendi facultas, but the first is interested in the treatment of animals without furnishing the necessary breadth of instruction for how to proceed (leui admonitione), while the second systematically omits the symptoms and the causes of diseases, as if his readers already possessed a basic proficiency in the material. Chiron and Apsyrtus, however, express themselves in an inferior style, with little elegance; and even if the contents of their works are more complete, they are very disorganised, which hinders the ease and usefulness of their reading. Furthermore, some of the medicinal preparations were expensive, and this often dissuaded the owners, through economy or prudence, from treating sick animals: this fact pushed Vegetius into writing his work ad omnium utilitatem. (D. Paniagua tr. C. Belanger).