Despite this, Watson doubts its value, for Vegetius "was neither a historian nor a soldier: his work is a compilation carelessly constructed from material of all ages, a congeries of inconsistencies".

[8] These antiquarian sources, according to his own statement, were Cato the Elder, Cornelius Celsus, Frontinus, Paternus and the imperial constitutions of Augustus, Trajan, and Hadrian (1.8).

Milner observes that it was "one of the most popular Latin technical works from Antiquity, rivalling the elder Pliny's Natural History in the number of surviving copies dating from before AD 1300.

"[10] It was translated into English, French (by Jean de Meun and others), Italian (by the Florentine judge Bono Giamboni and others), Catalan, Spanish, Czech, and Yiddish before the invention of printing.

Niccolò Machiavelli attempted to address Vegetius' defects in his L'arte della Guerra (Florence, 1521), with heavy use of Polybius, Frontinus, and Livy, but Justus Lipsius' accusation that he confused the institutions of diverse periods of the Roman Empire and G. Stewechius' opinion that the survival of Vegetius' work led to the loss of his named sources were more typical of the late Renaissance.

[12] The complete Latin text of De Re Militari is available online: From the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection at the Library of Congress The 1944 abridged edition of Lieutenant John Clarke's 1767 translation (omitting Books IV and V, "of interest only to military antiquarians") is available online: A complete facsimile of John Clarke's 1767 translation is available at Google Books: 1529 German-language edition of De re militari published by Heinrich Stayner with woodcuts variously depicting underwater diving suits, siege equipment, cannons, and air mattresses for the comfort of soldiers in the field.