It is Zheng Xuan (127–200), more than any other commentator, to whom we owe our current understanding of the Confucian Classics – Zheng Xuan, his subcommentators, Kong Yingda (574–648), and Jia Gongyan (fl. 637), who canonised his readings in the early Tang (618–907). Zheng Xuan made mistakes, however, and this chapter offers a case in point: the calculation of physically impossible target geometries for the royal archery meet reputedly held in the Western Zhou (1045–771 BCE), the ‘Big Shoot’ (dashe). In transforming the ambiguous language of the Classics into an elaborate mathematics problem with definite quantities, Zheng Xuan neglects to account for the targets being in three dimensions, and his subcommentators supply mathematical proofs for numbers that are ‘flat wrong’. It is not as if they could not have known, I argue, as the Big Shoot was living practice in their respective days, and as Zheng and Kong were trained in mathematics. Faced with this curious dissonance between exegesis, experience, and mathematical training, I suggest that we might better understand the work of the exegete as reconstructing abstract, ideal forms which were necessarily divorced from their reality and for which mathematics suggested itself as the perfect tool.

Although there has been a tendency in modern scholarship on the Roman Empire in late antiquity (early third to early seventh century BCE) to view the period through the lens of transformation rather than violent upheaval, warfare undoubtedly became more frequent, at least compared with the first two centuries BCE, and impacted on regions of the empire long insulated from significant military conflict. The empire of late antiquity faced more significant external challenges, as well as more regular bouts of civil war. Increased use of archery, with its potential to inflict mass casualties, was a distinctive feature of battle in this period; siege warfare became more common, so that civilian populations experienced the violence of war more directly; and expansion in the size of the army placed increased pressures on recruitment and logistical support – pressures which resulted in greater use of force by the state to maintain the military establishment. Changes in the structure of the army also meant that troops were more frequently billeted on the civilian population, who thereby became more exposed to casual violence at the hands of their own troops. In these different ways, late antiquity can be considered a period of Roman history when military violence became more prevalent.

This chapter considers the importance of scribal skills, particularly letter writing, through a focus on the insha (epistolary) treatises of the Bahmani vizier, long-distance merchant and scholar, Mahmud Gavan. Against a background of court factionalism, Gavan advocated the cultivation of a genre of writing, insha or letter writing, which not only had strong practical uses for communication at court, but had the potential, if manipulated adroitly enough, to transform society, the recipient of the letter, and the individual writing the letter.

This chapter focuses on the martial skills of sword fighting, archery and wrestling. Courtiers were the military elite: a high position was frequently the reward of prowess in battle, and the ability to direct men and attract followers in daily life was directly related to one’s skill in battle. However, martial skills were not merely a prerequisite for worldly success. I examine the tale of Yusuf, who – by virtue of his skills as a wrestler – rose from lowly service in the kitchens of the sultan’s palace to become one of the most powerful courtiers in the Bahmani sultanate, and eventually the founder of the independent sultanate of Bijapur. In historical accounts like this, the refinement of martial skills and the perfection of one’s physical body came to be framed as a key ethical endeavour through the ideal of javanmardi, or ‘young manliness’.