Gaul
Classical and Historical Book Review:
Caesar, Julius. The Conquest of Gaul. New York: Penguin Books, 1983.
The author, Julius Caesar, of The Conquest of Gaul has been variously described as a "Roman patrician, politician, writer, reformer, general, dictator and," according to the decree of the Roman senate, later "a god." (Seindal, 2003) The military leader Julius Caesar's book upon his Gallic conquests famously begins, "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres..." Or that Gaul is divided in three parts. The authorship of the book was motivated in part to define his legacy, as he fought these wars, as a great general and a great leader to the adoring Roman populace and the disapproving Roman senate. Thus, even during his lifetime, before he became an official God of the Roman world, Caesar was attempting to formulate his own following and legacy in print. Rather than allowing even his followers to define his conquests, he wished to define them on his own terms.
Because Caesar wrote, not in retrospect, but during the course of the actual campaigns themselves, taking the reader from the campaigns against Helvetii invaders to the siege of Alesia seven years later, through the parts of Gaul that now make up France, contemporary Belgium, the German lands west of the Rhine, southern Holland, and much of Switzerland, the stories still have an honesty and a verisimilitude that is surprising. At times, Caesar admits his own lack of foresight, and also his clean and clear prose does not, to a reader's surprise, inevitably inflate his accomplishments. An intellectual, Caesar wished to explain why his military tactics were superior to the Germanic and British tribes he warred against, as well as praise his own military superiority and the necessity of his mission against the Gallic peoples, to win the Gallic lands for Rome.
Caesar's tone is not always laudatory regarding himself as a...
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