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The Veracity of Caesar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

J. P. V. D. Balsdon
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Extract

JuliusCaesar wrote seven books (a book to every year) on his campaigns in Gaul from 58 to 52 b.c., and three books (the first two describing the events of 49, the third those of 48) on his campaigns against Pompey and the Republican government in the civil war. A. Hirtius, who had perhaps been his secretary in Gaul, wrote Book viii of the B.G.—presumably in the latter part of 44—to describe Caesar's doings in 51 and 50, to link the two parts of Caesar's work together. This we know from Hirtius' own evidence, from the modest little introduction to his book. Who wrote the surviving accounts of Caesar's campaigns from 47 to 45 (the Bellum Alexandrinum, Bellum Africum, and Bellum Hispaniense), we do not know at all.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , March 1957 , pp. 19 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1957

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References

page 19 note 1 In what follows B.G. stands for the De bello Gallico and B.C. for the De bello civili. The full titles of modern works referred to in the notes are to be found in the note on bibliography at the end of the article.

page 20 note 1 Adcock, pp. 96 ff., like the editor of the Oxford Classical Text, accepts all these passages as genuine. The editor of the latest Teubner edition of B.G. regards iv. 10, v. 13–14, and vi. 26–28 as interpolations.

page 20 note 2 Brutus 262, a passage followed very closely by Hirtius, B.G. viii, praef. 4 f.

page 21 note 1 Rambaud, p. 140.

page 21 note 2 B.C. ii. 22. 6.

page 21 note 3 Suet. Div. Iul., Dio Cassius xli. 26–35, Appian B.C. ii. 47.

page 22 note 1 B.G. iv. 4–15; cf. Plut. Caes. 22. 4, Appian Celt. 18 (both quoting Tanusius Geminus), Plut. Cato 51, Comp. Nic. et Crossi 4. 2, Suet. Div. Iul. 24. 3.

page 22 note 2 iv. 9. 3, 11. 4.

page 22 note 3 Suet. Div. Iul. 9. 2.

page 23 note 1 Tac. Ann. iv. 34. 4.

page 24 note 1 ii. 17.

page 25 note 1 B.C. i. 10; Stevens, p. 168.

page 25 note 2 Cf. Tac. Ann. ii. 26. 3.

page 27 note 1 Walser, p. 23.

page 27 note 2 Cf. Strabo 4. 192 c.

page 27 note 3 Who himself had given no hostages, B.G. i. 31. 9.