What’s with Caesar and the Third Person in the Gallic Wars?

While we say that the Gallic Wars were written by Caesar, they were really written by the scribes. The thesis of this paper is that they used the third person singular to refer to Caesar, since they were taking down dictation and would not use “I/we,” as they were not the ones who had done the action. This use of the third person is attested to in Greek authors, and Caesar obviously was pleased with how it sounded; while he had the last word on the subject, it’s the scribes who deserve the credit for style.

Caesar and Genocide: Confronting the Dark Side of Caesar’s Gallic Wars

Julius Caesar’s military achievements, described in his Gallic War, are monumental; so are the atrocities his army committed in slaughtering or enslaving entire nations. He stands accused of genocide. For today’s readers, including students and teachers, this poses problems. It raises questions, not least about Caesar’s place in the Latin curriculum. Applying modern definitions of “genocide,” is he guilty as accused? If so, is it justified to condemn him of a crime that was recognized as such only recently? Without condoning Caesar’s actions, this paper seeks fuller understanding by contextual analysis, placing them in the context of Roman—and ancient (if not almost universal)—customs of imperial warfare. It emphasizes the complexity of historical persons and events, juxtaposing Caesar the brutal conqueror to Caesar the clement victor, who established clemency among a ruler’s cardinal virtues.

Relative Absoluteness: The Case of Participial Clauses in Latin

The aim of this article is to reopen the investigation of the ablative absolute in Latin and to analyse this construction and its use from one angle, namely, the coreferentiality rules. The examples for analysis have been taken from the Gallic Wars. As has been noticed before, in several works, the use of the absolute construction in texts written by classical authors, such as Caesar or Cicero, allows us to formulate a rule concerning its coreferentiality. As far as the syntactical coreferentiality is concerned, the classical rule requires an absolute construction to be — unsurprisingly — absolute, i. e., non-coreferential. This rule seems to be increasingly ignored by later authors. However, a deeper analysis taking into account not only syntactical but also semantical coreferentiality shows that the absoluteness of the construction is not so absolute after all, even in classical Latin. The examples of such use of the ablativus absolutus may be seen as forerunners of the change that occurred between classical and late Latin. The author proposes a hypothesis that an independent but similar development of the use of absolute constructions in different languages may suggest that there is a kind of interlinguistic tendency to substitute nominal phrases for subordinate clauses, especially in spoken language.

Cezarov posjet Iliriku 57. /56. g. pr. Kr. / Caesar’s visit to Illyricum in 57/56 B.C.

This article is dealing with the chronology and subject of Caesar’s first visit to Illyricum. Namely, at the beginning of winter in 57 B.C. Gaius Julius Caesar, the governor of Illyricum and the two Gauls, set off to Illyricum with the intent to visit the local communities and to acquaint himself with the area. However, in Gaul suddenly broke out the rebellion of the Veneti and their allies. Caesar’s subordinate commander in the area, Publius Licinius Crassus, informed Caesar about these events. As he was quite distant, Caesar ordered military ships to be built on the river that flows in the Atlantic Ocean (Liger fl.) and told Crassus he will proceed to the army cum primum per anni tempus potuit. This seemingly short episode during Caesar’s governorship of Illyricum is attested with only a few words in the third book of Commentarii de Bello Gallico (bell. Gall. III, VII – IX). Although noticed in modern historiography, to date no significant scholarly attention or satisfactory analysis has been paid to it. In modern historiography it is mentioned exclusively in the works dealing with a far wider context. There is only an overview, with a prevailing opinion that due to the war with the Veneti Caesar had to adjourn his short visit to Illyricum or that he did not even arrive there. Yet with the analysis of general historical circumstances, specific chronology of the period and Caesar’s work on Gallic wars, an exactly different conclusion is to be made. Here the authors give new interpretation of Caesar’s words and contemporary information on the political events in Rome. Thus proving not only that Caesar’s departure to war with the Veneti cannot be chronologically associated with his departure to Illyricum, but that Caesar indeed visited Illyricum; that his visit lasted much longer than it has been considered so far; and that his reasons for the visit stemmed from the significance of the province in Caesar’s plans for future engagements.