Table Of ContentAbout this book
The SPQR Study Guides series is designed to make it easy for students of
all levels to dip their toes into antiquity. Each book gives you a classical
work broken down by chapter, with each Latin chapter followed by its
equivalent English chapter. We also give you the running vocabulary for
each chapter as you read, in case you need a little help or if you're revising
the text for an exam.
If you'd like to learn more about the SPQR Study Guides series, visit the
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Acknowledgements
The SPQR Study Guides series was designed and developed by Paul
Hudson, with input from innumerable classics teachers from around the
world – thank you, everyone! The picture of Augustus used as the series
cover was produced by Andreas Wahra and Till Niermann. Some text has
been adapted from Wikipedia under a CC-BY-SA licence:
Augustine: Confessiones
Augustus: Res Gestae Divi Augusti
Bede: Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum
Caesar: Commentarii de Bello Civili
Caesar: Commentarii de Bello Gallico
Catullus: Carmina
Cicero: In Verrem
Horace: Odes
Horace: Satires
Ovid: Metamorphoses
Sallust: Bellum Catilinae
Sallust: Bellum Iugurthinum
Suetonius: The Twelve Caesars
Tacitus: Annales
Virgil: Aeneid
Virgil: Eclogues
Virgil: Georgics
Vitruvius: De Architectura
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my daughter Sophie, aka "Little Tink", who has
provided lots of love and lots of laughter at every point in its creation.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Liber I
Liber II
Liber III
Liber IV
Liber V
Liber VI
Liber VII
Liber VIII
Introduction
Commentarii de Bello Gallico (English: Commentaries on the Gallic War)
is Julius Caesar's firsthand account of the Gallic Wars, written as a third-
person narrative. In it Caesar describes the battles and intrigues that took
place in the nine years he spent fighting local armies in Gaul that opposed
Roman domination.
The "Gaul" that Caesar refers to is sometimes all of Gaul except for the
Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis (modern day Provence),
encompassing the rest of modern France, Belgium and some of
Switzerland. On other occasions, he refers only to that territory inhabited by
the Celtic peoples known to the Romans as Gauls, from the English
Channel to Lugdunum (Lyon).
The work has been a mainstay in the teaching of Latin to schoolchildren, its
simple, direct prose lending itself to that purpose. It begins with the
frequently quoted phrase "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres", sometimes
quoted as "Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est", meaning "All Gaul is
divided into three parts". The full work is divided into eight sections, Book
1 to Book 8, each varying in size from approximately 5,000 to 15,000
words. Book 8 was written by Aulus Hirtius after Caesar's death.
Title
The Latin title, literally Commentaries about the Gallic War, is often
retained in English translations of the book, and the title is also translated to
About the Gallic War, Of the Gallic War, On the Gallic War, The Conquest
of Gaul, and The Gallic War.
Contents
The first book deals primarily but not exclusively with the Helvetian War in
58 BC. In it, Caesar describes Gaul and the campaign against the Helvetii, a
conglomeration of peoples numbering in excess of 300,000, who decided to
migrate by force of arms from the Alpine regions through the centre of Gaul
to the west to alleviate population pressures. This would require the
crossing either of Provence, or of areas held by tribes allied to Rome. When
Caesar made it clear he would not allow this, the Helvetians formed an
alliance of tribes to fight him. This drew the Romans out of Provence. Later
books are about the campaigns against Veneti, Aquitani, Germanic peoples
and Bretons; Caesar's invasions of Britain; the insurrection of Gaul, and the
defeat of Vercingetorix at the Battle of Alesia.
Caesar distinguishes three ethnic groups living in Gaul who were subdued
by his forces: the Gauls, who lived in the center of the country; the
Aquitani, who lived in what is now Aquitaine; and the Belgae, who lived in
the north. Campaigns typically started in late summer with the provisioning
of grain and construction of fortresses, and ended late in the year when
Caesar returned to his winter quarters among the Sequani for the winter
(Caesar 42). He campaigned with a number of legions in his army,
sometimes as many as eight. He faced a variety of tribal armies, often hasty
alliances of them, some numbering – or at least claimed to number – over
100,000 strong. Many of the campaigns end with the Roman cavalry
running down thousands of fleeing tribesmen, and often their women and
children, too. In one instance he defeated a tribe and immediately sold all
53,000 survivors into slavery.
Influence
Educational use
It is often lauded for its polished, clear Latin. This book is traditionally the
first authentic text assigned to students of Latin, as Xenophon's Anabasis is
for students of Ancient Greek; they are both autobiographical tales of
military adventure told in the third person. The style is simple and elegant,
essential and not rhetorical. It contains many details and employs many
stylistic devices to promote Caesar's political interests.
Also, the books are valuable for the many geographical and historical facts
that can be retrieved from the work. Notable chapters describe Gaulish
costume (VI, 13), their religion (VI, 17), a comparison between Gauls and
Germanic peoples (VI, 24) and other curious notes such as the lack of
Germanic interest in agriculture (VI, 22).
The account (Book 1) begins with the commonly quoted Latin phrase Gallia
est omnis divisa in partes tres translated into English as, "All Gaul is
divided into three parts". The inhabitants of those three parts are the Belgae,
the Aquitani and the Galli (as stated in the phrase quarum unam incolunt
Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli
appellantur).
Astérix
Since Caesar is one of the characters in the Astérix and Obélix albums,
René Goscinny included gags for French schoolchildren who had the
Commentarii as a textbook. One example is having Caesar talk about
himself in the third person as in the book.
Vorenus and Pullo
In Book 5, Chapter 44 the Commentarii de Bello Gallico notably mentions
Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, two Roman centurions of the 11th Legion.
The 2005 television series Rome gives a fictionalized account of Caesar's
rise and fall, featuring Kevin McKidd as the character of Lucius Vorenus
and Ray Stevenson as the character of Titus Pullo.
