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...

Unlike one would expect of a politician anxious to define his legacy, and facing a hostile Roman senate at home, whom did not endorse all of the campaigns of his quests to dominate the territories in question, Caesar describes everything in a very matter-of-fact tone. He narrates quite impressive feats of strength, but not all of them involve his own might. He describes how the army, as a collective built a bridge across the Rhine in only slightly more than two weeks, as well as how he was able to formulate a military fortification of troop, ten miles long, at Alesia.
All this is even more impressive when one considers that the conquest of Gaul, "does not appear to have been planned, but in 58 BCE an intrusion into Roman controlled territory of the Helvetii from the area of Switzerland gave Caesar an excuse to go on the offensive." (Seindal, 2003) "Originally, it was not Caesar's intention to attack Gaul, but Rumania, which was rich in precious metals. In the spring of 58 BCE, Caesar's legions were already in the eastern parts of his province: the seventh, the eighth, the ninth and especially the tenth, which was called 'the knights' and was very dear to Caesar. However, the migration of the Helvetians, a coalition of tribes in modern Switzerland, forced him to think about at least one or two campaigns in the north. The Helvetians had migrate to the southwest of France and had to cross through Roman territories. This was unacceptable to any Roman governor."

For Caesar, it was a golden opportunity to impress the Senate and People's Assembly. Besides, there were reports about Germans that were attacking the Aedui, a Gallic tribe in the valley of the Saone that was allied to Rome. A victory over the Germans would place him on the same rank as his uncle Marius. This is exactly what happened." (Lendering, 2003) Thus Caesar, although he does not put this into such blatant terms, and although he…