"De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries

About the book

Caesar's account of the Gallic campaigns follows armies through negotiations, marches, sieges, and battles while presenting Roman expansion as a sequence of problems requiring decisive action. His apparently controlled narrative gives unusual prominence to terrain, supplies, timing, and the conduct of allies and enemies. Alongside the Gallic narrative, this volume gathers other campaign commentaries associated with Caesar and his wars, extending the setting into Rome's civil conflict and its consequences. The collection therefore needs to be read with attention to its different contributors as well as its commanding political perspective. W. A. Macdevitt's translation preserves a direct narrative movement, while Thomas De Quincey's introduction supplies a separate, strongly admiring interpretation of Caesar's character.

• Military command
• Empire
• Political self-presentation

Why read it

Read it for campaign narrative that makes logistics and persuasion central to the exercise of power.

English translation by W. A. Macdevitt; introduction by Thomas De Quincey