To be prepared is half the victory (the other half is extreme violence):’ Commentaries on the Gallic Wars' (Julius Caesar, 58-49BC)

A review of ‘Commentaries on The Gallic Wars’, by Julius Ceasar (58-49BC)

I’m going to take a bold stance and suggest that, maybe, Caesar’s propaganda journal—designed to glorify himself to the public whilst simultaneously impressing his enemies—was not entirely accurate.

Now, I don’t think it’s actually that divergent from the truth, and this is partially a cope to allow me to include this review on my ‘fiction review blog’. That said, anyone who authors a book about themselves in the third person can’t be taken at face value.

The Gallic Wars were a series of increasingly belligerent campaigns of conquest by the then-governor of Cisalpine Gaul, Julius Caesar, into Transalpine Gaul: corresponding to a modern-day France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The commentaries were periodical dispatches sent back to Rome, detailing the political, logistical, and military twists and turns of the conflict; with occasional anthropological essays for flavour. Written in the third person, we get a lot of ‘Caesar did this’ and ‘Caesar did that’, which can read a bit awkward when it’s Caesar writing that. The commentaries are organised into multiple books, each divided into a large number of short chapters. Some are only a hundred or so words long. The book’s tone evolves over time. What begins as a reasonable case for defence against migrating barbarians slowly changes into blatant land grabs. The Helvetti had it coming. The Belgae plausibly posed a threat. But by the Veneti campaign, the justification is increasingly tenuous. Britain was purely for glory—but, I suppose that’s a reason in of itself. But the Aquitani? By the time he’s sent legion there, I was rereading chapters to see what they’d done wrong. The answer: not being conquered by Gaius Julius Caesar.

This is a book entirely about war, but one that almost never discusses actual fighting. If it comes down to fighting and you haven’t already won, then you’ve lost. Instead it’s about marching, counter-marching, building a good camp, keeping up supply lines, having secure foraging parties, ordering levies, holding water sources, digging ditches, filling ditches, finding winter quarters, killing civilians, building bridges, felling trees, securing granaries and, always, the constant drumbeat of taking hostages. The hostage taking thing left me a bit mystified, and I assume it’s something that was so common at the time (no surprise given how much they fucking mention it) that the exact dynamics would be inherently understood by the contemporary reader. It never seems to secure good behaviour, so what’s the point of it? Do they kill them? Do they enslave them? Do they release them if the tribe are good? The exact dynamics are never explained. But I’m getting off track. It says a lot about the Roman psyche that these ‘salacious’ dispatches, designed to excite the common man, are basically just blunt recitations of the logistical efforts surrounding battles and sieges, and occasionally the political context behind them. Some battle commentaries (after multi-chapter logistical preambles) boil down to a single sentence. Though it is blunt, the prose has a certain wry incisiveness that occasionally spits out beautiful turns of phrase. It’s got an air of Hemingway about it. For example, instead of saying ‘we didn’t have materials to repair our boats’, Ceasars says:

“All things which were of service in repairing vessels, were wanting”

Still straightforward, but it has a dramatic lilt without being verbose.

That said, Commentaries can make for pretty dry reading at points. Especially after you’ve already heard about foraging parties 500 times before. The Siege of Alesia, often seen as the crescendo of the Gallic wars, wasn’t actually that interesting. The relatively unknown Siege of Uxellodunum, conversely, was much more engrossing. It was quite cool to see how the Romans went about besieging a whole mountain, involving building huge towers to fire arrows down onto its plateau and digging mines to drain away the springs which provided fresh water to the defenders.

It is occasionally—and very unintentionally—funny. Like Caesar saying some Gauls were so afraid of speaking out against the Germanic warlord Ariovistus that they would only speak if he promised never to repeat it; which he agrees to and then promptly posts the whole conversation back to Rome for public recitation. Or his mention that ‘certain friends of Caesar’ who enthusiastically volunteered were actually huge cowards when push came to shove. There’s a satisfying bitchiness to it. He names no names, but absolutely everyone at the time would know who he meant.

Whilst not always the most enthralling work, it’s incredibly interesting to read the original sources regardless of their veracity. It’s amazing to hear a 2,000-year-old voice and notice the striking similarities—the same goes for that which is totally alien. I’d recommend the Commentaries for this especially. Its structure of short, sharp chapters means it’s never dense. And because it is Caesar speaking (third-person perspective aside), you feel much more engaged with the events of the Gallic wars than a historical analysis alone could ever achieve.

-Ben Shread-Hewitt