Caesar’s De Bello Gallico as Exemplary History

 

Caesar famously writes about himself in the third person, using the first person only when referring to his actions as author. One effect of this distancing of author and actor is to cause the narrative to read more like history than autobiography. This talk proposes to allow Caesar that ruse and read his De Bello Gallico as annalistic history in the Roman historiographical tradition. Two implications from such a reading suggest a new approach to evaluating Caesar’s persona in the De Bello Gallico: first, annalistic history cares more about illustrating moral exempla than documenting the whole truth (visible in how this tradition culminates in Livy); second, presenting oneself as a model for others provides a moral basis for elaborating one‚s own successes (witness Cato’s Origines). Hence by adopting the annalistic model, Caesar presents his commentaries as about much more than himself, for they articulate a didactic narrative of exemplary leadership and conquest in the tradition of the Roman Republic.