The Conquest of Gaul (Classics S.)

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Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres... It is, perhaps, the most famous opening line of any memoir in Western civilization. What Caesar and the Romans called "Gaul," although we usually think of it as France, also comprised Belgium, the German lands west of the Rhine, southern Holland, and much of Switzerland. This is the only military campaign of the ancient world for which we have a chronicle written by the general who conducted it, and Julius Caesar is an insightful historian, with a keen eye for detail, as in this scene from the repulsion of the forces of the German king Ariovistus: Caesar placed each of his five generals ahead of a legion and detailed his quaestor to command the remaining legion, so that every soldier might know that there was a high officer in a position to observe the courage with which he conducted himself, and then led the right wing first into action, because he had noticed that the enemy's line was weakest on that side.


Language Notes
Text: English, Latin (translation)


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Betweeen 58 and 50 BC Julius Caesar not only conquered almost the whole of modern France, Belgium and Switzerland, with parts of Holland and Germany, but also invaded Britain twice. It was partly as a piece of personal propaganda that he recorded his campaigns against the various Gallic tribes in Latin; nevertheless these simple, direct and lucid texts are a unique direct source on Gaul in that period and also the only narrative actually written by a great general of antiquity about his own campaigns.


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