Augustus racked his mind for a name for a name, but came out empty. The person looked uncomfortably familiar to Augustus, but he couldn’t figure out why. They went to the sink and filled a glass with water. "Hahaha! Yep, chess is just a game where you move little wooden figures around and pretend to be smart and strategic."Īugustus smiled, but when he looked over Caesar’s shoulder, he noticed someone enter the kitchen. “I think you’re thinking too much about an incredibly violent game with family friendly graphics.”Īgrippa, who was at the table watching their game, laughed. They can move forward but can’t capture forward? They can capture diagonally but can’t move diagonally? Why can pawns capture diagonally anyway? There’s no reason they can’t capture sideways.” “But, it’s just that a pawn capturing diagonally makes no sense. “I’m quite sure,” he answered, his gaze shifting back to the pieces, “Go on, do your move.”Īugustus hesitantly picked up his knight and moved it near the edge of the board. Julius Caesar, sitting across from him, looked up from the board. By winning the support of the people, Caesar sought to make himself unassailable from the boni."Are you sure pawns can capture diagonally?" Augustus asked, glancing towards the chess board. The Commentaries were an effort by Caesar to directly communicate with the plebeians – thereby circumventing the usual channels of communication that passed through the Senate – to propagandize his activities as efforts to increase the glory and influence of Rome. To defend himself against these threats, Caesar knew he needed the support of the plebeians, particularly the Tribunes of the Plebs, on whom he chiefly relied for help in carrying out his agenda. Such prosecution would not only see Caesar stripped of his wealth and citizenship, but also negate all of the laws he enacted during his term as Consul and his dispositions as pro-consul of Gaul. The boni intended to prosecute Caesar for abuse of his authority upon his return, when he would lay down his imperium. The victories in Gaul won by Caesar had increased the alarm and hostility of his enemies at Rome, and his aristocratic enemies, the boni, were spreading rumors about his intentions once he returned from Gaul. Concurrently, "Gaul" was also used in common parlance as a synonym for "uncouth" or "unsophisticated" as Romans saw Celtic peoples as uncivilized compared with themselves. As the Roman Republic made inroads deeper into Celtic territory and conquered more land, the definition of "Gaul" shifted. Generally, Gaul included all of the regions primarily inhabited by Celts, aside from the province of Gallia Narbonensis (modern-day Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon), which had already been conquered in Caesar's time, therefore encompassing the rest of modern France, Belgium, Western Germany, and parts of Switzerland. The "Gaul" that Caesar refers to is ambiguous, as the term had various connotations in Roman writing and discourse during Caesar's time. In it Caesar describes the battles and intrigues that took place in the nine years he spent fighting the Celtic and Germanic peoples in Gaul that opposed Roman conquest. Julius Caesar's firsthand account of the Gallic Wars, written as a third-person narrative. ![]() This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The maps are good and invaluable for being able to follow the troop movements throughout Gaul. Gardner much of the introduction is however rather jumbled and stands in stark contrast to Caesar’s own clear and well-organized account. Handford, revised and with a new introduction by J. ![]() At the outset, I didn't expect to like it as much as I actually did, but I come out of this with a newfound respect for both the military commander and the author, as well as the man, Gaius Julius Caesar. Except for the occasional depreciating remark about Gauls in general, I was little bothered about the purported propaganda aspect of this work, also because it clearly shows what a formidable foe the combined forces of the Gallic tribes actually were. The detailed descriptions of battle tactics, siegeworks, troop movements (on both sides), logistics, etc, gives an unique view of the different battles as well as the practical (and psychological) mechanisms of ancient warfare. This is easily the best account of a military campaign I have ever read. ![]() Being (at least in part) intended as source material for others, the narrative is straightforward and transparent, and there’s not a word too many. There’s much to value in Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War it is lucidly and elegantly written, and Caesar’s august style makes it a rare reading experience.
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