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Julius Caesar as Historian

100 - 44 B. C.

Julius Caesar is known not only for his hard-hitting military campaigns and victories in Gaul and Britain but is considered one of our best sources for historical information about the First Century B. C. Indeed, he would probably not be such a famous Roman in our time if he hadn’t also been an excellent historian who wrote about his own military campaigns and political deeds. His most popular works are his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, describing in a very readable style his conquest of Gaul and The Civil War, in which he describes his struggles with and eventual defeat of Pompey.

Both the Commentaries and the Civil War are available at most bookstores in inexpensive English translations from Penguin Classics. The direct, high impact writing style used by Caesar has made his books popular reading material with schoolchildren for the last several hundred years in both original Latin and modern translations in several languages.


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