ANCIENT SOURCES
Considering that most of Greek and Roman literature has been lost to fire, flood, vermin, and neglect over the last two thousand years, we are fortunate to possess as much information about Caesar’s life as we do. Still, the challenge for any biographer is to sift through the scattered and often incomplete ancient accounts—all written by authors with their own prejudices—to piece together a coherent picture of Caesar’s life and times.
We are immensely fortunate to have two surviving texts written by Caesar himself, the Gallic War and the Civil War. The Gallic War is Caesar’s year-by-year record of events in Gaul originally composed as annual dispatches to the Senate. Even Caesar’s enemies admired the clear prose of his Gaulish war narrative in seven books, with an eighth added soon after by Caesar’s faithful friend Hirtius. Since the Gallic War is the only complete, contemporary source we possess on this formative event in Caesar’s life, we largely depend on the author’s view of his own actions. There is, of course, a great danger in this, but objective readers cannot help but be impressed by the accuracy of his account. The Civil War, detailing Caesar’s own victory over Pompey and the senatorial forces, must also be read with care as Caesar is ever anxious to justify his overthrow of the Republic, but other sources from the period do allow us to judge his narrative. The accounts of the Alexandrian, African, and Spanish campaigns appended to theCivil War, though not composed by Caesar, are important contemporary sources for his campaigns. Caesar’s other genuine works, including letters, a grammatical treatise, poetry, and his venomous Anti-Cato, survive only in fragments or not at all.
Cicero, Caesar’s prolific and highly opinionated contemporary, is a treasury of firsthand information on Roman life and politics at the end of the Republic. Especially valuable are hundreds of his letters to family members and friends, including the correspondence with his comrade Atticus. Several of Caesar’s replies to Cicero’s letters are preserved in Cicero’s collected works. Cicero’s many public speeches and philosophical writings, while more formal than the letters, nevertheless shed important light on the events of Caesar’s life.
The Roman historian Sallust commanded a legion under Caesar in the civil war, then—after extorting vast amounts of money as governor of Numidia—he retired to his estate to write. His Conspiracy of Catiline, War of Jugurtha, and fragmentaryHistoriesdisplay a marked bias against the entrenched nobility, but show Cato in as favorable a light as Caesar. His style is terse, skeptical, and often gloomy, while his grasp of geography and chronology can be frustratingly vague.
The Latin poet Catullus insults Caesar briefly but viciously in his verse, providing an important contemporary look at Caesar’s reputation among the avant-garde of Rome’s literary community.
The versatile Greek historian Nicolaus of Damascus wrote a highly flattering life of the emperor Augustus in the late first century B.C. that preserves an invaluable description of Caesar’s final days. Nicolaus was a friend to Herod the Great of biblical fame and a tutor to the children of Anthony and Cleopatra. The work of Nicolaus is, unfortunately, preserved only in part through quotations in a Byzantine encyclopedia.
The Greek biographer Plutarch, born in the mid-first century A.D., is one of the most readable authors from antiquity. His Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans, a major source for Shakespeare, contains parallel biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, including Caesar paired with Alexander the Great. Plutarch draws widely on many earlier sources in his stated goal of teaching moral lessons from the lives of great men. Aside from Caesar, he features biographies of Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Cato, and Brutus, among Caesar’s contemporaries.
The famed Roman biographer of emperors, Suetonius, lived at roughly the same time as Plutarch, but was much more interested in scandal than morality. Suetonius was fortunate to be appointed a secretary at the imperial palace, which gave him unprecedented access to official archives. He was later dismissed for an alleged scandal involving the wife of the emperor Hadrian.
Appian of Alexandria wrote a history of Rome almost two hundred years after Caesar’s death, but he is especially valuable as he, like Plutarch, preserves material from the firsthand reports of Asinius Pollio, one of Caesar’s officers.
Dio Cassius (also known as Cassius Dio) was a Greek historian and Roman senator who lived in the turbulent third century A.D. His History of Rome survives only in part, but fortunately includes Caesar’s era. He has a notable interest in supernatural events and invents many of his characters’ speeches, but his descriptions are valuable as they draw on many earlier authors now lost.
MODERN SOURCES
I highly recommend Caesar: Life of a Colossus by the military historian Adrian Goldsworthy to anyone who desires a richly detailed look at Caesar’s life, especially his generalship. In writing my biography, I have been especially indebted to Matthias Gelzer’s abundantly annotated Caesar: Politician and Statesman as an indispensable guide to the ancient Greek and Latin sources on Caesar’s life. The first part of Ronald Syme’s The Roman Revolution puts Caesar’s actions within the political context of the first centuryB.C., as does Erich Gruen’s The Last Generation of the Roman Republic. H. H. Scullard’s From the Gracchi to Nero is an eminently readable and authoritative study of Roman society before, during, and after Caesar’s day. Among more recent works on the period, I recommend Christian Meier’s Caesar: A Biography, Tom Holland’s highly accessible Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, and Anthony Everitt’s Cicero and Augustus.
Batstone, William, and Cynthia Damon. Caesar’s Civil War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Boatwright, Mary, Daniel Gargola, and Richard Talbert. The Romans: From Village to Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Bonfante, Larissa. Etruscan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
Brouwer, H. H. J. Bona Dea: The Sources and Description of the Cult. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989.
Burns, Thomas S. Rome and the Barbarians, 100 B.C.—A.D. 400. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
Cagnat, R., A. Merlin, and L. Chatelain. Inscriptions Latines d’Afrique. Paris: E. Leroux, 1923.
Cary, M., and H. H. Scullard. A History of Rome. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975.
Chauveau, Michel. Cleopatra: Beyond the Myth. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2002.
Crawford, Michael H. Roman Republican Coinage. London: Cambridge University Press, 1974.
Cunliffe, Barry. The Ancient Celts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
———. The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek. New York: Penguin, 2003.
Dando-Collins, Stephen. Caesar’s Legion. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
De la Bédoyère, Guy. Roman Britain: A New History. London: Thames and Hudson, 2006.
Delamarre, Xavier. Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise. Paris: Editions Errance, 2003.
De Souza, Philip. “Greek Piracy.” In The Greek World, edited Anton Powell. London: Routledge, 1995. Pp. 179–198.
Dittenberger, Wilheim. Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1982.
Dumézil, Georges. Archaic Roman Religion. Translated Philip Krapp. 2 vols. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Duncan, David Ewing. Calendar: Humanity’s Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year. New York: Avon Books, 1998.
Eska, Joseph, and D. Ellis Evans. “Continental Celtic.” In The Celtic Languages, edited by Martin Ball. London: Routledge, 1993. Pp. 26–63.
Evans, D. Ellis. Gaulish Personal Names. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.
Everitt, Anthony. Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician. New York: Random House, 2001.
Fraser, P. M. Ptolemaic Alexandria. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.
Freeman, Philip. War, Women, and Druids: Eyewitness Reports and Early Accounts of the Ancient Celts. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.
———. The Philosopher and the Druids: A Journey Among the Ancient Celts. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.
Fuller, J. F. C. Julius Caesar: Man, Soldier, and Tyrant. New Brunswick, New Jersey: De Capo Press, 1965.
Gardner, Jane. Roman Myths. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.
Gelzer, Matthias. Caesar: Politician and Statesman. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1968.
Goldsworthy, Adrian. Caesar’s Civil War. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2002.
———. The Complete Roman Army. London: Thames and Hudson, 2003.
———. Caesar: Life of a Colossus. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Gordon, Arthur. Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
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———. Cleopatra. Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 2004.
Green, Miranda. The World of the Druids. London: Thames & Hudson, 1997.
Gruen, Erich S. The Last Generation of the Roman Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.
Gulliver, Kate. Caesar’s Gallic Wars. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2002.
Hannah, Robert. Greek and Roman Calendars: Constructions of Time in the Ancient World. London: Duckworth, 2005.
Haywood, John. Atlas of the Celtic World. London: Thames and Hudson, 2001.
Hengel, Martin. Crucifixion. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1977.
Holland, Tom. Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic. New York: Doubleday, 2003.
Ireland, S. Roman Britain: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge, 1986.
Johnson, Allan, Coleman-Norton, Paul, and Frank Bourne. Ancient Roman Statutes. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961.
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Jones, Prudence. Cleopatra: A Sourcebook. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006.
Kagan, Donald. The Peloponnesian War. New York: Penguin, 2004.
Kagan, Kimberly. The Eye of Command. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006.
Kahn, Arthur. The Education of Julius Caesar. Lincoln, NE: Authors Guild, 2000.
Kamm, Anthony. Julius Caesar: A Life. London: Routledge, 2006.
Kleiner, Diana E. E. Cleopatra and Rome. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Kruta, Venceslas, ed. The Celts. London: Hachette Illustrated, 2004.
Lefkowitz, Mary R., and Maureen B. Fant. Women’s Life in Greece and Rome. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Le Glay, Marcel, Jean-Louis Voisin, and Yann Le Bohec. A History of Rome. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
Lendon, J. E. Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.
Mac Cana, Proinsias. Celtic Mythology. New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1983.
Mallory, J. P. In Search of the Indo-Europeans. London: Thames and Hudson, 1989.
Malamud, Margaret. “Manifest Destiny and the Eclipse of Julius Caesar” in Maria Wyke, ed. Julius Caesar in Western Culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.
Matyszak, Philip. Chronicle of the Roman Republic. London: Thames & Hudson, 2003.
Megaw, Ruth, and Vincent Megaw. Celtic Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 1989.
Meier, Christian. Caesar: A Biography. New York: Basic Books, 1982.
Mitchell, Stephen. Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
Morel W., K. Büchner, and J. Blänsdorf, eds. Fragmenta Poetarum Latinorum. 3rd ed. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1995.
Moscoti, Sabatino, ed. The Celts. New York: Rizzoli, 1991.
O’Connor, Colin. Roman Bridges. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Oikonomides, Al. N., and M. C. J. Miller. Hanno the Carthaginian: Periplus or Circumnavigation. Chicago: Ares Publishers, 1995.
Osgood, Josiah. Caesar’s Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Pallottino, Massimo. A History of Earliest Italy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991, 2006.
Parenti, Michael. The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome. New York: The New Press, 2003.
Peddie, John. Conquest: The Roman Invasion of Britain. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.
Puhvel, Jaan. Comparative Mythology. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.
Rankin, H. D. Celts and the Classical World. London: Areopagitica Press, 1987.
Richardson, L., Jr. A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Riggsby, Andrew M. Caesar in Gaul and Rome: War in Words. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006.
Roseman, Christina. Pytheas of Massalia: On the Ocean. Chicago: Ares Publishers, 1994.
Ross, Anne. Pagan Celtic Britain. London: Constable, 1993.
Scarre, Chris. The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Rome. New York: Penguin, 1995.
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Spaeth, John. “Caesar’s Poetic Interests.” The Classical Journal 26.8 (1931): 598–604.
Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939.
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Temkin, Owsei. The Falling Sickness. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Wills, Garry. Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984.
Wistrand, Erik. Caesar in Contemporary Society. Göteborg, Swed.: Kungl. Vetenskaps-och Vitterhets-Samhället, 1978.