A new translation that captures the gripping power of one of the
greatest war stories ever told--Julius Caesar's pitiless account of his
brutal campaign to conquer Gaul
Imagine a book about an unnecessary war written by the ruthless general
of an occupying army--a vivid and dramatic propaganda piece that forces
the reader to identify with the conquerors and that is designed, like
the war itself, to fuel the limitless political ambitions of the author.
Could such a campaign autobiography ever be a great work of
literature--perhaps even one of the greatest? It would be easy to think
not, but such a book exists--and it helped transform Julius Caesar from
a politician on the make into the Caesar of legend. This remarkable new
translation of Caesar's famous but underappreciated War for Gaul
captures, like never before in English, the gripping and powerfully
concise style of the future emperor's dispatches from the front lines in
what are today France, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland.
While letting Caesar tell his battle stories in his own way,
distinguished classicist James O'Donnell also fills in the rest of the
story in a substantial introduction and notes that together explain why
Gaul is the "best bad man's book ever written"--a great book in which
a genuinely bad person offers a bald-faced, amoral description of just
how bad he has been.
Complete with a chronology, a map of Gaul, suggestions for further
reading, and an index, this feature-rich edition captures the forceful
austerity of a troubling yet magnificent classic--a book that, as
O'Donnell says, "gets war exactly right and morals exactly wrong."
