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(originally dated April 27)
Yay! I finished it almost a week early--not because I'm such a goody-goody (as IF, in college I took great pride in writing papers the night before that got A's :) but because the professor suggested we do so and with a class this big, if I hand it in with everyone else, I won't know my grade until JULY. (Which might be appropriate, since Gaius WAS born in the month named after him. )
However, graceful speech was but one literary weapon Caesar deployed in his calculated campaign for domination—he was as fluent a writer as a speaker and his two Commentarii, with their combination of elegance and brevity, are still held up as models of military composition. In these Caesar eschews the more flowery language of the funeral or the Senate hall, and instead writes in a much more appropriately martial tone—businesslike, brief, unemotional. And yet for all that, the Commentarii served as effective tools of propaganda, intended to justify his expensive campaigns and subtly position himself as a leader to the people. “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres” (Book I) begins his Commentarii de Bello Gallico and with this engaging opening Caesar invites the audience—his peers in the Senate and the Roman populace—to follow him as he plunders Gaul and conquers the Celtic and Germanic barbarian tribes…all for the greater glory of Rome, of course. Throughout the Commentarii, and notwithstanding Caesar’s use of the third person narrative, he is selling himself in a very personal way to the reader, sprinkling his text with anecdotes of Caesar’s mercy, charm and most important, his military invincibility. Caesar was well-aware that the infantry was the heart and soul of Roman glory. Latin’s straightforward construction, with its structural terseness and lack of articles, lends itself very well to the purposeful efficiency of the Comentarii—-Caesar’s ending to the Commentarii de Bello Civili is a simple “Haec initia belli Alexandrini fuerunt.” (Book III) Caesar’s writing style in these two works highlights another verbal characteristic—-his instinctive grasp of the impact of conciseness. Caesar’s epigrams are famous in every language, the most well-known being, when asked about his Pontic campaign, his laconic response “Veni, vidi, vici.” (Suetonius, 37) Plutarch tells us of another example; upon being warned by one of his captains that the Senate would not extend Caesar’s term in Gaul, Caesar “clapped his hand on the hilt of his sword and said, ‘But this shall.’” (28) As any soldier knows, brevity is the soul not just of wit, but of might.
Sometimes I think my professor is a little taken aback at my interest in military matters--the wars themselves are not that interesting, but military technique and strategy is because they never change. What worked thousands of years ago can work now, because all armies are composed of infantry (soldiers who march), cavalry (mounted soldiers), artillery (launched missiles), etc. and they still study brilliant battle tactics today, like Hannibal's double-envelopment (pincer) attack at the Battle of Cannhae. In fact I believe I remember that Stormin' Norman used the pincer plan in Desert Storm but the Wikipedia article doesn't indicate that, so I could be wrong. And Joshua Chamberlain, a Union commander at Gettysburg, used another classical battle tactic at Little Round Top (I think it was from the Spartans)--he was a classic professor at Bowdoin so of course he knew it! I just love that something someone did thousands of years ago still works, still fits, still is applicable and relevant. History never changes because people never change.
Yay! I finished it almost a week early--not because I'm such a goody-goody (as IF, in college I took great pride in writing papers the night before that got A's :) but because the professor suggested we do so and with a class this big, if I hand it in with everyone else, I won't know my grade until JULY. (Which might be appropriate, since Gaius WAS born in the month named after him. )
However, graceful speech was but one literary weapon Caesar deployed in his calculated campaign for domination—he was as fluent a writer as a speaker and his two Commentarii, with their combination of elegance and brevity, are still held up as models of military composition. In these Caesar eschews the more flowery language of the funeral or the Senate hall, and instead writes in a much more appropriately martial tone—businesslike, brief, unemotional. And yet for all that, the Commentarii served as effective tools of propaganda, intended to justify his expensive campaigns and subtly position himself as a leader to the people. “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres” (Book I) begins his Commentarii de Bello Gallico and with this engaging opening Caesar invites the audience—his peers in the Senate and the Roman populace—to follow him as he plunders Gaul and conquers the Celtic and Germanic barbarian tribes…all for the greater glory of Rome, of course. Throughout the Commentarii, and notwithstanding Caesar’s use of the third person narrative, he is selling himself in a very personal way to the reader, sprinkling his text with anecdotes of Caesar’s mercy, charm and most important, his military invincibility. Caesar was well-aware that the infantry was the heart and soul of Roman glory. Latin’s straightforward construction, with its structural terseness and lack of articles, lends itself very well to the purposeful efficiency of the Comentarii—-Caesar’s ending to the Commentarii de Bello Civili is a simple “Haec initia belli Alexandrini fuerunt.” (Book III) Caesar’s writing style in these two works highlights another verbal characteristic—-his instinctive grasp of the impact of conciseness. Caesar’s epigrams are famous in every language, the most well-known being, when asked about his Pontic campaign, his laconic response “Veni, vidi, vici.” (Suetonius, 37) Plutarch tells us of another example; upon being warned by one of his captains that the Senate would not extend Caesar’s term in Gaul, Caesar “clapped his hand on the hilt of his sword and said, ‘But this shall.’” (28) As any soldier knows, brevity is the soul not just of wit, but of might.
Sometimes I think my professor is a little taken aback at my interest in military matters--the wars themselves are not that interesting, but military technique and strategy is because they never change. What worked thousands of years ago can work now, because all armies are composed of infantry (soldiers who march), cavalry (mounted soldiers), artillery (launched missiles), etc. and they still study brilliant battle tactics today, like Hannibal's double-envelopment (pincer) attack at the Battle of Cannhae. In fact I believe I remember that Stormin' Norman used the pincer plan in Desert Storm but the Wikipedia article doesn't indicate that, so I could be wrong. And Joshua Chamberlain, a Union commander at Gettysburg, used another classical battle tactic at Little Round Top (I think it was from the Spartans)--he was a classic professor at Bowdoin so of course he knew it! I just love that something someone did thousands of years ago still works, still fits, still is applicable and relevant. History never changes because people never change.
