2020-21 Academic Catalog

Julius Caesar spent ten years campaigning in Gaul before being called back to Rome to face a splintered Republic and protracted Civil War. Caesar wrote fascinating accounts of both these wars, going beyond tactics to include ethnography, allegories of the Roman Republic in foreign societies, and analysis of why and how the civil war erupted and who was responsible. We will read significant portions of Caesar's Gallic War and Civil War, as well as writings about Caesar by contemporaneous authors. Caesar's elegant and clear prose belies a complex explanation and justification of the collapse of the Republic. Prerequisite: Latin 204 or equivalent