Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: ooks and of Caesar's Bellum Gallicum take us from Britain, where the Romans struggle, to Gaul, where the Romans suffer heavy losses, and finally to the Hercynian Forest across the Rhine, where strange creatures dwell.Jennifer Gerrish has succeeded in making these books accessible to her readership, consisting of students of Latin and those who do not read Latin. OverviewThe book contains an introduction with a brief bibliography, the Latin text with facing translation, a commentary with separate notes on the Latin and an index.The introduction presents information about Caesar's life and career and his works.It is a useful overview of scholarly discussions about, for example, the publication date(s) of Bellum Gallicum and the purpose of the work.The books themselves are summarised and discussed from a thematic (Themes) and narratological angle (Narrative Features).Footnotes and a selective bibliography provide suggestions for further reading, such as relevant chapters from the Cambridge Companion edited by Luca Grillo and Christopher Krebs. 1 The section Notes on the Text is introduced by a concise but clear explanation of manuscript transmission, which is likened to a game of 'Telephone'.Gerrish effectively guides students through the stemma of the text as presented in Hering's Teubner edition.This discussion is one example of the way in which Gerrish succeeds in making the Classics research field accessible to users of her book.A map with the most important places and people is printed at the end of the introduction (as well as on the cover).A map is absolutely necessary for the 1 L. Grillo and C. B. Krebs, edd., The Cambridge Companion to the Writings of Julius Caesar (Cambridge, ).
Source: Histos
DOI: 10.29173/histos695
Author: Suzanne Adema
Institution: Leiden University
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4407201650