SOURCE: “Caesar's Practical Prose,” in Classical Journal, Vol. 89, No. 2, December-January, 1994, pp. 183-95.

In the following essay, Damon explains that, in reading De Bello Civili, it is important to recognize the character traits of the individuals discussed; to understand Caesar's narrative as a Roman would have; to notice repeated events; and to realize that recurrent events can lead to different outcomes.

Thirty years ago, when Matthias Gelzer had the opportunity of addressing an audience of teachers of Latin and ancient history, he chose for his topic “Caesar as an historian.”¹ He argued that Caesar was not an historian in the modern sense of the word—not objective, not dependent on inadequate sources, not university trained—but that his commentarii were, given ancient criteria for the genre, historiographical texts, something to set beside Sallust for the history of the late Republic, something to put in front of Appian and Cassius...