Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar (100–44 BC) was a Roman general, statesman and writer. Born into a patrician family, he rose through the offices of the Republic, held the consulship in 59 BC, and then governed Gaul for nearly a decade. After crossing the Rubicon in 49 BC he fought and won a civil war against Pompey and the senatorial party, and was appointed dictator for life shortly before his assassination on the Ides of March, 44 BC.

Caesar wrote with deliberate plainness: Cicero praised his commentaries as bare and graceful, stripped of rhetorical ornament. His account of the Gallic campaigns of 58–52 BC was published in seven books, to which his officer Aulus Hirtius added an eighth after Caesar's death; the narrative of the civil war followed. Both works are written in the third person and remain among the foundational sources for the Roman conquest of Gaul.

This archive carries The Gallic War (De Bello Gallico), Books I–VIII, in the English translation of W. A. McDevitte and W. S. Bohn (Bohn's Classical Library, 1869). The Civil War, which the same volume prints after it, is not included.