Abstract
Abstract The narratives that we call Caesar’;s Gallic War and Civil War were spoken of by his contemporaries as the “records of his achievements.”1 The term here translated as “records” is commentarii (its singular form is commentarius). The word itself contains a reference to memory (the root -men-, also present in mention, memento, comment and, contracted, in amnesia), and our translation reflects the word’;s etymology. The ancient evidence allows us to arrive at relatively good inferences about what Caesar’;s readers would have expected from a commentarius. When Caesar’;s officer and later continuator Aulus Hirtius, in Gallic War 8, refers back to Gallic War 7 with the phrase “it was shown in the preceding commentarius,” “preceding commentarius” means something like “the record of the preceding year.”2 The Gallic War as Caesar published it was a set of seven commentarii, the records of seven annual campaigns in Gaul (58–52 bce), not one commentarius, or record, of his conquest of Gaul.
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