The Gallic Wars: The Campaigns That Made Julius Caesar a Roman Legend

Quite simply, in terms of scale, the Gallic Wars were unmatched by anything the Roman Republic had witnessed since the Punic Wars. By the end of the campaigns, ancient historians estimated that more than a million people had died, and still more displaced or enslaved. Even by the more conservative estimates of modern historians, a casualty count in the hundreds of thousands appears possible. Either way, the war was a cataclysm, involving tens of thousands of combatants, and it also marked the greatest displays of skill by one of the greatest battlefield generals history has ever known.

Caesar’s successful campaigns in Gaul have become the stuff of military legend, in part because he had the foresight to document them himself. Caesar himself wrote a famous firsthand account of the Gallic Wars, apparently from notes he had kept during the campaigns, and he wrote Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War) in the third person. Caesar’s account described the campaigning and the battles, all as part of a propaganda campaign to win the popularity of the Roman people. As a result, he left out inconvenient facts, including how much of a fortune he made plundering, but the work still remains popular today, and it is still used to teach Latin.

The Gallic Wars: The Campaigns That Made Julius Caesar a Roman Legend comprehensively looks at the campaigns that subdued Gaul and led to Caesar’s conquest not just of the European continent but of Rome itself. Along with pictures, you will learn about the Gallic Wars like never before, in no time at all.