Caesar In The Roman Historiography

Caesar's Gallic War is an excellent historical work. The words he used in his Gallic War were so precise and terse that this book got around the West as the text of Latin long age. The historians pay attention to Gallic War very much, but the status of Caesar in Roman Historiography and his contribution to it were discussed not so much. Thus the thesis intends to examine the status and contribution of Caesar to Roman historiography by analyzing the character of Roman historiography and Caesar's main work, Gallic War.First, I introduce the study level in both foreign and domestic scholarship and the reason I write it. The main body of the thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter one deals with the Roman historiography before Caesar mainly. In this chapter I explain the influence of Greek to Roman culture and the reason Roman historiography produce. Some important pioneers of Roman historians and their thought of history are also discussed here. In chapter two I explore Cicero and Sallust's views on history and the later works in detail, especially the character of Sallust's writing. In chapter three I analyze the Gallic War wholly. With the concrete political situation of that time explained, I pointed out Caesar wrote the book in order to rebut the attack of his rivals and enlarged his influence. We can judge from the book's style of writing, Gallic War was a historical work written carefully and a kind of new style of historical work. Not only did Caesar inherit the good tradition of Roman historiography, but carried forward it. Caesar's writing method had his own earmark and had great influence on later writers. In chapter four I discuss the reliability of Gallic War. Although flatter and mistakes of facts were inevitable, yet the book was believable basically. At the same time Caesar confirmed his status in Roman historiography by the Gallic War and became the key of development of Roman historiography.My conclusion is: Caesar's Gallic War had high place in classical works by terse, vivid words and full and accurate records. Caesar did not only inherited the good tradition of Roman historical prose created by old Cato, but also formed the new writing style that focused on the effect of human beings on history. Thus Caesar became the representative of Roman historiography beginning to mature.