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Traces the five-hundred year history and wide-ranging influence of the Roman historian's unflattering book about the ancient Germans that was eventually extolled by the Nazis as a bible.

Critognatus’ speech has long been recognized as heavily by Caesar's hand, although few have questioned whether any speech was delivered by the Arvernian noble at all; and it has long puzzled readers with its contradictory manner and fierce criticism of Rome. But the etymologizing wordplay across several languages demonstrated below (along with other distinctly comical elements) renders it more than likely that both the speech and the speaker are products of the author's imagination. In its Nabokovian mode, it offers a glimpse of Caesar the linguist and introduces a playfulness into the dire situation before Alesia that suggests that the ‘Barley-Muncher’ and his speech should be reconsidered in a different, more humorous light.

Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? (‘Just how much longer, really, Catiline, will you abuse our patience?’). The famous incipit—‘And what are you reading, Master Buddenbrook? Ah, Cicero! A difficult text, the work of a great Roman orator. Quousque tandem, Catilina. Huh-uh-hmm, yes, I've not entirely forgotten my Latin, either’— already impressed contemporaries, including some ordinarily not so readily impressed. It rings through Sallust's version of Catiline's shadowy address to his followers, when he asks regarding the injustices they suffer (Cat. 20.9): quae quousque tandem patiemini, o fortissumi uiri? (‘Just how much longer, really, will you put up with these, o bravest men?’). More playfully, and less well-known, Sallust employed the expression again in a speech by Philippus (Hist. 1.77.17 M./67 R.): uos autem, patres conscripti, quo usque cunctando rem publicam intutam patiemini et uerbis arma temptabitis? (‘But you, members of the Senate, just how much longer will you suffer our Republic to be unsafe by your hesitation and make an attempt on arms with words?’). Soon afterwards it served Cicero's son, who, as governor of Asia, put down Hybreas fils for having dared to quote from his father's work in his presence (Sen. Suas. 7.14): ‘age’, inquit [sc. Marcus Tullius], ‘non putas me didicisse patris mei: “quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra”?’ (‘“Come now”, he said, “do you think that I do not know by heart my father's ‘Just how much longer, really, Catiline, will you abuse our patience’?”’). Just about the same time, Livy recalled it in order to colour Manlius’ exhortation of his followers (6.18.5): quousque tandem ignorabitis uires uestras, quas natura ne beluas quidem ignorare uoluit? … audendum est aliquid uniuersis aut omnia singulis patienda. quousque me circumspectabitis? (‘Just how much longer, really, will you remain ignorant of your own strength, which nature has willed even brutes to know? … We must dare all together, or else, separately, suffer all. Just how much longer will you keep looking round for me?’). Thereafter Quintilian would refer to it twice, when discussing apostrophe and rhetorical questions (Inst. 4.1.68, 9.2.7), just a couple of years before Tacitus has the maladroit Q. Haterius encourage Tiberius to seize the reins—quo usque patieris, Caesar, non adesse caput rei publicae? (‘Just how much longer, Caesar, will you suffer the absence of the head of state?’, Ann. 1.13.4); a few decades later still, Apuleius puts it into the mouth of the slave who chastises his master, now in asinine form (Met. 3.27): ‘quo usque tandem’, inquit, ‘cantherium patiemur istum paulo ante cibariis iumentorum, nunc etiam simulacris deorum infestum?’ (‘“Just how much longer, really,” he said, “will we suffer this old gelding to attack the animals’ food just a little while ago and now even the gods’ statues?”’). He trusted, no doubt, that the famous question would alert his readers more than anything to the many ‘similarities between Catiline and Lucius’, in order to have them appreciate this ‘ludicrous copy of Cicero's arch-enemy’. Some time after, and in a different corner of the Empire altogether, a teacher's bronze statue would carry the inscription:VERBACICRO | NISQVOVSQ | TANDEMABVTE | RECATELINAPA | TIENTIANOS | TRA.

In his digression on the Gauls in Book 6 of the Gallic War, Caesar includes a portrait of the Druids (BGall. 6.13.3 sed de his duobus generibus [sc. quae aliquo sunt numero atque honore] alterum est druidum) and their public roles first and foremost in religious and legal affairs (6.13.4–5 illi rebus diuinis intersunt, sacrificia publica ac priuata procurant, religiones interpretantur … fere de omnibus controuersiis publicis priuatisque constituunt), not forgetting their philosophical doctrine (6.14.6 multa … disputant et iuuentuti tradunt). He emphasizes the strictly oral form their teaching takes (6.14.4), how ‘they do not deem it appropriate to commit it [their learning] to writing even though in almost everything else, in public and private affairs, they resort to Greek writing (neque fas esse existimant ea litteris mandare, cum in reliquis fere rebus, publicis priuatisque rationibus Graecis litteris utantur)’, about the reasons for which he then proceeds to speculate (6.14.4): id mihi duabus de causis instituisse uidentur, quod neque in uulgum disciplinam efferri uelint neque eos qui discunt litteris confisos minus memoriae studere: quod fere plerisque accidit, ut praesidio litterarum diligentiam in perdiscendo ac memoriam remittant. This [sc. practice] they seem to me to have instituted for two reasons: they do not wish either that their teaching be revealed to the general public or that those who are learning it, having become reliant on writing, give less attention to memorization; and it does, as a rule, happen to many that, because of the prop offered by writing, they relax their diligence in thoroughly committing things to memory.

Caesar's geographies of Gallia and Britannia as set out in the Bellum Gallicum differ in kind, the former being \"descriptive\" and much indebted to the techniques of Roman land surveying, the latter being \"scientific\" and informed by the methods of Greek geographers. This difference results from their different contexts: here imperialist, there \"cartographic.\" The geography of Britannia is ultimately part of Caesar's (only passingly and late) attested great cartographic endeavor to measure \"the world,\" the beginning of which coincided with his second British expedition.

In February 54 b.c. Cicero concludes a missive to his brother with a passing and – for us – tantalizing remark: Lucreti poemata ut scribis ita sunt, multis luminibus ingeni, multae tamen artis. sed cum veneris. virum te putabo si Sallusti Empedoclea legeris; hominem non putabo. Quintus had, it seems, read De rerum natura, or at least parts thereof, just before he left Rome for an undisclosed location nearby, and he shared his enthusiasm with his brother per codicillos. Meanwhile, he was corresponding with Julius Caesar, whose staff in Gaul he was about to join. When, a few months later, he was stationed with Caesar, he was involved in another literary affair, this time concerning his brother who wrote to him, inquiring about his autobiographical De temporibus suis: quo modo nam, mi frater, de nostris versibus Caesar? nam primum librum se legisse scripsit ad me ante, et prima sic ut neget se ne Graeca quidem meliora legisse; reliqua ad quendam locum ῥᾳθυμότερα (hoc enim utitur verbo). dic mihi verum: num aut res eum aut χαρακτὴρ non delectat?(Q. fr. 2.15.5)

Caesar's Commentarii have hardly been studied within the historiographical tradition – probably because of their generic difference from historia and, more generally, alleged overall sparseness, famously and influentially compared to nudity. While their relationship to Greek historians has received some haphazard attention, their possible debt to antecedent Roman historians is an even less explored question – admittedly compounded by the fragmentary state of early republican historiography. In the following pages, however, I will suggest that there is ample evidence of Caesar's familiarity with, and even imitation of, the Historiae by Lucius Cornelius Sisenna.

In entitling his historical work res gestae (not historiae ), Sempronius Asellio advertises his adaptation of the Polybian model, which is more comprehensive than has been acknowledged. Asellio thus joins a group of innovative Roman historians who employed programmatic and contrastive titulature to mark their novel historiographical approaches. Among them stands L. Cornelius Sisenna, whose Historiae are limited to contemporary history; their title is redefined accordingly. Doubts about the existence of original titulature among republican historians in general seem unfounded.

Caesar's \"imaginary geography\" of Germania as an infinite extension without any patterns but simply endless forests contrasts with his presentation of Gallia as an overviewed space. Within these geographies different concepts of space prevail, all of which serve to explain why his celeritas ceases in Germania. Having crossed the Rhine and thereby entered terra incognita like Alexander and Pompey, he refrains from campaigning because of the geographical conditions. By alluding to Scythia's similar space and Darius' failure, he shows himself to act prudently. It is also a characteristic of the imperator optimus to know when a venture is too risky.