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![[Audiobook]](/documents/reading_list/figures/audiobook.png)
Caesar, Gaius Julius and Aulus Hirtius.
The Commentaries.
(Audiobook, Unabridged).
Thomasville, GA: Audio Connoisseur, [ca. 52–51 B.C.,
ca. 45 B.C.] 2004.
ISBN 1-929718-44-6.
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This audiobook is an unabridged reading of English translations
of Caesar's commentaries on the Gallic
(Commentarii de Bello Gallico)
and Civil
(Commentarii de Bello Civili)
wars between 58 and 48
B.C.
(The eighth book of the Gallic wars commentary, covering the minor
campaigns of
51 B.C.,
was written by his friend Aulus Hirtius after Caesar's assassination.)
The recording is based upon the rather eccentric
Rex Warner translation, which is now
out of print. In the original Latin text, Caesar always referred
to himself in the third person, as “Caesar”. Warner
rephrased the text (with the exception of the book written
by Hirtius) as a first person narrative. For example, the first
sentence of paragraph I.25 of The Gallic Wars:
Caesar primum suo, deinde omnium ex conspectu remotis equis, ut
aequato omnium periculo spem fugae tolleret, cohortatus suos proelium
commisit.
in Latin,
is conventionally translated into English as something like this (from
the rather stilted
1869 translation
by W. A. McDevitte and W. S. Bohn):
Caesar, having removed out of sight first his own horse, then those of
all, that he might make the danger of all equal, and do away with the
hope of flight, after encouraging his men, joined battle.
but the Warner translation used here renders this as:
I first of all had my own horse taken out of the way and
then the horses of other officers. I wanted the danger to
be the same for everyone, and for no one to have any hope of
escape by flight. Then I spoke a few words of encouragement
to the men before joining battle. [1:24:17–30]
Now, whatever violence this colloquial translation does
to the authenticity of Caesar's spare and eloquent Latin,
from a dramatic standpoint it works wonderfully with the
animated reading of award-winning narrator Charlton Griffin;
the listener has the sense of being across the table in
a tavern from GJC as he regales all present with his exploits.
This is “just the facts” war reporting. Caesar viewed
this work not as history, but rather the raw material for historians
in the future. There is little discussion of grand strategy nor, even
in the commentaries on the civil war, the political conflict which
provoked the military confrontation between Caesar and Pompey. While
these despatches doubtless served as propaganda on Caesar's part, he
writes candidly of his own errors and the cost of the defeats they
occasioned. (Of course, since these are the only extant accounts of most of
these events, there's no way to be sure there isn't some Caesarian
spin in his presentation, but since these commentaries were published
in Rome, which received independent reports from officers and
literate legionaries in Caesar's armies, it's unlikely he would have
risked embellishing too much.)
Two passages of unknown length in the final book of the
Civil war commentaries have been lost—these are handled by
the reader stopping in mid-sentence, with another narrator
explaining the gap and the historical consensus of the
events in the lost text.
This audiobook is distributed in three parts, totalling 16 hours and
40 minutes. That's a big investment of time in the details of battles
which took place more than two thousand years ago, but I'll confess I
found it fascinating, especially since some of the events described
took place within sight of where I take the walks on which I listened
to this recording over several weeks. An Audio CD
edition is available.
August 2007 