bannedOTW

The earliest manuscript of the Gallic Wars is separated from the original by roughtly 10 centuries, and there are only 10 manuscripts. Given that weak evidence it would seem that we should conclude a rather large part of what we know about the Roman Empire at the onset of the Imperial period maybe false and Julius Caesar never existed. Thoughts opinions?

Roger Pearse

It's a perfectly possible position to take, but seems no different, in my mind, to obscurantism. The same logic would apply to almost every text from antiquity, disposing of the entire classical heritage, and I really don't see why we should pretend that a text has not reached us when in fact it has.

Of course there will have been damage in transmission, although probably not significant from a historian's point of view; who cares whether Caesar wrote 'et' or 'ac' or 'atque' when we translate them all as 'and'? But then that's part of living in a fallible world. People probably imagine that printed books have no damage, yet most of us can probably think of examples to the contrary.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Toto

Do you have any reasons to suspect that the work was fictional or forged? Were there early disputes between different factions over the true nature of Julius Caesar, so that one faction might have a motive to forge texts that supported its position?

Roger Pearse

This sounds reasonable; but can't we easily think of reasons why Augustus -- or some later ruler, of antiquity or medieval times -- might have changed them? Augustus suppressed Caesar's juvenalia for political reasons. The French Revolutionaries loved Tacitus for his anti-imperial views (so C.W.Mendell), and so Napoleon encouraged attacks on Tacitus as a forgery for the same reason.

So I tend to view all this sort of argument with wariness. If it's always possible, then it can never be an argument for one specific text. I can't think of any text that has survived for which I cannot think of some such reason; not even a cookbook! Can anyone?

On the other hand, once interference is established, this might explain why it happened. That I think could be legitimate.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Jack the Bodiless

Conversely: as archaeologists have recovered some twenty-five thousand copies of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, with the oldest ones going back as far as 1500 BC or thereabouts, should we assume that the Egyptian pantheon is real?

driver8

2,000 years later there's no controversy over where Caesar's body lies.

Julian

The writings of Julius Caesar had profound political implications at the time he wrote them and his works are quite lopsided, as might be expected. They tend to emphasize the positive and neglect or outright omit the negative. There is no reason to believe that his works contain any forgeries, in my opinion, for reasons somewhat irrelevant to the topic at hand.

We have a vast amount of evidence pertaining to the nature of the roman empire so that, while many details can be disputed, there can be no question that, as a whole, we have accurate knowledge. If the point of the OP was to show that the bible is reliable to the same extent as the writings of Julius Caesar then the attempt has sadly failed. If that wasn't the point, then what is...?

Julian

gstafleu

If Julius Caesar didn't exist, we would have to explain away all these coins. However when it comes to "a rather large part of what we know about the Roman Empire at the onset of the Imperial period maybe false," Terry Jones argues exactly that rather persuasively in Barbarians.

Gerard Stafleu

MortalWombat

And also explain away the details of Caesars life contained in the writings of his contemporaries such as Cicero, Catullus, and Sallust.

Daan

Forgeries can be detected for several reasons. Medieval latin has introduced some specific new words, so nowadays we can see which texts are from medieval or ancient origin. The age of ink and paper can be detected by examining texts. There are other contemporary sources on the conquest of Gaul. Coins, ruins, other texts. Other texts could be: records on the names of gouvernors. The governor of Gaul defeated the Chatti on the other side of the Rhine in 39 BC for instance. Some Chatti moved to the Rhine delta to become soldiers for Rome. The Rhine delta is 800 km north of Lyons, where the Roman Empire used to be in 59 BC.