Recent biographies transcend traditional fact- and source-based descriptions of Caesar’s life (as in the exemplary and still indispensable Gelzer 1968) and place it in the broad context not only of Roman political but also social, constitutional, military, and cultural history (Meier 1995; Goldsworthy 2006). Rawson 1985 and Conte 1994b discuss Caesar’s works in the framework of late Republican literature; they and Kennedy (1972) illuminate his rhetorical brilliance. Thanks to Garcea (2012) we now have a detailed study of his De Analogia. The literary art of the Civil War has been highlighted recently in two excellent studies by Batstone and Damon (2006) and by Grillo (2012); strong foundations for a similar reassessment of the Gallic War have been laid, for example, by Riggsby (2006) and Osgood (2009). Collected volumes (Welch and Powell 1998, Griffin 2009, as well as the present volume, among several others) contribute a broad range of valuable insights, and numerous appendices in the forthcoming Landmark Julius Caesar (Raaflaub 2017) add further suggestions. It is to be hoped that the latter work will represent a “landmark” in bringing Caesar’s Commentarii to the attention of a broad readership.

From the perspective of the present chapter, several issues are crying out for comprehensive new treatment. The most important is the literary art of the BG, especially in view of recent important progress achieved in reassessing the BC. This needs to be done in connection with several major problems that concern both works. Although there is no lack of brief discussions, especially of individual aspects, the last systematic treatments of these problems were written a long time ago and on the basis of premises that have long been outdated (outstanding examples are Barwick 1951 and Rambaud 1966 on historical distortion in Caesar’s reporting). These problems thus require renewed systematic attention aided by new approaches and modern perspectives. One is the issue of the nature and purpose of Caesar’s Commentarii (including a re-examination of “Caesar the historian,” on which now see Krebs (2017)), another the question of the production, publication, and intended readership of the Commentarii, yet another that of propaganda, ideology, and accuracy. Finally, the self-portrait sketched by Caesar (and complemented by the portraits drawn by the authors of the later Wars) throws important light on Caesar the leader, politician, and statesman. What I said on this in the present chapter and in Raaflaub (2010a and 2010b) seems to me only a beginning.

The three most important studies of Caesarian propaganda are Barwick (1951), Rambaud (1953), and Collins (1972); none is without problems. Collins (1963) provides an informed review of the previous literature, Riggsby (2006, 207–15) an up-to-date discussion of “propaganda” in Caesar, and Kolb (2003) a survey of ways to communicate with the public. Crawford (1974, vol. 2.734–8) discusses Caesarian coinage, Gros (2010) Caesar’s architectural designs, and Zanker (2009) Caesarian portraiture.

The study of the varying and changing terminology in Caesarian scholarship on propaganda (fides, Glaubwürdigkeit, tendenza) may yield interesting results. Further desiderata include studies of Caesar’s propagandistic efforts in comparison (and partial response) to Pompey’s and of the continuators’ (cruder) propaganda in the Corpus Caesarianum.

The basic works for understanding the debate about Caesar’s Tendenz are Rambaud (1953, 2nd edn 1966) and Collins (1952 and 1972). After half a century they remain polarizing and useful. For discussion of Roman virtues and politics in relationship to Caesar, one should turn to Weinstock (1971), Fears (1981), and Ramage (2003). McDonnell (2006) places these discussions in a Republican context. Narrative in Caesar has seen several recent studies; especially useful is Riggsby (2006). The collection of essays in Welch and Powell (1998) cover a very useful range of topics. Batstone and Damon (2006) and Grillo (2012) focus on the BC but address issues relevant to narrative in the BG. The reception of Caesar is studied by Wyke (2008). I have not seen Wyke (2012), but it should be mentioned. Biographies are always useful. The classic biographies are by Gelzer (1968) and Meier (1995). Two recent books that are both easy reading and broadly informative are Tatum (2008) and Goldsworthy (2006). One should not forget the ancient sources: Suetonius, Cicero’s letters, Cassius Dio.

Studies of Caesarian “propaganda” over the past century seem to have resolved into a resounding non liquet. This conclusion should entail a further conclusion: we do not understand clearly the methods and purposes of a work like the BG. We need both more narratological studies of the text and semiological studies of its meaning: how does totalization, exemplary anecdote, bureaucratic detail work in creating the text’s effects? What is the function of the authorial surplus that is evident everywhere? There are many suggestions in the literature, but no thorough study. We need also to understand better how and why Caesar’s text was important in its first moment. How does it play the game of aristocratic competition? What does it ask of its audiences and what does it offer? Finally, given the transhistorical life of Césarité, we need to understand why and how that myth still serves the West: why do we need or want the absolutism, the totalization, the colossus, the unwavering mastery and well-known compassion? If we are the subject of Césarité, what kind of subject are we asked to become?

Caesar has been hardly dealt with as a religious actor in its own right, even if many biographies touch on this. Research has concentrated on his calendar reform and his divinization. For the former, Feeney (2007) and Rüpke (2011b) are basic, for the latter Weinstock (1971) is still valuable. Gradel (2002) places it within the longer development of the cult of rulers.

The many aspects of what we consider to be religious deeds were certainly parts of different repertoires of action for a Roman noble. Original and traditional patterns were combined. It would be helpful to see this not only on a piecemeal basis, but as a bundle of actions compared with other contemporary agents (e.g. Rüpke (2017) and Hölkeskamp (2010)). How typical were they for a patrician (cf. Rüpke (2012c))? For a member of a family of secondary importance? As for the calendar reform, we need to investigate further the developments in Italy and the provinces and the knowledge of these developments at Rome; this would allow us to assess the strategic component in Caesar’s course of action and his place in intellectual discourses beyond immediate political advantage.

There was considerable discussion of the geographical set-pieces of the BG in the early part of the twentieth century, emphasizing the ethnographic element and (unfortunately) claims of interpolation. So even Beckmann’s 1930 monograph defending authenticity deals primarily with linguistic and formal issues. Rambaud 1974 brought genuinely spatial issues to the fore, and his notion of déformation historique has been attractive to some as a way of looking at the use of geography. Several papers in the collection of Poli (1993) touch on geographic themes, though often from the point of view of Caesar’s sources (whether textual or “real”), as do Harmand (1973) and France (1989). Much of the discussion above was shaped by three pieces that appeared more or less simultaneously and independently of each other: Krebs (2006), Riggsby (2006, 21–72), and Schadee (2008); the bibliographies of the first and last are additionally useful for gathering the scattered earlier material. In addition to Oppermann (1933) cited above, Nützel (2004) treats the BC (along with the BG and the rest of the corpus Caesarianum) at a stylistic level.

As noted above, the topic of geography in the BC (let alone the corpus Caesarianum) has been understudied. Of particular interest would be the role of the sea in the BC, which is not only particular to that work (as opposed to the BG), but perhaps unique in Latin historiography more generally. It would also be valuable to exploit existing source-critical research in an attempt to find whether Caesar relies on/manipulates specific geographical expectations about the “known” spaces of this work. In BG literature, there is unresolved disagreement on whether geography should be understood to have a direct causal influence on national character (the “Hippocratic” view). Above I briefly discussed “simultaneity at a distance” in the BC, but the general relationship of space in time would repay more extensive research into both works.

Gruen (2011) is a challenging revisionist approach to ancient ethnography, and the chapter on Caesar’s treatment of the Gauls will offer the reader a different perspective on his aims. Riggsby (2006) is the most important monograph-length treatment of constructions of Romans and Gauls in the BG since Rambaud (1966). The unpublished dissertation of Jervis (2001) informs much work done on Caesar’s construction of “the other” over the last decade. The recent arguments of Krebs (2006; 2011) have shed new light on the intellectual influence of Caesar as geographer and ethnographer. Grillo (2012) has illuminated complex dynamics of the rhetoric of otherness in the BC. For the intellectual background outside of Rome, Hartog (1988) is the most significant contribution in the last quarter-century, but this should now be read alongside Skinner (2012) on the pre-Herodotean invention of Greek ethnography. In the field of cultural anthropology, the theoretical framework for rethinking ethnography developed in Clifford (1986) has been influential.

On the subject of Caesar’s construction of selves and others, many directions for further scholarship remain; there are three that I suggest here. First is the historicization of otherness and the complex role of memory in the BG. While it is not conventional historiography, the past does conspicuously inform the present of Caesar’s work, and in turn undergoes a process of remaking in the course of the narrative; Roman perceptions of and attitudes toward the Gauls – and vice versa – are represented as the products of historical developments. Secondly, more is to be said about the textual “assimilation” of the conquered, the collapse of the distinction between “self” and “other” through the appropriation of the perspective of the Gauls and the “translation” of their anxieties into the terms of a distinctly late Republican Roman political discourse. A final direction that merits further inquiry is the reception of Caesar’s ethnography and geography, from the Corpus Caesarianum to Greek literature of the imperial period to the Middle Ages.