De Bello Africo
(On the War in Africa)
Authorunknown
LanguageClassical Latin
SubjectHistory, military history
Publisherunknown
Publication date
approx. 40 BC
Preceded byDe Bello Alexandrino 
Followed byDe Bello Hispaniensi 
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The African War

De Bello Africo (also Bellum Africum; On the African War) is a Latin work continuing Julius Caesar's accounts of his campaigns, De Bello Gallico and De Bello Civili,[1] and its sequel by an unknown author De Bello Alexandrino. It details Caesar's campaigns against his Republican enemies in the province of Africa.

Authorship

De Bello Africo is preceded by De Bello Alexandrino and followed by De Bello Hispaniensi. These three works end the Caesarean corpus relating Caesar's Civil War. The historical narratives, though attributed to Caesar,[1] are assumed to have been written by three different anonymous authors around 40 BC.[2] Though normally collected and bound with Caesar's authentic writings, their authorship has been debated since antiquity. One very plausible theory favors Aulus Hirtius as the author of De Bello Alexandrino (see there for details). But due to considerable differences in style, scholarly consensus has ruled out the author of the latter, as well as Julius Caesar, as the author or authors of the two last parts. It has been suggested[3] that these were in fact rough drafts prepared at the request of Hirtius by two separate soldiers who fought in the respective campaign; and had he survived, Hirtius would have worked them up into more effective literary form. There are scholars who propose that he acted as editor to these historical narratives.[4] Regarding De Bello Africo, A.G. Way ventures: "The careful chronology and the faithful record of the feelings of the troops suggests a soldier - possibly a junior officer - who was on the spot. That he was young and inexperienced; an ardent, but not always a balanced, partisan; a keen observer of all that went on around him, but without access to the inner counsels of his C.-in-C."[5]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Yenne, Bill (2012). Julius Caesar: Lessons in Leadership from the Great Conqueror. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 195. ISBN 9780230112315.
  2. ^ Danckaert, Lieven (2017). The Development of Latin Clause Structure: A Study of the Extended Verb Phrase. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 88. ISBN 9780198759522.
  3. ^ A. Bouvet, La Guerre d'Afrique, Les Belles-Lettres 1949: introduction, p.xix.
  4. ^ Caesar, Gaius Julius (2012-12-12). The Gallic Wars. Winged Hussar Publishing. ISBN 9781620180730.
  5. ^ Caesar Alexandrian, African and Spanish Wars, with an English translation by A.G. Way, M.A., The Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1955, p.141.
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