De bello Alexandrino

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

De bello Alexandrino (also Bellum Alexandrinum , ie Alexandrian War ) is the title of an ancienthistoriographical work writtenin Latin about the works of Gaius Julius Caesar and his officers in the period from September 48 BC. Until August 47 BC BC (according to the Julian calendar) fought. It belongs to the so-called Corpus Caesarianum , comprises a book of 78 chapters and is seamlessly connected to Caesar's De bello civili (On the Civil War) .

Authorship

The De bello Alexandrino font contains no information about the author. Suetonius , who wrote a biography of Caesar around 150 years after the work was written, mentions that some ancient sources attributed the Alexandrian War to Gaius Oppius , while others believed Aulus Hirtius to be the author. The question of authorship has often been debated in modern research. Basically, three hypotheses can be distinguished:

  1. Nipperdey, Klotz, and Barwick attribute the entire work to Caesar's follower Aulus Hirtius . In all probability, he wrote the eighth book of Caesar's Gallic War and mentions in the Epistula ad Balbum (the preface to the eighth book by Caesar's De bello Gallico ) a continuation of Caesar's writings up to Caesar's death.
  2. A second group of researchers (including Andrieu, Giomini, Richter) point to the considerable stylistic differences between the eighth book of the Gallic War and the Alexandrian War and attribute De bello Alexandrino to an unknown author.
  3. According to a third group of philologists, one can hardly speak of "the" author of the Alexandrian War ; since the individual sections are stylistically highly heterogeneous, the work is probably composed of several individual reports by different authors. The accumulation of Caesarian formulations in chapters 1–21 indicate that the beginning of the work was based on a draft by Caesar, whereas the authors of the following sections could no longer be determined. This thesis was mainly developed by Landgraf and Pötter and has recently been taken up by Gaertner / Hausburg.

Content and structure

The title of the work is misleading because barely the first half of it describes Caesar's war in Alexandria , while the remainder is about military events elsewhere. The book is not chronologically but geographically arranged and presents the events in the different theaters of war one after the other. The opening part (chapters 1–33) continues Caesar's description of his stay in Egypt and describes the armed conflicts in and around Alexandria up to the death of Ptolemy XIII. and the reorganization of Egyptian conditions through the firm establishment of Cleopatra on the throne. Then the unfortunate military conflicts between Caesar's officer Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus and King Pharnakes II in Armenia are described (Chapters 34-41). This is followed by the account of the war in Illyria (chapters 42-47), where Aulus Gabinius was supposed to bring reinforcements to quaestor Quintus Cornificius , as well as the depiction of the turmoil on the Iberian Peninsula (chapters 48-64). In the end, the book describes Caesar's victorious blitzkrieg against Pharnakes and closes with his return to Italy (chapters 65-78).

literature

  • Jean Andrieu: Guerre d'Alexandrie . Paris 1954.
  • Luciano Canfora : Caesar, the democratic dictator . Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-46640-0 , pp. 346-350.
  • Jan Felix Gaertner , Bianca C. Hausburg: Caesar and the Bellum Alexandrinum. An Analysis of Style, Narrative Technique, and the Reception of Greek Historiography . Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-525-25300-7 .
  • Raphael Giomini: Bellum Alexandrinum . Rome 1956.
  • Alfred Klotz : Iulius 131). In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume X, 1, Stuttgart 1918, Col. 274 f.
  • Alfred Klotz: Caesar Studies: together with an analysis of the Strabo description of Gaul and Britain . Leipzig / Berlin 1910.
  • Gustav Landgraf : Studies on Caesar and his followers, especially on the authorship and composition of the Bellum Alexandrinum and Africanum . Erlangen 1888.
  • Carl Nipperdey: C. Iulii Caesaris commentarii cum supplementis A. Hirtii et aliorum. Caesaris Hirtiique fragmenta . Leipzig 1847.
  • Heinz Pötter: Studies on the Bellum Alexandrinum and Bellum Africanum. Style and author question . Leipzig 1932.
  • Will Richter : Caesar as a performer of his deeds: An introduction . Heidelberg 1977.
  • Rudolf Schneider : Bellum Alexandrinum . Berlin 1888.
  • Michael Trauth: Caesar incertus auctor . A quantifying word for criticizing drafting questions in Latin texts. In: Röllwagenbüchlein: Festschrift for Walter Röll on his 65th birthday. Edited by Jürgen Jaehrling, Uwe Meves and Erika Timm, Tübingen 2002, pp. 313–334.

Web links

Wikisource: Alexandrian War  - Sources and Full Texts (Latin)
Wikisource: Alexandrian War  - Sources and full texts (English)

Remarks

  1. ↑ Suetonius, Divus Iulius 56, 1: nam Alexandrini Africique et Hispaniensis incertus auctor est: alii Oppium putant, alii Hirtium, qui etiam Gallici belli novissimum imperfectumque librum suppleverit .
  2. ↑ Hirtius, De bello Gallico 8, praef. 2: Caesaris nostri commentarios rerum gestarum Galliae, non comparantibus superioribus atque insequentibus eius scriptis, contexui novissimumque imperfectum ab rebus gestis Alexandriae confeci usque ad exitum non quidem civilis dissensionis, cuius finem nullum videmus, sed vitae Caesaris .
  3. ↑ See Caes. Civ. 3,102-112.