This article reconsiders the evidence for Furius Bibaculus’ historical epic Annales Belli Gallici, an epic arguably covering Caesar’s warfare in Gaul. In addition to a reconsideration of the textual evidence and the testimonia, this article discusses in detail questions of authorship, date, and sources. The article concludes with some observations on language and content of the Annales Belli Gallici.

After long neglect, in English-language scholarship at least, the question of how Julius Caesar wrote and disseminated hisGallic War—as a single work? in multi-year chunks? year by year?—was revived by T.P. Wiseman in 1998, who argued anew for serial composition. This paper endeavours to provide further evidence for that conclusion by examining how Caesar depicts the non-Roman peoples he fights. Caesar's ethnographic passages, and their authorship, have been a point of contention among German scholars for over a century, but reading (...) them and the rest of the text with eyes unclouded by the exhausted debate about possible interpolation reveals details that bear upon wider questions of composition. In these passages Caesar devised an ethnographic framework in order to rank against one another the levels of threat posed by different barbarian peoples, downplaying the relative ferocity of the Gauls in contrast to other groups in an effort to magnify the peril the others posed to Rome and the glory to be obtained from their defeat. This ethnographic framework is significant for understanding Caesar's method both because it provides insight into Caesar's reasons for including the ethnographic passages and because it implies that theGallic Warwas composed in, at a minimum, four stages: Books 1–2, where the framework is first developed and used, by 56b.c.; Books 3–4 and 5–6, where it is elaborated and extended, by 54 and 52b.c.respectively; and finally Book 7, after 52b.c., when Caesar, in recounting the campaign against Vercingetorix, was forced to abandon and contradict the ethnographic framework in a fashion that suggests that the earlier books were already in circulation, preventing him from adjusting them to the new circumstances of the campaign of that year. (shrink)

Ancient testimonia on the Druids are few in number and sparse on details, and they have yielded a broad range of scholarly opinions on the Druids’ function among the Gauls. This article examines the suspiciously limited role played by the Druids in Julius Caesar's Gallic War (= BGall.). Considering the work of both classicists and archaeologists, it argues that, given Caesar's demonstrated propensity for tailoring his portrayals of northern Europeans to fit with his narrative objectives, he deliberately omitted the (...) Druids from nearly all of the Gallic War save for a brief ethnographic digression on the Gauls. This he did in order to downplay the sophistication of the Gauls, and the threat they posed to the Romans, since the Druids were likely a potent source of anti-Roman sentiment during Caesar's time in Gaul, just as they seem to have been in the Early Imperial period. (shrink)

Intellectual eminence apart, what did Kant, Clausewitz, Marx and Engels, and Tolstoy have in common? Professor Gallic argues that they made contributions to 'international theory' - to the understanding of the character and causes of war and of the possibility of peace between nations - which were of unrivalled originality in their own times and remain of undiminished importance in ours. But these contributions have been either ignored or much misunderstood ; chiefly because, as with all intellectual efforts in (...) unexplored fields, they were often imperfectly expressed, and were also overshadowed by their author's more striking achievements. Professor Gallic has sorted out, compared and contrasted, criticised and re-phrased the teachings of his chosen authors on peace and war. (shrink)

In his Gallic War Caesar tells us that the Roman Senate had frequently recognized the Aedui as ‘brothers and kinsmen’. This statement, though prima facie rather odd, is fully supported by Caesar's contemporaries, Cicero and Diodorus Siculus, and a number of later authorities. Ihm was of the opinion that the Aedui were recognized as ‘fratres consanguineosque’ because they were the first tribe in Gallia Comata to enter into alliance with Rome. However, no ancient authority supports this view and it (...) is hardly sufficient to explain the notion of blood relationship implied by these titles. (shrink)

This article discusses the Italian translation of Suetonius's Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Dante Popoleschi, a little-known Florentine humanist and member of the Orti Oricellari in the early sixteenth century. Since Popoleschi's translation, which is preserved in a single manuscript copy dedicated to King François Ier of France, has never been studied in detail and, moreover, is unknown to present-day students of Suetonius, this contribution aims to examine the work both in its own right and in comparison to Popoleschi's (...) volgarizzamenti of Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War and Donato Acciaiuoli's Life of Scipio. By placing Popoleschi's version of Suetonius in its original cultural-historical context, it also sheds new light on his life, works and translation activity. (shrink)

Julius Caesar was remembered in later times for the unprecedented scale of his military activity. He was also remembered for writing copiously while on campaign. Focusing on the period of Rome's war with Gaul , this paper argues that the two activities were interrelated: writing helped to facilitate the Roman conquest of the Gallic peoples. It allowed Caesar to send messages within his own theater of operations, sometimes with distinctive advantages; it helped him stay in touch with Rome, from (...) where he obtained ever more resources; and it helped him, in his Gallic War above all, to turn the story of his scattered campaigns into a coherent narrative of the subjection of a vast territory henceforward to be called “Gaul.” The place of epistolography in late Republican politics receives new analysis in the paper, with detailed discussion of the evidence of Cicero. (shrink)

Critognatus’ speech has long been recognized as heavily by Caesar's hand, although few have questioned whether any speech was delivered by the Arvernian noble at all; and it has long puzzled readers with its contradictory manner and fierce criticism of Rome. But the etymologizing wordplay across several languages demonstrated below (along with other distinctly comical elements) renders it more than likely that both the speech and the speaker are products of the author's imagination. In its Nabokovian mode, it offers a (...) glimpse of Caesar the linguist and introduces a playfulness into the dire situation before Alesia that suggests that the ‘Barley-Muncher’ and his speech should be reconsidered in a different, more humorous light. (shrink)

We have been witnessing more than two hundred years of successful formation and spread of the nation-state. As a historical reminder, let me quote great French historian of the nineteenth century, Jules Michelet; in spite of its somewhat sentimental tone, his view on the unification of France is typical of what any nationalist would like to say about the successful creation of an ethno-national state: "This unification of France, this destruction of parochial spirit is often considered as the simple result (...) of the conquest of provinces. But a conquest can glue together, chain together the hostile parts, never unite them: the conquest and the war have only opened provinces to each other, and has given to isolated populations an opportunity to meet each other; the quick and lively sympathy of Gallic genius, its social instinct, has done the rest of the work. What a strange event! These provinces, of differing climate, customs and language have understood each other, fallen in love with each other, felt solidarity towards each other….”(Michelet, Histoire de la france, t. III; 1844, Histoire de la France, Anthologized in Saly et. al.1996, p. 115) Saly, P., Gerard, A., Gervais, C. and Rey, M.P., “Nations et nationalismes en Europe 1848-1914., my translation)" Contemporary sociologists express similar thoughts in a different rhetorical garb. They stress the advantages of nation-forming along ethnonational lines. By offering to people a culture in languag(es) they actually spoke, by encouragement of the formation of more local elites, directly in contact with their electorate, and by promoting capitalist mode of production it has enabled the massive democratization. As many sociologists , prominently Anderson and Gellner, have pointed out, democracy and nationalism go together.. (shrink)

In 21 CE, a series of localized movements broke out in Gallia Comata due to heavy debts among provincials according to Tacitus. Modern scholars have long argued that the indebtedness occurred because of rising interest rates, resulting from dwindling currency in circulation after decades of free-spending following Augustus’ victory at Actium, and that Gallic communities were subjected to an additional tribute to support the wars of Germanicus (14–16 CE), which continued unabated after the wars and pushed Gauls (...) beyond their means. These claims are misguided, however, in that there is no certain evidence of a special tax to support Germanicus’ wars and that the argument for a dwindling circulation of currency in Gaul falters under closer inspection. Rather, the pressing statal and military needs imposed on communities in Gallia Comata after 9 CE on top of routine exactions could significantly increase burden levels levied on provincial populations, thus contributing to rising debts. Through examining how Roman logistics and conscription operated in this period, it is possible to trace how populations were impacted by such demands and which communities were most heavily affected by them, too. Individually, the impact of each factor is unlikely to have been burdensome enough to have caused large-scale resistance, it is only the cumulative effect that these explanations had on top of routine Roman extraction schemes that could create the conditions for this revolt. This paper argues that in extraordinary circumstances, such as the period after the Varian Disaster for Gallia Comata, the costs of supporting military campaigns places real short-term strains on local economies, which creates the conditions for revolt. The benefit of this approach is that it may explain other episodes of anti-fiscal resistance that broke out during or within a decade of wars in neighboring regions. (shrink)

Zosimus, after recording the foundation and immense growth of Constantinople, introduces a digression directed towards his purpose of justifying paganism against Christianity. ‘It has often indeed occurred to me to wonder how, when the city of the Byzantines has grown, so that no other can compare with it for prosperity and size, there was no prophecy delivered from the gods of our predecessors about its development to a better fortune. With this thought in mind I have turned over many volumes (...) of histories and collections of oracles, and with difficulty I happened upon one oracle said to be of the Sibyl of Erythrae or of Phaennis of Epirus. Nicomedes, the son of Prusias, put his confidence in this oracle, and interpreting it in an advantageous sense he took up war against his father, Prusias, at the persuasion of Attalus.’ Zosimus proceeds to quote twenty-one lines of hexameter verse, which have come down in a rather corrupt state, but of which the general sense is reasonably clear. They consist mainly of an obvious post eventum forecast of the Gallic invasion of Asia Minor in the third century B.C. (shrink)

We study a dynamic game in which players can steal parts of a homogeneous and perfectly divisible pie from each other. The effectiveness of a player’s theft is a random function which is stochastically increasing in the share of the pie the agent currently owns. We show how the incentives to preempt or to follow the rivals change with the number of players involved in the game and investigate the conditions that lead to the occurrence of symmetric or asymmetric equilibria.

The study of metaphor is now firmly established as a central topic within cognitive science and the humanities. We marvel at the creative dexterity of gifted speakers and writers for their special talents in both thinking about certain ideas in new ways, and communicating these thoughts in vivid, poetic forms. Yet metaphors may not only be special communicative devices, but a fundamental part of everyday cognition in the form of 'conceptual metaphors'. An enormous body of empirical evidence from cognitive linguistics (...) and related disciplines has emerged detailing how conceptual metaphors underlie significant aspects of language, thought, cultural and expressive action. Despite its influence and popularity, there have been major criticisms of conceptual metaphor. This book offers an evaluation of the arguments and empirical evidence for and against conceptual metaphors, much of which scholars on both sides of the wars fail to properly acknowledge. (shrink)

An absorbing introductory treatment of logic, ranging from classic philosophy to the fundamental building blocks of modern electronics.

I argue that people are sometimes justified in participating in unjust wars. I consider a range of reasons why war might be unjust, including the cause which it is fought for, whether it is proportionate, and whether it wrongly uses resources that could help others in dire need. These considerations sometimes make fighting in the war unjust, but sometimes not. In developing these claims, I focus especially on the 2003 Iraq war.

In this article, the author aims to demonstrate how Agamben’s concept of Homo Sacer is ideally epitomized by a soldier in war. A soldier in war holds a peculiar position, as killing of soldiers is considered neither illegal by laws nor immoral by ethics, and so a soldier is not considered to be legally or morally “guilty” in the usual sense of the word if he or she kills another soldier in war. The author analyzes the notion of Homo Sacer (...) – a figure representing a human that can be killed without the killer being punished, but at the same time someone who cannot be sacrificed – and further demonstrates that a soldier in war can be said to hold precisely such a status. The reason why a soldier cannot be sacrificed resides in the fact that he has already been “sacrificed to war” by his own society, in exchange for the safety of all other members of society. Perceiving a soldier as Homo Sacer provides a novel explanation and an additional argument for the moral symmetry of combatants, one of the pillars of non-revisionist Just War Theory, as all soldiers can be understood as persons sacrificed by their own societies. (shrink)

The study combines theories of myth, popular culture, structuralism and poststructuralism to explain the enormous appeal of Star Wars and Harry Potter. Although much research already exists on both stories individually, this book is the first to explicitly bring them together in order to explore their set-up and the ways in which their structures help produce ideologies on gender and ethnicity. Hereby, the comparison yields central insights into the workings of modern myth and uncovers structure as integral to the (...) success of the popular genre. It addresses academic audiences and all those wishing to approach the tales from a fresh angle. (shrink)

This article is based on a public lecture hosted by the Monash University Centre for Human Bioethics in Melbourne, Australia on 11 April 2013. The lecture recording was transcribed by Vicky Ryan; and, the original transcript has been edited — for clarity and brevity — by Vicky Ryan, Michael Selgelid and Jonathan Moreno.

The concept of apocalypse is well established in all the major religions of the world, be they Semitic religions or Hinduism. The underlying idea behind the concept in all the religions remains the same, that is, the world will come to an end. The end itself, which has been called the Judgment Day, Day of Resurrection, or the Day of Retribution or Reckoning will be preceded by some signs. It has also been called the day of Apocalypse, the day when (...) the whole world will be destroyed. One of the distinct forms of it is Muslim Apocalypse about which a lot has been written. However, the argument of the present research paper shall be to examine the concept of the Mahdi primarily from the Shi’te Muslim point of view. The premise of the argument is that Shi’te argument or concept of the Mahdi is far more substantial having a solid theoretical foundation than the other perspectives about it. No wonder, therefore, the concept of the Mahdi has manifested itself in literature across cultures and ages. There are so many poets, primarily, Muslim poets who have highlighted this concept in their poetry and thus the research paper shall make an attempt to look at some of those poets and their understanding of it. (shrink)

SUMMARYThe Machiavellian Moment was largely responsible for establishing what remains the dominant understanding of American Revolutionary ideology. Patriots, on this account, were radical whigs; their great preoccupation was a terror of crown power and executive corruption. This essay proposes to test the whig reading of patriot political thought in a manner suggested by Professor Pocock's pioneering first book, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law. The whig tradition, as he taught us, located in the remote Saxon past an ‘ancient constitution’ (...) of liberty, in which elected monarchs merely executed laws approved by their free subjects in a primeval parliament. This republican idyll, whigs believed, was then tragically interrupted by the Norman Conquest of 1066, which introduced feudal tenures and monarchical tyranny. Did patriot theorists accept this narrative? The answer, I shall argue, is strikingly mixed. By the early 1770s, appeals to the ‘ancient constitution’ had become less common in patriot writing. And by the end of the 1770s, many patriots had absorbed a completely different understanding of the feudal past—one pioneered by Royalist historians of the seventeenth century and then adapted by Scottish historians of the eighteenth. This shift reflects a broader transformation in patriot political and constitutional theory. (shrink)

Are good and evil a “point of view”? Do Jedi and Sith alike merely crave greater power? What does a “space opera” have to teach us about how to live virtuously? George Lucas created Star Wars as a modern-day morality tale, modeled on classical epics, such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, tragic dramas written by the likes of Sophocles, Seneca, and Shakespeare, and the scriptures that inspire religions in the East and West. This chapter canvasses the metaphysical and moral (...) themes across the three trilogies that make up the “Skywalker saga” to construct a genealogy of how “the Force” evolved throughout these films. At the heart of this conceptual development is the question of how the light and dark sides of the Force are related to each other and what that relationship can help us understand about the nature of good and evil in our own experience. (shrink)

For over 150 years liberal optimism has dominated theories of war and violence. It has been repeatedly argued that war and violence either are declining or will shortly decline. There have been exceptions, especially in Germany and more generally in the first half of the twentieth century, but there has been a recent revival of such optimism, especially in the work of Azar Gat, John Mueller, Joshua Goldstein, and Steven Pinker who all perceive a long-term decline in war and violence (...) through history, speeding up in the post-1945 period. Critiquing Pinker’s statistics on war fatalities, I show that the overall pattern is not a decline in war, but substantial variation between periods and places. War has not declined and current trends are slightly in the opposite direction. The conventional view is that civil wars in the global South have largely replaced inter-state wars in the North, but this is misleading since there is major involvement in most civil wars by outside powers, including those of the North. There is more support for their view that homicide has declined in the long-term, at least in the North of the world (with the United States lagging somewhat). This is reinforced by technological improvements in long-distance weaponry and the two transformations have shifted war, especially in the North, from being “ferocious” to “callous” in character. This renders war less visible and less central to Northern culture, which has the deceptive appearance of being rather pacific. Viewed from the South the view has been bleaker both in the colonial period and today. Globally war and violence are not declining, but they are being transformed. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars have identified a political formation that mobilizes the emancipatory energies of feminism in the service of the expansion of the carceral state. ‘Carceral feminism,’ as it has come to be known, is often portrayed by these scholars as a product of feminist-conservative convergence. Here, I argue that the rise of the SlutWalk movement suggests a more complex genealogy for carceral feminism. By situating SlutWalk in the historico-theoretical context of feminism’s sex wars, I reveal the carceral–feminist (...) impulses roiling beneath its progressive ‘sex-positive’ surface. With its tendency to reduce sexual freedom to expressive freedom, valorize conventional forms of femininity and sexuality, and promote a fundamentally carceral paradigm of sexual freedom, the SlutWalk movement, I argue, is descended from anti-censorship/pro-sex feminism, a liberal-feminist hybrid that emerged out of the convergence of sex-radical feminism and liberalism during the sex wars. When viewed in this light, SlutWalk no longer appears as a sign that feminism’s ‘pleasure’ and ‘danger’ factions have negotiated a long-awaited ‘sex-détente.’ Rather, it stands as a testament to the extent to which feminism’s once radical aspirations in the domain of sexual politics have been supplanted by a tepid, heteronormative, and disquietingly carceral liberal project. (shrink)

American bioethics began in the late 1960s, stimulated by a plethora of new medical technologies and biological knowledge and by a scandal-induced interest in human subject research. Although it was understood that there would be ethical debate , no one thought the disputes would be ideological in character, as if part of one's voting pattern as liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. There were arguments, often sharp, but no culture wars.