THE VALUE OF JULIUS CAESAR AS ETHNOGRAPHER

Abstract

Caesar's campaigns in Gaul, Germany and Britain occasioned great excitement in Rome. For Catullus "the Gaulish Rhine, the formidable Britons, remotest of men" represented "the memorials of great Caesar" (Cat. 11.10-11). Cicero too considered Caesar's exploits against the Britons the stuff of poetry (Q Fr. 2.16.14). The reading public must have been interested in what he had to say about his foreign adversaries.