Another striking, almost unique, indication of Caesar’s importance in Italy was the number of translations into the Italian vernacular. Peter Burke’s survey (1966) estimates that in the Cinquecento there were 27 editions of French translations of Caesar and 26 Italian editions, but perhaps more significantly, as far as Italy itself is concerned, these 26 editions meant that there were more Italian vernacular translations of Caesar than of any other ancient historian (21 of Tacitus, 19 of Livy, 12 of Sallust). After the unusually early translation by Pier Candido Decembrio in 1438, there was another fifteenth-century volgarizzamento in 1467 by a translator in the Este court who signed himself Polismagna (Tanturli 1988: 223), but neither of these was ever printed. However, two volgarizzamenti were published in close proximity at the start of the sixteenth century, at a time when few vernacular translations of the classics were being made in Italy, and a third one in the 1550s. In 1512 Agostino Ortica della Porta’s was the first Italian translation of the Commentaries to be printed and was popular enough to go through 17 editions by 1574. It too contained a list of ancient place names with their modern equivalents, but interestingly the translator apologizes for the list’s brevity, which was caused, he claims, by the speed with which he had to work towards publication: all this suggests an urgent demand for an Italian version. Della Porta’s letter of dedication to Ottaviano di Campofregoso, the Genoese Doge, underlines the fact that this volgarizzamento will allow those who do not know Latin to read this great work and thus benefit from a knowledge of history, ‘‘della vita humana maestra e guida’’ (Caesar 1547: A ii r). Later editions of this translation will also include the standard paratexts from the Latin editions: apart from the geographical index and maps, there are regularly diagrams of bridges, palisades, sieges, etc.
This demand for a vernacular Caesar is further confirmed by the fact that soon after, in 1518, a Florentine, Dante Popoleschi, also had his translation printed. Here too the introductory letter (by Carlo Aldobrandi to the reader) praises the translator for his service ‘‘ad commune utilita,’’ but adds, perhaps criticizing Della Porta’s version, that Popoleschi’s translation contains no new or recondite words, or strange sentences, but straightforward vocabulary, harmonious, ordered sentences, and idioms used by the most refined men (Caesar 1518: 1r). Popoleschi’s Italian is thus the appropriate equivalent of Caesar’s ‘‘pure’’ Latin. Possibly in this period of intense debate in Italy about the language question, Popoleschi’s Tuscan version was seen in some circles as preferable to Della Porta’s Genoese idiom. But we also find other reasons for this volgarizzamento: in his dedication of the work to Iacopo Quinto de Aragone de Appiano, after the obligatory praise of history largely lifted from Cicero, the translator notes that Caesar’s name is still revered today amongst those he defeated, the French and Germans. The letter also adds another significant reason for this translation, namely the vicinity of those countries whom Caesar defeated in just eight years, for now the French and Germans (presumably the translator means Swiss mercenaries) ‘‘have so filled this Italy of ours with tumult and war that it seemed to me to be appropriate, both for this reason and for the trade that we have with such nations, that our people should through this translation of ours gain knowledge of those places’’ (Caesar 1518: 3v). Caesar’s Commentaries thus afforded Italians, depressed by their lack of military success against foreign powers in the Italian wars, a consolatory backward glance at a happier military past when these same countries had been defeated by Roman military genius. This is very much the period and the context in which Machiavelli wrote his political treatises with their nostalgia for the great Roman past.
Another major Tuscan translation followed in 1554 by Francesco Baldelli. This version too contains the by now standard indexes and illustrations, and was popular enough to be reprinted, 20 years later, in an edition illustrated by the great architect Andrea Palladio. This beautiful 1575 edition, reprinted in 1598 (Caesar 1598), contains the usual maps and diagrams of fortifications and bridges, but also for the first time 34 etchings of ancient battles, formations, and encampments, all executed by Palladio himself: his aim was to make Caesar’s text visually intelligible as well, so that features such as camps and towers in each illustration are labeled with a series of letters (a, b, c, etc.), which are clearly picked up in Caesar’s text (figure 23.3). The edition was dedicated to Jacopo Boncompagno, natural son of Pope Gregory XIII, who was appointed captain general of the papal armies in 1573. In his dedicatory letter, Palladio points out that although Italy has been ‘‘depressed’’ by military
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Figure 23.3 The Siege of Thapsus. Palladio’s fine copper print of Caesar’s Siege of Thapsus (46 BC) from The African War (attributed to Caesar). The print shows how Caesar placed the cohorts of his Fifth Legion (K) behind his three other lines of troops in order to withstand Metellus Scipio’s elephants (E). From Commentari di Giulio Cesare, con le figure in rame [... ] fatte da Andrea Palladio per facilitare a chi legge, la cognition dell’Historia (Venice: Girolamo Foglietti, 1598), pp. 380-1 (Magdalen College Old Library, E.9.4, pp. 380-1 by permission of the President and Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford).
Defeats in recent times, it is still worthwhile imitating the ancient Roman battle orders, despite recent radical changes such as the invention of firearms. After all, the Roman soldiers were mostly uneducated country folk, and their captains were not ‘‘Semidei,’’ but humans whose clever actions can be imitated. In addition, Francesco Patrizi in his Paralleli militari (1594) noted that Palladio took such care over these visualizations because he saw them as valid exempla for contemporaries to follow against the Turkish threat (Patrizi 1594; Hale 1977), so once more the text and illustrations served a practical purpose, and the political-military context played a major role in Caesar’s popularity in sixteenth-century Italy. In fact he will inspire other military theorists to compose their own tactical works: the significantly named Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (1515-86), a famous Neapolitan soldier, who fought in many important battles in the century, published in 1585 his eight books of Della nuoua disciplina & vera arte militare, based both on his military experience and on his study of Caesar’s Commentaries. The subtitle informs the reader that in eight books he will explain ‘‘the art of war with brief rules for the convenience of soldiers, based on Julius Caesar, on how a prince can easily and cheaply defend himself in battle using only his own forces against however powerful an army, and how to attack and defeat all nations, again using his own forces’’ (Coldagelli 1971). These last phrases show that Brancaccio had read Machiavelli as well as Caesar. However, experience on the Italian battlefield showed that the ambitions of such works were unrealistic, and Julius Caesar remained only a distant ideal throughout the century to Italian military rulers unable to defend themselves against foreign domination.
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