The history of early printed editions of the Commentaries provides clear evidence of the extraordinary growth in the popularity of Caesar as an author: the first Italian edition was printed in 1469, there were at least nine editions of his works before 1500, and of course many more in the sixteenth century. Peter Burke’s important survey of editions and translations of the ancient historians has established that in the period 1450-1700 Caesar was the third most popular ancient historian, behind Sallust and Valerius Maximus, in terms of the number of editions and translations printed throughout Europe. More precisely, Burke charted his striking rise in popularity: in the period 1450-99 Caesar was fourth after Sallust, Valerius, and Livy; in the period 1500-49 he came third (ahead of Livy), while the second half of the sixteenth century marks the high point of Caesar’s popularity: between 1550 and 1599 the Commentaries command the highest number of editions and translations in Europe. However, in the following half-century, 1600-49, Caesar falls to tenth place, as Tacitus becomes the most read ancient historian, and Quintus Curtius, Livy, and Suetonius all finish above him (Burke 1966).
From the first edition to the end of the sixteenth century, Italians gradually produced more and more accurate texts of the Commentaries. As for the scholarly apparatus surrounding the text, here Italian humanists had to invent their own commentary material, since - unlike with poets such as Horace and Vergil - there was no late antique or medieval commentary tradition to follow. The paratexts surrounding Caesar’s works were initially concerned with the geography of the wars, with maps of Gaul and Spain, and often contained lists of Latin toponyms and their modern equivalents. Raimondo Marliano’s geographical index to the Gallic War appeared in the Milan 1477 edition and from then on was regularly reprinted in later editions, so that students could learn the modern equivalents of place names mentioned in Caesar’s account of his wars (e. g. Bactavi hodie holandini populi inter Belgas). to the new medium, Caesar becomes a popular school author in Italy after 1500, particularly useful for teaching geography (Grendler 1989: 259-60; Black 2001: 262 n. 395).
Another major step forward in the sophistication of the paratextual apparatus came with the 1513 Aldine edition; it contained Giovanni Giocondo’s (1433-1515) improved text, the by now standard geographical index, maps of Gaul showing where any significant military action took place, but now followed by his helpful illustrations of the construction of the bridge over the Rhine, of various military engines, and of the sieges of a number of cities, and a map of Spain. Giocondo also adds that he needed to consult the architectural treatises by Vitruvius and by Giocondo’s near-contemporary Alberti in order to interpret such technical passages. So while at a basic level the new medium ofprint added helpful illustrations to clarify Caesar’s descriptions, these visualizations were also valuable for those interested in engineering and other technological and military innovations. The 1513 and 1517 editions are dedicated by Giocondo to Giuliano de’ Medici, and the Latin word order in the dedication underlines the appropriateness of this text for this leader: ‘‘Julius’ Commentaries seem a highly appropriate gift for you, Giuliano, for this purest Latin work is suited to your spotless character’’ (Iuliano Iulii commentaria, quod candidissimi animi tui moribus candidissimum hoc opus maxime conveniens videtur munus; Caesar 1517: a ii v). The key word candor, regularly applied to Caesar’s Latin, is linked here to Giuliano’s upright character, while this interest in the significance of names is paralleled in other encomia of the time: rhetoricians suggested an association between Leo X and Augustus, as patrons of literary and artistic culture, and also correspondingly a parallel between his father Lorenzo the Magnificent and Julius Caesar; this is illustrated, for instance, by Andrea del Sarto’s Triumph of Caesar in the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano, where a Caesar (or Augustus) who looks like Lorenzo is portrayed as receiving gifts of exotic animals (Cox-Rearick 1984). Similarly Pope Julius II possibly took his papal name from his ambition to be a successful military leader as well as pope, and was perhaps also inspired by the fact that his predecessor on St. Peter’s throne, the notorious Borgia pope, Alexander VI, had taken his name from another great military leader (Alexander the Great) and named his illegitimate son Cesare (Borgia) (Shaw 1993; Temple 2006). Cesare Borgia in turn identified strongly with his namesake: he had a sword made on whose scabbard was the motto cum numine Caesaris omen (‘‘with Caesar’s divine will, good omen’’), though nomine would also have been appropriate (in fact the motto may have been deliberately ambiguous), and he even attempted to imitate Caesar’s triumphs in his triumphant entry into Rome in 1500 (Wyke 2007: 76-9, 143-4).
While the first printed commentary on Caesar had appeared outside of Italy - in the Swiss Henricus Glareanus’s 1538 edition (Margolin 1985) - the Italians produced two important commentated editions in the second half of the century. Fulvio Orsini owned three different MSS of Caesar’s works, including one he claimed was 600 years old, now Vat. Lat. 3324 (Brown 1972: 4), and in 1570 he published his emended text along with variant readings and the first ever collection of fragments from works by or attributed to Caesar, as well as the by now standard elements of the apparatus: indices of place names, maps, and illustrations of sieges and fortifications (Caesar 1570). Both Orsini’s edition and the one produced the following year by Aldus Manutius the Younger, which incorporated Orsini’s readings, contained Paolo Manuzio’s dedication of the work to Paolo Rhamnusio: there Caesar is recommended as a model for Rhamnusio’s own Latin history of Doge Enrico Dandolo’s conquest of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade. The role of both Caesar and Dandolo is that of reminding Italians that in the past Romans and Venetians had conquered the military threat from the East. Aldo’s edition was reprinted several times, and to the maps and figures of military bridges, fortifications, and siege-towers he adds illustrations of military formations and weapons, plus some of the stranger animals mentioned in the Commentaries, such as the elk and the bison (Caesar 1571). Caesar’s text, then, was seen as instructive on several fronts: it taught pure Latin, princely virtues, military tactics and engineering, European geography, and natural history.
World History
