With the first humanist translations of Caesar’s works, Caesar the author re-enters the collective consciousness in the German-speaking world. The first complete translation of Caesar’s works into French by Jean du Chesne (also Quesne) was published in 1473-4, though he still embeds the translation into a mirror for princes, employing classical history as a model for his own patron, Charles the Bold. The first translation following more exacting humanist standards was produced shortly afterwards in 1485 by Robert Gaugin. The first German translation, produced in 1507 by Matthias Ringmann (Philesius) and published in Strasbourg under the title Julius der erst Romisch Kaiser von seinen kriegen (Julius the first Roman emperor: about his wars), combines Caesar’s De bello Gallico and De bello civile with Plutarch’s life of Caesar. Like the earlier French translations, it associates philological interest with contemporary politics: Ringmann, from Strasbourg, was a friend of Jakob Wimpheling, who in his political tract Germania (1501) had used evidence from Caesar’s life to argue that Alsace, the bilingual region at the borders between French - and Germanspeaking territories and home of many of the early humanists, had been part of the German empire since Caesar’s times. This highlights how, despite the new philological engagement with Caesar’s texts, the image of Caesar the military leader and conqueror remains dominant even in a period when copies of his literary works are more readily available. Two prominent German figures may serve to illustrate this point at least briefly: Albrecht Durer and Martin Luther.
Durer’s Triumph of Caesar, showing him in the company of Pompeius and Crassus, does not survive; we know of it only through a description by Jacob Balde (Gundolf 1904: 148).
Luther, on the other hand, is evidence for an increasingly ambivalent attitude towards Caesar the politician, whereas he seems unconcerned with Caesar the author. In his Tischreden (Werke, vol. 62, Gesprach 2731, p. 185), Luther refers to Caesar as an exemplary ruler, and he uses Caesar, like Alexander, as the model of worldly success, but the critical overtones are unmistakable in other writings. A report on the organization of schools in Saxony associates Caesar with Nero:
Es sagen etliche / wie kan o(e)brickeit von gott sein / und doch viel mit vnrechtem gewalt zuhirschen kommen sind / Als Julius. ...
Also missbraucht auch ein tyrann Gottes ordenung / Als Julius odder Nero / Dennoch ist die ordenunge / dadurch recht vnd Fride erhalten wird / ein Go(e)tlich gescho(e)pffe / Ob schon die person / so sich der ordenung missbraucht / vnrecht thut.
Many people say: how can order be divinely instituted, and yet many come to rule by unlawful force, as, for example, Julius [Caesar]? ... Therefore, a tyrant like Caesar or Nero abuses the order created by God. And yet the order itself, by which justice and peace are upheld, is divinely created, even if the person who abuses it does wrong.
The differentiation in this last statement is striking: Caesar, like Nero, is adduced as an example of tyrannical abuse of power - yet the occurrence of such abuse does not, so the theological argument runs, deny the existence of a divinely created order, but is simply evidence of human frailty. Caesar, the powerful ruler, has become an example of all-too-human sinfulness.
World History
