Episode 47. The Gallic Wars, Part Two: Vercingetorix and the Great Revolt

Sources and Historiography

Caesar's Commentarii are the primary source for the entire Gallic War, and the contrast between how he treats Avaricum—flatly, without evident discomfort—and how he treats Gergovia—honestly, acknowledging the defeat—is itself historiographically interesting. The honesty about Gergovia suggests that the Commentarii, while propagandistic, were not simply fabricated, since a pure fabrication would not have included a significant defeat.

Vercingetorix is known entirely through Roman sources, primarily Caesar. This creates an obvious interpretive problem: our portrait of the greatest Gallic leader is constructed by the man who defeated him. Caesar's praise of Vercingetorix, scattered through the Commentarii, is genuine enough to be credible—Caesar respected the man, and saying so made his own victory more impressive. Modern French national mythology adopted Vercingetorix as its founding hero in the nineteenth century, when Napoleon III funded excavations at Alesia and commissioned the enormous bronze statue that still stands on the plateau at Alise-Sainte-Reine. The political uses of Vercingetorix by later nations are themselves a subject of historical interest.

The human cost of the conquest is addressed directly by Caesar's own figures and by the silence in non-Roman sources. There are essentially no surviving Gallic perspectives on the wars. The Gauls had a rich oral tradition but not a written one at this level, and Caesar's conquest destroyed the social structures that maintained the oral tradition. What we have is the Commentarii, Plutarch's Life of Caesar, and archaeology. The archaeology of Alesia in particular, excavated extensively since Napoleon III's time, confirms the broad outlines of Caesar's account of the siege while raising questions about some of his specific figures.

Works CitedPrimary Sources

• Caesar. Commentarii de Bello Gallico, Books 5–7. The Eburones massacre through the end of organized resistance.
• Plutarch. “Life of Caesar,” chapters 25–27. Vercingetorix and Alesia; includes the surrender scene that Caesar's own account handles more briefly.

Secondary Sources

• Cunliffe, Barry. The Ancient Celts. 1997. Essential background on Gallic society and culture before and during the Roman conquest.
• Gilliver, Kate. Caesar's Gallic Wars. 2002. Focused scholarly treatment of the military campaigns.
• Goldsworthy, Adrian. Caesar: Life of a Colossus. 2006. Comprehensive on the military campaigns.
• Meier, Christian. Caesar. Translated 1995. The most analytically ambitious modern treatment; excellent on what the Gallic Wars meant structurally for the Republic.

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