Exam Part 7

7. Five paragraph academic essay: Using the original Latin to support your claims, identify and show examples of Caesar's biases against the Celts. 25%


Through out Caesar's writings in Caesar's Gallic war, you can see many of his biases. Through out the story you can see he is try to make the Gauls sound like barbarians, pigs, and disgusting people. There are times where he described the way they live the type of home they live in. Caesar does this through his book so that he will be seen as a hero by the Roman people because he defeated the horrid and terrifying Gauls.Over the course of the year it has been clear to me the biases of Caesar and why he says what he says.


In the first book and the first chapter we can already see some of Caesar's biases. In the latin he says "propterea quod a cultu atque humanitate provinciaelongissime absunt, minimeque ad eos mercatores saepe commeant atque eaquae ad effeminandos animos pertinent important".
This basically is saying how they are smelly barbarians because they live the farthest away from our provinces. He shows us here how he looked at the way they lived com paired to the way the Romans did. The Belgae did live the farthest away from from the Romans, but that wouldn't mean that they would be the way Caesar describes them to be. It is not that they did not have the option to trade with the Romans, it's that they chose not to. This is one of the first biases that we see from Caesar, and it is very early on in the book. 


Caesar also through out the book says how Barbarian the Helvetii are. Yet in this passage  "Eos impeditos et inopinantesadgressus magnam partem eorum concidit; reliqui sese fugae mandaruntatque in proximas silvas abdiderunt." we see that Caesar and his men were the real barbarians. Today we would look down on Caesar as a coward for what he did to the reaming tribes of the Helvetians. I would call Caesar a barbarian for attacking defenseless men that were wearing their packs ready to cross the river. These men were in no way expecting or ready for a fight, and Caesar and his men slaughtered them. That is almost text book barbarianism, attacking someone when they are not ready and slaughtering them.  


I believe that because of Caesar's biases he would stretch the truth and make it sound like the Gauls did something so horrible that they must be evil. "Cenabum signo dato concurrunt civesque Romanos, quinegotiandi causa ibi constiterant". In this passage I am sure that the gauls did attack a roman town, but Caesar uses stronger words such as slaughter, which I'm sure would upset the Roman people. When he would do this he would more easily gain the support of the Roman people. Caesar says how bad the Gauls are when they do certain things, but we have read in the past and later on in the book that he does much worse himself. In that paragraph Caesar also talk about how there was a very honorable and distinguished Roman equtie. I'm sure this man was a good man, but I think that Caesar might have stretched the truth to make it sound like the Gauls did and absolutely horrible thing because they killed a good roman man and soldier.


These were only some of the things that we can see Caesar's bias on. He does all of this for one main reason, so that in the eyes of the Romans he is a great hero. He adds bias to everything he says to make it sound like what he does is valiant and brave, and what ever the Gauls do is horrible. I think that we would see a totally different story if we read what the Gaul would write about the war.