Did Caesar write Commentarii de Bello Gallico as propaganda?
This is a question I found in
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2o39m1/did_caesar_write_commentarii_de_bello_gallico_as/ User superflossman asks this, because "Many of my teachers and professors over the years have said that it was in fact propaganda, but a cursory search on something like Jstor points me toward many scholarly articles that say that it was not. Was it propaganda? Is there a way to truly know? Is there one unified scholarly opinion held by the majority?"
The discussion, as we can see, is pivoting about the fact that the De Bello Gallico has to be considered, in a proper manner, as a self-serving text and not propaganda.
In answering the question, user XenophonTheAthenian first observes that "propaganda" really exists in a world that can utilize modern communication. Then notes the following.
"First of all you [superflossman] seem to be unclear on what exactly Caesar's commentaries are. You seem to be under the impression that these were originally intended as literary works to be disseminated throughout the city, the way a novel would today. This is untrue. While Caesar's work was later collected and published as a real book, this was not its original purpose at all. The very title of the work is a clear indicator of this - "commentarii" are not "commentaries" at all, the correct translation of the term in the context in which it is being used by Caesar is "dispatches." Roman governors were expected to send dispatches back to the senate (Cicero's "litteras" which he famously claims Piso did not send during his proconsular command in Macedonia), although technically they did not have to. Much of the content and style of the work is directly influenced by this. For example, Caesar's consistent use of the third-person is because the dispatches were intended to be read aloud in the senate, much the same way that dispatches from an American general are often read aloud in the Capitol. Additionally, the (sometimes quite extreme) inconsistencies in style clearly reflect that Caesar was not the only author. ... it's quite clear that Caesar drew heavily on the dispatches of his subordinates for certain things, although of course he edited them and the overwhelming majority of the work is entirely his own. ... Like I said, that's what the word "commentarii," when used in a legal sense, means. ...
Anyway, I digress. That's really not that important. What is important is Caesar's style. Caesar is not writing so that "the average cives on the street" can read his work. The average citizen probably had very little direct exposure to Caesar's works, as publication in Republican Rome was not the streamlined ... affair of Augustus' day, books were almost prohibitively expensive, and we know of no public readings of Caesar's works, which were probably published and spread in a manner similar to Cicero's essays, which were essentially sent to his friends and anyone who requested them. Besides the necessity of straightforwardness in military dispatches (Caesar's were probably more ornate than most - Cicero makes fun of Piso for introducing rhetorical style into his military accounting) Caesar's style is also a result of his own rhetorical school. Caesar was a member of the Direct, or Plain Style. This is the style of Homer, the style of Plato, Herodotus, even of Thucydides - of pretty much everyone before Demosthenes really got the Periodic Style perfected. The Plain Style avoids complex subordination (although Caesar's personal form of it used a lot of indirect speech) and whereas the Periodic Style listed clauses in order of logical progression the Plain Style listed them in chronological order. That this is in no way unique to this particular work is quite clear when we note that it is present in de Bello Civili (which had an even narrower audience and which, mind you, is vastly more self-serving, and is quite openly too, than de Bello Gallico - I have always been puzzled why de Bello Gallico is held up in the popular imagination as propaganda but de Bello Civili somehow escapes it) and is present in Sallust's transcript of Caesar's speech against Cicero's decision to execute the Catilinarians. Unless we suppose that Caesar's speech against Cicero was intended to be read by the "average cives," when it was never even published, it's rather silly to suppose that Caesar crafted his style with a populist purpose in mind. Besides, simple as it appears Caesar's style is extremely highly-developed, as ancient commentators noted, and hardly the sort of thing that everyone read - de Bello Civili in particular stands out as a real masterwork of literary craft in the Plain Style.
.... Finally ... [a] statement [like this] here: "Julius Caesar was accumulating too many fans in the capital and was sent off to the god-forsaken border of Gaul to hold the damn line and stay out of the way, festering in obscurity" is totally and indefensibly untrue. Caesar was awarded as his proconsular command Illyricum and Cisalpine Gaul, to which Transalpine Gaul was later added. These were not "god-forsaken," out-of-the-way provinces whose governors were expected to sit there and simply preserve the status quo. These were not provinces in which one "fester[ed] in obscurity." Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum were, along with Macedonia and Syria, the singlemost important provinces of the late Republic. Cisalpine Gaul in particular is of more importance to us, since Caesar didn't do much in Illyricum. Cisalpine Gaul was where generals became triumphators, where spent fortunes were restored in only a few years, and was one of the key provinces to which every magistrate up for provincial assignments looked. That the province was almost exclusively awarded to proconsular governors, and almost never to propraetors, testifies to its importance, as does the fact that the province was under arms pretty much 100% of the time, even when the governor was being replaced and he was supposed to disband his army. The danger to the Cisalpine frontier was well-known to the state - where had the Teutones come down from, within living memory, after all? Revolts were commonplace, and the constantly shifting Gallic tribes constantly attacked Roman allies along the Transalpine coast, necessitating offensives - the exact reason Caesar uses to justify his attack (whether it really was justified is another story). The immense plunder that could be exacted by even the shortest campaign into Transalpine Gaul was unimaginable, easily comparable to the plunder of the east, and the boost to a politician's dignitas was even greater still, probably greater than out east. Cicero was awarded Cisalpine Gaul at the end of his consulship, as a reward for his service to the state. Cicero ended up resigning his governorship ... and handing it over to his colleague Antony in addition to Antony's province of Macedonia. Cicero makes a big deal that Antony was in control of Macedonia and Cisalpine Gaul, saying that he allowed a monster [Antony] ... to take the two most important provinces to maintain the peace and stability of the state. And you miss the fact that the senate did not award Caesar his province - the entire reason that Cato claimed Caesar's proconsulship was illegal was not because of anything he did in Gaul, but because Pompey used his influence to stall the senate and allowed Caesar to get a tribune to propose a law (which, like all laws, was voted on in the comitia, not the senate) granting him dual governorship (instead of proconsular command over the trees of Italy, as the senate proposed). Caesar's enemies didn't send him to Gaul - he and Pompey made the decision.
Anyway, enough of that. You [superflossman] are essentially right in that the de Bello Gallico is intended as a self-serving piece. It's initial purpose was to persuade the senate that his command was proceeding legitimately (which Cato contested repeatedly). Now, you're also right in saying that it served as a vehicle to increase his popularity, despite what I say above. The purpose of the publication of Caesar's dispatches was to spread news of his proconsulship beyond the floor of the senate, although the outreach of the work was certainly not as wide as you seem to imply.
... Caesar's works, widely read though they were, certainly did not have to social scope of modern propaganda, nor were they as omnipresent and forceful. True propaganda is increasingly being shown as an element of modern society and in particular modern communications. We should think of Caesar's works less like propaganda and more like political pamphlets. I suggest consulting the relevant sections of Gelzer's biography of Caesar, of which there is an English translation available. Gelzer gives an excellent overview of the initial delivery, collection, editing, and publication of the work (as well as trying to solve some disputes about exactly how they were published, a question that we don't really know) and really not much has progressed since his time."
Thanks to XenophonTheAthenian's discussion, any reasoning about De Bello Gallico is easier. Chapeau! XenophonTheAthenian, Chapeau!
