From ehrhardt@xtra.co.nz Sat May 27 23:14:21 2000
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From: "Ehrhardt" <ehrhardt@xtra.co.nz>
To: <classics@u.washington.edu>
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Subject: Re: Wheelock's Caesar footnote
Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 18:00:10 +1200
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One great advantage of Caesar's Gallic Wars is the very limited vocabulary -
only about 1000 words, I think, all of which are quite common in other Latin
writings, if one omits the technical terms used in describing the Rhine
bridge in Book IV.   So the elementary Latin teacher can offer a work full
of interesting material, written by an acknowledged genius whom even many
uneducated people have heard of, devoid of embarrassing sexual references
and innuendos, and well designed to stimulate patriotism and a conviction of
the superiority of civilization and intelligence over brute force and
unthinking courage.   No wonder the Gallic Wars have been so popular as an
introductory text for so long - or that there has been so strong a revulsion
from them in the past generation (the Head of the Classics Department in
which I taught for many years would never allow me to set any part of Caesar
as a Latin text in any course on 'Roman Historians'!).

    Chris. Ehrhardt

.