De Bello Africo
{{Short description|Book}}
{{Infobox book
| name = De Bello Africo
(On the War in Africa)
| image =
| caption =
| author = Unknown
| language = Classical Latin
| subject = History, military history
| release_date = approx. 40 BC
| publisher = Unknown
| preceded_by = De Bello Alexandrino
| followed_by = De Bello Hispaniensi
}}
De Bello Africo (also Bellum Africum; On the African War) is a Latin work continuing Julius Caesar's accounts of his campaigns, De Bello Gallico and De Bello Civili,{{Cite book|title=Julius Caesar: Lessons in Leadership from the Great Conqueror|last=Yenne|first=Bill|date=2012|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|isbn=9780230112315|location=New York|pages=195}} and its sequel by an unknown author De Bello Alexandrino. It details Caesar's campaigns against his Republican enemies in the province of Africa.
Authorship
De Bello Africo is preceded by De Bello Alexandrino and followed by De Bello Hispaniensi. These three works end the Caesarean corpus relating Caesar's Civil War. The historical narratives, though attributed to Caesar, are assumed to have been written by three different anonymous authors around 40 BC.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Oj0lDwAAQBAJ&dq=de+bello+africo+author&pg=PA88|title=The Development of Latin Clause Structure: A Study of the Extended Verb Phrase|last=Danckaert|first=Lieven|date=2017|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780198759522|location=Oxford|pages=88|language=en}} Though normally collected and bound with Caesar's authentic writings, their authorship has been debated since antiquity. One very plausible theory favors Aulus Hirtius as the author of De Bello Alexandrino (see there for details). But due to considerable differences in style, scholarly consensus has agreed that neither Aulus Hirtius nor Julius Caesar can be the author or authors of the two last parts. It has been suggestedA. Bouvet, La Guerre d'Afrique, Les Belles-Lettres 1949: introduction, p.xix. that these were in fact rough drafts prepared at the request of Hirtius by two separate soldiers who fought in the respective campaign; and had he survived, Hirtius would have worked them up into more effective literary form. There are scholars who propose that he acted as editor to these historical narratives.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ebK-CwAAQBAJ&dq=de+bello+africo+author&pg=PT415|title=The Gallic Wars|last=Caesar|first=Gaius Julius|date=2012-12-12|publisher=Winged Hussar Publishing|isbn=9781620180730|language=en}} Regarding De Bello Africo, A.G. Way ventures: "The careful chronology and the faithful record of the feelings of the troops suggests a soldier – possibly a junior officer – who was on the spot. That he was young and inexperienced; an ardent, but not always a balanced, partisan; a keen observer of all that went on around him, but without access to the inner counsels of his C.-in-C."Caesar Alexandrian, African and Spanish Wars, with an English translation by A.G. Way, M.A., The Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1955, p.141.
See also
- Commentarii de Bello Gallico
- Commentarii de Bello Civili
- De Bello Alexandrino
- De Bello Hispaniensi
- Caesar's civil wars for an account of the campaign
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
{{Wikisourcelang|la|De Bello Africo}}
{{wikisource|The African War}}
{{Authority control}}
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{{AncientRome-work-stub}}
Category:Works about history in Latin
Category:Africa (Roman province)