De Bello Africo (also Bellum Africum; On the African War) is a
Africa
.
Authorship
De Bello Africo is preceded by
Caesar's Civil War. The historical narratives, though attributed to Caesar,[1] are assumed to have been written by three different anonymous authors around 40 BC.[2] 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 ruled out the author of the latter, as well as Julius Caesar, as the author or authors of the two last parts. It has been suggested[3] 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.[4] 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."[5]
^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.
