A Quantitative Analysis of Caesar’s Representation of Celeritas

Julius Caesar enjoyed a notable reputation for celeritas, as evidenced by literary references in the works of both contemporary and later ancient authors. Modern scholars furthermore argue that Caesar patently promoted his own military prowess, especially in his Bellum Gallicum. This paper therefore investigates Caesar’s representation of celeritas in the Gallic War commentaries by performing a comparative quantitative analysis of all explicit references to swiftness. The results show that celeritas was noticeably emphasised in the Bellum Gallicum, but also that these references do not surpass in number such references in, for example, Sallust’s contemporaneously written Iugurtha to such a large extent as has been previously claimed, based on the study of the cognate family of celer alone. Caesar did, however, have a distinct preference for using these cognates to indicate swiftness, probably thereby implicitly associating himself with celeritas.