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Retracing Julius Caesar’s Path through France
追溯凯撒大帝在法国的足迹
Hemingway, orwell, Joyce, Turgenev: many great foreign writers have found inspiration in France. But for lasting influence, one scribe stands above them all. He travelled around France for nine years, observing the local customs and recounting what he saw in lean and muscular prose. He also killed, by his own estimate, a million of the natives, conquered their territory and imposed on it a civilisation that has lasted, in one form or another, more than 2,000 years.
海明威、奥威尔、乔伊斯、屠格涅夫：许多伟大的外国作家都在法国找到了灵感。但为了持久的影响，有一个抄写员高于所有人。他在法国游历了9年，观察当地的风俗习惯，并用简洁有力的文字讲述他所看到的一切。据他自己估计，他还杀害了100万土著，征服了他们的领地，并将一个以某种形式延续了2000多年的文明强加于此。
He was, of course, Julius Caesar. His “Commentaries on the Gallic Wars” is a fine work of literature. Cicero likened his prose to “nude figures, upright and beautiful, stripped of all ornament of style”. The “Gallic Wars” is also the only first-hand account of an ancient campaign written by a general of such stature. It is a priceless source for historians, yet also a slippery piece of propaganda. A quip apocryphally attributed to Winston Churchill could as easily have been Caesar’s: “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.”
当然，他就是尤利乌斯·恺撒。他的《评价高卢战争》是一部优秀的文学作品。西塞罗把他的散文比喻成“裸体的人物，正直而美丽，剥去了所有的风格装饰”。《高卢战争》也是唯一一部由如此声望的将军撰写的关于古代战役的第一手资料。对于历史学家来说，这是一个无价的资料来源，但同时也是一种狡猾的宣传手段。一句被误认为是温斯顿·丘吉尔(Winston Churchill)的讽刺话很可能是恺撒的名言:“历史会善待我的，因为它是我写的。”
A copy of the “Gallic Wars” in hand (on a non-stone tablet), The Economist retraced some of Caesar’s steps, using fast French trains rather than oxcarts on Gaulish roads that had not yet had the benefit of Roman engineering. The aim was not merely to retell Caesar’s bloody, dramatic tale, but to look at how modern historians have questioned it. And also to ask what we can learn from the most consequential writer-soldier-statesman in European history.
《经济学人》手里拿着一份《高卢战争》（非石碑上）的副本，追溯了恺撒的一些足迹，在高卢公路上使用的是法国的高速火车，而不是牛车，当时还没有罗马工程的优势。这样做的目的不仅是为了重新讲述恺撒血腥、戏剧性的故事，而且是为了看看现代历史学家是如何质疑这个故事的。同时我们也要问，我们能从这位欧洲历史上最有影响力的作家、军人和政治家身上学到什么。
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