Divided into Three Parts

Fratres Sorores,

I had hopes for using TextArc as a way of representing De Bello Gallico, but the only version of it available through the program is in Latin.  That doesn't help, and I cannot for the life of me find out where on their website, textarc.org, one can launch the application and input a file of text for analysis.  Unless someone can give me the link to input data, then TextArc is a wash for me.

However, Voyant has turned up some interesting data for the first book of De Bello Gallico, as can be seen above. This might be interesting to look at over the course of each of the books, and see what the macroscopic trend is regarding the tribes that Caesar encounters, then how often that tribe is mentioned throughout the book. However, this chart lacks some context. In its simplest form, Caesar entered Transalpine Gaul on the invitation of the Aedui, because the Helvetii had left Germany with every person in the tribe. They burned their houses and crops behind them, so they had no choice but to move south and cause trouble to the Gauls. It is worth noting that Caesar's first year in Gaul was very successful, and the fact that he defeats the Helvetii around Chapter 30 in the first book. The fact that the uses of Caesar's name peaks at around the 3/5 point in the book, and also that the Helvetii practically disappear from there suggest that his name should most be associated with the defeat of the Helvetii, but also that his name be associated with the Aedui, given that he preserved the fraternal ties between them and Rome. It is worth noting also that both names were used the most when the Helvetii were defeated. However, by the end of the book, Caesar's name reigns supreme.

I think that it would be most prudent to separate the project into 8 links that analyze different parts of the text in a similar fashion, each with a chapter overview, as well as useful interpretive information from the secondary literature, possibly about how it affects Caesar's march on Rome and his diplomatic approach to both.

As for the project's focus on Caesar's use of diplomacy, with the graphs will be major decision points in De Bello Gallico, with an explanation about why such and such decision was important, as well as the context within which Caesar chose to not use the sword. With this data, I plan to have some simple maps made up of where peoples and armies are in Gaul, maybe a before map and an after map to show how the terrain of Gaul changed because of the events within the book.

I think that the tools made available via digital scholarship will help explain some of the trends in each book that cannot be visible without the data mining tools available through programs like Voyant.  These frequency maps take little time to make, so the only issue will be to go through each book, and then identifying which foes are worth frequency'ing.

Valete,

Dominic Martyne