Caesar's Commentaries are his own third-person account of his activities as general in the Roman conquest of Gaul (58-52 B.C.) and in the civil war against Pompey (49-48 B.C.). Caesar's Latin style was considered from antiquity to be a brilliant model of simplicity and good taste, and for this reason Caesar is to this day one of the first authors students of Latin read.
The 1513 edition was the first Aldine edition of Caesar, to be followed by many more. It includes a map of Gaul and Germany, stenciled with colors at the time of publication to make the divisions easier to recognize. Although the original plan was to use six colors--purple, saffron, red, yellow, green and blue--the BYU copy includes three colors only: red for Belgium; green for southeastern Gaul; and the seas appear to have a very light yellow tint, the original blue possibly having faded over the years. The 1513 Caesar is the only Aldine edition with colored maps.
The woodcuts on leaf C1 have been hand labeled "Massilia" and "Uxellodunum." These corrections were made because the woodcuts were inadvertently printed backwards and do not correspond to the explanations on the facing pages. As all the copies have these same corrections in the same hand, it is possible that they were made by Aldus himself. Certainly they were made at the press before distribution of the book.
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