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56He left memoirs too of his deeds in the Gallic war and in the civil strife with Pompey; for the author of the Alexandrian, African, and Spanish Wars is unknown; some think it was Oppius, others Hirtius, who also supplied the final book of the Gallic War, which Caesar left unwritten. With regard to Caesar’s memoirs Cicero, also in the Brutus speaks in the following terms: 2“He wrote memoirs which deserve the highest praise; they are naked in their simplicity, straightforward yet graceful, stripped of all rhetorical adornment, as of a garment; but while his purpose was to supply material to others, on which those who wished to write history might draw, he haply gratified silly folk, who will try to use the curling-irons on his narrative, but he has kept men of any sense from touching the subject.” 3Of these same memoirs Hirtius uses this emphatic language: “They are so highly rated in the judgment of all men, that he seems to have deprived writers of an opportunity, rather than given them one; yet our admiration for this feat is greater than that of others; for they know how well and faultlessly he wrote, while we know besides how easily and rapidly he finished his task.” 4Asinius Pollio thinks that they were put together somewhat carelessly and without strict regard for truth; since in many cases Caesar was too ready to believe the accounts which others gave of their actions, and gave a perverted account of his own, either designedly or perhaps from forgetfulness; and he thinks that he intended to rewrite and revise them. 5He left besides a work in two volumes “On Analogy,” the same number of “Speeches in reply to Cato,” in addition to a poem, entitled “The Journey.” He wrote the first of these works while crossing the Alps and returning to his army from Hither Spain, where he had held the assizes; the second about the time of the battle of Munda, and the third in the course of a twenty-four days’ journey from Rome to Farther Spain. 6Some letters of his to the senate are also preserved, and he seems to have been the first to reduce such documents to pages and the form of a memorial volume, whereas previously consuls and generals sent their reports written right across the sheet. There are also letters of his to Cicero, as well as to his intimates on private affairs, and in the latter, if he had anything confidential to say, he wrote it in cipher, that is, by so changing the order of the letters of the alphabet, that not a word could be made out. If anyone wishes to decipher these, and get at their meaning, he must substitute the fourth letter of the alphabet, namely D, for A, and so with the others. 7We also have mention of certain writings of his boyhood and early youth, such as the “Praises of Hercules,” a tragedy “Oedipus,” and a “Collection of Apophthegms”; but Augustus forbade the publication of all these minor works in a very brief and frank letter sent to Pompeius Macer, whom he had selected to set his libraries in order.
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