Award-Winning Caesar in Gaul and Rome is April eBook of the Month

DUBLIN, Ohio, USA, 28 March, 2007—Anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with Latin knows "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres" ("All Gaul is divided into three parts"), the opening line of De Bello Gallico, Julius Caesar's famous commentary on his campaigns against the Gauls. But what did Caesar intend to accomplish by writing and publishing his commentaries, how did he go about it, and what potentially unforeseen consequences did his writing have? These are the questions that award-winning author Andrew Riggsby pursues in the April eBook of the Month.

Named by the Association of American Publishers as the 2006 Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division (PSP) award winner for Excellence in Classics and Ancient History, Caesar in Gaul and Rome uses contemporary literary methods to examine the historical impact that Caesar’s commentaries had on the Roman reading public. In the first part of his study, Riggsby considers how Caesar defined Roman identity and its relationship to non-Roman others. He shows how Caesar opens up a possible vision of the political future in which the distinction between Roman and non-Roman becomes less important because of their joint submission to a Caesar-like leader.

In the second part, Riggsby analyzes Caesar's political self-fashioning and the potential effects of his writing and publishing the Gallic War. He reveals how Caesar presents himself as a subtly new kind of Roman general who deserves credit not only for his own virtues, but for those of his soldiers as well. Riggsby uses case studies of key topics (spatial representation, ethnography, virtus and technology, genre, and the just war), augmented by more synthetic discussions that bring in evidence from other Roman and Greek texts, to offer a broad picture of the themes of national identity and Caesar's self-presentation.

Caesar in Gaul and Rome is provided through the generous support of The University of Texas Press, and will be available through more than 14,000 participating libraries April 1-30. To help libraries promote the April eBook of the Month, NetLibrary has developed a tool kit of free promotional resources that includes print-on-demand bookmarks, a sample press release and electronic support materials. More information is available at:

http://www.netlibrary.com/Librarian/ToolsAndResources/eBookOfTheMonth.aspx

About the University of Texas Press
Since 1950, The University of Texas Press has published books that make lasting contributions to international scholarship and preserve and promote the cultural heritage of Texas. Major areas of concentration are Anthropology, Old and New World Archaeology, Architecture, Art History, Botany, Classics and the Ancient World, Conservation and the Environment, Egyptology, Film and Media Studies, Geography, Landscape, Latin American and Latino Studies, Literary Modernism, Mexican American Studies, Marine Science, Middle Eastern Studies, Ornithology, Pre-Columbian Studies, Texas and Western Studies, and Women's Studies. The University of Texas Press has published more than 2,000 books over five decades. Currently a staff of 50, under the direction of Joanna Hitchcock, publishes some 90 books and 11 journals annually.

About NetLibrary
Based in Boulder, Colorado, NetLibrary (www.netlibrary.org) is a division of Online Computer Library Center, Inc., a worldwide library cooperative. NetLibrary provides content and technical delivery solutions to institutional libraries, corporations and government agencies that facilitate the purchase, management and distribution of research, reference, digital learning, and general interest content via Web-based technologies. NetLibrary's eContent solution is the most broadly adopted in the market, making the content of more than 400 publishers and eContent providers available through more than 14,000 libraries worldwide.

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