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This introductory chapter discusses the need for a new edition of Caesar's Bellum ciuile (Civil War) by recounting its editing history since Wolfgang Hering published his influential Die Recensio der Caesarhandschriften (1963), the BC and non-Caesarian Bella as well as the Bellum Galicium. The focus of modern editorial work on the Bellum ciuile has been on rationalizing the list of witnesses to be used in constructing the text. The project of repairing the many problem spots of the tradition's archetype is ongoing, while the problems that arose from the incomplete state in which Caesar left the work are probably beyond repair. The edition that will appear concurrently with this volume relies on a fresh collation of the principal manuscripts by the late Virginia Brown; and besides the new collation and the general clearing away of error that it permits, this edition presents a text based on a new stemma.

This chapter describes the history of the text, inasmuch as inevitable historical discrepancies and scarce evidence can provide. As such, this chapter details working assumptions rather than a full argument of the text's much disputed history. The text of Caesar's Bellum ciuile survives in almost two hundred known manuscript books. All of the extant manuscripts are ultimately derived from a single archetype, as is shown by errors grave and trivial common to them all. These accumulated as the text was copied in the course of the centuries after the publication of the corpus Caesarianum. For the Bellum ciuile alone, a work of some 33,000 words, they number in the hundreds. The date at which the archetype was produced can be established at least approximately by considering errors that arose from features of its script.

This chapter refers to the specific emendations for key passages in the first book of the Bellum ciuile. It also notes the emendations made by other scholars regarding these passages, and whether or not they are chosen to be rejected in favour of a more precise interpretation, or for better clarifying the context of a portion of the narrative. The chapter also remarks on the difficulty of emendation, in explaining that a change to one part of this passage usually entails a change to another despite the syntax remaining otherwise clear. In the end, this chapter can only offer what seems to be the minimum amount of intervention needed to produce historical sense.

This chapter is concerned with recovering the original archetype of the Bellum ciuile through the existing descendant branches of its stemma. In particular, this chapter searches for unstable relationships defined by agreement in errors that are correctable by conjecture, in order to test the positive argument for a tripartite stemma. Given the archetype ω‎, it could be proved that μ‎ and π‎ belonged to different branches of the archetype's descendants, in order to recover more of the archetype than was possible with earlier stemmata. However, μ‎ and π‎ do belong to separate branches, but there has also been some horizontal transmission between these branches. The extent of that transmission cannot be determined with any precision: it is somewhere on the spectrum between occasional and systematic, probably closer to the former endpoint. This makes the reconstruction of the archetype less mechanical and more a matter of editorial judgement.

This chapter follows the same vein as the previous two chapters in enumerating the emendations (and the historical and contextual justifications for these) from the archetype of the Bellum ciuile, this time with a focus on the third and final book in the narrative. Book 3 contains more annotations than the previous two, due to the necessity of working through the ‘problem spots’ that often leave unclear, if not implausible, interpretations of the passages. The chapter also notes that emendation based on context are more convincing, even as the context can at times require the acceptance of dubiously Caesarean phrasings and syntax.

This chapter offers emendations and reconstruction of the second book of the Bellum ciuile. As with the previous book, it notes the inconsistencies present in the archetype, as well as the ways in which previous scholars have attempted to make sense of the more difficult gaps in the narrative. Historical sense and plausibility are, once again, essential in this act of reconstruction. This chapter also highlights several ‘repairs’ from previous scholarly editions that have been disregarded in favour of more simplified approaches that do not take too much away from the context of the book.

This chapter outlines the emendations taken with this edition of Bellum ciuile, with regard to the stylistic liberties explored in previous chapters. Certain passages are emended for clearer syntax, while others have undergone improvements to the original (and at times) clumsy wording. A number of passages are also emended with a technical term not otherwise used by Caesar. The use of certain terms over others is likewise explicated in order to better convey the intentions of Caesar, such as the battle rhetoric described in the text, or technical jargon and the use of other unusual words which might be justified by the narrative.