Julius Caesar wrote this while the fighting was still going on. It is his own account of how he conquered Gaul — the land we now call France, Belgium, and parts of Switzerland and Germany. He writes about “Caesar” in the third person, as if someone else were telling the story. Book 1 is the first year, 58 BC.

A people from the Swiss lakes, the Helvetii, burn their towns and try to migrate west through land Rome treats as its business. Caesar blocks them, beats them, then turns on a German warlord named Ariovistus who has been taking tribute from Gallic tribes. Rome was still a republic then: a city run by a senate and elected officials, not by one man. This campaign is how Caesar became too strong for that system to hold.