Why is there such a substantial lack of historical scholarship on Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico between the 1st century BC and the 19th century?
There's suddenly a revived interest in his Comentarii in the twentieth century (with the likes of C.E Stevens, Rambaud, Adkock, J.H. Collins etc) yet there's a notable absence of any such scholarship before the turn of the 20th century. I was hoping someone could clear this up for me. Thanks!
Can I ask what you mean by scholarship? Modern standards of scholarship and ways of viewing the past are more or less a 19th century invention, which is why we don't cite "secondary scholarship" from earlier than that unless the circumstances are really exceptional.
It's true that medieval Europe created Caesar into some kind of legend or quasi-mythical figure. But the Commentaries got a fair amount of airplay during and after the Renaissance, being especially popular in France. (The Antwerp edition of 1570 was apparently especially popular.)
Montaigne was keenly interested. I don't know if you count this as scholarship, again, but Carol Clark observes that in his copy of the Commentaries, the most marked-up sections were several books of Gallic Wars.
People were reading it and interested.
Does that help?