The Master Source Register

Surviving Sources

1. 1 · Julius Caesar and his officers — written 48–45 BC, contemporary, participants. Survives complete; ends before the events of 44.1.1 Civil War · 1.2 Alexandrian War (continuation by his officers) — no stable public edition to link
2. 2 · Cicero — 46–43 BC, contemporary, senior participant. Cleopatra in Rome (“reginam odi,” 2.1.15.15), her departure (2.1.14.8), the Lupercalia (2.2.2.84–87), the charge that Antony forged entries in Caesar’s acta (2.2.1). Never mentions the Cinna bill — the silence is noted and weighed in Memo 1.2.1 Letters to Atticus · 2.2 Philippics · 2.3 De Divinatione
3. 3 · Cleopatra VII — 33 BC, contemporary, the queen’s own chancery. One Greek word, ginesthō (“let it be so”), subscribed on a royal ordinance papyrus — the entire surviving output of her side in anything possibly her own hand.3.1 Papyrus subscription, 33 BC — no stable public edition to link
4. 4 · The Egyptian stone record — contemporary and official, the only substantial body of evidence for Caesarion outside the reach of the Roman victor’s editing.4.1 Serapeum birth stele, Memphis · 4.2 Armant mammisi cartouches (recorded by Napoleon’s savants and later travellers; demolished 1861–62) · 4.3 Dendera reliefs (standing) · 4.4 Bronze coinage with the infant · 4.5 Egyptian regnal dating — stone, coin and dating record; no single edition to link
5. 5 · Nicolaus of Damascus — ~20s BC, tutor to Cleopatra’s children, afterwards client of Herod and of Augustus. The earliest surviving connected account of the assassination; survives in fragments; written inside the victor’s patronage network by a man who had served the other side.5.1 Life of Augustus (fragments)
6. 6 · Augustus — completed AD 14, the victor’s own official account, inscribed across the empire. Actium and the taking of Egypt are claimed (6.1.25–27); Antony and Cleopatra are never once named.6.1 Res Gestae Divi Augusti
7. 7 · Velleius Paterculus — ~AD 30, army officer under Tiberius. Brief loyalist compendium.7.1 Roman History
8. 8 · Plutarch — ~AD 100–120, some 150 years after. Greek biographer using earlier sources now lost, including Asinius Pollio and, for Cleopatra’s death, her physician Olympos. The Lupercalia scene, the Donations, “too many Caesars.” The opening of the Caesar is lost in transmission.8.1 Caesar · 8.2 Antony · 8.3 Brutus
9. 9 · Suetonius — ~AD 121, imperial secretary to Hadrian with access to the archives. The will (9.1.83), the Cinna bill (9.1.52.3), the Oppius pamphlet (9.1.52.2), the funeral and Cinna’s death (9.1.85). The opening of the Divus Julius is lost in transmission; it begins in Caesar’s sixteenth year.9.1 Divus Julius · 9.2 Divus Augustus
10. 10 · Appian — ~AD 150s, Alexandrian Greek in Roman service, drawing on Pollio. The statue in Venus Genetrix (10.1.2.102), the funeral, the triumviral wars.10.1 Civil Wars
11. 11 · Cassius Dio — ~AD 200–230, some 250 years after, Roman senator writing in Greek. The fullest connected narrative; the Sibylline report “whether true or false” (11.1.44.15); the fate of the statue (11.1.51.22); the end in Alexandria (11.1.51.10–15).11.1 Roman History
12. 19 · Genesis — the primary text of the patriarchal period. Traditions older; composition and redaction generally placed in the first millennium BC, final form ~6th–5th centuries BC. Earliest manuscripts: Dead Sea Scrolls fragments, ~2nd century BC onward.19.1 Genesis (cited by chapter)
13. 20 · The traditional chronologies — the systems that produce the patriarchal dates from the text’s internal ages; they disagree by nearly two centuries on Abraham’s birth.20.1 Seder Olam Rabbah (~2nd century AD) · 20.2 Ussher, Annales (AD 1650) — no stable public edition to link
14. 21 · Mesopotamian chronology — king lists, date lists and synchronisms (middle chronology) anchoring the fall of Ur and Hammurabi.21.1 King lists and synchronisms (composite) — composite of scholarly editions; no single text to link
15. 22 · Egyptian chronology — king lists and the Turin Canon for the Hyksos span.22.1 King lists and Turin Canon (composite) — composite of scholarly editions; no single text to link
16. 24 · Pliny the Elder — Natural History, ~AD 77, encyclopaedist writing ~120 years after Caesar’s death. The caesus etymology of the family name; the sudden death of Caesar’s father; the pearl given to Servilia.24.1 Natural History — no stable public edition to link
17. 32 · Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, surviving books — Augustan-era narrative history; Book 1 carries the Alban chain, the destruction of Alba Longa and the transplant of its noble houses — the Julii named — to Rome (1.30). Distinct from the lost books of the Caesarean era (item 17).32.1 Ab Urbe Condita Book 1 (edition)
18. 33 · Homer, Iliad — the oldest Greek epic; Book 20 carries Poseidon’s prophecy that Aeneas’s descendants will rule — the root of the whole Julian tradition, centuries before Rome.33.1 Iliad Book 20 (edition)
19. 34 · The Bovillae altar — stone altar dedicated by the gens Julia to Vediovis at Bovillae, inscribed leege Albana — by Alban law; dated on letter-forms to c. 100 BC. The one surviving physical document of the family’s own Alban claim.34.1 The inscription (CIL I² 1439) — stone; no single edition to link
20. 35 · Virgil, Aeneid — the canonical Troy-to-Latium epic. Commissioned and written under Augustus, after the Julian name had become the state: the tradition’s codification by the dynasty that ruled by it.35.1 Aeneid (edition)
21. 36 · Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities — Augustan-era Greek history of early Rome; the fullest surviving Aeneas-to-Romulus narrative.36.1 Roman Antiquities (edition)
22. 39 · The consular fasti — the inscribed magistrate lists (Fasti Capitolini and related), carrying the Julii Iuli consulships of 489–434 BC, the decemvir of 451, and the first Caesar consul of 157 BC.39.1 Fasti Capitolini — stone; no single edition to link
23. 40 · The Venus–Aeneas denarius — silver coinage struck by Caesar 47–46 BC: Venus obverse; Aeneas carrying Anchises and the Palladium reverse. The descent claim minted into army pay.40.1 The coin type (Crawford 458/1) — coin; no single edition to link

Missing Sources

Nothing in this list links out: these works are lost — their absence is the entry.

12. 12 · Caesar’s private papers and the acta — secured by Antony from Calpurnia on the evening of 15 March 44; contested at the time (Cicero’s forgery charge, 2.2.1). Not one document survives.
13. 13 · The drafted Cinna bill — attested only at 9.1.52.3; its carrier was killed on 20 March 44 and the text is never heard of again.
14. 14 · Cleopatra’s archive — the entire chancery, correspondence and any memoirs of a reigning literate monarch of twenty-one years: nothing survives beyond 3.1. The largest single silence in the record.
15. 15 · Gaius Oppius, the paternity pamphlet — the book denying Caesar’s paternity of Caesarion, commissioned into the record (attested 9.1.52.2), then itself lost; known only from its citation.
16. 16 · Asinius Pollio, Histories — written by a commander who fought these wars, the acknowledged backbone of Plutarch and Appian. Lost entirely.
17. 17 · Livy, books 109–133 — the Augustan-era narrative of 49–30 BC. Lost; survives only as one-line summaries (Periochae).
18. 18 · Augustus, De vita sua — his memoirs in thirteen books. Lost; its account shaped the surviving tradition before disappearing.
19. 23 · Any contemporary attestation of Abraham — no inscription, document, seal or monument naming Abraham exists in any archive of the period — not at Ur, Mari or Ebla. The earliest naming is the biblical text, over a millennium after the traditional dates.
20. 25 · Caesar’s lost works — the speeches (one fragment survives, the Julia eulogy, in Suetonius 6); the Anticato; De Analogia (one rule survives in Gellius 1.10); the poem Iter; the youthful works — Praises of Hercules, the tragedy Oedipus, collected sayings — whose publication Augustus forbade in a letter to Pompeius Macer (attested Suetonius 56); the letters to the Senate, to Cicero, and the enciphered private letters (Suetonius 56). Of his writing, the war commentaries survive; the rest is lost, and for the juvenilia the suppression order itself survives.
21. 26 · The Acta Diurna and Acta Senatus — the daily published record of Senate and people, instituted by Caesar as consul in 59 BC (attested Suetonius 20). No issue from his lifetime survives.
22. 27 · Sulla, Memoirs — twenty-two books, completed shortly before his death in 78 BC, used by Plutarch. The dictator’s own account of the years in which he spared the young Caesar. Lost.
23. 28 · Sallust, Histories — the narrative of 78–67 BC, the decade of Caesar’s eastern service and return. Fragments only.
24. 29 · Tanusius Geminus, history — a hostile contemporary account cited by Suetonius and Plutarch for damaging claims. Lost; its citations cannot be checked against it.
25. 30 · Oppius, life of Caesar — the biography by Caesar’s intimate Gaius Oppius, distinct from his book denying Caesarion’s paternity (item 15). Lost; known from citations.
26. 31 · Cicero’s letters to Caesar — a published collection existed in antiquity, with Cicero’s secret memoir De consiliis suis. Lost. One side of the correspondence survives (item 2).
27. 37 · Fabius Pictor — Rome’s first historian, writing ~200 BC, who carried the Aeneas tradition a century and a half before Caesar. Lost.
28. 38 · Cato, Origines — the first history written in Latin, treating the Alban and Italian origins. Fragments only.