Similar De Bello Africo, Commentarii de Bello Civili, Brutus, On the ideal Orator, Commentarii de Bello Gallico | ||
De analogia (full title: De analogia libri II ad M. Tullium Ciceronem) were the two books of a grammatical work on the Latin language written by Julius Caesar and dedicated to Cicero. Only a few fragments from this important work have survived. Suetonius mentions that Caesar wrote De analogia while he and his army were crossing the Alps.
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Analogia denotes the adherence to grammatical rules while not changing one's diction with current demotic usage. After the composition of his Commentarii de bello Gallico Caesar felt obligated to devise certain grammatical principles in reference to his commentaries, writing that "the choice of words is the fountain-head of eloquence." Parts of this work could have also been triggered by comments in Cicero's De oratore. Cicero himself mentioned that Caesar's De Analogia had been written with greatest accuracy.
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In the ancient Latin dictionary De Verborum Significatu by Sextus Pompeius Festus, which was a new edition of Flaccus' homonymous work, Festus quotes a fragment of the De analogia in the discussion of the double consonant. Caesar limits the ancient, primitive Latin alphabet to eleven letters. A comparison with the parallel Varronian fragment however has shown that Caesar here only meant the ancient consonants.