René van Royen is a historian; he teaches at the University of Amsterdam. Previously, he wrote the highly succesful Asterix en de waarheid (Asterix and the Truth, 1997), which has been awarded the first prize in Germany for the most entertaining history book of 1999.
That Caesar conquered Gaul in 50 B.C. is something we have been told by the Roman general himself and by such historians as Plutarch and Suetonius. However, the existence on the Atlantic coast of a small village refusing to bow before the Roman empire is something we have learned from René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, the literary fathers of the beloved Gallic heroes, Asterix and Obelix. That, 300 years before Caesar’s campaign, the Gauls marched on Rome and captured the city on the seven hills, is something we now learn from René van Royen and Sunnyva van der Vegt.
