Commentarii revolves around modern authors trying to use it to estimate the pre-Roman population of Gaul. In the 18th century, authors extrapolated from the text populations of 40200 million. Authors in the 19th century guessed in the 15-20 million range based on the text. 20th century authors guessed as low as 4 million, with Henige giving a modern range of 4-48 million between authors. Ultimately, Henige sees the Commentarii as a very clever piece of propaganda written by Caesar, built to make Caesar appear far grander than he was. Henige notes that Caesar's matter of fact tone and easy to read writing made it all the easier to accept his outlandish claims. Caesar sought to portray his fight as a justified defense against the barbarity of the Gauls (which was important, as Caesar had actually been the aggressor contrary to his claims). By making it appear that he had won against overwhelming odds and suffered minimal casualties, he further increased the belief that he and the Romans were godly and destined to win against the godless barbarians of Gaul. Overall, Henige concludes that "Julius Caesar must be considered one of history's earliest and most durably successful "spin doctors"". Authorship Classicist Ruth Breindal believes it likely that Caesar did not directly write the work, but instead dictated most of it to a scribe at one time and the scribe wrote as Caesar spoke, or that the scribe took notes and wrote the account afterwards. Still, she does believe that Caesar had an overwhelming hand in creating the work, but believes much of the grammar and clarity of the work to be the result of the scribe or scribes involved. Breindal also considers the main point of the work to be as a propaganda piece to protect Caesar's reputation in the vicious politics of Rome. Book eight was written after Caesar's death in 44 BC by consul Aulus Hirtius; Hirtius must have written the book before his own death in the civil war in 43 BC. The author portrays Caesar's thoughts frequently, with an emphasis on making Caesar seem efficient, decisive, and straightforward, and that his view on how war should be waged is the same. The work paints the conflict as inevitable and necessary. As literature Beginning in the 1970s, authors began to regard the work less as a historical work, but more of a literary work, in the tradition of