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Full Description
Traditional approaches have reduced Caesar's Bellum Civile to a tool for teaching Latin or to one-dimensional propaganda, thereby underestimating its artistic properties and ideological complexity. Reading strategies typical of scholarship on Latin poetry, like intertextuality, narratology, semantic, rhetorical and structural analysis, cast a new light on the Bellum Civile: Ciceronian language advances Caesar's claim to represent Rome; technical vocabulary reinforces the ethical division between 'us' and the 'barbarian' enemy; switches of focalization guide our perception of the narrative; invective and characterization exclude the Pompeians from the Roman community, according to the mechanisms of rhetoric; and the very structure of the work promotes Caesar's cause. As a piece of literature interacting with its cultural and socio-political world, the Bellum Civile participates in Caesar's multimedia campaign of self-fashioning. A comprehensive approach, such as has been productively applied to Augustus' program, locates the Bellum Civile at the interplay between literature, images and politics.
Contents
Introduction. Between ancient and modern approaches: admirers and detractors of Caesar; 1. The swift and the slow: Caesar's art of characterization; 2. The great contest: constantia, innocentia, pudor, and virtus; 3. Redefining loyalty; 4. The limits and risks of Caesar's leniency; 5. The barbarization of the enemy; 6. Two army-communities and their effect on the Roman people; 7. Shaping the future of Rome: the architecture of the Bellum Civile; Appendix 1. Chronology of the Civil War (pre-Julian calendar) and narrative structure of the Bellum Civile; Appendix 2. Composition, publication and genre of the Bellum Civile; Appendix 3. The manuscript tradition of the Bellum Civile. Opening, end and book division.
