The Art of Caesar's Bellum Civile: Literature, Ideology, and Community
Cambridge University Press, 1/19/2012
EAN 9781107009493, ISBN10: 1107009499
Hardcover, 234 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm
Language: English
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.
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.