Julius Caesar | John Henderson (essay date 1996)
John Henderson (essay date 1996)
SOURCE: “XPDNC / Writing Caesar,” in Classical Antiquity, Vol. 15, No. 2, October, 1996, pp. 261-88.
[In the following essay, Henderson explores how the act of writing helped to create the image of Caesar that he wanted to project of himself.]
Whereupon Henderson rose, in his place, to speak his motion (surrexit sententiae suae loco dicendae). And moved (pro sententia sua hoc censuit):1
that: Caesar's Caesar tells, undecidably, of a peace-keeping war2 which didn't have to be, yet had to be, fought over the “self-regard” the world owed him and his Caesar self (dignitas)—“not status for Caesar but something approaching self-respect” (his apologist might aver) “and knowledge of his actual worth and the offices it entitled him to seek, meaning more to him than life itself.”3 From the horse's mouth, what a Caesar is...
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