[In the following essay, Rossi contends that Caesar used established rhetorical models and types as a way of leading his readers towards the conclusions he wished them to reach.]

Asinius' Pollio damaging judgment on the historical inaccuracy of Caesar's Commentarii¹ has for a long time led many scholars to dismiss Caesar's historical works as an almost free-composed historical fiction, where events are, at best, systematically distorted, or even fabricated altogether.² It is only in recent years that scholars have begun a slow process of rehabilitation. On the one hand, they have called attention to the limited presence of large scale historical falsification in the Commentarii; and on the other, they have started to highlight the sophisticated nature of the narrative structure,³ hidden behind a prose that Cicero had praised for its elegant clarity and directness of style.⁴ It is what we may call Caesar's strategy of representation of events, not their falsification, which forces upon the reader the desired reading and interpretation. In a recent article, Damon⁵ has studied one of these narrative strategies adopted by Caesar. She points out how in BC [De Bellum Civili] Caesar presents events and characters in a way that “aims at fashioning in the reader a net of memory and understanding by tying the knots which link episodes and characters that are found on the long strand of narrative.”⁶ It is this method, she argues, that leaves a great deal of the responsibility for interpretation to the readers.

Following this line of interpretation, I explore how this “net of memory,” which Caesar aims at fashioning in his readers' mind, extends beyond the limits of his own text. As an example I analyze Caesar's description of Pompey's camp after the battle of Pharsalus. Employing a type scene, a topos, familiar in the historiographic tradition, Caesar builds a network of correspondences with other events, thereby broadening and universalizing the significance of the narrated episode. It is through this device that he weaves efficaciously into his narrative an important ideological and political subtext that informs the narrative of BC.

After the historical debacle of Pharsalus, the Pompeians are dispersed and, while a panic-stricken Pompey abandons the region in flight, Caesar, with his usual rapidity of action, strikes the Pompeians a final blow. He attacks their camp and, after a short skirmish with the Thracians and other barbarians who had been left in charge of it, Caesar and his soldiers finally get the better of their enemy.⁷ What follows in the narration is a detailed description of the camp, in which a spectacle of lavishness is offered to the gaze of Caesar and his men (BC 3.96.1-2):

In castris Pompei uidere licuit trichilas structas, magnum argenti pondus expositum, recentibus caespitibus tabernacula constrata, L. etiam Lentuli et non nullorum tabernacula protecta hedera, multaque praeterea quae nimiam luxuriam et uictoriae fiduciam designarent, ut facile existimari posset nihil eos de euentu eius diei timuisse, qui non necessarias conquirerent uoluptates. At hi miserrimo ac patientissimo exercitui Caesaris luxuriem obiciebant, cui semper omnia ad necessarium usum defuissent.⁸

“In Pompey's camp could be viewed artificial bowers, great quantities of silver laid out, tents floored with freshly cut turf, the tents of Lucius Lentulus and some others wreathed with ivy, and much else to indicate excessive luxury and confidence of victory. It was easy to deduce from their pursuit of inessential pleasures that they had no misgivings about the outcome of the day. Yet these were men who accused Caesar's wretched and long-suffering army of luxury, when it had never enjoyed sufficiency in its everyday needs.”⁹

Significantly all the other historians who describe the aftermath of the battle of Pharsalus do not seem to follow Caesar in this description. Dio (41.61-63) and Velleius (2.52), although both reporting Caesar's acts of clementia following the battle of Pharsalus, omit altogether the description of Pompey's camp. Appian (BC 2.81) reports briefly its capture, but does not make any mention of its lavishness. He only reports that Caesar and his men ate the supper which had been prepared to celebrate the upcoming victory (2.69) and that the entire army feasted at the enemy's expenses. A similar description is found in Plutarch (Pomp.72.4) where again the emphasis is not on luxuria; the Pompeians are rather charged with vanity … and folly …, for the adornments found in the camp were those of men who had sacrificed and were holding festivals rather than that of men who were arming themselves for battle.

What were Caesar's reasons to describe the camp of Pompey in such a fashion?

This passage, prima facie, could be compared to others of BC, where Caesar emphasizes the moral and military shortcomings of his enemy, for Pompey's camp, as Caesar himself points out, is a perfect reflection of the nimia luxuria and the excessive confidence in victory of the Pompeians.¹⁰ We may cite one other such example. In BC 3.31-33 Caesar describes the Pompeians' mobilization of the resources of Syria and Asia under the authority of the then governor of Syria, Metellus Scipio, who in 52 had become both Pompey's consular colleague and his father-in-law.¹¹ The harsh and unfair exacting of such contributions, which Caesar describes in detail in BC 3.32, is labeled as a perfect exemplum of another important moral flaw of Pompey and his associates: auaritia.¹² The terminology employed here and in the previous passage is not fortuitous. Even a brief glimpse at contemporary authors shows how these two terms were loaded with moral and social significance in Roman political debate of the time. Sallust in his Bellum Catilinae presents Catiline, the enemy of the State, as a man spurred on by the corruption of public morals, which were ruined, according to Sallust, by two great evils, precisely luxuria and auaritia.¹³ Likewise, Livy, a generation later, in the preface of his work accounts for the moral degeneration of Rome in similar terms. The reasons for Roman decline are “the immigration” of avarice and luxury in the Republic.¹⁴

Hence in Rome's contemporary political context, these two episodes may be interpreted as two paradigmatic exempla. They serve not only to highlight Pompeians' moral flaws and shortcomings, but they also cast them as the real menace for that Roman Republic that they supposedly embody in the war against Caesar. A reading of the episode along these lines fits perfectly the political and ideological program that many scholars have seen as the foundation of BC, namely to represent Caesar as the savior of the Republic, while the Pompeians are convicted of contemptuous disregard for Roman laws and customs.¹⁵ Yet by employing a type scene familiar in the historiographic tradition Caesar is also able to build a network of correspondences with other events, thus directing the reader towards an even more damaging interpretation of the un-Republican behavior of the Pompeians.

Descriptions of conquered camps were not an unusual topic in historical accounts. Nonetheless Caesar's account here seems to follow a particular tradition, whose archetype may in meaningful ways be traced back to the famous description of Mardonius' camp after the Greek victory at Plataea, “the most glorious of victories ever known to men,” as Herodotus hailed it.¹⁶ In Herodotus' account, as the battle draws finally to a close and the Persians are put to flight, the Greeks, led by Pausanias, arrive in the Persian camp. Here they are greeted by a spectacle of opulence: the tents are adorned with gold and silver, the couches are gilded and silver-plated; everywhere there are golden bowls, cups and other drinking vessels and sacks with cauldrons of gold and silver.¹⁷ The famous anecdote that follows, where the lavish Persian meal served with all the magnificence of a banquet is compared to the frugal Spartan diet, builds an even stronger antithesis between the Greeks and the barbaroi and so stresses the polarity of their behavior.¹⁸ The former is fashioned on parsimonia, the latter on immoderate luxury. …¹⁹ Though the story may be exquisitely Herodotean, surely the characterization of the Persians is not, for it finds precise parallels in contemporary Athenian representation of the Persians. As Hall rightly suggests in her study on the representation of the barbarian in Greek tragedy, luxuria had become one of the traits that shaped the ethnicity of the Persians in antithesis to the Greeks' own sense of identity. Various terms used in the Persae of Aeschylus to evoke the luxury of the Persian court were to become closely associated with the barbarian ethos,²⁰ especially … “luxury” and the concept of αβρоsύνη or αβρóτηz, an untranslatable term combining the senses of softness, delicacy and lack of restraint. It is for this reason that the Herodotean description of the Persian camp acquires deeper meaning: such a description becomes in Herodotus an important sign of Persian ethnicity. It is in this capacity that this representation becomes an important literary model, a sort of topos, dynamically re-employed and re-adapted by other historians to characterize the Asiatic East in antithesis to its Western opponents. This representation becomes, to use Hinds' terminology, a topos-code within which endlessly active (and endlessly interpretable) allusive variations can be contained.²¹

A case in point. As Alexander the Great moves against the Persian empire and wins a crucial victory at Issus against Darius,²² soon to be the last monarch of the Persian Empire, a similar description follows. The description, although varying slightly from one historian to the other, shares all the principal Herodotean features. As Alexander and his men enter the camp, the wealth of the Persian camp is described in rich detail.²³ But in addition to the abundance of wealth, the Persian camp also betrays a more damaging flaw of Persian national character: their luxurious way of living. This concept is clearly expressed in Diodorus, for whom the camp and its wealth become a reflection of Persian luxuria,²⁴ τρυpη. Likewise Curtius defines the wealth in the Persian camp as an instrument of luxury, not of war. (Ingens auri argentique pondus, non belli, sed luxuriae apparatum).²⁵

The same theme, although not explicitly expressed, is reiterated by Plutarch. In his account, as soon as Alexander and his men enter Darius' tent, they are met by a spectacle of lavishness: again we find basins and pitchers and tubs and caskets, all of gold, and expertly fashioned, while the apartment was fragrant with spices and unguents. Plutarch also reports that as soon as Alexander passed from this tent into another one amazing for size, height, and the furniture it contained, he looked to his companions and exclaimed: “This, as it would seem, is to be a king.”²⁶ As noted by Hamilton,²⁷ the anecdote, in Herodotean fashion, is so constructed to highlight the polarity of behavior and attitude between Alexander and the Asian king, a polarity soon reinforced in the following narrative by various examples of the … frugality, of Alexander.²⁸ Alexander, when asked by a woman named Ada to hire her bakers and cooks, is said by Plutarch, to have replied that he had been given better cooks by his tutor, Leonidas; namely for his breakfast a night march, and for his supper, a light breakfast. Alexander adds that Leonidas “used to come and open my chests of bedding and clothing, to see that my mother did not hide there for me some luxury and superfluity. …”²⁹

We may now return to Caesar. From the examples cited above, it seems quite obvious that the description of Pompey's camp in Caesar's narrative follows a set of models, employed largely by Greek writers to characterize Persian ethnicity.³⁰ Thus, by fashioning his description of Pompey's camp in such a manner, Caesar implicitly assimilates Pompey's camp to that of an Oriental king.

But Pompey and his men are not merely likened to Orientals. As Caesar clearly states, they have inherited the most important trait of Oriental ethnicity: nimia luxuria. The un-Roman moral and political shortcomings of the Pompeians therefore assume a different nuance as they are directly assimilated to a foreign ethnicity. Accordingly Caesar's crucial refusal to plunder Pompey's camp³¹ and the emphasis on the hardships to which his men are accustomed (miserrimo ac patientissimo exercitui … omnia a d necessarium usum defuissent) becomes emblematic of the polarity of behavior between the Caesarians and the now orientalized Pompeians.³² New protagonists have been cast into old roles as they reflect the polarity of behavior between Easterners and Westerners distinctive of the topos.³³

What was Caesar's aim in fashioning the episode in such a manner? The bitter irony of assimilating Pompey, the great conqueror of the East, to a defeated Oriental king is self-evident, especially since Romans would still have a sharp recollection of Pompey's magnificent third triumph at the end of the long wars in the East, celebrated in Rome just a few years earlier, in 61 bce. The triumph, we are told by our ancient sources, exceeded in brilliancy any that had gone before and lasted for two full days.³⁴ Many nations were represented, but the most significant feature of the triumph was the imposing statue of Mithridates Eupator, the scion of the Royal house of Persia, which was eight cubits high and made of solid gold. With it came Mithridates' throne and scepter and, to stress the comparison between Pompey and Alexander the Great, the couch of King Darius I, the greater ancestor of the Persian monarch, whose empire had been conquered by Alexander. At the head of the procession, before Pompey himself, were led the five sons of Mithridates bearing the evocative names of Artaphernes, Cyrus, Oxathres, Darius and Xerxes as living representatives of the conquered East.³⁵ Thanks to this representation, Pompey the Great, who had likened his res gestae to those of Alexander, is implicitly cast in the role of these Oriental monarchs, as he is now defeated by a new Alexander: Caesar.³⁶

But Caesar's representation of Pompey's camp has probably a more subtle propagandistic purpose and it is this description that may help us to unravel the important ideological and political message that permeates the work in its entirety.

The opening words of Lucan's Pharsalia defined the civil wars between Caesar and Pompey as bella plus quam civilia,³⁷ wars worse than civil wars, and time and again Lucan's epic borrows terminology and images from human anatomy to represent the res publica as a metaphorical body which has been torn apart as a result of internecine conflicts.³⁸ Lucan's emphasis in representing the civil war between Caesar and Pompey lies exactly on its status as a bellum internum. Because of it the ties that link the most sacrosanct relationships in a society are suddenly shattered: son kills father,³⁹socer wages war against gener,⁴⁰ brother kills brother as Lucan's imagery brings to full circle the history of the city of Rome whose foundation is linked inextricably to Remus' death at the hands of his brother Romulus.⁴¹

As Latin poetry⁴² articulates its description of the civil war between Pompey and Caesar as a fratricide, Caesar's political discourse in BC moves in the opposite direction: it tends towards a process of de-familiarization of the enemy, of de-romanization. It is through this strategy that the description of Pompey's camp and of his behavior assumes crucial ideological significance. Via this representation, the Pompeians are stripped altogether of their national identity as Romans, for their behavior becomes specifically linked to a foreign and, more specifically, to Oriental ethnicity.

To verify our interpretation of the passage we may now observe the ways in which this process of de-romanization and Orientalization of the Pompeians is operative in another section of BC.

Early in book 3 of BC, as Caesar is about to cross the Adriatic for a final confrontation with Pompey, he lists Pompey's forces at great length for three consecutive chapters.⁴³ He attempts no analysis of his own, nor does he make any explicit statement about his enemy's strength and weakness. As noted by Carter,⁴⁴ one of his aims, by presenting the majestic proportion of Pompey's army, is that of portraying Pompey as a Goliath and himself as a David. But Caesar's listing of Pompey's force has probably also another more important purpose. While there is no need to doubt the accuracy of Caesar's statistics, a comparison with our other sources shows how Caesar's list gives an exaggerated impression of the non-Italian preponderance in Pompey's army. A case in point. After listing Pompey's fleet assembled from Asia, the Cycladic islands, Corcyra, Athens, Pontus, Bithynia, Syria, Cilicia, Phoenicia, and Egypt,⁴⁵ Caesar moves on to list Pompey's legions, his archers, and finally his cavalry which is said to have amounted to 7000 men comprising the following contingents: Deiotarus had brought 600 Gauls, Ariobarzanes 500 from Cappadocia; Cotys 500 from Thrace; from Macedonia there were 200 under Rhascypolis, from Alexandria Pompey's son had brought 500 Gauls and Germans; Pompey himself had conscribed 800 from his slaves and shepherds; 300 had been given by Tarcondarius from Galatia, 200 mounted archers had been sent from Syria by Antiochus of Commagene. To these Pompey had added Dardani and Bessi, likewise Macedonians, Thessalians and men belonging to other tribes and states, and so he had reached the number mentioned above.⁴⁶

As the contributions from foreign nations total 3600, the rest is just dismissed as Dardani, Bessi, Macedonians, Thessalians and “men of other nations and states” (ac reliquarum gentium et ciuitatum adiecerat). No mention is made that among the other nations and states the largest contributor was Rome itself, as is clearly reported by Appian,⁴⁷ Dio,⁴⁸ and Plutarch. Plutarch actually goes as far as to say that Pompey's cavalry was “the flower of Rome and Italy, preeminent in lineage, wealth, and courage.”⁴⁹ Caesar's inclusion of the Italian and Roman contingent under the heading “men of other nations and states” is pointedly evasive.

As Pompey had been made the embodiment of an Oriental king, similarly, as part of the same strategic design of representation, the war against him assumes the connotation no longer of a civil war, but it is represented as bellum externum against a foreign enemy.⁵⁰ In a narrative once again highly evocative of Herodotus' description of the Persian forces, in Caesar's BC, Pompey, the new King of Kings as he was called by some of his detractors,⁵¹ threatens the West and what the West embodied now by Rome represents, at the head of a huge and heterogeneous barbarian army, in the fashion of a nouvelle Xerxes.⁵²

What was the effectiveness of such a representation in Rome's political climate of the time? Surely Caesar's BC exploits some of the criticisms leveled against Pompey at the time. Pliny views the extravagant triumph of Pompey in 61 bce over Asia as a victory of luxury over austerity (Pliny, NH 37.14 seueritate uicta et ueriore luxuriae triumpho) and he could be reechoing some of the complaints of Pompey's contemporaries. Already in 61, Pompey was spending his fortune on the building of a great palace, inspired by the paradeisoi of Oriental palaces and Plutarch (Pomp. 67.3), as we have seen previously, reports that Domitius Ahenobarbus called Pompey derisively King of Kings, a reference presumably to the Great King of Persia.⁵³ And also the army assembled by Pompey had raised the suspicions of the Romans. Some of Cicero's letters express his uneasiness about the foreign army assembled by Pompey and perceived as a threat to Rome. Although on the whole Cicero views Pompey as the champion of the Republican cause, and will eventually side with him, in his correspondence he nevertheless expresses his concerns. In his letter to Atticus dated Feb. 27, 49, written from Formiae, while Cicero was still deciding which course of action to follow, he voices his own doubts on Pompey's intention. He argues that Pompey has not abandoned Rome because it was impossible to defend it. It was Pompey's idea from the first to plunge the world into war, to stir up barbarous princes (reges barbaros) and to bring savage tribes (gentes feras) under arms into Italy.⁵⁴ In a letter of the following month (March 18, 49), addressed again to Atticus from Formiae, a similar concern reemerges. Siding with Pompey would mean bringing hordes of Getae, Armenians and Colchians against Rome.⁵⁵ A letter from Brundisium on November 27, 48, after the battle of Pharsalus, expresses a similar dislike for the too close alliance that he had witnessed in Pompey's camp between the Pompeians and the barbarians.⁵⁶

More specifically, though, it is the presentation of the Pompeians as embodiment of oriental luxuria that exploits current Roman fears about the East and the threat it poses to Rome's national identity. We had seen at the beginning of this study how the term luxuria had important political and ideological overtones in the writings of Livy and Sallust. Luxuria was perceived by these authors as the moral flaw responsible for endangering that social and moral stamina on which Rome had flourished and because of which it had been successful for so many centuries. This luxuria, viewed as foreign to Roman national identity, had begun to insinuate itself corrosively into the fabric of the Roman State as Rome had begun to come into close contact with the East. Roman contemporary political discourse viewed luxuria therefore as conjoined to Eastern ethnicity and recognized in Rome's interaction with the East the main reason for the present decline of Roman mores.

For Sallust, luxuria is a comparatively late development in the process of decline of Rome and in the Bellum Catilinae he voices the idea that the agent of the first importation of luxuria was precisely an army from Asia. The army was that of Sulla, who, in order to secure the loyalty of the army that he had led into Asia, had allowed it a luxury and license foreign to the manners of Roman forefathers. It was there that a Roman army had first learned to indulge in a luxurious way of living (huc accedebat quod L. Sulla exercitum quem in Asia ductauerat, quo sibi fidum faceret, contra morem maiorum luxuriose nimisque liberaliter habuerat. Loca amoena, uoluptaria facile in otio ferocis militum animos molliuerant).⁵⁷ But the idea may claim an even older tradition. In Livy, Cato's speech against the repeal of the lex Oppia argues notably the same idea, though Greece, too, is now charged by Cato with sharing that same ethos, that for Hellenic culture, had been a characterizing trait of Oriental ethnicity, in antithesis to their own.⁵⁸

Apart from the speech of Cato, Livy himself, following most likely an earlier annalistic tradition, agrees with Sallust: the agent of the first importation of luxuria was an army from Asia.⁵⁹ In Livy and in the annalistic tradition that he represents, though, the army was that of Manlius Vulso. Livy exploits the theme in the opening chapter of book 39, creating a juxtaposition between the Roman military campaigns against the Ligurians on the one hand, and the military campaign against Asia on the other. The former had the effect of making the troops keener to show their valor (nec alia prouincia militem ad uirtutem acuebat).⁶⁰ The military campaign against Asia had achieved the opposite effect. As a result of the attractive nature of its cities, the abundance of provisions from land and sea, the effeminacy of its people, and the royal wealth, it had made Roman armies richer, rather than more courageous (ditiores quam fortiores exercitus faciebat).⁶¹ This military decline, was soon followed by a moral one as Vulso's troops, returning in Rome to celebrate their triumph, introduced in the city for the first time Asian luxury (Livy, 39.6.6-9):⁶²

Neque ea sola infamiae erant quae in prouincia procul ab oculis facta narrabantur, sed ea etiam magis quae in militibus eius cotidie conspiciebantur. Luxuriae enim peregrinae origo ab exercitu Asiatico inuecta in urbem est. Ii primum lectos aeratos, uesfem stragulam pretiosam, plagulas et alia textilia, et quae tum magnificae supellectilis habebantur, monopodia et abacos Romam aduexerunt … epulae quoque ipsae et cura et sumptu maiore apparari coeptae. Tum coquus, uilissimum antiquis mancipium et aestimatione et usu, in pretio esse, et quod ministerium fuerat ars haberi coepta.

“Contributing to this notoriety were not merely the events reported as having taken place in his province far from Roman eyes, but even more the daily evidences among the soldiers, for the beginnings of foreign luxury were introduced into the city by the army from Asia. These soldiers were the first to bring to Rome bronze couches, costly coverlets, counterpanes and other woven cloths, as well as what was regarded at the time as sumptuous furniture—tables supported on a single pedestal, and sideboards … and the feasts themselves also began to be prepared with greater care and expense. Thereafter the cook, regarded by men of old as the paltriest of slaves both in monetary worth and in employment, began to be highly valued; what had been considered drudgery began to be accounted an art.”

After listing these accessories of luxuria, introduced then for the first time in Rome, Livy concludes in a rather somber tone stating that the signs then appearing were merely the seeds of the luxuria to follow (uix tamen illa quae tum conspiciebantur semina erant futurae luxuriae).⁶³

It is in this political context, when Rome was questioning itself seriously about the nature and the reasons of its moral decadence, that we may better understand the effectiveness of Pompey's representation in BC.⁶⁴ Taking advantage and exploiting Roman fears about the East and the threat that the corruptive influence of Oriental luxuria poses to Rome's national and moral identity, Caesar in BC casts a portrait of Pompey in such a like fashion. By describing Pompey's camp, according to a well-recognizable typology of representation of the Orientals, Pompey himself in BC becomes the embodiment of this Eastern threat. The great conqueror of the East has been conquered by the corruptive influence of the East and, in turn, has become the living embodiment of oriental luxuria. The fear expressed by Cato the Elder that Asia would sooner conquer Rome, than Rome Asia, finds its realization in Caesar's characterization of the Pompeians.⁶⁵ Conquered by Oriental luxuria, Pompey, with his heterogeneous and huge army, not only threatens the security of the state, but, at a deeper level, represents also a menace for the national and moral identity of the country which Caesar is now called to defend: Rome. Hence the battle of Pharsalus becomes, in Caesar's representation, not only a victory over Pompey but a great victory of the West over the East, exactly like Plataea 400 hundred years earlier.

Yet things were soon to change and the tables were soon turned. Caesar himself in the years following the battle of Pharsalus will become the target of a similar propaganda by his enemy. Un-Roman honors were bestowed upon him soon after his return to Rome and he began to enjoy a semi divine status in the fashion of an Oriental monarch.⁶⁶ And he was not discouraging such an assimilation. As pointed out by Weinstock it may well be that Caesar drove into Rome in his triumph chariot with white horses precisely because that was how the Persian kings used to appear. Later, he wore, or planned to wear, the Eastern tunic and wanted to wear a diadem, which, together with the tiara, was the principal attribute of the Persian kings.⁶⁷ Suetonius even reports the rumour, most likely unfounded and spread by his detractors, that Caesar had the intention of moving the capital of the empire from Rome to Alexandria.⁶⁸ Soon after the battle of Pharsalus, Rome and its political and cultural tradition was again threatened by the East, but this time, the threat was not Pompey, but Caesar himself.

Collins, following Barwick, fixed the date of BC in late 48 or early in 47⁶⁹ for the “legalitätstendenz” and the Republican tones of the work do not suit Caesar's later policy. The representation of Pompey's camp may further support their hypothesis. Even if BC was indeed published after Caesar's death, as many scholars suggest, most likely the work was written and completed by Caesar by the end of 47. After the year 47, a representation of Pompey as the incarnation of the Oriental threat would have just reminded the audience and the readers all too well of the threat that the now orientalized Caesar posed to the Roman system.

Artful reporter Caesar in his BC exploited the fears of a society who more and more saw the East as a potential threat to its own security and identity and he skillfully casts his enemy as the embodiment of this threat. At the end he himself will become victim of his own game but the representation of Pompey in BC, as an Eastern monarch, will have important consequences for it lays the foundation of the political propaganda of a generation later. As civil wars break out again in Rome, Augustus, during the war against Antony, will follow precisely in the footsteps of his predecessor. This time though, if not more skillful, Augustus will prove more successful than his adoptive father.

Notes

1. Suet. Jul. 56.4 Pollio Asinius parum diligenter parumque integra ueritate compositos putat, cum Caesar pleraque et quae per alios erant gesta temere crediderit et quae per se, uel consulto uel etiam memoria lapsus perperam ediderit; existimatque rescripturum et correcturum fuisse.

2. The most extreme statement of this view is that propounded by Rambaud. For a more moderate position see Balsdon 19-28; Stevens 3-18; 165-79.

3. This type of approach for BG is particularly evident in Welch and Powell. For BC, cf. La Penna 191-233; Rowe 399-414; Gotoff 1-18; Williams 215-226; Carter (1991) 16-27.

4. Cic. Brut. 262 nudi enim sunt, recti et uenusti, omni ornatu orationis tamquam ueste detracta. But on this passage see also Eden 74-75 who argues for the possibility that Cicero is here referring ruefully to the reception accorded his own Commentarii. Gotoff 2 raises instead the possibility that Cicero may be “groveling” in the Brutus passage. On the passage see also Williams 215. Whether Cicero is being disingenuous in this passage remains debatable, but Cicero's view, as it stands, was not shared by some modern scholars. Cf. for example Nettleship 47 who judges Caesar's Commentarii carelessly written. For a similar view cf. also Schlicher 212.

5. Damon 183-195.

6. Damon 185.

7. BC 95.

8. On this passage see Kraner, Hofmann, Meusel ad loc. Cf also Carter (1993) ad loc. Cf. also Rowe 411 who interprets Caesar's description of the camp's luxurious appearance and overconfidence of the enemy as a useful narrative device to underscore the reversal of fortunes of the Pompeians.

9. In poetry Lucan will describe the episode in 7.728-760 but in his account the emphasis will be on the plunder of the camp as a reflection of the cupiditas of the Caesarians. See especially 757-760 ut rapiant, paruo scelus hoc uenisse putabunt. / cum sibi Tarpeias uictor desponderit arces, / cum spe Romanae promiserit omnia praedae / decipitur quod castra rapit.

10. As noted by one of the referees, the term avaritia does not appear anywhere else in BC, making its double presence in 3.96 all the more relevant.

11. It is not clear whether the exactions detailed in BC 3.32 took place in Syria or in Asia or in both and, if in Asia, on whose authority. On the topic see Carter (1993) ad. loc. For a portrait of Scipio in Caesar see also BC 1.4.3, where he is accused of ostentatio and adulatio.

12. BC 3.32.1 interim acerbissime imperatae pecuniae tota prouincia exigebantur. multa praeterea generatim ad auaritiam excogitabantur.

13. Sal. Cat. 5.8 incitabant praeterea corrupti ciuitatis mores, quos pessuma ac diuorsa inter se mala, luxuria atque auaritia, uexabant. For a similar idea cf. Sal. Cat. 12.2. On this passage see McGushin ad loc.

14. Livy, Praef. 11-12 Ceterum aut me amor negotii suscepti fallit, aut nulla unquam res publica nec maior nec sanctior nec bonis exemplis ditior fuit, nec in quam ciuitatem tam serae auaritia luxuriaque immigrauerint, nec ubi tantus ac tam diu paupertati ac parsimoniae honos fuerit. Adeo quanto rerum minus, tanto minus cupiditatis erat: nuper diuitiae auaritiam et abundantes uoluptates desiderium per luxum atque libidinem pereundi perdendique omnia inuexere. On Roman concern about luxuria and auaritia see Edwards 176ff. The backgrounds to this idea are traced by Earl 44ff. and Luce 271-275. See also Feldherr 37-50.

15. For a detailed discussion see Collins 113-132 who stresses how Caesar in BC strives to appear as a bonus civis, rei publicae natus. For a similar interpretation see Carter (1991) 18 and La Penna 195 ff.

16. Hdt. 9.64.1.

17. Hdt. 9.80 1ff. … For a similar description of the Persian camp see also 7.119 and 7. 190.

18. Hdt. 9.82. On this passage cf. also. How - Wells ad loc. and more in general on the representation of the Persians in Herodotus see Flory 81-119. See also Briant 69-105.

19. Hdt. 9.82.

20. Hall 80 ff. …

21. Hinds 42.

22. On the importance of the battle of Issus and its renown in antiquity see Polyb. 12.17.1.

23. Diod. 17.35.1-4; Curtius 3.11.20; Plut. Alex. 20.6-8. Among our ancient sources Arrian is the only one who reports that Alexander found only three thousand talents in the camp, but he adds that all the money and everything else a great king takes with him even on campaign for his extravagant way of living … he had already sent to Damascus (Arr. An. 2.11.10).

24. Diod. 35.4.

25. Curt. 3.11.20.

26. Plut. Alex. 20. 7-8.

27. Hamilton ad loc., who rightly points out that Alexander is here expressing pity for Darius for thinking that royalty consisted in mere wealth.

28. Plut. Alex. 22.4-5.

29. Plut. Alex. 22.5.

30. A similar account is found significantly in Livy (36.11.1-5), in his description of the winter quarters of Antiochus the Great, when Romans came for the first time in close contact with Asia. Again, the description of the camp of the Oriental king is seen as a reflection of Oriental luxury (cepit luxuria). Cf. also Diod. 29.2. On Livy's passage and his sources see Briscoe ad loc.

31. BC 3.97.1 Caesar castris potitus a militibus contendit ne in praeda occupati reliqui negotii gerendi facultatem dimitterent. qua re impetrata montem opere circummunire instituit. On this passage see Carter (1993) ad loc. who rightly notes that one can only guess what the relation of this idealized picture may be to what actually happened when Caesar insisted on pursuing the Pompeians. For a different account of Caesar's usual behavior in battle and after victory see Suet. Jul. 67 Ac non numquam post magnam pugnam atque victoriam, remisso officiorum munere, licentiam omnem passim lasciuiendi permittebat, iactare solitus milites suos etiam unguentatos bene pugnare posse … habebatque tam cultos, ut argento et auro politis armis ornaret, simul et ad speciem, et quo tenaciores eorum in proelio essent metu damni.

32. BC 96.2.

33. As noted by one of the referees, Caesar will adopt a different strategy of representation in BG, where he will be at pains to portray his own most important foreign opponents, the Germans and the Belgians, as far removed from the softening effects of luxury. On the topic see also Rambaud 334-339.

34. On the magnificence of the triumph, all ancient sources seem to agree Cf. Plut. Pomp. 45.1-46.1; App. Mith. 116-117; Dio, 37.21; Vell. 2.40.3; Pliny, NH 7.97-99 and 37.11ff.

35. See Greenhalgh 168ff., who believes that the theme of the whole display was to compare Pompey and Alexander.

36. On Caesar as a new Alexander see Weinstock 83-90; 186-8.

37. Lucan, 1. See also Getty ad loc.

38. On this aspect of Lucan's poetry cf. Bartsch 10-12; 15-17; 20-22.

39. Cf. for example Lucan's description of the battle of Pharsalus 7.625-630 quis cruor emissis perruperit aëra uenis / inque hostis cadat arma sui, quis pectora fratris / caedat et, ut notum possit spoliare cadaver, / abscisum longe mittat caput, ora parentis / quis laceret nimiaque probet spectantibus ira / quem iugulat, non esse patrem.

40. Lucan, 1.111-20. On the passage and its meaning see Bartsch 15.

41. The link between the civil war and the foundation of Rome is made explicit by Lucan at 1. 94-97.

42. Lucan is not the first one to describe civil wars in such a fashion. In Catullus, Virgil and Lucretius the image of a brother who kills a brother becomes a convenient paradigm for civil wars. See for example Lucr. 3.70-72 sanguine ciuili rem conflant … / crudeles gaudent in tristi funere fratris; Cat. 64.399 perfudere manus fraterno sanguine fratres; Verg. G. 2.496 infidos agitans discordia fratres; 510 gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum. On these two passages see Thomas ad loc. On the topic see also Hardie 29-32; 53-56; 67-68.

43. BC 3.3-5.

44. Carter ad loc.

45. BC 3.3.1-2.

46. BC 3.4.3-6.

47. App. BC 2.49. We may also notice that Appian specifies that Pompey intended to use auxiliaries mainly in garrison duty, in building fortifications, and in other services for the Italian soldiers, so that no one of the latter was kept away from the battles.

48. Dio, 41.55.2.

49. Plut. Pomp. 64.1 …

50. On the important difference between Bellum Civile and Bellum Externum in Roman culture see Jal 19-27. For other passages where Caesar stresses the heterogeneity and non-Roman nature of Pompey's army see Rambaud 340.

51. Plut. Pomp. 67.3 reports that this nickname, given to him by Ahenobarbus, made Pompey odious.

52. For a similar representation of Xerxes' and Darius' army with an emphasis on their majestic proportions and heterogeneity see respectively Hdt. 7.61-96 and Arr. An. 2.8.5-8.

53. On the topic see Van Ooteghem 317ff.; Bowie 470-481.

54. Cic. Att. 8.11.2. On the passage cf. Shackleton Bailey ad loc.

55. Cic. Att. 9.10.3 me, quem non nulli conseruatorem istius urbis, parentemque esse dixerunt, Getarum et Armeniorum et Colchorum copias ad eam adducere? See also Shackleton Bailey ad loc.

56. Cic. Att. 11.6.2 me discessisse ab armis numquam paenituit; tanta erat in illis crudelitas, tanta cum barbaris gentibus coniunctio … Cf. also Fam. 7.3.2 for similar ideas. Cf. also Att. 11.7.3 for Cicero's judgment on the alliance with Juba in the African war (non esse barbaris auxiliis fallacissimae gentis rem publicam defendendam).

57. Sal. Cat. 11.5. See also P. McGushin ad loc.

58. Livy, 34.4.3 Haec ego, quo melior laetiorque in dies fortuna rei publicae est, quo magis imperium crescit—et iam in Graeciam Asiamque transcendimus omnibus libidinum inlecebris repletas et regias etiam adtrectamus gazas—, eo plus horreo, ne illae magis res nos ceperint, quam nos illas. On this passage and on Livy's sources for the speech see Briscoe ad loc.

59. On the relation between Sallust's account and Livy's see Earl 46ff. Earl notices the similarities between the two accounts both in their descriptions of the lax discipline of the armies and in listing articles of luxury. He then explains Sallust's postdating the various stages of moral decline as an effort on Sallust's part to be consistent, since his over-concentration on concordia has led him to reject the tradition of the growth of luxuria in the earlier second century. For a similar idea in Sallust see Jug. 41-42.

60. Livy, 39.1.3.

61. Livy, 39.1.4.

62. Walsh ad loc. rightly points out that this allegation already goes back to the annalist L. Piso. According to the Elder Pliny (NH 34.14=Piso fr. 34 P) he specifically mentioned the bronze couches, one-legged tables and sideboards imported into Rome to grace Vulso's triumph. For a full treatment of the idea of luxuria in Livy as a corrupting element that contributed to Rome's decline, see Luce 250-275. For other examples of the same theme linking luxuria to Oriental ethnicity see Cic. ad Q. Frat. 1.1.19; Tac. Agr. 6.2. Pliny, NH 34. 34.

63. Livy, 39.6.9.

64. On the seriousness of Roman concern about their moral decadence see Edwards 176.

65. Livy, 34. 4.3 eo plus horreo, ne illae magis res nos ceperint quam nos illas.

66. For a detailed list of all the honors bestowed on Caesar from 47 to 44 and the origins of such honors see Weinstock who rightly suggests that it was probably on his Eastern campaigns that Caesar conceived the plan of a Roman version of the ruler cult (413): “There it was a political and religious necessity to claim for himself what had been due to kings of the East … These preparations were intensified when the Parthian campaign became imminent. In Parthia Caesar meant to appear as a legitimate king, the heir to all its political and religious traditions, and he wished to be honored accordingly.” On the topic see also Collins 127-28.

67. Weinstock 333 with relevant bibliography

68. Suet. Jul. 79 Quin etiam uaria fama percrebuit migraturum Alexandream uel Ilium … Cf also 52.3 where Elvius Cinna was charged with introducing an astonishing law which would enable Caesar to marry uxores liberorum quaerendorum causa quas et quot uellet.

69. The date of BC has always been controversial. Klotz showed with great probability that BC was not published in the lifetime of Caesar but was edited and published shortly after his death by Aulus Hirtius. The view was attacked by Kalinka and Barwick who believed that BC was written and published as part of Caesar's propaganda campaign during the war, and that it appeared in two parts, books 1-2 as a unit at the end of 49, and book 3 at the end of 48 or early in 47. Collins 130 adopts instead a middle ground position: the work was indeed written earlier (48) but, since, soon after it was written it no longer fit the new propaganda objectives of Caesar, it remained untouched in Caesar's archives until the summer of 44 when it was resurrected by Hirtius and given over to the copyists. Cf. also La Penna 231, who believes that BC was published by Caesar in 47-46, but that the later chapters (3.101 to the end) were probably written at a later date, for in those later chapters La Penna notices signs of a changed policy, especially in chapter 3.105 where: “Cesare … prepara il terreno nell'opinione pubblica per un potere assoluto di carattere orientale e teocratico.”

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