The art of Caesar's Bellum Civile : literature, ideology, and community / Luca Grillo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grillo, Luca, 1970- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Caesar, Julius. De bello civili.

Caesar, Julius.

Rome--History--Civil War, 49-45 B.C--Historiography.

Rome.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 221 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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

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

Appendix 1. Chronology of the Civil War (pre-Julian calendar) and narrative structure of the BC

Appendix 2. Composition, publication and genre of the BC

Appendix 3. The manuscript tradition of the BC. opening, end, and book division.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

1-139-20975-2

1-280-48511-6

1-139-22264-3

9786613580092

1-139-21784-4

1-139-21475-6

1-139-22435-2

0-511-97297-0

1-139-22092-6

OCLC:

775869914