On the Date and Interpretation of the Bellum Civile Author(s): John H.

Collins Source: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 80, No. 2 (1959), pp. 113-132 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/292453 . Accessed: 02/03/2011 15:42
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AMERICAN

JOURNAL
VOL. LXXX, 2

OF

PHILOLOGY
WHOLE No. 318

ON THE DATE AND INTERPRETATION OF THE BELLUM CIVILE. I. In a fundamental article in Rheinisches Museum nearly fifty years ago, A. Klotz,1 summing up the evidence and earlier discussion and adding solid arguments of his own, showed with great probability that the Bellum Civile was not published in the lifetime of Caesar, nor from any finally revised copy, but was superficially edited and published shortly after his death by Aulus Hirtius, who had as his text the unfinished and unpolished manuscript from Caesar's literary remains. The view thus nailed down by Klotz, though attacked in the following decades by E. Kalinka2 and others, may be considered the received doctrine on the matter down to 1938, when K. Barwick published his elaborate study, Caesars Commentarii und das Corpus Caesarianum.3 In 1951 Barwick again took up the problem in his Caesars Bellum Civile. Tendenz, Abfassungszeit und Stil, and with further argument based on intensive linguistic analysis and historical reconstruction, attempted to make good the thesis that the B. C. 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 the year 49, and Book 3
Cf. R.-E., X, "Zu Caesars Bellum Civile," Rh. M., 1911, pp. 80ff. col. 270. 2 " Die Herausgabe des Bellum Civile," Wien. Stud., 1912, pp. 203 ff. Cf. Bursian Jahresberichte, CCXXIV (1927); CCLXIV (1939), with citation of additional literature. sPhilol., Suppl., XXXI, 2 (1938).

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at the end of 48 or early in 47. Klotz had in the meantime published his Editio altera of the B. C.,4 and in his Praefatio had answered Barwick's 1938 arguments and further fortified his own earlier position. Although Barwick has convinced some scholars,5 I believe the general view of Klotz still commands a majority agreement.6 The main arguments for Klotz' theory may be briefly summarized: (1) the "rough-draft" or "skizzenhafter Z,ustand" of the work as a whole, especially as compared with the balanced organization and artistic finish of the Bellum Gallicum; (2) the abrupt break-off at the end, indicating that it is unfinished; 7 (3) the silence of Cicero, who never alludes to the B. C.; (4) the criticism of Asinius Pollio cited by Suetonius (Caes., 56, 4): parum diligenter parumque integra veritate compositos putat, cum Caesar pleraque et quae per alios erant gesta temere crediderit et quae per se, vel consulto vel etiam memoria lapsus perperam ediderit; existimatque rescripturum et correcturum fuisse, which is apparently to be completed by the thought, "if he had lived to do it";8 (5) the express words of Hirtius (B. G., VIII, Praef. 2): novissimumque imperfectum ab rebus gestis Alexandriae confeci, since novissimum imperfectum apTeubner edition, Leipzig, 1950. Lloyd W. Daly, A. J. P., 1953, p. 195; F. E. Adcock, Caesar as Man of Letters (Cambridge, 1956), is doubtful; see note 40 below. 6 U. Knoche, "Caesars Commentarii, ihr Gegenstand und ihre Absicht," Gymnasium, 1951, Heft 2; P. Fabre, Bellum Civile (3rd Bude edition, Paris, 1947), pp. xxiii-xxiv; M. Rambaud, L'art de la deformation historique dans les Commentaires de C6sar (Paris, 1953). I have myself tried to show the insufficiency of some of Barwick's arguments in an appendix to my Frankfurt dissertation, Propaganda, Ethics, and Psychological Assumptions in Caesar's Writings (1952). The passage of Brut., 262 has since Nipperdey been generally recognized as applying only to the B. O., and Barwick has not shaken this res iudicata; the attempt to find echoes of the B. C. in Cicero's Pro Ligario, 18 is also unsuccessful, in that the catch-words (dignitas, contumelia) and arguments by which Caesar justified his war-making were in common circulation long before the B. C. Cicero was already complaining of Caesar's sensitive dignitas in January 49 (Att., VII, 11, 1). Cf. Knoche, op. cit. (note 6 above), p. 155, n. 30: "Das starkste Argument fur die postume Edition des BC sind m. E. die worte des Asinius Pollio."

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parently refers to B. C., III. It should perhaps be added that the older arguments, based on the phrases bello confecto (B. C., III, 57, 5; 60, 4) and bello perfecto (B.C., III, 18, 5) have long been discounted as of no weight. The cumulative force of this evidence is overwhelming, nor have the counter arguments of Kalinka and Barwick been able to weaken it significantly. Barwick's case is built mainly upon his concept of the B. C. as timely propaganda requiring immediate publication for its effectiveness, but his strongest arguments indicate only that the B. C. was written during the progress of the war, or directly after Pharsalus, and prove nothing regarding the time of publication.10 Kalinka was even driven to the astonishing theory of an unauthorized or pirated publication in his attempt to meet Klotz' arguments based on the unevenness of the text. In 1952 I reasoned "-that it was incredible that Caesar should have written the B. C. in, say, 48 or 47, and then let it lie for years without completing or publishing it. Believing further that posthumous publication had been proved by Klotz, I concluded that the work was written in the last months of Caesar's life, after the return from Spain in the late summer of 45, and was left incomplete at his death. Further reflection on the whole problem in the last few years has convinced me that this view is incorrect, and I now believe with P. Fabre 12that the B. C. was written in late 48 or early 47 in Egypt at odd intervals during the so-called Alexandrian War, that it was laid aside incomplete for reasons which are speculative but which I hope to make plausible, and that it was found among Caesar's papers after his death in approximately the condition in which we now have it.
*Cf. Klotz, Cdsarstudien (Leipzig, 1910), pp. 155-6; Rice Holmes, Caesar de Bello Gallico (Oxford, 1914), p. 362, n. 2. 10 F. Lossmann, " Zur literarischen Kritik Suetons," Hermes, LXXXV (1957), pp. 47-58, analyzes the meaning of Suetonius' version of Pollio's criticism (it is important to note that we do not have Pollio's exact words), and its bearing on the problem of date, with great sharpness and detail. His final conclusion supports Klotz' theory of posthumous publication. See also his careful review of Barwick, Gnomon, 1956, pp. 355-62. l Op. cit. (note 6), pp. 55-6. 12 Bude edition, p. xxi. Fabre believes the B. C. was written before Thapsus. See citation at note 30 below.

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In other words, I believe that Barwick is correct in fixing an early date of composition, and that Klotz is correct in fixing a posthumous date of publication. I wish here to set this view forth with such evidence as I can bring, and to indicate certain wider consequences bearing on the historical interpretation and credibility of the work itself. II. What ultimate plans for the organization of the Roman Imperium Caesar may have formed or entertained in his last months will doubtless always be discussed and can never be satisfactorily settled.13 But there can be no doubt about one thinghe had no intention of imitating Sulla by resigning the dictatorship. His own words as reported by Titus Ampius in Suetonius' account (Caes., 77): nihil esse rem publicam, appellationem modo sine corpore ac specie. Sullam nescisse litteras, qui dictaturam deposuerit fit together with his acts and omissions to act, and leave no doubt of his determination to maintain his despotic position. That he consciously intended to found a Hellenistic God-kingdom on the model of Alexander has been powerfully argued by Meyer and others; 14 that he had the slightest intention of "re-establishing the republic" as Cicero publicly called upon him to do (Pro Marc., 26-7), and as Sallust also urged (Ep. ad Caes., I, 6, 3), or even of re-establishing some sort of shadow republic as Augustus later found expedient, is believed, as far as I am aware, by no one. His government after Thapsus was a humane but quite naked absolutism, conducted with conspicuous contempt for the mos maiorum,l5 and the assumption of the lifetime dictatorship in early 44, against the whole weight of constitutional tradition, was an open declaration that he had done, finally and deliberately, with the old republican ideology.
13 Cf. R. Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939), p. 53. 1 Ed. Meyer, Caesars Monarchie und das Principat des Pompeius (Stuttgart-Berlin, 1918); W. Steidle, Sueton und die antike Biographie, Zetemata, Heft 1 (Munich, 1951), pp. 60 ff. 1"In "Caesar and the Corruption of Power," Historia, 1955, pp. 445-65, I have tried to show this contempt in some detail; here I may summarily refer to chapters 76-80 of Suetonius' Caesar, recalling their importance as a Roman moral judgment recently stressed by Steidle, op. cit. (note 14).

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With this post-Thapsus, monarchial Caesar clearly in mind (it matters little whether he laid great stress on the title Rex; his regal bearing and arrogation of royal power made mere titles of minor importance), let us turn to the B. C., and ask how well it fits the character of its author as that character reveals itself in its last phase. We shall find, I think, that the B. C. does not fit at all; that it is a work republican through and through; that it neither contains the spirit nor the foreshadowing of the "monarchial" or "imperial" idea; that even interpreted as propaganda, it is not propaganda for monarchy nor for any projected reform or re-organization of the Roman governmental system. As a product of the mind of the " late " Caesar, known to us from Suetonius, from Cicero's correspondenceof the years 45-44, and from the miscellaneous anecdotes in Plutarch, Dio Cassius, Appian, and other writers, of the Caesar driving for the possession of absolute power, and in visible ways corrupted by power in the sense of Lord Acton's aphorism, the republican Gedankenwelt of the B. C. is hardly thinkable. Since the above statements will appear radical to many, and have indeed been specifically denied,16it is necessary to support them here by a somewhat detailed collection of the evidence. That the B. C. does not contain any clear political " slogan" or announcement of the " imperial idea " has often been noted. U. Knoche writes: 7 " Sieht man Caesars Schriften durch . . . so ist es bemerkenswert,wie haufig von der Fortuna die Rede ist und wie der Gedanke an ein r6misches Schicksal ganz zuriicktritt. Geradezu erstaunlich und erschreckened ist es aber, eine wie geringe Rolle dort iiberhaupt in Wirklichkeit der Reichsgedanke spielt; und es ist sonderbar,dass Caesar, der Meister der Propaganda, sich diese Parole hat entgehn lassen." The sole instance in the B. C. of an expression that may be thought in some sense to announce a "program" or overall political plan is a phrase in a letter to Metellus Scipio urging as objectives to be sought, quietem Italiae, pacem provinciarum, salutem imperi
"1Among better company, by me, who thought I could find evidence in the B. C. of Caesar's desire to appear as the patronus of the Roman state, op. cit. (note 6), p. 76; cf. citation from L. Wickert, note 20 below. 17 " Die geistige Vorbereitung der augusteischen Epoche," in Das neue Bild der Antike, ed. H. Berve (Leipzig, 1942), II, p. 213.

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(B. ., III, 57, 4). These words do sum up, with remarkable accuracy and insight, the great needs of the Roman world, and Gelzer 18has repeatedly cited them to show Caesar's statesmanly grasp of the problems before him, and his vision beyond the limited horizon of the old res publica incorporating merely the city-state of Rome, or at most, the citizen body of Italy. But these words in their actual context cannot be taken as a program or even as a slogan, whatever may be their value as proof of Caesar's understanding and statesman's concern. The message in which they occur is an offer of peace on the principle of return to the status quo ante bellum, that is, re-establishment of the senatorial oligarchy and the rest of the legal and customary res publica. At no time in the B. C. does Caesar indicate a desire or intention of altering or reforming, to say nothing of revolutionizing, the old constitution. The propaganda of the work has, in fact, the exactly opposite tendency of emphasizing Caesar's defense of the old constitution. His expressed reasons for invading Italy are (1) to support the rights of the tribunes (B. C., I, 5, 1-2; 22,5; 32,6); (2) to free the Roman people from the factio paucorum (I, 22, 5; 85, 4); (3) to preserve his personal dignitas against the iniuriae and contumeliae of his inimici (I, 7, 1; 7-8; 22, 5; 32, 2; cf. Cic., Att., VII, 11, 1). His conditions of peace, as stated in the B. C., never require any constitutional change, but stress on the contrary his constant desire and willingness to submit to the republican laws. He is prepared to suffer all for the good of the state (I, 9, 3; 5). He asks only free elections and personal security (I, 9, 5; 85, 11; III, 10, 8-10). This picture of his demands and intentions is supplemented but not altered by the strictly contemporary evidence of the Ciceronian correspondence (note especially, Att., VIII, 9, 4: aiebat (Balbus the Younger) nihil malle Caesarem quam ut Pompeium adsequeretur . . . et rediret in gratiam; . . . Balbus quidem maior ad me scribit nihil malle Caesarem quam principe Pompeio sine metu vivere). It is the Pompeians who are accused of innovation: novum in rem publicam introductum exemplum (B. C., I, 7, 2); in se (i. e., Caesar) novi generis imperia constitui (I, 85, 8). Still more specifically the Pompeians are
1s Caesar, der Politiker und Staatsmann (4th ed., Munich, 1942), p. 262; Vom rdmisohen Staat (Leipzig, 1943), I, p. 137; II, p. 178.

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charged with contemptuous disregard for law and custom: Consules, quod ante id tempus accidit numquam, ex urbe proficiscuntur . . . contra omnia vetustatis exempla . . .omnia divina humanaque iura permiscentur (I, 6, 7-8). The question of the sincerity or truth of this presentation is at the moment irrelevant; the point to be noted is that Caesar is at pains to appear as the loyal son of the republic, forced to take arms in the republic's defense, and wishing nothing as reward but the restoration of the old state of things, otium (I, 5, 5), and peace. There is not a sentence in the B. C. the political tendency of which could not be approved by Cicero, or for that matter, by Cato; there is no threat of innovation (those of Caesar's followers who entertained radical hopes of confiscation and novae tabulae were quickly disillusioned; cf. Caelius Rufus, Fam., VIII, 17, 2; hic nunc praeter faeneratores paucos nec homo nec ordo quisquam est nisi Pompeianus), and no expression of dissatisfaction with the former condition of the res publica except that the selfishness and ambition of a few men, of the factio paucorum, was preventing the system from functioning. Caesar reduces the whole political question to the level of a personal quarrel in which Pompey, supported and egged on by Caesar's inimici, preferred to throw the state into a turmoil rather than permit Caesar his well-earned place of equal dignitas (B. C., I, 4, 4. Lucan's well-known nec quemquam iam ferre potest Caesarve priorem / Pompeiusve parem does not misrepresent Caesar's own statement). The modern idea that there was a general crisis, economic and political, in the Mediterranean world that could be resolved only by a fundamental change in the governmental organization, with one-man rule replacing the old rivalry of the potentes 19 for money and honores, is not remotely suggested, not even darkly hinted by Caesar. We find this so hard to believe that we read into Caesar what we cannot find explicit in his work. L. Wickert writes of the peace propaganda of the B. C. thus: 20 " Caesars Absicht war, nachzuweisen, nicht nur, dass er den Frieden gewollt habe, sondern auch, dass er im Kampfe mit den Pompeianern und im Gegenzatz zu ihnen alles getan habe, um die alte res pqublica zu retten " (a correct and excellent statement); "dass aber das
2O" Zu Caesars Reichspolitik," 19 certamina potentium,

Tacitus, Ann., I, 2. Klio, 1937, pp. 232 ff.

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Verhalten der Gegner und die Ereignisse selbst es ihm unmoglich gemacht hiitten, diese Plan durchzufiihren" (partly correct, but one sees here the beginning of subjective addition); " dass er Schritt fur Schritt gegen seinen urspriinglichen Willen mit zwingender Notwendigkeit dazu gefiihrt worden sei, die Verfassung in der Weise umzugestalten, dass die Monarchie und--knnen wir hinzufigen-der Reichsstaat das Ergebnis sein mussten " (for this last view there is in the B. C. no trace; it is a modern and wholly subjective interpretation based on knowledge of the actual later imperial development). The only passage in the B. C. that gives the slightest color to the last part of Wickert's sentence is that of Caesar's speech to his rump senate of 1 April 49 (B. C., I, 32, 7): Pro quibus rebus hortatur ac postulat, ut rem publicam suscipiant atque una secum administrent. Sin timore defugiant, illis se oneri non futurum et per se rem publicam administraturum. There is no announcement here of a coming Reichsstaat, or of any general constitutional reform; there is, as Gelzer 21 has pointed out, a threat to act independently, and thus an attempt to force co-operation by the reluctant senate, but again there is nothing that a Cicero or a Cato could not have approved in principle. The idea of a temporary dictatorship to deal with a public emergency, whether formally tendered by a vote of the senate or taken in hand de facto by a strong consul, was one of the oldest traditions of the Roman constitution. In Caesar's words there is no break with the res publica, but rather the use of the res publica as a slogan. In conformity with his striving to appear as the bonus civis, rei publicae natus, Caesar continually implies that his march into Italy in 49 (the touchiest point of his case: note Mommsen's struggle to justify it in the Rechtsfrage) was supported by almost universal consent. Towns and soldiers are again and again represented as eager to yield themselves, and as submitting with great impatience to control by Pompeians. A monotonous parade of surrenderersand collaborationists is set forth in B. C., I, 12-18. At Iguvium, Caesar certior factus . . . omnium esse . . .optimam erga se voluntatem. Thermus, who was holding the town for the Pompeians, flees, and milites in itinere ab eo discedunt ... Curio summa omnium voluntate Iguvium recipit
S1 " Caesar," in Das neue Bild der Antike, II, p. 188 = Vom r6mischen Staat, I, p. 126.

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(I, 12, 1-3; note the tendentious recipit for capit or occupat). Practically the same formula describes the seizure of Auximum, with the addition of an honorary citation: neque se neque reliquos municipes pati posse C. Caesarem imperatorem, bene de re publica meritum, tantis rebus gestis oppido moenibusque prohiberi (I, 13, 1). In Picenum, Pompey's special stronghold, cunctae earum regionum praefecturae libentissimis animis eum recipiunt exercitumque eius omnibus rebus iuvant (I, 15, 1; a cynic may wonder how many peremptory requisitions helped the help); Etiam Cingulo, quod oppidum Labienus constituerat . . . ad eum legati veniunt quaeque imperaverit se cupidissime facturos pollicentur (I, 15, 2). Never was conquering army so enthusiastically greeted. If there was a sullen citizen or two who with Cicero was wondering utrum de imperatore populi Romani an de Hannibale loquimur ( Att., VII, 11, 1), we should never learn the fact from Caesar. This "bandwagon propaganda" is extended and emphasized throughout the B. C.22 In some passages it is given a definite political, even legal connotation. At Oricum L. Torquatus . . . conatus portis clausis oppidum defendere cum Graecos murum ascendere atque arma capere iuberet, illi autem se contra imperium populi Romani pugnaturos esse negarent (B. C., III, 11, 3-4). Again at Apollonia, where L. Staberius attempted like Torquatus to defend the town and secure hostages from the inhabitants, illi vero daturos se negare, neque portas consult praeclusuros, neque sibi iudicium sumpturos contra atque omnis Italia populusque Romanus iudicavisset (III, 12, 2). In Syria the soldiers of Metellus Scipio threatened mutiny, ac non nullae militum voces . . . sese contra civem et consulem arma non laturos (III, 31, 4). Caesar urged the Massilians: debere eos Italiae totius auctoritatem sequi potius quam unius hominis voluntati obtemperare (I, 35, 1). As factual reports of words actually spoken these passages are obviously strongly colored and "stylized," but they prove beyond cavil Caesar's keen wish to legitimate his victory in conformity with republican principles. Of similar tendency is the ostentatious deference to the comitia advertised in III, 1, 5: Statuerat enim prius hos (those exiled during Pompey's domination) iudicio populi debere restitui
22

A full citation of passages with sharply critical discussion is given

by Rambaud, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 277-83.

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quam suo beneficio videri receptos, ne aut ingratus in referenda gratia aut arrogans in praeripiendo populi beneficio videretur. In his last months Caesartreated the comitia with sovereign contempt, ordering mock elections at his personal pleasure, and outraging republican feelings: Incredibile est quam turpiter mihi facere videar, qui his rebus intersim, wrote Cicero to Curius. Ille autem (i. e., Caesar), qui comitiis tributis esset auspicatus, centuriata habuit, consulem hora septima renuntiavit, qui usque ad K. Ian. esset quae erant futurae mane postridie. Ita Caninio consule scito neminem prandisse (Fam., VII, 30, 1, January
44) .23

Caesar's anxiety to placate republican opinion is shown less conspicuously, but none the less significantly, in his omissions. Rambaud24 has with great plausibility suggested that the reason the name of Cicero does not appear in the B. C. is that it was precisely Caesar's failure to win Cicero to his side that made his claim to represent the old republic look thin. " D'un cote, elle [i. e., the unsuccessful sollicitation of Cicero] aide a comprendre que le Bellum Civile n'ait pas nomme Ciceron a qui Cesar accordait tant d'importance en 49; l'abstention prudente de ce politique, son absence au senat le premier avril, dementaient l'argumentation cesarienne." Cicero's defiance of Caesar at the interview of 28 March 49 (Att., IX, 18) was unquestionably a serious setback for Caesar's policy, and all the more painful that it was unexpected. "Menschlich gesehn ist es vielleicht die erstaunlichste Niederlage, die Caesar erlitten hat." 25 Caesar passed it over in silence in the B. C. not only because it was a psychological defeat, but because it damaged the picture of republicanism he was striving to paint. There was perhaps not another man in Italy whose judgment of the political rightness of his conduct Caesar so much valued, or whose approval would in fact have been more valuable to him. No phase of Caesar's conduct in the civil war impressed his contemporaries (and indeed posterity) more strongly than his
s3 Cf. further discussion of the " Legalititstendenz" in Barwick, Caesars Bellum Civile, pp. 109-114. The preceding two paragraphs have been adapted with minor revision from my dissertation, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 78-80. 24 Op. cit. (note 6), p. 151. 26 0. Seel, Cicero (Stuttgart, 1953), p. 199.

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clementia. In the B. C. this policy is given a very prominent place and is unquestionably one of the major strands of the Caesarian propaganda. But it has often been noted that Caesar, though he rings the changes on the idea so tirelessly that a modern scholar has facetiously suggested that the book should be titled Bellum Civile, sive de Caesaris clementia,26deliberately avoids the word; he speaks instead of lenitas, and of incolumes dimittere or incolumes conservare; his supporters speak of temperantia and humanitas (Caelius, Fam., VIII, 15, 1; Dolabella, Famn.,IX, 9, 3). The reason is not far to seek. Clementia is the virtue of the legitimate monarch, not of the primus inter pares.27 It was exactly because he was unwilling to accept Caesar's clementia, unwilling to recognize any right of Caesar to exercise clementia, that Cato preferred death, and Caesar's avoidance of the word shows in striking fashion his care to stay inside the republican tradition of equality. He similarly avoids the word in his famous letter on the capitulation of Corfinium (Att., IX, 7-c), but speaks of misericordia and liberalitas, and it is his opponent Cicero who writes bitterly of insidiosa clementia (Att., VIII, 16, 2).28

All this conspicuous, not to say ostentatious republicanism of the B. C. is incompatible with the Caesar of 46-44, " the crony of Quirinus stepping down from his place among the gods " (Quid? tu hunc de pompa Quirini contubernalem his nostris moderatis
epistulis
26 27

laetaturum

putas?

Cic., Att., XIII,

28, 2).

It is

P. Fabre, Bude edition, p. xxx. Seneca, De Clem., II, 3, 1: Clementia est temperantia animi in potestate ulciscendi vel lenitas superioris adversus inferiorem in constituendis poenis. Cf. Rambaud, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 289-93. 28M. Treu, "Zur Clementia Caesaris," M. H., 1948, pp. 197 if., and Rambaud, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 289 ff., have strongly attacked the sincerity of Caesar's professions, and have developed the view given contemporary expression by young Curio: ipsum autem non voluntate aut natura non esse crudelem, sed quod popularem putaret esse clementiam (Att., X, 4, 8). It would require a second article to give in detail my reasons for disagreeing with this view; briefly, I may remark that Cicero, although he wrote of insidiosa clementia at the time, did not later doubt its genuineness, despite the hatred he felt for Caesar. But the question of sincerity is quite secondary here to the estimate of Caesar's "republicanism" in the B. C. Sincere or Machiavellian, Caesar presents his clementia or liberalitas as the good will of a republican nobilis, not as the condescension of a monarch.

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equally discordant and unfitting whether read as apologetic or as preparatorypropaganda. As apologetic, it is too grossly contradicted by the events of 46-44, too easily turned to ridicule, to be effective; as preparatory propaganda, it prepares for the wrong thing. When one considers the deep-cutting change that took place in Caesar's character and outlook in his last phase,29the conclusion is strongly suggested that the B. C. is a product of his earlier period. The argument of Barwick, based on considerations of the timely character of the propaganda and tendance, and on the time-conditioned judgments of men (note especially the rather severe criticism of M. Yarro, B. C., II, 17-20), reinforces the above line of thought, and points to late 48 or early 47 as the date of composition. To Barwick's evidence may be added the remarks of P. Fabre,30who cites the fine saying of Louis XII: " Le roi de France ne venge pas les injures du duc d'Orleans," and asks whether Caesar would have carried on his quarrel with the dead: "Apr'es la guerre d'Espagne, et deja meme apres la guerre d'Afrique, quel interet eut trouve le maitre absolu de Rome, le tout-puissant dicateur ... a dessiner en traits satiriques et mordants des ennemis que la mort ou la soumission avait reduits a l'impuissance ? " We know, indeed, that he did pursue Cato beyond the grave, but this is to be explained by Cato's special position as a symbol of continuing resistance. Is it not more likely that the persiflage with Metellus Scipio (His temporibus Scipio detrimentis quibusdam circa montem Amanum acceptis imperatorem se appellaverat, B. C., III, 31, 1) was written while this contemptible Pompeian leader was still in active opposition? The disparaging observations on Afranius (B. C., I, 84, 4; 85, 1) and Petreius (I, 75, 2) are also more fitting if written before Thapsus and the deaths of these men. One of the remarks of Caesar quoted earlier, omnia divina humanaque iura permiscentur (B. C., 1, 6, 8), inspired a comment by Eduard Meyer:31 " Caesar hat sich die schone Schlussphrase nicht entgehen lassen " (he used it again, B. C., I, 32, 5 !) "die er ebensogut auf seine eignen, ganz gleichartigen Massregeln
Cf. my " Caesar and the Corruption of Power." Bud6 edition, 1947, p. xxi. Fabre, however, agrees with Klotz in assigning a posthumous date of publication. 81 Op. cit. (note 14), p. 289, n. 1.
29

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als Monarch h:atteanwenden konnen." Meyer might have added that Cicero actually did apply virtually this formula to Caesar's conduct: omnia iura divina et humana pervertit propter eum quem sibi ipse opinionis errore finxerat principatum (De Off., I, 26). I suggest that what was obvious to Cicero and Meyer was probably obvious also to Caesar, and that it is unlikely that he would have allowed "die schone Schlussphrase " to appear had he been writing at a date when it could so easily and effectively be turned to scorn. None of these indications of the time of writing of the B. C. is decisive, but the ease with which they may be individually discounted must not be permitted to obscure the fact that they are parallel, not linked indications, so that their cumulative force is not to be despised. But it may well be asked why, if Caesar wrote the B. C. in 48-47 for political ends, did he not publish it at once ?' This question seemed to me unanswerable when I first considered the problem, and led me to suppose that the work could only have been written toward the end of Caesar's life, at the earliest after Thapsus. But if it can be shown that events interrupted the writing and made the original purpose obsolete, the natural objection to a widely separated date of writing and publication disappears, and the arguments of Barwick and Klotz are no longer opposed, but point together to the same conclusion: writing in 48-47; publication in 44-43. III. When Caesar arrived at Alexandria some seven weeks after Pharsalus, and was shown the head of Pompey, who had been murdered a few days before, he very probably believed, with that sanguine temperament that had led him to write of the condition of Gaul at the end of 56, omnibus de causis Caesar pacatam Galliam existimaret (B. G., III, 7, 1), that the civil war was virtually over, and that he needed but show himself in Italy to find all opposition broken: Caesar confisus fama rerum gestarum infirmis auxiliis proficisci non dubitaverat aeque omnem sibi locum tutum fore existimans (B. C., III, 106, 3). The objects for which he had fought the civil war were attained; he had recovered his dignitas, and his soldiers might now expect to recover their libertas (B. C., III, 91, 2). In this spirit of

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optimistic self-satisfaction he had marched around the Aegean to the Hellespont, and had sailed thence to Ephesus and Rhodes, hearing and recording, with harmless pride, the stories of prodigies that circulated through the East in the wake of his victory (B. C., III, 105). From Rhodes he had crossed the Mediterranean to Alexandria. It is quite possible that he dictated part if not most of the B. C. at intervals of this journey, as we know was his custom in traveling (cf. the De Analogia and the Iter, Sueton., Caes., 56, 5). He was nominally in pursuit of Pompey, but he did not press the matter with Caesarian celeritas. For a Pompeius Magnus was hardly a fit subject for liberalitas sive misericordia. Immediately after his arrival at Alexandria on approximately 2 October48 (27 July by the correctedcalendar), two unforeseen developments combined to turn his adventurous life to a new course: he met Cleopatra and he became involved in the dangerous struggle for the control of Egypt known as the Alexandrian war. Our firm knowledge of the events at Alexandria rests mainly on the account of Hirtius, who was not, however, present himself, but put together his narrative from Caesar's private conversations (quae bella . . . ex parte nobis Caesaris sermone sunt nota, B. G., VIII, Praef. 8) supplemented no doubt by other reports written or oral. He tells us nothing of Caesar's personal life, prudently suppressing, in deference to Roman "Victorianism " and xenophobia, what he knew of Caesar's liaison with the woman he had recognized as the legitimate Egyptian queen. To eke out the purely military history of Hirtius we have some 500 lines of the tenth book of Lucan's Pharsalia, based in all probability on Livy, but of course heavily loaded with poetical invention, exaggeration, and bitter anti-Caesar partisanship. At a hardly higher level of reliability stand the brief and contradictory notices in Suetonius, Plutarch, Dio Cassius, and Appian. In the nature of the case, rumor and speculation must have embroidered the known facts. Yet there can be no question whatever that Cleopatra gained a powerful influence over Caesar, or that she continued for the rest of Caesar's life to hold a place of major importance in his plans. The failure of our main source to discuss the psychological and moral background of the Alexandrian war must not lead us to ignore, or treat as trivial

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gossip, the decisive importance of the Egyptian period in Caesar's personal development. With good reason has Cleopatra been called " die genialste Frau der Weltgeschichte," 82 and with good reason did the Romans fear her "as they had feared no other but Hannibal." 33 Caesar remained in Egypt some eight months, the last two of which were spent in a pleasure-trip up the Nile with Cleopatra.34 He then departed to take up again the affairs of empire, which had assumed a seriously threatening form during his period of neglect. But a year later we find Cleopatra in Rome, living in Caesar's own sumptuous residence across the Tiber, where she remained until after the murder of the dictator, caring for Caesar's son Caesarion and "playing the queen" to the rage of republican Romans (Cicero, Att., XV, 15, 2). Caesar had her statue publicly set up next to that of Venus Victrix (Genetrix), his own patron goddess, and much of the intrigue and scheming of the last months of his life-the plan to assume the title Rex outside Italy, the rumor that he intended to remove the seat of government to Alexandria, and the astonishing law which Helvius Cinna was charged with introducing to enable Caesar to marry uxores liberorum quaerendorum causa quas et quot vellet (Suet., Caes., 52, 3)-is unquestionably closely connected with his serious involvement with the Egyptian enchantress.35
82 Title of book Cf. also Th. Birt, by Otto van Wertheimer (1930). Frauen der Antike (Leipzig, 1932), and F. Stahelin's R.-E. article

(1921).
88 W. W. Tarn, Oxford Classical Dictionary (1949), article "Cleopatra." "8Louis E. Lord, "The Date of Julius Caesar's Departure from Alexandria," J. R. S., 1938, pp. 19-40, discredits, perhaps correctly, the The point is not essential to the matter of this alleged pleasure-trip. article. 8S Full citation of sources and of the most important modern literature in Stahelin, R. E., XI, col. 755. F. E. Adcock, C. A. H., IX, p. 724, n. 1, rejects, without good reason, the account of the proposed law to permit polygamy. Correct view in Meyer, op. cit. (note 14), p. 518. From an obscure reference in Cicero (Att., XIV, 20, 3) it may reasonably be inferred that Cleopatra was pregnant with Caesar's second child at the date of the assassination. Cf. J. Carcopino, Cicero: the Secrets of his Correspondence (London, 1951), II, pp. 314-17, who believes, however, that the reference is to the birth of Caesarion. No one else that I know doubts that Caesarion was born in 47.

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It is of course impossible to know the precise manner in which the fabulous luxury and display, the excesses of power and pleasure that Caesar found at the Alexandrian court worked upon his mind, but there are many proofs that the post-Alexandrian, post-Cleopatra Caesar is a very different man from the Caesar of Corfinium and Ilerda.36 The imagination of Lucan has painted the scene in florid rhetoric, and a greater than Lucan was inspired by his description 87 to write: High on a throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand, Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, Satan exalted sat. All circumstances united to turn the Roman Imperator into the oriental Rex, to harden his contempt for the stupid oligarchy that had rejected him, and to fill his soul with that superbia and delusion of grandeur which three years later made him so hateful that his old friends and camp comrades combined to murder him. If, as has been suggested, Caesar wrote the B. C. in the period immediately following Pharsalus, partly during his leisurely journey to Egypt and partly during intervals in the palace at Alexandria (when one considers that the so-called " Alexandrian war " lasted some six months, but that the actual fighting took up only a few days, it is clear that many free intervals must have been available), it is easy to understand both the republican tone and ideology of the work and its propaganda of self-justification. It is Caesar'sapologia for his conduct of the civil war, addressed to Romans; to Romans first of all of the aristocracy that had fought against him (other than the irreconcilable leaders). Its tendance is open and straightforward: to clear Caesar of any charge of attacking the republic, to set forth his deeds in the best light, to destroy the moral credit of his adversaries, to be admired, to triumph. One may see in it not unjustly a certain spirit of self-satisfied exuberance, a tempered repetition of the fiducia of 59: Quo gaudio elatus non temperavit, quin paucos post dies frequenti curia iactaret, invitis et gementibus adversariis adeptum se quae concupisset, proinde ex
86 Cf.

my

" Caesar and the Corruption of Power."

S7 Of course I do not know this; let Milton scholars speak.

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eo insultaturunm omnium capitibus (Suet., Caes., 22, 2). It contains no subtle double-talk looking toward monarchy; the ideals and standards of conduct to which it appeals are the ideals and standards of the old republic, of Cicero and of Cato. It contains no " Caesarism" in the sense which that word has assumed in modern times, but is throughout the work of a Roman republican aristocrat, successful in the lawful game that the Roman aristocracy played, the game of competition for honors and position. Having swept the board in this game, Caesar might well say Satis diu vel naturae vixi vel gloriae. In Egypt, however, falling increasingly under the influence of Cleopatra and of the atmosphere of oriental despotism and oriental luxury, Caesar gradually lost interest in the Roman ideal of aristocratic libertas, and became convinced that Sulla had been a simpleton when he resigned the dictatorship. When he finally returned to Italy from the East at the end of 47, he came determined to hold power in perpetuity, and to increase the pomp and splendor of his position in ways that would have seemed frivolous to the Caesar who had given his bed to Oppius and had slept on the ground. But it was not alone the corrupting influence of refined and exotic luxury that worked upon Caesar's character during the Egyptian interlude. He visited the tomb of the great Macedonian conqueror, whose career had stimulated his imagination since his youth, and he saw in active operation the most complex and developed administrative bureaucracy of the ancient world. " Ganz gewiss hat Caesar seinen Aufenthalt in Agypten nach der gliicklichen Beendigung des Alexandrinischen Krieges nicht bloss zum Tandeln mit Kleopatra benutzt, sondern ausser anderm auch zum Studium einer Verwaltung, von der die r6mische unendlich viel lernen konnte." 38 A new Caesar developed in Egypt, perhaps for both better and worse, for it was in Egypt that Caesar decided not only on personal monarchy, but on many of those schemes of reform and re-organization to which his modern admirers have appealed as evidence of his statesmanship. We know that the calendar reform came from Egypt, and we may guess that many another project (one thinks of the dream of piercing the Isthmus of Corinth with a canal in imitation of the
88

H. Willrich, " Caligula," Klio, 1903, p. 89.

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great Pharaoh) was likewise the product of the fertile Nile and its ripe civilization. In Dio Cassius' history (XLIII, 15-18) stands a speech allegedly delivered ad Quirites on the occasion of Caesar's victorious return from Africa (and his visit to his Sardinian "farm," Fam., IX, 7, 2). Dio's habit of manufacturing rhetorical speeches is too well known to permit anyone to accept this piece as representing with accuracy an original documentary source, but it is not probable that it is fabricated out of hand. In it Caesar announces a program of general reform under the principle that the eighteenth century called "enlightened despotism." For what it may be worth, this doubtless garbled speech may be taken as the herald of the new Caesar, the Caesar who has given his name to "Caesarism." By this time the manuscript of the Bellum Civile was a forgotten paper of the past. It no longer corresponded to the psychology of its author. It remained untouched in Caesar's archives until the summer of 44, when it was resurrected by Hirtius and given over to the copyists.39 Thus the arguments of both Barwick and Klotz have their respective validity. We need assume neither that Caesar published a work in a "skizzenhafter Zustand," nor that he pursued propaganda objectives that were long obsolete.40 IV. If the foregoing discussion is correct in its main outlines and conclusion, consequences of no small importance to the understanding of the events of 50-49 must be reckoned with. First of all, we must not attribute to Caesar the fixed intention at the beginning of the civil war, or even after the struggle at Dyr" Rambaud, op. cit. (note 6), p. 367, supposes that the B. C. was published after Caesar's death by Antony and Faberius. 40F. E. Adcock, Caesar as Man of Letters, declines to commit himself definitely, but follows Barwick's general argument. His most interesting remark in connection with this paper is his suggestion that, after Pharsalus, "though Caesar did not cease to be a man of letters, he had come to care less for self-justification once he had the supreme justification of success. He seems to have become willing to leave to others the narratives of his victories. And the less he came to care for the conventions of the republic, the less he was anxious to maintain that he had preserved them."

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rachium and the victory of Pharsalus, of destroying the republic and establishing a personal regnum. We must take more seriously than recent scholarship has done his comparatively modest professions of objectives as stated in the conditions given to L. Roscius and L. Caesar (B. C., I, 9, 5-6) 41 We must not give a Machiavellian or even a Hitlerian twist to his claims of peaceful intentions, or to his announcement of a nova ratio vincendi, ut i.. isericordia et liberalitate nos muniamus (Att., IX, 7-c, 1).42 His letters in the Ciceronian collection (Att., IX, 6-a; 7-c; 16, 2), and the letters of his agents Balbus and Oppius (Att., VIII, 15-a; IX, 7-a; 13-a) must be taken as more sincere and more " republican " than they have frequently been judged. We must not re-interpret the plain words of our sources with modern diplomatic subtlety, or in the light of modern knowledge of an imperial development that no man could foresee in 49 B. C. When Caesar held his famous interview with Cicero at Formiae on 28 March 49, he really meant what he said: Veni igitur et age de pace (Att., IX, 18, 1). He wanted civil peace, dignitas and otium, and he did not demand dictatorial powers for himself as their price. The large-scale plans of reform (lex lulia municipalis), of colonization, of vast engineering projects, and of personal government, with the striving for excessive honors and semi-divine titles, are all products of the later Caesar, and cannot be safely appealed to as evidence for his purposes in 49, to say nothing of his purposes in 59 or 60.43 One may guess that had he been granted his second consulship for the year 48, he would not have attempted to revolutionize the state, but would have been content with a proconsulship thereafter to take vengeance on the Parthian for Carrhae. It was the stubbornness, suspiciousness, and vindictiveness of
41K. von Fritz, " The Mission of L. Caesar and Roscius," T. A. P. A., 1941, pp. 125 ff., refuses to take these proposals as offering a serious basis of peaceful compromise. ' As M. Treu, op. cit. (note 28).
'8

a conscious aiming, from his earliest youth, at the goal of statesmanly reform through the establishment of monarchy. Cicero, Phil., II, 116, says of Caesar multos annos regnare meditatus, but this, and similar attributions by opponents, need not be taken too seriously.

As is well known, Mommsen's brilliant portrait attributes to Caesar

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the Pompeian-Catonian opposition-Marcus Bibulus, Lucius Domitius, Metellus Scipio, Faustus Sulla, Lentulus Crus, and their amici-unwilling and temperamentally unable to believe in a moderate Caesar, a Caesar bonus civis-that drove matters to civil war, and brought to naught the peace efforts of Cicero and other reasonable men. Pompey himself, as Cicero expressly says (Victa est auctoritas mea non tarn a Pompeio [nam is movebatur] quam ab iis qui duce Pompeio freti peropportunam et rebus domesticis et cupiditatibus suis illius belli victoriam fore putabant, to A. Caecina, Fam., VI, 6, 6), and as Caesar implies (Ipse Pompeius, ab inimicis Caesaris incitatus, B. C., I, 4, 4), could probably have been brought to a second Luca agreement, which would by no means necessarily have involved a despotic or " unrepublican" rule by Caesar. There was room within the constitution for orderly reform, and it is a tragedy of world history that Rome could not use for orderly reform the services of her greatest son. Through civil war the way led to military dictatorship and totalitarianism. It was the way chosen by a stiff-necked aristocracy unable to forget and unable to learn. As Caesar truly said as he gazed at the desolation of Pharsalus: Hoc voluerunt; tantis rebus gestis Gaius Caesar condemnatus essem, nisi ab exercitu auxilium petissem (Suet., Caes., 30, 4). Perhaps after all, if we could really look into the wheels and levers of history, we should find that it was not Caesar, but Cato and Cleopatra, who founded the Roman empire!
JOHN H.
BERKELEY. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,

COLLINS.

ADDENDUM: After this article was submitted, there came into my hands an article by Karlhans Abel, " Zur Datierung von Casars Bellum Civile," Museum Helveticum, XV (1958), pp. 56-74, who argues sharply that the so-called "Legalitatstendenz " of the B. C. cannot be used as evidence of the date of composition. His entire article should be read in connection with the line of argument offered in section II above.