Cicero’s Caesarian Histories
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Christopher S. van den Berg
Chris van den Berg is Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank ‘55 Professor of Classical Studies at Amherst College and Chair of Classics. His first book was a study of Tacitus’Dialogus de Oratoribus (CUP 2014), his second a study of Cicero’sBrutus (CUP 2021). He is currently writing a book on visual and material culture in Greco-Roman rhetoric and literary criticism. The project has been funded by an ACLS Burkhardt Residential Fellowship at Princeton and a Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. Other projects include less-formal work on modern rhetoric, especially right-wing extremism in American and European political discourse.
Abstract
This chapter approaches Cicero’s response to Caesarian aesthetics by considering Cicero’s ideas about Caesar’s historiography. It considers Cicero’s own efforts at writing commentarii and his views on historiography at Cic. Att. 2.1. There Cicero recounts his inability to have his accomplishments memorialized by getting his commentarii reworked for general consumption. That account of Cicero’s historiography contextualizes the tendentious nature of his portrayal of Caesar in the Brutus (itself a historia that relies on commentarii, according to Cicero).
Abstract
This chapter approaches Cicero’s response to Caesarian aesthetics by considering Cicero’s ideas about Caesar’s historiography. It considers Cicero’s own efforts at writing commentarii and his views on historiography at Cic. Att. 2.1. There Cicero recounts his inability to have his accomplishments memorialized by getting his commentarii reworked for general consumption. That account of Cicero’s historiography contextualizes the tendentious nature of his portrayal of Caesar in the Brutus (itself a historia that relies on commentarii, according to Cicero).
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Dedication V
- Preface V
- Acknowledgements
- Contents XV
- Christina S. Kraus: Publications to Date XVII
- Polybius and Livy’s Sentence Structure 1
- Narrative Inconsistencies and Ethical Constructions in Livy Book 31 29
- “I Want to Be Great Too – but How?” Alexander, Augustus, and Livy 43
- There and Back Again: Structure and Crossing in Livy’s Third Decade 61
- Livy on the Tiber Island: Writing Rome a Solo 77
- Recapturing the Capitol: Yet More Livian Refoundations 93
- Caesar’s Shrinking Lexicon 109
- On Endings and Beginnings in Caesar’s Bellum civile 125
- Cicero’s Caesarian Histories 143
- Tacfarinine Disorder: Sallustian and Livian Color at Tacitus, Annals 3.20–1 157
- Shadows of History: Sallustian Perspectives on Book 2 of Augustine’s Confessions 177
- Camilla and the Guys 197
- How Is Maecenas Like a Syllogism? Seneca on Style in the Moral Epistles 215
- The divergent epistolary cultures of greece and rome 400 BCE–400 CE 231
- The clades variana: literary commemoration of a roman military disaster 253
- Tacitus for courtiers 265
- Sex and empire: caesar and henry higgins 277
- The silence of the frogs: an experiment with paratragedy 293
- List of Contributors 293
- General Index
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Dedication V
- Preface V
- Acknowledgements
- Contents XV
- Christina S. Kraus: Publications to Date XVII
- Polybius and Livy’s Sentence Structure 1
- Narrative Inconsistencies and Ethical Constructions in Livy Book 31 29
- “I Want to Be Great Too – but How?” Alexander, Augustus, and Livy 43
- There and Back Again: Structure and Crossing in Livy’s Third Decade 61
- Livy on the Tiber Island: Writing Rome a Solo 77
- Recapturing the Capitol: Yet More Livian Refoundations 93
- Caesar’s Shrinking Lexicon 109
- On Endings and Beginnings in Caesar’s Bellum civile 125
- Cicero’s Caesarian Histories 143
- Tacfarinine Disorder: Sallustian and Livian Color at Tacitus, Annals 3.20–1 157
- Shadows of History: Sallustian Perspectives on Book 2 of Augustine’s Confessions 177
- Camilla and the Guys 197
- How Is Maecenas Like a Syllogism? Seneca on Style in the Moral Epistles 215
- The divergent epistolary cultures of greece and rome 400 BCE–400 CE 231
- The clades variana: literary commemoration of a roman military disaster 253
- Tacitus for courtiers 265
- Sex and empire: caesar and henry higgins 277
- The silence of the frogs: an experiment with paratragedy 293
- List of Contributors 293
- General Index
