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Julius Caesar’s Self-Created
Image and Its Dramatic Afterlife
i
Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception
ii
Julius Caesar’s Self-Created
Image and Its Dramatic Afterlife
Miryana Dimitrova
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY
iii
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
www.bloomsbury.com
BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Miryana Dimitrova has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
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iv
To my parents Radostina and Stefan, with love and gratitude
v
vi
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
vii
viii Contents
Epilogue 193
Notes 203
References 217
Index 233
Acknowledgements
This book is the revised version of my PhD thesis, completed under the
supervision of Professor Edith Hall. I am deeply grateful to Edith for believing
in me and for her inspirational energy and passion for research, which provided
me not only with consistent academic guidance but also with invaluable
moral support. I would also like to thank Mike Ingham for his enduring
interest in my work, his willingness to discuss my ideas at various stages, and
his comments and efficient copy-editing. I have benefited greatly from the
competence and patience of the editorial team at Bloomsbury. Last but not
least, special thanks to Lyubo, my tower of strength and comfort, whose love
and knowledge about tigers have changed my world.
ix
x
Introduction
Caesar Is Dead. Long Live Caesar!
Julius Caesar (100–44 BC ) played a decisive role in the shaping of the geo-
political and cultural map of Europe and has become an iconic figure
ubiquitously recognizable, revered and judged since his own lifetime to this
day. The intellectual brilliance of his commentaries on the Gallic and civil
wars, together with Cicero’s first-hand impressions, the rich historiographic
accounts of Cassius Dio, Appian and others, and, above all, the biographies of
Suetonius and Plutarch, have shaped Caesar’s multi-layered image of an
enigmatic and contradictory persona. Charismatic leader, devious politician,
womanizer, Caesar is also a symbol of autocracy and personifies the sea change
in Roman history: the transition from Republic to Empire. Popular in medieval
times as a personification of chivalry and prowess, he was the only Roman
included in the collection of perfect warriors, the ‘Nine Worthies’, alongside
the ancient Greek heroes Hector and Alexander the Great. With the rise of
Renaissance humanism, his life and career became the centre of political
discourses and evaluations of European systems of government in terms of
their Roman predecessors. The emergence of the term ‘Caesarism’, related to
Napoleonic power, bound Caesar to the nineteenth-century political taxonomy,
while in his monumental oeuvre Römische Geschichte (1854–56) Mommsen
hailed him as the most successful of all Romans.1 In the twentieth century,
notwithstanding the feeling of disillusionment with great leaders after the
Second World War, Caesar’s fame did not diminish; rather, it entered a new
phase of liberation from the rigidity of the binary model he had belonged
to for centuries – great statesman, founder of monarchy, on the one hand,
autocrat and annihilator of republican ideals on the other. Caesar entered the
twenty-first century wearing the crown of his military and literary achievements
1
2 Julius Caesar’s Self-Created Image and Its Dramatic Afterlife
but also enjoying universal popularity and appeal through a rich cultural
afterlife.
This vision of greatness, deep-seated in our Western culture, however, certainly
did not appear as stable or positive during Caesar’s lifetime as it is now, when seen
in hindsight and multiplied by centuries of reverence, debate and re-imagining.
Caesar was certainly one of the brightest stars of the late Republic but his life and
career were, ultimately, a constant struggle to reach the top and then to remain
there. It is within this context that his commentaries were composed. The
Caesarean corpus consists of seven books on the Gallic war (58–52 BC) and three
books on the civil war, covering the period between Caesar’s invasion of Italy and
ending, abruptly, with the beginning of the Alexandrian war in 47 BC.2 Caesar’s
associate, Aulus Hirtius, added Book 8 of the Gallic War describing Caesar’s
last year in Gaul (51 BC). Anticipating the beginning of the Civil War, the end of
Book 8 becomes an interesting external link that creates a seamless transition
between Caesar’s own narratives. Three additional accounts of the Alexandrian,
African and Spanish wars, were composed by Caesar’s ‘continuators’, or, in Cluett’s
words, ‘those men in Caesar’s army who took it upon themselves to complete
Caesar’s campaign narratives’ (2009: 192). Hirtius is seen as the one responsible
for the editing and preparing the final version of the Civil War narrative, as well
as some chapters of the Alexandrian War. The issue of the authorship of the latter
has been eloquently debated by Gaertner and Hausburg (2013), who convincingly
demonstrate that the various peculiarities pertinent to different sections of the text
could be seen as indicative of different authorships; although they accept Hirtius’s
input, they also suggest other possible contributors, including Caesar himself.3
Caesar’s prime motive for the creation of a meticulously self-authored
character, ferocious in his defence of the interests of Rome and his personal
dignity but at the same time compassionate and reasonable, was to justify his
actions during his extensive proconsulship in Gaul and, later, during the civil
war against Pompey. He may or may not have expected his accounts to outlast
him. Luckily for us, they did. Basking in their creator’s fame, the Gallic and the
civil war commentaries have become more than the signature trait of Caesar’s
character – through them, Caesar speaks with a voice that is still heard today.
Due to their comprehensible prose, they have long been part of the Latin
school curriculum across the Western world. The Gallic War also stands out as
an invaluable historical document, providing an almost exclusive account not
Introduction 3
only of Caesar’s Gallic campaign but also of the geography and topography of
the vast territories explored and conquered by the General.
Above all, the commentaries are a fusion of propaganda and self-promotion,
at the heart of which lies the re-creation of Caesar as a full-bodied literary
personality. In this book, I endeavour to demonstrate the significance of this
act of self-expression for the representations of Caesar in the English dramatic
canon. I argue that a range of texts – beginning with the plays of Shakespeare
and his contemporaries, through Handel’s baroque opera Giulio Cesare in
Egitto and concluding with Bernard Shaw’s late Victorian Caesar and Cleopatra
– epitomize a cultural reception of the personality of Julius Caesar, which
ultimately derives from Caesar’s forceful promotion of his own achievements.
The plays I discuss belong to a tradition of active reception of Caesar that,
although never waning since the dictator’s lifetime, was rekindled in the
Renaissance with the emergence of the Caesarean editio princeps in 1469. The
commentaries acquired a great importance as historical documents and a
literary achievement, and were integral to the early modern interest in Roman
culture, sparked by the re-discovery of a great number of classical texts in the
1500s that were circulated across Europe either in their original Latin or Greek,
or in translation. In England, the commentaries were published in London in
the original Latin (1585, 1590) but also in English by Arthur Golding, who
translated the Gallic War in 1565 (re-printed in 1590). Clement Edmunds’s
Observations upon Caesar’s Commentaries the First Five Bookes of Caesar’s
Commentaries, Setting Fourth the Practise of the Art Military, in the Time of the
Roman Empire was first published in 1600 and its subsequent editions included
additional books of the Gallic War and the Civil War. During the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries more translations became available, and a considerable
variety of the editions (selected books, compendia) were designed to appeal to
the British readers from all walks of life.
Caesar’s oeuvre contributed to its author’s huge popularity as a controversial,
yet admired role model. Caesar appeared in discourses on political and
ethical values; opinions on his actions, which effectively paved the way to
Augustus’s one-man rule and the birth of the Roman Empire that European
monarchs saw themselves heirs to, ranged from commendable to condemnable.
It is this fascination that lies at the heart of the myriad plays created across
Europe during that period. The large number of English plays attests to the
4 Julius Caesar’s Self-Created Image and Its Dramatic Afterlife
this end, I have organized my study around three different layers of reception:
the commentaries, Lucan and ancient historiography, and the dramatic works.
The next section introduces in more detail each of these links; it is followed by
a chapter outline and finally by a discussion of the scope of the study, its
framework and omissions.
The commentaries
A fluid genre, the ancient commentaries ranged from private papers to public
reports and incorporated the conventions of the historiographic tradition.
They were produced by individuals of different political and social rank and
could either remain as records of events or be edited and shaped in the form of
a historical narrative. Notably, among the prominent figures in the late Republic
who employed the medium were Sulla, whose writings are preserved in
fragments, and Cicero, who planned a history of the Catilinarian conspiracy to
be written on the basis of his commentaries.
As the only preserved work authored by Caesar and the only example of the
genre existing in its entirety, Caesar’s opus has somewhat become the norm,
especially in the popular understanding of the genre. The shared final aims of
the commentarii and the res gestae to leave a record of deeds for posterity have
provoked Cleary (1985: 347) to suggest that Caesar combined the two and
invented a new literary genre. Regardless of whether we take Caesar’s work to
be innovative in terms of merging genres, the fact that the commentaries blend
a claim for historical accuracy with a pronounced autobiographic aspect
renders them the perfect vessel for self-presentation of Caesar, who notably
combined remarkable leadership skills with those of a leading grammarian
and a gifted rhetorician. Cicero famously comments on Caesar’s consummate
style in his Brutus (Cicero, Brutus 75.262); Caesar’s work De Analogia, possibly
produced as a parallel piece to his polemic Anticato, was notable for its defence
of the Attic style that favoured the linguistic clarity and purity to which its
author adhered.4 Furthermore, Caesar composed a tragedy on Oedipus and a
poem called Iter; although these remained subject to private enjoyment and
criticism, they indicate Caesar’s interest in literary-dramatic experiments,
typical for the aristocratic circles.5
6 Julius Caesar’s Self-Created Image and Its Dramatic Afterlife
Caesar was familiar with the works of Xenophon, and his influence is
revealed particularly in the battle descriptions as well as in the use of the third
person, Caesar’s signature mode of expression. In a comprehensive overview of
the sources likely available during Caesar’s time, Gruen (2011: 141–7) discusses
the established Gallic stereotypes which, combines with acknowledgement
of the barbarian prowess found in the works of Polybius and Posidonius
might have been used by Caesar to enrich the descriptions of his first-hand
knowledge of the Gauls.
Certainly, the commentaries stand out as the strongest and only real evidence
of Caesar’s literary skills. Modern scholarship celebrates the lucidity of their
prose but also exposes Caesar’s use of language as integral to his propagandistic
strategies employed to advance his political and military career and to dispel
the controversies surrounding it. Caesar’s syntax is ‘more sophisticated than
anything written previously, apart from oratory’ (Hall 1998: 16); his language is
‘spare yet muscular’ (Brown 1999: 337); ‘in Caesar’s hands, stylistic nudity is
indeed a costume’ (Kraus 2009: 164). More apologetic treatments consider the
linguistic sophistication of Caesar’s statements as a cause of misinterpretation
by his contemporaries (Morgan 1997), while Bourne (1977: 422) sees Caesar’s
clarity as part of his Epicurean stance, since the Epicurean view holds that
literature should be ‘direct, clear, unadorned, and easily understood by all’.
The achievements of Caesar as an author have been evaluated in numerous
studies; notable are those by Adcock (1956) and Batstone and Damon (2006),
the latter analysing in detail the Civil War, taking into account characterization
and narrative structure. The connotations of Caesar’s propaganda and self-
representation are studied by Yavetz (1983) and Will (2008); Henderson (1996)
and the volume edited by Welch and Powell (1998) scrutinize Caesar’s ways of
using his writing skills to create a highly elaborate justification and validation
of his deeds.
Although showing no naiveté regarding the agenda of Caesar the
propagandist, more recent insightful contributions by Riggsby (2006), Grillo
(2012) and Peer (2015) reveal an important tendency to broaden the perspective
on the multi-faceted Caesarean phenomenon by establishing new links between
form, content and final aims, and putting a strong emphasis on Caesar’s artistic
and aesthetic decisions. They imply that, without disputing the commentaries’
function to justify and promote Caesar’s greatness, their value as literary works
Introduction 7
The plays
William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, performed during the year of the opening
of the Globe theatre (1599),6 has become the true ‘evil genius’ of historical
Gaius Caesar, a superb demonstration of the ability of drama not only to engage
with classical history but to determine new ways of perceiving the original.
It establishes a two-way reception of Caesar’s personality or, to paraphrase
Martindale’s remark that ‘since Virgil, no reading of Homer, at least in the West,
has been, or could be, wholly free of a vestigial Virgilian presence’ (1993: 8),
our appreciation of Caesar as a historical personality has been conditioned by
Shakespeare’s tragedy.7 Probably among the best examples of the assumptions
arising from the play and ingrained in popular ideas about Caesar are his deaf
right ear and, most importantly, the immortal ‘Et tu, Brute?’ (3.1.77). Caesar’s
utterance ‘you too, my son’ is noted by the ancient writers Suetonius and Dio
and, as Pelling (2009: 267) points out, the line had been used earlier in The True
Tragedy of Richard Duke of York in 1595. Nevertheless, the emblematic
exclamation of shock and despair is echoed in numerous other works and
exists in the popular imagination as both Shakespearean and Caesarean.
Just over a century after the first performance of Shakespeare’s tragedy,
Georg Frideric Handel created the baroque operatic masterpiece Giulio
Cesare in Egitto (1724), written for the Royal Academy of Music and premiered
at the Haymarket in 1724. The libretto, by Nicolo Haym, is based on earlier
versions by Francesco Bussani, who wrote his libretto for Antonio Sartorio’s
opera in 1677. It presents the events of Caesar’s arrival in Alexandria and his
struggle against the Egyptians and focuses, not surprisingly, on the love affair
with Cleopatra, celebrated in virtuoso arias and heroic action. In his extensive
analysis of the history of the two librettos, Monson (1985: 319) observes the
alterations introduced by Haym who aimed at expunging various comic
elements as well as toning down the role of Cornelia, Pompey’s widow, as the
love interest of Achilla and Ptolemy in order to focus more on the Caesar–
Cleopatra relationship. As a result, Handel’s rendition became not only one of
his most famous works in his time but has also sustained its fame ever since.8
Written in 1898, George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra received its
first, so-called ‘copyright’, performance at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle in
March 1899; it was published in 1901 in Three Plays for Puritans together with
Introduction 9
The Devil’s Disciple and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion. The first professional
production took place in Berlin in 1906, followed by a performance in New
York. The German premiere was produced by Max Reinhardt, who had the
ability to create the elaborate naturalist staging and set essential for the play. In
1907 Caesar and Cleopatra opened in Leeds, and in November it finally reached
its London audience at the Savoy theatre. The play was initially written with the
part of Caesar designated for Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, who performed
at the London premiere.9 Caesar and Cleopatra depicts Julius’s arrival in Egypt
in pursuit of Pompey, his military exploits, most notably the capture of the
Pharos lighthouse and, of course, his liaison with Cleopatra, which takes the
shape of a platonic tutor–disciple relationship with Caesar instructing Cleopatra,
characteristically younger than her historical counterpart, in the ways of
governing and authority.
The play is to a large extent a reaction to what Shaw saw as Shakespeare’s
failure to depict Caesar’s true greatness. In his preface to Three Plays for
Puritans, the dramatist writes: ‘Shakespear [sic], who knew human weakness
so well, never knew human strength of the Caesarian type; [. . .] it cost
Shakespear no pang to write Caesar down for the merely technical purpose of
writing Brutus up.’10 In a review of a production of Julius Caesar, Shaw opines:
‘It is impossible even for the most judicially minded critic to look without a
revulsion of indignant contempt at this travestying of a great man as a silly
braggart, whilst the pitiful gang of mischief-makers who destroyed him are
lauded as statesmen and patriots’ (quoted by Wisenthal 1988: 61).
Shaw’s intention is to reveal the true heroic Caesar, very much the
Mommsenite character embodying Roman greatness (Mommsen’s Römische
Geschichte was extensively consulted by Shaw). His Caesar is an intelligent
realist, amoral but nevertheless benevolent. Most importantly, since he is
often at the heart of comic situations and is capable of self-irony, the play
uses theatrical conventions of history and romantic plays in order to subvert
them.11
The works of Shakespeare, Handel and Shaw are by far the brightest stars in
a magnificent constellation of English Caesar-related plays; however, a more
comprehensive picture of Caesar’s dramatic afterlife would not be possible
without taking into account the remarkable number of plays created in the
early modern period. Although, with some exceptions, the subject matter is
10 Julius Caesar’s Self-Created Image and Its Dramatic Afterlife
about the assassination that has notably taken place off stage. Alexander, a
Scottish cultural émigré who joined King James I in England, was influenced
by the closet dramas of the Sydney circle,14 and possibly drew on material he
found in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which in turn might have been influenced
by Caesar’s Revenge. The issue of the interconnections between these three
plays will be considered in more detail throughout the book.
George Chapman’s Caesar and Pompey was written in c. 1605 but the idea
that the text was actually performed is called into question in Chapman’s own
dedication of the play’s quarto, first published in 1631: ‘this martial history [. . .]
never touched it at the stage’.15 The 1653 edition states that the play has been
performed at the ‘Black-fryers’. This claim, together with the existing stage
directions, has led to the assumption that the play might have been rehearsed
at the Blackfriars, but perhaps never performed; the possibility that it may have
been performed after 1631 has also been contested.16 The play is centred on the
civil war, its culmination at the battle at Pharsalus and the consequences of
Caesar’s victory, Pompey and Cato’s deaths, the latter arguably seen as moral
victory. The popularity of the subject and the text’s quick pace compensate for
the somewhat heavy wording and even Cato’s lengthy monologues do not
deprive the play of its performative potential, thus rendering plausibility to
Brown’s claim that although the play was probably never presented, ‘it was
written in the tradition of the commercial theatre and should be visualized on
its stage’ (1954: 469).17
Issues such as the lack of clearly defined tragic hero, the inconsistency of
the characters of both Pompey and Caesar and the rigidity of Cato’s character
have contributed to the play’s neglect; the text is often bypassed as an example
of the minor play of a playwright whose literary fame was earned exclusively
by his translations of Homer. The tragedy is accused of failing to transmit an
‘impression of an important and world-changing march of events’ (MacLure
1966: 152). There are critics, however, who have attempted to bring the play’s
importance back into the academic limelight by pointing out that it offers ‘fine
dramatic moments and raises compelling questions’ (O’Callaghan 1976: 319).
The False One (c. 1619–20?), published in the 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher
first folio but authored by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger,18 presents an
account of the events in Alexandria, closely following the historical sources,
including Lucan’s Civil War. In this play, belonging to the tradition of
12 Julius Caesar’s Self-Created Image and Its Dramatic Afterlife
standing but only a small pressure is necessary to cause their fall – the animal is
tricked to lean on the trunk and soon finds itself helpless on the ground. This
description, Womersley plausibly contends, is comparable to Decius Brutus’s
remark that Caesar ‘loves to hear/That unicorns may be betrayed with trees’
(Julius Caesar 2.1.204–5). Monson (1985: 313) notes that Bussani, whose libretto
was re-worked by Haym for Handel’s Giulio Cesare, mentioned the Alexandrian
War alongside the staple sources of Plutarch, Suetonius, Appian and Dio.
Regardless of its authorship, the Alexandrian War has been attached to Caesar’s
literary corpus and this presumes knowledge of Caesar’s writings on Bussani’s
part.
The playbill of the first professional production (the copyright performance)
of Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra in Newcastle included a list of historical
sources and the playwright’s advice for the critics to consult ‘Manetho and the
Egyptian monuments, Herodotus, Diodorus, Strabo (book 17), Plutarch,
Pomponius Mela, Pliny, Tacitus, Appian of Alexandria and, perhaps, Ammianus
Marcellinus’. In his discussion of the above passage, Couchman (1973: 53) notes
the absence of influential authors, such as Lucan or Suetonius and the placing
of Plutarch amongst the lesser known sources, as well as adding Caesar’s own
Gallic War in a second list of sources recommended to the ordinary spectators.
Bernard Shaw did not label his Caesar and Cleopatra a comedy: in the standard
edition of his works, he gave it the subtitle ‘a History’; in the Mander and
Mitchenson edition the subtitle appears as ‘a history in four acts’ and the day bill
reproduced in the edition advertises the play as ‘a chronicle play in five acts’.21
Shaw’s classification supports his playfully notorious claim that history is to a
large extent a product of artistic creation. A remark in the playbill suggests that
the above writers have consulted their own imagination and that the author has
done the same. The list of ancient sources is rightly seen as a joke by Couchman,
who accepts the widespread opinion that Mommsen’s history should be taken
as the only real source of Shaw’s work.22 Although Valency (1973: 172) describes
Shaw’s Caesar as ‘a monumental figure, redeemed from rigidity by his humor
and his humanity’, he is critical of the play’s lack of direct contact with classical
sources and concludes that ‘in comparison with its historical basis the situation
depicted in Caesar and Cleopatra seems simple, reasonable, and relatively
comprehensible. Perhaps this is its chief shortcoming as drama’ (1973: 181).23
However, such criticism seems to be missing the point of creative interpretation
14 Julius Caesar’s Self-Created Image and Its Dramatic Afterlife
In order to make sense of the implication of Caesar’s own works on the selected
plays despite the scarcity of direct textual borrowings, in this study I pay special
attention to the important intermediators: the ancient historiographers and
Lucan. The number and popularity of accounts of Caesar’s life and times reflect
the magnitude of the dictator’s fame and the majority of them became available
in print in the fifteenth century, together with Caesar’s own works. Throughout
the book, for the sake of convenience and simplification, I have adopted a
somewhat generic term ‘ancient historiographers’ but it is important to bear in
mind their heterogeneity: the immediate reception, as it were, by Caesar’s
anonymous continuators is evident in the Alexandrian War, African War and
Spanish War; the biographies of Suetonius and Plutarch are structured around
the sensational in the former and the moral evaluation in the latter; Velleius
Paterculus and Florus have written concise compendia while Appian and
Cassius Dio’s histories of the civil wars offer a detailed account of Caesar’s role
in the big picture of late Republican affairs. Many of these works drew on the
now lost accounts of Livy and Pollio, the latter a contemporary and associate
of Caesar, whereas the extant rich correspondence, speeches and writings of
Cicero are also an invaluable source that documents his very personal attitude
towards Caesar as an individual and as a political figure. Consulted to different
degrees but available as a kaleidoscope of impressions, these texts served as
groundwork of the plays and are an apt demonstration of drama’s receptiveness
towards the classical tradition.
Ancient historiography is joined by another hugely influential work and a
key source of inspiration for dramatists – Lucan’s historical epic Civil War. By
virtue of its genre, the poem acts as an interface between history and fiction,
Introduction 15
and the author’s emotionally charged response to Caesar’s victories and his
legacy determines its special place in the study of the reception of Caesar;
therefore, it deserves a more detailed look in this Introduction.
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (AD 39–65), the nephew of Seneca the Younger,
took an active part in social and political life during the reign of Nero who
appointed him to the posts of augur and quaestor. Lucan was awarded the
prize for poetry in the first Neronia in AD 60 but when, possibly due to artistic
jealousy, Nero banned the performance of Lucan’s works, the young poet took
part in the famous Pisonian conspiracy against the emperor. Upon the
discovery of the plot, he was forced to commit suicide, a fate that his uncle also
met in the same year.24
Although Lucan authored numerous works, his extant oeuvre consists
exclusively of the ten books of the Civil War. The poem includes the crossing of
the Rubicon, the Spanish campaign, the siege of Massillia, Caesar’s victory at
Pharsalus, and Pompey’s death in Egypt. Book 10 ends unfinished, Lucan leaving
Caesar at the beginning of the Alexandrian War, fighting against numerous
Egyptian troops, his future yet undecided.25
The Caesarean legacy, fully developed in its Augustan offshoot and resonating
in the Julio-Claudian dynasty, conditioned Lucan’s own life. Painfully aware of
this, Lucan accordingly extends his opposition to the Caesarean bias beyond
the limits of the narrative and sets his poem as a weapon against the prevailing
historical actuality – a literary desire, in Leigh’s words: ‘to induce his readers
to deny the truths of historical time’ (1997: 27).
The poem is saturated with a feeling of odium towards the civil war and
Lucan channels this emotional charge into a narrative of enormous scale, a
marked obsession with the irrational and the twisted, which reinforces the
catastrophic dimensions of the conflict. Despite his alleged Republican stance
and hatred for the authoritarian regime that he takes Caesar to symbolize, the
poet is nevertheless possessed by a perceivable, almost masochistic, urge to
depict his character as full of superhuman energy and ambition. This has led
commentators to see Caesar as ‘the emotional and narrative focus of the poem,
an attractive, if fearful, mixture of defiance and ruthlessness, epic grandeur and
impious heroism’ (Schiesaro 2003: 124), as the true muse of Lucan (Johnson
1987: 118). Even those who do not readily endorse Caesar as the main character
accept as evident ‘Lucan’s admiration for his skill, swiftness, and general
16 Julius Caesar’s Self-Created Image and Its Dramatic Afterlife
physical bearing’ (Holliday 1969: 14). Ahl (1976: 190) also agrees that although
Lucan loathed the regime brought by Caesar’s victory in the civil war, he could
not deny the General’s clemency and phenomenal military skill.
Not only does Caesar emerge as the driving force of Lucan’s poetics but the
two are engaged in a somewhat symbiotic relationship in relation to their fame.
While it is clear that Caesar and the civil war are an enduring subject that
guaranteed the interest in Lucan (thus Walde: ‘Lucan’s fame persists because he
made Caesar his principal character’ (2006: 47)), in his poetic self-confidence,
Lucan claims the ability to determine how the image of Caesar is perceived in
posterity.
Caesar has conditioned the historical reality of Lucan and the poet, in his
own aristeia, attempts to condition the representation of Caesar.26 To this end,
he actively and purposefully implicates his persona within the poem, using
apostrophic feats and establishing his work as a rival interpretation of the
events that historical Caesar describes. In his attempt to alter Caesarean reality
and to gag the demonic voice of history, at a moment when the presence of
the narrator is crucial, the battle at Pharsalus, Lucan refuses to describe the
atrocities of the war. This, as Johnson (1987: 98) remarks, is almost as if Homer
refused to describe the duel between Hector and Achilles. Masters (1992: 9)
describes Lucan’s strategy: ‘In the struggle between Caesar and Pompey, then,
lies the paradigm of Lucan’s narrative technique: the conflict between the will
to tell the story and the horror which shies from telling it.’ This poetic self-
denial is an alternative way to stop the action, which at the same time insists on
the demiurge powers of the poet, his ability to create certain events and to
deny others, a power used by Lucan to oppose Caesar’s control of history,
claimed by the commentaries.
In Book 9, Lucan breaks his silence and engages with Caesar apostrophically.
Caesar is transported to the remains of Troy, where ‘even the ruins suffered
oblivion’ (9.969) – in what seems almost like a comic relief episode, a rather
enigmatic, ghostly guide tells Caesar not to disturb the shade of Hector – the
General has stepped on his grave by accident. The eerie presence of the guide
is rightly suggested to be none other than the poet, who has been following
Caesar’s victorious advance like a shadow.27 Indeed, it is on the ancient
battlefield of Troy, where Lucan, with his poetic talent, challenges the power of
the dictator and god-to-be:
Introduction 17
O how sacred and immense the task of bards! You snatch everything
From death and to mortals you give immortality.
Caesar, do not be touched by envy of their sacred fame;
[. . .]
The future ages will read me and you; our Pharsalia
Shall live and we shall be condemned to darkness by no era.
(9.980–86)
The importance of this episode lies in the blurring of the borders between
reality and fiction, the sublimation of the voices of narrator and poet, and the
resulting unification of epic and historical Caesar. Finally, there ensues a
sublimation of Lucan and Caesar as almost transcendental beings engaged in
battle for poetic and historical truth. This is made more poignant by the
manner Lucan chose to extend his resistance beyond the limits of the narrative:
forced to commit suicide, as the blood ran out of his opened veins, Lucan
recited lines from the Civil War (Suetonius Life of Lucan; Tacitus Annals 15.70).
His death is an ample demonstration of both his poetic self-esteem and desire
to transform the last moments of his life into a memorable performance, and
to add substance to his work by connecting it to a real battle against Caesarean
legacy.
Moreover, it is notable that the poem ends precisely at the same point as
Caesar’s Civil War and it seems plausible to suspect intentional structuring of
the work as a generic and stylistic antipode to Caesar’s opus. Caesar’s
commentaries should be accepted as a source for Lucan’s poem alongside the
accounts of Livy and Assinius Pollio28 and claims that Lucan’s work is a
deliberate counterpoise to Caesar’s opus are expressed by Feeney (1993: 274)
and Masters (1992), among others. Masters points out that in his account on
Lucan, Vacca does not mention that Lucan left his poem unfinished but rather
that the poem did not receive its final revision (1992: 222); Vacca’s claim that
three books were published during Lucan’s lifetime is seen by Masters to follow
traditional biographies of poets and many elements may be invented to fit the
model lives of Virgil (reciting three books of the Aeneid) and Ovid (incurring
the anger of the emperor) (1992: 220–1). Therefore, he concludes that the
poem was designed to have no end: ‘for a poem whose premise is the
impossibility of its resolution, the only possible ending is one which cuts us off
at that moment where nothing is resolved’ (1992: 253). Leigh (1997: 21)
18 Julius Caesar’s Self-Created Image and Its Dramatic Afterlife
supports this hypothesis by observing that ‘the narrative is studded with the
emotional refusal of an ending’.29
The reaction against Caesarean historical supremacy emerges as the guiding
principle of the poet’s creative process; consequently, the work becomes the ‘alter
ego’ of the commentaries and although Lucan should not be accepted as historical
source at its face value, his poem stands out as a crucial phase of the development
of Caesar’s character in historiography. For example, Appian (Civil Wars 2.75)
is most likely influenced by Lucan in his depiction of Caesar ordering the
destruction of his camp palisade at Pharsalus, in order to compel the soldiers
to rush towards the enemy lines with no camp defences to retreat back to. Caesar
himself does not mention such anti-strategic order.30 Lintott (1971: 488)
articulates the importance of Lucan’s poem by defining it as a work that ‘represents
an intermediate stage between the contemporary account by Caesar of his defeat
of the Pompeians and the later versions in Plutarch, Appian and Cassius Dio’. The
crossing of the Rubicon scene, the episode in which Caesar attempts to cross the
Adriatic on his own, during a storm, in order to transport his troops delayed in
Italy, the mutiny of Caesar’s soldiers, and the encounter between Caesar and
Cleopatra are presented by ancient historians and certain accounts bear more
similarities to Lucan than others. By the time it reaches Cassius Dio, Appian,
Plutarch and Suetonius, the image of Julius Caesar is as rich in allusions to the
terrifyingly charismatic General who sets in motion the epic Civil War.
Both the form and content of Lucan’s poem had immense value for the
subsequent theatrical representations of Caesar, particularly in the Elizabethan
and Jacobean theatre, which was also influenced by Seneca’s language and
style. Some scholars have in fact argued for the pre-eminence of Lucan over
Seneca. Thomson (1952: 231) states that ‘much of Elizabethan poetry that is
credited to Seneca should be credited to Lucan’ and Blissett (1956: 556–7)
accentuates the dramatic potential of the Civil War: ‘though Seneca wrote
drama and Lucan epic, both are writers of “tragedy” in the mediaeval sense’.31
Noting the increase in editions and translations of the poem towards the last
decades of the sixteenth century, in his landmark study, Paleit (2013: 10) calls
the period between 1580 and 1650 the ‘age of Lucan’. His poem was a not only
a source for the playwrights, but also provided food for thought for the
intellectuals with its republican or indeed, nihilistic, stance, and appealed to
the general reader with its sensational depictions of violence.
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Language: English
WILLIAM HAZLITT
EDITED BY A. R. WALLER
AND ARNOLD GLOVER
❦
1906
LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.
29 AND 30 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
TO THE MEMORY OF
A. G.
E. H. G.
A. R. W.
PREFACE
A. R. Waller.