Department of Ancient Studies

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Browsing Department of Ancient Studies by browse.metadata.advisor "De Villiers, A."

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    Celeritas Caesariana : reputation, representation and reality
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-03) Danon, Bart; De Villiers, A.; Kotze, A.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Ancient Studies.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Julius Caesar had a demonstrable reputation for celeritas, to the extent that Cicero in one of his letters added the epithet Caesariana to celeritas when describing another general’s swiftness. This reputation can be further traced in various other ancient sources, such as Suetonius’ biography on Caesar and Velleius Paterculus’ history of Rome. Two potential bases for a Roman general’s reputation to possess a particular virtue can be identified, i.e. representation and reality. In this study, these two bases are examined in detail for Caesar’s reputation for celeritas. The first part of this study focusses on the representation aspect and constitutes a statistical frequency study of words that explicitly indicate swiftness of military movements. For the second part, in which the reality component is assessed, legionary marching speeds are reconstructed (using Monte Carlo calculations) based on information supplied in the ancient sources. The results are assessed both intratextually (comparing Romans and their enemies within texts) and intertextually (comparing various Roman generals described in different texts). For data on Caesar the focus is on the first seven books of the De Bello Gallico, while for the data on the other Roman generals Sallustius’ Iugurtha and a corpus of Cicero’s letters on his Cilician campaign are included. The representation study shows that Caesar in the De Bello Gallico significantly more frequently refers to his own celeritas, both as compared to his enemies and as compared to the generals described by the other authors. Moreover, from a methodological point of view, it is concluded that a statistical frequency study should be based on the contextual meanings of words and not just on word forms. The results of the reality study point less unequivocally to Caesar being demonstrably more swift as compared to the other generals; the reconstructed marching speeds for all generals cover more or less similar ranges. However, the estimated probabilities for the marching speeds suggest that their values are considerably lower as compared to the widely applied values Vegetius mentions in his Epitoma de rei militari. Considering the results of the two parts together, the hypothesis that Caesar’s reputation for celeritas was for a considerable part based on the emphasis on his own celeritas in the De Bello Gallico, can thus be validated.