Pompey does not accept defeat at Pharsalus. Rather, in an effort to gain support from powers beyond Rome, he makes for Egypt and, unbeknownst to him, his decapitation. As narrated in Lucan'sBellum ciuile, after deliberating in Cilicia with his senatorial advisers (8.259–455), Pompey stops at the island of Cyprus (8.456–9):tum Cilicum liquere solum Cyproque citatasimmisere rates, nullas cui praetulit arasundae diua memor Paphiae, si numina nascicredimus aut quemquam fas est coepisse deorum.Then they left the Cilician soil and steered their vessels (...) in haste for Cyprus—Cyprus which the goddess, mindful of Paphian waves, prefers to any of her shrines (if we believe that deities have birth, or if it is lawful to hold that any of the gods had a beginning).In Lucan, Pompey's trip to Cyprus is brief and includes a somewhat curious reference to Venus (diua), her origins (undae … Paphiae) and the birth of the gods. Other authors also record Pompey's visit to Cyprus, although the details vary. Some, including Julius Caesar, set his deliberations not in Cilicia but on Cyprus itself (Caes.BCiu.3.102.3.1–8.1; cf. Plut.Vit. Pomp. 77.1.1–2.1). Others, it seems, provide few if any details of Pompey at the island, for example the scanty evidence from Livy,Per. 112.1–10. (shrink)

InFam.13.1 Cicero, visiting Athens en route to Cilicia in the summer of 51b.c., writes to C. Memmius L.f., praetor in 58 but by the time of Cicero's communication an exile in Athens after the shambolic consular elections for 53; Memmius was absent from Athens in Mytilene, hence the need for Cicero to write to him. This letter, along withAtt.5.11.6 and 19.3, is our focus in the argument that follows, but, to summarize the situation in the very broadest terms, Cicero's concern (...) in it is with Memmius’ intentions regarding a plot of land in Athens occupied by a house of Epicurus, and with the objections to Memmius’ plans that had been raised with Cicero by the scholarch of the Epicurean community in Athens, Patro. (shrink)

In his digression on the Gauls in Book 6 of theGallic War, Caesar includes a portrait of the Druids (BGall.6.13.3sed de his duobus generibus[sc. quae aliquo sunt numero atque honore]alterum estdruidum) and their public roles first and foremost in religious and legal affairs (6.13.4–5illirebus diuinisintersunt,sacrificiapublica ac priuata procurant,religionesinterpretantur … fere de omnibuscontrouersiispublicis priuatisque constituunt), not forgetting their philosophical doctrine (6.14.6multa …disputantet iuuentuti tradunt). He emphasizes the strictly oral form their teaching takes (6.14.4), how ‘they do not deem it appropriate to (...) commit it [their learning] to writing even though in almost everything else, in public and private affairs, they resort to Greek writing (neque fas esse existimantea litteris mandare, cum in reliquis fere rebus, publicis priuatisque rationibus Graecis litteris utantur)’, about the reasons for which he then proceeds to speculate (6.14.4):idmihiduabus de causis instituisseuidentur, quod neque in uulgum disciplinam efferri uelint neque eos qui discunt litteris confisos minus memoriae studere: quodfere plerisque accidit, ut praesidio litterarum diligentiam in perdiscendo ac memoriam remittant.This [sc. practice] they seem to me to have instituted for two reasons: they do not wish either that their teaching be revealed to the general public or that those who are learning it, having become reliant on writing, give less attention to memorization; and it does, as a rule, happen to many that, because of the prop offered by writing, they relax their diligence in thoroughly committing things to memory. (shrink)

After long neglect, in English-language scholarship at least, the question of how Julius Caesar wrote and disseminated hisGallic War—as a single work? in multi-year chunks? year by year?—was revived by T.P. Wiseman in 1998, who argued anew for serial composition. This paper endeavours to provide further evidence for that conclusion by examining how Caesar depicts the non-Roman peoples he fights. Caesar's ethnographic passages, and their authorship, have been a point of contention among German scholars for over a century, but reading (...) them and the rest of the text with eyes unclouded by the exhausted debate about possible interpolation reveals details that bear upon wider questions of composition. In these passages Caesar devised an ethnographic framework in order to rank against one another the levels of threat posed by different barbarian peoples, downplaying the relative ferocity of the Gauls in contrast to other groups in an effort to magnify the peril the others posed to Rome and the glory to be obtained from their defeat. This ethnographic framework is significant for understanding Caesar's method both because it provides insight into Caesar's reasons for including the ethnographic passages and because it implies that theGallic Warwas composed in, at a minimum, four stages: Books 1–2, where the framework is first developed and used, by 56b.c.; Books 3–4 and 5–6, where it is elaborated and extended, by 54 and 52b.c.respectively; and finally Book 7, after 52b.c., when Caesar, in recounting the campaign against Vercingetorix, was forced to abandon and contradict the ethnographic framework in a fashion that suggests that the earlier books were already in circulation, preventing him from adjusting them to the new circumstances of the campaign of that year. (shrink)