Beyond the Boundaries of Fantasia: An ancient imagining of the future of leadership

Everybody wants to join Caesar (1:30)

It is one thing to conquer enemies; it is another to attract enemies to your side. Allegiance is particularly tricky during civil war: if a Roman army slaughters another Roman army, then the victor wins by killing Roman soldiers.

During his account of the war against Pompey (Bellum Civile), Caesar is careful to present himself not only as an enemy (and conqueror) of Pompey (as we have seen in an earlier module), but also as a friend to Rome at large. Pompey is a pretender and his supporters are merely in error; real Romans side with Caesar. The narrator suggests that the Romans people themselves agree with this position by telling tale after tale of cities spontaneously abandoning Pompey and defecting to Caesar as his army approaches.

Listening for Leadership

The first self-movement to Caesar’s side is actually the tribunes’ (1.5.5), who flee to an explicitly inactive Caesar (is tempore erat Ravennae expectabatque suis lenissimis postulates response). The first defection of a population to Caesar’s side (1.13.4-5) includes not only Auximian citizens, but also Lucius Pupius, the chief centurion, whom the people have captured and led to Caesar: thus the Auximians are not only serving their own interests, but have actually allied themselves with Caesar’s, bringing to Caesar (without his bidding) a captive of military interest to him, and of no interest to the Auximians except insofar as they are (now through their own agency) aligned with Caesar. The next defection (1.20) opens with the townspeople of Corfinium capturing Domitius and offering to deliver the town to Caesar as soon as they hear of Domitius’ intended flight: thus their choice to go to Caesar’s side explicitly rejects, and prevents, another’s choice to run away: and the incident quickly (1.21-23) turns into another instance of Caesar’s clementia. The next major defection (1.60) is actually a large cluster of defections (Caesar says ‘magna celeriter commutatio rerum’), with five great states joined to Caesar’s friendship (magnis quinque civitatibus ad amicitiam adiunctis); the next chapter begins with the psychological effect of these defections on the enemy (quibus rebus perterritis animis adversariorum) and turns on the nomen atque imperium of the absent Pompey moving the barbarians (Caesar’s nomen does not move them, because his name is unknown (Caesaris autem erat in barbaris nomen obscurius)). (Whether or not this is historically plausible, it is significant that Caesar-narrator contrasts the barbarian’s response to Pompey’s name, not with their non-response to Caesar’s name, but with their non-response to Caesar’s non-name – as if only the ‘obscurity’ of Caesar’s name among the barbarians could account for their peculiar fear of Pompey.) Many further examples could be adduced, but a related though not identical instance is more instructive: for while these incidents are ‘defections of Pompeians to Caesar’ (and hence still strictly characterizable as rex-promoting, even if the rex-promoter is not the potential rex himself, but rather the defectors), the fraternizing of the Pompeian and Caesarian camps at Ilerda (1.74) is really an instance of ‘defection of both Pompeians to a common Roman(=Caesarian) unity’. This presentation of unity implicitly characterizes ‘Roman unity’ as anti-Pompeian (and therefore Caesarian) when the Pompeian commanders break the armies apart (1.75), and is referred explicitly to Caesar (1.74.7) when his consilium is approved by the whole group (magnumque fructum suae pristinae lenitatis omnium iudicio Caesar ferebat, cosiliumque eius a cunctis probabatur). Thus ‘defection from partisanship to Roman unity’ is also ‘approval of Caesar’, and loyalty to the Pompeian cause generates disunity among the Roman people – quite literally, when Petreius forces his men to swear loyalty to Pompey (1.76). Caesar’s cause is therefore the same as the cause of the cunctis, so that defections to Caesar are really nothing more than returns to the res publica, with Pompeian faction removed. This is another way of saying that the author identifies Caesar with the republic, and that spontaneous Caesar-seekers are just republic-seekers, as the opening passages of the BC first begin to suggest.

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