Criticism of the Continuators extends beyond their infelicities of style to include the lack of nuance, subtlety and originality in their portrayal of Caesar’s leadership and his cause. In this analysis, the authors of the African and Spanish Wars, who give no indication that they possess any access to Caesar’s inner councils or any high military rank, come off as little more than ‘‘adjutant acolytes in the secretariat’’ (Henderson 1996: 274). Even Hirtius, who served as praetor in 46 BC, governor of Transalpine Gaul in 45 BC, and had been Caesar’s envoy to Pompey in 50 BC, completes the Gallic War as part of his ‘‘mimetic project’’ in his role as ‘‘Caesar’s lieutenant and amanuensis’’ (Henderson 1996: 271-2). Such assessments correctly emphasize both the Continuators’ place in the hierarchy of Caesar’s command and their unwavering conviction in both his generalship and the legitimacy of the values he claimed to be fighting to defend. However, they fail to appreciate the importance of the foundation of the Continuators’ loyalty to Caesar, and its consequences for understanding the ways in which the Continuators seek to affirm and promote Caesar’s message. Ultimately, the political relationship between the Continuators and Caesar is more complex than the simple and obvious assertion that they were followers of Caesar might suggest.
The Continuators were soldiers. Although he eventually serves Caesar in many capacities, both political and military, Hirtius first appears as Caesar’s legate in Gaul in 54 BC. The other Continuators never indicate that they performed any role or held any office other than giving loyal service in Caesar’s army. Indeed, if their emphasis on the long service to Caesar of their fellow soldiers is any indication, they spent many years under Caesar’s command { African War 45). The Continuators were therefore products of the unique culture of the Roman legion on long service abroad, which one Roman historian has referred to as a distinct ‘‘society’’ with its own customs {MacMullen 1984). These include detachment from the daily life and politics of Rome, and strong if not total identification with both their military commander and the minutiae of camp life. In the case of the Continuators, this meant repeated exposure to Caesar’s rhetoric justifying his campaigns and his cause without any corresponding or counterbalancing exposure to the self-presentation of Caesar’s adversaries. Indeed, the unilateral stream of defections to Caesar from his enemies suggests that while the appeal of Caesar’s cause and message extend beyond his own army, that of his opponents enjoys no wider purchase. The Continuators’ isolation from any larger rhetorical context thus combines with the daily exigencies of life on campaign to produce a unique window onto Caesar’s reception by his subordinates, and how they not only convey but refashion his message.
That reception was not wholly positive, in spite of the image of the Continuators as unthinking sycophants that many commentators have transmitted. The Continuators record a number of occasions on which Caesar’s troops call into question not only his tactical judgment, but also his strategic foresight and his ability to meet his troops’ needs {Alexandrian War 7, African War 3, 16, 24). At other times, Caesar is unable to restrain his troops’ zeal, and yields to their thirst for battle, thus suggesting that he does not always retain full control of his army {Alexandrian War 22, African War 54). These episodes demonstrate that Caesar’s troops possess powers of critical judgment independent of their commander, and also show the raw power of their numbers to which Caesar must on occasion cede, particularly when their immediate needs are pressing. Similarly, Hirtius places more emphasis on legates in Book 8 than occurs throughout the rest of the Gallic War {other than Book 3), thereby reminding the reader that behind Caesar’s brilliant command stand numerous loyal functionaries. The overall effect of such passages does not ultimately detract from Caesar’s talents as a general. If anything, it emphasizes Caesar’s unique role as the indispensable visionary of the sometimes fractious and short-sighted troops under his command, as well as his tolerance and empathy as a leader. It does so, however, in a way that retains for the Continuators and their peers a role in Caesar’s campaigns that Caesar cannot take for granted.
More often, of course, the Continuators have nothing but praise for Caesar’s genius and legitimacy as a leader. They articulate this praise on multiple narrative levels. First, their interest in the daily details of campaigning provides an ideal canvas on which to portray Caesar’s tactical genius, and his omniscience and swiftness as a decision-maker in particular. This focus on the mundane also showcases the intimacy and rapport Caesar has with his army - not a distant, remote leader, but one who can address his troops’ fears by abandoning his role as general and training them ut lanista tirones gladiatores condocofacere {African War 71). At the same time, the Continuators’ immersion in the rhetoric of Caesar’s camp and their uncritical acceptance of his cause result in stark juxtapositions between the legitimacy of Caesar’s fight on behalf of the dignity of the Roman people and the Roman state and the behavior of his opponents, who are either despicable barbarians, or Romans such as Scipio and Gnaeus Pompey all the more despicable for acting like barbarians and thereby betraying their proud Roman heritage {Cluett 2003: 123-4). In addition, the Continuators even manage to praise Caesar for qualities about which he himself remains restrained or silent, such as his clementia, his felicitas, and his performance of his religious duties {Weinstock 1971: 26). In so doing, they not only replay but amplify important aspects of Caesar’s self-presentation, providing in the process further evidence of their independent perspectives.
On other occasions, the Continuators elect to share Caesar’s silence on certain sensitive topics. Most famously, the Alexandrian War makes no mention of Caesar’s relationship with Cleopatra, or of the birth of Caesarion, thus preserving the silence Caesar initiated in Book 3 of the Civil War. In this regard at least, it genuinely represents a continuation of Caesar’s own narrative. More broadly, however, the Continuators never use the term bellum civile {‘civil war’) to refer either to a given battle or to the overall campaign in which Caesar is engaged. Indeed, even the use of the terms ‘Caesarians’ and ‘Pompeians’ to refer to Caesar’s and Pompey’s followers is confined to descriptions of the campaign against Pompey’s sons in Spain. This silence about the real nature of the war being fought both comports with Caesar’s own preferred claim that he was fighting on behalf of his rights and for the Roman state and its people against a faction in the Senate, and reflects a deep-seated Roman discomfort about civil war that extends beyond Caesar’s partisan perspective and the Continuators’ judicious reticence. It is nonetheless striking, given both the presence of Roman opponents at every turn and the references throughout the Continuators to the continued unsettled conditions at Rome and in the empire at large {Cluett 2003: 127). However parochial and mundane the central concerns of their narratives may be, the Continuators do make clear that they were not ignorant of the larger political context of the years 48-45 BC.
Just as silence about civil war suggests an underlying literary continuity between the Continuators’ work and that of Caesar, so that silence provides the key to understanding the Continuators’ political relationship with Caesar. That relationship was predicated upon physical, psychological, and temporal distance from Rome, combined with long-term exposure to Caesar’s command and Caesar’s rhetoric in the insular culture of an army on campaign abroad. Such conditions enabled the Continuators to present each individual campaign as one more campaign of imperial conquest undertaken by Caesar on behalf of the Roman people, just as Caesar himself would ultimately celebrate individual triumphs over Egypt, Africa, and Spain. They also enabled the Continuators to associate Caesar’s person with the Roman people for whom he claimed to be fighting, without any countervailing institutional constraints such as the Senate or a legitimate political opposition. Moreover, they allowed the Continuators to demonize their Roman military opponents, equating them morally and politically with the numerous foreign foes they faced in each provincial setting. Such demonization only further idealized Caesar, whose gentleness and clemency represented real, as opposed to barbarized, Roman values. The result is a portrait of Caesar grounded in a combination of propaganda and direct experience, in which the rupture of civil war is effaced and the continuity of imperial conquest upheld, even as the reality of civil war insists on asserting itself every time Roman faces Roman on the battlefield. In providing such an account, the Continuators demonstrated their loyalty to Caesar and their understanding of his preferred interpretation of events; but they also reflected and refracted the conditions under which they lived and fought. To the extent that they may be justly accused of parroting Caesar’s propaganda, their mimesis must be understood within the context of their lives. The political and social value of the Continuators’ work is therefore considerable; whether their portrayal of events has any historical merit is another question entirely.
World History
