SOURCE: “The Camp of Pompey: Strategy of Representation in Caesar's Bellum Ciuile,” in Classical Journal, Vol. 95, No. 3, February-March, 2000, pp. 239-56.

In the following essay, Rossi contends that Caesar used established rhetorical models and types as a way of leading his readers towards the conclusions he wished them to reach.

Asinius' Pollio damaging judgment on the historical inaccuracy of Caesar's Commentarii¹ has for a long time led many scholars to dismiss Caesar's historical works as an almost free-composed historical fiction, where events are, at best, systematically distorted, or even fabricated altogether.² It is only in recent years that scholars have begun a slow process of rehabilitation. On the one hand, they have called attention to the limited presence of large scale historical falsification in the Commentarii; and on the other, they have started to highlight the sophisticated nature of the narrative structure,³ hidden behind a prose that Cicero had...