Transforming, Dismantling, and Reconstructing a Narrative: the case of Marcus Caelius in the Bellum Civile.

In Bellum Civile 3.20-22, Caesar interrupts his commentary on the military action in Epirus and Greece against Pompey’s army and turns to the policy of the praetor M. Caelius Rufus and its outcome in Rome and Italy. In this passage, Caesar picks up on his earlier discussion of Rome’s internal policies (BC 3.1.1-5) and stresses not only Caelius’s opposition to his decisions but also the disturbances that he tries to stir up in Italy. Reading these chapters with the methods of narratological and rhetorical analysis, and paying attention to Caesar’s characterization of Caelius, I suggest that Caesar aims to depict Caelius as an agitator who failed, ultimately, to rise to the level of a conspirator. Caesar does this by drawing on the repository of Ciceronian literature on conspiracy and its codes and topoi about the nature of conspiracy that undoubtedly continued to haunt the minds of his readers. By first building and then destroying this topos-code, I argue, Caesar’s narrative transforms a dangerous attempt to raise up his enemies in Rome and in Italy into nothing less than evidence of unity of the republic under his successful leadership.