Miryana Dimitrova - Julius Caesars Self-Created Image and Its Dramatic Afterlife

To my parents Radostina and Stefan, with love and gratitude

Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception

Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception presents scholarly monographs offering new and innovative research and debate to students and scholars in the reception of Classical Studies. Each volume will explore the appropriation, reconceptualization and recontextualization of various aspects of the Graeco-Roman world and its culture, looking at the impact of the ancient world on modernity. Research will also cover reception within antiquity, the theory and practice of translation, and reception theory.

Also available in the series:

Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Modern Visual and Performing Arts, edited by Filippo Carl and Irene Berti

Ancient Greek Myth in World Fiction since 1989, edited by Justine McConnell and Edith Hall

The Codex Fori Mussolini, Han Lamers and Bettina Reitz-Joosse

The Gentle, Jealous God, Simon Perris

Greek and Roman Classics in the British Struggle for Social Reform, edited by Henry Stead and Edith Hall

Imagining Xerxes, Emma Bridges

Ovids Myth of Pygmalion on Screen, Paula James

Victorian Classical Burlesques, Laura Monrs-Gaspar

This book is the revised version of my PhD thesis, completed under the supervision of Professor Edith Hall. I am deeply grateful to Edith for believing in me and for her inspirational energy and passion for research, which provided me not only with consistent academic guidance but also with invaluable moral support. I would also like to thank Mike Ingham for his enduring interest in my work, his willingness to discuss my ideas at various stages, and his comments and efficient copy-editing. I have benefited greatly from the competence and patience of the editorial team at Bloomsbury. Last but not least, special thanks to Lyubo, my tower of strength and comfort, whose love and knowledge about tigers have changed my world.

In the twentieth century, notwithstanding the feeling of disillusionment with great leaders after the Second World War, Caesars fame did not diminish; rather, it entered a new phase of liberation from the rigidity of the binary model he had belonged to for centuries great statesman, founder of monarchy, on the one hand, autocrat and annihilator of republican ideals on the other. Caesar entered the twenty-first century wearing the crown of his military and literary achievements but also enjoying universal popularity and appeal through a rich cultural afterlife.

This vision of greatness, deep-seated in our Western culture, however, certainly did not appear as stable or positive during Caesars lifetime as it is now, when seen in hindsight and multiplied by centuries of reverence, debate and re-imagining. Caesar was certainly one of the brightest stars of the late Republic but his life and career were, ultimately, a constant struggle to reach the top and then to remain there. It is within this context that his commentaries were composed. The Caesarean corpus consists of seven books on the

Caesars prime motive for the creation of a meticulously self-authored character, ferocious in his defence of the interests of Rome and his personal dignity but at the same time compassionate and reasonable, was to justify his actions during his extensive proconsulship in Gaul and, later, during the civil war against Pompey. He may or may not have expected his accounts to outlast him. Luckily for us, they did. Basking in their creators fame, the Gallic and the civil war commentaries have become more than the signature trait of Caesars character through them, Caesar speaks with a voice that is still heard today. Due to their comprehensible prose, they have long been part of the Latin school curriculum across the Western world. The Gallic War also stands out as an invaluable historical document, providing an almost exclusive account not only of Caesars Gallic campaign but also of the geography and topography of the vast territories explored and conquered by the General.

Above all, the commentaries are a fusion of propaganda and self-promotion, at the heart of which lies the re-creation of Caesar as a full-bodied literary personality. In this book, I endeavour to demonstrate the significance of this act of self-expression for the representations of Caesar in the English dramatic canon. I argue that a range of texts beginning with the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, through Handels baroque opera Giulio Cesarein Egitto and concluding with Bernard Shaws late Victorian Caesar and Cleopatra epitomize a cultural reception of the personality of Julius Caesar, which ultimately derives from Caesars forceful promotion of his own achievements.

The plays I discuss belong to a tradition of active reception of Caesar that, although never waning since the dictators lifetime, was rekindled in the Renaissance with the emergence of the Caesarean editio princeps in 1469. The commentaries acquired a great importance as historical documents and a literary achievement, and were integral to the early modern interest in Roman culture, sparked by the re-discovery of a great number of classical texts in the 1500s that were circulated across Europe either in their original Latin or Greek, or in translation. In England, the commentaries were published in London in the original Latin (1585, 1590) but also in English by Arthur Golding, who translated the Gallic War in 1565 (re-printed in 1590). Clement Edmundss Observations upon Caesars Commentaries the First Five Bookes of Caesars Commentaries, Setting Fourth the Practise of the Art Military, in the Time of the Roman Empire was first published in 1600 and its subsequent editions included additional books of the Gallic War and the Civil War. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries more translations became available, and a considerable variety of the editions (selected books, compendia) were designed to appeal to the British readers from all walks of life.

Caesars oeuvre contributed to its authors huge popularity as a controversial, yet admired role model. Caesar appeared in discourses on political and ethical values; opinions on his actions, which effectively paved the way to Augustuss one-man rule and the birth of the Roman Empire that European monarchs saw themselves heirs to, ranged from commendable to condemnable. It is this fascination that lies at the heart of the myriad plays created across Europe during that period. The large number of English plays attests to the relevance of Caesars life, and importantly his death, to a society appreciative of the story of the mighty Generals fall and the revenge of his supporters, a society that found the story instructive but also entertaining.

Two lines of reception of the commentaries were available to the playwrights whose works I consider. The first line entails the direct borrowing of material. Although the use of Caesars texts as direct sources may appear tentative due to the arguable lack of evidence, there are instances, albeit incidental, of such interaction. These are indicative of the enduring interest in the commentaries and facilitate the second, indirect, line of reception, namely, the appreciation of the works as an inspiration and a sort of Caesarean repository for themes, imagery and qualities. The different ways the playwrights handled this repository are what this book is about.