A Literary and Narratological Reading of Titurius Sabinus and Quintus Cicero in Julius Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum

Abstract

This thesis argues that the characters of Titurius Sabinus and Quintus Cicero, as depicted by Caesar in his Bellum Gallicum, fulfill a narrative function that furthers the political aims of Caesar’s text. I start by arguing that there are three Caesars present in the Bellum Gallicum, employing Gérard Genette’s three definitions of “narrative” as a model: Caesar the historical author, Caesar the narrative voice, and Caesar the character. I also argue that Caesar the author writes in the “zero degree,” a term Roland Barthes created to describe a seemingly unadorned writing style. When characterizing Sabinus and Cicero, Caesar will occasionally break his degree zero style to pass judgment (frequently implicit rather than explicit) on the two men and their actions. Through this process Caesar establishes his narrative voice as an arbiter of proper military conduct: when an officer acts in accordance with what the narrative voice approves, he is shown to be successful in the field. This approach has allowed me to engage with, and advance, the scholarly approaches to Caesar undertaken in valuable recent monographs by Luca Grillo and Andrew Riggsby.