Pre-battle exhortations in the Roman army in the light of the Caesarian Commentarii

Abstract

Descriptions of pre-battle exhortations are frequent literary topos in ancient historiography. They can also be found in the works of Gaius Julius Caesar – Commentarii de bello Gallico and Commentarii de bello civili. The subject of the analysis in the following article is the issue of pre-battle speeches in the Roman army in the light of the aforementioned works. The author of the paper draws attention to such aspects of this issue as: frequency of occurrence of pre-battle speeches delivered by the Roman generals; the circumstances in which they occur; an audience (whether there were only officers or Caesar writes about speeches given to selected units or even to the entire army); the elements that Caesar and other Roman generals emphasized in their speeches; their approach to their own soldiers; the rhetorical devices they used; the effects of these speeches as well as reliability of Caesar’s account. The article also attempts to answer the question whether the pre-battle speeches were a permanent part of pre-battle ceremonial in the Roman army in the late republic period. Particular attention was paid to Caesar’s harangue in Vesontio before the battle with Ariovistus, the leader of the Germanic Suebi (BG I, 40–41), as well as to the comparison of Caesar’s speeches with the orations of the Pompeians, delivered before the decisive clash of the civil war at Pharsalus (BC III, 85–87; 90). Moreover, the author considers the importance of the way of describing pre-battle speeches for the process of self-presentation that motivated the author of Commentarii.