Fighting for Rome: Poets and Caesars, History and Civil War

The essays in Fighting for Rome confront the traumatic disjunction between the militarist culture of classical Rome, with its heavy investment in valour, conquest and triumph, and the domination of its history by civil war, where Roman soldiers killed so many Romans for control of Rome. The essays gathered and rewritten here range across the literary forms (history, satire, lyric and epic) and work closely with the ancient texts (Appian and Julius Caesar; Horace; Lucan and Statius; Tacitus and Livy). Close reading and powerful translation communicate the ancient writers’ efforts to grasp and respond to the Roman civil wars, and to their product, Roman terror under the Caesars. The book aims to bring to life strong reactions to a world order run by civil war.

• Powerful readings of Roman texts involved with civil war • John Henderson is a leading academic and critic • The jacket picture - a modern symbol of despair at militarism and tyranny - catches the effect of the book exactly

Preface; Introduction; Part I. Histories of the Civil Wars: 1. Three men in a vote: proscription (Appian, Civil wars 4.1–6); 2. XPDNC: writing Caesar (On the civil war); Part II. Horace: 3. On getting rid of kings: Horace, Satires 1.7; 4. Polishing off the politics: Horace’s Ode to Pollio (Odes 2.1); Part III. Epic: 5. Lucan: the word at war; 6. Statius’ Thebaid: form (p)remade; Part IV. Histories of Rome: 7. Tacitus: the world in pieces; 8. Livy and the invention of history; Date chart; Bibliography; Indexes.