Caesar “displaces the burden of argument” within the text and avoids the appearance of overt self-justification (Riggsby 214). The ‘foreign voice’ argument in this paper follows the same line of thought which Andrew Riggsby has so aptly used in his book Caesar in Gaul and Rome. By using Divico to necessitate a reply, Caesar maintains the focus of a foreign enemy while still effectively defending himself against his critics back in Rome. The use of a ‘foreign voice’ also avoids the petty pointing of fingers, enabling Caesar to counter claims brought against him without identifying the original claimant as a Roman. Divico’s arrogant words allow Caesar to demonstrate how the private and public are aligned in his motivation, which in turn legitimizes his actions in the Republic’s best interest. Divico’s arrival carries the associations of the past Roman iniuria, which Caesar couples with the private grievance – the death of his kinsman. Caesar’s limited use of Divico (for the old warrior does not appear again after his speech) is consciously symbolic. Divico’s voice characterizes the dangerous nature of Gallic temperament, legitimizing and necessitating subsequent Roman action. However, Divico’s words are anything but peaceful, and he goes so far as to threaten a disaster similar to that which befell Cassius. Divico heads the Helvetii parlay following the destruction of the Tigurini by Caesar’s cavalry, ostensibly to reach a peace agreement. But his significance rests on his former implication in the defeat of Cassius’ legions fifty years before. them.’ When he enters the narrative, Divico assumes the position of enemy chieftain, even though his actual role appears to be that of respected warrior and elder rather than actual authority. He is an equally convenient mouthpiece for any criticisms of Caesar back in Rome, allowing Caesar to defend himself while still maintaining an atmosphere of ‘us vs. However, Divico is not restricted to providing Caesar with a platform for defending Roman frontier policy. His purpose within the account is to voice a challenge to Rome and to Caesar, to which Caesar is then able to respond. Divico enters at a midway point in the narrative, delivers his threat to Caesar, and then departs and is not heard of again. This paper analyzes the way in which Divico’s words set the groundwork for a strong and carefully organized justification for the Helvetii campaign. In the account of the Helvetii in Book 1, Divico provides the first instance of substantial enemy speech. Caesar deems his ‘barbarian’ opponents worthy of a voice in his narrative, even if that voice is fabricated and only serves to justify their subjugation. Whatever one thinks of Julius Caesar and his motives behind writing his war commentaries, he has done posterity the service of giving a voice to an otherwise mute and unknowable cultural presence of the ancient world: the peoples of Gaul. Thus, pre-battle exhortations are put to use by the Caesarian narrator as a literary tool. An analysis of their forms and narratological functions shows that they contribute to persuading the narratees that war, and battles within war, are predictable and, to a certain extent, controllable procedures. Whether they reflect reality or not, Adema shows that pre-battle exhortations not only function to encourage troops in the story world, but also function on the level of the narrator and his narratees. The authenticity or historicality of especially pre-battle exhortations has often been discussed. She takes a combine linguistic and narratological approach to this type of speech and investigates their role as a recurring element in the presentation of battles in historiography. In her article, Adema focuses on the pre-battle exhortations in Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum (book 1 and 7). Several contributions in this study illustrate that this holds for speeches in historiography, starting from Thucydides’ famous Methodenkapitel (Feddern, Harris) and discussing the historiographical topos of paired speeches (Waddell). In literature, representations of speech and thought do not merely function as a means of communication for characters in the story world, but also as a means of communication between the narrator and his narratees.
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