Quibus mons, non virtus, saluti fuit. Raumsemantik im Bellum Hispaniense

Abstract

The Bellum Hispaniense is for the most part considered in scholarship only with respect to textual and linguistic problems and in relation to its deficit in literary qualities. Through a close reading, the present paper analyses the representation of space in this third and last of the pseudo-Caesarian Bella and interprets it in the historiographical context of the Late Republic. It aims to demonstrate that the younger Gnaeus Pompeius’ military strategy in the area of Spain – the occupation of locations on higher ground – is semantically loaded as a ‘barbarian strategy’ and so stands all the more strongly in contrast to the virtus of the Caesarians.

Keywords

• Civil war
• Corpus Caesarianum
• Bellum Hispaniense
• Cn. Pompeius the Younger
• C. Iulius Caesar
• topography
• semantics of space
• historiography of the Late Republic