Caesarian Intertextualities: Cotta and Sabinus in <em>BG</em> 5.26–37

Abstract

While scholars have acknowledged intratextual relationships to another episode in the BG, Caesar's account of his defeat at Atuatuca is embedded in a more complex field of textual references. The locus of two generals dangerously disagreeing is found in Greek literature and historiography; Caesar's vocabulary especially connects Atuatuca to a famous episode by Polybius. These references help to situate Caesar in Greek and Roman literary tradition and demonstrate that the dynamics of imitation, competition and appropriation typical of poetry from the Augustan age were well established in prose authors of the late Republic.