Family or Faction? The Political, Social and Familial Networks Discerned from Cicero's Letters during the Civil War between Caesar and Pompey

Abstract

The civil war between Caesar and Pompey has inevitably been categorised as the downfall of the Roman Republic. It eventually affected every Roman citizen and would ultimately shape the course of events that led to the creation of the first principate. Although this struggle for power has been well documented, and argued from various political angles, relatively few classicists have debated the affiliations and/or support that these two aspiring autocrats would have needed in order to secure victory. The aim of this paper is to highlight these lesser discussed affiliations by using social network analysis (SNA) to scrutinise Cicero’s letters in order to map the connections between Roman senators at the time of the civil war.