Same Words, Different Wars: Rhetorical Consistency and Caesar’s Political Legitimacy

Abstract

This thesis is an analysis of how Julius Caesar builds his political authority, civic identity, and legitimacy through his Commentarii, specifically the De Bello Gallico and De Bello Civili. Although the two works describe two dramatically different historical contexts, one revolving around an external war and the other around internal conflict, this study argues that Caesar maintains a highly stable rhetorical and semantic framework across the two texts. To substantiate this claim, the thesis combines three computational methods: Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling, semantic vector analysis, and evaluative framing analysis. Through the topic modeling method, we see that the two texts occupy distinct thematic environments. The De Bello Gallico is dominated by geographic, ethnographic, and military vocabulary, while the De Bello Civili puts more emphasis on Roman political institutions and civic conflict. Notwithstanding these differences, semantic vector analysis shows a high degree of consistency in the use of political, civic, and military terms across both texts. Evaluative framing analysis similarly reveals a stable justificatory tone, with Roman actors consistently receiving more legitimizing language than enemies. Taken together, these findings suggest that Caesar uses linguistic consistency as a rhetorical strategy through which he presents his authority as rational, necessary, and continuous across different historical circumstances.