ABSTRACT
Caesar refers to the civil nature of the war at the very beginning of BC III, but aer the rst chapter he only relates his battles against Pompey and his legates. When Caesar discusses his debt reforms he explains his decision to appoint arbitrators to help reassure the people and remove the fears which arise out of the debt issue in almost every war and all civil disagreements (bella et civiles dissensiones) (BC III 1.3). As in BC I 67.3, he uses the term civiles dissensiones, this time as opposed to a (foreign) bella. Yet in the next sentence, when he refers to the exiles he writes that he means those men who oered their services to him at the beginning of the civil war (civilis belli) (BC III 1.4). is time Caesar openly concedes in the rst person that he has fought a civil war and uses the explicit phrase.1 In the rst sentence he explains that the arbitrators would appraise the value of things as they were before the war (ante bellum), yet when he speaks of the men themselves, the exiled people, he suddenly switches to ‘civil war’. Why the abrupt change in terminology?
