From Thucydides to Kalyvas, civil war is associated with wickedness and personal animosities. This article seeks to comprehend the violence during the civil war of the Late Republic. It will claim that behaviour during the Roman civil war period was actually typical of comparable conflicts, in particular in terms of indiscriminate and selective violence. with a focus on two case studies: the murder of Cicero during the proscriptions in late 43 BCE and the use of violence by Young Caesar after the civil war at Perusia, ending early in 40 BCE. Violence was not only a conspicuous part of civil war, but had a distinct purpose to it: the elimination of personal enemies and securing power.

Notwithstanding the vast modern literatures regarding the significance of the Roman triumph and the structures of Graeco-Roman historiography, virtually no attention has been given to the possibility that the description of the triumph afforded a means of closure. This situation is all the more paradoxical in view of the fact that the subject of closure has been the object of renewed scrutiny in recent decades. Starting with the observation that the triumph did provide society at Rome in the Republic with a ritual form of closure, this paper proposes the thesis that narration of the triumph in fact often provided closure for Greek and Latin literature dedicated to historical themes. The conclusion of the Punica of Silius Italicus furnishes excellent evidence, despite its Flavian date. Manifestly a second-rate work of literature, in comparison with the Aeneid of Vergil, this best preserved instance of historical epic can be assumed not to have striven to be innovatory and hence to furnish a glimpse of a lost reality. Drawing upon the contemporary traditions of the Hellenistic world, the literary production of historical epic in the Roman world was largely ephemeral and has accordingly disappeared with but a few remaining traces. Yet, the notices and fragments that survive for more than 20 works strongly suggest that the triumph afforded closure in a manner analogous to that of the Punica of Silius Italicus. The same can be said of various works of prose, ranging from the Bellum Iugurthinum of Sallust through to the De Vita Sua and Res Gestae of Augustus. Even when there is no recourse to an elaborate ecphrasis, the performance of the triumph seems to furnish closure for the historical narrative. Discernment of this pattern in turn allows us to re-evaluate and appreciate all the more those narratives that were open-ended.