Quotes from David Armitage

If these wars between Caesar and Pompey are "worse than civil," it is because they were fought between two men who had been bound by marriage pact; in that sense, they were familial wars ("kin facing kin"), not merely between citizens.

Rome's earliest dissension arose from flawed human nature and its desires for freedom, glory, and power, but it was only after the fall of Carthage that such evils flourished to the point of driving plebeians and patricians into open conflict: "The way was clear for pursuing rivalries, [and] there arose a great many riots, insurrections, and in the end, civil wars."43

For many Romans, civil war remained the war that dared not speak its name. The words bellum civile had to be weighed carefully and spoken sparingly, if ever at all, because of the harsh memories of major conflicts.

The pressure to define civil war is often inversely related to the political stakes for offering such a definition: the higher the pressure to be precise, the greater the chance that exactitude will itself be a source of political contention.