Sisyphus and Caesar: the opposition of Greece and Rome in Albert Camus' absurd cycle

Abstract

Albert Camus’ reception of the ancient world is a subject deserving greater consideration than it has currently received. This article will discuss the importance of Greece and Rome in Camus’ Absurd cycle and its implications in the context of colonial Algeria. I begin with an analysis of Camus’ instinctive polarization of Greece and Rome (Greece as artistic and democratic; Rome as violent and imperialist), before arguing that this antithesis was vital in two of Camus’ most lasting creations: Sisyphus and Caligula. I will examine both the complex use of Greek myth in Le Mythe de Sisyphe and Camus’ contrasting representation of Roman society in the play Caligula. These receptions will then be situated within the political and literary contexts in which Camus wrote, particularly that of colonialism. Camus’ reception of the ancient world reveals much about his complex relationship with Algeria. Even as he rejected the Latinizing tropes of previous colonial writers, his own concept of Graeco-Mediterraneanism was equally predicated on Eurocentric discourses. Camus’ vision of the ancient world goes to the heart of understanding not only his Absurd literature but ultimately, I suggest, reveals a writer at a crossroads between Europe and Africa.

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