Cicero's dialogue De Finibus depicts three conversations between the author and his friends. In the course of these conversations Cicero depicts himself as addressing his interlocutors directly, using the vocative case, on 45 occasions; the other characters, however, never address Cicero at all. What is the reason for this imbalance?

This article argues that Caesar puns on the cognomen of Pompey the Great through his use of the adjective magnus at least twice in his Bellum Civile. In each instance, the wordplay contributes to (1) evoking the memory of Pompey's past triumphs and (2) exploring the gulf between past reputation and present reality. By focussing on this particular wordplay, the article contributes to a wider discussion of Caesarean language and wit as well as to studies of Caesar's art of characterization.