Lucan’s Poetic Geographies: Center and Periphery in Civil War Epic

Eos, 2012

Getty published his commentary on book I in 1940 1 , so we had to wait almost 70 years for a new, more extensive analysis. The short remarks by wuilleuMieR and le BonnieC (as footnotes, 1962) 2 and more comprehensive commentary by GaGliardi (1989) 3 filled the gap only partially (viansino provided the whole poem with notes mainly by collecting comparandas, 1995; however, roChe [= R.] did not list this edition in the bibliography 4). Lucan studies have flourished astonishingly, especially in the last two decades. Apart from numerous papers scattered throughout various journals we have been given new monographs, collective works, and commentaries. Justifying the need for a new commentary to book I is therefore redundant. The work consists of an extensive introduction (pp. 1-64), text (with short critical apparatus, pp. 65-87), commentary (pp. 91-390), and comprehensive bibliography (pp. 391-406). It ends with helpful indices (index verborum, locorum, nominum et rerum, pp. 407-418). Defining in the preface the goals of his commentary, R. speaks "of respectfully preserving what is good, of reworking, correcting, or extending what seems now less relevant in Getty's 1940 commentary..." (p. VII). These aims have most certainly been achieved. In his introduction, Getty discussed in turn Lucan's life and work, problem of the hero of the poem, Lucan's historical authorities, geographical knowledge, and rhetoric. R. omits three issues brought up by Getty, namely biography, geography and the problem of the hero, but supplements and updates considerably the last two matters, and expands the introduction with issues overlooked by his predecessor. He therefore discusses the structure of book I, its significance for the whole poem and connections between the book and the other parts; moreover, he analyses not only the historical sources but also relationships between Lucan and Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Manilius, and Seneca. R. examines Stoic elements as well, and brings up matters of narration-the problem of apostrophe in particular (he bases himself on Culler's statements 5). One of more important issues discussed in the first part of the introduction is the change of the narrator's attitude in the poem-his relation to the principate, pp. 5-10 (some scholars, recognizing this change, divide the poem into books I-III and following). R. opts for consistency 6 and on pp. 7-10 discusses in more detail two crucial passages which are used as arguments for the narrator's change (the invocation of Nero, ll. 33-66-here, he emphasizes the conventional nature of the panegyric; the positive portrayal of Domitius, II 478-534). However, it is not only Lucan's attitude towards Caesar and the principate that fits into discussion about the "unity" of the poem, but also the narrator's relation to Pompey. We may, to put it simply, 1

2020

In this doctoral dissertation I seek to reassess the innovativeness of the young Corduban poet Lucan's masterpiece, the Civil War. Faced with the abrupt closure of Lucan's poem 546 lines into Book 10, I adopt the view propounded by Haffter, Masters and Tracy, that what most have taken as incompletion brought on by the poet's premature death in 65 CE is in fact a deliberate artistic decision. I then argue back from this view and reread several key features of the poem as manifestations of the same deliberate bodily incompleteness, the same sudden mutilation of a voice that the ending of the poem as we have it presents. My dissertation consists of two macro-sections, one on the structural and thematic characteristics of Lucan's Civil War, and one on the characterization of the two antagonists most actively involved in the conflict: Julius Caesar, himself the author of an incomplete prose account of the very civil war that Lucan chooses to focus on; and Pompey the Great, a broken man whose mangled body reproduces at the microcosmic level the lack of finish exhibited by the textual body of the poem itself. i Table of Contents i Acknowledgments ii Dedication iv the thickest woods. Thank you, Francesco, for being my champion and (soon) my best man: thanks to your skills, as when you dealt with that sheriff in South Carolina, I survived quite a few misfortunate accidents, and I learned not to give up. And you, Giovanni, have always listened to me with unmatched kindness, offering precious advice whenever I needed it. And you, Angelika and Edoardo, who are to me like a sister and a brother, remind me everyday that I am the luckiest man to have met you both. To conclude, I wish to thank my muse, the love of my life, and the incredible woman I am going to marry in just a few months: Anne, it is a privilege to stand by your side as we walk through life, and it was a privilege to conclude my doctorate in your company. In Lucan's poem, Pompey is like the captain of a ship that's about to sink. If I had not met you, I would be like Pompey: you are my mast through the storms of life. Per mia madre, i miei nonni, Cam ed Anne ἀνερρίφθω κύβος 59 Cic. Div. 2.34. 60 Krafft's edition (1975) is excellent. It has long been recognized that Annaeus Cornutus, author of the Theologia Graeca, was the same Cornutus who taught Lucan and Persius. However, it is not possible to prove that he was also a freedman of Lucan's family, as Marti 1945: 354 hypothesizes.

In Republican Rome, did the literature of the conquered and traversed landscape express theories about Rome itself? This paper starts with an examination of Cicero’s De Provinciis Consularibus. In this speech, delivered to the senate, Cicero sets up a polemic between the ‘virtuous’ commander, who writes reports to the Senate on his activities in the provinces, and the ‘worthless’ commander, who does not. I argue that this comparison contrasting ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Romans exemplifies Roman attitudes about the relationship between territorial conquest and discursive knowledge on one hand, and lacunae and oblivion on the other. In turn, the paper demonstrates the ways in which such discursive practices about contested territory clearly signal Roman conceptions of Rome itself, by contrasting the city to the territory it controls. In light of this textual interplay between Roman provinces and the discursive strategies of knowledge, the paper examines further models of territorial discourse and control in other Roman writers of the Late Republic and Augustan period. In particular it interrogates Livy’s history of the Second Punic War and teases out the ways that Livy uses the actions of commanders in the field as part of his discussion of the Roman political struggle in the city. The paper undertakes an analysis of Cicero’s directly political literature on the one hand, and Livy’s literary historiography of politics, on the other, to uncover the potential commonalities and differences that they share in their respective understandings of Roman ‘power projection’ in the provinces and in Italy and how these affect their literary theorisations of Rome itself.

2000

2015

Proceedings of the Virgil Society, 2023

Lucan's Bellum Civile (henceforth BC) has long been assumed to stand in striking opposition to Virgil's Aeneid. The BC's opening lines appear to adopt a competitive-even combativestance relative to Virgil's epic undertaking: Lucan's declaration to sing of bella plus quam civilia (Lucan 1.1) goes beyond the Aeneid's theme of arma virumque (Virgil, Aen. 1.1), while his description of his epic project as inmensum opus (Luc. 1.68) outstrips even the "greater" series of events-the war in Italy-which Virgil frames as his maius opus (Aen. 7.44-5) in the Aeneid's latter books. Lucan's proem, with its visceral imagery of Roman self-harm and language of criminality (Luc. 1.1-7), seems to establish a decidedly destructive trajectory for the poem, a marked diversion from the theme of (extremely) hard-won progress towards Roman greatness which Virgil lays out (Aen. 1.1-7). Yet even as his poem's furor blossoms like a fresh bloodstain and Lucan presents us with harrowing descriptions of the Roman world in ruins (Luc. 1.24-39, 7.397-406), with laments on the triumph of Caesarian tyranny (Luc. 7.385-459), and with morbid images of the bodies of nations mouldering on the plains of Pharsalus (Luc. 7.617-43), 1 we should not-and cannot-take a wholeheartedly 'pessimistic' approach to the question of the BC's engagement with Virgil's epic. 2 After all, this question depends entirely upon our conception of Virgil and his ambivalence. 3 To * I would like to thank the Virgil Society for the valuable comments and discussion which helped me to develop my talk into this article. Since some of these ideas were developed within my doctoral thesis, special thanks are owed to my supervisor Bruce Gibson, and to my examiners Colin Adams, Rhiannon Ash, and Alison Sharrock. I would also like to thank Julene Abad del Vecchio for her supportive discussions, and Talitha Kearey for helping me to track down some important items of bibliography. 1 Fantham (2010) 209-11. For an overview of tensions of remembering and forgetting, speech and silence, and civil war, see Thorne (2011). 2 On broader questions of Lucanian optimism and pessimism, particularly regarding the outcome(s) of civil war and Nero's reign, see Sanderson (2020) 190-223, 231-6; and Sanderson (forthcoming), respectively. 3 Casali (2011) 85.

Graeco-Latina Brunensia, 2020

In his Civil War, Lucan enters into intertextual game not only with epic and tragedy, but also with love poetry. A number of references to Roman elegy, the Heroides, and Ariadne's lament in Catullus (64) have been noted in Book 5, when Caesar arrives in Epirus and summons his troops from Italy. The aim of this article is to examine the functions of these elegiac references related to Caesar and to propose an interpretation slightly different from that found in earlier studies. Using elegiac vocabulary, motifs, and topoi (servitium and militia amoris) in 5.476-497, Lucan makes his audience perceive Caesar in the role of an elegiac mistress (domina), who thereby imposes the role of lover on his soldiers. However, those roles do not correspond to their real meaning in the poem as Caesar is quickly forced to transform into a lover. This shift is crucial for the intertextual game with love poetry. Nevertheless, the troops do not notice the change, standing by the role they were previously cast in (5.678-699). In this way, they allow their leader to become a mistress again and continue the war.

2020

In scholarship on Lucan, more and more emphasis is being placed on the connection of his poem with Caesar’s Commentarii de bello civili. It is argued that the Civil War remains in constant interaction with Caesar’s text. This article aims to analyse one example of such interaction by undertaking a juxtaposition and a close reading of Lucan. V 461–475, the narrative about the two armies encamped on the river Apsus in Epirus, and Caes. BCiv. III 18–19. These two sections are firmly connected by common motifs that do not appear together elsewhere, a similar order of narrative episodes, and the strong commitment of the narrator. The first part of the article focuses on how Lucan debunks Caesar’s propaganda and at the same time creates another one, expressed by his narrator. In the second part, an attempt is made to show that Lucan’s text is more complex and that it includes other voices, which also undermine the epic narrator’s fervent utterances.