Politics and Poetics 24.11.2016 Lecture 7: Lucan and the poetics of civil war HANDOUT

Important facts:  Lucan born in Cordoba, Spain in 39CE; forced to suicide in 65, when he was 25 years old.

 His grandfather was Seneca the Elder; his uncle Seneca the Younger, who was appointed Nero’s tutor in 49CE.

 Nero’s dates are 37-68CE (he was emperor from 54 to 68)

 Lucan was incredibly precocious: apart from his poem ‘On Civil War’ (Bellum Civile/Pharsalia), he also wrote wrote a Journey to the Underworld (we have fragments), an Iliaca, an Orpheus, epigrams, a Laudes Neronis performed at the Neronia, 10 books of Silvae, a Saturnalia, a Medea, 14 books of Salticae fabulae, ‘dancing fables’, a poem on the burning of Rome, and Letters from Campania, as well as prose orations.

 Lucan’s Bellum Civile consists of 10 books (epic hexameters, but not as we knew them…), the last of which is apparently ‘cut short’, at only 546 lines. Scholars have long debated whether this is intentional, or (the consensus) whether he intended the poem to be 12 books long (like the Aeneid, and later, Statius’ Thebaid), or 15 books long (like Ovid’s Met.)

 The epic deals with the civil war of 49-45BCE, which began when Caesar crossed the Rubicon in Jan 49. A summary of events leading up to Pompey’s murder and Caesar’s triumph(s) can be found, for example, in the introduction to Susanna H. Braund’s translation of the poem (Oxford World Classics). The poem takes us up to 47CE and then stops.

 Other works narrating the events of these civil wars: e.g. Caesar’s own de bello civili, Appian’s civilian bella book 2 (2nd century CE), Cassius Dio’s Roman History (2-3rd century CE); Livy (books lost); Augustan epicists whose works do not survive (Cornelius Severus, Albinovanus Pedo, Sextilius Ena, Rabirius).

1. Tacitus on Lucan’s suicide

‘He (Nero) next ordained the dispatch of Lucan. When his blood was flowing, and he felt his feet and hands chilling and the life receding little by little from the extremities, though the heart retained warmth and sentience, Lucan recalled a passage in his own poem, where he had described a wounded soldier dying a similar form of death, and he recited the very verses. Those were his last words. Then Senecio and Quintianus and Scaevinus, belying their old effeminacy of life, and then the rest of the conspirators, met their end, doing and saying nothing that calls for remembrance.’ Annals 15.70

2. Lucan’s political allegiances: BC 1.33-66

1 1.33-45 But if the fates could find no other way For Nero’s coming, if eternal kingdoms are purchased By the gods at great cost, if heaven could serve its Thunderer Only after wars with the ferocious Giants, Then we have no complaint, O gods; for this reward we accept Even these crimes and guilt; though Pharsalia fill its dreadful Plains, though the Carthaginian’s shade with blood be sated; Though the final battle be joined at fatal Munda; Though added to these horrors, Caesar, be the famine of Perusia And the struggles of Mutina, the fleets overwhelmed Near rugged Leucas, and the slave wars under burning Etna; Yet Rome owes much to citizens’ weapons, because it was For you that all this was done.

Bear in mind 1. The problem of change over time. 2. Anachronistic readings of imperial panegyric. 3. The problem of the poem’s thematisation of guilt (culpa, nefas, crimen) and of the impossibility of not being implicated in civil war. As many have argued, the poem doesn’t just narrate civil war, but re-enacting it. The overarching political question must therefore be: when we read or recite the poem, what are we participating in? What political work are we performing? 4. The larger issue of the politics of Lucanian intertextuality: quite apart from the poem’s own bleak, godless, hero-less view of Roman history, to what extent does it command the power to contaminate our readings of Rome’ great national epic, the Aeneid? 5. Stoicism.

3. Lucan’s Metamorphoses: Bellum Civile/Pharsalia 1.vv.1-7

I sing of a wars worse than civil wars, of wars fought between kinsmen over Pharsalia’s plains, of wickedness deemed justice; of how a powerful people turned their own right hands against their own guts; of strife within families; how, with the first Triumvirate broken, the forces of the quivering globe contended in mutual sinfullness; standard ranged against standard, eagle matched against eagle, spear threatening spear. What madness is this, o citizens? Why this excessive freedom with the sword?

Bella per Emathios plus quam ciuilia campos cf. Aen.6.86-7 bella, horrida bella…cerno iusque datum sceleri canimus, populumque potentem Aen.1.1 arma virumque cano in sua uictrici conuersum uiscera dextra cognatasque acies, et rupto foedere regni certatum totis concussi uiribus orbis 5 in commune nefas, infestisque obuia signis signa, pares aquilas et pila minantia pilis.

2 quis furor, o cives, quae tanta licentia ferri?

 Think back to the beginnings of Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. What strikes you as noticeably different in Lucan’s proem? Notice how lines 1-2 allude to the Aeneid, and think about scope, teleology, timing, the poet’s inspiration, the role of the hero, geography. 4. The great epic pile-up: a labyrinth of intertexts

Look again at Lucan’s proem. Compare it with the following passages to which Lucan alludes…

A. Aeneid 6.826-35 (speech of Anchises in the Underworld): ‘But those you see, resplendent in matching arms (paribus…armis), souls now in harmony and as long as they are imprisoned in night, alas, if once they attain the light of life, what mutual strife, what battles (quantas acies) and bloodshed they cause, the bride’ s father swooping from Alpine ramparts and Monoecus’ fort, her husband confronting him with forces from the East! (i.e. Caesar and Pompey, who married Julia, Caesar’s daughter. Caesar came down from Gaul to Italy, while Pompey’s troops came largely from Greece and Asia Minor). Steel not your hearts, my sons, to such wicked war nor vent violent valour on the vitals of your land (neu patriae validas in viscera vertite vires, 833). And you who draw your lineage from heaven, be you the first to show mercy: cast the sword from your hand, child of my blood!’

B. Georgics 1.498-92: ergo inter sese paribus concurrere telis Romanas acies iterum videre Philippi; nec fuit indignum superis, bis sanguine nostro Emathiam et latos Heami pinguescere campos

So was it that Philippi saw for a second time Roman armies clash in the sock of matching arms; and heaven above did not demur at Macedon and the broad Balkan plains being twice soaked with the blood of our fellow citizens.

Q: How might we interpret these Virgilian intertexts in Lucan?

 Now compare Lucan line 8, quis furor, o cives, quae tanta licentia ferri (‘What madness is this, o citizens? Why this excessive freedom with the sword?’), with the following inspirations:

C. Homer, Iliad 1.8: τίς τ᾽ ἄρ σφωε θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνέηκε μάχεσθαι; (‘Which of the gods was it that made them quarrel?’)

D. Aen.2.42, ‘o miseri, quae tanta licentia, cives?’ (Laocoon says ‘O wretched citizens, what great licence is this?’)

3 E. Aen.5.670, ‘Quis furor iste novus?’ (‘What new madness is this?’ when Trojan women set the ships on fire).

F. Ovid Met.3.531-2 (Pentheus): ‘quis furor, anguigenae, proles Mavortia, vestras /attonuit mentes?’ (‘What madness has paralysed your minds, you sons of serpents’ teeth, you offspring of Mars?’)

Q. What do you think these windows onto Virgilian and Ovidian epic reveal?

Further juxtapositions to investigate in your own time:

 BC 1.70-2: invida fatorum series summisque negatum stare diu nimioque graves sub pondere lapsus nec se Roma ferens. (It was the chain of jealous fate, and the speedy fall which no structure can escape; it was the grevious collapse of excessive weight, and Rome unable to support her own greatness.) with Ovid Met.3.548-50 si fata vetabant stare diu Thebas, utinam tormenta virique moenia diruerent, ferrumque ignisque sonarent. (If the fates forbid Thebes to endure for long, I hope that the tortures and fighting men might batter down her walls and that sword and fire might roar around her.)

 BC 4.548-57 (Caesarians kill each other like the Theban warriors born from the seeds sown by Cadmus) with Met.3.106-126.

 BC 6.355-9 with Ovid Met.3.719-28 (the dismemberment of Pentheus). Lucan links the site of the final battle, Pharsalos, with other ill-omened locations of classical myth, including Thebes.

5. Post-Ovidian tempora: the politics of time and space in Lucan

A. mora as the force delaying civil war  1.183-4: ‘And now Caesar had hurried across the frozen Alps and had conceived in his heart the great rebellion and the coming war’  1.204-5: ‘The he dislodged the obstacles (moras) to war and carried his standards in haste over the swollen stream’  1.262-4: ‘Look! Destiny kindled the flame of war, applying to Caesar’s hesitating heart the spur that drove him on to battle, and bursting all delays that shame created.’  1.281: (Curio) ‘Remove all obstacles (moras)’  1.291-95: ‘Eager for war as Caesar was already, these words of Curio increased his rage and fired his ardour none the less. So the race-horse at

4 Olympia is encouraged by the shouting, although he is already pressing against the gates of the closed barrier and seeking to loosen the bolts with his forehead.’  2.495-9: (Domitius) ‘After crossing the Rubicon, never again will Caesar be stopped by any stream, not even if the Ganges blocked his way with its swollen flood. Let the squadrons of horses gallop forward and the infantry also advance…’  2.524-5: (Domitius talks to himself) ‘Hurry to your mark, break all obstacles (moras) that tie you to life…’

B. Delay as violent paralysis: passage for discussion if we have time Book 4.737-end (Curio launches an African campaign in Caesar’s behalf, and he and his forces are killed by the enemy troops led by King Juba)

The doom of speeding 437 death had given the general over to destruction; now civil war was claiming one who had aided its inception. He had led his men by a perilous path over the steep 440 rocks and cliffs, till the enemy could be seen far off, from the heights. The foe with native cunning, held off a while, till Curio should leave the hills and trust his army to defile over the open plain. He, unaware of their hidden plans, and thinking them in retreat, 445 marched his men down to the fields, as if victorious. Soon the stratagem was revealed, as the Numidian light cavalry gained the slopes and then surrounded the Romans on every side, stunning the soldiers and their leader alike: the coward did not seek to flee nor 450 the brave man to fight. For there the horses, un-roused by the trumpet’s blare, did not champ the bit or scatter stones with their stamping hooves, mane floating, ears erect, or chafe at the restraint and shift their ground with a clatter, till the bowed head sinks, the limbs reek 455 with sweat, the tongue protrudes, the mouth coarse and dry, the lungs panting roughly breath labouring as the spent flanks work, and froth cakes and dries on the blood-stained bit. They refused to move a step, though urged on by whips and blows, and the force 460 of continual spurring to drive them on; though no man could profit there by conquering his mount’s resistance, for no attack was possible, any charge would only carry the rider nearer the foe, to offer a clear mark for a spear. But as soon as the African skirmishers launched their 465 steeds at them, the plain shook with that trampling, the soil was ploughed, and a pillar of dust rose, huge as that whirled by a Thracian storm, veiling the sky with its cloud and bringing darkness. Now the sad doom of war bore down on the Roman infantrymen. 470 the issue never in doubt, this not even war’s lottery, for every moment of conflict was filled with death: with no possibility of attack or closing with the foe. So the soldiers, surrounded on every side, fell to

5 sideways thrusts from close quarters, as well as to 475 spears flung from a distance, doomed by the bloody wounds inflicted by a hail of missiles and the sheer weight of steel. The vast army was driven into a tiny space, and any man crawling in fear among that host could barely move without hurt from his comrades’ 480 swords, the crush growing greater as the front ranks retreated, diminishing the circle. Without space even to deploy their weapons, the crowd of soldiers were squeezed ever tighter, armour dented by the pressure. The conquering Moors could scarcely enjoy a clear 485 view of the victory fate granted them, unable to see collapsing limbs, bodies striking the ground, streams of blood, as the dead were held upright by the throng.

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