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Lucan 'Transforms' Ovid: Intertextual Studies in the Bellum

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Lucan 'Transforms' Ovid: Intertextual Studies in the Bellum Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2012 Lucan "Transforms" Ovid: Intertextual Studies in the Bellum Civile and the Metamorphoses Sara Watkins Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES LUCAN ‘TRANSFORMS’ OVID: INTERTEXTUAL STUDIES IN THE BELLUM CIVILE AND THE METAMORPHOSES By SARA WATKINS A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Classics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2012 Sara Watkins defended this dissertation on March 15, 2012. The members of the supervisory committee were: Laurel Fulkerson Professor Directing Dissertation David Levenson University Representative Francis Cairns Committee Member Timothy Stover Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Lewis Edward Watkins, who never underestimated the value of education. April 17, 1932 - March 6, 2011. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a debt of gratitude to all those who helped in the completion of this dissertation, but especially to my adviser Laurel Fulkerson, without whose enthusiasm for my topic, practical advice on matters large and small, and encouragement during those times when I felt discouraged, I would not have seen this project to completion. I owe special thanks as well to the members of my committee, Tim Stover, Stephen Hinds, Francis Cairns, and David Levenson, for the time and care you all have devoted to reading and critiquing my work at varying stages of the writing process. To the faculty of Florida State’s Classics Department, I want to thank you, as well, for your generous donations of time, support, and advice throughout my graduate career. I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from you. To my friends and family, who have (to put it bluntly) tolerated me throughout this process, I am indebted also to you. To my parents, sister, and my grandmother: thank you for your abiding love, support, and patience throughout. To Deb, Jason, Abby, Reema, Robert, and Buddy: thanks for all the Lovecraftian adventures. And, finally, Jason, I owe you the greatest thanks of all for believing in me even (and especially) when I didn’t believe in myself. Your perspective, assurance, and love at every step of this process have been as essential to my sanity as to my success. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................1 1. CHAPTER ONE: PATTERNS OF CHAOS ...........................................................................6 1.1 Chaos Iterum ..................................................................................................................7 1.2 Lucan’s ‘Metamorphoses’ ...........................................................................................12 1.3 Universal Fire, Flood…and War..................................................................................19 1.4 ‘Change and Decline’ from Ovid to Lucan ..................................................................22 1.5 Lucan and the Iron Age................................................................................................24 1.6 Living after the Fall .....................................................................................................31 1.7 Caesars in the Sky ........................................................................................................43 2. CHAPTER TWO: THE FATES OF CITIES.........................................................................48 2.1 Shadows of Rome ........................................................................................................50 2.2 An Ovidian Digression: Metellus at the Treasury .......................................................53 2.3 The Massilian Embassy ...............................................................................................57 2.4 (The) Bellum Civile goes to Sea...................................................................................61 2.5 Ovidian Contexts .........................................................................................................64 2.6 Memories of Sulla ........................................................................................................70 2.7 Ship(wreck)s of State ...................................................................................................72 2.8 Vulteius and His Ratis .................................................................................................78 2.9 Monumental Nefas .......................................................................................................85 2.10 Theban Paradigms ........................................................................................................88 2.11 Urbes per Orbem .........................................................................................................99 3. CHAPTER THREE: MONSTERS AND HEROES ............................................................102 3.1 Audax Curio ...............................................................................................................104 3.2 Hannibales Redivivi ...................................................................................................120 3.3 Curio’s Fama .............................................................................................................123 3.4 Cato in Libya..............................................................................................................124 3.5 Cato’s Argonautic Quest ............................................................................................127 3.6 Audax Cato .................................................................................................................131 3.7 Lucan’s Medusan Fons ..............................................................................................133 3.8 Enter the Snakes .........................................................................................................138 3.9 (Herculean) Apotheosis? ............................................................................................140 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................144 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...............................................................................................................149 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...............................................................................................159 v ABSTRACT Although many of Lucan’s allusions to Ovid are well-known, studies that contextualize them with the care that has been done with, e.g., Lucan and Vergil are still few in number. This study makes a substantial contribution to the growing understanding of Ovid’s influence upon Lucan. In seeking to move beyond the emulation-alone model as a way of explaining their poetic interactions, I examine a number of intertextual links between Lucan’s Bellum Civile and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and I demonstrate how Lucan appropriates Ovidian material to articulate and enhance his broader poetic goals and vision. vi INTRODUCTION The last several decades have been witness to a renaissance in the study of post-Augustan Latin epic poetry. Following from and in many ways inspired by the renewal of interest in Ovid’s Metamorphoses as an Augustan complement (and rival) to Vergil’s Aeneid, many post- Augustan epic poets like Lucan, Statius, Valerius Flaccus, and Silius Italicus are currently being re-evaluated and enjoying revivals of their own.1 Though it is a common orthodoxy that Ovid laid the groundwork for many of the characteristic features of post-Augustan or ‘Silver Age’ poetry,2 expansive and sustained studies of Ovid’s influence on his successors are still lacking. This is certainly true of Lucan, whose Bellum Civile has been read most often in relation to its sustained and quite often polemical engagement with Vergil’s Aeneid. When it has come to studying Ovid’s influence on Lucan, critics have historically been concerned with isolating varied, seemingly unplanned, and disparate Ovidian intertexts, with little attention either to explaining their significance or delineating any larger patterns in Lucan’s use of Ovidian material.3 This trend can be attributed—at least in part—to the idiosyncratic place that the Metamorphoses holds within the epic tradition. The poem is pointedly episodic and its framework is characterized by such fragmented and fragmenting fluidity that it militates against the attempts of both poets and critics to cast it as the principal model against which to judge any of the texts that follow it.4 When it comes to Lucan, there is a sense in which it has simply been easier to analyze the ways that Lucan reacts, systematically, to Vergil: on a macro and micro 1 See Wheeler (2002, 361-3) for a good (and recent) summary of this trend, especially as it pertains to Lucan. 2 The general affinitities between the two poets are outlined well in Williams (1978, 52-3;
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