Anatomizing Civil War
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Anatomizing Civil War Anatomizing Civil War Studies in Lucan’s Epic Technique • Martin T. Dinter The University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor Copyright © Martin T. Dinter 2012 All rights reserved This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid- free paper 2015 2014 2013 2012 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Dinter, Martin T. Anatomizing Civil War : studies in Lucan’s epic technique / Martin Dinter. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 472- 11850- 2 (hardback) — ISBN 978- 0- 472- 02871- 9 (e- book) 1. Lucan, 39– 65. Pharsalia. 2. Lucan, 39– 65— Technique. 3. Epic poetry, Latin— History and criticism. 4. Rome— History— Civil War, 49– 45 B.C.— Literature and the war. I. Title. PA6480.D56 2012 873'.01— dc23 2012042614 parentibus optimis Acknowledgments • With great pleasure I thank the following institutions for their kind and gener- ous support in the course of my research: DAAD, Cusanuswerk— bischöfliche Studienförderung e.V., University of Heidelberg-C ambridge Programme, AHRC, St. John’s College Benefactor Scholarships, The Cambridge European Trust, The Jebb Fund, The Kurt Hahn Trust, The Fondation Hardt. The support of the Cambridge Classics Faculty allowed me to attend many a conference. I have presented parts of my Lucan project at research seminars and conferences at the universities of Basel, Bordeaux, Cambridge, Liverpool, Oxford, Rostock, Virginia, Warwick, and Würzburg and have at these occa- sions greatly benefited from the comments made by Matthew Leigh, Chris Kraus, Shadi Bartsch, Sylvie Franchet d’Esperéy, Christine Walde, Bruce Gib- son, Tony Woodman, and Thomas Baier. I also wish to thank Glenn W. Most and Christiane Reitz for their inspirational teaching at Heidelberg, as well as Philip Hardie and John Henderson at Cambridge. The latter has directed my PhD thesis, from which this book stems, toward its completion during three years with much patience, diligence, and encouragement and has been the ideal Doktorvater. My thanks to him. I also extend my thanks to Emily Gowers and Stephen Harrison, who have acted as my PhD examiners. Elaine Fantham has given me access to forthcoming material and kindly read my entire manuscript, and her wise comments have often spurred more than she could ever have imagined, while Michael Reeve’s and the late John A. Crook’s astute criticism has saved me from many an error. John A. Crook has also kindly provided translations of the Epitaphium Lucani and the Argumenta Lucani. Philip Hardie has offered generous comments and has made available viii • Acknowledgments excerpts from his forthcoming book on Fama,1 and Susanna Morton Braund has ever so kindly given me permission to use her translation of Lucan—i t has stood as model throughout. De Gruyter has kindly given me permission to reuse material from my chapters “Lucan’s Epic Body,” in Lucan im 21. Jahrhun- dert, edited by Ch. Walde (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2005), 295– 312, and “ . und es bewegt sich doch— der Automatismus des abgehackten Gliedes in Lukan” in Lucan between Epic Tradition and Aesthetic Innovation, edited by Ch. Reitz and N. Hömke (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 175– 190. I am also grateful to the Musée Fabre de Montpellier, for granting me the right to reproduce Gericault’s paint- ing on the jacket of this book. Particular thanks go to Charles Guerin for his patient and repeated help and cultural diplomacy in this matter. I am most indebted to the librarians at the Cambridge Classical Library, Stephen Howe and Lyn Bailey, for their splendid cooperation and support. In addition I have received further bibliographical help with hunting down rare continental items from Andreas Bartholomä, Antonia Ruppel, and especially Cornelia Vetter. Inge and Abed Sai have been the most generous of all hosts during my time in Britain, and so has Jesus Agustin Badillo- Corona in Mexico. My parents, who have continually offered their love and support, end this list. I dedicate this work to my mother and the memory of my father, who left us when I had only just finished this project. Martin T. Dinter 1. Cf. Hardie 2012. Asso 2011 appeared after the manuscript had been completed. Contents • Introduction 1 Aide- Mémoire: The Plot of Lucan’s Bellum Civile 5 1. Lucan’s Epic Body: Anatomizing Civil War 9 2. Embodiments: Lucan and Fama 50 3. Autarchic Limbs: Sententiae in Lucan 89 4. The Anatomy of Repetition 119 Bibliography 155 Index Locorum 173 General Index 185 Introduction • Let us mop up the blood and appreciate Lucan’s epic as a work of art, in the guise of the painting that serves as frontispiece. What would art critics have to say about this picture? Would they judge in the same way as the catalog of a recent London exhibition in which Théodore Géricault’s Study of Truncated Limbs (c. 1818– 19)1 was displayed, remarking that it “transcends mere horror to achieve an aesthetic, sensuous quality that belies the macabre subject”?2 Would they join in with Delacroix’s 1857 response that it constitutes “the best argument in favour of Beauty as it was intended”?3 Today a study of Lucan no longer needs apology, for what was once con- sidered to be not much more than a pile of truncated textual limbs in an un- finished and therefore unpolished epic corpus has been rehabilitated. Morford, Ahl, Johnson, Henderson, Masters, Leigh, and Bartsch have all fought the good fight.4 Accordingly, from my privileged position I am looking back to a wealth of scholarship that has changed our outlook on Lucan. Much of the research on Lucan’s epic account of the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey has focused on politics and ideology. In addition often it has exclusively addressed the question of Lucan’s relationship to his presumed sources, not least the prose history of Livy and the account of Caesar himself, or has concerned itself with the influence contemporary rhetorical education and practice has had on Lucan. 1. Oil on canvas 52 × 64 (20.5 × 25.25), Musée Fabre, Montpellier. 2. Noon 2003, 81. 3. Noon 2003, 81. 4. Morford 1967, Ahl 1976, Johnson 1987, Henderson 1987, Masters 1992, Bartsch 1997, Leigh 1997. 2 • Anatomizing Civil War My study, however, aims to take Lucan more on his own terms as a poet by examining a number of related techniques that combine to create a unique poetic form and vision. I argue for the importance of a unifying imagery based on the body, whether of the state, of the army, or of the poem itself, for a unify- ing literary purpose, in which traditional epic and heroic glory is replaced by a different conception of fame, particularly the fame of the poet, and for the unifying, pervasive, and positive contribution of two widely used poetic and rhetorical devices, epigrammatic sententiae and abundant repetition of both narrative moves and lexical items. By treating Lucan as a poet we will see how Lucan’s epic technique shapes his literary corpus. My first chapter, on Lucan’s use of body imagery, explores the use of body vocabulary in Lucan’s epic. We find it employed in at least five different con- nections: the cosmic body the Roman state body the military corps the human body the textual body By examining Lucan’s treatment of individual bodies and social groupings I map out the parameters of Lucan’s anatomical conceptualization of Rome, the Roman state, and the world as a whole. These parameters are then exemplified by a reading of BC 7 and a case study of the epic motif of the automated severed limb. For the cosmic body Lucan uses gigantomachic imagery and personifica- tion to invest earth and heaven, most prominently the sun, with bodily pres- ences, which enable them to take an active part in crafting his world of civil war. Second, the Roman state body is drawn into Lucan’s project: throughout, Roma carries virtual bodily presence, and extensive play on the many meanings of caput positions strife for the caput mundi at the very heart of the epic. Third, in the military corps the bodies of the military leaders and that of the armies seem to merge, each representing the other. What is more, overlap of military and body vocabulary makes us read each soldier as epitomizing a larger body. Additionally, human bodies frequently stand in for soulless objects; they pile up and turn into defensive structures—gu arding rather than being guarded. Lucan’s poetics of namelessness relies heavily on substituting body parts such as manus for named characters when denoting those committing nefas. Finally Lucan frequently links his fate and fame with that of his textual body and thus designs these funera mundi as his own requiem. In sum, Lucan’s interlocking Introduction • 3 of different levels of often disturbing body imagery creates an epic body that is not whole and closed but unnervingly unfinished and open. By presenting his epic not as a classical whole but as an open body, a vivisection of the Roman Republic, Lucan once more calls the authority of epic into question and exposes the cracks and fissures in a genre that seeks to pass itself off as a seamless whole.