Lucan's Bellum Ciuile and the Epic Genre
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Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile and the Epic Genre Fran Alexis BA (Hons) MA This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of History and Classics University of Tasmania 2011 ii Declaration of Originality This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for a degree or diploma by the University or any other institution, except by way of background information and duly acknowledged in the thesis, and to the best of the my knowledge and belief no material previously published or written by another person except where due acknowledgement is made in the text of the thesis, nor does the thesis contain any material that infringes copyright. Fran Alexis Authority of Access This thesis may be made available for loan and limited copying in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968. Fran Alexis iii Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile and the Epic Genre Abstract This thesis demonstrates that Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile takes epic to a new level, testing the generic paradigm, because Rome’s civil war is a new subject for epic poetry. Lucan’s epic presents civil war as the self-destruction of republican Rome, and close reading reveals the poem’s intricate relationship with Homeric, Virgilian and Ovidian epic. We see that it changes and exaggerates characteristic tropes of the genre, by techniques such as delay, digression and frequent intervention by a complex narrator / persona, whose dramatic intrusions are like the speeches of characters in a tragedy. Such a politically risky subject, a type of impious war where Romans fight against and kill Romans, necessitates a long preamble and an insistent narrator’s voice to justify poetic commemoration of such a crime. Unlike earlier epic where civil war is rare or treated only as an unfortunate but necessary prelude to peace, Lucan’s poem is wholly taken up with this type of internecine war, the civil war between Caesar and Pompey. It also includes the civil wars of Marius and Sulla, introduced as a mise en abyme to intensify this subject, which suggests the predictability of recurring civil war and ideas of persistent political instability. Lucan’s poem offers a detailed portrayal of the sea- battle at Massilia, and paradoxically, this inventive battle is the most ‘epic’ of its civil war battles, because many conventions of epic land battles are applied to this conflict on ships. Lucan’s sea-battle re-presents and revitalises epic topoi by their new location, the sea. The episode concerning Hercules and Antaeus is also an example of a mise en abyme, reflecting the focus of Lucan’s poem, the idea that civil war degrades both sides equally. It argues that the wrestling match between Hercules and Antaeus illustrates how participants in combat become similar and assume corresponding characteristics. This episode shows how the poem interacts with its own past battle narrative, relates to accounts of conflict in earlier epic, and reflects Roman gladiatorial spectacle. Lucan’s paradoxical poem presents the battle at Pharsalus iv more symbolically than a typical epic battle narrative. Rhetorical praeteritio of the unspeakable wounds, weapons and forms of death in civil war draws a parallel between the human body and the state of Rome. Lucan’s epic stretches the limits of the genre to overcome the difficulty of recounting Romans fighting against fellow Romans in civil war and demonstrates that there is more to this type of war than blood and guts and gruesome mutilation. Lucan’s poem is evidence for how much has been and how much more can be articulated through the language and tropes of epic. v Acknowledgements My most grateful thanks go to my supervisor Peter Davis who has been a source of inspiration, guidance and support since the first lecture in Ancient Civilisations I attended in 1998. I thank him for his unstinting encouragement, and appreciate greatly the enthusiasm for the subject generated during the weekly ‘Reading Lucan’ sessions we had together with Rod Thomson, Jessica Dietrich, Jenna Mead and fellow post-grad David Nolan throughout 2007-08. I thank Jonathan Wallis and Graeme Miles, who took over as supervisors, for their advice and help. Special thanks go to fellow post-grad Michael Berry for his infectious passion for languages and invaluable support during the final stages of this thesis. I also acknowledge the friends I have made among the group of post-grad students and the assistance provided by the office staff. Heartfelt thanks and gratitude go to my family: to my husband, Peter Alexis, for his unfailing confidence and love throughout my years of study; and to our son Adam and daughter Ami, for their love, support and encouragement. I dedicate this thesis to the memory of our son, Rowan, who died 20 October 1999. vi Table of Contents Introduction: Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile and the Epic Genre 1 1. Chapter 1: Lucan’s Book 1: Beginnings of Epic 9 2. Chapter 2: Lucan - The Intrusive Narrator 37 3. Chapter 3: Lucan’s Book 2: Civil War and More 73 4. Chapter 4: Lucan’s Book 3: Sea Battles 111 5. Chapter 5: Lucan’s Book 4: Taking sides 148 6. Chapter 6: Lucan’s Book 7: Wounds and Weapons 185 Conclusion 214 Bibliography 217 1 Introduction: Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile and the Epic Genre tot mihi pro bellis bellum ciuile dedisti. BC 5.269 In place of so many wars, you have given civil war to me. 1 The spokesman for Caesar’s mutinous troops complains that instead of many wars against a foreign enemy he is asked to fight in a civil war. As readers of Lucan’s poem, we might level a similar complaint: in place of the kind of war found in Homer’s Iliad, the quintessential epic,2 Lucan, as poet, gives us an epic about Rome’s civil war, the war which changed Rome from republic to principate. In the line above, the poet accentuates his subject matter, war, by polyptoton and proximity (bellis bellum), and so glances back to the opening word of his poem where the first word (bella) indicates, through its allusion to the weighty subject of Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid, that these are the most significant epic texts with which it engages. Lucan’s poem is about the events of a civil war, bella ... plus quam ciuilia, BC 1.1, ‘wars ... more than civil’, about battles ‘more than’ or different from those found in these earlier epics.3 This phrase, however, remains unclear as to precise meaning, and on another level it illustrates how difficult it is for Lucan’s poem to portray in epic manner Rome’s civil war where the protagonists are more than just enemies, they are fellow Romans, and the events are from Rome’s recent history more than from the battles of myth or legend. As a result of its subject, Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile asks to be compared with martial epic, Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid while its many allusions not only point to these two epics but also to Homer’s Odyssey and Ovid’s Metamorphoses as poems within the epic genre. I examine Lucan’s epic in conjunction with these works and 1 This translation and all others in the thesis are my own. 2 Baldick, 2008, 111, defines epic as a ‘long narrative poem celebrating the great deeds of one or more legendary heroes, in a grand ceremonious style. The hero, usually protected or even descended from gods, performs superhuman exploits in battle or in marvellous voyages, often saving or founding a nation ... .’ 3 Henderson, 1998, 186, writes: ‘Lucan’s difficult language is strange, foregrounded in reading above the tale it tells’. With Henderson, I see that the meaning or sense of the phrase, bella ... plus quam ciuilia, ‘wars ... more than civil’ is difficult to pin down with any great precision. Paradox and inconsistency in Lucan’s epic often reflect back to this strange phrase and the type of wars it recounts. 2 explore the extent to which Lucan’s poem displays new modes of expression for its subject, Rome’s civil war. This thesis argues that Lucan’s choice of subject, Rome’s civil war, is the critical factor which drives the changes to his battle narrative. The presumably knowing and self-inflicted choice of subject might be Lucan’s response to poetic or literary concerns, as the poet succeeds in differentiating his epic from all earlier extant epics, especially that of Virgil, through his detailed engagement with the battles of Rome’s civil war. The poet articulates an almost Ovidian measure of self- awareness and self-assurance about his place within the literary canon, as well as a certain level of political disquiet. Lucan’s choice of subject might reflect the political or cultural anxiety of a young poet living under the rule of Nero, the legacy of Rome’s civil war.4 We know that earlier poets had written on aspects of Rome’s civil war or referred to it directly and that in earlier epic some battles can be read as civil war (as shown in Chapter 3), but Lucan undertakes directly what might be seen as a concern of Latin Literature, that is, how to write about such a politically sensitive issue as Rome’s civil war.5 Aspects of Rome’s civil war as a subject that necessitate the remodelling of many of the poetic conventions of the epic genre are discussed in this thesis. Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile speaks out about a topic almost taboo, a type of war considered to be a crime against humanity. The tensions aroused by the subject cause the poet to stretch the elasticity and adaptability of the genre, as the poem reflects the strain of exposing the self-destruction of Roman society in civil war.