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ETHNOGRAPHIC CHARACTERIZATION IN LUCAN’S BELLUM CIVILE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Gregory W.Q. Hodges, B.A., M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2004 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Erik Gunderson, Adviser Professor Frank Coulson _________________________ Professor Gifty Ako-Adounvo Adviser Department of Greek and Latin Copyright by Gregory W.Q. Hodges 2004 ABSTRACT Lucan’s Bellum Civile is a commentary upon and criticism of the Neronian principate and the deteriorated Roman character of the first century. The poet’s success would be marked initially by imperial censorship, followed by his avowed involvement in the Pisonian conspiracy, the inevitable result of which was Lucan’s death sentence in 65 A.D. In his epic Lucan laments the state of Roman citizenship that has precipitated the fall of the Republic. The true Roman, the hero that would sacrifice all for the state, is absent from the poem. Instead the promotion of the individual, effected by military and political successes among foreign peoples at and beyond the edges of empire, has dismantled simultaneously the ethnic construct of the Roman. To underscore this loss of native Roman identity Lucan employs various non-Roman ethnic models when developing the characters of Caesar, Pompey, and Cato. The stereotypical traits of the European Gaul, the Asiatic despot, and the North African nomad, as generated by such sources as Polybius and Cato the Elder, structure the character of Lucan’s protagonists. They have divested themselves of their Roman aspects and assumed rather those of the peoples among whom they produced their public strength. No longer can this be seen as a legitimate civil war fought between Romans for Rome. Instead these leaders have become as foreigners, each posing a distinct threat to the state. These three men, ii representative of the poet’s tripartite world view, enact the promised destruction that will leave the empty city of Rome to be rushed and occupied by the foreign enemies that had so long been held at bay. Lucan’s ethnographic characterizations of his heroes are illustrative of his disaffection with a Rome that has been abandoned by its protectors. Even the poet, upon recounting Caesar’s desecration of the temple to Saturn, is unable to return in thought or narrative to the city. Instead he, his audience, his poem, and his characters are condemned to wander far from the security and strength that was once the bounty of Republican Rome. iii Dedicated to my family iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my adviser, Erik Gunderson, for his intellectual support and continued encouragement. His patience with my stylistic errors and the often crudely developed methodology has given me the opportunity to approach this text from a variety of different avenues. Frank Coulson has benefited this dissertation with his keen eye for detail and his unwavering attention to various critical matters. I am indebted to him for his substantive and editorial suggestions. I am grateful to Gifty Ako-Adounvo for undertaking involvement in the production of this paper. Her perceptive understanding of the theme has provided me with many insights. The Department of Greek and Latin at the Ohio State University and Trinity College School together have granted me the support and environment that allowed this project to be pursued and completed. Alice H. Brown, who reviewed many editions of this manuscript, has helped immeasurably in the preparation of the text. Any remaining errors are my own. I also wish to thank Donald J. McCord whose tuition and lively conversation initiated an interest of which this dissertation is the culmination. Lastly, the members of my family have afforded me the encouragement and strength to develop this dissertation. To them I owe the greatest debt of all. v VITA March 13, 1973.................................. Born - Toronto, Canada 1995 .................................................. B.A. St. John’s College 1996 .................................................. Post-Baccalaureate, University of Pennsylvania 1998 .................................................. M.A. University of Toronto 1998-2002.......................................... Graduate Teaching and Research Associate, The Ohio State University 2002-present ..................................... Instructor of Classics, Trinity College School, Canada FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Greek and Latin vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION ................................................................................................ iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................. v VITA .............................................................................................................. vi INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1. CAESAR THE FOREIGNER ............................................... 20 1.1 CAESAR’S ETHEREAL INTRODUCTION .......... 21 1.2 CAESAR THE GAUL .............................................. 24 1.3 CAESAR AT TROY AND BEYOND ..................... 58 1.4 CAESAR AND ALEXANDER ............................... 68 1.5 CONCLUSION ........................................................ 74 2. POMPEY: THE SUN SETS IN THE EAST ...................... 76 2.1 POMPEY’S ROMAN INTRODUCTION .............. 79 2.2 POMPEIUS CUNCTANS ....................................... 90 2.3 XERXEAN POMPEY ............................................. 121 2.4 A VIEW TO A KILL ............................................... 135 3. CATO’S ISOLATION ........................................................ 152 3.1 THE STAGE IS SET ............................................... 153 3.2 CATO THE COUNSELLOR .................................. 170 3.3 CATO THE LOVER ............................................... 185 3.4 THE STOIC TENOR OF BOOK 9 ......................... 195 3.5 AFRICA: THE HELLISH UTOPIA ...................... 201 3.6 THE PSYLLI: AUXILIUM EX FORTUNA ............. 213 3.7 CONCLUSION: THE COMMENSURABILITY OF THE PSYLLI AND CATO ............................... 223 CONCLUSION: SI CREDERE FAMAE...................................................... 225 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................... 229 vii INTRODUCTION Lucan’s epic poem, Bellum Civile, has enjoyed a certain renaissance upon the publication of Ahl’s work dedicated thereto in 1973.1 While still attributed, largely due to the chronology of Latin literature, to the Silver Age in terms of literary style, the epic and its author both have borne the burden of comparison with their golden Virgilian antecedents.2 The following work intends not to contribute to this type of intra-literary criticism, but rather aims at evaluating Lucan’s poem on its own merits with a special eye to the underlying aspects of ethnography. The monstrous characteristics of the foreigner will come to bear upon the Roman, threatening his very existence. In this epic, which is in part a threnodic lament of the phantasmic Republic, Lucan suggests that the civil war means more than the dismantlement of traditional Roman political institutions. In fact, this conflict serves as the death knell for an increasingly abstract Roman ethnic identity. With Rome, her institutions, and her champions, all having been relegated to a quasi- mythic history, a time that knew not the civic bloodshed of Marius and Sulla, the Roman character has been dismantled. This is is the ironic patrimony to be forseen for a people born of outlaws, fugitives and criminals who established through social contract and grew 1Bramble (1982), Martindale (1984, 1993), Johnson (1987), Fantham (1992), Hunink (1992a), Masters (1992), Hardie (1993), Bartsch (1997), Skelnár (2003). 2Getty (1940), Thompson and Bruère (1968), Bramble (1982), Martindale (1984, 1993), Johnson (1987), Hardie (1993). 1 through rape and conquest a small town on the banks of the Tiber. As was the case in the 8th century B.C., in the age of Nero it is not known what it means to be Roman. The state is left, bereft of the true citizen, a city now replete with foreigners: vincto fossore coluntur Hesperiae segetes, stat tectis putris avitis in nullos ruitura domus, nulloque frequentem cive suo Romam sed mundi faece repletam cladis eo dedimus,... The Hesperian fields are to be worked by a chain gang, upon the heads of none will the roofs, hewn of old by our forefathers, of homes still standing fall. We concede Rome not to bustle with her own Roman citizens but rather, through this disaster, to be full with the dregs of the world. (7.402-405) Rome is to become the place where the abject peoples of the world are to be deposited. Its destruction generates a vacuum that is filled by the centripetal rush of foreigners from Europe, Asia and Africa. Lucan’s apostrophic lamentation cited above identifies the civil war itself as both the effect of Roman discord and the cause of Roman subordination. Fugitives from the city, traitors to the fertile fields of the Italian peninsula, Romans have disavowed the nationalistic title of global regent. In these lines Lucan offers an exposition on the conspicuously absent Roman citizen. Incommensurate with the altruistic aims of the Republic that would have the true