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LUCAN’S MUTILATED :

THE POETICS OF INCOMPLETENESS IN ROMAN EPIC

ISAIA M. CROSSON

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2020

© 2020 Isaia Crosson All Rights Reserved

Abstract

LUCAN’S MUTILATED VOICE: THE POETICS OF INCOMPLETENESS IN ROMAN EPIC

ISAIA M. CROSSON

In this doctoral dissertation I seek to reassess the innovativeness of the young Corduban Lucan’s masterpiece, the Civil War. Faced with the abrupt closure of Lucan’s poem 546 lines into Book 10, I adopt the view propounded by Haffter, Masters and Tracy, that what most have taken as incompletion brought on by the poet’s premature in 65 CE is in fact a deliberate artistic decision. I then argue back from this view and reread several key features of the poem as manifestations of the same deliberate bodily incompleteness, the same sudden mutilation of a voice that the ending of the poem as we have it presents. My dissertation consists of two macro-sections, one on the structural and thematic characteristics of Lucan’s Civil War, and one on the characterization of the two antagonists most actively involved in the conflict:

Julius , himself the author of an incomplete prose account of the very civil war that Lucan chooses to focus on; and the Great, a broken man whose mangled body reproduces at the microcosmic level the lack of finish exhibited by the textual body of the poem itself.

Table of Contents i

Acknowledgments ii

Dedication iv

Introduction 1

The silence of the poet 1.1 The meaning of incompleteness 13 1.2 Inmensum 17 1.3 Doomsday 29 1.4 The suffering poet 41 1.5 Silencing prophets 48

Shape of chaos 2.1 The rhetoric of the enemy 64 2.2 Where it begins 78 2.3 Lucan v. Caesar 95 2.4 Final notes from Marseilles 110

Birth and death of a god 3.1 Where it ends 116 3.2 117 3.3 Divus Julius 130 3.4 The poet’s nemesis 153

The human stain 4.1 Dream of a shadow 161 4.2 Nomina nuda tenemus 169 4.3 Pompey in pieces 175 4.4 The headless trunk 194

Epilogue 209

Bibliography 211

i Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Professors Gareth D. Williams, Katharina Volk and Stephanie A.

Frampton for believing in my project and giving me invaluable advice as it gradually took shape over the past two years. On many occasions I felt discouraged, either because I did not know how to continue, or because I thought that my ideas were irrelevant. Thanks to the enlightened guidance of my advisors I found new inspiration to bring to an end a dissertation that – quite ironically – focuses on incompleteness in an ancient work of literature. Gareth, Katharina and

Stephanie: it was a privilege to be your student and learn from your acumen and insatiable intellectual curiosity how to approach so complex an artwork as Lucan’s Civil War.

I also wish to thank Professor Kristina Milnor, who has made me a more refined reader of the language thanks to her insights and captivating lectures; and Professor Matthew Leigh, whose masterful book on Lucan made me fall in love with this poet’s mysterious work.

My deepest gratitude also goes to my extraordinary : without my great-uncle Cam

I would not have grown to appreciate the intrinsic beauty of humanistic knowledge and classical studies. Without my grandparents, Luisa and Sergio, I would not be the man I am today: even when you were far, you were always close, and you helped me to understand what truly matters in life. My aunt Sonia taught me patience, compassion, and to believe in myself. And you, my beloved mom, have been my most loyal, most enthusiastic and most loving ally in this tortuous journey: without your selfless love and your soothing words I could not have succeeded, and I cannot express how honored I am to be your son.

As for you, my dear friends, what can I say? You were and are my vital force: thank you,

Emma, for reacting to my endless complaints about the difficulty of the enterprise (or about the difficulties of life in general), with unwavering optimism: you’ve been my in the midst of

ii the thickest woods. Thank you, Francesco, for being my and (soon) my best man: thanks to your skills, as when you dealt with that sheriff in South Carolina, I survived quite a few misfortunate accidents, and I learned not to give up. And you, Giovanni, have always listened to me with unmatched kindness, offering precious advice whenever I needed it. And you, Angelika and Edoardo, who are to me like a sister and a brother, remind me everyday that I am the luckiest man to have met you both.

To conclude, I wish to thank my muse, the love of my life, and the incredible woman I am going to marry in just a few months: Anne, it is a privilege to stand by your side as we walk through life, and it was a privilege to conclude my doctorate in your company. In Lucan’s poem,

Pompey is like the captain of a ship that’s about to sink. If I had not met you, I would be like

Pompey: you are my mast through the storms of life.

iii

Per mia madre, i miei nonni, Cam ed Anne ἀνερρίφθω κύβος

iv Introduction

Lucano era forse maggior genio di Virgilio, nè perciò resta che sia stato maggior poeta, e riuscito meglio nella sua impresa; anzi che verruno lo stimi nemmeno paragonabile a Virgilio. Giacomo Leopardi

Theophrastus states that “it is appropriate to leave something to your listeners’ understanding, and let them deduce it by themselves.” 1 Innes points out that one of

Theophrastus’ most likely sources for this principle is his predecessor Aristotle.2 It is therefore quite an ancient belief that the interactions between speakers and listeners should be rich and multifaceted, and that listeners should have as active a role as possible in their understanding of a given speech. As a result, in shaping a λόγος one will be most effective when one refrains from saying everything one means to say, and when one also lets listeners draw conclusions on their own. Theophrastus’ basic formula posits that the adoption of a pose of deliberate incompleteness in the composition of a speech is useful, not detrimental, for the purposes of persuasion.

The above reflection may be extended to writers in general, for written works of a disparate nature were often publicly recited in ancient , and speakers were often speechwriters to begin with. In extolling the ideal symbiotic relationship between λογογράφοι and their audience Demetrius of Phalerum builds on Theophrastus’ view. In a relation of mutual engagement the listener, says Demetrius, upon understanding what has been omitted (συνεὶς τὸ

ἐλλειφθέν) by the speaker, will be more favorably inclined to the speaker’s message (µάρτυς...

εὐµενέστερος).3 This has to do with a rhetorical trick: through intuiting the information left out from a λόγος, listeners derive intellectual pleasure, because they are made to feel clever, as if

1 Fr. 696 Fortenbaugh: δεῖ...ἔνια καταλιπεῖν καὶ τῶι ἀκροατήι συνιέναι καὶ λογίζεσθαι ἐξ αὑτοῦ. Unless otherwise noted translations are my own. 2 Innes 1985: 252-4. See Ar. Rhet. 1408a and 1417b. 3 Dem. Eloc. 222. 1 they were able to fill gaps and gain important insights. But this sense of discovery is an illusion, because skilled rhetoricians can and will manipulate their discourse in a way that makes it clear what information has been left out and why, and what conclusions ought to be drawn as a result.

A similar trend can be observed at : reflecting on obscurity (obscuritas) in forging a sentence, draws attention to the tendency among prose writers and even to cut out words and omit or distort information in their zeal for brevity, and in an effort to enhance pleasure in hearing and reading. This is achievable through various techniques, from ἀδιανóητα

(expressions with a clear verbal sense but a hidden meaning), to omissions with disregard for the intelligibility of the speech (“as if it were enough,” goes on Quintilian, “that the speakers should know what they mean to say”).4 Although Quintilian, in contrast to Grillo’s claim,5 finds fault with all expressions in which the recipient of the λόγος must make an effort to understand what is being expressed (sermonem…quem auditor suo ingenio intellegit),6 other people delight in obscurity and incompleteness (Quint. Inst. 8.2.21):

Ingeniosa haec et fortia et ex ancipiti diserta creduntur, pervasitque iam multos ista persuasio, ut id demum eleganter atque exquisite dictum putent quod interpretandum sit.

These things are thought to be ingenious, powerful, and audaciously eloquent, and the conviction has now become widespread that nothing is elegant or refined unless it requires an interpretation.

So much for Thucydides’ belief that most people are prone to internalize the data they receive without testing it properly (ἀβασανίστως).7 According to the Athenian historian, due to laziness and a deplorable tendency to accept hearsay reports without second thoughts or further inquiries,

4 Quint. Inst. 8.2.19: Alii brevitatem aemulati necessaria quoque orationi subtrahunt verba, et, velut satis sit scire ipsos quid dicere velint, quantum ad alios pertineat nihili putant […]. 5 In an eloquent 2012 study of Caesar’s rhetoric which I especially reference in Ch. 2, Grillo quotes among others Quintilian to make the claim that ancient manuals of rhetoric recommended the Caesarian practice by which certain information is left out and, as a result, the reader is meant to draw obvious conclusions from a biased text (35). However, Quintilian refers to the ambiguity of such kinds of narrative as the products of rhetorical flaws, and hence something to disregard rather than recommend. 6 Quint. Inst. 8.2.19. 7 Thuc. Hist. 1.20.1. 2 his fellow-citizens got their own history wrong, as when they thought that Hipparchus was the elder son of Peisistratus and the ruling in Athens. By contrast, the kind of audience critics like Theophrastus, Demetrius and Quintilian refer to possesses the necessary skills and willpower to reexamine and engage with skilfully constructed λόγοι. Yet they also are, to an extent, gullible: they are expected to know when something was concealed, downplayed, and in short left out to produce an intentionally incomplete account, but they are also expected to then follow the trajectory imparted by such an account to reach predictable unstated conclusions.

Of course, Thucydides himself is writing exactly for this kind of audience: it is clear from his chapters on method that although most people might indeed be content with untested and untruthful accounts, the author is interested in the few attentive readers who will adjudge his endeavor forever useful due to their ability to engage with a challenging text and get to the truth.8

Much like Thucydides, these few (ὀλιγοί) wish to understand with clarity (τὸ σαφὲς σκοπεῖν)9 what has happened during the Peloponnesian War; hence we ought to assume that they would approach the text of the History with the same inquisitive attitude which the author displayed in writing it down. An interesting but unanswerable question is the extent to which the ancients worried that the recipients of a λόγος (be it for oral consumption, silent enjoyment, or both) could recognize their rhetorical trickeries and refute them: could Thucydides have anticipated so proactive a reader as Elizabeth Irwin, who building on Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ critique argues that the alleged search for clarity in the History turns into an inaccurate, tendentious account filled with damning lacunae? And a proof of this would be the quadripartite narrative of

8 Interestingly Thucydides seems to imply that having made a great effort in finding out the truth from a broad range of information, no inquiry is required on the readers’ part. This seems especially true at 1.21, when the historian suggests that people who would judge his painstaking reconstruction of the remote past of Greece to be as accurate as possible would be right. Even so, at no point is it stated that readers who agree with Thucydides are prevented from agreeing with him after careful consideration and reflection. In fact, toward the end of the chapter Thucydides invites his readers to judge from facts, implying a proactive readership (ἀπ᾽αὐτῶν τῶν ἔργων σκοποῦσι). 9 Thuc. Hist. 1.22.4. 3 the capitulation of Plataea: a rather chaotic arrangement by summers and winters, coupled with the downplaying through omissions of the responsibility of the Plataeans in rejecting the

Spartans’ repeated attempts at diplomacy, leads most readers to erroneously conclude that Sparta was merciless in executing the Plataeans.10 Such an inference is at no point verbally whispered in the text, but according to Irwin the Thucydidean and pro-Athenian rhetoric suggests unforgivable ruthlessness in the behavior of the Spartans by inviting readers to experience the execution of the besieged as if sudden, unjustified, and coldblooded: in Book 3, during the last installment of the

Plataean narrative, Thucydides “selectively engages and indeed shapes our memory of earlier episodes”11 by piecing together only the information which would contribute to overemphasizing the Spartans’ δύσκλεια, and by omitting the rest.

If the goal of rhetorical techniques based on arguments from silence is to ensure that the audience agrees with the unuttered conclusions of the rhetorician in question (producing, in

Demetrius’ words, more favorable witnesses), ancient critics like Dionysius and contemporaries like Irwin show us that the strategy might equally backfire. It is not possible to know how much

Thucydides worried about such a possibility, or if his confidence in the power of his λόγοι actually made him unable to foresee the possible advent of aggressive detractors of his τέχνη. It is likewise impossible to ascertain the extent to which the Roman writer Julius Caesar worried about being unmasked in his attempt to condition his fellow-Romans by distorting recent events in his narrative of the civil war against Pompey, but the fruits of his eloquentia have at times drawn harsh condemnation: it was pure propaganda, Collins would say.12 More to the point, while deconstructing the rhetoric at work in Caesar’s description of a speed contest between him

10 Irwin 2015: 121-99. On tendentious narrative in the Plataean account see also Badian 1993. 11 Irwin 2015: 136. 12 Collins 1972: 942-49. 4 and Afranius to reach a vantage point during the Spanish campaign, Grillo explains that

“linguistic and thematic patterns, the architecture of the sequence, and its narratological development all participate in the construction of an invisible network, which leads the reader toward evident conclusions.”13 That is, Caesar cleverly portrays himself as being quicker and smarter than his enemy, regardless of the truth. One could add that the Caesarian text as a whole participates in constructing a web of data that is meant to guide us toward certain conclusions.

Incompleteness plays a remarkable role in the process: without decidedly endorsing the view that

Caesar planned to end his commentary with the murder of at (and in a climate of discord which matches the initial discord at Rome in 49 BCE), Grillo concludes that ending without an end would be a brilliant rhetorical maneuver on Caesar’s part, for it suggests that after more power should be given to Caesar to end a now near-global war.14

Whether Caesar anticipated painstaking perusals of his rhetoric aimed at uncovering his thirst for power is not, as I said, a question we can answer with certainty. What I find of special interest, though, is the acknowledged possibility for ancient speakers and authors in the Greco-

Roman world to try to shape others’ perceptions of ἔργα through the production and divulgation of incomplete λόγοι. Even more interesting is the surge in popularity of this kind of phenomenon before and around the time in which Quintilian writes. In particular, if it makes sense to think that Caesar might have wanted to produce a “contradiction…between apparent artlessness and actual perfection”15 in intertwining unpolished or unfinished strands of narrative (the at the palace of Alexandria) and well-rounded accounts (for instance, his general Curio’s downfall and defeat in Africa) in order to enhance his rhetoric, then it may also be true that the young epicist

13 Grillo 2012: 22. 14 Ibid. 167-74. 15 Eden 1962: 85. 5 Lucan wanted to shape his poetic λόγος according to comparable criteria. In a heavily criticized

1957 article Heinz Haffter points to similarities between the endings in Caesar and Lucan’s accounts of the war, arguing in favor of Lucan’s poem as being shaped according to Caesar’s non-ending: “Vorerst aber fragen wir: angenommen, das Bellum civile des Lucan sei unvollendet und der Dichter durch seinen plötzlichen Tod in seiner Arbeit unterbrochen worden, sollte dann diese Unterbrechung zufällig genau bei jenem Punkt im Ablauf der dargestellten Ereignisse erfolgt sein, mit dem Cäsar sein Werk beschlossen hat? Nein! Da liegt doch die Vermutung nahe, daß das Epos vollendet ist und daß Lucan denselben historischen Ausschnitt darzustellen gedachte wie Cäsar, daß Lucan das Werk Cäsars durch eine poetische Gestaltung ersetzen oder demselben Stoff die wahre Bewertung verleihen wollte.”16 Against this view Pfligersdorffer argues that Lucan, aware of Caesar’s inability to conclude his work, would have never chosen an unfinished work as his model.17 But Hirtius’ urgency in resuming the writing from the point where Caesar has left it off is no proof that Caesar was unable to finish his work, or that Lucan thought Caesar’s work to be incomplete by accident. Nor is it self-evident that an author, deeming a predecessor unable to revise and add to his work, would look elsewhere for a satisfactory model to emulate: Dionysius recalls that the Sicilian historian Philistus, whose account of the conflict between Syracuse and Athens gained him the title paene pusillus

Thucydides,18 imitated Thucydides’ broken-off ending.

In my dissertation I therefore argue that Lucan discerned in the Caesarian rhetoric – with its inconsistencies at the level of structure and content, its omissions and its lack of completeness

16 Haffter 1957: 122. 17 Pfligersdorffer 1959: 360. For additional arguments against Haffter see also Rutz 1965: 234-340. Masters 1992: 244-47 defends the view that an argument can be made in favor of Lucan’s choice to end in an unsatisfactory way, just as Caesar did. More recently scholars have bypassed the question of completeness by assuming the poem to be incomplete without delving into details. Exceptions are Tracy 2011: 33-53 (in favor of deliberate incompleteness) and Stover 2008: 571-80 (against deliberate incompleteness, and essentially building on Rudich 1997: 182-83). 18 Cic. Q. Fr. 2.11.4. 6 – the means to construe rather than destroy meaning, and chose to adopt and expand upon

Caesar’s means of communication for his alternative version of the facts of war. This process, part an imitation and part an innovative adaptation, is recognizable from the first book of

Lucan’s poem, and therefore it should not only be studied in relation to the analogies between unsatisfactory endings which Haffter rightly deemed significant. In my view a lot more ought to be said: at once inspired by some of the rhetorical trends of his age and confronted by the process of disintegration effected by civil strife on the psychosomatic state of individuals and of the entire Roman world, Lucan makes incompleteness his preferred compositional criterion on multiple levels. On the one hand, he rewrites Caesar in Caesarian style to condemn him and prove him wrong, suggesting conclusions in stark contrast with the conclusions subtly (and tacitly!) broadcast by the Caesarian τέχνη; on the other hand, he aims at producing an unfinished text with unspeakably horrifying outcomes, unresolved scenes and tensions, and deficient characters (think of the broken, beheaded Pompey) to mirror the ruinous condition of the

Republic, which under survives in the meaningless names and deeds of magistrates acting on behalf of the emperor.

The trend in obscuritas Quintilian indignantly refers to in his treatise, a rather extreme development of the kind of precepts theorized in Aristotle’s Lyceum, proves that innovations in style and content were occurring more and more often at the court of the Julio-Claudians, and

Lucan was known for his urge to compete with earlier generations of artists (Virgil above all) and to set a new standard. James O’ convincingly shows that inconsistencies in Virgil’s masterpiece which have been discounted as blunders due to a lack of revision “are indications that characters within the are being deceived, and that readers may be deceived as well, or at least offered conflicting paths of interpretations. These inconsistencies are the products not

7 of the poet’s inattention, but of his artistry.”19 O’Hara admits that one inspiration for his research in this direction came from a character in James Joyce’s Ulysses, Stephen Daedalus, who calls errors in Shakespeare “portals of discovery.”20 In arguing for the volitional nature of Virgil’s inconsistencies, in the sense that they are meant to suggest unwritten content and stimulate thought and interpretation, or at the very least meant to reveal the coexistence of simultaneous interpretative possibilities without providing a definitive answer, O’Hara opens the ground for a fruitful study of and – more specifically – Latin poetry: it is necessary to renounce the rigid and obsolescent critical approach according to which docti poetae such as

Virgil or Lucan21 would share the ambition to produce a ‘flawless’ work, or in Aristotelian terms an organic textual body with its parts evenly developed and partitioned in accordance with the same discernible ratio. Since it is plausible that already Virgil concocted dissonances in his epic to engage readers (as when prophesies in Book 1 that will give customs and walls to people and reign in for three years,22 yet in Book 12 allows the Italians to their customs23 after Aeneas admits that his men will build separate walls for him),24 Lucan would have all the more reason to craft a poem with inconsistent traits in order to differentiate himself from Virgil. Among such traits is an open-ended ending that evokes Lucan’s beginning in medias res with Caesar’s crossing of the River and, at the same time, resonates with

Caesar’s own open-ended ending. But whereas Caesar’s unwritten subtext might suggest that the people should entrust him with even more , as Grillo argues, or that the wars after

19 O’Hara 2007: 2, my italics. 20 Ibid. 21 For Lucan as doctus poeta see the generally excellent contributions in Landolfi-Monella 2007. 22 Virg. Aen. 1.263-65. 23 Ibid. 12.834-37. 24 Ibid. 12.189-94. 8 Pompey are “foreign rather than civil,”25 and hence the proper subject of a distinct commentary,

Lucan’s arguments from silence evoke Caesar’s untellable wickedness, his possible defeat at

Alexandria, and the catastrophic end of the world as we know it.

Form and content in Lucan’s Bellum Civile do not coincide, at least in the sense that throughout his epic Lucan alludes to events – such as Caesar’s death, the Battle of , the enslavement of the Roman citizens, and an apocalyptic conflagration after which the universe cannot be born anew – without detailing their actual within the limits of his ten-book poem. To be fair, more so than in military commentaries written by Roman generals such as

Caesar, a lack of coincidence between form and content is a natural feature of epic, and this is true before Lucan’s innovations: in his succinct formulation on the Homeric genesis of epic,

Hardie provocatively informs us that “at the very beginning of the Western tradition, we find a genre displaying an ‘openness’ often associated with modernist texts.”26 Of course the oral transmission of archaic Greek plays a role in the written traits of the epic genre. The hotly debated ending of the written version of the Iliad, with or without a final line on the arrival of the

Amazon Penthesilea to help the Trojans in a seemingly endless war, is but an example of the inconclusiveness of narratives which always look forward to the possible continuation of the story:27 thus we transition from the Iliad to the Aithiopis. In Lucan, the tension between the limited content that the poet fixes in his and the formless content to which his text alludes is an emphatic and systematic phenomenon, and it is accentuated in ways and for reasons that will become clear throughout my study.

25 Ahl 1976: 307. 26 Hardie 1997: 139. See also Fowler 1989: 79. 27 Hardie 1997: 139. 9 Building on Haffter, Jamie Masters is among the few to judge the open-endedness of

Lucan’s Book 10 as authentic, even though he also adopts a reductionist approach which does not adequately account for multiple instances of deliberate incompleteness in the rest of the poem; but he importantly notes that the external evidence on Lucan fails to mention the poet’s desire to revise his work in any major way.28 The biographer Vacca is explicit (Luc. 58-60):

Reliqui enim VII belli civilis libri locum calumniantibus tamquam mendosi non darent, qui tametsi sub vero crimine non egent patrocinio: in isdem dici, quod in Ovidii libris praescribitur, potest: “emendaturus, si licuisset, erat.”

For the remaining seven books would not give excuse to hostile critics for the errors they contained, nor would they need a defense as if in the case of a true crime. At best one could say of them what said of his : “if he had been allowed to, he would have corrected them.”

In relation to this passage Rose observes: “That is not how one describes a poem lacking several books.”29 Hence it is not what most Lucanian scholars have (perhaps too abruptly) concluded on the basis of issues such as anomalous structure, inconsistencies, and the abrupt and inconclusive

Caesarian non-closure. My invitation, in reassessing Lucan’s contribution to the epic canon, is to keep an open mind. I approached his libri mendosi as I would portals of discovery, and I invite you to do the same.

OVERVIEW

My dissertation consists of an introduction, an epilogue and four chapters that can be grouped in two halves: the first half revolves around key-themes and structural complexities in Lucan’s

Bellum Civile, whereas the second half presents a new reading of and their antagonistic relation in the poem.

In Ch. 1, The silence of the poet, I argue that Lucan equates the future outcome of the

Battle of Pharsalus to a conflagration of unprecedented size to which both he and various other

28 Masters 1992: 217-34. 29 Rose 1966: 391. 10 prophetic figures in the poem repeatedly allude. Due to its catastrophic proportions, the future end of the universe is ineffable: all vatic figures with the exception of the hellish witch Erictho prefer silence to prophecy. As they refrain from disclosing the worst at hand and focus on lesser evils, these vates deliver incomplete prognoses. Lucan, the poet-vates, mirrors their efforts by writing an incomplete poem, and he reaches an abrupt end before the victory of Caesar, the enslavement of the and the universal dissolution become concrete realities.

In Ch. 2, The shape of chaos, I contend that Lucan’s peculiar style and heterogeneous content do not originate for the most part from the rhetoricized mentality of his age, but from

Caesar’s writings: having learned from his antagonist manipulative techniques such as omissions and arguments from silence, Lucan employs these techniques to craft an irregular, incomplete textual body in which he downplays facts that are pivotal to Caesar’s self-advertisement as a liberator of Rome and upholder of peace. In place of a Virgilian teleological plot with a discernible finis, the contiguity of inconclusive narrative blocks in Lucan’s epic suggests that

Caesar’s military strategy contributes to the irreversible of endless chaos.

In Ch. 3, Birth and death of a god, I reassess the role of Julius Caesar in the poem: in contrast with the prior literary tradition, Lucan portrays his enemy as a godlike character. In anticipating what he declares in Book 7, namely that the indifference of the heavenly gods to humankind caused the Roman emperors to replace the gods on earth, Lucan shows the devastating effects of unchecked despotism by casting Caesar as an unpunished maker of nefas.

Since in Book 10 things change, and Caesar metamorphoses into a powerless mortal, I argue that this metamorphosis represents the poet’s own nemesis against a wicked god whom no Olympian cared to punish in his impious quest for absolute power. As Caesar, maker of nefas, is suddenly bereft of power, the epic of nefas within which he operates must end.

11 In Ch. 4, The human stain, I examine the character of Pompey the Great: in contrast with

Caesar, he symbolizes lack of power and defeat from the start. Against the consensus, I posit that Pompey does not evolve in the course of the poem: so stark are the incongruities in his characterization that we can only make sense of him by judging his inadequacy as an endemic phenomenon. As an incomplete Ciceronian rector rei publicae who fails to keep the ship of state afloat, Pompey evokes at once the diseased condition of the and the incomplete epic he is a part of. The character’s shortcomings do not entail irony or nihilism on Lucan’s part, but they are symptomatic of the kind of resigned pessimism that Lucan displays when he, the poet-vates, averts his gaze from the spectacle of dying liberty rather than continuing to narrate it.

12 CHAPTER 1

The silence of the poet

I never want projects to be finished; I have always believed in unfinished work. I got that from Schubert, you know, the “Unfinished Symphony.” Yoko Ono

What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you sicken and die of them, still in silence? Audre Lorde

1.1 THE MEANING OF INCOMPLETENESS

Lucan’s Bellum Civile (henceforth abbreviated as BC) can and should be read as finished in spite of its abrupt ending. I cannot prove beyond doubt that the poem was deliberately left unfinished, but it is no more possible to prove that its incompleteness is unintentional. My goal is to offer good reasons for interpreting the incompleteness as meaningful, questioning the communis opinio that the poem in its surviving conditions lacks meaning and is compositionally incoherent. Ahl points out that “some influential critics have based their interpretation of the ten books we have on their speculations about the ending Lucan envisaged.”1 Speculation is unavoidable regardless of the view one takes, whether in favor of or against the possibility that

Lucan decided to stop at (even in the midst of) Book 10, while describing the siege of the palace of Alexandria where Caesar was trapped with the boy-king Ptolemy.2 Granted this license to speculate, I agree with Masters that “[t]he best evidence for the intended ending of a poem is the place where it does, in fact, end.”3

1 Ahl 1976: 306. 2 Brisset 1964: 165 n. 2 posits that Lucan’s ending, a bit later in the development of the Alexandrian war, completes Caesar’s abrupt ending during the early stages of the conflict. This is worth thinking about more than Brisset does: as we shall see in Ch. 2 and in Ch. 3, Lucan’s epic is a completion of sorts of Caesar’s commentary. Yet also the BC is incomplete and abrupt. My argument is that Lucan uses incompleteness to rewrite Caesar through a systematic process of emulation and adaptation. 3 Masters 1992: 216. 13 Three scholars have offered extended defenses of the position, which I also take, that

Lucan’s epic does not break off before its planned endpoint,4 each with different arguments.

Since I will often refer to them throughout my study, here I summarize their views concisely: according to Haffter, Lucan stops in the middle of the Alexandrian military operations in order to imitate the ending of Caesar’s De Bello Civili, which also stops during the Alexandrian campaign, and to propose an alternative yet evocative version of events.5 I agree that the almost exact correspondence between the finales of these two works cannot be a mere coincidence.

Masters, building on Haffter, provides a meticulous dismantling of the traditional arguments in favor of the unfinished status of the BC; in his pars construens, he reflects on the notion of ‘endlessness.’ Civil war is an endless phenomenon. It happened before Caesar and

Pompey and therefore it will happen again. Lucan’s ending, which lacks a satisfactory resolution, symbolizes the perpetually repetitive nature of war.6 Thus Lucan is interested in representing the phenomenology of war, even though he focuses on a single conflict.

Most recently Tracy proposes a structural analysis of Book 10: Caesar’s exchange with

Acoreus is a “microcosmic recapitulation”7 of Book 10 as a whole, the only book of the BC in which Caesar is portrayed as a weak, vanquished character. Affinities between the epilogue of the Nile scene and the epilogue of Book 10 suggest thoughtfulness and design on the author’s part: despite appearances, the last book of the BC does not break off suddenly but is part of a

4 Regardless of the truth, the poem does not break off in mid-sentence, as Bruère 1950: 217 has it: “That Lucan’s poem is incomplete, breaking off as it does in the midst of a sentence with Caesar in mortal peril on the Alexandrian mole, is too evident to require proof” (my italics). Sadly, scholars have often taken the accidentally unfinished status of the poem to be a certainty. 5 Haffter 1957: 118-26. 6 Masters 1992: 216-59. 7 I borrow this expression from Hardie 1997: 146. 14 careful plan to emphasize Caesar’s vulnerability and (fictional) defeat before he becomes a tyrant in history.8

One aspect of the poem that these scholars have not reflected upon is the consequence of

Lucan’s equating of civil war to a conflagration of unprecedented size, an ἐκπύρωσις, but one with no rebirth and hence a perversion of the Stoic process of conflagration. This is the truest ending of the nefas that Caesar reenacts within the text of the BC: quite literally, as Jim Morrison sings, it is “the end of everything that stands.”9 In contrast with the preexisting literary and philosophical tradition, Lucan resorts to the Stoic imagery of cosmic dissolution only to pervert

Stoic cosmology and tell his readers that the birth of the coincides with something worse than the loss of freedom for Roman citizens: it coincides with universal death, from which nothing else will be born; it is an irreversible process. In the face of so bleak an outcome – the end of biological life – Lucan stops his narrative at an earlier stage in the development of the nefas he has chosen to recount. He does so because the finis of Caesar’s nefas, and hence the terminus of the poet’s subject-matter, is too great a crime to comprehend, write down, or sustain in any way. As we shall see, Lucan is, to an extent, Caesar’s literary doppelgänger in his reenacting of the war through his poem, yet he becomes increasingly reticent about retelling historical evil. Thus silence, according to the logic of the poem, is the ultimate form of resistance to the poet’s own unspeakable song.

A clue to this signal function of silence is Lucan’s usage of divination and diviners throughout the BC to mirror his endeavors: signs and oracles are futile means of foreknowledge, for they predict inescapable death, whether at the microcosmic level (individual deaths) or at the

8 Tracy 2011: esp. 43-50. 9 I could not think of a more simple, yet equally effective way to put it than by borrowing this line from the song “The End,” first released in 1967 as part of The Doors’ self-titled debut album. After all, in 1969 Morrison said about the song: “I think it’s sufficiently complex and universal in its imagery that it could be almost anything you want it to be.” The desperation in Morrison’s lyrics would not, one suspects, have displeased Lucan. 15 macrocosmic level (the death of Romans and foreigners). Subsequently, whenever they can, the prophets in the BC – just like the narrator, who is the vates par excellence – prefer not to dwell upon the nefas they unveil through their ars and choose instead to silence the worst of it. There are partial exceptions, like the Roman matron in Book 1. Possessed by , she does not hesitate to enunciate a detailed prognosis that surpasses the chronological endpoint of the BC, naming specific events down to the in 42 BCE. However, the woman is a vessel of the gods, who are angered at mankind and therefore unwilling to be beneficial. Thus, she is not speaking her own words: she is in a trance. Another exception is the Thessalian witch

Erictho, a happy prophet of disaster in Book 6, where she readily resuscitates a slaughtered man to foretell the future to , the son of Pompey the Great, without hesitation. Again, though, the exceptionality of the circumstances of this prognosis is made clear: Erictho’s vatic privileges stem from unlawful, infernal forces, making her the only vates in the epic to support

Caesar openly. Yet not even the forces of hell, far stronger than those of men, dwell in detail upon the ultimate finis of the civil war.

In his equation of empire and death the poet-vates Lucan launches the strongest imaginable condemnation of the Roman imperial lineage, undoing at a stroke the Augustan ideology of timelessness, according to which stabilized the flux of space and time under his (and his successors’) enlightened guidance, favoring universal peace and the return to a

Golden Age. To the contrary, in Lucan’s world space and time dissolve away as everything disintegrates.

Because his epic lacks a distinct and fixed terminus, Lucan rightly calls it an inmensum opus (BC 1.68, see below). This, I argue, is no bloated rhetoric. The immeasurability of the poetic text ultimately reflects the impossibility of measuring a phenomenon whose shattering

16 effect, perturbing as it is to everyone’s life and to the very equilibrium of the cosmos, transcends human capacities of articulation and understanding and becomes necessarily ineffable (ne-fas).

The mimetic relationship between the BC and the apocalyptic scenario it depicts is Lucan’s most effective delaying strategy to cease reenacting Caesar’s nefas. The poet, obsessed with mutilated bodies on the battlefield, mutilates his own poetry before destiny can. Self-slaughter (even a mode of textual suicide) affects the fiction of the text before it does the author in his own reality.

1.2 INMENSUM OPUS

Early on Lucan announces that he will take up an impossible task, as he sets out to detect and describe the causes of war (BC 1.67-69):

Fert animus causas tantarum expromere rerum, inmensumque aperitur opus, quid in arma furentem inpulerit populum, quid pacem excusserit orbi.

My mind moves me to set forth the causes of these great events. Immeasurable is the work that opens before me– to show what reason drove peace from earth and forced a frenzied nation into arms.10

I believe that this passage, which I refer to as the second proem of the BC,11 is fundamental to understanding the larger mechanics of the poem. In fact, Lucan makes an explicit reference to a defining feature of his epic project: immeasurability, which presupposes the lack of any clearly

10 Excerpts from Lucan’s BC are from Housman 19702. Translations are adapted from Duff 1928. 11 This distinction, overlooked by most scholars, who generally refer to the ‘proem’ or ‘introduction’ of the BC without specifying the lines that they are referring to, is important to understand the extent of Lucan’s sophisticated intertextual gestures. Whereas the introduction to the narrative of the BC is extremely long (1-182, as in Masters 1992: 1) and comprises both proems, the first proem only consists of the first seven lines of the epic, as in Green 1991: 234-35; Conte 1966: 42-53. This length is not coincidental, but a careful aemulatio of the Iliad, whose proem also consists of seven lines. Furthermore, the interrogative quis at 1.8 of the BC retraces τίς at 1.8 of the Iliad. Cf. Pichon 1912: 217– strongly refuted, in his utter denial of Homer’s influence on Lucan, by Burck and Rutz 1979: 159-60. It is true that Lucan is especially obsessed with Virgil (to whom he constantly alludes through antiphrasis), and with the rest of the Latin epic tradition. However, he is also certainly conscious of the Homeric model, even though allusions to Homer are less frequent and harder to discern (Green 1991: 230-54; cf. Lebek 1976: 279-302, whose study highlights six direct parallels between the BC and Homer). As it will emerge, remembering Lucan’s debt to the epic genre is fundamental for the purposes of my study. On the complex intertextuality of Lucan’s introduction, see Fratantuono 2012: 27-71. On the Ovidian fert animus at 1.67, pointing to the beginning of a distinct proemial section, see Roche 2009: 148. 17 distinguishable terminus.12 In her perceptive study of Lucanian geopoetics, Myers sheds new light on the types of boundary violations that are essential to Lucan’s ideological framework,13 and she hints at the notion of immeasurable writing: after pointing out that the violence underlying imperial expansion in the BC is a centripetal force, insofar as the progression of outward Roman conquests leads to inward destruction and disintegrates the physical and conceptual borders of the Roman world, she stresses how “inmensum…opus (measureless work) suggests the global nature of the conflict as well as the immensity of Lucan’s epic.”14

What does it mean, though, for an epic poem to be measureless? Given the narrow scope of her study, Myers does not reflect on the fuller implications of her claim. Rather, she focuses on Lucan’s effort to project through rhetoric an all-too-Roman conflict into a larger geographical scale: first, the poet blurs the distinction between center () and periphery (the territories subject to the Romans and, in general, foreign theatres of war). In fact, Caesar and Pompey are

12 It will be useful to recall the preface to ’s opus (Pr. 4): Res est praeterea et inmensi operis, ut quae supra septingentesimum annum repetatur, et quae ab exiguis profecta initiis eo creverit ut iam magnitudine laboret sua [Moreover, my subject involves infinite labor, seeing that it must be traced back above seven hundred years, and that proceeding from slender beginnings it has so increased as now to be burdened by its own magnitude]. Scholars conspicuously fail to mention Livy’s influence on Lucan’s expression inmensum opus, and they point to Virgil’s second proem as the main source for Lucan’s inspiration. An exception is Roche 2009: 150, who includes in his commentary a reference to the relevant passage in Livy’s proem, even though he posits no specific connection with Lucan. Yet Livy is the only predecessor of Lucan to use the precise wording inmensum opus; given his importance as a source of the BC (a well-known matter since Pichon 1912), it is probable that Lucan had him in mind when writing his own proem. Moreover, an allusion to Livy need not exclude one to Virgil. See also Petr. Sat. 118.6 for a similar expression: ecce belli civilis ingens opus. The difficulty of reconstructing ancient events with scant sources, as well as the impressive chronological breadth of Livy’s narrative, justifies the historian’s boast. Nor is Livy doing anything new: emphatic claims pointing to the laboriousness of the historian’s task, especially when one is dealing with a time-frame in which history as a genre with a sound methodology did not exist yet, are found as early as in Thucydides. Compare Lucan: he writes about a less than four-year long civil war (49 to 46 BCE), and his narrative stops after about two years, at the beginning of the siege of Alexandria. As I will argue, it is Lucan’s deliberate and persistent distortion of space and time that justifies his use of the expression inmensum opus. On Livy’s proem and his attitude toward his task, useful remarks are found in Stadter 1972: 287-307. 13 On boundaries – geographical, temporal, ethical, legal, linguistic, anatomical – and their redefinition in the BC, see Henderson 1998: 191-92 and 205; Bartsch 1997: 10-48 and 153 n. 19; O’Gorman 1995: 117-31; Most 1992: 391-419; Masters 1992: 64. On travel, landscape and geopolitics in Lucan, see Pogorzelski 2011: 143-70; Bexley 2009: 459-75; Spencer 2005: 46-69; Rossi 2001: 313-26 and Rossi 2000: 571-91; Leigh 2000: 95-109; Thomas 1982: 108-23. On Lucan’s geographical inconsistencies, often a privileged topic of early scholars in their effort to undermine his ars, see Mendell 1942: 3-22; Getty 1940: xxxvii-xliv; Bourgery 1928: 25-40; Haskins 1887: lxxiv- lxxv. 14 Myers 2011: 403; O’Gorman 1995: 120-21. Cf. Arnaud 1993: 45-56. 18 said to turn the imperialistic idea of crossing frontiers by outward movement – the subjugation of external enemies – inward, by using the sword against their fellow-citizens.15 Second, since

Rome was in effect a world empire16 before the outbreak of hostilities between Caesar and

Pompey, civil war is in this case more than merely civil (BC 1.1: bella…plus quam civilia): instead it is a global conflict during which the space the Romans laid claim to in order to define themselves as a nation becomes unrecognizable, with its borders in pieces.17 On Myers’ analysis, it follows that inmensum opus must not mean, as I shall argue it does, that the work extends beyond the author’s capacities, but rather that this expression is meant to magnify the subject- matter of the BC by pinpointing the global vastness of the war: as Lucan strives to redefine the basics of Roman space, he strives to “project the theme of his epic onto the largest possible scale.”18 Apparently, it is due to this concern above all that Lucan insists on how conventional boundaries such as the Rubicon River are effaced. Furthermore, Rome ceases to be the most important place within the Roman world.19 And by the time we reach Pharsalus, in Book 7, it is

15 The distinction between bellum externum and bellum internum thus collapses. See Henderson 1998: 187. Cf. Jal 1963: 19-27 and Jal 1962. 16 For explicit references to Rome’s subjugation of the rest of the world, see Luc. BC 1.160; 1.285; 2.583-84. 17 Myers 2011: 401. 18 Ibid. 402-403; Myers concedes that Lucan’s presentation of the conflict as analogous to a cosmic cataclysm is “more than just a vivid rhetorical device,” in that it helps to show how the civil war affects the spatial relationship of Rome to the rest of the world. Yet Myers never doubts the metaphorical nature of this analogy, though she perhaps could: Lucan truly aims to say (within the fiction of BC) that the civil war is a cosmic war, and that it causes the end of everything. Cf. Narducci 2002: 43, who is on the right path in judging Lucan’s metaphor of the simultaneous decay of the world and the res publica a serious matter for the poet: “Prendendo estremamente sul serio una metafora del genere Lucano imprime una particolare torsione all’idea, diffusa nello stoicismo imperiale, di una stretta rispondenza ‘speculare’ tra l’ordine sociale e quello del cosmo.” 19 An obvious fact after the apparition of personified Roma at Luc. BC 1.186-190: with tresses torn, miserable and sighing, the urbs begs Caesar to stop rather than quickly violate three sacred boundaries (the Rubicon, Ariminum, and Rome itself). On the marginalization of Rome in the poem, see Henderson 1998: 206; Masters 1992: 93-117. Cf. Bexley 2009: 460; Croisille 2002: 157. 19 evident that the war is occurring everywhere, having scattered its protagonists to the outskirts of the oikoumene.20

Without undermining the effects of Lucan’s rhetoric, I suggest that a literal interpretation of the expression inmensum opus is not only possible, but also perfectly coherent with the nature of the poet’s subject-matter, as well as with the reticent attitude he adopts towards it. In my view,

Lucan’s persistent act of boundary violation permeates the text itself, to the point where there can be no absolute distinction between the text and its content. In sum, the BC is the physical embodiment of civil war. Therefore, Lucan’s aggrandizing language and imagery should be read as an expression of the true, hyper-nature of his epic, rather than as an attempt to inflate his epic through a hollow exaggeration of its traits: the reality of the poem, a physical representation of abstract traits such as immeasurability, proves the literal rather than rhetorical value of Lucan’s words. Essential to my interpretation is Masters’ parallelism between Caesar, the main propeller of the narrative action, and Lucan, who chooses to recount and therefore reenact the same narrative action: “Lucan is ‘creating’ the civil war, he is actually ‘waging a war’, a war which, as we are told from the beginning, is a nefas; surely too the poetic re-enactment of the war can be censured as being a cognate nefas.”21 Thus Lucan and Caesar are waging parallel wars: one with his pen, the other with his sword. This is no heterodoxy: Cairns notes that it is a standard convention for poets to describe themselves as doing what they write about.22 And Lieberg, in tracing this convention from Early Imperial to literature, rightly formulates a detailed

20 Aeneas’ westward movement from to Rome in the Aeneid is thus reversed, as Caesar’s pursuit of Pompey follows an eastward trajectory that eventually leads, in Book 9, to the ruins of Troy, just when Cato is stranded in Africa. Opposite trajectories correspond to opposite developments: to Aeneas’ troubled establishment of the Trojan- Roman race, Lucan opposes Caesar’s unperturbed destruction of it. To war as the means of ensuring peace, Lucan opposes internecine strife, and hence the disintegration of the world from within. To the establishment of justice, Lucan opposes the transformation of justice into legalized crime. In sum, the Roman Weltordnung is completely undone. See Rossi 2000: 571-91; Miles 1999: 231-50; Hardie 1993: 10-14; Horsfall 1989: 8-27; Conte 1988: 38; Moretti 1984: 37-49; Narducci 1979; Martindale 1976: 51; Morford 1967: 60; Guillemin 1951: 214-27. 21 Masters 1992: 7. 22 Cairns 1972: 163. 20 theory according to which ancient poets regarded language as constitutive of reality: epic poets typically identify with their protagonists, be they warriors or generals, just as much as bucolic poets identify with the erudite shepherds they imagine engaging in agonistic contexts.23 Masters goes on to apply this theory to the BC even at the microscopic level, positing a metaliterary correspondence between Lucan’s massive poetic task and Caesar’s massive earthworks:24 in

Book 3 of the BC, Caesar creates a floating (agger) to Massilia, and Lucan exaggerates the dimensions of such an artifact (3.381: res inmenso statura labore). More generally, whereas historical sources treat the Massilian campaign rather summarily,25 thereby implying that it was viewed as rather unimportant, only Lucan and Caesar26 dwell on it in detail, a clue that Haffter was correct in proposing that Lucan here imitates Caesar’s commentary.27

23 Lieberg 1982. In Poeta Creator Lieberg is especially interested in the immersive creative process through which poets recreate reality in their text by performing the actions they might have other characters perform. Whether the poets would have performed these actions in their own historical reality is debatable, yet the enhanced sensation of truth and trustworthiness that readers perceive in reading about these poets’ first-person involvement in the narrative is undeniable. In his introduction (1-3) Lieberg acknowledges that it was Gronov (1637) to first come across this convention in his work on : quae enim scribebant facta esse Poetae, ea ipsi facere vel gerere dicebantur, alluso ad ipsum nomen Poetarum. The process is naturally reminiscent of ’s conception of poetry as µίµησις (Rep. 393c 5-6). Masters 1992: 7 aptly expands on these premises, positing that poets like Lucan achieve the same results as others without frequent explicit literary self-reference, but by identifying with the characters in the poem: “Lucan…identifies strongly with his two main protagonists (and with many of the lesser figures); so strongly that, to some extent, the poem is its own commentary: the actions performed within it (the subject-matter), and the struggles of its creator to narrate those actions (the ‘composition-’), run in symbolic parallel.” Lieberg and Masters refer to types of practices, or Figuren, belonging to rhetoric. In another introductory remark Lieberg makes this clear: “Beides soll innerhalb des Vergil-Kapitels geschehen, dem im übrigen auch deshalb eine besondere Bedeutung zukommt, weil es sich mit der möglichen Einordnung unserer Figur in das System der antiken Rhetorik beschäftigt und den magisch-orphischen Charakter der Poesie behandelt.” Just as Masters posits Lucan’s deliberate wish to contrast the Virgilian rhetorical tradition by enacting reality through an implicit identification with Caesar, Pompey and other figures in the BC rather than by explicit literary self-reference, so I posit that Lucan also adopts other techniques to pursue innovativeness, such as the literalization of the notion of immeasurability, which amounts to the poet’s muted voice and an incomplete text. 24 Masters 1992: 34-39. 25 Suet. Jul. 34.2; Plut. Caes. 16; Flor. Ep. 2.13.23, an expansive treatment, but he was likely influenced by Lucan himself, as in Lintott 1971: 493-94; App. BC 2.47; Dio Hist. 41.19; 41.25. 26 Caesar provides extensive descriptions of military preparations in his commentary at 1.33-35; 1.56-58; 2.1-16. 27 But Lucan’s exaggeration in the description of military earthworks is not limited to the Massilian compilation. See, for example, how the operations at Brundisium unfold in Book 2: compared to , Dio and Caesar himself, Lucan provides a longer account and literally adds weight to Caesar’s barricade. See Luc. BC 2.678: aggere multo. Cf. Plut. Pomp. 63.3; App. BC 1.27; 2.40; Dio Hist. 41.12.3: the historians only devote attention to Pompey’s trenches and stakes, as if Caesar’s earthworks did not deserve mention, perhaps because they were not even finished. But in the BC Caesar’s barricade becomes a construction with far-extending towers (2.679: longae…turres) whose 21 The metaphor of poem as building project is a locus classicus that dates back as far as

Pindar, who compares his sixth Olympian ode to a temple.28 In Latin poetry, we find comparable instances in Virgil,29 Horace30 and Manilius.31 Moreover, the recurrence of expressions such as surgit opus, referring exclusively to the monumental and commemorative value of poems and used by ,32 Manilius33 and Ovid,34 shows both that the analogy was widespread before

Lucan and that Lucan reworks it in a new way, through the militaristic imagery of the agger.35

Despite the promising start to his interpretation, Masters veers towards a conclusion similar to that of Myers: namely that Lucan’s association of his opus to earthworks that (though neglected by historical sources) become uncontainable in the BC suggests paradigmatic immensity and has rhetorical magnification as its principal function. The poem is massive; so are the architectonics it describes. Bachofen reaches a similar conclusion: “Lucan steigert die Errichtung der Blockade zu einem ungeheuren Unternehmen…”36 It is as if the immoderate enfant prodige from Cordova enjoys inflating through rhetoric even that which is futile, making negligible details look greater than they were during the war.

The result is that Lucan can lay claim to being the greatest epic poet because he treats the greatest of topics. Yet this reading is only one side of the coin: as soon as we draw a parallel between Lucan and Caesar; between the act of writing and the act of waging war; and between wings coming together in the center resemble no less than the Symplegades (2.715-19). As a result, it appears that Pompey had to stay at Brundisium not because he decided to, or due to a shortage of ships (cf. App. BC 1.27.2), but essentially because of Caesar’s monstrous earthworks. 28 Pind. Ol. 6.1-3. 29 Virg. Georg. 3.13. 30 Hor. Od. 3.30.1-5. In this case, the comparison is with a funerary monument of everlasting value. 31 Man. Astr. 2.772-87. In this case, the comparison is with the building of a city. 32 Prop. El. 4.1.67. 33 Man. Astr. 1.113; 2.782. 34 Ov. Fast. 5.111; Trist. 2.559-60; Am. 1.1.27. See Masters 1992: 33 n. 55 on Ov. Fast. 4.830, and on the allusion to Prop. El. 4.1.67. 35 Similar metaphors are also found in the prose tradition: so, for example, Liv. Pr. 4 and Petr. Sat. 118.6. 36 Bachofen 1972: 89 ff. 22 the poetic opus and its content (Caesar’s agger), it is natural to extend the parallelism at the macroscopic level, to the effect of considering the poem to be affected in its entirety. The immeasurability of the civil war Caesar wages thus conditions its literary counterpart from the beginning to the end, with the result that the BC replicates and surpasses the immensity of

Caesar’s wooden agger. In fact, however exaggerated they may be, the Caesarian earthworks can still be measured, because they are the product of men, who built them by their inmenso labore.

As a confirmation of this, Lucan makes sure to include in his vivid description the successful outcome of the soldiers’ labor, after the dismantling of the sacred Druidic grove: ash trees, oaks, alders, and cypresses are cut down, and when enough wood has been taken (BC 3.450: utque satis caesi nemoris), the soldiers pile it onto wagons to finish their project.37 In the case of a civil war, though, things are more complicated: Lucan’s admixture and overlap of universal dissolution (a conflagration which is the product of forces much greater than human, such as fate and the of godlike Caesar)38 and the destruction engendered by war distorts space and time to the point where nobody can provide accurate measurements of the humanly distorted world. The end, for the first time in the literature, coincides with the death of everything and everyone: such a nefas is too damaging to be put into words, but it must be consigned to oblivion. Besides, we are to imagine that the author himself (a mere mortal, and therefore subject to the same fateful prescriptions to which he subjects his characters) is bound to die whenever the end that he prophesies strikes. Subsequently, for all his farsightedness and obsession with liminal transgression, Lucan is unable to transcend the limen of universal death, which happens to be also the limen of his own existence in the written word. A poem about the future end of all things is by necessity open-ended.

37 For the whole passage, see Luc. BC 3.440-52. See also BC 3.455-58 for the actual construction of the agger. 38 On Caesar’s godlike characterization and its implications for the development of narrative see Ch. 3. 23 The passage following the second proem is key to grasping the extent of Lucan’s spatial and temporal distortion (BC 1.70-82):

Invida fatorum series summisque negatum stare diu nimioque graves sub pondere lapsus nec se Roma ferens. Sic, cum conpage soluta saecula tot mundi suprema coegerit hora, antiquum repetens iterum chaos, omnia mixtis sidera sideribus concurrent39 ignea pontum astra petent, tellus extendere littora nolet excutietque fretum, fratri contraria Phoebe ibit et obliquum bigas agitare per orbem indignata diem poscet sibi, totaque discors machina divolsi turbabit foedera mundi. In se magna ruunt: laetis hunc numina rebus crescendi posuere modum.

It was the chain of jealous fate, and the speedy fall which no eminence can escape; it was the grievous collapse of excessive weight, and Rome unable to support her greatness. Even so, when the framework of the world is dissolved and the final hour, closing so many ages, reverts to primeval chaos, then all the constellations will clash in confusion, the fiery stars will drop into the sea, and earth, refusing to spread her shores out flat, will shake off the ocean; the moon will move opposite to her brother, and claim to rule the day, disdaining to drive her chariot along her slanting orbit; and the whole distracted fabric of the shattered firmament will overthrow its laws. Great things come crashing down upon themselves– such is the limit of growth ordained by heaven for success.

As he strives to express the ahistorical quid of civil war (“che cosa sia la guerra civile”),40 Lucan blurs the lines between Roman, human and cosmic fate: superimposed on the gruesome biennium that starts with the crossing of the Rubicon (10 or 11 January 49 BCE) and ends on the harbor of Alexandria (48/47 BCE) are “so many ages” (1.73: saecula tot), because the end of the war between Caesar and Pompey equals total annihilation, on earth as in heaven. For the same

39 I agree with Gagliardi 1989: 60 and Cozzolino 1972: 139-43, who convincingly defend the originality of Luc. BC 1.74-75 contra Housman and Bentley, who thought instead of an interpolation based on Sen. Ben. 6.22; the dispute originates from a difficulty in explaining mixtis. Cf. Narducci 2002: 48-49 n. 7. In my view, mixtis is not accessory and expungeable, since Lucan will use the same verb later on, in pivotal passages in Books 6 and 7, to allude to his cosmic conflagration. 40 Conte 1968: 240. 24 reason Lucan effects a parallel between the clash of natural elements and the clash of the Roman armies.

Let us examine the passage in detail: the idea according to which everything that has reached the peak of its development is destined to self-destruct, for a wicked fate dictates so

(1.70: invida fatorum series), is typical of early Augustan literature:41 Seneca the Elder, in the preface to Book 1 of the Controversiae, refers to the evil eternal prescription of fate (Contr. 1 Pr.

7: maligna perpetuaque in rebus omnibus lex est) by which greatness is an impermanent state, and all things are bound to regress at an even quicker pace than they progressed. Although

Seneca is reflecting on the decadence of oratory after , his generalizing tone suggests a broader concept and context, and Narducci goes as far as to hypothesize that the rhetorician’s belief in the inescapable collapse of all things could have played an important role also in his lost

Historiae.42 In expressing a similar idea, Livy is the first to imagine an all too weighty Rome, crushed by the heaviness of its own victories (Pr. 4: ut iam magnitudine laboret sua).43 In poetry,

Horace and Manilius echo Livy before Lucan does,44 whereas Lucan’s uncle and the son of the

Elder, , in his reprises his father’s sententia on the fate of things.45 It is, however, only Lucan who intertwines in the same passage both generalizing statements on the cruelty of fate against anything at the peak of success (1.70-71: summisque negatum/ stare diu, echoed at 1.81 by in se magna ruunt), and a more specific statement about

41 On the diffusion of this motif, see Jal 1963; Dutoit 1936. 42 Narducci 2002: 42. 43 See above, p. 18 n. 12. Cf. Liv. Pr. 5: the Romans, as time progresses and the integrity of old has come to naught in a climate of discord, are harming themselves: iam pridem praevalentis populi vires se ipsae conficiunt [The people’s might, which has long been very powerful, is working its own undoing]. 44 Hor. Ep. 16.1-2: Altera iam teritur civilibus aetas,/ suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit [Now another age is worn away by civil wars,/ and Rome itself collapses by its own strength]. Man. Astr. 1.912: imperiumque suis conflixit viribus ipsum [And the Empire came to blows with its own forces]. with Roma and ruit recalls the assonance between Ῥώµη (strength) and ῥύµη (ruin), a connection also present in the third sibylline oracle. 45 Sen. Ag. 87-89: Licet arma vacent cessentque doli,/ sidunt ipso pondere magna/ ceditque oneri Fortuna suo [Though weapons sleep and treachery ceases,/ greatness sinks by its very weight,/ and good fortune is a burden that crushes itself]. 25 Rome as being unable to support itself any longer (1.71-72: nec se Roma ferens). This superimposition of the general on the particular prepares the ground for Lucan’s projection of a particular war into a universal conflict. A return to primeval chaos (1.74: antiquum…chaos) symptomatizes the collapse of the boundaries between the human and the cosmic scale, between

Rome and the rest of the universe: heaven and earth become one; the stars sink into the sea; the ocean shrinks due to the pressure of the earth; night and day are indistinguishable, as the moon proceeds on an orbit opposite to the sun. In sum, the whole framework of the universe will be thrown into confusion (1.79-80: totaque discors/ machina divolsi turbabit foedera mundi).

Paradoxically, Lucan’s act of compressing the strife between star and star, earth and ocean, the moon and the sun within the framework of the war between Caesar and Pompey oddly dilates the notions of space and time, rather than condensing them. In fact the poet forces upon the narrow boundaries of his civil war the broader boundaries of conflicts (such as astral collisions) that occur outside the sphere of the civil war proper: the coordinates of such conflicts point to outer space, and elements and forces predating constitute the opposing armies.

Another act of compression with amplifying effects occurs later on, when the matron delivers her prognosis in the midst of a terrified Roman crowd (BC 1.678-95):

“Quo feror, o Paean? Qua me super aethera raptam constituis ? Video Pangaea nivosis cana iugis latosque Haemi sub rupe Philippos. Quis furor hic, o Phoebe, doce, quo tela manusque Romanae miscent acies, bellumque sine hoste est? Quo diversa feror? Primos me ducis in ortus, qua mare Lagei mutatur gurgite Nili: hunc ego, fluminea deformis truncus harena qui iacet, agnosco. Dubiam super aequora Syrtim arentemque feror Libyen, quo tristis transtulit Emathias acies. Nunc desuper Alpis nubiferae colles atque aeriam Pyrenen abripimur. Patriae sedes remeamus in urbis, inpiaque in medio peraguntur bella senatu. Consurgunt partes iterum, totumque per orbem

26 rursus eo. Nova da mihi cernere litora ponti telluremque novam; vidi iam, Phoebe, Philippos.” Haec ait, et lasso iacuit deserta furore.

“Whither am I taken, o Paean, in haste across the sky? In what land do you set my feet? I see Pangaeus white with snow-clad ridges, I see Philippi spread beneath the crag of Haemus: say, Phoebus, what madness is this that drives Romans to fight Romans; what war is this without a foe? Whither next am I borne? You take me to the Far East, where the waters of Egyptian Nile stain the sea: him I recognize, that headless corpse lying on the river sands. The grim goddess of war has shifted the ranks of Pharsalus across the sea to treacherous Syrtis and parched Libya: thither also am I carried. Next over the cloud-capped Alps and Pyrenees am I spirited away; then back to my native city, where the civil war finds its end in the very Senate House. Again the factions raise their heads; again I make the circuit of the earth. Grant me, Phoebus, to behold a different shore and a different land: Philippi I have seen already.” So she spoke and fell, abandoned by the frenzy which was now spent.

A stupefying breadth of events occurring in different places at different times supplants in these lines the scant information provided by the prophets who speak before the matron, the Etruscan Arruns and the astrologer . As Dick notes, the woman predicts events from 48 BCE (the ) to 42 BCE (the Battle of Philippi).46 To be precise, she predicts Pharsalus, the assassination of Pompey, Thapsus, Munda, the assassination of Caesar and Philippi.47 The latter toponym (Philippos) appears twice, at 1.680 and 1.694, and whether it refers to the place where actually vanquished Caesar’s killers or to Pharsalus (also mentioned at 1.688: Emathias acies) is unclear, for both are symbolically implied. Similarly, a geographical syllepsis in Book 7 suggests that Pharsalus and Philippi were fought on the same battlefield.48 In fact, Lucan reprises a synonymic correspondence that he has inherited from the

Virgilian tradition, making the two pivotal battles fought for the creation of the Roman Empire

46 Dick 1963: 40. 47 On the content of the prophecy (and its relationship to the rest of the poem), see especially Hershkowitz 1998: 14-32; Ahl 1976: 311-16; Dick 1963: 40; Due 1962: 129-31; Bruère 1950: 225-27. As Dick points out, scholiasts (Adn. Sup. Luc. 1909; Comm. Bern. 1869) are rather on point in their interpretation of these lines. 48 Luc. BC 7.853-54: Ante novae venient acies, scelerique secundo/ praestabis nondum siccos hoc sanguine campos [Meanwhile, fresh armies will meet, and you will offer your/ plains for a second crime before this blood has/ dried off them]. The plains are, naturally, those of Emathia, and hence Pharsalus. 27 indistinguishable.49 More importantly, this merging of Pharsalus and Philippi fits nicely into the poet’s attempt to break geographical boundaries and commingle distinct battles with distinct outcomes, as if to suggest that all instances of Roman wickedness future or past are connected with the civil war between Caesar and Pompey. Nor is this an isolated instance: Reed, reflecting on a passage in Book 7 in which the example of the ancestral brotherly strife between and Remus is brought to mind,50 puts it well: “Lucan’s Pharsalus subsumes Philippi, the war between Marius and Sulla, the “slave wars” of Sextus Pompey, and indeed all the Roman internal conflicts back to .”51

To sum up, in the final hour of universal dissolution (1.73: mundi suprema…hora) corresponding to the triumph of the Caesars and the end of freedom, millennia of astrophysical phenomena and countless instances of internecine mortal strife are enmeshed with each other.

The shorter, recent flux of events from Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon to his installation in

Rome overlaps with the longer flux of cosmological and human history: the final act of the civil war is effectively refashioned into the final act of the history of the universe. Multiple spatial and temporal frames thus converge and continue running in parallel throughout the epic.

49 See the thorough explanation of Mynors 1990 in relation to Virg. Georg. 1.489-90: “To the public, Pharsalus and Philippi…were what mattered; and as they receded into history, and were seen as two decisive steps in one progress towards the , the poets heightened their dramatic significance (encouraged perhaps by a misunderstanding of…[Virg. Georg. 1.490]) by imagining, or writing as though they supposed, that they were actually fought on the same ground.” For a similar overlap, see Ov. Met. 15.823; Man. Astr. 1.908-13; Petr. Sat. 121.111; Juv. Sat. 8.242. 50 Luc. BC 7.437-39: Volturis ut primum laevo fundata volatu/ Romulus infami conplevit moenia luco,/ usque ad Thessalicas servisses, Roma, ruinas [Ever since Romulus founded his city/ by the of a vulture on the left, and peopled it/ with the criminals of the Asylum, down to the/ catastrophe of Pharsalus, Rome ought to have/ remained in slavery]. 51 Reed 2011: 25. An example of Lucan’s tendency to compress multiple events, even those far apart from each other, within the same spatial and temporal framework comes as early as in the first line of the BC, with bella (1.1), a plural in place of the singular and one that the manuscript tradition often displays as the title of the epic. It is obvious that bella refers not to a single civil war, or to a single battle within it, but also to wars and battles fought outside the historical boundaries of the epic, before 49 BCE or after 46 BCE. The plural at Luc. BC 9.985 is another excellent example. See Martindale 1984: 138-39. Cf. Henderson 20102: 437; and Conte 1968: 240, who reads in the semantics of Lucan’s plural nouns a wish to express warfare per se in all its disruptive implications. 28 To aggravate his distortion even more, Lucan perverts the fundamentals of . As I argue below, he uses the well-known Chrysippean model of the cosmos, which is based on the notion of the cyclicality of death and rebirth, to construct his own cosmic framework, but he vehemently denies any possibility of cosmic rebirth.

1.3 DOOMSDAY

Since Lapidge’s study52 it has been well known that Lucan focalizes his apocalypse through Stoic language and imagery.53 In fact Chrysippus’ theories were very much alive in the

Early Empire,54 and they were applied to various contexts. Chrysippus had been the last of the early Stoics to write about the cosmos: his comparison of the universe to a living being55 which a generative principle (πνεῦµα) holds together through pneumatic tension (τόνος, which in turn generates δεσµοί, the bonds among the elements), became standard in later generations.56 This was especially because it was more accessible and coherent than the cosmological theories of

Zeno and Cleanthes, but also because Chrysippus was the last Stoic we know of to formulate an original, widely applicable cosmological theory.57 Therefore in the De Natura Deorum Cicero has his Balbus use the Latin equivalents of Chrysippus’ Greek terms to explain the causes behind the apparent relationships between the elements of the physical world. 58 And in the De

Divinatione Cicero names Chrysippus as one of the who taught the Romans the doctrine

52 Lapidge 1979: 344-70. 53 See Narducci 2002: 45-48; Loupiac 1998: 31. 54 See Wiener 2006: 179-220; Lapidge 1979: 346. Cf. Gould 1971: 9-17; von Arnim SVF 1, 5 ff. 55 On the universe as a living being see Pl. Tim. 30b; SVF 1, 110-14; 2, 633-45. 56 See Hahm 1977: 63-64; Lapidge 1973: 273-76. Although the analogy between universe and living creatures is not originally Chrysippean, the philosopher’s description of the way in which the cosmic πνεῦµα contains the whole universe, giving it its stability, is original (see SVF 2, 368; 439-41; 447-49; 540; 551-53). 57 The Romans did not seek to speculate too much on cosmology, as they were “especially interested in the business of this world – politics and morality – to the virtual exclusion of any interest in a mentally-constructed universe” (Lapidge 1979: 350). 58 Cic. ND 2.19. 29 of the interconnection of cosmic parts through a divine force.59 Cornutus, the teacher of Lucan and , summarizes the principles of Chrysippean cosmology in his Theologia Graeca,60 in which the Stoic theory of universal creation, transformation, dissolution and rebirth helps to provide a more scientific basis for Greek traditional myths.61 Manilius, in his effort to expound the relationship between human life and astral motion, also uses a predominantly Chrysippean theory and terminology62 to prove the existence of divine interconnectivity among the elements of the universe: it is a mutual sympathy (consensus, a translation of the Greek συµπάθεια)63 among elements (themselves pervaded by the same divine principle) that holds the universe together with its binding force (vinculum, Manilius’ term to describe the force of the pneumatic tension).64 Without this binding force the universe would dissolve, as Manilius explains when he describes the celestial circle and the cardinal points holding it in place (Astr. 2.801-807):

Haec loca praecipuas vires summosque per artem fatorum effectus referunt, quod totus in illis nititur aeternis veluti compagibus orbis; quae nisi perpetuis alterna sorte volantem cursibus excipiant nectantque in vincula, bina per latera atque imum templi summumque cacumen dissociata fluat resoluto machina mundo.

These points are charged with exceptional powers, and the influence they exert on fate is the greatest known to our science, because the celestial circle is totally held in position by them as by eternal supports; did they not receive the circle, sign after sign in succession, flying in its perpetual revolution, and clamp it with fetters at the two sides and lowest and highest extremities of its , heaven would fly apart, with its fabric disjointed and disintegrated.

59 Cic. Div. 2.34. 60 Krafft’s edition (1975) is excellent. It has long been recognized that Annaeus Cornutus, author of the Theologia Graeca, was the same Cornutus who taught Lucan and Persius. However, it is not possible to prove that he was also a freedman of Lucan’s family, as Marti 1945: 354 hypothesizes. 61 Lapidge 1979: 351-54. 62 Ibid. 355-58. 63 As in Cic. Div. 2.34. 64 Cf. Cic. ND 2.115, who uses vinculum as the Latin equivalent of δεσµός. 30 This passage constitutes Manilius’ closest reference to the Stoic notion of ἐκπύρωσις, the process of destruction by fire followed by the birth of a new universe. According to Chrysippus, when the bond of the generative principle of the universe (δεσµός πνεύµατος) is loosened and the tension previously keeping things together is released (ἀνάλυσις), then the process of universal destruction takes place in accordance with the Stoic cyclical view of the death and rebirth of all things. Manilius recalls this phenomenon at 2.807: the fabric (machina) of the loosened world

(resoluto mundo) disintegrates, its constituents suddenly disassembled. However, no detailed description of the process or outcome of the ἐκπύρωσις follows, because the poet’s emphasis is on the cohesiveness, coherence and complex harmony of the mechanism of the universe rather than on its hypothetical rupture. The introductory nisi and the use of subjunctives in the conditional statement further contribute to distancing the reality of universal equilibrium from the vague future possibility of universal turmoil.

As Lapidge stresses, Lucan must have been conversant with the Stoic and, in particular, the Chrysippean language of creation and destruction: in his programmatic passage on the fate of the cosmos, the expression machina divolsi turbabit foedera mundi (BC 1.80) is reminiscent of

Manilius’ rendition of Stoic imagery, and the whole passage aligns with the Stoic cosmological principles that the Roman intellectual milieu inherited from the Greeks.65 But an even greater influence must have been exercized on Lucan by his uncle Seneca,66 who describes at length the

ἐκπύρωσις (Ben. 6.22.1):

“Omnia ista ingentibus intervallis diducta et in custodiam universi disposita stationes suas deserant; subita confusione rerum sidera sideribus incurrant, et rupta rerum in ruinam divina labantur, contextusque velocitatis citatissimae in tot saecula promissas vices in medio itinere destituat, et, quae nunc alternis eunt

65 Scholars disagree on the extent of the influence of Cornutus on Lucan’s cosmological views. Contra Lapidge see in particular Most 1989: 2054. For my argument it is enough to concede that Lucan employs a rich literary and philosophical tradition, and that he alters a key aspect of the Stoic theory on the cosmos to prepare the ground for his abrupt ending in Book 10. 66 I follow Griffin 1976: 394-400, still fundamental when establishing a plausible chronology for Seneca’s works. The period of composition of the is 56-62 CE, thus the text was in all likelihood available to Lucan. 31 redeuntque opportunis libramentis mundum ex aequo temperantia, repentino concrementur incendio, et ex tanta varietate solvantur atque eant in unum omnia; ignis cuncta possideat, quam deinde pigra nox occupet, et profunda vorago tot deos sorbeat.”

“Let all the heavenly bodies, separated as they are by vast distances and appointed to the task of guarding the universe, leave their posts; let sudden confusion arise, let stars clash with stars, let the harmony of the world be destroyed, and the divine creations totter to destruction; let the heavenly mechanism, moving as it does with the swiftest speed, abandon in the midst of its course the progressions that had been promised for so many ages, and let the heavenly bodies that now, as they alternately advance and retreat, by a timely balancing keep the world in a state of equipoise be suddenly consumed by flames, and, with their infinite variations broken up, let them all pass into one condition; let fire claim all things, then let sluggish darkness take its place, and let these many gods be swallowed up in the bottomless abyss.”67

Seneca, whose powerful polyptoton on the colliding stars (sidera sideribus incurrant) appears almost verbatim in Lucan,68 imagines that his interlocutor might go so far as to wish that the heavenly bodies (and the divine forces behind them) stopped acting as they normally do in order to banish his doubts: namely, to ascertain whether entities like the sun and the moon, which move by a fixed law, are benefactors of men or act out of inertia without any desire to bestow an actual benefit.

Is it worthwhile, Seneca asks after imagining the dissolution of the universe, to let everything go to naught simply to persuade a doubtful mortal of the good disposition of the gods toward us? The answer is no, and Seneca is quick to dismiss the scene of destruction he has conjured a moment before. To the absurdity of this scene, which is never countenanced as a real possibility, he opposes statements on the benevolence of heaven: for example, he tells his interlocutor that the sun and the moon do him a benefit even when he is unwilling to receive it

(6.22.1: prosunt tibi etiam invito). Also the gods, whose will is unchangeable, have evidently shown regard for us humans (6.23.3: etiam nostra viderunt rationemque hominis habuerunt) by means of their orderly creation of the universe (in prima illa autem constitutione, cum universa disponerent). Seneca shares Manilius’ foremost preoccupation: the way he frames his description

67 Trans. Basore 1935. 68 See above, p. 24 n. 39. 32 of the ἐκπύρωσις, so as to make it sound like an argumentum ad absurdum, shows how careful he is to distance the reality of an orderly universe from the grim hypothesis of imminent catastrophe. And even when he sounds more pessimistic, as in the epilogue of the Consolatio Ad

Marciam, in which the postmortal soul of Cremutius expresses to his daughter with unmistakable farsightedness the perishability of all things, Seneca avoids negative excesses. In fact, he juxtaposes in the same sentence the perspective of destruction with the prospect of rebirth (Marc.

26.6):

Et cum tempus advenerit, quo se mundus renovaturus extinguat, viribus ista se suis caedent et sidera sideribus incurrent et, omni flagrante materia uno igni, quidquid nunc ex disposito lucet ardebit.

And when the time shall come for the world to be blotted out in order that it may begin its life anew, these things will destroy themselves by their own power, stars will clash with stars, and all the fiery matter of the world that now shines in orderly array will blaze up in a common conflagration.

The essence of Stoic cosmology is beautifully encapsulated in the antithesis between the future participle renovaturus and the present subjunctive extinguat: rebirth and destruction are kindred notions,69 each being the logical and chronological product of the other.70 Even in Ovid’s proem to the Metamorphoses, which shares with Lucan a reference to primeval chaos rather than to

Seneca’s abyss (vorago), the reconstitution of a divinely inspired order follows closely upon destruction: a god, or some kindlier nature (Met. 1.21: deus et melior...natura), is said to create harmony out of the original elemental quarrel (litem) that is shapeless chaos.71 Later in Book 1 of the Metamorphoses the narrative of the deluge that Jupiter designs to punish men after testing the hubristic Lycaon also implies the belief in a perennial cycle of destruction and rebirth: Deucalion

69 Essential on this topic is Long 1985: 13-37. 70 Seneca’s consolatory argument originates from the idea that the world just as humans do. Seneca turns the leitmotif of universal dissolution (and rebirth) into a valid reason to find comfort before death. See also NQ 6.2.9 for comparable thoughts: ingens mortis solacium est terram quoque videre mortalem [In death it is a great solace to see that the earth, too, is mortal]. By contrast Lucan offers no consolatory remarks. 71 Ov. Met. 1.5-9: Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia caelum/ unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe,/ quem dixere chaos: rudis indigestaque moles/ nec quicquam nisi pondus iners congestaque eodem/ non bene iunctarum discordia semina rerum [Before the sea was, and the lands, and the sky that hangs over/ all, the face of nature showed alike in her whole round, a state/ which men have called chaos: a rough, disorderly mass of things,/ nothing at all save lifeless bulk and warring seeds of ill-matched/ elements heaped in one]. 33 and Pyrrha, most reverent worshipers of the gods, are spared by Jupiter and repopulate the earth after heeding the oracle of Themis.72 Although this tale has mythical rather than philosophical undertones, the essential idea is the same: death never remains death. In the eternal flux of things, death is a transforming agent that fosters new life. Thanks to this belief, a Stoic like

Seneca, who shares his father’s and nephew’s belief that greatness crashes upon itself, can at least console himself with the thought that decaying greatness is not an end in itself, because it triggers a process of regeneration.73 In the case of Ovid’s reworking of the Hesiodic myth of the metallic ages, ethics also come into play: the poet’s insistence on the piety of Deucalion and

Pyrrha recalls the reason for the deluge (Lycaon and humankind’s impiety) and suggests the possibility that a nobler race of mortals will spring from the stones that the devoted duo are meant to throw behind them.

Although he is obviously sensitive to the literary tradition he redeploys in the BC, Lucan never explicitly mentions the possibility of rebirth in his description of universal dissolution.74

Thus he silences a pivotal aspect of the Stoic cosmological theory, to the effect that his

ἐκπύρωσις, though Stoic in its pedigree, evolves into something bleaker than it ever was in

Manilius and Seneca. Countless omens contribute to signaling the unique, irreversible nature of what is coming: portents including fire ablaze in the sky, a solar eclypse that evokes the baneful fate of the Pelopids,75 a giant Fury stalking the city of Rome,76 and the epiphany of the ghost of

72 Ov. Met. 1.376-79. For an overview of the deluge narrative, including its sources and meaning, see Griffin 1992: 39-58. On Ovid’s chaos and its lasting influence on Lucan, see Tarrant 2002: 349-60. 73 See Setaioli 1997: 329-67. 74 An excellent point first made by Schotes 1969: 25. Cf. Roche 2005: 52-71; Schmitz 1993: 9. 75 Luc. BC 1.540-44: once upon a time at Mycenae the sun reversed its course, horrified at what did. Cf. BC 7.451-54, where the theme of the is revisited in a similar mythological context. The house of the Pelopids is an illustrious example of the breakdown of family boundaries, and Lucan’s cognatas acies (BC 1.4) is obviously reminiscent of Atreus and Thyestes. See also Sen. Th. 1035 ff.; cf. Sen. Ag. 908 ff. 76 Strictly speaking the only traditional acting god in the poem, although a minor deity whose function in the poem is in essence rhetorical: the menacing Fury symbolically condemns Caesar’s criminal deeds. Cf. the description of 34 Sulla77 all mark the first nefarious act of violence against Rome on Caesar’s part: the crossing of the pomoerium with armed troops.78 And when the haruspex Arruns inspects the innards of his sacrificial bull, the deformities he beholds are unseen and leave him speechless.79 Furthermore, a second list of prodigies dumbfounds the Roman soldiers on the eve of Pharsalus.80 It is on that day, so it seems, that a seer generally identified with the augur Gaius Cornelius81 pronounced what sounds more like a disheartened acknowledgment than a true prophecy (BC 7.192-200):

Euganeo, si vera memorantibus, augur colle sedens, Aponus terris ubi fumifer exit atque Antenorei dispergitur unda Timavi, “Venit summa dies, geritur res maxima,” dixit “inpia concurrunt Pompei et Caesaris arma,” seu tonitrus ac tela Iovis praesaga notavit, aethera seu totum discordi obsistere caelo perspexitque polos, seu numen in aethere maestum solis in obscuro pugnam pallore notavit.

If those who tell the tale may be believed, an augur sat that day on the Euganean hills, where the smoking spring of Aponus issues from the ground and the Timavus, river of Antenor, splits; and he cried: “The last day has come; the greatest deed is being done! The armies of Pompey and Caesar now meet in unhallowed conflict.” Either he observed the thunder and the warning bolts of Jupiter; or he saw that all the firmament and the poles were at strife with the warring sky; or else the sorrowing deity in heaven signified the battle by the dimness and obscurity of the sun.

The accumulation of meteorological hypotheses here as the various possible reasons for the

(alleged) prognosis by Cornelius, from the cracking sound of Jupiter’s bolts to the dimness of the

Megaera in Sen. Her. F. 100-103 for a closely similar effect. On the ministeria deorum in the BC, a rather complex topic, essential are Chaudhuri 2014: 156-94; Lovatt 2013: 118-21; Friedrich 20102: 369-410; Fantham 2003: 229-49; Feeney 1991: 191-202; Narducci 1979; Ahl 1974: 566-90; Le Bonniec 1970: 161-95; Dick 1967: 235-42; Fraenkel 1964: 254; Thierfelder 1934: 1-20. For my take on the ministeria deorum in Lucan see Ch. 3. 77 For the whole list see Luc. BC 1.522-83. 78 Two illustrious precedents for this catalogue of omens are Virg. Georg. 1.464-88 and Ov. Met. 15.783-98. Ovid’s list precedes the assassination of Caesar at the House of the Senate, whereas Virgil’s list follows the assassination. Lucan’s use of the same dramatizing device at the very moment when Caesar begins his rise to power betrays his vehement ideological opposition to the tradition he is innovating upon, and as a result the antiphrastic nature of his poetic task: in the BC, Caesar embodies and engenders nefas. In Virgil and Ovid, nefarious is instead the dictator’s murder at the hands of his adoptive sons and the other conspirators. See Martindale 1976: 45-54. 79 Luc. BC 1.626-28. 80 Ibid. 7.151-84. 81 See Duff 1928: 382 n. 1. See Plut. Caes. 47. 35 sunlight, contributes to the impression that no particularly talented prophet is needed to deliver

Cornelius’ prophecy: it is evident to all that after Caesar’s invasion of Italy the days of the universe are numbered, its future as if determined by the time-delay mechanism of a bomb. Yet it should be noticed that Pharsalus, the narrative climax of the poem and the summa dies that comes after too many days of indecisive confrontations between brotherly armies, is not the suprema hora (1.74) Lucan thinks of in his cosmological passage. Despite its crucial importance

(it is referred to as “the funeral of the world,”82 a powerful reminder of its dire consequences), the battle is part of a larger canvas and not an endpoint in itself, neither for the development of the narrative, nor in the sequence of catastrophic events leading up to the final conflagration.

Precisely for this reason it takes place in Book 7, and Lucan, though tempted for a moment to keep silent on its horrors,83 proceeds to detail them with scientific precision until a most inhuman aftermath beckons: Caesar, the conqueror, banqueting among the corpses of butchered fellow- citizens.84

The truest suprema hora is, instead, the unwritten outcome of the war, as revealed at the outset by Nigidius Figulus, the second speaker in the triptych of seers who try to explain the meaning of the portents caused by Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon (BC 1.666-72):

“Inminet armorum rabies, ferrique potestas confundet ius omne manu, scelerique nefando nomen erit , multosque exibit in annos hic furor. Et superos quid prodest poscere finem? Cum domino ista venit. Duc, Roma, malorum continuam seriem clademque in tempora multa extrahe, civili tantum iam libera bello.”

“The madness of war is upon us, when the power of the sword shall violently upset all legality, and atrocious crime shall be called virtue. This frenzy will last for many years; and what good is to us to pray the gods for an end? This peace, when it comes, will come with a tyrant. Let Rome

82 Luc. BC 7.617: Inpendisse pudet lacrimas in funere mundi […]. 83 Ibid. 7.552-56. 84 Ibid. 7.792-93. 36 prolong the unbroken series of suffering and draw out her agony for ages: only while civil war lasts, shall she henceforth be free.”

When Caesar officially suppresses the Republic and becomes dictator in 46 BCE, then Rome, the world it is part of, and the universal whole shall spin toward cosmic dissolution. This is a gradual process: it will kill Caesar, too, offering some meager consolation to the Pompeian party,85 but it will keep producing other tyrants until the last day actually comes. The point is taken up again in

Book 9, when a disheartened soldier, perplexed at the thought that more hardships will follow the ignominious murder of Pompey, asks Cato when the fighting will finally come to a halt (BC

9.232-33):

Nam quis erit finis, si nec Pharsalia pugnae, nec Pompeius erit?

For what end will there ever be of fighting, if neither Pharsalia nor the defeat of Pompey ends it?

Neither the bloody plains of Thessaly, nor the trunk of Pompey mark the finis pugnae that the soldier craves. The finis will be the Caesarian pax, or else the settlement of one dominus after another in an unbroken series. Which dominus exactly will mark the end of human history we cannot know, because Lucan does not know this either, his mortal gaze through the future being naturally fallible. The only thing the poet feels sure about is that everything will meet its end during the Roman Empire. Could the last be none other than Nero himself, the poet’s wicked muse?

As for the physiognomy of the antiquum chaos to which the machina mundi is bound to revert, we can hypothesize that Ovid’s cosmogonic mass (Met. 1.7: rudis indigestaque moles)

85 See above, p. 25-29: Caesar cannot escape the fateful law of self-destructive greatness, and for this reason his death is predicted several times in the course of the BC. But Brutus’ vengeance, inspired by the spirit of Pompey, is ultimately a worthless undertaking, because Rome’s downward spiral cannot be arrested, and the res publica cannot be restored to the people of Rome. It is in this sense that “for Caesar Pharsalus itself was closure” (Fantham 2010: 70). Fantham finds that in the BC Caesar’s rhetoric is silenced in the aftermath of Book 7. But even if the character of Caesar matters less in the last three books of the poem, and as such is given little space and speaks and acts little, what he has accomplished on the Emathian fields has lasting repercussions on a universal scale. 37 preceding the genesis of the cosmos matches what Lucan had in mind; but that is, again, left to our imagination, as Lucan refuses to dwell on the aftermath of the end he envisions. The narrator in fabula,86 intent as he is on disrupting the narrative flow of the poem with his anguished commentary on the future, is rather laconic when it comes to the state of things ensuing from the ἐκπύρωσις he foresees. All he concedes through Figulus’ words is that freedom will no longer exist in the irreversible process leading to the end, and he repeats the same concept in his own words after Pharsalus (BC 7.638-46):

Maius ab hac acie quam quod sua saecula ferrent volnus habent populi; plus est quam vita salusque quod perit: in totum mundi prosternimur aevum. Vincitur his gladiis omnis quae serviet aetas. Proxima quid suboles aut quid meruere nepotes in regnum nasci? Pavide num gessimus arma teximus aut iugulos? Alieni timoris in nostra cervice sedet. Post proelia natis si dominum, Fortuna, dabas, et bella dedisses.

This battle dealt to all nations a blow too heavy for their own age to bear. More was lost there than life and existence: we were overthrown for all time to come; all future generations doomed to slavery were conquered by those swords. For what fault of their own were the sons or grandsons of the combatants at Pharsalus born to slavery? Did we87play the coward in battle or screen our throats from the sword? The penalty of cowardice not our own is fastened upon our necks. To us, born after that battle, Fortune gave a master; she should have given us also the chance to fight for freedom.

The Battle of Pharsalus condemns future generations to bear the mark of defeat before they are able to put up a fight. “We,” a conspicuous first person plural sustained throughout the second half of the passage (prosternimur, gessimus, teximus, and in nostra cervice), shows how much Lucan felt the scar of defeat on his flesh as he was writing. Yet Caesar’s spiral of nefas involves an even worse evil than the collective loss of liberty, an evil which makes all preoccupations for such a

86 The expression is taken from Narducci 2002: 88. 87 Italics are by Duff 1928: 417. 38 loss rather preposterous: the Roman race – with all of us, too – is condemned to predetermined and untimely extinction88 (BC 7.812-15):

Hos, Caesar, populos si nunc non usserit ignis, uret cum terris, uret cum gurgite ponti. Communis mundo superest rogus ossibus astra mixturus.

Caesar, if fire does not consume this host now, it will hereafter, together with the earth and the waters of the sea; there remains a conflagration which will destroy all the world and mingle the stars and dead men’s bones.

We may juxtapose to this passage Cicero’s take on the analogy between the dissolution of the res publica and the dissolution of the world (Rep. 3.34):

“…Sed his poenis quas etiam stultissimi sentiunt, egestate, exilio, vinculis, verberibus, elabuntur saepe privati oblata mortis celeritate, civitatibus autem mors ipsa poena est, quae videtur a poena singulos vindicare; debet enim constituta sic esse civitas, ut aeterna sit. Itaque nullus interitus est rei publicae naturalis ut hominis, in quo mors non modo necessaria est, verum etiam optanda persaepe. Civitas autem cum tollitur, deletur, extinguitur, simile est quodam modo, ut parva magnis conferamus, ac si omnis hic mundus intereat et concidat…”

“But private citizens often escape those punishments which even the most stupid of us are able to feel – poverty, exile, imprisonment and stripes – by taking refuge in a swift death. But in the case of a state, death itself is a punishment, though it seems to offer individuals an escape from punishment; for a state ought to be so firmly founded that it will live forever. Hence death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable. On the other hand, there is some similarity, if we may compare small things with great, between the overthrow, destruction, and extinction of a state, and the decay and dissolution of the whole universe.”89

First Cicero posits the eternity of a firmly founded state (civitas…aeterna), thus contradicting the law by which the ideal state, just like every other reality, must share in the fate of mortals.90 He also rejects the Chrysippean (and, in origin, Platonic) theory of the evolution of the state as if it were a living creature, judging the passing away of states to be unnatural (nullus interitus...

88 Perhaps the saddest irony is that the future destruction which Lucan connects, retroactively, with the generation of Caesar and Pompey is going to destroy him in his own generation: in 65 CE Lucan cut his wrists open, a victim of the nefas of the last Caesar to be born. The inescapable death that the BC preannounces through various proleptic stances matches, if only in part, the history Lucan is living in his present, under Nero’s rule. The poet, aware that his opposition to the regime (culminating in his participation to the ) could translate into so lethal an outcome as his Julius Caesar fosters in the BC, “does not merely recreate historical events, but gives to the dead past a voice with which to address his contemporaries” (O’Higgins 1988: 220). The poet’s audience includes his own self, as he struggles to cope with the aftermath of Pharsalus. 89 Trans. adapted from Keyes 1928. 90 See Asmis 2008: 1-33. On Cicero’s ideal state and, more in general, on his political thought, see Hammer 2014: 26-48; Wood 1988: 90-104 and 120-142; Bernett 1995: 85. 39 naturalis).91 What matters more, though, is his comparison of the end of states and the collapse of the entire world. And like Manilius and Seneca, so also Cicero refrains from presenting the notion of cosmic dissolution as an actual threat. The rhetorical nature of the protasis at the end of the passage above, as well as the ut clause used to reflect on the aptness of the comparison between things small and great, reveals the narrator’s wish to emphasize through allegory the dramatic impact of the end of the res publica, but nothing more. By contrast Lucan emphasizes the certainty, and proximity, of universal dissolution, as if it is a much more pressing reality in his literary universe: two future indicatives repeated in the same line (7.813: uret…uret) and a powerful present (7.814: superest) tell us that the all-encompassing consummation by fire is going to happen, and it is going to happen rather soon. No less eloquently expressed is the burning spectacle into which the world is said to be turning: a communis rogus awaits us, and the expression evokes the funereal tone used earlier in Book 7.92 The astral imagery of Book 1 is also recalled: on this occasion, however, the stars are said to collide against the bones of the deceased (7.814: ossibus astra), and an image of inextinguishable fire exemplifies the simultaneous endpoint of the cosmic, and the human, dimensions of destruction. In Joseph’s words, “Lucan figures the day of Pharsalia as a day of doom for Rome, most of all in book 7…Lucan makes the topos central to the argument of his epic, that is, his assertion of Rome’s doom – on that one day – to Caesar and .”93

Unable to measure and describe the baneful finis which tangibly looms over the cosmos and himself, but whose details remain ineffable – as this finis, yet to come, includes the unknowable

91 Cf. above, p. 29 and n. 55. 92 See above, p. 36 n. 82. 93 Joseph 2017: 130. Joseph’s study demonstrates excellently that Lucan, though building on a tradition – a literary topos – of catastrophic days that looks all the way back to Homer, outdoes his predecessors, and is highly original in his aggressive insistence on the notion of Pharsalus as ‘doomsday.’ Indeed, as I have argued so far, behind a surface of seemingly boastful rhetoric Lucan turns the civil war into the prologue of an inescapable reality of universal death. Contra Joseph, though, I find that ‘doomsday’ is a misleading term when used to refer merely to the day of the decisive battle. In fact, the apocalypse that Lucan envisions will take place sometime after Pharsalus, perhaps in Nero’s reign (see above, p. 39 n. 88). See Dinter 2012: 36. 40 future circumstances of the poet’s own demise – Lucan has no choice but to stop before he can reach the actual endpoint of his subject-matter. Thus, the abrupt ending of Book 10 is symbolic of the poet’s failure to contain within his hexameters the ever-spinning wheel of fate, which whirling towards an ἐκπύρωσις without rebirth. At the same time, the abrupt ending of

Book 10 beautifully recapitulates the essential notion of Lucan’s second proem: inmensum opus, inmensum opus...94

1.4 THE SUFFERING POET

In book 9, Lucan apostrophizes Caesar in order to reassure him of his immortality (BC

9.980-86):

O sacer et magnus vatum labor! Omnia fato eripis et populis donas mortalibus aevum. sacrae, Caesar, ne tangere famae; nam, si quid Latiis fas est promittere Musis, quantum Zmyrnaei durabunt vatis honores, venturi me teque legent; Pharsalia nostra vivet, et a nullo tenebris damnabimur aevo.

How mighty, how sacred is the poet’s task! He snatches all things from destruction and gives to mortal men immortality. Be not jealous, Caesar, of those whom fame has consecrated; for if it is permissible for the Latin Muses to promise aught, then, as long as the fame of ’s bard endures, posterity shall read my verse and your deeds; our Pharsalia shall live on, and no age will ever doom us to oblivion.

The close connection between Lucan’s λόγοι and Caesar’s ἔργα, in addition to highlighting the power of poetry to grant eternity to human deeds, vehemently reasserts the poet’s oblique concurrence with (even a certain authorial complicity in) the war crimes that he did not commit

94 I take the statement by Henderson 20102: 438 rather seriously: “[W]riting the epic killed the poet. The weight of standing-in for his culture, of assuming the voice of a collective wisdom, of a totalizing concretization of its vital mythologies left the epic project significantly unfinishable” (my italics). To this I would add the weight of the reality that Lucan chooses to represent: death, robbing the poet of his own voice. The incompleteness of the BC symbolizes, among other things, the triumph of death over life. 41 himself and even condemns without reservation.95 Malamud is on point when she sees in these lines “one of the most disturbing of Lucan’s insights: that writing about Caesar makes him somehow complicit with and analogous to Caesar…Caesar and his bard, together for ever, for better or for worse as they contemplate the ruins of Troy.”96 This observation fits into Masters’ larger interpretation: Lucan, in writing about the ‘unspeakable-ness’ of war, reenacts it at every turn of the page, staining his own hands in the process. At times we get the impression that the author’s penchant for the macabre betrays a sadomasochistic taste for unnecessarily gruesome details. More importantly, indulging in dehumanizing descriptions of dismemberments such as that of Marcus Marius Gratidianus, whose arms, squirming tongue, ears and nostrils are amputated while his eyes are dug out of their sockets,97 makes it difficult to figure out what

Lucan’s ideology is: is he a fervent Republican? A parodist? A nihilist? Or else he might enjoy his dose of violence, as a sort of carnifex himself in the realm of his vivid imagination. Could he be the incautious victim of Nietzsche’s aphoristic principle? “He who fights monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the

95 Examples are Luc. BC 1.8-23; 3.154-68; and 7.387-459 (the longest uninterrupted lament over mankind’s wicked fate). 96 Malamud 1995: 182. Cf. Masters 1992: 10: “Lucan is Caesarian in his ambition, but Pompeian in his remorse; the Pompeian in him condemns Caesar, but the Caesarian in him condemns – kills – Pompey. This paradox…is one of the fundamental premises of the poem’s violent logic.” Bartsch 1997: 55-56 agrees that the way in which Lucan addresses his nemesis here, consecrating his and Caesar’s shared fama, displays an unsolvable inner conflict on the poet’s part that levels or equivocates the opposition between the two; their roles (author and acting protagonist) collapse into one, and it becomes impossible to give voice to a coherent ideological stance in the chaotic state of things marking the end of the Republic: Lucan’s anti-imperialism is, paradoxically, not so incorruptible as it seems at first sight. Cf. Johnson 1987: 120, who reads the passage in parodic terms: the affirmation of the vatic power of poetry to confer immortality is useful only insofar as it uncovers Caesar’s fake successes and stupidity, as if the poet were detached from his main character. I disagree: Lucan’s tension between co-participating in the Caesarian nefas and rejecting it is an extremely serious matter, and implies everything but detachment. What is also interesting about this passage is that Lucan, in sharing his glory with Caesar, seems to undermine the authoritativeness of his own voice. See Schrijvers 1990: 32-36; Kubiak 1985 ad loc.; Ciechanowicz 1982: 265-75 (though I find the conclusion unsound); Häussler 1978: 56 ff.; Ahl 1976: 328-32; Lounsbury 1975: 209-12; Rambaud 1955: 258-96; Griset 1954: 109-13; Housman 19702 ad loc.; Postgate 1913: xc. On Caesar at Troy (Lucan’s invention) see Rossi 2001: 313-26; Zwierlein 1986: 460-78; Mayer 1981: 3. 97 Luc. BC 2.181-90. For comparably violent scenes see the narratives of the Massilian campaign (3.585-617) and the Dyrrachium campaign (6.169-251). 42 abyss also gazes into you.”98 Just as in the controversial novel American Psycho the writer Bret

Easton Ellis appears to be so accustomed to violence as to either be desensitized to his protagonist Patrick Bateman’s lust for blood or even to participate in Patrick’s delight at the thought of mangling successful colleagues, occasional lovers and street prostitutes, so it is possible that Lucan inherits something of Caesar’s bloodlust. What is certain is that a hyperbolic representation of graphic violence forbids readers to over-identify with the victims of that same violence, because it creates “distance from the very horrors it seeks to bring home.”99 A case in point is the narrative of the snakes in Book 9, where an implausible array of lethal reptiles causes

Cato’s marching soldiers to drink their own blood in a vain attempt to quench their thirst, or to become liquefied as their muscles and sinews are exposed, or to become bloated until they resemble formless masses, or to amputate their limbs to avoid the spreading of some deadly venom, and so on.100 As Bartsch argues at length, in the face of so grotesque a spectacle of bodily disintegration no audience would empathize with those dying; alienation is the most natural feeling generated by such a disconcerting textual moment.101 Yet regardless of the emotional impact (or lack thereof) it has, Lucan’s transformation of the human body into a lifeless machine, itself numbed to pain – for the victims in the poem never moan, scream or express their agony in any way, but they passively accept all kinds of wounds that are inflicted upon them – serves a precise purpose: it demolishes yet another boundary, of a somatic kind. In addition to redefining the categories of space, time, or ethical norms, which are transformed into

98 My italics. Norman’s edition and translation of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil (2012) is excellent. 99 Quint 1993: 143. See also Martindale 1993: 66-70 and Johnson 1987: 56. Interesting observations are also found in Lefèvre 1970: 59-82; Vessey 1970: 232-34; Tucker 1969: 295-97. 100 For the whole narrative see Luc. BC 9.734-846. 101 Bartsch 1997: 31. 43 their antitheses,102 Lucan also redefines the category of ‘body:’ its content (blood, organs, tissues) gushes forth through the lacerated boundary of flesh, and nothing is left to distinguish and separate the body from the surrounding environment. Lucan’s mutilated corpses also have a symbolic meaning, as Quint brilliantly intuits: “[T]he vicissitudes of the body in the

Pharsalia…reflect the shapelessness of recent Roman history as the poem conceives it, and as it imagines and portrays that history through a narrative of episodic disunity. The epic narrative, which classical literary theory describes with the metaphor of the well-knit body, is deliberately fragmented by Lucan to depict a world out of joint, a history that cannot be organized by imperial apologists into the plot of destiny.”103 Fragmentation, at the level of the body or of episodic concatenation, is a powerful strategy to undo the idea of the unity that the emperor claimed to confer upon the Roman by his mere existence.

On the one hand, then, the uncensored depiction of graphic violence becomes a useful propagandistic resource by which to oppose the imposing façade that Caesar (and more overtly

Caesarian poets than Lucan was, such as Virgil) helped to generate and propagate. The disjointed world that the BC immortalizes conveys a message far different from that which the Augustan program supplied. And in this respect, Quint’s point can be pushed even further: granted that in his Poetics Aristotle compares the plot of a faulty Athenian to a human body lacking in homogeneity, harmony of proportions and corporeal integrity,104 it is possible to draw a parallel between the poem as an incomplete body and the incomplete (dismembered) bodies of the war victims, just as Masters draws a parallel between the Caesarian agger at Massilia and the poem

102 This type of reversal takes place at the beginning (Luc. BC 1.2: iusque datum sceleri canimus) and continues in the rest of the poem. See for example 1.667-68: scelerique nefando/ nomen erit virtus [unspeakable crime/ shall be named virtue]; or 6.147-48, on the Caesarian centurion Scaeva: pronus ad omne nefas et qui nesciret/ in armis quam magnum virtus crimen civilibus esset [ready for any wickedness, he knew not/ that in civil war virtue is a heinous crime]. 103 Quint 1993: 147. 104 Arist. Poet. 7. Cf. Pl. Phaedr. 264c-265e; Cic. De Or. 2.325. 44 as a building.105 Thus, Lucan’s narrative of episodic disunity, in addition to suggesting that the

Roman state is in disarray, mimics the body of a Marcus Marius Gratidianus, or the headless trunk of Pompey at the end of Book 8. The brutalization of the text, effected through

“[d]iscontinuous narrative, constant poetic intervention and apostrophe, descriptive set-pieces, verbal lists, declamatory structure, , hyperbole, paradox, the summoning of the reader into the text, prosaic language and discordant rhythm, negative formulation,”106 can be regarded as a clue in favor of my theory of deliberate incompleteness (see Ch. 2). More to the point, the brutalization of characters in the text shows that Lucan could only envisage Roman history as an unfinishable project (see Ch. 4).

On the other hand, the accumulation of scenes full of surreal violence, even if unbearable in their repulsiveness, leaves the issue of Lucan’s involvement in (and taste for) the Caesarian nefas open: just how much is the poet secretly enjoying his symbiotic relationship with his nemesis, Julius Caesar? For how long has he gazed into Nietzsche’s abyss? Earlier I pointed out that when Crastinus hurls the first javelin to stain the Thessalian soil with Roman blood, Lucan interrupts his panoramic overview of the various stages of strife – the trumpets blasting their war notes, the Eastern archers, Pompey’s assembled ranks confronting the headlong fury of the

Caesarian army, the betrayal of Pompey’s mercenary cavalry – as soon as the soldiers behold their own brothers and fathers (BC 7.550: Ille locus fratres habuit, locus ille parentes). He then promises silence (BC 7.552-56):107

Hanc fuge, mens, partem belli tenebrisque relinque, nullaque tantorum discat me vate malorum, quam multum bellis liceat civilibus, aetas. A potius pereant lacrimae pereantque querellae: quidquid in hac acie gessisti, Roma, tacebo.

105 See above, p. 22-23. 106 Boyle 1993: 154. On narrative discontinuity and fragmentation see also Syndikus 1958: 24-29. 107 See above, p. 36 and n. 83. 45 Let my pen turn away from this phase of the war and leave it to darkness; I refuse to tell such horrors, and let no age learn from me the full licence of civil war. Rather let our tears be shed in vain, our complaints be uttered in vain; of the part Rome played in this battle I shall say nothing.

At 7.557, though, less than a full after the peremptory tacebo, Caesar is described in action, denying any validity to Lucan’s earlier promise. As if this were not enough, a few lines later we stumble upon Roman senators and knights indiscriminately mowed down by the steel

(7.581-83), and upon dead patricians piled up so as to form a great heap (7.597: aggere multo), with a grotesque wink at Caesar’s agger in Book 3. This schizophrenic sequence betrays Lucan’s inner tension between a compliant willingness and yet a determined unwillingness to narrate, a tendency Bramble explains in terms of a nearly pathological pessimistic moralization: in place of the chain of sequential actions we are used to finding in Homer, or in Virgil, it is the rhetorical moment, “seen whole, and interpreted for its moral implications,”108 that becomes the essential unit of composition of the BC. Bramble attributes this feature to the poet’s psychology, his uncontrollable excess of negativity, which translates on the written page into overly long, overly static outbursts interspersed through a narrative of brief, broken-off actions.109 Therefore, when wicked Crastinus throws his spear, Lucan’s acrimonious condemnation of the immoral act occupies more space than the deed itself. The moralizing interventions slow down (and distract from) the ordinary succession of events. Conversely, Homer’s focus is on each particular of the procedure the archer must follow in order to shoot his arrow: the handling of the bow, the placement of the arrow, the pulling of the string, the act of shooting, the trajectory of the arrow

108 Bramble 1982b: 539. 109 Cf. Bramble’s judgment on the surviving fragments of Cornelius Severus, a historical epicist who (as Rabirius and Sextilius Ena) might have exerted some influence on Lucan’s style, although the indignant opinion of , , Servius et al. on the BC proves that Lucan was unique in his rhetoricizing tendency: “[Severus’] negligence of historical detail shows that Lucan was not the first to be offhand with events: disregard for narrative – abridgment, curtailment, or total neglect – a factor common to both poets, leads to insistence on, and rationalistic hypertrophy of, the rhetorical moment” (Bramble 1982: 487). This analysis is prima facie correct, but dismissive in tone: one ought to ask the reasons for which an epic poet might be “offhand” with events. On Lucan’s style see also the valuable contribution by Seitz 1965: esp. 204-18, on pathetic sententiousness. 46 through the air.110 The overall effect of Lucan’s tendencies is to delay the succession of events and actions that develop the plot, and (as if to symbolize this point) several instances of morae are found throughout the ten books of the BC. It seems, then, that Lucan hardly enjoys his subject-matter and even suffers because of it. Nevertheless, he feels he must continue his telling of it. The poet’s turmoil and stubborn unwillingness or inability to recount a plain, uninterrupted narrative become particularly manifest when he promises to avert his gaze from the horrors of

Pharsalus– only for him to break his promise a moment later. To use Master’s terminology, it appears that Lucan’s ‘Caesarian’ side triumphs over his ‘Pompeian’ side.111

Ultimately, the urge to reenact nefas seems stronger than the urge to remain silent. Yet it is simplistic to read the poem in this way. In truth, the ultimate nefas, the end of everything, the doomsday consuming the wretched inheritors of Caesar’s institutionalized act of enslavement called ‘Roman Empire,’ the annihilation of the Roman people as well as the rest of humankind, the cosmic strife among the elements of the natural world dragging us back to primeval chaos… in sum, the inevitable finis of normative epic teleology, is conspicuously, even inevitably, lacking. Besides, the most painful moments between Pharsalus and the extant poem’s end, including the suicide of Cato, who is the last surviving symbol of the cause of liberty, and the biennium of Caesar’s dictatorship, are also absent. As I stated at the beginning of this chapter, no hard evidence will ever prove whether Lucan wanted to leave out the information he omitted or not. However, the idea that there is at least one boundary that cannot be broken, namely the ineffability of too great a nefas for humankind’s capacities and conscience – the end, indeed – is quite recurrent in the BC. To be precise, this phenomenon often recurs in the sections of the BC devoted to divination and divinatory practices, which constitute, as Morford observes, about one

110 Compare Luc. BC 7.470-75 and Hom. Il. 4.122 ff. 111 See above, p. 42 n. 96. 47 tenth of the whole poem, and hence amount to a comparatively large portion of the text.112 In a self-conscious historical epic that eschews divine intervention, it may seem something of a paradox to devote so much space to prophetic utterances,113 the most natural byproduct of the gods’ involvement in human vicissitudes. That is, unless Lucan aims to convey an important message through divination, and I believe that so he does.

1.5 SILENCING PROPHETS

Let us examine the prophetic apparatus of the BC: in Book 1 (522-695), bad omens send chills down the spines of the Romans, persuading them to ask two professionals, Arruns and

Nigidius Figulus, for an explanation. To these Lucan adds a third diviner, the matron whom the god Apollo himself has roused to a frenzy, so as to exacerbate the Romans’ collective fear of the apocalyptic future awaiting them all. In Book 5 (67-236), reprising a historical anecdote present in and, arguably, in his chief source Livy, Lucan tells the story of the fearful

Pompeian Appius Claudius,114 who left his camp on his own in order to ask the Pythian priestess

Phemonoe to reveal his destiny. In Book 6 (413-830) Sextus Pompey, the ignominious offspring of Pompey the Great, resorts to the black magic of the witch Erictho for the same reason that

Appius went to : to know his future in order to quell his fear. In Book 9 (544-86), Cato’s officers beg their general to consult the revered oracle of Jupiter Ammon so as to find out about the outcome of the war. This last scene, though, does not concern us: Cato, so certain of his role in the world and of his death, rejects divination in favor of philosophical wisdom, and is aware of

112 Morford 1967: 59. 113 It is at BC 6.425-30 that Lucan gives us a full list of divinatory practices: oracles (Delos, Delphi and Dodona); extispicy; augury; haruspicy; astrology; some secret knowledge (a reference to additional practices that Lucan has no knowledge of, but which would still be lawful); and “illicit knowledge,” meaning witchcraft. 114 Val. Max. Mem. 1.8.10. 48 the inadequacy of the prophetic medium.115 Besides these main scenes, there is Cornelius’ concise pronouncement on the Euganean hill in Book 7, on the eve of Pharsalus, following a second series of bad omens: as I already observed, however, his is a disheartened sententia, not a prophecy,116 its function being to increase the pathos and pessimistic tone of the narrative. I disagree with Morford when he judges also Lucan’s apparitions and dreams – the epiphany of mournful Roma to Caesar (1.185-203); Julia talking to Pompey in his sleep (3.8-35); Pompey beholding his now remote successes in his theater (7.7-44); and the nightmare of the Caesarian troops as they lie on undeserved kingly couches (7.760-86) – to be just means and highpoints of rhetorical color that are deployed to pathetic and dramatizing effect.117 Although distinct from divinatory practices, Lucan’s dreamlike visions share in the anticipatory function of divination and strengthen the message that the poet communicates more explicitly through his seers: that ruin cannot be avoided, and that we must therefore contemplate the subsequent worthlessness of the entire prophetic apparatus. Thus Roma is but a sickly old woman, and her prayer to Caesar to put an end to his furor is overwhelmed by his self-justified invasion of the Italian soil; Julia predicts the collective demise of the Roman people by referencing the countless boats that

Charon is preparing in Hades (BC 3.16: innumeras puppes), or the several punishments set in

Tartarus (3.17: in multas laxantur Tartara poenas), or even Pompey’s assassination (3.34-35:

115 It is worth recalling Cato’s utterance, some sort of oracle itself (Luc. BC 9.580-83): “Iuppiter est, quodcumque vides, quodcumque moveris./ Sortilegis egeant dubii semperque futuris/ casibus ancipites: me non oracula certum,/ sed mors certa facit” [“All that we see is divine; every motion we make is divine,/ too. Men who doubt and are ever uncertain of/ future events– let them cry out for prophets: I draw my assurance from no oracle, but rather from the certainty of death”]. Cato, a flawless Stoic at least in this particular scene, gives a flawlessly Stoic reply to his legate Labienus, one implying his belief that the divine λόγος permeates reality. This view is in contrast with the narrator’s uncertainty about the active presence of the divine in the cosmos. It is also noteworthy that Cato points his finger at the Roman populace in Book 1, at Appius Claudius in Book 5, and at Sextus Pompey in Book 6: all these characters are indeed full of doubt (dubii) and therefore unworthy of the god’s attention and aid. On the negative effects of fear see Narducci 2002: 141; Narducci 1979: 65 ff.; Martindale 1977: 375 ff.; Makowski 1977: 196. Cf. Fantham 1992: 78. 116 See above, p. 35-36. 117 And on the worthlessness of somniorum colores, see Quint. Inst. 4.2.94. See also Sen. Contr. 2.1.33. 49 “the civil/ war shall make you mine”); Pompey’s last dream, a joyful delusion, demonstrates that only by dwelling on past glories can one find consolation in the wake of the doom of Pharsalus; and, to conclude, the nightmarish ghosts tormenting Caesar and his men signal the perpetuation of the cycle of death for which the Caesarians are chiefly responsible: those once slaughtered shall be slaughterers in the near future, but their retribution is full of sorrow (7.771: tristes poenas), because it is just another step toward the final conflagration.

In light of this, it is legitimate to ask just what prophecies are meant for in the BC: if no means of foreknowledge can help anyone change their future, why does Lucan so indulge in the sphere of divination and the supernatural? According to Dick, he does so to devalue oracles: since “prodigies burden mankind, magically induced prophecies portend death, and dreams presage annihilation for the dreamer…in Lucan’s hands, prophecy becomes an epic device used for the ulterior motive of showing its futility.”118 Makowski, who highlights the irrational fear of

Appius and Sextus as opposed to Cato’s lack of fear, reaches a similar conclusion: in the face of death, “the desire for foreknowledge is misguided and foolish;”119 hence foreknowledge proves a worthless form of aid.120 This is true, and it is especially evident in the case of oracular responses that are asked for rather than uttered spontaneously, in that an explicit request of foreknowledge by someone (be it an individual or a group) betrays the inquirer’s neediness and expectations: it is apparent that the men who inquire about their future in the BC, moved as they are by fear that something terrible might befall them, surmise that they will be able to straighten or ease their fate through the prophetic knowledge they will have received; for why else would they ask for

118 Dick 1963: 49. Additional but comparable remarks are found in Dick 1967: 235-42 and Dick 1965: 460-66. 119 Makowski 1977: 196. 120 We may recall Seneca’s opinion (Ep. 30.10-11) as consistent with his nephew’s: quam ideo timere dementis est quia certa expectantur, dubia metuuntur. Mors necessitatem habet aequam et invictam [Therefore, how foolish it is to fear death, since men simply await that which is sure, but fear only that which is uncertain! Death has its fixed rule– it is equitable and unconquerable]. 50 such knowledge? However, their expectations are invariably disappointed: in Book 1, Arruns and

Figulus are unable to offer a solution to the Romans who asked for their help, and the unsolicited

Roman matron is adamant about the certainty and immutability of the chain of battles and subsequent murders from Pharsalus to Philippi. As in the description of the communis rogus ensuing from Caesar’s paramount impiety on the Thessalian battlefield,121 so in the series of events foretold by the matrona the indicative sets the tone: potentiality gives way to indicatival certainty as the woman beholds fights yet to be fought, dead yet to be dead.122 In the last line of her prophecy (1.694: vidi iam, Phoebe, Philippos), the retrojection of Philippi (and Pharsalus)123 onto the past through the perfect vidi annihilates all hope of altering the trajectory of fate: so sharp is the farsightedness granted to her by the god that the future is, albeit for a fleeting moment, past. Lucan’s contemporaries knew well the historicity of every event foretold by the prophetess, which for them were past history (τὰ γενόµενα). However, through the utterance of the matron Lucan turns that which has not happened yet in the BC into past deeds, thus removing probability and improbability from the horizon of both characters and readers: the war, with all its consequences, is a historical fact that cannot be changed. It is as if it has already happened

(as, in an extra-textual sense, it had happened roughly a century before Lucan took his pen and wrote it down).

To strengthen this impression of inevitability, Lucan deploys a similar tactic in Book 6, when Erictho explains to Sextus how she will satisfy his desire of foreknowledge (BC 6.619-23):

“Sed pronum, cum tanta novae sit copia mortis, Emathiis unum campis attollere corpus, ut modo defuncti tepidique cadaveris ora plena voce sonent nec membris sole perustis auribus incertum feralis strideat umbra.”

121 See above, p. 40. 122 See above, p. 26-27. 123 See above, p. 28 n. 49. 51

“But, since there is such abundance of recent slaughter, the simplest plan is to lift a dead man from the Thessalian fields; then the mouth of a corpse still warm and freshly slain will speak with substantial utterance, and no dismal ghost, whose limbs are dried up by the sun, will gibber sounds unintelligible to our ears.”

In the footnote to his translation, Duff remarks that “Lucan seems to have forgotten that there had been no fighting as yet in Thessaly.”124 But I do not believe that the poet has made a mistake, and I find myself rather in agreement with O’Higgins: the Thessalian witch, a vates who is able to alter the course of individual destinies and whose power almost matches that of the heavenly gods,125 is free to snatch a victim from the future massacre of Pharsalus simply in order to prophesy about the battle.126 Again, Lucan retrojects events he abhors in order to make them present, palpable, and inescapable. Spatial and temporal boundaries are once more transgressed, too. While showing the utter futility of foreknowledge, the prophetic mechanism of the BC contributes to highlighting the concreteness and ineluctability of the universally lethal outcome of the war. But there is yet more: all the vatic figures in the poem apart from the sadistic witch Erictho adopt, if they can, the same defensive strategy to solve the issue of worthless foreknowledge: silence, and feigned ignorance over the future end. Thus, another ‘ulterior motive’ ought to be added to Dick’s list, as Lucan aims to suggest that silence is preferable to oracular insight. This is not only true of the various vates in

124 Duff 1928: 348. 125 It is clear that the power of the witch is incredible: Lucan tells us that the gods loath the sound of her voice so much that they grant her every wish as she first spells it out (BC 6.527-28). She can also kill men, bring them back from the dead as she pleases (6.529-32), and plot to keep Thessaly the place of the decisive confrontation between Caesar and Pompey (6.578-85). In her response to Sextus, she even implies that she has enough power to drastically change fata minora: the gods are ready to oblige her (6.605-607) if she wants to cut short someone’s life. Whose power is superior (that of witchcraft, or of the superi dei) is ultimately debatable, as Lucan admits (6.496-99). Yet something is certain: Erictho cannot affect the unfolding of events that will be catastrophic for entire peoples, such as the Battle of Pharsalus. In these cases Fortuna, Caesar’s great ally throughout the poem, is more powerful than all the witches of Thessaly (6.611-15). For excellent treatments of the Erictho scene (including notes on the reversal of Aeneas’ catabasis), see Fratantuono 2012: 238-67; Pillinger 2012: 127-37; Bernstein 2011: 257 ff.; Danese 1992: 197-244; Johnson 1987: 1-33; Feeney 1986: 1-24; Narducci 1985: 1548-51; Ahl 1976: 130-49. On Sextus Pompey specifically, see Tesoriero 2002: 229-47; Ogden 2002: 249-72. 126 “[I]t is impossible to tell where Lucan’s spell begins and Erictho’s leaves off. Lucan can shift the “future” of his characters (the battle of Pharsalia, in this case) into their past, to match Erictho’s transference of their future into their present” (O’Higgins 1988: 219). 52 the poem (or else of the poet’s occasional mouthpieces) but also of Lucan himself, who calls himself a vates twice127 and whose insights surpass the insights of his characters.128 In the intense struggle between retelling Caesar’s nefas and consigning it to oblivion, it is therefore the latter option that must prevail, not least in the form of Book 10 and its truncated ending: the incomplete finale of the BC matches the incompleteness of the prophecies delivered throughout the ten-book poem, and in this way Lucan matches the other vates in his epic.

Arruns, the first seer to speak in the poem, clarifies by his words and behavior what the palliative to the inevitable death of his fellow-citizens shall be (BC 1.630-38):

His ubi concepit magnorum fata malorum, exclamat: “Vix fas, superi, quaecumque movetis, prodere me populis; nec enim tibi, summe, litavi, Iuppiter, hoc sacrum, caesique in pectora tauri Inferni venere dei. Non fanda timemus;129 sed venient maiora metu. Di visa secundent, et fibris sit nulla fides; sed conditor artis finxerit ista Tages.” Flexa sic omina Tuscus involvens multaque tegens ambage canebat.

When thus he had grasped the prediction of great evils, “Scarce may I,” he cried aloud, “o gods, reveal to men’s ears what you are preparing. Not with mightiest Jupiter has my sacrifice found favor; but the infernal gods have entered into the body of the slaughtered bull. What we fear is unspeakable; but the sequel will be worse than our fears. May the gods give a favorable turn to what

127 Luc. BC 1.63 and 7.553. Cf. Virg. Aen. 7.41. In Book 1 of the BC, it is ambiguous whether the word vates is in the nominative case, referring to Lucan, or in the vocative, referring to Nero, his source of inspiration. See Tucker 1983: 143-51. O’Higgins 1988: 108 n. 2 rightly points out that “mouthpiece and source of inspiration form a single vatic mechanism,” as is the case with Apollo and Phemonoe, or with Erictho and the resuscitated corpse. Therefore she argues that it makes no difference how we decide to interpret 1.63: the connection between Lucan and his vates is unmistakable. However, I believe that there is a difference: the Pythian priestess and the dead miles do not speak of their own accord, but they are forced to do so. In other words, they are passive vessels of information. If we call the emperor Nero a vates at the beginning of the BC, rather than the poet, this frees Lucan of any responsibility as he retells his nefarious topic: Lucan would as well become a passive vessel of information. To me, it is unlikely that so self-conscious a poet as Lucan would want to suggest passivity on his part. I therefore take vates at 1.63 to be in the nominative case. 128 On the poet as vates (an omniscient narrator) see Newman 1967; Bickel 1951: 257-314; Dahlmann 1948: 337- 53; Runes 1926: 202-16. 129 The same periphrasis is repeated at Luc. BC 2.176, on the dismemberment of Marius Gratidianus: the nefas of past civil wars (such as the war between Marius and Sulla, during which Gratidianus perished and literally disintegrated) and the nefas of the current civil war, between Caesar and Pompey, can be retold in spite of the feelings of horror and indignation they arouse. By contrast, the future outcome of the current civil war is a nefas no human tongue can tolerate to speak about at length. 53 we have witnessed! May the entrails prove false, and may the lore of our founder Tages turn out a mere imposture!” Thus the Tuscan told the future, veiling it in obscurity and hiding it with much ambiguity.

It is important to notice that the Etruscan professional, although equally laconic about present and future nefas, makes a distinction between the degrees of ineffability relative to present and future events: the immediate cause of the people’s fear – Caesar’s declaration of war against

Rome by his crossing of the Rubicon and its gruesome implications – is ineffable (non fanda) due to the long-lasting violence it foretells (graphically symbolized by the corruption of the organs of the bull). Yet something even worse than present fears (and their immediate cause) will come later on, and this must be the ἐκπύρωσις– even more ineffable a topic than the military operations leading to it: on the face of it, Arruns limits himself to wishing that his prognosis be false (1.636: fibris sit nulla fides), and he adds nothing. His is a deliberate choice, for he knows the meaning of the malignant spots on the entrails of the bull, or of its flattened heart, or of the excrescence growing on the lobe of its liver, but he refuses to share his superior knowledge with his audience: both involvens and tegens, in the last line of the passage, highlight the subject’s intentionality and his conscious omission of information. Thus, vatic incompleteness is endemic to the epic well before the BC ends incompletely.

Next in the climactically arranged triptych of Book 1 comes Nigidius Figulus, who was among the most learned Romans of the time and a passionate Pompeian, Pythagorean and astrologer. His prognosis contains more accurate information than Arruns’: bolder than his

Tuscan colleague, Figulus does not shy away from detailing a few of the imminent monstrosities signaled by the prodigies in Book 1. As he describes the alarming disposition of the planets in accordance with the zodiacal dodecatrope, the seer specifies that, whether governance of the universe is dependent on blind chance or destiny, the frenzy of war is incumbent on either

54 approach, and all forms of legality will be overthrown forever.130 However, Figulus averts his gaze from the end (1.669: quid prodest poscere finem?), wishing – as I previously pointed out – that the fight be drawn out for much longer than it will, rather than Caesar’s tyranny being established.131 Again, we perceive a pivotal difference in the way in which the events leading to the end are treated as opposed to the way in which the end itself is treated, the latter being unbearable and therefore silenced. Panic results from the little knowledge the two prophets have granted their audience, a demonstration of the failure of divinatory practices to offer a resolution

(1.673: Terruerant satis haec pavidam praesagia plebem). Unfortunately yet worse is at hand

(1.674: sed maiora premunt). It is now the turn of the rabid matron, whose prophecy I quoted extensively above.132 She is, as we know, the most effective seer of the three. She spells out the major events of the civil war, including the deaths of its protagonists, and she never falters in her retelling of nefas. Yet we do well to remember that she is forced to speak against her own will, as her body is controlled by a superior, inhuman authority: the god Apollo, who enters her mind and – given the manifest anger of the gods at mankind (2.1: iamque irae patuere deum) – has no reason to be kind toward mortals, or spare them accurate foreknowledge of the nefas responsible for their annihilation. Even so, there is no hint of the ἐκπύρωσις, and the last historical event to be portended is the Battle of Philippi.

The prophetic apparatus of Book 1 alerts us to two key-points of awareness about the mechanics of the BC. First, prophecies are worthless, if not burdensome to mankind, to recall

Dick and Makowski’s observations. Second, and more importantly, however, prophecies only

130 The long utterance (Luc. BC 1.641-75) might have been historical, although there is no definitive way to prove it. See 1996: 180 and 185; Getty 1960: 310-23; Getty 1941: 17-22. Getty first refuted Housman, who in his edition of the BC rejects the astronomical correctness of the passage. Hannah and Getty are right: Figulus’ words must be read in accordance with astrological rather than astronomical parameters. It is possible to reconcile the planetary positions mentioned in the prophecy with the dodekatropos. 131 See above, p. 36-37. 132 See above, p. 26-27. 55 disclose a partial truth, the lesser nefas; thus all vates in the poem seem to share Lucan’s own desire to omit the most horrifying outcome of the future (BC 2.1-15):

Iamque irae patuere deum, manifestaque belli signa dedit mundus, legesque et foedera rerum praescia monstrifero vertit natura tumultu indixitque nefas. Cur hanc tibi, rector Olympi, sollicitis visum mortalibus addere curam, noscant venturas ut dira per omina clades? Sive parens rerum, cum primum informia regna materiamque rudem flamma cedente recepit, fixit in aeternum causas, qua cuncta coercet se quoque lege tenens, et saecula iussa ferentem fatorum inmoto divisit limite mundum; sive nihil positum est sed fors incerta vagatur fertque refertque vices, et habet mortalia casus: sit subitum, quodcumque paras; sit caeca futuri mens hominum fati; liceat sperare timenti.

And now heaven’s wrath was revealed; the universe gave clear signs of battle; and nature, conscious of the future, reversed the laws and ordinances of life, and proclaimed civil war while breeding monsters amid the general chaos. Why did you, of , see fit to lay on suffering mortals this additional burden, that they should learn the approach of calamity by awful portents? Whether the author of the universe, when the fire gave place and he first took in hand the shapeless realm of raw matter, established the chain of causes for all eternity, and bound himself as well by universal law, and portioned out the universe, which endures the ages prescribed for it, by a fixed law of destiny; or whether nothing is ordained and fortune, moving at random, brings round the cycle of events, and chance is master of mankind– in either case, let your purpose, whatever it be, be sudden; let the mind of man be blind to coming doom; he fears, but leave him at least hope.

As Fantham notes, according to the Stoic doctrine to which Lucan partially adheres, hope and fear are both harmful emotions, in that they equally perturb the soul.133 But to counterbalance the gods’ cruel bestowal of fear, Lucan instinctively reacts by wishing for , which he equates to ignorance: the jussive subjunctive liceat at 2.15 is an exhortation to Jupiter to bring swift ruin, unbeknownst to mortals. Although Lucan is more explicit in motivating the necessity of silence over the finis of the civil war, his is in essence an extension of Arruns, Figulus and (to some degree) the god Apollo’s thought process: if doom is indeed inevitable, as the BC persistently

133 Fantham 1992: 82. 56 intimates, then not knowing it and not thinking about it becomes an inevitable countermeasure and source of comfort. As an unmistakable sign of his alignment with the ideological framework of the other seers in the poem, Lucan also alludes to Figulus’ prophecy by his juxtaposition of a worldview based on determinism and a worldview based on sheer randomness.134

What, then, is the alternative to blissful ignorance, the kind of ignorance that the survivors of the Ilerda campaign are said to enjoy after Caesar leaves them unscathed and dismisses them?135 The answer comes after Lucan’s somewhat contradictory apostrophe to the

(perhaps sovereign) rector Olympi in Book 2: intolerable life conditions in the present. In fact, business ceases; gloom descends over the city; grief vexes everyone, from magistrates to private citizens; death is already present, even if it is yet to strike; and the inconsolable atmosphere of sorrow impregnating all corners of Rome recalls those silent households in which a dear one has just passed. Women and men alike cannot but express their distress in gut-wrenching ways (BC

2.16-29):

Ergo, ubi concipiunt, quantis sit cladibus orbi constatura fides superum, ferale per urbem iustitium; latuit plebeio tectus amictu omnis , nullos comitata est purpura fasces. Tum questus tenuere suos, magnusque per omnes erravit sine voce dolor. Sic funere primo attonitae tacuere domus, cum corpora nondum conclamata iacent, nec mater crine soluto exigit ad saevos famularum bracchia planctus, sed cum membra premit fugiente rigentia vita

134 See Gagliardi 1989: 123; Schotes 1969: 17 and 109. 135 Luc. BC 4.394-401, a key-passage: Non proelia fessos/ ulla vocant, certos non rumpunt classica somnos./ Iam coniunx natique rudes et sordida tecta/ et non deductos recipit sua terra colonos./ Hoc quoque securis oneris fortuna remisit,/ sollicitus menti quod abest favor: ille salutis/ est auctor, ille fuit. Sic proelia soli/ felices nullo spectant civilia voto [No battles call them from/ where they rest; no trumpet-call breaks their sound/ slumbers. They are welcomed now by their wives/ and innocent babies, by their simple dwellings and/ their native soil, nor are they settled there as/ colonists. Of another burden fortune relieves/ them: their minds are not troubled by partisanship;/ for, if Caesar granted them their lives, Pompey/ was once their leader. Thus they alone are happy,/ looking on at civil war with no prayer for the success/ of either]. The reason for the soldiers’ happiness is in essence their freedom from future expectations: they must not pick sides, and they do not have to pray that either side will be victorious, anxiously gazing at the future in an attempt to grasp it in advance. Since they are relieved of their anxiety, their neutral spectatorship of the continuation of the war (proelia…nullo spectant civilia voto) is the greatest gift one may wish for in Lucan’s topsy-turvy world. 57 voltusque exanimes oculosque in morte minaces; necdum est ille dolor, nec iam metus: incubat amens miraturque malum. Cultus matrona priores deposuit, maestaeque tenent delubra catervae.

Therefore, when men perceived the mighty disasters which the truthfulness of the gods would cost the world, business ceased and gloom prevailed throughout Rome; the magistrates disguised themselves in the dress of the people; no purple accompanied the ’ rods. Moreover, men restrained their lamentations, and a deep dumb grief pervaded the people. So, at the moment of death a household is stunned and speechless before the body is lamented and laid out, and before the mother with disheveled hair summons her maidens to beat their breasts with cruel arms: she still embraces the limbs stiff with the departure of life, and the inanimate features, with eyes fierce in death. Fear she feels no longer, but grief not yet: incapable of thought she hangs over her son and marvels at her loss. The matrons put off their former garb and occupied the temples in mournful company.136

Moving on to the prophetic apparatus of Book 5, we cannot tell whether Apollo’s oracle to

Appius by means of Phemonoe is shrouded in soothing words because the god does not want the cowardly Appius to despair as the Roman populace does in Book 1. It might as well be that the god takes pleasure in deceiving Appius, since he likewise had no qualms about foretelling catastrophe through his earlier mouthpiece, the matron. Regardless of the truth, what stands out in the long oracular scene at Delphi is that Phemonoe, like Arruns and Figulus, would like to stay silent, and she tries feigning possession to avoid fulfilling her prophetic duties and delivering true oracles. Her reason for acting with reluctance is, aside from personal fear, the same reason that leads Lucan to pray for a speedy, sudden destruction of humankind in Book 2: she is aware of the burdensome worthlessness of divination. Hence her firm rebuttal of Appius’ demands

(5.130-31): “Why,” she asked, “does wicked hope of learning the truth bring you here, Roman?”

In his shortsightedness Appius fails to understand that it is ignorance of the future that grants him a spark of hope, not knowledge of it: in this strange Lucanian world the Pompeian’s

136 I only quote the most significant section of a long, pathetic description ending at 2.44. 58 spes is perverted, and hence inproba. The ultimate, ironic proof of Appius’ misunderstanding is the misleading ambiguity of the oracular words to which he eventually listens: Apollo’s promise of peace in Euboea, which allows Appius to cultivate “vain hope” (5.227: vana spe), because he ignores or dares not intuit his real future– the fact that the god, by peace, meant death. But there is more: while Phemonoe is in a trance and searches amid countless threads of destiny to detect the insignificant trajectory of Appius’ existence, she beholds all ages at once, including the end of it all, the last hour of the world (BC 5.179-82):

Tanta patet rerum series, atque omne futurum nititur in lucem, vocemque petentia fata luctantur; non prima dies, non ultima mundi, non modus Oceani, numerus non derat harenae.

So measureless a chain of events is revealed; all the future struggles to the light; destinies contend with each other, seeking to be uttered. The creation of the world, its destruction, the compass of the Ocean and the sum of the sands were not lacking.

Yet Phemonoe is forbidden to reveal what she sees (5.176-77: nec tantum prodere vati/ quantum scire licet). The same dynamic characterizing revelations of the future in Book 1 thus also applies to the Delphic scene: the lesser nefas – in this case the fate of a coward – may be uttered, but no word directly or explicitly vocalizes the finis of it all.

To conclude, we turn to Erictho, for Gordon a character who “refuses to be exorcised”137 despite the progress in Lucanian scholarship, since her overblown portrayal and her revolting practices make her a hardly classifiable unicum in Latin epic. An “interweaving”138 of Virgil’s

Sibyl and Lucan’s own Phemonoe, the witch represents hell on earth, the embodiment of the reversal of Aeneas’ catabasis.139 Her prophecy to Sextus, given its chronological proximity to the battle of Pharsalus, is proportionately important, as observed by Schrempp: “[Ericthos]

137 Gordon 1987: 231. 138 Masters 1992: 180. 139 See above, p. 40 n. 125. See also Martindale 1980: 367-77; Tartari Chersoni 1979: 25-39; Paoletti 1963: 11-26; Longi 1955: 186 ff.; Guillemin 1951: 223. 59 besonderes Gewicht erhält sie durch die Stellung unmittelbar vor dem Buch der

Schlachtschilderung.”140 For the purposes of this study, the most unique feature of Erictho to bear in mind is also one of the most conspicuous: thriving in death as she does, she is a supporter of Caesar, she revels in nefas, and she enjoys everything about it, including prognostications that may cause distress to ordinary mortals. This is why the Thessalian oracle is the most pivotal and efficacious throughout the whole of the BC: behind it stands a vates (and supernatural forces) diametrically opposed to augurs, astrologers, and intermediaries of the superi dei such as the

Roman matron and Phemonoe. Lucan, on the other hand, is not wholly dissimilar to Erictho: taste and distaste for his subject-matter coexist in him, and even though he wants to stop his narrative, he only does so after compiling ten books of atrocities.

In order to satisfy Sextus Pompey’s desire to know the outcome of the battle (who will perish in it, who will survive it), the Thessalian witch forces her will upon the wretched corpse of a soldier whose lungs are intact, that he might communicate with clarity. Like Phemonoe, Lucan, and the seers in Book 1, the soldier exhibits a distinct lack of enthusiasm for revealing the future, but he has no choice. Unlike the , however, he launches on a highly informative utterance.

Nor does he focus on one particular destiny: we get no petty death of a single mortal on this occasion, but a vision of the where all Republicans but Brutus (the or

Pompey’s avenger) grieve, whereas all evil revolutionaries (such as the Gracchi) rejoice in triumphal wickedness. As for the specific historical events that are forecast, they include the deaths of Pompey and Caesar, as well as a hint at the ill-starred fortune of Sextus’ household, its graves scattered in those continents in which the Pompeians had previously enjoyed victories

(BC 6.805-20):

“Nec gloria parvae

140 Schrempp 1964: 25. 60 sollicitet vitae: veniet quae misceat omnes hora duces. Properate mori magnoque superbi quamvis e parvis animo descendite bustis et Romanorum manes calcate deorum. Quem tumulum Nili, quem Thybridis adluat unda, quaeritur, et ducibus tantum de funere pugna est. Tu fatum ne quaere tuum: cognoscere Parcae me reticente dabunt; tibi certior omnia vates ipse canet Siculis genitor Pompeius in arvis, ille quoque incertus, quo te vocet, unde repellat, quas iubeat vitare plagas, quae sidera mundi. Europam, miseri, Libyamque Asiamque timete: distribuit tumulos vestris fortuna triumphis. O miseranda domus, toto nil orbe videbis tutius Emathia.”

“Let not short-lived glory trouble you: the hour will soon come that makes all the leaders equal. Make haste to die; proud of your high hearts, go down from graves however humble, and trample on the ghosts of the gods of Rome. By whose grave shall flow the Nile, and by whose the Tiber– that is the question; and the battle of the rivals settles nothing but their place of burial. As for you, ask not about your fate; the Fates will show you without words from me; your father, a surer prophet, will tell you all in the land of Sicily; and even he knows not whither to summon you and whence to warn you away, what region or clime he must bid you avoid. Ill-fated house! You must fear Europe, Africa and Asia; Fortune divides your graves among the lands you triumphed over; you shall find no place in all the world less than Pharsalus.”

Given the mention of the ghost of Pompey at 6.814, a certior vates who will tell Sextus what his destiny shall be with greater accuracy, O’Higgins, reprising Bruère’s idea,141 notes that if the narrative of the BC had included the Sicilian War (36 BCE), then the whole scenario would have evoked Aeneid 6, where gives advice to his son.142 Of course this is fragile reasoning: given the short chronological span covered by the extant ten books of the BC, we can deduce that if Lucan wanted to treat the whole civil war period from beginning to end, his opus would have reached gargantuan proportions, requiring unrealistic lengths for an epic poem.143 The mention of Pompey’s ghost is useful in that it anticipates further hostilities – and further instances of

141 Bruère 1950: 228-29. See also Thompson 1964: 147; Due 1962: 127. 142 O’Higgins 1988: 219 n. 34. 143 Ahl 1976: 308; Marti 1970: 27; Grenade 1950: 48. 61 death, including that of Sextus – before the suprema hora of universal dissolution will “make all the leaders equal” (6.806-7: veniet quae misceat omnes/ hora duces). Yet, as usual with epic poems, anticipation does not always entail extensive treatment: for otherwise, “the Iliad must end with the death of , the fall of Troy.”144 Prophecies often forestall or replace fuller accounts of future events. The death of Sextus in Sicily is an example. The most conspicuous example of this phenomenon, however, is the ἐκπύρωσις Lucan briefly envisions in Books 2 and

7, which the corpse evokes here by the same verb (miscere) that was earlier used to describe the collapse of star against star,145 or the collapse of stars against human bones.146 Since the infernal forces Erictho masters and unleashes at her command make for the most powerful form of divination aside from the divinatory power of Lucan himself (that vates of all vates!), it is no surprise that the gaze of the corpse stretches from the Underworld to the finis of the universe.

And since the infernal forces delight in nefas, as witches do, the corpse is given orders opposite to those of Apollo’s priestess: he omits from his prognosis Sextus’ individual destiny, the lesser evil, and includes far greater evils, such as the supreme hour marking the final catastrophe. Even so, the mention is rather brief, its tone ominously indefinite, and we get the impression that the inferni dei, too, find it problematic to cope with the unprecedented outcome precipitated by

Pharsalus.

Lucan, almost omniscient in the farsightedness granted by his role of narrator and his historical vantage point, proves the superior range of his vatic gaze when he puts into words the final stages of cosmic collisions and disintegration. Still, he never quite breaks the boundary that is the end: the glimpse into the finis he offers in his programmatic passage in Book 1 is the best

144 Masters 1992: 237. See also Häussler 1978: 257; von Albrecht 1970: 275 n. 6; Rutz 1965: 267; Schrempp 1964: 3 and 91 ff.; Brisset 1964: 142. 145 Luc. BC 1.74-75. See above, p. 24 n. 39. 146 Ibid. 7.814-15. See above, p. 40. 62 he can do, and his prophecy on the ἐκπύρωσις is a way to forestall the description of its happening later in the poem. The ineffability of Lucan’s subject-matter works itself out in the poet’s anticipation of, but failure to narrate, the ultimate cosmic catastrophe: as a poet who gestures at ἐκπύρωσις but at no point makes it a part of his narrative, Lucan inevitably leaves unfinished business in a work without end.

Granted the parallelism between the poet-vates and the various types of prophets we encounter throughout the narrative of the BC, it is natural to suppose that the prophetic apparatus of the poem replicates the tendency Lucan follows while recounting present and future nefas.

Thus, if all the Lucanian prophets omit through silence some of the information they have access to, showing recalcitrance when it comes to foretelling or describing the end, it is – again – natural to suppose that the poet’s own resistance to his nefarious subject-matter shall produce the same result; after denouncing the damages of foreknowledge to humankind (and to himself) and praising the merits of ignorance, Lucan adopts by the end of his narrative the same coping mechanism Arruns first adopted in the beginning: he shuts his mouth.147

147 One may recall again Seneca (Ep. 24.1): Quid enim necesse est mala accersere, satis cito patienda cum venerint, praesumere ac praesens tempus futuri metu perdere? Est sine dubio stultum, quia quandoque sis futurus miser, esse iam miserum [Why, indeed, is it necessary to summon trouble, which must be endured soon enough when it has once arrived, or anticipate trouble and ruin the present through fear of the future? It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now, for you may be unhappy at some future time].

63 CHAPTER 2

Shape of chaos

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos. Will Durant

God leads through chaos with wise providence. Eduard Norden

2.1 THE RHETORIC OF THE ENEMY

Lucan’s cosmological framework as expounded in Ch. 1 rests on an unconventional apocalyptic conceptualization of the universe, positing no regenerative process after the prophesized ending of the cosmos. Due to this bleak prospect, prophets who catch a glimpse of the foreseeable future tend to select the information they disclose by avoiding disclosing the worst at hand, and even if they (rarely) launch into catastrophistic revelations, they are unable to dwell on details. Part of their laconic disposition stems from the overwhelming terror the future holds. Part has to do with their inability to see, or know, everything: the poet’s early confession that his task lacks measure insofar as he, a mortal with a limited lifespan, might die before or in the midst of the apocalypse he envisions testifies to a lack of omniscience. The literalization of the future cosmic destruction as Lucan proclaims it and effects it through his inmensum opus forbids the poet-vates to account for the details of the end, in that he himself may become its unwitting victim, a possibility which his prognostic powers fail to ascertain. Oracular incompleteness reflects this failure, as well as the unspeakable nature of the vatic terror that the other vates withstand, and Lucan’s condemnation of the regime responsible for this nefas. Yet incompleteness is inherent not only in the dynamics of the prophetic apparatus of the BC. Lack of closed form to reflect on the effects of civil warfare permeates the very infrastructure of

Lucan’s rhetoric and τέχνη, as I already stated in my reflection on fragmentary bodies in Ch. 1:

64 the dissolution of somatic boundaries, expressed by the gruesome dismemberment in the poem of individuals and masses of soldiers alike, stands as a metaphor for the shapelessness of a history no human has control over, not even the Roman emperor.1 As a result the poem itself exhibits a shapeless, heterogeneous and anti-Aristotelian body. Although this is well known, and paradoxes and antonymic oppositions at the level of language, wording and semantics of the BC have been the object of thorough studies, there are aspects of the disruptive effect of Lucan’s rhetoric that still require a more detailed examination; namely, the genesis and causes of the poet’s narrative deformations, and the logic of incomplete narrative segments within a system of apparent illogicality that permeates the narrative as a whole.

Scholars have long tended to attribute most of the inconsistencies in Lucan’s poetry, and the subsequent irregularity of the textual body (and narrative) of the BC, to what Rudich labels the “rhetoricized mentality”2 of Augustan and post-Augustan poets; or else to a serendipitous lack of control3 influenced to a significant extent by the introjection into the realm of poetry of rhetorical techniques, features and colorations– a process which von Albrecht rightly considers less unidirectional than it is often thought.4 Thus Morford, when he reassesses Lucan’s merits as a poet, speaks of excellence5 in terms of pathos, color and sententiae, but judges the overall result an ultimately imperfect specimen of “rhetorical epic,”6 highlighting the poet’s debt to

Augustan declamatores. And when Gagliardi concludes his study on continuity (or lack thereof) between prose genres and Lucan’s epic with an endorsement of the originality of the BC, “un

1 Ch. 1 esp. p. 42-44. 2 Rudich 1997: 113-17. 3 See Johnson 1987: 3. 4 Von Albrecht 1999: 224: “When studying the history of Roman literature we have to keep in mind that the so- called intrusion of rhetoric into poetry, which is often said to have started with Ovid, should rather be reconsidered and redefined starting from the intrusion of poetry into rhetoric, which took place in the schools of declamation under Augustus.” 5 See also Seitz 1965: 204-32. 6 Morford 1967: ix. 65 togatum carmen capace di articolarsi in una nuova intelaiatura, e di esprimere ancora la sua tormentata spiritualità,”7 he is building on Paratore’s (disparaging) acknowledgment of the influence of Augustan oratory on Julio- poets: “Il torbido asianesimo della letteratura fiorita sotto gli imperatori della dinastia Giulio-Claudia, quel furibondo scuotere dalle fondamenta l’edificio della romanità trionfante costruito dalla prima generazione augustea e tentare di riconquistare gli ideali della Roma repubblicana, attraverso modi e forme di prepotente, inconsueto barocchismo, tutto ciò ebbe la sua lunga incubazione presso i retori del tempo d’Augusto.”8 More recently Dinter has examined the sententiousness of Lucan’s style, and especially the way in which the poet’s sententiae make the text uneven, functioning as autarchic limbs9 or as self-sufficient units of meaning that are subject to the excerptability practiced by von

Seckendorff in his lehrreiche Sprüche.10 Hence Dinter again stresses a fundamental debt to rhetoric.11 Obvious examples of this phenomenon are Cato’s suasoria in response to Brutus’ appeal to abstain from combat in Book 2, an autonomous tirade that would make perfect sense if extrapolated from its context; or Petreius’ peremptory γνώµη on the beneficial nature of wickedness (BC 4.252: iuvat esse nocentes). For Dinter, sententiousness in the BC is pervasive to the point that it becomes a driving force in the text, just as Bennington has it for 18th century

French fiction: “This force is not some irrational or metaphysical entity assumed to be at work in texts, but a force of law. If the ‘overt’ forms of sententiousness lay down the law, the more

7 Gagliardi 1970: 66. 8 Paratore 1957: 505. Recall also Pasquali 1920: 248: “Retorica e poesia non si congiungono intimamente, non si fondono se non nella Roma del primo tempo dell’impero.” For useful studies on the influence of declamationes on the poetry of the Early Empire see Bonner 1966 and Bonner 1949; Clarke 1953; Parks 1945. 9 Dinter 2012: 89: the expression “autarchic limbs” is the very title of Ch. 3 in his book. 10 In the preface to his translation of Lucan’s BC into German, published posthumously in 1695, Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff collected three hundred or so sententiae worth emending in accordance with his Lutheran education. The work, condemned by Gundolf 1930: 11 as awkward, nevertheless seems to suggest that the narrative of the BC lends itself to excerptability and decontextualizations in a way other epic poems do not. 11 Dinter 2012: 89 ff. See also Nadaï 2000; Ahl 1993. 66 concealed types…draw their force from a law laid down, or exploit that law surreptitiously.”12

Both the most effective gnomic statements of the BC and the less pointed situational sententiae employed to reiterate the poet’s main tenets are so conceived and arranged as to conjure a topsy- turvy world which responds to a subverted system of values. In this Weltanschauung the norms once appreciated by virtuous Romans become unrecognizable, and the γνώµη emerging from the poet’s accumulation of sententiae negates the ethics that the imperial propaganda professes to broadcast.13 While this is a fascinating argument, it does not fully solve the issue of the incongruousness of Lucan’s textual non-body and its genesis: since Lucan did not write in von

Seckendorff’s aphoristic format, simply noting the autarchy and excerptability of pointed γνώµαι in the BC is not in itself a sufficient proof that Lucan meant to encourage future critics to dissect his work into a handbook of dicta worth memorizing. In turn, such dissections of the poem as done by modern intellectuals such as von Seckendorff hardly amount to proof that the BC was disunited to begin with. Why, then, does Lucan write in the way he does? Why do we sense disunity throughout the poem? These questions remain unanswered, and the inadequacy of a model that takes into account mostly (if not solely) Lucan’s debt to the rhetoric of his age to explain his differentiation in form and theme from predecessors such as Virgil also emerges in the earlier studies by Gagliardi and Morford: unable to interpret the inconsistencies of the BC in a coherent way, both scholars imply in their arguments that, for all his merits, Lucan failed

12 Bennington 1985: 9. On Lucan’s sententiousness as a rhetorical device see also Tucker 1967: 334-84. 13 On Lucan’s antiphrastic Künstsprache recall Sklénar 2003: 13: “That Lucan mounts a deliberate assault upon the traditional norms of epic is one of the most prominent commonplaces of the nihilist line of criticism, which holds that epic in Lucan’s hands just as surely as inevitably becomes mock-epic as, within his text, virtus becomes crimen and ius becomes scelus. By now few (one hopes) lament the overthrow of the previous regime, whose legislation in the matter of Latin epic can, with only the slightest risk of caricature, be paraphrased as follows: the Aeneid so exhausted the genre’s possibilities as to guarantee the inferiority of its successors; Ovid, though hopelessly superficial, is redeemed by his elegance, but Latin epic thereafter lumbers downhill in a sorry parade of decadent mediocrities whose tastelessness is nowhere better exemplified than by the garish imagination of Lucan, that barely postadolescent poète maudit who can only too easily be made to corroborate all of our inherited prejudices about the Age of Nero.” 67 where Virgil did not;14 hence Lucan’s “tormentata spiritualità,” 15 the result of the poet’s unfulfilled desire to become the Wunderkind he aspired to be16 since the time of his claim to have surpassed the Culex.17

I do not wish to deny that among Lucan’s sources of inspiration were some of the orators whose dicta Seneca the Elder, himself representative of a “somewhat plump and foreign manner of diction,”18 collected in his lost Oratorum et Rhetorum Sententiae, Divisiones, Colores. Nor do

I deny that the prosaic style of the BC, vehement in tone, aphoristic in its pointed sententiae, and overblown in its predilection for rhetorical momentum with dilatory effects for the narrative sequence,19 has to do in part with Lucan’s own rhetorical school-training and experience in the . I argue, however, that the main reason why Lucan writes in the way he does is because he wants to refute Caesar, and he appropriates Caesar’s rhetoric (striving for abruptness, omission, inconclusiveness, and in short incompleteness) to use it as a major point of relatiatory critique

14 Similar conclusions are found in Rudich 1997. 15 See above, p. 66. 16 Bramble 1982: 485 by “outrageous Wunderkind” defines Lucan especially in relation to Petronius’ well-known classicizing objections. Of course in considering Lucan’s innovativeness as a poet we do well to remember that the fragmentary state of transmission of the Latin corpus precludes definitive answers. In the field of mythological epic more or less contemporaneous with Lucan we have nothing but titles, with the exception of two lines on the Trojan War recited by Abronius Silo in the presence of Seneca the Elder (Sen. Suas. 2.19). In the field of historical epic fortuna was more , and we know for example that Lucan alluded to a line in Rabirius’ Bellum Actiacum, or that he was influenced in diction and style by Albinovanus Pedo and Cornelius Severus. Despite the incomplete information at our disposal, a rather ironic issue when dealing with an author who makes incompleteness a key- feature of his poetics, the wealth of ancient testimonies responding with indignation to Lucan’s achievements, from Petronius, to Servius, to pseudo- in Isidore de Seville and , proves that Lucan was unmatched in extent of innovations. 17 Suet. Luc. 2: ut praefatione quadam aetatem et initia sua cum Vergilio comparans ausus sit dicere: “Et quantum mihi restat ad Culicem?” [When in some introduction Lucan compared his age and beginnings with those of Virgil, he dared saying: “How much more, then, before my work may compete with the Culex?”]. Lucan must have pronounced these words at a younger age than when Virgil (at twenty-six) wrote the Culex, or else the BC would not be in its “early stages,” as Suetonius seems to imply with praefatione quadam. I disagree with Rostagni 19612: 83, who unconvincingly argues that Virgil could have been as young as twenty-one when he wrote the Culex. Issues of dating aside, the gist of the passage is clear: proud of the fact that he could conceive of and compose a good enough poem to rival the Aeneid whilst in his youth, Lucan mocks Virgil’s less ambitious early projects and sets himself as a contender for the crown of best epicist. Hence in Lucan’s mention of the Culex there is a touch of disdain, for he knows (and expects his audience to know) that his BC is a more sophisticated work. 18 Sen. Suas. 6.27. See also Cic. . 10.26. 19 On the dilatory effect, or mora, of overblown rhetoric see Masters 1992: 3. See also Ch. 1 p. 46 n. 108 and 109. 68 against his literary enemy.20 Once we adopt this view, it is possible to interpret rather than dismiss and disparage the peculiar (form-less) form in which the poet presents his version of events; and most of the inconsistencies at the level of the narrative become consistent clues to

Lucan’s anti-Caesarian rewriting of history. As we shall see, Caesar uses rhetoric to mimic chaos, but also and especially as a point of departure to showcase his ability to restore order despite (or out of) the chaos surrounding him. By contrast, Lucan’s mimesis of chaos suggests the impossibility of any such return to order, and he thereby disproves with vehemence the

Caesarian pretense of order as articulated both in the De Bello Civili (henceforth DBC, to differentiate it from Lucan’s text) and in the De Bello Gallico (DBG). Lucan’s emphasis on disorder echoes and corroborates the tragic epilogue of human history as addressed through the prophetic apparatus of the BC: the end of everything that stands is the unavoidable finis of a world irreparably in ruins.

It is precisely to emphasize the open-ended corpus of his text, and therefore the lack of predictability and the lack of any Caesarian ordering principle, that Lucan snatches mere portions of events from the bulk of history and interrupts them with disorienting interventions that are as self-contained as his sententiae. The result is that his epic tends to be inconclusive and favors startling conundrums: for all their careful build-up, distinct narrative strands in the poem develop in unexpected and seemingly illogical ways, imitating the randomness by which chance (fortuna) piles up inconsistent events and absurd outcomes until the universe will end in an ἐκπύρωσις without rebirth. Lucan interlocks these moments in his epic tale with curt juxtapositions, further

20 I agree in essence with the line of argument endorsed by Masters 1992: 17; Rambaud 1960: 155; Haffter 1957: 120-21; Griset 1954: 109-13. Among these scholars only Haffter concedes that Lucan imitates Caesar, rather than using his text as a point of departure. But Haffter’s focus is limited to chronology: Lucan covers roughly the same years as Caesar, stopping where and when Caesar stops, in contrast with the rest of the historiographical tradition covering the civil war. My focus is instead on Lucan’s endorsement of Caesar’s rhetorical maneuvers as a means of reacting to Caesar’s incompleteness through a different kind of incompleteness, one that criminalizes Caesar and equates him to an agent of chaos. 69 giving the impression of tedious randomness. Thus the Virgilian teleological edifice that Norden describes in the well-known formulation I quoted at the beginning of this chapter is undone.21 To the dissolution of the universe by fire, and to the dissolution of human bodies by wounds, Lucan adds the pivotal theme of the dissolution of his very text, which he expresses by a jagged narrative in which information is so often elided, expunged, or misconstrued; an irregular patchwork of scenes varying in nature and focus replaces a linear plot; and it is often difficult to understand where a story begins, or how it will unfold. This kind of narrative unpredictability is not in contradiction with vatic farsightedness, for the latter is also a phenomenon with unpredictable implications: as we saw in the case of Phemonoe, although for an instant “all the future struggles to the light” for her to behold (BC 5.179-80), Apollo shapes her utterance to be partial, limited and focused on the destiny of the disconcerted Appius; the god also cuts

Phemonoe’s response peremptorily short. And despite the near lethal pressure of hosting the god within her breast,22 and his pouring of forgetfulness (the waters of the River Lethe) inside her guts,23 it is evident that when she snaps out of her trance, Phemonoe has forgotten what she beheld, and becomes no more knowledgeable than the matron after she fell unconscious to the ground, or than Appius himself. I also stressed how Lucan’s own farsightedness, though superior to that of his characters, remains subject to the unbreakable bonds of his experience and mortality, making him a poet who represents himself as knowing a lot, but not everything: Lucan is a poet by necessity unable to impose a linear trajectory and teleology on his plot.

Granted that there is an important connection between the overall narrative fragmentation of the BC and the incomplete prognoses delivered throughout the epic, what more can we say

21 See above, p. 64. 22 Lucan informs us that the act of possession by a god can kill human vessels at BC 5.116-20. 23 Luc. BC 5.221-22. 70 about Lucan’s ultimate worldview, and about the message contained in his inmensum opus? In answering this question it may be useful to start from Nill’s recent monograph on Lucanian violence (Gewalt): reflecting on the dismantling effect of the Exzess of Gewalt in the BC, Nill posits that the meaning of the poem lies in its negation of form. The fragmentation of corporeal unity through violent deeds is the sole constant binding the ten books of the epic, and it affects the narrative itself: “Im Unmaking der Lucanischen Gewalt fallen somit Struktur und Auflösung zusammen zu einer Struktur der Auflösung.”24 Nill presses Quint’s point that by writing as he does Lucan unmakes the history of the victors (the Caesars). But whereas for Quint the process of unmaking is a way in which to commemorate the voice of the vanquished, whose plan for the restoration of the Republic never becomes reality25 (Lucan himself fell victim to his pro-

Republican plot), Nill reads Lucan in light of the postmodernist taste for reality as the dissolution of unity and the coexistence of a pluralism of competing epistemological systems: there are no commemorative attempts and no hidden meanings in the epic, but there is simply the depiction of history as the dissolution of what we see, perceive, or think that we might know. Through his relativism Nill sees in the BC a programmatic statement close to Lyotard’s conceptualization of reality as an intricate blending of narratives and systems of knowledge that require us to suspend all final judgments.26

24 Nill 2018: 86. Compare Hinds 1998: 86-88, who focuses on the encomium of Nero in Book 1 of the BC. In discussing the incompatibility of the encomium with the rest of the book, Hinds contends that failures of aesthetic and moral consistency in Lucan are inevitable, but he does not investigate in detail the reasons for these apparent failures and opts instead for a solution similar to Nill’s: Lucan’s quasi-romanticized desire to eternalize disruption, destruction and chaos as symptoms of the broken Rome where he lives, without a care to provide answers or a resolution. 25 Quint 1993: 147-57. 26 Nill 2018: 29-86 and esp. 81: “Die Betonung der Fragmentierung findet ihren Ausdruck in strukturauflösenden Tendenzen bezüglich der Sprache, der Zeit, des menschlichen Subjekts und der Gesellschaft.” See also Sarup 1989: 135: “Rejecting totality, Lyotard and other postmodernists stress fragmentation– of language games, of time, of the human subject, of society itself.” 71 The above argument in favor of meaning as the dissolution of meaning also informs, in essence, Sklénar’s nihilistic reading.27 I disagree with such views, because I find them one- directional in leading to a dead-end for no good reason. Lucan’s espousal of a poetics of non finito – an open-ended, formless literary corpus – may indeed suggest that reality seems complex to the point of unintelligibility; but I argue that it is motivated by the poet’s practical rather than philosophical urge to denounce Caesar’s partiality in his DBC. The latter is an incomplete text not because Caesar left out objectively unimportant events, but because he manipulated readers into thinking that he was telling the objective truth. Likewise, Lucan’s rhetoric is a strategy by which he seeks to delegitimize Caesar’s appropriation of history: Lucan uses incompleteness to show that Caesar’s text is incomplete, proving that Caesar got his story wrong. It follows that the apparent unintelligibility of the chaotic world depicted in the BC serves a pragmatic function and has condemnatory political undertones. Because of this, Lucan’s delegitimizing effort need not imply that the poet cannot comprehend reality, or that he offers no alternative to Caesar’s subversion of ethics: in the end Lucan does pick a side, and – however imperfect his choice may be – he picks the ideal of freedom over tyranny. In 65 CE Lucan died due to his choice. Thus it is undeniable that the BC is at least in part a commemoration of his and others’ acts of resistance to tyranny.

On this last point I agree with Quint,28 whose study nevertheless refrains from a close comparison of the BC and Caesar’s text. By contrast, Rambaud and Haffter promisingly read portions of Lucan and Caesar in opposition to each other,29 but their essays suffer from a reductionist approach, and neither of them adequately links Lucan’s rewriting of Caesar to the

27 Sklénar 2003. 28 Quint 1993: 152-53. On Lucan’s pro-Republican stance and ideological opposition to tyranny see also Narducci 2002: 35-36 and 411-22; Leigh 1997: 2-3. 29 Rambaud 1960: 155-62; Haffter 1957: 118-26. 72 form and meaning of the corpus of the BC. As the rest of the chapter will show, Lucan’s cultivation of morphological incompleteness (expressed through unfinished narratives) becomes a powerful means of communicating Caesar’s plunging of the universe into chaos, an impression that Caesar is keen to counteract in his own writings. At the same time, the incompleteness of the

BC proves that the poet deemed the fight against Caesar’s self-advertisement worth fighting despite a lack of hope: by silencing facts Caesar proclaims and by including what Caesar overlooked, Lucan is weaponizing his word in the ideological war against the constraining power of tyranny.30 The calculated nature of his procedure is underscored by the fact that his rhetorical strategy is already manifest in highly polished books: for example, in Book 1, which is the main focus of this chapter, we suddenly transition from an overwrought distribe on moral decay as the cause of internecine strife (1.158-82) to Caesar’s appearance at the Rubicon (1.183 ff.); or in

Book 3, from Caesar’s violation of a sacred Druidic grove (3.399-452) to his departure and the subsequent detailed description of the Battle of Massilia, which ends without a mention of the

Caesarians’ victorious siege (3.453-762). Lucan botches his text and forbids us to foresee a development in a clear direction. This peculiar approach to history and the episodic, disjointed trajectory of the plot from Book 1 onward signal that the abruptness of the ending of Book 10 is by no means unpredictable, nor is it unsatisfactory or atypical of so much of the rest of the poem.

In fact, the structural premises of the BC do not allow us to foreshadow the kind of conclusion that our modern taste would expect; on the contrary, the inconclusiveness of the events described in the poem produces a predictable narrative to which Book 10 is assimilated. A paradox of the BC is that the notion of unpredictability – the unpredictable outcome of simultaneous

30 This is after all the culmination of a trend, as in Leigh 1997 3 n. 10: “[I]t is reasonable to note that Lucan’s public speeches in celebration of tyrannicides must have given an ideological cast, however basic, to his critique of Nero.” Cf. Rudich 1993: 95. 73 unpolished narratives based on recent historical truths – suggests a rather predictable criterion of composition: indeed lack of closure.

In light of my considerations above I find that more promising than Nill is O’Hara, who in his approach to the BC adopts the lens Zeitlin first adopted in a 1971 study in which she tries to make sense of the . According to Zeitlin, in Petronius incongruities are “integral emblems of a world-view that expresses a consistent vision of disintegration.”31 O’Hara, who is admittedly succinct in his treatment of Lucan and proceeds by assertion and intuition rather than extended argument and close-reading, is nevertheless right to insist that Zeitlin did not need to look all the way back to Euripides to find a poet keen on depicting his chaotic contemporary world.32 Latin poetry is full of such depictions, from competing perspectives in 64, to discordant voices in the Aeneid, to Lucan’s play on meaningful inconsistencies. He is also right to stress that in the specific case of Lucan the act of engendering chaos in the text through various types of inconsistencies, including the author’s two-faced attitude toward his archenemy

(mostly repulsion, but partly admiration), does not undermine his commitment to the Republican cause, “just as the narrator of Catullus 64 remains devoted to the heroic age even as the poem demonstrates the flaws of that world.”33 If “representational inconsistency as a reflection of ideological uncertainty”34 can motivate the choice to renounce aesthetic, structural, thematic or moral cohesiveness, it is also true that ideological fractures in a poet’s voice need not amount to the absolute negation of meaning and ideology; such fractures certainly do not do so in Lucan’s

31 Zeitlin 1971a: 633. 32 Ibid. 33 O’Hara 2007: 140. 34 Nagler 1990: 231, writing about Homer. Problematizing inconsistencies symptomatic of a less homogeneous text has proven methodologically useful in reexamining several works. For example, in relation to Hellenistic poetry Goldhill remarks that a multiplicity of viewpoints with no authoritative point of view is often put forth as a “demonstration of the variegated nature of reality as perceived by the Hellenistic poets” (1986: 32-33). 74 poetry.35 It is misleading, then, to conclude that a wholly illogical, anarchic vision of the world with nihilistic implications emerges from the disunity and heterogeneousness of the literary corpus of the BC. On the one hand, the poet’s own fight against proves that he did not fully endorse a belief in senseless chaos, even though Caesar is an agent of chaos in the poem, and chaos is a vividly represented phenomenon. On the other hand, we do well to remember that even an outwardly illogical system often responds to its own logic, the pattern of which, once discovered, might yield strikingly meaningful answers. As she builds on Zeitlin, Rimell makes this point precisely in relation to the Satyricon:36 she agrees that since Petronius “exhibits no rigid unity of tone, no stylistic purity or simplicity, no concentration on a single emotion and probably not a single plot or theme,”37 then dynamics of “fundamental disorder”38 push the work forward. However, pointing to the unitarian view of Connors,39 she also contends that some sections of the Satyricon that are normally read as detachable fragments in fact interact and overlap. These interactions generate a compatibility of theme and an internal coherence that defy ready-made categorizations. Thus the assumption that the work makes no sense “because it erodes standard terms of definition”40 is simplistic, because a text can trace patterns and make a point in ways other than through traditionally understood plot and narrative.

Zeitlin had reached a similar conclusion in examining (in a different 1971 study) the symbiotic relationship between the two poems recited by Eumolpus in the extant portion of the

Satyricon, the so-called Troiae Halosis and Bellum Civile (Petronius’ response to Lucan): a

35 Cf. Masters 1994, a study I disagree with, as it will emerge in further detail in Ch. 4. 36 Rimell 2002: 1-17. 37 Zeitlin 1971a: 635. 38 Ibid. 39 Connors 1998. 40 Rimell 2002: 7. 75 “coherence of underlying themes and symbols” 41 coexists with Petronius’ destructive

Weltordnung. For Rimell the publication by Zeitlin of two antithetical studies in the same year, one to stress compositional disunity in the Satyricon, one compositional unity, points to the

‘split’ nature of a text keen to enact a radically anti-classical worldview by turning a quasi- neurotic swing between structure and disjunction into a rhetorical strategy. Thus Petronius’ ultimate goal is to represent the crisis of the integral self by a continuous dramatization of self- disintegrating structures and boundaries, and by “an inversion or confusion of the distinctions between interiors and exteriors which constitute that self.”42 Of course, the same may be said of

Lucan’s belligerent narrative of war, in which language “focuses sharply on the violation of soldierly bodies through the death-dealing wounds inflicted by their fellow Romans. In some ways his epic seems the prolonged expression of a crisis around the body, or rather the boundary that separates men from what is pointedly not-man, from the inanimate and the environment– a boundary which the weapons of civil war physically violate by spilling human blood and guts on the field of war and which the intrusive imperial government would violate too, if in another way.”43 Bartsch’s metapoetic reading of the BC according to the vicissitudes of the body is in agreement with Rimell’s point about Petronius: Lucan’s style and themes equally express self- disintegrating integrity. And this, I would add, aligns with the idea of a universe spinning towards apocalypse. More to the point, at the level of the narrative self-disintegration touches the poet, too, since he may appear split in his ideology (in particular when he feels drawn to Caesar in spite of his promotion of the Republic). Unlike Petronius, however, Lucan establishes an explicit connection between the theme of textual disunity and the theme of politics. While

41 Zeitlin 1971b: 81. 42 Rimell 2002: 10. 43 Bartsch 1997: 12. 76 establishing this connection, as O’Hara rightly intuits, he also reasserts his preference for, and allegiance to, the Republican regime, adding a layer and (we might say) some measure of resolution to the unresolved, puzzlingly Petronian dramatization of crises of integrity. In the BC the underlying, unifying theme of an outwardly illogical, disunited text is a poet’s willful protest against a , expressed through an unfinished text that is meant to chastise and rectify Caesar’s unfinished history. This is how Lucan bestows meaning on a textual body built on a seemingly erratic, meaningless historical cycle, and finished through seemingly unrelated constituents that are left unfinished.

A final thought for now: Plato’s , as if anticipating Aristotle’s speculation in the

Poetics, stresses the importance of unity of composition in anyone’s λόγοι (Phaedr. 264c):

ΣΩΚΡΑΤΗΣ. Ἀλλὰ τόδε γε οἶµαί σε φάναι ἄν, δεῖν πάντα λόγον ὥσπερ ζῷον συνεστάναι σῶµά τι ἔχοντα αὐτὸν αὑτοῦ, ὥστε µήτε ἀκέφαλον εἶναι µήτε ἄπουν, ἀλλὰ µέσα τε ἔχειν καὶ ἄκρα, πρέποντ᾿ ἀλλήλοις καὶ τῷ ὅλῳ γεγραµµένα.

ΦΑΙΔΡΟΣ. Πῶς γὰρ οὔ;

SOCRATES But I do think you will agree to this, that every discourse must be organized, like a living being, with a body of its own, as it were, so as not to be headless or footless, but to have a middle and members, composed in fitting relation to each other and to the whole.

PHAEDRUS Certainly, I do.

Strictly speaking Lucan disregards one of the above principles: his λόγος concerns a dying rather than a living organism, and his subsequently desperate attempt to keep it alive at least through an ideological stance. Because of this basic morphological shift in discourse, it is surely obvious that the Socratic structural parameters on compositional unity do not apply to the BC. Instead distinct, if not overtly antithetical, patterns of composition inform the inner logic of Lucan’s dying body: it shall be headless (with a beginning in medias res); footless (with an abrupt ending); and the fitting compatibility among the middle section and the other members shall be dealt with accordingly.

77 Hence what Socrates goes on to teach, namely that in forging our λόγος we should refrain from

“hacking off parts like clumsy butchers,”44 Lucan disregards. Interestingly, Lucan learns a butchering technique of his own, and he learns it from Caesar himself, whose strategy of incompleteness served a subtle propagandistic intent of self-preservation. In Lucan’s hands this technique at once mimics the chaos ensuing from the moribund Republic, while also shedding light on the uncomfortable parts of Roman history that Caesar meant to silence forever.

Let us turn, then, to select passages in Caesar and examine Lucan’s reaction to them.

More precisely, in order to counter the speculative argument that the ending of Lucan’s BC is incomplete because the young suicide lacked the time to revise Book 10 and add however many more books he might have planned to add, my focus will be on beginnings: I argue that instances of incompleteness occur early in Caesar and, as a result, in his partial emulator Lucan, making the possibility of an abrupt ending plausible and believable.

2.2 WHERE IT BEGINS

Incompleteness both in the sense of a lack of stylistic and thematic finish and in the sense of the omission of information marks the beginning of Caesar’s DBC. Let us examine the opening chapter (1.1.1-4):

*** Litteris [a Fabio] C. Caesaris consulibus redditis aegre ab his impetratum est summa tribunorum plebis contentione ut in senatu recitarentur. Ut vero ex litteris ad senatum referretur impetrari non potuit. Referunt consules de re publica infinite. L. Lentulus consul senatui rei publicae se non defuturum pollicetur si audacter ac fortiter sententias dicere velint; sin Caesarem respiciant atque eius gratiam sequantur, ut superioribus fecerint temporibus, se sibi consilium capturum neque senatus auctoritati obtemperaturum; habere se quoque ad Caesaris gratiam atque amicitiam receptum. In eandem sententiam loquitur Scipio: Pompeio esse in animo rei publicae non deesse si senatus sequatur; si cunctetur atque agat lenius, nequiquam eius auxilium si postea velit senatum imploraturum.45

44 Pl. Phaedr. 265e. Cicero picks up the analogy in the De Or. 2.325. 45 Caesar’s text is taken from Damon 2015, whereas translations are adapted from Damon 2016. I am including Damon’s lacuna at the beginning of the DBC, but in my argument I will posit that Caesar’s incipit is not lacunose and makes sense in its extant state. 78 *** When Caesar’s letter was delivered to the consuls, their consent for it to be read out in the senate was obtained with difficulty, indeed after a huge struggle by some . But consent could not be obtained for a motion on the letter’s contents. The consuls’ motion initiated a general debate about public affairs. One consul, Lucius Lentulus, promised that he would not fail the republic if senators were willing to announce bold and forceful proposals. “But if you look to Caesar and chase after his gratitude, as you have done on previous occasions, I will consult my own interests, not comply with the senate’s authority; I too can take refuge in Caesar’s gratitude and friendship.” Scipio made the same point, namely that Pompey did not intend to fail the republic if he had the senate behind him. “But if you hesitate, and you are too mild when you do act, the senate will call for his help – if you want it later – in vain.”

Through a succinct ablative absolute the narrator announces his dispatch of a letter to the Senate.

Although meant as one of the last possible resources for peace, tragically the letter provokes a war of words, an anticipation of the civil war in which many Romans lost their lives. Without disclosures as to the content of the letter, the narrator’s focus then shifts to whether the letter should be read at all, something the tribunes Antony and Cassius struggle to obtain.46 Within the space of two short sentences tensions escalate: the tribunes’ struggle to obtain consent for the public reading of the letter translates into dissension with regard to its content. The adverb aegre and the adjective summa mark the intensity of the struggle, an example of a diplomatic failure, as well as a hint at the imminence and unavoidability of armed violence. Caesar foreshadows the unsuccessful result of the verbal contentio through a polyptoton, the repetition of impetro in varying forms and contexts in two parallel sentences: first we find the verb in the perfect passive to describe the tribunes’ initial success in persuading the reluctant consuls to have the letter read; then in the passive infinitive, vehemently negated by non potuit, to express divergent reactions to the content of the letter and to undermine the initial success of the tribunes. A general debate

46 A small but not irrelevant example of omission and incompleteness can be found even in the mention of the tribunes of the people: Caesar remains vague about their identities and number. In truth out of the ten tribuni plebis only two, and Cassius, openly pro-Caesarian, addressed the Senate with Caesar’s request to have his letter read. Caesar’s vagueness is noteworthy, as it deceives inattentive readers into thinking that all the tribunes backed him up, furthering Caesar’s fame as a champion of the . A further proof of Caesar’s tendentious narrative is his focus on the summa contentio following the arrival of the tribunes, which immediately evokes the lack of freedom of expression, lack of clarity, and lack of legality characterizing Lentulus and Scipio’s intimidating remarks. Yet there was nothing unusual or procedurally wrong and illegal about the consuls’ decision to postpone the reading of the letter: as guarantors of the executive power the consuls decided which matters to address first, which later, and the tribunes enjoyed low priority in this regard. 79 ensues: referunt consules de re publica infinite.47 The result of the debate, as is well known, is the Pompeians’ successful coercion of the senators into doing their bidding and declaring Caesar a public enemy through the senatus consultum ultimum.

Carter’s reaction to Caesar’s introductory paragraph points to its allegedly problematic features: “[T]here are strong reasons for believing that at least several sentences have been lost from the start of the book: (a) the narrative at the end of the Bellum Gallicum 8 fails to join properly with the beginning we have here, although Hirtius wrote it specifically to fill the gap between Caesar’s two works (B.G. 8 praef.); (b) the contents of Caesar’s letter were very important and however hastily Caesar may have written the BC it is almost inconceivable that he did not spell out the offer he was making… (c) the principles of clear exposition inculcated by ancient education, nicely exemplified by Caesar’s famous introduction to his own Gallic War, make it improbable that Caesar, for all his directness, began quite so abruptly.”48

Batstone and Damon, in a footnote to their recent book on Caesar’s DBC, also concede that the narrator’s directness at the beginning of his narrative might point to the loss of an introduction. But they add that if there is some legitimacy to the question as to whether Caesar would begin as he does, certainly whatever could have gone lost from the original beginning

47 I prefer Hotoman’s infinite to Faerno’s in civitate, as it makes more sense in the context of the initial chapters, in which Caesar is keen on depicting his enemies in the worst possible light. A “general debate” is inappropriate under the circumstances, because practical and specific measures should be taken based on Caesar’s conditions for peace. Lentulus and others are buying time to delegitimize Caesar and sabotage his attempt at a compromise. This decision emphasizes the chaotic developments at Rome in Caesar’s absence: the gist is that prolonged debates over nothing, personal interests (at 1.4.1-3 Lentulus and Scipio seem swayed by the prospect of power, provinces and wealth), foolish stubbornness and poor decision-making caused the civil war, not Caesar, whose reasonableness becomes evident a bit later, when he writes that he is waiting for a response to his “extremely mild demands” in (1.5.5): Is eo tempore erat Ravennae expectabatque suis lenissimis postulatis responsa, si qua hominum aequitate res ad otium deduci posset [He at that time was at Ravenna, awaiting response to his extremely mild demands, in case by some humane sense of equity the situation could be steered toward peace]. Batstone and Damon 2006: 44 and Carter 1991: 154 also point to the inappropriateness of a debate infinite de re publica under the circumstances. According to Varro’s prescriptions in the handbook he wrote for Pompey on senatorial procedure (Gel. NA 14.7.9), in a time of crisis all discussions should be de singulis rebus finite. 48 Carter 1991: 153-54. 80 cannot be much at all.49 In fact, Caesar’s letter was delivered on January 1st of 49 BCE, just nine days before the crossing of the Rubicon and the actual beginning of armed hostilities. Starting with the debate that precedes the senatus consultum ultimum and with the subsequent march of

Caesar with his troops is an ideal starting point: what could be lost would be at most a contextualization of that debate. In her translation of the DBC Damon endorses the view that the original text is damaged with even greater emphasis: “Some text is missing at the junction of the

BC and the BG.”50 That is, between Caesar’s original ending in Book 7 of the DBG and the beginning of the DBC. I do not agree with this view. The abruptness at the beginning of the DBC is a calculated move on Caesar’s part, as it effectively sets the tone of the ensuing narrative, prefiguring the abruptness of the ending in Book 3, during the first stages of the Alexandrian

War. The DBC follows criteria for the most part different from those inspiring the DBG, because it focuses on a different subject-matter (the recent ) and conveys a different kind of message to an audience well-acquainted with the facts of war (Caesar is innocent, reasonable, and interested in the pursuit of the interests of the people despite what the Pompeians claim).

Hence I find that Carter and Batstone and Damon do not focus enough on the innovations in form and content that Caesar’s new undertaking entails: Caesar shows some continuity in his usage of rhetorical techniques in the DBG and the DBC, but in the latter work he applies his rhetoric to different needs, and the result is ultimately a distinct, more direct, style. The peculiarities of Caesar’s rhetoric evolve and reach a higher level of maturity and striking originality in his commentary on the civil war against Pompey, as is to be expected in accordance with the relative chronology of the works: in the DBC, the product of a more experienced commander and writer, subtler manipulations and deformations in style, rhetoric and

49 Batstone and Damon 2006: 189 n. 6. 50 Damon 2016: 2, my italics. 81 architecture occur. I would argue that it is because of this greater degree of sophistication that the work has been “unappreciated and misunderstood,”51 and it has long been considered “an unfinished masterpiece.”52

To counter Carter’s thesis that continuity should be sought between the DBC and the spurious continuation of the DBG by Hirtius, it is enough to say that a strong contact-point does in fact exist between Caesar’s original ending in Book 7 of the Gallic War and the very opening paragraph of the Civil War, making it superfluous to look for continuity anywhere else: after narrating the successful victory at Alesia against Vercingetorix and the temporary pacification of

Gaul, including the territory of the Arverni, Aedui, Bituriges and Ruteni, Caesar concludes with the following rather abrupt words (DBG 7.90): Ipse Bibracte hiemare constituit. His litteris cognitis Romae dierum viginti supplicatio redditur. The parallelism with DBC 1.1.1 (Litteris… redditis) is unmistakable, and it creates a stark reversal; whereas Caesar’s letter is welcome to the point that a twenty-one day long public Thanksgiving is held in Rome in 52 BCE, less than three full years later another letter provokes a wholly antithetical result: chaos, as well as the violent opposition of Pompey’s allies. In my view this reversal by antithesis, which both Hirtius and Carter ignore, suggests that Caesar wanted the first chapter of the DBC to be just as the manuscript tradition preserves it, namely as our current Ch. 1.53 If it is acceptable that Caesar makes the informed stylistic decision to use an ablative absolute as his preferred closural device for Book 7 of the DBG, it should also be deemed acceptable that he would choose the same device for his allusive and contrastive opening in the DBC. More to the point, an “abrupt

51 Grillo 2012: 2. 52 Batstone and Damon 2006: 1. 53 On issues of continuity between the DBC and the DBG see Henderson 1998: 57: the intratextual system of referentiality linking the two works is so strong that “in this poetics, there will be no holding the boundary between Gaul and Italy, which Caesar and his text must cross and re-cross as they progress their work.” 82 beginning is a trademark of Caesar’s narrative technique”54 across his entire oeuvre: Caesar customarily introduces without preamble and by juxtaposition new narrative sections that are unrelated to the previous narrative. Thus, for example, he interrupts his description of military operations against Afranius at Ilerda to introduce with a simple dum a description of Domitius’ arming of seventeen Massilian warships and various other smaller vessels (DBC 1.56.1-2):

Dum haec ad Ilerdam geruntur Massilienses usi L. Domiti consilio naves longas expediunt numero XVII, quarum erant XI tectae. Multa huc minora navigia addunt ut ipsa multitudine nostra classis terreatur.

While this was going on at Ilerda, the Massilians, acting on the plan of Lucius Domitius, got seventeen warships ready, eleven of them with decks. To these they added many smaller vessels so that our fleet would be terrified by numbers alone.

It is interesting to notice that, trusting Lucan more than Caesar, Rambaud emends the number of ships upward and concludes that Lucan is trying to set the record straight, correcting or including details Caesar had suppressed.55 However, in the description of the Battle of Massilia (BC 3.509-

762), to which I will return later, Lucan provides no specific numbers for the opposing fleets: the length and epic tone of Lucan’s narrative and the intensity of the combat described are reason enough for Rambaud to argue that the number of ships involved must have been greater than

Caesar admits. But on this occasion, alas, it is hard to ignore Lucan’s willful distortions and exaggerations. Opelt shows that the sea battle as Lucan conceives it is replete with horrifying

Einzelszenen in which the poet pushes the boundaries of verisimilitude:56 only the story of the

Roman soldier Acilius, recounted by Suetonius, Valerius Maximus and , has any firm grounding in historicity.57 Furthermore, granted that the fleet led by Decimus Brutus consisted of twelve warships that, according to Caesar (DBC 1.36-4-5), were quickly assembled at , it would have been convenient for Caesar to be honest in writing that Domitius’ fleet included

54 Peer 2015: 13. 55 Rambaud 1960: 159-62. 56 Opelt 1957: 437-443. See also Esposito 1988: 97-103. 57 See Suet. Jul. 68.4; Val. Max. Mem. 3.2.22; Plut. Caes. 16. 83 more than seventeen warships, if that indeed were indeed the true number. In fact a larger enemy fleet would make Brutus’ unexpected victory (and, by extension, Caesar’s strategy to make

Brutus commander of the fleet built on the shores of Arles) even more impressive.

But if this passage is not so appropriate to unmask Caesar’s manipulations in light of

Lucan, it is at least quite striking for the abruptness with which the narrator shifts focus between theatres of war, from to Gaul, through the monosyllabic temporal conjunction dum. As at the beginning of the DBC, scholars have once again voiced their perplexity on this point: after surveying the various views on these chapters, Klotz concludes that they originally belonged to

Book 2 (2.2-3), but that Caesar made a hasty decision and moved them to Book 1 to enhance the number of his achievements before the imminent publication of the book. Along this line of reasoning Klotz maintains that Caesar intended his editorial decisions to yield a smoother result.

But he failed to achieve that result, because he left the work unfinished and unpublished despite his initial intentions.58 Barwick has a different view: he claims that the chapters always belonged to Book 1, given Caesar’s plan to talk first about his achievements in Italy and Spain, then about the undertakings of his legates in Massilia and Africa. In line with Klotz, however, Barwick also argues that the lack of smoothness in the progression from one scene to the next symptomatizes unintentional deficiency on Caesar’s part: the author simply did not have time to round off and polish his writings due to his desire to publish them quickly, so as to circulate his version of events and undermine the accusations of his political antagonists. Had he had enough time, through various stages of revision he would have produced a homogeneous text, thereby forging a continuous narrative similar in clarity and rhythm to that of other historical narratives.59

58 Klotz 1911: 90-91. See also the preface to his second edition of the commentarii, Klotz 19502: xi-xii. 59 Barwick 1938: 150-52. 84 Peer counters the views of both Klotz and Barwick, arguing that Caesar’s juxtaposition of battles and his illustration of their progression as if they were occurring simultaneously amounts to a conscious choice, for this particular narrative mode allows him to insist on his “one-against- many” theme: the Bellum Civile depicts an all-out war in which events are entangled with each other. Since Brutus won, the Caesarians pacified the region, and news of the victory would soon reach Caesar, invigorating his mood and the mood of his troops, and prefiguring a sudden reversal of fortune to the detriment of Afranius (DBC 1.59), it makes perfect sense that the narratives of Ilerda and Massilia are conjoined in Book 1.60 This is true, as it is true that Caesar could easily have avoided stark juxtaposition in conjoining them, but he chooses this particular style to enhance the simultaneity of action and the concord of his, and his legate’s, armies:

Caesar and his men embody unity and order out of chaos, winning and granting peace wherever they go. Moreover, Dinter notes that in Lucan’s BC certain bold warriors within Caesar’s army such as Scaeva, and the whole of that army as a collectivity are interchangeable.61 According to the actualization of the rhetorical figure pars pro toto, where one part of the body stands in for the whole, Lucan feels entitled to envision Caesar’s potential loss of his soldiers due to a mutiny in Spain as if it were tantamount to the loss of his own limbs (BC 5.252-53): tot raptis truncus manibus gladioque relictus/ paene suo. In a similar vein the poet feels that he can address the collective of Caesar’s military body with the expression Caesar totus at Dyrrachium (BC 6.140-

43):

Quem non mille simul turmis nec Caesare toto

60 Peer 2015: 64-65. 61 Dinter 2012: esp. 22-31. For similar metonymies see Mebane 2016: 192-97. Her focus rests on the notion of caput to refer to the head of the collective body of the Romans, a topic I will deal with in greater detail in my discussion on Pompey in Ch. 4. For now it will be enough to recall that already Cato the Elder presents a situation in which a single individual, the military Quintus Caedicius during the First Punic War, stands for the whole of the army: in Cato’s description as recounted by Gellius (NA 3.7) the tribune’s wounded torso signifies the loss of the soldiers under his command, but his intact head points to his survival as the head of the soldierly body. See Gladhill 2012: 316 n. 2. The famous fable of the belly offers an even earlier example of interplay between parts and whole. 85 auferret Fortuna locum, victoribus unus eripuit vetuitque capi, seque arma tenente ac nondum strato Magnum vicisse negavit.

But though Fortune with a thousand squadrons combined and all of Caesar’s forces could not secure the post, one man snatched it from the conquerors and forbade its capture: “While I still wield my weapons and have not been defeated, Magnus has not yet won.”

Not only does this passage offer another opportunity to make the name Caesar metonymical in its evocation of the whole Caesarian forces settled in Thessaly, but it also allows Lucan to push further the dissolution of physical boundaries that is effected by the war: if ‘Caesar’ comes to represent Caesar’s army (be it arrayed on a battlefield or reclining in tents while waiting for bloodshed), then his subordinate Scaeva can embody a massive building, the bulwark of Caesar’s camp.

In switching focalization to enhance continuity between the heroic acts he accomplished in Spain and the heroic acts Brutus accomplished in Gaul, Caesar is already resorting to Lucan’s pars pro toto model, but in a different way: it is the structure of his carefully arranged narrative that fosters through directness the idea of unity out of multiplicity; Caesar, the troops he controls, and other troops (or bodily parts) dislocated in other war-contexts are one and the same, and the well-being of one part of the army contributes to the well-being of the others. As the juxtaposed scenes suggest, Brutus’ victory at sea aligns with and contributes to Caesar’s victory on land, and

Caesar’s preparations at Arles contributed to Brutus’ victory in the first place.

But let us now turn to the beginning of the Gallic War to consider other possible reasons why Caesar’s Civil War would require a distinct type of rhetoric with a distinct rhythm in its opening chapter (DBG 1.1):

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt. Gallos ab Aquitanis Garumna flumen, a Belgis Matrona et Sequana dividit. Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae, propterea quod a cultu atque humanitate provinciae longissime absunt, minimeque ad eos mercatores saepe commeant atque ea quae ad

86 effeminandos animos pertinent important, proximique sunt Germanis, qui trans Rhenum incolunt, quibuscum continenter bellum gerunt.

Gaul is a whole divided into three parts, one of which is inhabited by the Belgae, another by the Aquitani, and a third by a people called in their own tongue Celtae, in the Latin Galli. All these are different one from another in language, institutions and laws. The are separated from the Aquitani by the river Garonne, from the Belgae by the Marne and the Seine. Of these peoples the Belgae are the most courageous, because they are farthest removed from the culture and civilization of the province, and least often visited by merchants introducing the commodities that make for effeminacy; and also because they are nearest to the Germans dwelling beyond the Rhine, with whom they are continually at war.

“The principles of clear exposition”62 to which Carter refers are immediately recognizable in this passage, an introduction that in a plain style which is typical of the genre of the commentary63 informs readers unfamiliar with Gaul about its geographical, social, political and military configuration. Thus the introduction of the DBG allows readers to appreciate the sophistication of Caesar’s prose, a calibrated mix of brevity, clarity and the masterful variation of sentence types through which the narrator demonstrates his proverbial care for the choice and disposition of words as expressed in the : verborum dilectum originem esse eloquentiae.64 Each sentence is short and self-contained; no word is superfluous, but each name of a Gallic tribe and each attribute that is mentioned (from the ‘courage’ of the Belgae, to the ‘effeminacy’ spread by mercatores) adds an item of information. Lastly, instances of variatio diversify Caesar’s prose, sustaining its rhythm and making it more pleasurable: for example, in contrast to the first two sentences, each beginning with a subject (Gallia…Hi), the third begins with the direct object

Gallos, whereas the subject Garumna flumen is nicely situated in mid-sentence, between two ablatives of separation (Aquitanis and Belgis) indicating the people neighboring the Gauls. Many

62 See above, p. 80. 63 Yet Caesar’s plainness must never be mistaken for careless simplicity. See Gotoff 1984: 18: “Suffice it for now to say that if Caesar is still to be identified with the humile, that level of style must be expanded beyond the limitations imposed by, say, Cicero to include a composition that can be periodic, complex, and capable of great expressiveness through the use of varied and often subtle techniques.” Cf. Perrotta 1948: 7: “[L’] eleganza cesariana mostra le tracce di un’elaborazione profonda.” 64 Cic. Brut. 252. 87 scholars, including recently Damon and Dixon and Dixon,65 have appreciated the pure Latinitas emerging from such passages. And granted Caesar’s need to portray foreign territories, ethnicities and customs before a varied audience of senators, and the populus Romanus

(in short people who in most cases spent little to no time in Gaul),66 the relaxed lucidity of this

Latinitas is perfectly justified. Kraus, however, states that Caesar’s “stylistic nudity is indeed a custom,”67 and as such it is not limited to the DBG. In fact I believe that Caesar does not renounce his literary habits in the DBC.68 Instead his sophisticated variant of the genus humile takes an unexpected turn in this work, because (as I stated) it satisfies different needs: Caesar no longer needs to provide context for his Roman readers, who were in the know both about the geopolitical configuration of Italy and the debate held in 49 BCE on what to do about the content of Caesar’s letter, and so his focus shifts to an effective way in which to present these well- known historical data.

At the same time, the prose of Caesar mimics the confusion and chaos cultivated by his enemies in order to persuade readers that he, a most capable leader, is necessary to ensure peace.

In this mimicking process Caesar’s style never loses its “nudity,” or its unadorned force.69 Rather

65 Damon 1994: 183-95; Dixon and Dixon 1992: 66-77. Cf. Batstone 1991: 126-36; von Albrecht 1989: 56-67. For useful general stylistic observations on Caesar’s prose see also Craig 1931. 66 There is no way to know exactly how many people read the DBG, but scholars offer appealing reasons to believe that quite a few did: see Levick 1998: 72-73; Wiseman 1998: 4-5. Furthermore, even if people did not read the text, they would find out about Caesar’s exploits from others who had read it. A plain style made of short and memorable sententiae connected to one another by parataxis was helpful for memorization, helping to spread the word about Caesar’s achievements. See among others Nordling 2005: 186-87; Eden 1962: 95. 67 Kraus 2009: 164. 68 For differences in the language of the DBG and the DBC, especially in the opening chapters, see Schlicher 1936: 212-24. 69 It might be useful to remember Cicero’s remarks on the quality and public perception of Caesar’s writings (Brut. 262): “nudi enim sunt, recti et venusti, omni ornatu orationis tamquam veste detracta. Sed dum voluit alios habere parata, unde sumerent qui vellent scribere historiam, ineptis gratum fortasse fecit, qui illa volent calamistris inurere, sanos quidem homines a scribendo deterruit; nihil est enim in historia pura et illustri brevitate dulcius” [“They are like nude figures, straight and beautiful; stripped of all ornament of style as if they had laid aside a garment. His aim was to furnish others with material for writing history, and perhaps he has succeeded in gratifying the inept, who may wish to apply their curling irons to his material; but men of sound judgment he has deterred from writing, since in history there is nothing more pleasing than brevity clear and correct”]. 88 nudity becomes expressive of chaos and conjures unpredictability: what will the next coup de théâtre be after the condemnation of Caesar as a public enemy? The fact that certain passages in the DBC are striking due to an all-too-obvious incoherence proves that the narrator, otherwise crystal-clear in his writings, wished to write deliberately confusing passages in order to describe and engender confusion: chaos is laid out in the open for all to behold. Batstone and Damon, for example, highlight the fact that Lentulus’ speech at the beginning of the DBC is remarkable for its lack of logic: the consul threatens duplicitously to side with Caesar if the Senate agrees with

Caesar. But why would this be a threat, if the Senate has also already agreed to side with the enemy? An explanation of this illogical reasoning is that “[Lentulus’] words are meant to threaten and coerce.”70 In my view, though, this is not enough, as I find that Caesar is encapsulating in his syntax the chaotic illogicality of the reality he must confront: if the pro-

Pompeian consuls Lentulus and Marcellus were able to act according to reason, logic and order, they would be happy to reach a compromise with Caesar. But they do not, and Lentulus’ lack of logic is a way to emphasize his unreasonableness without an explicit comment on the author’s part, which would betray an open hostility to Lentulus and hence would perhaps jeopardize his credibility. Instead Caesar lets readers draw their own conclusions by construing a seemingly objective narrative, which nevertheless hides a biased subtext.71

In a similar vein, Caesar deliberately starts the DBC in medias res, without providing an introduction modeled on the DBG so as to reproduce at first-hand the turbulence surrounding the

Senate after the receipt and reading of his letter: whereas the rhetoric of the DBG aims to explain the significance and development of the Gallic War to an essentially ignorant audience, the

70 Batstone and Damon 2006: 44. 71 To define the ideology coloring the architecture and themes of the DBC, Barwick 1951 uses the term Tendenz. Cf. Collins 1972: 943, according to whom the statements found in the DBC betray Caesar’s megalomaniac wish to make propaganda, not to write history. 89 rhetoric of the DBC aims to move readers (movere, as in Quint. Inst. 12.2.11) by retelling the notorious recent history of Rome through a particular focalization. In contrast to Damon,

Batstone and Carter, I therefore agree with earlier commentators such as Oppermann,72 who posits the undamaged authenticity of the DBC, even though he does not acknowledge Caesar’s ambition to enact a mimesis of the historical reality by means of his style. My reading is similar to that of Peer, who in her recent book observes about Caesar’s mimetic τέχνη: “Caesar does not simply narrate the developments of the civil war: he composes a new narrative of the conflict.

The Bellum Civile was planned and implemented to pursue specific objectives. Thus it is redundant and irrelevant to linger in the opening chapters on the causes which led the senate- meeting or the intricate political circumstances surrounding it...”73 Not only would lingering be redundant and irrelevant, but it might be potentially damning: instead of having readers pay perhaps too much attention to the pre-war circumstances, perhaps questioning the legitimacy of his role, Caesar dumbfounds them and thrusts them in “the midst of a tempestuous senate- meeting.”74 Cutting off, so to speak, the general introductory statements found in the DBG and normally expected in historical narratives (with which the commentarii share several features),

Caesar communicates a more powerful message than he would if he did not resort to omissions: he straightway evokes the climate of coercion caused by the Pompeians, who force their audience into silence and into doing their bidding. If this were not already evident from his beginning in medias res, Caesar clarifies the point a few chapters later (DBC 1.5.1-3):

His de causis aguntur omnia raptim atque turbate. Nec docendi Caesaris propinquis eius spatium datur, nec tribunis plebis sui periculi deprecandi neque etiam extremi iuris intercessione retinendi, quod L. Sulla reliquerat, facultas tribuitur, sed de sua salute septimo die cogitare coguntur, quod illi turbulentissimi superioribus temporibus tribuni plebis VIII denique menses variarum actionum respicere ac timere consuerant.

72 Oppermann 1933: 14 n. 1. See also Fabre 1968-69: vol. 1, 2; Klotz 19502: 1. 73 Peer 2015: 13. 74 Ibid. 90 For these reasons everything was done in haste and confusion. Caesar’s near-ones were given no time to inform him, and the tribunes were granted no opportunity to protest their danger or even to hold onto their fundamental right by means of the veto, a right that Lucius Sulla let them keep. Instead, seven days into January they were forced to think about their own safety, something that the most tumultuous tribunes of the past were generally attentive to and worried about only after eight months of all kinds of action.

The orderly gaze that the omniscient narrator, victorious general and guarantor of the Republican interests adopts in order to describe Gaul in the DBG is substituted in the DBC by the disorderly gaze through which everyone, from Caesar in Ravenna to the coerced senators in Rome, witnesses in shock the Pompeian foolhardiness. To develop Peer’s point, one could say that what

Caesar explicitly declares in this passage, namely that “everything was done in haste and confusion,” he also implicitly expresses through his abrupt rhetoric.

As a further argument for the fact that Caesar chooses to start the DBC where he does for rhetorical effect, we ought to consider his mention, in his response to the Roscius in Ch.

9, of the content of the letter he sent to the Senate: after it has already been decided that Caesar is an enemy of Rome, Roscius is sent to persuade Caesar to disband his army. On this occasion

Caesar reveals that the content of his original proposal was that everyone act on equal terms and disband their armies (1.9.3: cum litteras ad senatum miserit ut omnes ab exercitibus discederent, ne id quidem impetravisse). The infinitive of impetro recalls the tribunes’ attempt to persuade the consuls to read Caesar’s letter at 1.1.1. And Caesar’s calculated procrastination in proclaiming the content of the letter makes perfect sense in light of his effort to reenact in his narrative the tense climate prevailing before the war: since everything was done in haste and confusion, the author of the Civil War is granted the possibility of disclosing his conditions for peace only after the Pompeians have declared war against him. At the end of Ch. 6 a most eloquent statement summarizes the topsy-turvy world in which Caesar finds himself, one in which the rules for diplomatic dealings and the traditional Republican procedures seem overturned with no less

91 emphasis than in Lucan’s Weltanschauung: “All rights, divine and human, are thrown into confusion.”75

If we grant the possibility that Caesar’s rhetoric in the DBC is manipulative to the point that it seemingly lacks polish and other important features (such as an explanatory introduction of the kind that we get at the beginning of the DBG), the inconsistencies in the narrative start to make sense, revealing as they do a telling subtext that the narrator strategically chooses to keep silent about. This in turn reveals that deliberate incompleteness in the DBC is a strategic device in the service of eloquentia. An excellent example of this phenomenon is Caesar’s failure to mention his illegal crossing of the Rubicon, an omission that entails chronological deformations that will be worth remembering: after devoting six chapters to the Pompeians’ secretive plots in favor of their private interests and five chapters to his self-presentation as a general who acts in the public interest, Caesar ends Ch. 11 with a brusque mention of his military occupation of

Ariminum (where he himself stays to levy troops); and then of Arretium, Pisaurum, Fanum and

Ancona (where he sends some of his cohorts). Facts such as the senatorial decree against him, a suspicious senatorial meeting held outside Rome, the consuls’ abandonment of Rome with a following of lictors, the recruitment of troops, and the requisitioning of weapons and money around Italy by Pompey’s troops all convince Caesar to take military action. Yet, Caesar writes, it is after learning of these disconcerting matters (DBC 1.7.1: Quibus rebus cognitis, again an ablative absolute as the incipit of a new narrative) that he exhorts his troops with the perspective of a fight in mind, that he rejects Pompey’s unfair terms of peace listed by Roscius, and that he occupies the Italian towns. His illegal status, subsequent to the violation of his terms of office as a general who crossed the boundaries of the pomoerium in arms, is never mentioned, nor is the

75 Caes. DBC 1.6.8: Omnia divina humanaque iura permiscentur. 92 crossing of the Rubicon, a necessary step before Caesar’s settlement at Ariminum. Even more striking, as we learn from Cicero,76 is that the final negotiations with Roscius took place on

January 17 or 18, after Caesar had taken possession of the towns he lists in Ch. 11. These were also the days in which the consuls fled from Rome. To legitimize his actions, Caesar distorts chronology and with it the relationship of cause and effect: his invasion of Italy, the real cause of chaos at Rome, and of the infringement of divine and human laws, becomes a necessary reaction

(the effect) to the unjust measures against him (the alleged cause).

Already in this initial distortion it is easy to recognize the kind of déformation historique that Rambaud describes in his still relevant study of Caesarian rhetoric: “L’historien établit des faits en regroupant des indices et rattache les faits entre eux par des relations causales. César, suivant une intention tout opposée, s’efforce souvent de rompre la continuité des événements et d’empêcher cette synthèse de l’historien ou la reconstitution spontanée des lecteurs.”77 On the basis of this premise, Grillo posits that a “process of fragmentation,”78 or the juxtaposition of sequences of factual statements in which the author either downplays or hides the interrelation of facts, characterizes Caesar’s practice of writing. I like Grillo’s expression, and I essentially agree with Rambaud. In juxtaposing a list of his first military occupations (from Ariminum to Ancona) and the scene of his encounter with Roscius, which in turn follows Caesar’s speech to his troops

(a chance to emphasize the consuls’ wrongdoing, including disregard for the tribunicia potestas),

Caesar downplays and hides the interrelation of all the relevant facts. He hides his invasion, which leads to the consuls’ departure; at the same time he downplays the nexus between the illegality of his act and the beginning of the war through a temporal distortion that places the

76 Cic. Fam. 16.12.2 and Att. 7.14.1. 77 Rambaud 1966: 98. 78 Grillo 2012: 3. 93 blame on the consequence (the faulty behavior of the Senate, the consuls’ flight…) of his blameworthy invasion. Given this background picture, Rambaud’s virulent polemic against the

DBC as a propaganda-piece, a reductive interpretation shared by Collins, Raubitschek and

Barwick,79 prevents him from seeing the merits of Caesar as a writer who is also genuinely interested in reenacting history in his text, not merely in narrating it. Lieberg uses the mythical figure of Amphion, who built the walls of Thebes with his singing, to describe the creative process by which a poet composes reality in his text by writing the text.80 Masters, we saw in Ch.

1, recalls this analogy when he claims that Lucan’s writing corresponds to “waging a war.”81 So also Caesar is waging his own war within the fiction of his text, and not just on the battlefield.

Indeed, I argue that it is precisely Caesar who inspires Lucan to mimic reality through his style.

Contra Rambaud, Adcock offers a pro-Caesarian reading of the DBC: “[W]hen at times he

[Caesar] misrepresented events, his account was, in all essentials, what he really believed, even if what he believed fell short of the truth.”82 One does not need to espouse this view to posit that the text of the DBC is constitutive of reality. Caesar would strive to present himself as innocent, and his enemies as guilty, even if he did not truly believe in his innocence. Yet regardless of his personal views, as I have shown, Caesar crafts a text in which he portrays himself as a character thrown into the midst of chaos together with the other Romans, and also together with us, his readers. As such, his narrative is a reenactment of the history he contributed to forging, a history in which he eventually triumphs over chaos.

79 Collins 1972: 922-66 and Collins 1952; Barwick 1951 and Barwick 1938. 80 Lieberg 1982: 37-39. 81 Masters 1992: 7. See Ch. 1 p. 8-9 and n. 23. 82 Adcock 1956: 94. See also Batstone 1991: 132 n. 15; Raditsa 1973: 437. 94 2.3 LUCAN V. CAESAR

Lucan adopts and adapts the Caesarian “process of fragmentation” (to recall Grillo) in construing his own narrative by argument. The first appearance of the character of Caesar in his version of events could not be more direct and abrupt, and it is meant to evoke the chaotic incipit of Caesar’s text (BC 1.183-94):

Iam gelidas Caesar cursu superaverat Alpes ingentesque animo motus bellumque futurum ceperat. Ut ventum est parvi Rubiconis ad undas, ingens visa duci patriae trepidantis imago clara per obscuram voltu maestissima noctem, turrigero canos effundens vertice crines, caesarie lacera nudisque adstare lacertis et gemitu permixta loqui: “Quo tenditis ultra? Quo fertis mea signa, viri? si iure venitis, si cives, huc usque licet.” Tum perculit horror membra ducis, riguere comae gressumque coercens languor in extrema tenuit vestigia ripa.

And already Caesar had hastened across the frozen Alps and had conceived in his heart the great rebellion and the coming war. When he reached the little river Rubicon, the general saw a vision of his distressed country. Her mighty image was clearly seen in the darkness of night; her face expressed deep sorrow, and from her head, crowned with towers, the white hair streamed abroad; she stood beside him with tresses torn and arms bare, and her speech was broken by sobs: “Whither do you march further? And whither do you bear my standards, you warriors? If you come as law-abiding citizens, here must you stop.” Then trembling smote the leader’s limbs, his hair stood on end, a faintness stopped his motion and fettered his feet on the edge of the river-bank.

One word comes to mind in reading the first lines of this passage: speed, hence the Latin celeritas, notoriously in Cicero a reason to marvel at the general first sweeping through Gaul and afterwards through the Italian peninsula (Att. 7.22.1): o celeritatem incredibilem! So incredible was Caesar’s swiftness that the modern-day US Army Colonel Dodge also marvels: “In extent of conquest Alexander was the most distinguished; in speed Caesar.”83 And among the ancients

Velleius Paterculus shares the same view: in his description of the operations at Dyrrachium he

83 Dodge 1892: 755. 95 states that due to his “usual rapidity and luck”84 Caesar could land in Thessaly and straightway set camp so close to Pompey’s as nearly to touch the enemy camp. It should thus come as no surprise that Lucan employs pluperfects (superaverat, ceperat) to signal his personal difficulty in catching up with Caesar’s celeritas: by the time the poet detects his movements across the Alps,

Caesar has already (iam) crossed them and reached the Rubicon River (ventum est…Rubiconis ad undas). Furthermore, the chaos of sedition (ingentes motus) and the war yet to begin (bellum futurum) have already begun in Caesar’s head (ceperat). I agree with Roche that the sequence is climactic85 and not (as Getty supposes) synonymic:86 the poet suggests that both the outbreak of turbulence and its transformation in a fully fledged conflict are concrete realities in Caesar’s mind, a hint at the fact that his celeritas in thought equates the tangible speed of his marching army. Thompson and Bruère trace bellum futurum…ceperat to Apollo’s revelation to , in Book 9 of the Aeneid, that all future wars shall depend on the single fate of Troy (Virg. Aen.

9.642-43): iure omnia bella/ gente sub Assaraci fato ventura resident.87 If Lucan indeed alludes to this passage, a god’s prophecy enigmatically looking to the future, his usage of pluperfects is even more striking, indicating that Caesar is so farsighted that he can forge the future while he is still living in his present: what the young Ascanius is clueless about Caesar has already imagined. One could even say that Caesar has already made it happen.

But Lucan’s abrupt beginning is tinged with a greater pessimism than the opening of

Caesar’s DBC: whereas the tribunes’ failed attempt at diplomacy points to the inevitability of a war yet to occur and still unforeseeable in its distinct stages and development, Lucan’s ceperat straightway ties past and future together, and the war thus seems so imminent and inevitable that

84 Vell. Hist. 2.51.2. 85 Roche 2009: 205. 86 Getty 1940 ad loc. 87 Thompson and Bruère 1968: 6. 96 it is practically already being fought. It is in fact already possible to distinguish between motus and bellum, a differentiation which strengthens the impression of inevitability, thereby pointing to Caesar’s envisioning of two stages in the conflict: the spontaneous upheaval of rebellious groups (perhaps a hint at the towns that yielded to Caesar without putting up a fight after the

Pompeian generals fled in fear, as in the case of Auximum, Asculum and Nuceria),88 and gruesome fights on the battlefield. But there is more, for Lucan’s appropriation of Caesar’s directness of style and pessimistic tone serves a precise purpose: to discredit Caesar by using his rhetorical weapons against him. In fact, in Lucan’s BC it is Caesar who removes all hope for peace, and no mention is made of the obstructionism of the consuls, or of a cowardly Senate.

Furthermore, for all his selectiveness it is evident that Lucan is rewriting Caesar, and hence reenacting a distinct war with its own coups de théâtre:89 Lucan is making sure to overemphasize the subtext that Caesar expunged from his version of events, while at the same time expunging what Caesar overemphasized in an attempt to direct readers towards certain conclusions. Thus in

Lucan there is no mention of a letter sent to the Senate with mild requests to try to steer the situation towards peace (cf. DBC 1.5.5: si qua hominum aequitate res ad otium deduci posset), but rather the illegal crossing of the Rubicon is given prominence, so much so that Roma herself materializes on the banks of the river to dissuade Caesar from an invasion. The female embodiment of the urbs is an ingens imago (BC 1.186) meant to reinforce the “tiny stream”90 south of Ravenna and reemphasize “the sanctity of the Rubicon as a limit which no army may legally transgress.”91

88 Luc. BC 2.466-77. 89 Thus Masters 1992: 1 calls Caesar “an ” in Lucan’s text. 90 Masters 1992: 1. 91 Ibid. 97 The latter point becomes more evident once we this scene to other scenes involving some character’s potential, or manifest, transgression of the law: for example, in the

Iliad, the scene where Athena prevents Achilles from drawing his sword in the midst of an

Achaean assembly, on which Grimal has focused;92 or the scene in which Cicero’s prosopopoeia serves to denounce Catiline’s crimes in the first Catilinarian speech, which Lausberg has examined in detail.93 And if these allusions are still not enough to criminalize Caesar, we might add the fact that Lucan’s mention of Caesar crossing the Alps is itself a transgression. In this regard Lebek simply states that “Die Einleitung passt zu Lucans Konzeption von Caesars blitzartigem Handeln.”94 Of course Caesar’s lightning-fast speed of movement is enhanced, but so is his similarity to the Carthaginian foe , who had transgressively crossed the Alps with the hostile intent of invading Italy, and to whom Caesar explicitly compares himself a little later, in his speech (BC 1.304-305: quam si Poenus transcenderit Alpes/ Hannibal). Lastly, when

Caesar fails to listen to Roma and actually crosses the Rubicon he is compared to a Libyan lion, a well-known reminiscence of ’ lion-like appearance in Book 12 of the Aeneid.95 Through allusions to Homer, Cicero and Virgil, Lucan magnifies the wickedness of Caesar. He does so also in describing the Rubicon’s opposition to Romans who have been turned into attackers: the rivulet swells to resist the crossing of the Caesarians (1.204: tumidumque per amnem), its tumidity perhaps a symbol of the revolt of nature against the unjust conqueror.

To reinforce the idea Lucan makes sure to use the same expression, tumidus amnis, which is unprecedented in epic, when Caesar crosses the Sicoris in Spain (4.133),96 a reminiscence of

92 Grimal 1970: 56. 93 Lausberg 1985: 1589. 94 Lebek 1976: 116. 95 Virg. Aen. 12.1-4. See Getty 1940 ad loc. 96 Roche 2009: 215. After Lucan the expression is only found in Silius Italicus (Pun. 10.207). 98 his initial violation of the law and the natural order of things. On this occasion Caesar, acting like a god, overpowers and punishes the river for flooding by splitting and constraining it into channels (4.142-43: spargitur in sulcos et scisso gurgite rivis/ dat poenas maioris aquae). In regard to the first transgression, against the Rubicon, Masters also points to the repetitiveness and redundancy of Lucan’s rhetoric, which is meant to oppose through mora Caesar’s celeritas: in fact, after the simile of the Libyan lion, it appears that this symbolic threshold between Gaul and Italy must be crossed a second time, when it is explained that its waters gain volume and power in winter and the cavalry and the rest of the army have to break the current by taking position slantwise across the stream (BC 1.213-22):

Fonte cadit modico parvisque inpellitur undis puniceus Rubicon, cum fervida canduit aestas, perque imas serpit valles et Gallica certus ab Ausoniis disterminat arva colonis. Tum vires praebebat hiemps, atque auxerat undas tertia iam gravido pluvialis Cynthia cornu et madidis Euri resolutae flatibus Alpes. primus in obliquum sonipes opponitur amnem excepturus aquas; molli tum cetera rumpit turba vado faciles iam fracti fluminis undas.

Issuing from a modest spring and running with scant waters in the heat of burning summer, the ruddy Rubicon glides through the bottom of the valleys and serves as a fixed landmark to divide Gaul from the farms of Italy. But now it was swollen by winter; and its waters were increased by the third rising of a rainy moon with moisture-laden horn, and by Alpine snows which damp blasts of wind had melted. First the cavalry took station slantwise across the stream, to meet its flow; thus the current was broken, and the rest of the army forded the water with ease.

Masters is a little misleading here, because Lucan is now describing the passage of the troops following after their leader’s transgression, and not reduplicating Caesar’s transgression. More than delaying the progress of the impious march, Lucan aims to stress that his antagonist planned his crime alone, as a mastermind of evil whom his soldiers can but emulate with bowed heads: as

Strassburger famously claimed to the amazement of a group of school-teachers in 1953, Caesar

99 was a totally isolated dictator, and his decisions in January of 49 BCE were not supported by a single senator: “Caesar im Urteil der Zeitgenossen.”97 When Lucan’s focus returns to Caesar after the crossing of his army, the ablative absolute superato gurgite (1.223) attests to the fact that he is past the river’s current, his feet on the forbidden Italian soil (1.224: Hesperiae vetitis et constitit arvis). Yet regardless of how we interpret the function of the chronological sequence of actions leading to the crossing, Lucan’s expansive treatment is doubtless a substitute for the biased beginning of the DBC, which functions both as an inspiration and as a point of departure.

And another point of departure occurs after Caesar’s trespassing of the pomoerium, when his march causes the consuls and senators to flee: as he corrects Caesar’s chronology, Lucan casts the blame on the invader, who already stands condemned by the poet’s strategic omission of the initial period of negotiations between him and the consuls. Thus by evoking Caesar’s incipit in medias res and by resorting to Caesar’s practice of omission, Lucan succeeds in depicting his character as a foe: iam at 1.183, besides pointing to a speed that is hard to match, points to incompleteness and the possible loss of information, a clear echo of the problematic beginning of the DBC. Lucan’s is an even weaker opening device than Caesar’s ablative absolute litteris cognitis. And if it is true, as von Albrecht has it, that “the choice of a symbolical starting point, the crossing of the Rubicon,”98 is among the features “typical of the epic tradition,”99 it is also true that unless Lucan wanted to allude to Caesar, he could have transitioned less abruptly from his lengthy introduction on the subject of his epic song to his symbolical starting point.

But the sensational speed characterizing the sequence of Caesar at the Rubicon does not constitute the first stumbling-point in Lucan’s plot: part of the dismay Paratore felt when, in a

97 On Strassburger’s remark see Yavetz 1971: 184. On the loneliness of Caesar see also Taylor 1957. 98 Von Albrecht 1999: 240. 99 Ibid. 100 1977 paper delivered at Clermont-Ferrand, he claimed that “[i]l n’est aucun morceau du poème qui ait été aussi opiniâtrement analysé et tourmenté par les savants que l’exorde”100 has to do with the sudden insertion in the midst of Lucan’s exordium of an eulogy to the emperor Nero.

Since this is in stark contrast with the condemnation of tyrannical one-man rule made explicit in

Book 7, where the poet laments that “our fate is the worst,/ for we are ashamed to be slaves”

(7.444-5: sors ultima nostra est,/ quos servire pudet), Fantham labels the eulogy the “biggest dilemma in considering the De Bello Civili.”101 In addition to creating a seemingly unsolvable ideological aporia, the laudatory lines commending Nero’s ascension to power fracture the cohesiveness of the exordium of the BC, prefiguring the contrastive tension of ill-fitting narratives placed in proximity to each other without paying much attention to their logical concatenation, a trademark of other parts of the epic. To be fair, the content of the encomium is not an absolute surprise, because it has a well-known precedent: a mere twenty-year old Lucan had won first prize at the Neronia of 60 CE thanks to a poetic tribute to his princeps. The public recitation of this first encomium, though, came at a time when the relationship between poet and sovereign was at its best, so much so that the latter’s patronage toward his protégé would soon translate into extraordinary rewards in favor of his : in 62 CE, or possibly even in the early months of 63, Lucan was made before the prescribed age, and he was just as quickly appointed a member of the College of the Augurs.102 According to ’ account

(openly anti-Lucanian in endorsing the rumor that the poet was so whimsical in his morality as to incriminate his mother Acilia in a vain effort to save his life after the capital sentence of 65), the friendship between the two young men started to deteriorate soon afterwards: Nero, it seems,

100 Paratore 1977: 93-101. 101 Fantham 1992: 13. The bibliography on the encomium and its paradoxical nature is enormous; several important studies are listed below as I address their main lines of argument. 102 Vacca Luc. 101 suffered an irreparable narcissistic wound as he came to realize that he could never match

Lucan’s . He thus reacted against the poet by forbidding all future public performances of his masterpiece on the civil war, and it was this effort to obscure Lucan’s fama that prompted the latter to join a conspiracy, rather than heartfelt nostalgia for the .103 Suetonius, no less biased than Tacitus, fails to mention Nero’s ban, which according to Ahl’s persuasive arguments occurred after Lucan composed the first three books of the BC and declaimed excerpts from the triptych (hence not before 62 or 63, or else it would make no sense for Nero to help

Lucan in his political career around this time);104 but Suetonius also stresses the latter’s vainglory as a fundamental reason for his increased hatred of Nero.105 One could say that the pathological personality of the emperor, as one prone to largesse in promoting the arts but at the same time prideful to the point of chastising artists who surpassed his abilities, recalls to an extent the pride of Lucan.

Could it be, then, that the encomium at the beginning of the BC was written before the poet lost his place of honor amid the imperial cohors amicorum?106 And that the contradictory nature of the praise within an epic that celebrates the goddess of anti-tyrannical is simply a clue that the tone and content of the BC were not originally meant to be in contrast with the regime, but became more explicitly condemnatory of the regime after the publication of the first three books, and in particular after Nero started to retaliate against his old friend? Scholars in favor of the sincerity of Lucan’s prologue, ranging from Paratore (who relies on scant historiographical detail) to Häussler (who reads the encomium in the light of the tradition of the

103 Tac. Ann. 15.49.3. Cf. Suet. Luc. 104 Ahl 1976: 347 ff. Virtually all scholars agree with Rose 1966: 379-96 and Brisset 1964: esp. 181-82 in rejecting the dated idea (cf. Pichon 1912: 270-71) that the political content of Books 1-3 is not explicit enough to Nero’s reaction and the ban against further recitations of the poem. 105 Suet. Luc. 106 Ibid. 102 speculum principis) and to Pfliegersdorffer (with his pro-Tacitean speculation) would all assent, pointing to an allegedly more violent anti-imperialistic tone in Books 4 to 10.107 Others argue for an ironic reading of the encomium,108 agreeing in some measure with the medieval scholiasts who (perhaps a bit too ingenuously) saw in the excessive flattery of Nero a biting sequence of allusions to his physical flaws (obesity, squinting, baldness and clubfoot);109 but it is unlikely that the princeps, who despite his pretense of artistic genius was at least cognizant of the rhetorical possibilities of poetry and the double entendre of allusive turns of phrase, would have been blind to Lucan’s mockery and would not have punished him more decisively than he did through a literary ban.110 As Ahl states in his appendix, Nero took time with Lucan; the scholar recalls Vacca, observing that: “Nero’s artistic jealousy came to a head when Lucan gave an extempore recitation of his and published the first three books of the Pharsalia.

Although the Pharsalia is the last work mentioned before the ban, Vacca has mentioned it in the same breadth as a work that was probably written as early as 60.”111 The point is clear: Nero was already jealous in the year 60. After he heard parts of the BC, he grew more jealous, but this was not yet a reason to hate, or kill, his protégé.112 To be clear, Vacca paints a most favorable picture of Lucan and may therefore not always be reliable, just as Tacitus and Suetonius might not be reliable for the opposite reason; but the pro-Lucanian biographer gains nothing from distorting

107 Many espouse this view (and many, in general, focus on the issues of interpretation caused by the encomium, as recalled by Bartsch 1997: 173 n. 46). Besides Häussler 1978: 76-80; Paratore 1977: 93-101; and Pfligersdorffer 1959: 344-54, which I find most interesting, see also Williams 1978: 163-65; Lebek 1976: 81-107; Jenkinson 1974: 8-9; Dilke 1972: 75-76; Thompson 1964: 147-53; Brisset 1964; Levi 1949: 71-78. 108 Arguably the most successful line of interpretation: see among others Paulsen 1995; Le Boeuffle 1989; Brena 1988; Arnaud 1987: 167-93; Morford 1985: 2003-31; Ebener 1984: 581-89; Gagliardi 1970: 74-80; Conte 1966: 42- 53; Griset 1955: 134-38 and 1954: 109-13; Marti 1945: 374. 109 Comm. Bern. I 53. Cf. Marti 1958: 15 (her edition of the Arnulfi Aurelianensis Glosule Super Lucanum). 110 Griset 1955: 134-38 contends that Nero wanted Lucan dead because of the scornful satire in the encomium. But why wait three or so more years, if already in 62 or 63 CE he was aware of the satire? 111 Ahl 1976: 347. On the dating of the Orpheus see Perutelli 1999: 47-72; Rose 1966: 391-92. 112 See above, n. 110. 103 the truth on this particular occasion, or when he records that the troubles for his young hero worsened some time after the end of his questorship.113

If, then, we take Vacca’s account to be reliable in regard to the development of hostility between Nero and Lucan, it is noteworthy that the emperor’s displeasure at Lucan and his work matured over the years before it led to an explicit retaliation (the ban) and eventually to the poet’s death two to three years later. This relative tolerance is harder to explain if we read open scorn in the encomium of Nero, as the medieval scholiasts did.114 To corroborate this view yet further, we may add that according to Suetonius, after Nero summons a meeting to interrupt

Lucan’s first and only public reading of the BC, a distinct phase occurs between the ban and the suicide during which Lucan has time to attack his prince through explicit words and deeds,115 and even goes on to publish a carmen famosum in which he charges Nero and his powerful entourage. 116 Of the fifteen Lucanian works mentioned through brief references or direct quotes,117 it is likely that the De Incendio Urbis, published after the fire of July 64 CE,118 is the carmen in question: in fact, as Statius claims in his Genethliacon Lucani, the lost poem chastised

“the criminal fires of a blasphemous master,” (Silv. 2.7.61: infandos domini nocentis ignes).119

Interestingly, Statius appropriates the vocabulary Lucan obsesses over to portray Caesar, and thus conflates two key Lucanian notions in one line: the notion of tyranny (which reprises

113 Ahl 1976: 346-48. 114 It will be useful to remember that some of Lucan’s most illustrious contemporary readers also failed to perceive irony in the encomium: at Luc. BC 1.56-57 we learn that if Nero leans on any one part of boundless space, the axle of the terrestrial sphere shall be weighed down (Aetheris inmensi partem si presseris unam,/ sentient axis onus), a possible allusion to the emperor’s excessive weight. But in Pseudo-Seneca’s Oetaeus (1569 ff.) we would not find an allusion to these lines to commemorate the apotheosis of Hercules, unless the anonymous tragedian took Lucan seriously. 115 For example, when releasing his bowels with an unusually loud noise, he recalled Nero’s line sub terris tonuisse putes. 116 Sed et famoso carmine cum ipsum potentissimos amicorum gravissime proscidit. 117 See most recently Williams 2017: 93. 118 See Griffin 1994: 182 ff.; Ahl 1976: 351-52. 119 See Ahl 1971: 1-27; Mensching 1969: 252-55; Gresseth 1957: 24-27. 104 Figulus’ prediction that peace will come at the price of a dominus, or else the ultimate suppressor of freedom);120 and that of ineffability, which is associated with the civil war giving rise to tyranny. It is plausible that in the De Incendio Urbis Lucan himself used these terms, identifying

Nero as the true heir of his demonic version of Caesar in the BC. It is surely this type of direct attack that will make the princeps angry beyond repair, and not some alleged satire at the beginning of the BC, one that allegedly all witty readers of the poem but the emperor himself could understand.

To find a better solution to the controversial nature of the encomium, it will be useful to linger a little longer over Figulus’ prophecy: the astrologer’s pessimistic equation of principate and peaceful slavery suggests that Book 1 is in no way radically different from later books, and in particular from Book 7, where the poet-vates himself endorses the same equation and laments the slavish condition burdening future generations of Romans. When considered in its context, critical of the dominus and the subsequent lack of libertas for the Roman people, the encomium automatically loses much of its force, becoming in part a shallow nod to convention, as Dewar argues building on Nock.121 Narducci adds that a comparison with both the official celebratory inscriptions of the emperor and several texts of the panegyrical canon, from the anonymous

Einsiedeln to the poems of Calpurnius Siculus, Claudian and , proves that the content of Lucan’s own panegyric, for all its bombast, is but one of many typical reapplications of the hyperbolic language associated with the rhetoric of the aurea aetas.122 And the motif of the Golden Age was indeed prevalent in the 60s, as Tacitus implies when he records that the discovery of a large treasure during the quinquennial in honor of Nero became a

120 Luc. BC 1.670. 121 Dewar 1994: 199-211. Cf. Nock 1926: 17-18. In a similar vein see Bohnenkamp 1977: 235-48; Béranger 1966: 97-112; Syndikus 1958: 93. Leigh 1997: 23 ff. posits that in its conventionality the praise sounds insincere. 122 Narducci 2002: 23. 105 pretext for poets and orators to boast about the extraordinary bounteousness of earth and gods.123

Furthermore, Lucan’s conventional homage to his literary patron Nero also fits into the larger scheme of intertextual homages paid to other poets: as I already pointed out in Ch. 1, the first seven lines of the BC, followed by an interrogation of the reasons for unquenchable civic rage, retrace the propositio and interrogatio of the Iliad.124 Moreover, Lucan’s initial bella echoes

Virgil’s arma virumque cano, and his mention of Emathia (BC 1.1: per Emathios…campos) contains a twofold allusion to the gloomy endings of Book 1 of the (1.491-92: nec fuit indignum superis bis sanguine nostro/ Emathiam et laetos Haemi pinguescere campos) and the ending of Book 15 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (15.824: Emathiique iterum madeficent caede

Philippi). Lastly Lucan’s taste for reduplication at 1.8 (pila minantia pilis) echoes ’ pila retunduntur venientibus obvia pilis,125 a sign that Lucan aims to revert to (and enhance) the crude realism of an older Roman tradition of epos.126

The encomium of Nero in the BC, then, much like the hymn to in ’ treatise on the atomistic nature of the universe, bows to convention without implying a strong authorial adherence to convention;127 and since the encomium interacts with an intricate web of

123 Tac. Ann. 16.2.2: Ac forte quinquennale ludicrum secundo lustro celebrabatur, ab oratoribusque praecipua materia in laudem principis adsumpta est. Non enim solitas tantum fruges nec confusum metallis aurum gigni, sed nova ubertate provenire terram et obvias opes deferre deos, quaeque alia summa facundia nec minore adulatione servilia fingebant, securi de facilitate credentis [It happened, too, that this was the second period for the celebration of the quinquennial games, and the incident was taken by the orators as the principal text for their panegyrics of the sovereign, for not the customary crops alone, or gold alloyed with other metals, were now produced; but the earth gave her increase with novel fecundity, and high heaven sent wealth unsought. And there were other servilities, which they developed with consummate eloquence and not inferior sycophancy, assured of the easy credence of their dupe]. 124 Ch. 1 p. 17 n. 11. 125 See Skutsch 1985 ad hoc. 126 See Conte 1988: 30. 127 On Lucretius see O’Hara 2007: 62-76, who builds on Farrell 1994: 88 in acknowledging the poet’s purposeful ambivalence in conceiving of humankind and earth’s original state through conventional mythical passages such as the hymn. Lucretius prefers Epicurean physics to a religious explanation, but does not overlook religion entirely. Cf. Sedley 1998; Summers 1995: 32-57; Gale 1994: 1-17; Minyard 1985: esp. 37, who posit no ambivalence and see in the hymn a captatio benevolentiae to readers, to be refuted later in the poem by the “Epicurean corrective” (Sedley 1998: 27). 106 conventional allusions (or literary nods) to the epic tradition, Hinds’ view that the passage is an inexplicable failure on an aesthetic and moral scale – a dilemma for the sake of it, to reprise

Fantham – is exaggerated.128 There is no moral failure, because the rest of Book 1 clarifies the author’s preferred view and anti-tyrannical cause: the encomium is preceded by a meticulous description of the architectural decrepitude of Italy, whose agricultural ruins evoke the untamed original site of pre-Rome as expounded by Evander to Aeneas,129 and is followed by Lucan’s prophetic vision of universal dissolution. These are strong textual indicators that Nero was not worth the price of war (cf. BC 1.33-4: Quod si non aliam venturo fata Neroni/ invenere viam), and his laudatio is but a self-contained, unconvincing statement without further endorsements.

Later in Book 1, Figulus’ implication that no good comes from praying for the end of the war, because peace will come with a dominus, further undermines the overtly positive tone, and veracity, of the encomium. Thus it is evident that when Lucan aligns the civil war with the gigantomachy preceding Jupiter’s establishment of peaceful order,130 and when he concludes that the cost of peace is not too high and we should all stop complaining (1.37-38: iam nihil, o superi, querimur; scelera ista nefasque/ hac mercede placent), he is casting doubt on his own words. He is also by extension doubting that any war leading to the triumph of the progeny of Aeneas was worth fighting, since had used the same phrase to warn about the steep price to be paid for peace between the and the Trojans (Virg. Aen. 7.317: hac gener atque socer coeant

128 See above, p. 71 n. 24. 129 Compare Luc. BC 1.28-29: horrida quod dumis multosque inarata per annos/ Hesperia est desuntque manus poscentibus arvis [if Italy bristles with thorn-brakes, and her soil lies unploughed year/ after year, and the fields call in vain for hands to till them] and Virg. Aen. 8.347-48: hinc ad Tarpeiam sedem et Capitolia ducit/ aurea nunc, olim silvestribus horrida dumis [from there he leads to the Tarpeian , and the Capitol, now gold, but once savage with wooded thorn-bushes]. As Gransden 1976: 4-11 argues, the tour in Book 8 is a topographical counterpart to the parade of future heroes in Book 6. In evoking this passage, Lucan clearly unveils the failure to progress from a rural landscape to the glory of a golden city: with the Julio-Claudians the landscape of Italy reverts to its primeval state, a further hint at the irreversibility of the chaos ensuing from war. 130 On gigantomachic imagery in the Aeneid, to which Lucan clearly alludes, see Hardie 1986: 85-156. For another important reference to this passage see Hor. Carm. 3.4.37-80. On Horace see Paschalis 1982: 342-6. 107 mercede suorum). Although the encomium of Nero is not meant explicitly to ridicule the emperor, a more implicit and subtler criticism of him does pervade the rest of the book. Thus the encomium exists to create a dilemma, but a very solvable one. The inconsistency between the encomium and its surroundings generates tension between the possibility of a return to the

Golden Age and the possibility of a return to chaos, as exemplified by the ruins of Italy and by the universal catastrophe Lucan prophesies. In the end, though, it is clear which view prevails.

I also find no aesthetic failure in the encomium. Its abruptness and disruptive force set the tone for the rest of the narrative, while providing readers with an initial cue as to what to expect next: clashing notions, in short a mimicry of the chaos of battle, and unpredictability in relation to plot developments. Interestingly, though Roche does not question the issues of interpretation that the encomium poses in trying to assess the coherence of Book 1 and the BC in general, he commends the skillfully contrived transition from geopolitical landscape to panegyric through the prosaic quod si. The phrase smoothly introduces a logical conditional sentence in which the gloomy imagery of decaying, warring Italy is presented as a precondition for Nero’s ascension to the throne (BC 1.31-38):131

nulli penitus descendere ferro contigit: alta sedent civilis volnera dextrae. Quod si non aliam venturo fata Neroni invenere viam magnoque aeterna parantur regna deis caelumque suo servire Tonanti non nisi saevorum potuit post bella gigantum, iam nihil, o superi, querimur; scelera ipsa nefasque hac mercede placent […].

No other sword has been able to pierce so deep; the strokes of a kindred hand are driven home. Still, if Fate could find no other way for the advent of Nero; if an everlasting kingdom costs the gods dear and heaven could not be ruled by its sovran, the Thunderer, before the battle with the fierce ,— then we complain no more against the gods: even such crimes and such guilt are not too high a price.

131 Roche 2009: 130. 108

It may be true that an effortless gradation marks the shift from γνώµη on the murderous dextra of fellow-citizens to panegyric. However, the fact remains that if the encomium were altogether expunged, the logic of the exordium would suffer no damage. As a result, the whole passage is a violent interruption within the exordium. “My mind moves me to set forth the causes of these great events,” says Lucan in Ovidian fashion at 1.67, after he has made Nero his preferred muse.

The only way to make sense of the phrase is to connect the events in question (causas tantarum rerum) to the “strokes of a kindred hand,” some thirty lines before (1.32). In fact, before Lucan resorts to this Ovidian allusion, he delights in envisioning the future divinization of Nero: hortatory subjunctives express the wish that the gates of be sealed and peace become possible across the nations (1.61-62: pax missa per orbem/ ferrea belligeri conpescat limina

Iani). At no other point in Book 1, or elsewhere in his carmen, does Lucan ever return to this image, but everywhere else in the epic he insists on presenting a decaying, warring world which reverts to the grim Italian landscape described at 1.24-32, right before the encomium starts.

Contra Roche, then, I suggest that, for all its cleverness, the causal quod si gives Lucan a chance to disrupt the linearity of an already perfectly smooth narrative. In his analysis Sullivan concludes that Lucan is protecting himself, the expungeability of his captatio benevolentiae an unmistakable sign of its insincerity and meaninglessness. Lucan’s panegyric might be insincere, as I too have argued, but it is meaningful in highlighting from the start a lack of homogeneity in the poet’s technique. If Lucan chooses to distract his readers with the introjection of such a disorienting passage in his incipit, no doubt revised before publication and recitation, we may consider this a warning that the poet might as well disregard conventional compositional norms until the very end of his epic. As a further proof of this, in the latter section of Book 1 he interrupts his description of the Caesarians’ march against the urbs to focus on a long series of

109 omens (1.522-83) followed by the triptych of prophets of disaster (1.584-695): the matron’s external prolepses, pointing to stories of death yet to be told, many of which (such as Philippi) will find no place in the narrative of the BC, is the definitive coup de grâce to the perspective of an incoming Golden Age. In place of Caesar’s transition from chaos to order, then, Lucan employs Caesar’s rhetoric of abruptness to depict triumphant chaos: the illogicality of the tribute to the princeps within a book, and an epic, written to invalidate the alleged benefits of imperial rule replicates the illogicality of a passage such as Lentulus’ initial speech in the DBC.132 But whereas in the DBC Caesar aims to suggest that the kind of peaceful global resolution envisioned in Lucan’s encomium of Nero is possible, especially when he emphasizes the unity between him and his army and the quasi-simultaneous victories (in Spain and France) against pro-Pompeian agents of chaos,133 the presence of the encomium in the BC is but an instance of chaos without resolution: the narrative flow is interrupted, confusion ensues, and peaceful resolution is negated.

2.4 FINAL NOTES FROM MARSEILLES

To conclude I would like to return for a moment to Caesar’s treatment of Massilia. As discussed above, the kind of violent narrative interruption that Lucan achieves through his interpolation in favor of his unlikely muse is also achieved by Caesar in the DBC, though to the opposite effect. A good illustration of this point is offered by the chopped narrative of the siege of modern Marseilles, a quadripartite scene that is interrupted by disorienting interjections on the

Spanish campaign, is irregularly distributed across the mid-section of Book 1 and the beginning of Book 2, and is longer than in other historical accounts.134 In contrast with the incomplete

132 See above, p. 89. 133 See above, p. 85-86. 134 Cf. Suet. Jul. 34.2; App. BC 2.47 (just a quick mention that Caesar was at Massilia when he heard of the mutiny at Placentia); Plut. Caes. 16; Dio Hist. 41.19, 41.21, 41.25; Flor. Hist. 2.13.23. 110 incipit of Book 1 of the DBC, the Massilian compilation has a clear beginning and end despite its episodic unfolding. It appears that completeness is granted this time because it is useful to emphasize the idea that Caesar embodies the ordering principle that the Romans need against his

(and their) adversaries, agents of chaos who use coercion to foster lawlessness (such as the pro-

Pompeian consuls did when they coerced the Senators into voting Caesar a public enemy). But as we shall see, claims to completeness and conclusiveness are always deceptive in the DBC.

At 1.35-36 Caesar petitions the Massilians, who appeal to neutrality; in the meantime

Domitius takes his ships to harbor and is put in charge of the city’s defense, a provocation to which Caesar responds by building siege engines. Then Caesar departs for Spain, and only at

1.56-58 does the narrative refocus on Gaul through a passage that Klotz (as I anticipated) thought originally written for Book 2:135 the Caesarians prevail in the naval battle at the Stoechades. This swift success prompts Caesar to turn his focus elsewhere and look instead to his Spanish campaign, offering many memorable details in an uninterrupted sequence: after outmaneuvering the Pompeians, who are cut off from provisions, the latter surrender. It is an extraordinary occasio bene gerendae rei (1.71.1) that the Caesarian troops would like to enjoy to the full, slaughtering their enemies. But their commander chooses mildness and pardons the grateful vanquished (1.74.2: agunt gratias omnes omnibus). This could be the end, and a flawless end as such, with order peacefully prevailing over chaos: sine vulnere tantas res confecisse.136 Could this also be the finis of the entire war? Maybe, but the self-consistent Petreius (1.75.2: non deserit sese) undoes the restored unity of the Romans, responding to diplomatic colloquia turned

135 See above, p. 84. 136 It is worth noting that only two chapters before the same phrase (1.72.1: sine vulnere suorum rem conficere) is used to express Caesar’s plan in regard to his men (or we could take the genitive suorum to mean, in general, all his fellow-Romans): Caesar portrays himself as a man whose plan of order and peace always translates into facts. 111 into friendly sermones between Caesarians and Pompeians137 with terror and crudelitas.138 The sententious remark the narrator chooses in order to describe the effects of Petreius’ devastating intervention is extremely charged (1.76.5):

Sic terror oblatus a ducibus, crudelitas in supplicio, nova religio iurisiurandi spem praesentis deditionis sustulit mentesque militum convertit et rem ad pristinam belli rationem redegit. In this way the leaders introduced terror, and cruelty in executions, and some novel ritual of -taking snatched away the hope of present surrender, changed the mind of the soldiers, and returned the situation to the previous state of war.

It does not take too careful a reader to discern in these last words, on the reversal to a previous state of affairs, not only a reference to the fight at Ilerda, but also to the initial contentio between tribunes, consuls and Senate in the opening chapters of the DBC. The danger posed by Petreius and, a bit later, Afranius, is eventually suppressed: the Pompeians are cornered a second time, and Caesar resorts again to his proverbial misericordia. Read against this backdrop the sudden reprisal of action (and focus) at Massilia in Book 2 serves to illustrate the way in which the

Caesarians behave without Caesar: they fight as valiantly as their absent leader, showing tactical superiority in the naval battle against the conjoined fleets of Domitius and Nasidius at Taurois, or when they breach the walls and force the enemy to surrender. Of interest is also the reduplication of the same dynamics at work in Spain: having been pardoned, the Massilians (like Petreius and

Afranius at the end of Book 1) treacherously break the truce granted by Trebonius and force the latter frantically to rebuild a siege wall and defeat them a second time. Just as the pars pro toto model unifies Caesar and the Caesarians in their righteousness and leniency, all enemies of

Caesar (be they individuals like the consuls, Petreius and Afranius, or a whole people like the inhabitants of Massilia) are unified in treacherousness and a lack of moral conduct.

137 DBC 1.74.1-3. 138 Ibid. 1.76.5. 112 At 2.17, after the Massilians’ betrayal and second surrender, we expect a resolution we do not get. What is going to happen now? Instead of answering this titillating question, in typical fashion Caesar abruptly switches focus to inform readers of his pacification of Spain (including

Cadiz, Corduba, Italica and Tarraco) after the Pompeian Varro, the last to attempt a resistance, yields. At last Caesar himself reaches Massilia at 2.22, in the fourth and last installment of the compilation, a chapter strangely ignored in Bachofen’s otherwise meticulous analysis.139 As in

Spain, and despite the fact that the Massilians are foreigners and therefore hostes (unlike the

Roman citizens fighting in the ranks of Petreius and Afranius), Caesar pardons them. It does not matter if he does it to preserve the reputation of the town (2.22.6: eos pro nomine et vetustate…in se civitatis conservans). What matters is that his ability to restore order without superfluous bloodshed is exceptional, and the fragmentariness of a narrative developed across two books and narrated in tandem with the Spanish campaign is meant to increase this view: the continuous interruptions in the narrative allow Caesar to emerge as the ultimate guarantor of order, to whom all (from the Romans deployed in Spain to the foreign people of Gaul) shall turn for peace. And to provide this flawless happy ending Caesar leaves out the mutiny of his 9th legion at Placentia, which took place right after the pacification of France, as Caesar set off for Rome (2.22.6: Ipse ad urbem proficiscitur): as Chrissanthos emphatically points out, the soldiers’ displeasure at the prolonged lack of pay and harsh conditions, which has place of honor both in Appian and in

Cassius Dio, finds no mention in the DBC, and this may be the reason why in Book 3 Caesar praises the 9th legion so profusely.140

How does Lucan react to all this? For a start, it is clear that the poet is, once again, using

Caesar as a model to provide his own version of the Battle of Massilia: Hunink points out that

139 Bachofen 1972: 11-16 and 101-14. 140 Chrissanthos 2001: 64 and 67-68. 113 details such as the strong defense put up by the city through ballistic missiles, or the massive siege engines erected by the besiegers, cannot have originated from other sources.141 Syndikus adds that length is also a significant indicator:142 in contrast with the brief mentions of other writers,143 Lucan imitates Caesar in overblowing the importance of this battle, which occupies almost half of Book 3. Hunink goes on to describe the articulation of the lengthy war scene as a series of self-contained successive blocks, or “isolated moments in a schematic order:”144 we transition from the desecration of a grove to provide wood for the Caesarian attack (BC 3.399-

455), to three distinct phases in which the besiegers are met with an adequate response on the part of the defendants (3.456-92), to a fourth phase in which the Massilians prevail and set fire to the Roman camp during a sortie at night (3.497-508). Defeated, the Caesarians must turn to the sea in an effort to obtain a better outcome (3.509-10): spes victis telluris abit, placuitque profundo/ Fortunam temptare maris. Lucan abstains from mentioning that Trebonius’ troops defeated the enemies and granted a truce that was treacherously broken at night, which is the reason why the Massilians were able to light up the Caesarian camp; nor does he continue to narrate the conclusion of the siege: he stops at a moment when the Massilians have the upper hand. He then shifts focus to describe the naval operations at the Stoechades, a scene filled with hyperbolic instances of mutilated bodies, human suffering and protracted death which Opelt tried to compare with historical sources.145 Of course this is to no avail: however much Rambaud wished to see in Lucan’s Massilian compilation a reliable corrective to the willful distortions of

141 Hunink 1992: 188. 142 Syndikus 1958: 18. 143 See above, p. 110 n. 134. 144 Hunink 1992: 188. Cf. Syndikus 1958: 52. 145 Opelt 1957: 435-45. 114 the DBC,146 the epic provides as distorted an account. But that is the point: again and again

Lucan weaponizes Caesar’s rhetoric against Caesar. The outcome is quite stunning: by compressing two naval battles (at the Stoechades and Taurois) into one and making Brutus’ victory the conclusive scene, the narrator grants the Caesarians a minor victory, but only to deny them a far more significant success, the very capitulation of Massilia. In this way we never find out that Caesar reached the pacified city to bestow his proverbial misericordia upon the treacherous vanquished. What happens in the midst of Book 3, when a siege in which the

Caesarians won is suddenly cut off from its ending, without readers knowing if and at what point the narrator may reprise the narrative, anticipates the incomplete traits of the siege of Alexandria in Book 10: as we will see in Ch. 3, Caesar eventually gained the upper hand there, too, but

Lucan stops before we know it.

In her seminal study on poetic closure Smith observes that “[w]e tend to speak of conclusion when a sequence of events has a relatively high degree of structure, when, in other words, we can perceive these events as related to one another by some principle of organization or design that implies the existence of a definite termination point. Under these circumstances, the occurrence of the terminal event is a confirmation of expectations that have been established by the structure of the sequence, and is usually gratifying.”147 If lack of closure is the principle of organization and design, terminal events may not be gratifying. But they are no less a conclusion.

146 See above, p. 83. 147 Smith 1968: viii, my italics. 115 CHAPTER 3 Birth and death of a god

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. Winston Churchill

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it– always. Mahatma Gandhi

3.1 WHERE IT ENDS

Lucan’s struggle against Caesar is multifaceted: to begin with, author is pitted against author in an ideological war, as both of them use the same rhetorical techniques to editorialize about the events of the civil war in accordance with their ideology, and in an attempt to persuade their intended audience to endorse their respective viewpoints. In Ch. 2 I focused on select passages in the BC in which Lucan conspicuously reacts to the Caesarian text: much like his opponent, Lucan butchers his plot to reenact chaos, but also to reveal the tendentiousness of the

DBC. For example, on reading that no negotiations took place while Caesar’s forces were camped at Ravenna and no proposals were ever made to the Senate to try to reach a peaceful compromise, but that Caesar trespassed the pomoerium with such Hannibalic swiftness as to plunge both the readers and the dumbfounded narrator himself into the chaos of illegality without a warning sign, the audience of the BC is invited to question the accuracy of Caesar’s exordium: to what extent was River a justifiable act? And is it true that Caesar would have preferred peace to war? Lucan’s silence on the negotiations preceding the march on Rome is no doubt meant to condition readers. The poet wants us to agree with him in calling Caesar a criminal. Similarly, Lucan’s silence on the occupation of Massilia in Book 3 has unfavorable implications, hinting at the fact that Caesar is unable to restore order out of chaos: if, to quote

116 Barchiesi, “[t]o bring something to an end is a clear sign of power,”1 when Lucan denies closure to the Massilian narrative and omits that the city was forced to capitulate he is denying Caesar his due power.

However, at an even more manifest level Lucan is waging war against Caesar by making him a negative character in his epic: this, too, is a strategy to neutralize the power and auctoritas of the Roman general who obtained a perpetual dictatorship before being stabbed in the Senate

House. In this chapter I aim to reassess the characterization of Caesar throughout the BC as an unprecedented, godlike human who is drastically (and apparently for no good reason) bereft of all power after committing unspeakable atrocities and seemingly going unpunished. I argue that the sudden metamorphosis of Caesar from a quasi-Jovian omnipotent figure who scorns human laws for nine books and yet finds himself in mortal peril in Book 10 makes sense within a ten- book design: granted that Lucan crafts a shapeless textual body in which certain events lack closure and an impression of overpowering randomness makes it difficult to understand what the finis of the poem might be, the peculiar development of the character of Caesar can be taken as a clue that Book 10 was indeed the anticlimactic finis that Lucan planned all along. As we shall see, in a universe where the superi dei are absent, divine nemesis does not strike and dictators are free to act as earthly gods, the poet chastises his all-powerful foe by cutting his (mis)deeds short and preventing us from reading about his final victories in the civil war.

3.2 JULIUS CAESAR

In the tumultuous years of the civil war, as he was writing to his friend Atticus, Cicero reserved some harsh criticism for Caesar. Famous, for example, is the question in which he

1 Barchiesi 1997: 207. 117 compares him to Hannibal, the foreign archenemy of the Roman Republic (Att. 7.11.1): “Are we talking of a Roman general, or rather of a Hannibal? Foolish and wicked man is he, and one who never even caught a glimpse of the shadow of good.”2 In Cicero’s opinion, the prestige (dignitas) in the name of which Caesar allegedly acted had no value if it lacked righteousness, and there was no righteousness in keeping a personal army, occupying Roman cities with military forces, planning reforms such as the abolition of debts and the pardon of all exiles, committing countless crimes and – in sum – acting like a supreme god.3 In another letter of the same period, using to sonorous effect, Cicero asks whether Caesar will consider the gods’ temples and the citizens’ houses to be his booty rather than his fatherland upon his arrival at Rome (Att.

7.13.1: quid est quod ab eo non metuas, qui illa templa et tecta non patriam, sed praedam putet?). In a third example, it appears that a criminal rage burns within Caesar as he keeps pursuing tyranny (Att. 10.4.2: ardet furore et scelere). The effects of this furor are devastating to the point that Roman magistrates may lose their heads: according to Curio, Cicero’s friend,

Caesar had threatened to kill the tribune Metellus because of his strenuous opposition to the unlawful appropriation of the Roman public treasury.4 Although the threat never turned into an actual murder, the episode was enough for Curio to believe that Caesar’s celebrated lenience

() towards political and military adversaries was a mask through which the future dictator of Rome aimed at preserving the favor of the people.5 Had their favor ever abated,

2 Utrum de imperatore populi Romani an de Hannibale loquimur? O hominem amentem et miserum qui ne umbram quidem umquam τοῦ καλοῦ viderit! 3 Cic. Att. 7.11.1: […] atque haec ait omnia facere se dignitatis causa! Ubi est autem dignitas nisi ubi honestas? Honestum igitur habere exercitum nullo publico consilio, occupare urbis civium quo facilior sit aditus ad patriam, χρεῶν ἀποκοπάς, φυγάδων καθόδους, sescenta alia scelera moliri, τὴν θεῶν µεγίστην ὥστ’ ἔχειν τυραννίδα? 4 On this episode see also Narducci 2002: 189; Fantham 1992: 140. Lucan recounts this episode at BC 3.114-53, using Metellus’ stubborn opposition as a pretext to emphasize Caesar’s irascibility and, therefore, present him in a way that finds no correspondent in other sources. See below, p. 123-24. 5 For a similar judgment of Caesar’s clementia, see Sen. Ben. 5.16.5: Ingratus ipse hostis ac victor; a Gallia Germaniaque bellum in urbem circumegit, et ille plebicola, ille popularis in circo Flaminio posuit propius, quam Porsinae fuerant. Temperavit quidem ius crudelitatemque victoriae; quod dicere solebat, praestitit: neminem 118 Caesar would doubtless have unleashed his most inveterate feature: his furor, indeed. These polemical tones abated once Caesar became dictator and they resurfaced in his literary afterlife with great vehemence, subsequent to his murder at the hands of Brutus and the other conspirators.6 It is worth remembering a section of the De Officiis in which the hostility against

Caesar anticipates to a degree that of Lucan (Off. 1.26):

Maxime autem adducuntur plerique, ut eos iustitiae capiat oblivio, cum in imperiorum, honorum, gloriae cupiditatem inciderunt. Quod enim est apud Ennium:

Núlla sancta sócietas Néc fides regni ést.

Id latius patet. Nam quicquid eius modi est, in quo non possint plures excellere, in eo fit plerumque tanta contentio, ut difficillimum sit servare “sanctam societatem.” Declaravit id modo temeritas C. Caesaris, qui omnia iura divina et humana pervertit propter eum, quem sibi ipse opinionis errore finxerat, principatum. Est autem in hoc genere molestum, quod in maximis animis splendidissimisque ingeniis plerumque exsistunt honoris, imperii, potentiae, gloriae cupiditates. Quo magis cavendum est, ne quid in eo genere peccetur.

The great majority of people, however, when they fall a prey to ambition for either military or civil authority, are carried away by it so completely that they quite lose sight of the claims of justice. For Ennius says:

“There is no fellowship inviolate, No faith is kept, when kingship is concerned;” and the truth of his words has an uncommonly wide application. For whenever a situation is of such a nature that not more than one can hold preeminence in it, competition for it usually becomes so keen that it is an extremely difficult matter to maintain a “fellowship inviolate.” We saw this proved but now in the effrontery of Gaius Caesar, who, to gain that sovereign power which by a depraved imagination he had conceived in his fancy, trod underfoot all laws of gods and men. But the trouble about this matter is that it is in the greatest souls and in the most brilliant geniuses that we usually find ambitions for civil and military authority, for power, and for glory, springing up; and therefore we must be the more heedful not to go wrong in that direction.7

Far from putting questions to Atticus, or from conjuring a Curio who may act as his mouthpiece in condemning Caesar and thus downplay his responsibility for the judgment which is being expressed, Cicero now attacks Caesar unequivocally: the perfect pervertit to signal the turmoil occidit nisi armatum. Quid ergo est? Ceteri arma cruentius exercuerunt, satiata tamen aliquando abiecerunt; hic gladium cito condidit, numquam posuit [The foe and conqueror of Pompeius was himself ungrateful. From Gaul and Germany he whirled war to Rome, and that friend of the people, that democrat, pitched his camp in the , even nearer to the city than Porsina’s had been. It is true that he used the cruel privileges of victory with moderation; the promise that he was fond of making he kept– he killed no man who was not in arms. But what of it? The others used their arms more cruelly, yet, once glutted, flung them aside; he quickly sheathed his sword, but never laid it down]. Trans. Basore 1935. 6 On the topic of Caesar’s turbulent relationship with Cicero and the latter’s varying judgment in his writings, see among others Marciniak 2008: 212-22; Peer 2008: 189-208; Citroni Marchetti 2000. 7 Trans. Miller 1913. 119 that the general caused in his temeritas, not only in relation to the human sphere, but also in relation to the divine one (with a hint at what Cicero must have thought of apotheosis) produces a powerful condemnation. When we couple this passage with Off. 2.84, in which Caesar is said to do evil for the pleasure of it,8 we gaze at the reckless and amoral conqueror who crosses the

Rubicon in Book 1 of Lucan’s BC. Still, this happens only for an instant: the subsequent acknowledgment that it is often a maximus animus splendidissimumque ingenium to harbor dangerous cravings restores some of Caesar’s positive traits. Therefore, I find it hard to agree with the assessment of Narducci, namely that “Cicerone si accanisce a disegnare il ritratto di

Cesare come quello di un essere mostruoso.”9 Even if we include in our reckoning of Cicero’s tirades against Roman tyrants the Philippics, where the damaging example set by Caesar famously reappears in the misdeeds of Antony and other Caesarians,10 Cicero’s outspokenness against the initiator of imperial rule at Rome never reaches heights that allow us to speak of

Caesar as a “monstrous being” in the modern sense of the expression. The most Catilinarian11

Caesar we read of in Cicero remains a complex, multifaceted figure endowed with a great spirit and a magnificent intellect.12 The glimpses of evil we catch in his behavior do not lead to a

8 Tanta in eo peccandi libido fuit, ut hoc ipsum eum delectaret, peccare, etiam si causa non esset [He (Caesar) was so inclined in doing evil, that it was precisely from doing evil that he derived pleasure, even if there was no reason for it]. 9 Narducci 2002: 235. 10 See, for example, Phil. 2.53.5: Caesar is said to be responsible for leading troops against his own fatherland (contra patriam). Cf. Phil. 2.53.10; 11.1.5; 13.14.8-10, where Antony and other Caesarian leaders also appear to be guilty of raising an army contra patriam. On Cicero’s condemnatory attitude towards Caesar’s potential heirs, see Gabba 1979: 125. 11 Narducci 2002: 205-16 aptly draws a parallel between Lucan’s Caesar and Catiline as depicted both in Cicero and in , focusing only on the most negative traits of the decadent aristocrat who tried to subvert the Republican order in 63 BCE. See, however, my observations below (n. 12). 12 After all, Catiline himself preserves some positive features in Cicero’s account. See, for example, Cael. 12-13, where the first sentence describing the man’s personality encapsulates magnificently his complexity: Habuit enim ille, sicuti meminisse vos arbitror, permulta maximarum non expressa signa, sed adumbrata lineamenta virtutum [For this man, as I think you remember, had countless features of excellence, if not firmly modeled, at least drawn in outline]. For Cicero’s ambiguous attitude towards his foe par excellence, see Langerwerf 2015: 155-66. Interesting observations are also found in Gildenhard 2010: 7-10, 81-85 and 129-32; Water 1970: 195-215. Surely one of the reasons why Cicero portrayed characters such as Caesar and Catiline in contradictory ways was to suit his rhetoric and 120 prolonged critique, nor is he cast as the embodiment of perversion in a persistently unambiguous way: towards the end of his speech in defense of king , delivered just a year before the

Ides of March, Cicero reserves kind words for the exceptionally benevolent attitude of Caesar during the years of the war. In fact, he writes, the atrocities the Romans were used to seeing in a climate of civil discord were never witnessed after Caesar became a victor (Deiot. 33: Quae semper in civili sensimus, te victore non vidimus). No decapitated heads displayed on the rostra, no relentless persecutions of citizens, no households overthrown, but a magnanimous leader who acted as if he were no tyrant, but as one who preserved the freedom of his fellow- citizens, born free (Deiot. 34: Et quem nos liberi, in summa libertate nati, non modo non tyrannum, sed clementissimum in victoria ducem vidimus).13 In other words, it seems that

Cicero’s vision of Caesar anticipates and illustrates Seneca’s Stoic take on humankind (Ben.

5.25.6): “a virtuous desire all the while resides in our minds, but it lies sluggishly, now from softness and disuse, now from ignorance of duty.”14 A spark of the benevolent divine principle known as λόγος seems to animate all men, including the conqueror of Rome at his worst.

If, as I showed, Narducci exaggerates Cicero’s criticism of Caesar, he is nevertheless on the right path when (in the very same book in which he calls Cicero’s Caesar monstrous) he observes that “il modello della clementia e della mitezza, che lo stesso Cesare si era sforzato di accreditare, sembra essersi imposto largamente nella tradizione.”15 Among the most eminent

the need of the moment. Therefore his rhetoric may undermine his reliability as a source, as we read in Hall 2009; Hutchinson 1998; Hardy 1924. In the section of the Pro Caelio I just quoted, for example, Cicero’s main purpose is to persuade the jury of the innocence of young Caelius. Granting alluring features to Catiline, with whom Caelius had associated for a short time, facilitates the orator’s task. A similarly opportunistic attitude is adopted toward Caesar: when Cicero had something to gain from him, he treated him well in his writings. After his death, though, he had no problem attacking him (see above, p. 119 and n. 6). Whatever the truth of Cicero’s opinion of Caesar may be, my main argument is not affected: my point is to show that Lucan’s extreme, unvaryingly negative representation of Caesar has no precedent in extant literature, and that it is essential to the understanding of the BC. 13 For another passage in which Caesar’s clementia is acknowledged with no reservations, see Cic. Lig. 15. 14 Inest interim animis voluntas bona, sed torpet modo deliciis ac situ, modo officiis inscitia. 15 Narducci 2002: 190. 121 representatives of this tradition are Plutarch and Suetonius (aside, of course, from Caesar himself in his commentarii). Although these authors do not deny the extraordinary ambition, boldness and thirst for glory that drove Caesar, at no point do they disregard his clementia or consider him a leader guided by a furor he could hardly bridle. Not even Seneca himself, who on occasion has no problem being severe in his judgment of Nero’s ancestor, can avoid admitting that Caesar was generally moderate in his anger and did everything he could to limit his opportunities to unleash it, including tactics such as burning letters addressed to Pompey by men he had pardoned during or after the civil war in order to force himself to disregard their previous political alliances.16

Compared to the historical tradition about Caesar’s life, which almost never denounces his deeds as plainly wicked,17 Cicero’s writings stand out for the harshness of their criticism of Caesar, and they constitute the closest approximation in prose to what Lucan accomplishes in his poetry.

However, Lucan outdoes Cicero, thus creating a unique character: truly, in this case, “un essere mostruoso.” An example of this characterization is Lucan’s treatment of the same episode recounted by Curio in Cicero’s letter to Atticus: in Book 3 of the BC, after a lament in which he wishes that the victorious general had limited his conquests to the Britons and Gauls, the poet describes Caesar’s arrival at Rome. “Already,” the same forceful adverb18 that also marks

Caesar’s first appearance in the poem,19 before he crosses the Rubicon, vehemently opens the way for his entrance to the city. And to convey impatience and swift motion,20 two fundamental

16 Sen. Ir. 2.23.4. On Seneca’s mostly favorable portrayal of Caesar insists Griffin 1976: 184. 17 Florus figures among the exceptions when he deems it plainly cruel (Hist. 2.13.50) that Caesar commanded his men to hit all of their enemies in the face during the battle of Pharsalus. Even in this case, though, opinions vary: cf. Plut. Caes. 45.2; App. BC 2.75, more moderate versions of the same episode. 18 Feeney 1991: 292 comments on the force of iam as a marker of Caesar’s powerful entry in the narrative of the BC. On the very meaningful and suggestive usage of such an abrupt opening device see also Ch. 2 p. 96. 19 Luc. BC 1.183. 20 Caesar’s three ruling passions in the poem, ira, spes and furor combine to trigger his inpatientia. For the latter as a typically negative feature that also characterizes other foes in the poem (such as Sextus at 6.424) and, in general, morally ambiguous figures in Latin literature (such as Otho in Tac. Hist. 2.40), see Narducci 2002: 210-17. See also 122 traits of Caesar throughout the BC, Lucan has him pass the heights of Anxur, the Pomptine marshes and the and temple of within the space of three lines. A moment later, after addressing the walls of his patria with contempt for those who inhabited them while he was fighting in Gaul,21 he enters a city paralyzed with fear (BC 3.97-98: urbem attonitam terrore subit). As Feeney has it, the people fear him because they think that he “will scatter the gods and burn their temples.”22 More importantly – and I will come back to this – they fear him because he appears to be godlike, and hence omnipotent both in will and in power (3.101: velle putant quodcumque potest). It is in this tense context that Metellus finds the courage to stand against him and tell him that he would rather die than let him plunder the public treasury. Caesar reacts with ferocious anger (3.133: magnam…iram),23 but he is able to repress it at first and forces himself simply to rebuke the tribune with scornful remarks. However, since Metellus still refuses to budge, Caesar’s anger grows so fierce that he looks around for a sword, forgetful of his proverbial clementia (3.142-43: Acrior ira subit: saevos circumspicit enses/ oblitus simulare togam). It is thanks to Cotta’s intervention that the murder is prevented.24 Caesar’s inability to control irrational impulses unless an external element (Cotta in this particular case)25 averts them proves how much Lucan distances his character from all previous representations. In Curio’s account as reported by Cicero, it is Caesar who never loses control: despite the exhortation of many to commit a massacre (Cic. Att. 10.4.8: permultos hortatores esse caedis), the necessity to

Marti 1945: 363: “Caesar is all impulse and passion.” Antithetical to this version of Caesar, who is unable to endure peace or respite from warfare (Luc. BC 2.650-51: numquam patiens pacis longaeque quietis/ armorum) is a Pompey, so accustomed to wear his toga and enjoy peace that he has forgotten his role as a military leader (1.130- 31: togae tranquillior usu/ dedidicit iam pace ducem). On this parallel, see Ahl 1976: 198. 21 Cf. Luc. BC 1.190-203, where it is the personification of Rome to address Caesar. Now, in Book 3, his patria cannot speak anymore. As Hunink 1992: 73 stresses, Rome has become Caesar’s “private possession.” Speaking up in order to divert the conqueror’s course in Book 1 has proven a worthless effort. 22 Feeney 1991: 295. 23 Quite more than “indignation,” as Duff 1928: 125 translates. 24 Luc. BC 3.145-53. 25 For considerations on the historicity of Cotta see Fantham 2010: 61. He might have been a tribune, even though he is unattested in the rest of the tradition. 123 maintain the favor of the people keeps his irascibility (iracundia) at bay. If Curio is right, something Cicero admits he does not know,26 Caesar may be faking how he truly feels, but his reason prevails over wrathful unreasonableness. According to Lucan, who adds to the picture the providential character of Cotta, the reverse of the impression we get from Cicero is true: if it were not for others controlling Caesar, there would be a ruinous caedes27 due to his ira. Even starker is the opposition between Lucan’s portrayal of Caesar and that of the historical tradition:

I could not find a single instance in Suetonius in which the name Caesar somehow appears in conjunction with the term ira.

Narducci’s monstrous Caesar may not figure in Cicero and in other prose writers, then, but he doubtlessly flourishes in Lucan’s poem: it is precisely in the BC that for the first time the most bestial elements of sheer and ungovernable violence are attributed to the Roman general and dictator, reaching unprecedented heights in the process. The irrational furor mentioned once by Cicero in the context of Curio’s apparently unverifiable account of the exchange with

Metellus becomes a defining quality of Caesar in the BC, just as much as is his irrepressible ira: the lightning-bolt to which Caesar is compared in the famous simile of Book 1, Jupiter’s emblematic weapon, rushes enraged (1.155: furit) to its appointed region of the sky; in contrast with Magnus and his army, depicted as they are in a state of frailty and trepidation as they settle in Campania (cf. 2.392-93: trepido descendens agmine Magnus),28 Caesar joyously rages amid his and his army’s weapons (2.439-40: Caesar in arma furens); and, of course, he is also furens when he denies burial to the victims of Pharsalus (7.797). Ira and furor are indeed closely

26 Cic. Att. 10.4.6. 27 For the pun on the name Caesar and the notion of caedes, as well as other dire notions evocative of what it truly means to be a Caesar, see Feldherr 2010: 76. On the pseudo-etymology of the name, see Pl. NH 7.47. 28 See below, p. 125 n. 31. 124 associated, the latter being a manifestation of the former:29 just before he adopts the image of the raging bolt to describe Caesar’s movements, Lucan informs us that it is the general’s own anger that impels him into battle in every corner of the earth (1.146-47): “He was alert and headstrong; his arms answered every summon of hope (spes) or wrath (ira).”30 Surprisingly, alongside anger, we read of hope. It is obvious, though, that Caesar’s spes must be of a perversely martial type, as two subsequent references clarify: a dishonorable (6.29: inproba) spes31 takes hold of him when he – mad about war (6.29: avidam belli…mentem) – plans a line of entrenchments to surround his enemies at Dyrrachium. Moreover, on the eve of Pharsalus, the greatest Roman massacre ever to occur, Caesar admits that he is “trembling with hope” (7.297: spe trepido).32 This, then, is hope of despotism, as we also read later on, when Lucan draws a sharp contrast between the

Caesarians, whose regni spes exhorts them to fight, and the Pompeians, who are terrified at the idea of their enemies’ regnum in Rome.33

Filled as he is with wrath and wicked hope, Caesar is aptly compared to a Libyan lion, a further marker of his monstrosity (1.205-12), and also a clear reference to the African furor of another archenemy of Rome, Hannibal.34 Elsewhere, Caesar is compared to a tigress (5.405), a

29 Thus we may say, as in Nix 2008: 282, that Caesar “rages in anger.” 30 I prefer a literal translation to Duff’s “ambition” and “resentment” (Duff 1928: 12), since it helps to highlight my point on Caesar’s three main irrational passions (cf. p. 122-23 n. 20). 31 Cf. Luc. BC 5.130-31: Phemonoe calls Appius’ urgency to discover the truth about his fate a spes inproba. Thus Lucan’s usage of the expression marks inherently impious human cravings: in the case of Caesar at Dyrrachium, his desire to further the hostilities against his fellow-citizens, protracting the nefas of the war he has provoked; in the case of Appius at Delphi, his desire to ask for the god’s aid in spite of his wicked cowardice: as Lucan himself tells us, the oracle is only benevolent toward righteous men (5.105-111), a concept to which Phemonoe herself hints when she says that Apollo might have fallen silent due to the unworthy nature of those asking for help (5.139-40). See also Ch. 1 p. 58-59. 32 This expression is grotesquely humorous, insofar as it plays on the recurrent idea of Pompey as trepidus (Luc. BC 2.392-93; 5.728; 8.7, 35, 756), or else full of fear, while he is facing an ever intrepidus Caesar (5.317, 658; 10.15). The only time Caesar is said to be trepidus is because of regni spes. We find a similar representation of Caesar in Virg. Georg. 4.69-70. See Lanzarone 2016: 298. 33 Luc. BC 7.386: metus hos regni, spes excitat illos. 34 Ahl 1976: 199 and 107-12. See also Ch. 2 p. 98 n. 95. 125 gale, a fire (3.363)35 and even Etna if it were sealed up (10.447). These comparisons, drawn both from the and from the natural worlds, forge in our minds the image of an entity as unpredictable and blind as the lightning-bolt that strikes terror into men’s hearts in Book 1. Thus, human is a reductive term for Lucan’s Caesar. Not even the Massilians’ prayer to remain neutral and unscathed (3.303-55) can tame his superhuman passions. Rather, he reveals them once more in a blasphemous response (3.356-72): even though he is hastening to the West, he has time to destroy Massilia, and his troops should rejoice at the free gift of warfare that he concedes them

(3.361: obvia…fatorum munere bella). Here more than elsewhere we find out that Caesar’s desire for bella is entirely self-gratifying: there is no strategic calculus behind the siege of

Massilia, but only a will to destroy the place. No wonder Marti, after noting that Caesar’s actions in the BC are “controlled by irrational emotions”36 and that his end is “the criminal assumption of power after a criminal civil war,”37 speaks of him as “a demon out of Hades, a magnificently evil fiend, a superhuman antagonist worthy of the saintly Cato.”38 This is no exaggeration, for

Lucan does all he can to make us think in this way (BC 7.567-73):

Quacumque vagatur, sanguineum veluti quatiens Bellona flagellum, Bistonas aut Mavors agitans, si verbere saevo Palladia stimulet turbatos aegide currus, nox ingens scelerum est; caedes oriuntur et instar inmensae vocis gemitus, et pondere lapsi pectoris arma sonant confractique ensibus enses.

Wherever he moves, like Bellona brandishing her bloody scourge, or like urging on the Bistones, when with fierce blows he lashes on his steeds terrified by the aegis of , a mighty darkness of crime and slaughter arises, and a groaning like a great cry, and a rattle of the breastplate when a man falls heavily, and a snapping of blade against blade.

35 It should be noted that in this passage it is Caesar who views himself as a force of nature; Lucan’s opinion of Caesar and Caesar’s opinion of himself in the poem coincide perfectly. See Ahl 1976: 198. 36 Marti 1945: 363. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 126 As soon as he materializes on the battlefield of Pharsalus, Caesar is characterized by a rapid sequence of allegorical images that evoke his impulse-driven nature: he embodies warfare, and the gory detail of Bellona’s whip adds a nuance of bestiality39 to his countenance. He is also

Mars-like when he flogs his steeds in order to throw himself into the midst of slaughter more swiftly: the juxtaposition of two supernatural forces closely linked to the same notion (the abstract personification of warfare and the Olympian god promulgating warfare) cannot be a case of gratuitous rhetorical excess. Rather, it is a calculated attempt to make Caesar look even more monstrous, while also suggesting his omnipotence on the battlefield.40

Marius and Sulla, themselves protagonists of heinous crimes in Book 2 of the BC,41 anticipate Caesar to a degree, but he outdoes everyone else: in Book 7, after likening Caesar to the gods of war, Lucan invents an anecdote according to which the victorious general banqueted among the corpses of the fallen the morning after Pharsalus and refused them burial.42 No image could be more inhuman:43 not even Hannibal, a proper match for Caesar in the simile of the

Libyan lion in Book 1,44 can measure up to him anymore.45 In fact, Hannibal reportedly buried the consul Aemilius Paullus at Cannae as a sign of respect for the enemy.46

39 Cf. Sen. Ir. 2.35.6: sanguineum quatiens dextra Bellona flagellum [Bellona shaking her bloody scourge with her right hand]. Seneca and Lucan draw on Virgil (Aen. 8.703), who first resorted to the suggestive image of Bellona. 40 Nor is it the only time that Lucan uses a double simile: see Lanzarone 2016: 410-11 and, especially, Esposito 2012: 113, who deals at length with the twofold example of Orestes and Agave as mythical counterparts of Caesar at BC 7.777-80. The fact that Lucan multiplies his mythical references, especially when he talks about Caesar, allows us to see a systematic pattern. Thus, it is proof that Lucan aims at forging a character of unprecedented wickedness: not a man, but rather a god on earth, as I argue at length in the second half of this chapter. 41 Luc. BC 2.68-232. 42 Ibid. 7.787-803. There is no doubt that the scene is fictional. No other source mentions anything remotely similar to a banquet among corpses. It may, however, be true that the fallen did not receive a proper burial. See Gioseffi 1995: 503. On the significance of this scene, see also Ch. 1 p. 36. 43 To be fair, this image has a precedent in Luc. BC 2.121-24, where the narrator remembers that the head of the orator Mark Antony was placed on Sulla’s dinner table. For a similar account see Val. Max. Mem. 9.2.1. Still, the amount of slaughtered bodies surrounding Caesar as he peacefully eats his breakfast in Book 7 makes this anecdote a much more repulsive example, within the fiction of BC, than the perhaps historical banquet of Sulla. 44 See above, p. 125 n. 34. 127 It is clear from my overview thus far that Lucan’s Caesar is an exceptional foe who transcends not only the boundaries of prior biographical accounts, but also the historical boundaries of verisimilitude, in that Caesar comes to resemble an evil supernatural entity with more in common with the animal kingdom and heavenly phenomena than with humankind. For

Marti, Lucan wanted to create a symbol, an allegory of vice to counterbalance Cato, who would be, instead, the allegory of virtue: since in the Stoic view men participate in the divine (and Marti believes Lucan to be essentially faithful to Stoicism), she concludes that the main characters in the BC are personifications of abstract notions such as Virtue, Wisdom and Wickedness.47 Her idea was inspired by Sikes, the first scholar to read the BC in accordance with Stoic principles and brilliantly to intuit that Lucan replaces in part the Olympian gods with abstract notions.48 In fact, even at first glance, it is evident that fortuna (often also in its personified version, Fortuna) and fatum are granted a far more active role in the poem than traditional deities,49 as is also the case with men like Caesar and Cato and the vices or virtues they embody. Sikes went on to postulate that if the Roman personifications of abstract notions were, in fact, less abstract and shadowy, Lucan would have probably granted them a role as important as that of the Olympians

45 On the gruesomeness of this episode see Johnson 1987: 102-34. Although I do not share his opinion that Lucan’s intent is parodic when he exaggerates his portrayal of Caesar, his technical analysis is often acute. 46 Luc. BC 7.799-803: Non illum Poenus humator/ consulis et Libyca succensae lampade Cannae/ conpellunt, hominum ritus ut servet in hoste,/ sed meminit nondum satiata caedibus ira,/ cives esse suos [When the Carthaginian buried a consul, Cannae was lit up by African torches; but that example did not move Caesar to observe the rule of humanity in treatment of the foe: his rage is not yet glutted with the slaughter, and he remembers that the men are his own countrymen]. 47 Marti 1945: 361-63. 48 Sikes 1923: 194-209. 49 Besides, the names invoked to refer to supernatural forces in the BC are to some degree interchangeable: “it makes no practical difference whether the poet says ‘di’/ ‘superi’ or ‘fortuna’/ ‘fatum’” (Friedrich 20102: 387). What Friedrich means is, in essence, that all these supernatural forces, together with the personified version of Fortuna, seem to be uniformly and coherently operating in favor of Caesar. Yet we do well to remember that the gods and fortune symbolize inherently distinct types of supernatural powers, enacting throughout the text the same dichotomy between providence and randomness that Figulus posits in Book 1 (641-45) and Lucan in Book 2 (1-15). 128 in previous epics.50 The problem with Marti and Sikes’ interpretation, however, is rather obvious nowadays: reading the BC as a Stoic poem that champions Stoic values is a reductive approach, if not a misleading one. Even if one does not accept Masters’ theory that Lucan deliberately engineers pointed contradictions throughout his text in order to “fracture the solidarity of the narrating voice”51 and thus to represent the state of unsolvable paradox and scission that internecine strife entails – “a war where no-one is right, and where every position is a paradox, a contradiction”52 – one must admit that Lucan’s oxymoronic stances on determinism and sheer chance53 forbid a univocally Stoic reading of the BC.54 The complexity of Lucan’s philosophical beliefs also emerges in the representation of Cato: if he were so beautifully Stoic as some of the past scholarship wanted him to be, he would surely have refused to take part in the unspeakable evil (nefas) of civil war. And yet, he chooses to take part in it.55

Granted that Lucan did not create personifications of Stoic principles in order to impart a lesson on ethics through them, all we said so far of Caesar’s embodiment of supernatural evil holds true. Why, then, does Lucan distance his Caesar from a more historical, more traditional

50 Sikes 1923: 205-209. 51 Masters 1992: 88. Cf. Bartsch 1997: 103-108. 52 Masters 1992: 89. 53 Intertwined to these opposite stances is the very likely possibility that the gods participate in human events, but are malevolent, as in Narducci 1979; Jal 1962. In fact, there are several examples in which Lucan accuses the gods of malevolence: BC 1.522-25; 4.807-809; 7.647; 8.597, 800. Surely this is inadmissible in Stoicism, as Seneca tells us in his De Prouidentia. 54 I am referring to Lucan’s apostrophe to Jupiter (BC 2.1-15), where the poet juxtaposes the possibility that Jupiter established the chain of causes for eternity and the possibility that fortune brings on events at random without clearly preferring one or the other stance. The same contradictory stances are first expressed by Nigidius Figulus in his brief prophecy (1.641-45) and resurface at various points throughout the poem, most famously in Book 7, where Lucan appears to emphasize his anti-theistic stance and claims that men deceive themselves in deeming Jupiter their ruler (7.445-47). Given her acute reading elsewhere, I find it astonishing that Marti reduces Lucan’s persistent and violent attacks against the gods to “passing moods” (1945: 357). More on point is, instead, Friedrich (20102: 369- 410): in his view, Lucan systematically opposes Virgil by antiphrasis. This must also characterize the poet’s treatment of the divine. Against Virgil’s plan to construct a glorious Roman civilization in accordance with the gods’ benevolent attitude, Lucan creates a world where men express through doubts and skeptical attitudes and deeds their revolt against any belief in the gods’ providential plan. In sum, Lucan himself, whether through inability or consummate art, does not raise himself, or will not raise himself, to the level of the Stoic vision of the universe (as in Adatte 1965: 238). 55 Bartsch 1997: 117-123. 129 and (we may say) more anthropomorphic representation of Caesar? Part of the answer lies in the poet’s attitude to Caesar and the Caesars who succeeded him on the throne, including Nero. It is as if Lucan wants his poetry to tell us that the Caesarian lineage is altogether monstrous. Linked to this notion is also the idea of the epic magnification of the historical truth: Lucan, despite the disparaging judgment of all those ancient critics who registered an opinion on the matter,56 is a poet, not a historian, and he is intent on what might happen (οἷα ἂν γένοιτο), not on the actual facts (τὰ γενόµενα).57 As a result, he intertwines history and fiction in order to achieve particular effects or to stir particular emotions: for example, writing that Caesar challenged unknown gods as if they were on a par with him in Book 3, when he desecrates a sacred grove with his axe, is not what actually happened, but it serves to enrich Lucan’s characterization of Caesar in a way that historical facts alone cannot achieve. Beyond this preliminary answer, however, I believe that a lot more needs to be said. I argue that the underpinnings of a fictional episode such as the desecration of the grove are key not only to understanding Lucan’s Caesar and his role in the BC, but also the larger meaning of the epic as a whole. Thus, in order to develop my approach, I turn to a topic I mentioned earlier and promised I would come back to: Caesar as godlike.

3.3 DIVUS JULIUS

When he is about to enter Rome in Book 3, despite his effort to convey an image of harmlessness and peace,58 Caesar instills tremendous fear into his fellow-citizens, so much so

56 Faced with the innovativeness of the BC, and “so comfortable with their notion of what an historical epic should look like” (Feeney 1991: 252), the ancients simply denied that Lucan was a poet. Cf. an anonymous accessus Lucani preserved in the 12th century Tegernsee collection of introductions to Latin school authors, in which the argument is reversed and Lucan is recommended as a poet. But this is an exception, and a late one. 57 As in Aristotle’s distinction (Poet. 9.1451a-b). See Lintott 1971: 488-89. 58 Luc. BC 3.71-73: Haec ubi sunt provisa duci, tunc agmina victor/ non armata trahens sed pacis habentia voltum,/ tecta petit patriae [When he had taken these precautions, the victorious general led his troops, unarmed and wearing 130 that the senators are ready to concede anything he asks for, even divine honors (BC 3.110: templa).59 In the eyes of all but – it appears – Metellus, it is useless to mount any resistance, because the general’s will is as indomitable as his martial power (3.101: velle…quodcumque potest).60 For neither the disheartened crowds of Romans facing him, nor us readers and critics of the text, is it a mystery that Lucan’s Caesar appears to be a “Zeus-like being whose attacks wither and destroy all in their way.”61 A few lines after the poet’s acknowledgment of the popular belief that Caesar can accomplish anything he desires, a striking expression strengthens the idea that such a belief is true (3.108): “Caesar was everything; everything was Caesar”

(Omnia Caesar erat). A propos of the figurative art of the imperial period, Zanker points out exactly what Lucan sums up in those three words. As he speaks of the overzealous imperial propaganda and of the decisive way in which emperors appropriated everything that may have previously held a different symbolic value, religious or non-religious, he admits that “owing to the dominance of official imagery, it became impossible to find a means of individual expression.” 62 Simply put, Caesar monopolizes everything by his inescapable presence, including all religious meaning.63 He controls everything and everything depends on him. In fact,

Lucan’s Caesar acts like a traditional Olympian deity: he constantly intervenes in the narrative action and propels it thanks to his superior power; he is singlehandedly the divine machinery of the BC. We have already had a taste of it in the passage from Book 7 I quoted above,64 in which

Caesar is juxtaposed to Bellona and Mars: as I said, this is no gratuitous rhetoric. Quite the aspect of peace, to the city of his birth]. Ahl 1976: 204 is wrong when he says that it is at 5.381-84 that Caesar enters Rome with unarmed men for the first time, “something he could not have done in book 3.” Caesar did it. 59 The first temple in honor of divus Julius was consecrated by the Senate in 42 BCE, two years after the celebration of the ludi victoriae Caesaris. 60 See above, p. 123. 61 Ahl 1976: 198. 62 Zanker 1988: 278. 63 Feeney 1991: 295. 64 At p. 126. 131 straightforwardly, the simile tells us that Caesar, Bellona and Mars are equals. The rest of the passage further clarifies this point (BC 7.557-67):

Hic Caesar, rabies populis stimulusque furorum, ne qua parte sui pereat scelus, agmina circum it vagus atque ignes animis flagrantibus addit. Inspicit et gladios, qui toti sanguine manent, qui niteant primo tantum mucrone cruenti, quae presso tremat ense manus, quis languida tela, quis contenta ferat, quis praestet bella iubenti, quem pugnare iuvet, quis voltum cive perempto mutet; obit latis proiecta cadavera campis; volnera multorum totum fusura cruorem opposita premit ipse manu.

Here Caesar, maddening the men and stirring up their frenzy, moved to and fro round the ranks and added fuel to the fire of their passion, that crime might not anywhere be wrought in vain: his eye marks whether their blades stream with blood from point to hilt, or glitter still with only the points reddened; whose hand trembles as it grasps the sword; whose arm is slack and whose braced; who merely obeys the order to fight, and who delights in it; and who changes countenance when he has slain a countryman. He visits the corpses that sprawl on the wide plain; with his own hand he staunches the wound that would otherwise pour out all the blood of many a man.

A glance at the Iliad quickly yields unmistakable parallels between the way Lucan’s Caesar behaves at Pharsalus and the way the Olympian gods typically behave in time of war: as Athena does with ,65 or Enyo and Ares with the Trojans,66 or Apollo with Hector,67 so also

Caesar motivates his men; just as Athena and Apollo carefully watch the duel between Hector and Ajax,68 so also Caesar encompasses with his superior gaze all that is taking place around him on the plain of Thessaly, able as he effortlessly is to discern at first glance the cowards and the bold amid his ranks; like Virgil’s Venus with her beloved Aeneas,69 so also Caesar is able to mend his own men’s wounds. It is no coincidence that Lovatt points out in relation to this

65 Hom. Il. 5.120-32. 66 Ibid. 5.590-5. 67 Ibid. 15.220-70. 68 Ibid. 7.58-66. 69 Virg. Aen. 12.411-24. 132 passage that Caesar – in contrast with Pompey, who witnesses his defeat from afar70 – “shares in the divine gaze; not a god watching from the mountain, but more a god intervening in the battle.”71 So determined and decisive is Caesar’s intervention that it even produces a visual effect: in addition to the images of Mars and Bellona that Lucan conjures for us, we read that a huge night of crime arises (7.571: nox ingens scelerum est), some form of divine manifestation that “also works aurally.” 72 Clearly, without Caesar’s godlike presence, supervision and intervention, the battle may end sooner than it does, and so too would also Lucan’s narrative.

And clearly, despite Caesar’s wicked purpose and the irrational impulses he embodies and fuels

(7.557: rabies populis stimulusque furorum), he is going to be successful. Lucan’s Caesar thus enjoys the divine features that Lovatt and Nix,73 more recently, but also others74 have ascribed to him. However, I believe that scholars have not analyzed in full the implications of their findings, with the result that the importance of Caesar’s divine status in the BC has been underestimated.

In fact, we get the impression that Lucan’s association of Caesar with godlike powers is more an occasional phenomenon than a persistent, pervasive characterization. In other words, the poet’s effort would amount to an accoutrement of epithets, allegories and allusions that add color to the wicked portrayal of the Roman foe, only to make him look worse than he truly was. A reading

70 Luc. BC 7.647-711. 71 Lovatt 2013: 118, my italics. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid. Cf. Nix 2008: 281-94. Lovatt’s discussion, given the vast scope of her book, on the possible significances of the act of gazing in the epic tradition, is by necessity concise: Caesar shares in the divine gaze because Lucan twists the epic universe. Other characters, Pompey above all, are unable to elevate themselves to the rank of Caesar, so that their viewpoint is narrow and limited. Nix instead argues that Lucan’s equation of Caesar and Jupiter alludes to Caesar’s self-destruction: the dictator, identified with Jupiter’s lightning-bolt, hence with Jupiter himself, attacks the god’s temples at Rome (thus, ironically, his own temples). As a quasi-divine figure, he fails and destroys himself. Not even Nix, though, goes on to explain what this peculiar representation of Caesar might entail for the meaning of the poem as a whole. 74 Henderson 20102: 473-74; Fantham 2003: 248-49; Hershkowitz 1998: 221-22; Putnam 1995: 228-29; Feeney 1991: 293-98; Johnson 1987: 102-34; Ahl 1976: 198 and 284-85; Grimal 1970: 56-59. 133 such as this one is, however, quite reductive. Furthermore, no connection has been established between Caesar’s godlike status and the structure and meaning of the BC.75

Adopting a rather narrow viewpoint, scholars have argued the following: either Lucan occasionally grants Caesar divine attributes and attitudes because he wants to unmask the divine pretenses of Roman emperors;76 or to show his character’s all too human shortcomings;77 or else to show us that a megalomaniac dictator who commits atrocities without paying for them is the natural consequence of a poem without acting gods.78 All this is true, but it is not enough. In particular, I wish to press the latter point further by arguing that Lucan’s Caesar is not just a megalomaniac whose traits are reminiscent of a Jupiter. In my view, the poet’s portrayal of

Caesar as omnipotent in will and power is pervasive and decisive, suggesting that Caesar himself is an acting god, and as such he is the only acting god in the whole of the BC. Thus, the BC is in a way Caesar’s own poem, much as Rome in Book 3 is his own possession when he enters it

75 Henderson, building on an argument first made by Martindale 1984: 64-79, attempts a deconstructionist reading of the BC meant to establish a connection between Caesar and the structure, compositional criteria and meaning of the poem. However, instead of focusing on Lucan’s fictional Caesar and his godlike status, as I do, he focuses on the heir of Caesar, Nero: “his [Lucan’s] poem courts confrontation with the ‘Caesarian’ death it re-presents and as if it seeks to corroborate its own meanings proceeds toward a goal of premature termination, to be imposed by outside force” (20102: 438). Henderson suggests that the abrupt end of the BC, imposed by Nero’s outside violence against Lucan, on the one hand is not the end Lucan planned, but on the other hand exemplifies beautifully the essence of the poem, an epic project significantly unfinishable in its rebellion against the superior power of the emperor. My focus on the relationship between Caesar and the BC is different, yet not necessarily in contrast with Henderson’s. 76 A point made by Grimal 1970: 56-59, who demonstrates that when Caesar responds to Roma in Book 1, he uses a language that anticipates the official register of the imperial religious system set up by Augustus and the Julio- Claudian dynasty. Thus he speaks with the same divine authority that his successors tried to convey through their propaganda. Similarly Feeney 1991: 293-98, who concludes that by exposing the cult of the Caesars, Lucan is scorning and condemning it. 77 Thus we are meant to laugh at Caesar’s divinity, because it is so untrue that it cannot be explained if not in terms of parody. This is the view in Johnson 1987: 102-34. 78 Fantham 2003: 248-49; Hershkowitz 1998: 221-22; Putnam 1995: 228-29. Their interpretation owes much to Ahl 1976: 198 ff. and 284-85. He, in turn, draws on Marti 1945: 352-76, but refutes her univocally Stoic framework. According to these scholars both Caesar and Cato are superhuman and, as such, rather unsympathetic characters whose self-confidence is unmatched in the poem. They are both unafraid of death and therefore, to some extent, triumph over death. Since he leaves the Olympian gods out of the picture, Lucan can build his characters as he does. Still, neither Caesar nor Cato has the power of gods. See also Narducci 2002: 187-261 and 368-422. In his depiction of Caesar and Cato, he finds himself in agreement with the ideas I sketched above, but he also refrains from equating the two to godlike figures. Thus, Caesar may be a mixture of Seneca’s Atreus, Hannibal, Marius and Sulla, Catiline and Alexander the Great, but he is no god. 134 unarmed. Without Caesar, there cannot be Lucan’s epic. As the only acting god in the poem,

Caesar is also the fundamental driving force generating the poem. Lucan’s Caesar shapes history, by shaping the nefarious events of the civil war (nefas) that are being narrated. Thus, he shapes the poem itself, which is precisely about nefas– a feat beyond the capabilities of a more ordinary mortal. An epic god can do as much, however, because the gods “are set off from humans by their immense licentia, their power for self-indulgence.”79 As we have already seen when he enters Rome, or in his exchange with Metellus, or in the scornful treatment of the

Massilians, Caesar indulges himself all he wants without paying the price: the Massilians trust to his haste, thinking he has more important things to do than destroy them, but nothing is prohibited to Caesar in the BC. He can delay the day of Pharsalus in order to shatter a small force of Greeks (3.358-60: “Vana movet Graios nostri fiducia cursus./ Quamvis Hesperium mundi properemus ad axem,/ Massiliam delere vacat”). He can do anything.

Is Caesar the only god in the poem? No, but he is the only one to be depicted in action.

Throughout the poem, though, Caesar receives help from personified Fortuna,80 herself a divine force of some sort, as Friedrich demonstrates.81 Moreover, Lucan often addresses other gods in a

79 Vernant and Vidal-Nacquet 1973: 128; see also Little 1970: 92-96. 80 Or from fortuna with no capitalized initial. In fact, it does not make much difference: see above, p. 116 n. 49. 81 Friedrich 20102: 386-87. His basic assumption is that “Fortune takes over sovereignty, but the old gods do not completely disappear, but maintain a shadowy existence beside her, powerless against her favorites (3.448): ‘servat multos fortuna nocentis/ et tantum miseris irasci numina possunt’ [Fortune guards many guilty men, and the gods can only take out their anger on the unlucky].” I find myself essentially in agreement with Friedrich, but I would add that Caesar shares Fortune’s sovereignty, insofar as she is nothing more than a name invoked for support, whereas it is Caesar himself who enacts his (as well as her) omnipotent will through a display of omnipotent power on earth. Quite acute is also Friedrich’s observation on the powerlessness of the other gods as suggested by the passage he quotes, which implies that even though some gods might not like the nocentis aided by Fortune, their only solace would be to unleash their anger against others (the miseri). This could explain, for example, Luc. BC 2.1-4: Iamque irae patuere deum, manifestaque belli/ signa dedit mundus, legesque et foedera rerum/ praescia monstrifero vertit natura tumultu/ indixitque nefas [And now heaven’s wrath was revealed; the universe gave clear/ signs of battle; and nature, conscious of the future,/ reversed the laws and ordinances of life, and proclaimed civil war/ while breeding monsters amid the general chaos]. Even if it is Caesar, with the aid of some foolishly loyal men such as Scaeva and Vulteius, who makes most of the nefas of the war, everybody must pay, and the wrath of heaven punishes everyone, since it cannot punish Caesar alone, who is Fortune’s favorite. However, this line of thought does not fully work, because there are times, as during the Ilerda campaign, in which the other gods are said to support Caesar just as 135 way that suggests the possibility of their existence, as when he specifies that Apollo is responsible for the matron’s frenzy in Book 1, or when he apostrophizes Jupiter at the beginning of Book 2. There are also references to a sort of harmony between Caesar and the other gods: when Petreius slaughters the Caesarian troops at Ilerda in Book 4, responding with bloodshed to the initial reconciliation between Caesarians and Pompeians and thereby forcing Caesar’s hand,

Caesar does not yield to violence and confirms his willingness to pardon Pompey’s men in spite of an act of open cruelty against him and his soldiers.82 On that occasion, Lucan remarks that the future dictator of Rome recognizes in Petreius’ revolt the hand of heaven, in spite of the loss of many soldiers (4.254-55: Tu, Caesar, quamvis spoliato milite multo, agnoscis superos).83 In fact, it is thanks to this act of gratuitous violence that he shall be remembered as the leader of the better cause (cf. 4.259: dux causae melioris ), even though his clementia is merely a façade, as when he sheds crocodile tears over Pompey’s mutilated head in Book 9.84 Thus the superi, much like Fortuna, cooperate with their equal on earth, Julius Caesar. The same cooperation can be discerned before the battle of Pharsalus: never have the gods been closer to Caesar than on this occasion, he says to his disheartened soldiers in an attempt to reinvigorate them (7.297-98: haud umquam vidi tam magna daturos/ tam prope me superos). In no way, though, is Caesar ever depicted as inferior to the gods: as we have seen, in Book 1 he is the lightning-bolt, and hence he embodies the power of Jupiter. In Book 7, he is Mars and Bellona. And in Book 4, after listening to Afranius, who tries to disassociate himself from Petreius’ cruelty and begs for pardon, he concedes pardon with an unperturbed expression (4.363-64: at Caesar facilis voltuque

Fortune does. We may therefore tweak Friedrich’s point and conclude that the superi are not so much “powerless” in front of Caesar, as much as his willing accomplices. In Narducci’s words, we find ourselves dealing with some sort of “provvidenza crudele” (Narducci 1979). See also Ch. 1 p. 56-57. 82 Luc. BC 4.202-52. 83 Ibid. 4.121-23. 84 Ibid. 9.1035-43. 136 serenus/ flectitur): the gesture and the language readily recall Jupiter, “whose brow was always serene.”85

As a result of this peculiar characterization of Caesar, I suggest that it makes perfect sense that the poem stops in Book 10, because it is there for the first time that the general loses his godlike status and appears to be a frightened, paralyzed mortal who is unsure about his future and survival. For the first time, Fortuna seems to act in favor of the now deceased Pompey, whose shadow and memory are still operating on earth after his demise at the hands of Ptolemy.

For the first time, as we shall see, Caesar can only look back, not forward, and he can only behold his glorious past rather than foreshadow a victorious future. This is no coincidence, I argue, nor should it be labeled as an oddity without further explanation.86 Rather, I believe that it can and should be interpreted as a clue that the BC exists only so long as its superhuman creator,

Caesar, has enough power to sustain it.

In the Aeneid, in spite of Aeneas’ efforts to live up to his mission, it is Jupiter’s invisible scheme that substantiates and empowers such a mission: Jupiter, the supreme ruler and guarantor of justice, forges the history of the Trojan exiles and of the Roman civilization that will be initiated by them. In the BC, we never hear from Jupiter, we doubt his power, we even doubt his existence:87 Caesar, the fulmen that never rests, has now taken his place. Servius, Virgil’s

85 OLD 1.2.2. See also Inscr. Murat. 1978.5. Surprisingly, Masters 1992: 85 comments on Caesar’s unusual serenity but misses the parallel with Jupiter, as do also Thompson and Bruère 1970: 160. 86 See Ahl 1976: 306: “Yet book 10 shows him [Lucan] in a mood of greater confidence. Caesar suddenly becomes more vulnerable, and Caesarism less monolithic.” Although he acknowledges Caesar’s uncharacteristic behavior, Ahl does not provide an explanation. In Ahl’s view, many things in the poem are unexplainable, simply because the poem is not finished. Cf. Gagliardi 1978: 249, who thinks that Lucan is trying to make Caesar look more human. I agree, but I add that Caesar’s ‘humanity’ is only made manifest after nine books of unrestrained godlike behavior, and that the abrupt shift from divine to human is key to understanding not only Book 10, but also what comes before it. 87 The most striking anti-theistic statement in the poem occurs a moment before Crastinus throws his javelin and begins the Battle of Pharsalus (Luc. BC 7.445-47): Sunt nobis nulla profecto/ numina: cum caeco rapiantur saecula casu,/ mentimur regnare Iovem [In very truth there are no gods who govern mankind: though, when the ages are swept along by blind chance, we lie to say that Jupiter reigns]. See above, p. 129 n. 54. 137 commentator, states that epic essentially consists of divine and human characters (ex diuinis humanisque personis).88 By granting Caesar godlike status in his poem, Lucan unifies the pair that tradition had always kept separated. In doing so, he is also exacerbating an Ovidian idea:

Ovid made it one of his paramount tasks to problematize the relationship between the human and the divine in the Metamorphoses, demonstrating through continuous and varied interactions between gods and men that it is hard to place either or both in clearly defined categories. Already during the cosmogony out of primeval chaos, in the proem, lines appear to be blurred: for example, Ovid fails to specify whether the supreme creator (mundi fabricator) makes the first humans, thereby bestowing upon them a divine element, or whether they emerge from the earth’s mud, without divine interference. After all, the apparition of the human race is a metamorphosis of the earth, from the earth.89 This initial ambiguity is deliberate and instrumental to the creation of a universe of “disorderly order” (Met. 1.433: discors concordia, an expression that Lucan evidently found so appealing that he famously transposes it into his own poem at BC 1.98, when he describes the shaky pact among the triumvirs), in which gods transgress into the realm of men and men into the realm of gods. With his Caesar, Lucan enacts an altogether different and novel type of transgression: man and god are one and the same. Furthermore, Lucan’s deification of

Caesar before his actual death in 44 BCE, before the apparition of the sidus Iulium and before the apotheosis conceded by the senate,90 is diametrically opposed to a fundamental trait of epic since

Homer: the anthropomorphism of gods. To human-like superi Lucan opposes a godlike man.

Therefore, I believe that Lucan’s Caesar can also be seen as an additional example of the poet’s

88 Serv. Verg 1.4. 89 Ov. Met. 1.69-88. 90 The comet allegedly appears during Augustus’ celebration of the ludi, in 44 BCE (Plut. Caes. 69.3; Pl. NH 2.93). 138 tendency to subvert through antiphrasis the conventions set by his predecessors, Virgil above all.91

How is it, then, that Lucan outdoes Ovid and Virgil and deifies a man? It is, mostly, through the monstrosity I have analyzed in the first half of this chapter. Caesar’s wicked nature, his swiftness of action, his furor, ira and perverse spes and the improbability that anyone can stop him are signs that Lucan aims at distancing his character from the mortal domain: like an epic god, Caesar is governed by irrational impulses, and those impulses are often self-gratifying, excessive and unjust. Yet, as happens for epic gods, irrational impulses are no hindrances to victory: gods may not get exactly what they want, but they are nevertheless victorious against all challenges brought against them, whether they deserve victory or not, and whether or not they act in a morally upright way.92 To demonstrate this it is enough to turn once more to the

Metamorphoses, of course an important source of inspiration for Lucan:93 when Lycaon, the first

Ovidian character to undergo a transformation, transgresses against Jupiter by offering him a human sacrifice and he is turned into a wolf,94 the gods are said to burn with anger at the thought of exacting their revenge (Met. 1.199-200: Confremuere omnes studiisque ardentibus ausum/ talia deposcunt), an early mention of their reflex-like recourse to the same emotions that infiltrate and embolden Lucan’s Caesar. In general, the gods’ irrational impulses and the

91 On Lucan’s antiphrastic process of writing, see Casali 2011: 81-109; Narducci 2002: 75-87; Barnes 2000: 268- 72; Ahl 1976: 64-67; Conte 1974: 43-44 and Conte 1966: 42-53; von Albrecht 1970: 281-89. 92 In a sense, it is precisely Caesar’s godlike status that makes him successful through most of the narrative despite the predominance of his irrational impulses. In fact, Caesar’s own work on the civil war proves that a meticulously calibrated restraint of irrational impulses was a fundamental tool by which an ambitious man might hope to secure despotic power. Throughout his commentary, Caesar never indulges in furor or ira. The incident of the tribune Metellus, an unverifiable anecdote in Cicero and an example of near-lethal irascibility in Lucan, is conspicuously absent in Caesar. And the fact that sources like Suetonius, Seneca and Plutarch are in agreement when stating that Caesar was a moderate leader suggests that his historical persona was closer to that of his own commentaries than to Lucan’s version. 93 See Keith 2011: 111-32; Tarrant 2002: 349-60; Wheeler 2002: 361-80; Esposito 1994: 87-164; Masters 1992: 25- 28 and 63-66; Lapidge 1979: 361. For Ovid’s influence on Neronian and Flavian epic, see Ganiban 2007; Henderson 1998; Hardie 1993; Quint 1993. 94 Ov. Met. 1.196-239. 139 consequences mortals must suffer because of them form the basis of several of Ovid’s myths: at the end of Book 5,95 after a singing contest between the Pierides and the Muses, the nymphs declare the latter victorious. Since the Pierides refuse to accept the verdict of the nymphs and show disrespect (5.663-64: at nymphae vicisse deas Helicona colentes/ concordi dixere sono), the Muses unleash their anger (5.668: qua vocat ira, sequemur) and transform their competitors into magpies. Book 6 starts with ’s approval of the Muses’ anger, which she deems

“just” (6.2: iustamque probaverat iram), albeit with a heavy hint of her own vanity: Minerva too wants a chance to either be praised by a mortal, or else to exact her godly revenge. Spurred by her desire for self-gratification, she provokes Arachne: aware of the girl’s pride and as if savoring a chance to inflict punishment on her, she puts her to the test by proposing a weaving contest. To the goddess’ surprise, at the end of the contest no flaw can be found in Arachne’s neoteric masterpiece, an intricate representation of the gods’ continuous abuses of humankind.96

Minerva is so angered that she beats Arachne thrice and again with a shuttle before decreeing her final punishment: that she be turned into a , forever a skilled weaver.97 Both these myths suggest that mortals bear some responsibility for the gods’ ira, which could therefore be truly deemed just, as in Minerva’s words: the Pierides mock Calliope, and Arachne is filled with anger when she responds to the disguised Minerva and refuses to worship the goddess’ skill.98

However, the case of Arachne already causes us to question divine justice: were it not for

Minerva’s egotistical wish to feel superior and receive worship, Arachne would have not been led into sinning with hubris. The very fact that Minerva (in the semblances of an old lady) first asks Arachne to acknowledge her superiority betrays her desire to trick a mortal into sinning.

95 Ov. Met. 5.662-78. 96 On the much discussed theme of Arachne’s work and her mimesis of the poet’s own work on a smaller scale see, among others, Barkan 1986: 1-18; von Albrecht 1984; Leach 1974. 97 Ov. Met. 6.1-145. 98 Ibid. 6.35-36. 140 Furthermore, Arachne effectively questions Minerva’s alleged superiority, because her work exhibits no fault. In the end, we ask ourselves whether Arachne really deserved to be beaten and imprisoned in the body of an .

Further examples leave no doubt that the gods’ entanglements with men are often acts purely of violence: in Book 1 Apollo, filled with lust, harasses Daphne until he causes her pitiful father to change her into a laurel tree in order to escape her molester.99 Still, Apollo consecrates the laurel tree as the main symbol of his divinity, thus retaining in some way his possession of

Daphne, or whatever remains of her. Yet, the plot is yet thicker than Daphne presumes: although unbeknownst to her, ’s anger (1.453: Cupidinis ira) at Apollo for mocking his childlike features ultimately triggers the sequence of events in which Apollo becomes obsessed with her.

The nonchalance Cupid displays in picking a random nymph as a tool for his vengeance, one who will never even know the true reason she has metamorphosed into a tree, highlights the utter impotence of humankind in the face of divine omnipotence. In Book 2 Jupiter, forgetful of the way he felt when Lycaon tried to trick him, effortlessly tricks Io, Callisto and Europa by disguising his true appearance and raping them.100 He, however, suffers no consequence for his selfish deeds, which are aimed at satisfying his selfish desire of carnal love. Again, the plot is more complex than it appears to be to the victims: in fact, behind the acts of violence against Io and Callisto the poet discerns the jealousy of Juno, whose exploitation of mortals to gratify herself and her desire to unmask her husband’s infidelity recalls Cupid’s selfish plan. One last example: in Book 3 we read about wretched Actaeon, son of Cadmus, who will himself eventually be the victim of divine anger when he is turned into a snake after his slaying of Mars’

99 Ov. Met. 1.452-567. 100 Ibid. 1.568-746 (Io); 2.417-533 (Callisto); 2.833-75 (Europa). 141 dragon.101 As is the case for Daphne, Io, Callisto and Europa, so also Actaeon is seemingly guiltless as he is guileless. Ovid demands our attention: you, reader, will find out that the Theban hunter is a victim of fortune, rather than that he committed crimes. In fact, there is no crime in error (Met. 3.141-43): at bene si quaeras, fortunae crimen in illo,/ non scelus invenies; quod enim scelus error habebat?102 The same malicious fortune that favors Caesar in the enactment of his nefarious deeds in the BC is already supporting Ovid’s Olympians as they unleash their ira against clueless men: after a prosperous day of hunting, Actaeon enters the grotto where Diana has chosen to take her bath, and he beholds her by accident. At first, Diana feels shame. A moment later, the blush on her cheeks gives way to a flush of vengeful wrath (3.255), and only when the hunter, who is turned into a stag, is eaten alive by his own dogs does the goddess feel sated.

Lucan’s Caesar bears a striking similarity to Ovid’s impulse-driven gods. The only reason why these gods are not said to be “magnificently evil,” as Marti feels free to call Lucan’s

Caesar,103 is that their laws are admittedly different from those of men, and their freedom of license must be different as well.104 As she recognizes her incestuous love for her brother, Byblis expounds this point beautifully in her lament (Ov. Met. 9.500-501): “the gods have their own codes. Why do I try to make human ways conform to divine laws, which are quite different?”105

101 Ov. Met. 4.563-603. 102 For an allusion in these lines to Ovid’s exile, see most recently Curley 2013: 217-35. 103 See above, p. 126. 104 It is not possible for humans to excuse their impulses and behaviors by comparison with the gods, because the latter are “something wholly other, sui iuris” (Feeney 1991: 202). Theseus, for example, tries to justify himself by finding comparanda in the gods’ behavior in Euripides’ Heracles (1314-21), but he misunderstands the fundamental incompatibility between the divine and the human. 105 Cf. Eur. Hipp. 451-61, where Byblis, ’s nurse, comments on her mistress’ incestuous passion for her son Hippolytus, rather than on her own passion for her brother as we read in Ovid, and she tries to persuade Phaedra that there is nothing wrong in committing incest, since the gods lie with their brothers and sisters all the time. 142 Although gods can express their love among brothers and sisters without incurring punishment, Byblis cannot do so, because humans have their own mandated laws to abide by.

Human laws, however, do not apply to Caesar. Lucan stresses Caesar’s unpunished impiety from the start, when the conqueror confronts the personification of Roma before the river Rubicon, a passage worth quoting a second time (BC 1.185-92):106

Ut ventum est parvi Rubiconis ad undas, ingens visa duci patriae trepidantis imago clara per obscuram voltu maestissima noctem, turrigero canos effundens vertice crines, caesarie lacera nudisque adstare lacertis et gemitu permixta loqui: “Quo tenditis ultra? Quo fertis mea signa, viri? Si iure venitis, si cives, huc usque licet.”

When he reached the little river Rubicon, the general saw a vision of his distressed country. Her mighty image was clearly seen in the darkness of night; her face expressed deep sorrow, and from her head, crowned with towers, the white hair streamed abroad; she stood beside him with tresses torn and arms bare, and her speech was broken by sobs: “Whither do you march further? And whither do you bear my standards, you warriors? If you come as law-abiding citizens, here must you stop.” Then trembling smote the leader’s limbs, his hair stood on end, a faintness stopped his motion and fettered his feet on the edge of the river-bank.

Suetonius and Plutarch record the apparitions that Caesar was said to have met before the

Rubicon,107 but Lucan alone makes Rome herself the subject of the apparition: her distressed appearance, much as her fear, already conditions us to anticipate that the chances of Caesar behaving as a law-abiding citizen are slim. Besides, Caesarie at 1.189, probably a variation on crinis (1.188)108 and an obvious pun on the etymology of the name Caesar, suggests that the

Roman foe – who is everything, while also everything is him! – has already taken possession of

106 See also Ch. 2 p. 95. 107 Suet. Jul. 32; Plut. Caes. 32. 108 Roche 2009: 208. 143 frightened Roma.109 The way she is portrayed reminds us of dreamlike visions, very much like the imago of Julia when she troubles Pompey’s sleep at the beginning of book 3.110 Yet the difference is that Caesar is fully awake: can it not be, then, that Lucan’s Roma is a goddess who is begging Caesar not to do something unlawful? Feeney suggests this possibility,111 and I see no reason to disagree with him, given that Caesar himself names her alongside several other gods a moment later, in his arrogant reply. Thus, Caesar does not abide by the law, he victoriously opposes the will of a deity, and he proceeds to fulfill his plan of conquest by crossing the river.

How could Roma, a deity, be afraid of a man– unless, that is, she is not talking to a mere mortal, but rather to a more powerful deity: Fortuna’s favorite? In this respect Caesar’s response to the apparition is informative (BC 1.195-202):

O magnae qui moenia prospicis urbis Tarpeia de rupe, Tonans, Phrygiique penates gentis Iuleae et rapti secreta Quirini et residens celsa Latiaris Iuppiter Alba Vestalesque foci summique o numinis instar, Roma, fave coeptis; non te furialibus armis persequor; en adsum victor terraque marique Caesar, ubique tuus – liceat modo, nunc quoque – miles.

O god of thunder, who from the Tarpeian rock look out over the walls of the great city; and you, Trojan gods of the house of Iulus, and mysteries of snatched from earth; o Jupiter of Latium, who dwell on Alba’s height, and you, fires of ; and you, o Rome, as sacred a name as any do smile on my enterprise; I do not attack you in frantic warfare; behold me here, me Caesar, a conqueror by land and sea and everywhere your champion, as I would be now also, were it possible.

True, Caesar seems to be asking for the gods’ help, which would be proof of his inferior, mortal- like status. It is also true, however, that among the gods whom he invokes in his prayer is Roma

109 Deliciously wicked is the intertextual antiphrasis Lucan enacts in this passage: as in Roche 2009: 209, it appears that the language of personified Roma recalls that of Mnestheus at Virg. Aen. 9.781-87, when the Trojan warrior exhorts his fleeing companions not to flee. Whereas in Mnestheus’ speech the emphasis is on the necessity to stay in order to fight for one’s patria, in the BC the exact opposite is true: all Romans must abstain from fighting for the possession of Rome, thus abstaining from committing nefas. The Virgilian allusion confirms the impiety of godlike Caesar. 110 Luc. BC 3.9-35. 111 Feeney 1991: 270-71. See also Roche 2009: 205. 144 herself, whose own request to abide by the law is about to be blatantly disregarded. His appeal to the gods, then, is an order, not a request for help: it is true that the imperative fave is typically found in invocations, yet in Caesar’s mouth it becomes an obligation for Rome to acquiesce to her general’s will. Caesar is imposing his will upon Rome and expects the other gods, including

Rome herself, to serve him and support him in his enactment and pursuit of nefas, just as they will also support him later on, at Ilerda and Pharsalus. So long as Rome yields to her victor by land and by sea, Caesar will no doubt keep being her loyal miles. But there is more: in a superb article Grimal points out that the language of this passage is anachronistic, in that Caesar invokes precisely those tutelary divinities of Rome – Jupiter, both as Tonans and as Latiaris; the Penates and the closely associated hearth of Vesta; Quirinus; and finally Roma – that will be closely associated with the Julio-Claudian emperors; in this way Caesar portrays himself as prefiguring the political and religious system that will be officially established by his successors only after his victory and assassination.112 Grimal’s observations confirm the point I made earlier, namely that Lucan grants his Caesar a status that he did not enjoy before or during Pharsalus. He grants him the ability to call upon (or rather command) the official gods of the Julio-Claudian religious propaganda, as if he were already a de facto emperor. Still, more importantly, he grants him the divine status that the Senate in fact sanctioned for him only in 42 BCE, two years after his death.

Thus, in spite of his impiety against the divine figure of Roma, Caesar hardly suffers the nemesis that comes upon the impious so injuriously in Ovid’s discordant universe.

In Book 3 more nefas is perpetrated without consequences for the perpetrator: while

Pompey is busy finding allied troops in the East, Caesar prepares for the and he

112 Grimal 1970: 56-59. See above, p. 134 n. 76. 145 builds a that connects his camp to the town.113 After despoiling the surrounding forests, he needs more lumber to complete his work and so decides to desecrate a grove sacred to druidic deities (BC 3.399-401):114

Lucus erat longo numquam violatus ab aevo, obscurum cingens conexis aera ramis et gelidas alte summotis solibus umbras.

A grove there was, untouched by men’s hands from ancient times, whose interlacing boughs enclosed a space of darkness and cold shade, and banished the sunlight far above.

Keith links this locus foedus to Ovid’s inhospitable grove where the dragon of Mars found its home and where Cadmus incurred his punishment for slaying it.115 She goes on to find a second correspondence with Ovid: like the pool where Narcissus died, so also the forest of the repels wildlife.116 The ill-omened sites evoked by these Ovidian contact-points signal that no place could be less appropriate for fetching wood,117 and the Caesarian troops are well aware of this: their hands hesitate, in that they fear that cutting sacred trees (3.430: robora sacra) would immediately result in self-destruction. Then Caesar, that unfaltering propeller of the Lucanian unspeakable plot, demonstrates again that without his providential intervention the raw material

Lucan’s poem is made of, the nefas, would not exist, nor could it last down to future generations

(BC 3.432-37):

Inplicitas magno Caesar torpore cohortes ut vidit, primus raptam librare bipennem ausus et aeriam ferro proscindere quercum effatur merso violata in robora ferro: “Iam ne quis vestrum dubitet subvertere silvam, credite me fecisse nefas.”

113 Luc. BC 3.298-455. For an exhaustive overview of this episode, see Leigh 1999 and Hunink 1992. 114 Pure fiction, as is the case with Caesar banqueting among the fallen in Book 7. According to Caesar (Caes. DBC 1.36.5), he was only briefly present at the cutting of trees in Massilia, and his subordinate Trebonius was actually in charge of the operations. 115 Keith 2011: 125. 116 Ibid. 117 See Masters 1992: 25-29. 146 When Caesar saw that his soldiers were sore hindered and paralyzed, he was the first to snatch an axe and swing it, and dared to cleave a towering oak with the steel: driving the blade into the desecrated wood, he cried: “Believe that I am guilty of sacrilege, and thenceforth none of you need fear to cut down the trees.”

Just as he refuses to bend his knee to Roma in Book 1, so Caesar refuses to pay his respects to foreign, potentially harmful gods. Let us recall Lucan’s initial declaration of his subject-matter: he is going to sing of how legality was conferred on crime, how an imperial people turned their victorious right hands against their own vitals, how kindred fought against kindred and how, when the compact of tyranny was shattered, all the forces of the shaken world contributed to a universal sacrilege.118 The connection between Lucan’s subject-matter and the character of

Caesar is made manifest in the latter’s speech in front of the druidic grove: “believe that I have committed nefas,” he says. Believe it, so that you can commit it too, now. Let us cut down the sacred grove in commune nefas! Let us slaughter Massilians and then Pompeians in commune nefas, in the name of legality conferred on crime, in the name of self-destruction, exactly as our bard Lucan has preannounced in the proem to his carmen.

It must be noted that Caesar’s men do not follow his example with enthusiasm, but rather because they have weighed his anger, always lurking behind the surface, against that of the superi dei (BC 3.439: expensa superorum et Caesaris ira). This, of course, highlights Caesar’s superiority to the (other) gods, furthering the idea of his omnipotent status. It should also be noted that, in addition to the Ovidian allusions already highlighted (allusions that emphasize the sacrilegious nature of Caesar’s deeds), a third allusion is discernible in the very act of cutting consecrated trees with an axe: in Book 8 of the Metamorphoses, Ovid gives us the fullest account

118 Luc. BC 1.2-6: iusque datum sceleri canimus, populumque potentem/ in sua victrici conversum viscera dextra,/ cognatasque acies, et rupto foedere regni/ certatum totis concussi viribus orbis/ in commune nefas […]. To Duff’s translation of the last bit as “all the forces of the shaken world contended to make mankind guilty” I prefer my own, as it conveys more strongly the notion of impiety embedded in the term nefas and resonates with Duff’s own (more appropriate) translation of nefas at 3.437. 147 of Erysichthon’s fate,119 mostly inspired by ’ sixth hymn.120 The story goes as follows: the Pelasgians preserved a grove sacred to in Thessaly (interestingly, the ill- omened site of the battle of Pharsalus). Erysichthon, wishing to build a banquet hall in which to feast with his companions, invades the grove and attacks an oak tree, striking it with his axe. The dynamic of the episode has obvious resemblances to Lucan’s narrative (Met. 8.751-60):

Non tamen idcirco ferrum Triopeius illa abstinuit famulosque iubet succidere sacrum robur et, ut iussos cunctari vidit, ab uno edidit haec rapta sceleratus verba securi: “non dilecta deae solum, sed et ipsa licebit sit dea, iam tanget frondente cacumine terram.” dixit, et obliquos dum telum librat in ictus, contremuit gemitumque dedit Deoia quercus, et pariter frondes, pariter pallescere glandes coepere ac longi pallorem ducere rami.

Yet not for this did Triopas’ son withhold his axe, as he bade his slaves cut down the sacred oak. But when he saw that they shrank back, the wretch snatched an axe from one of them and said: “Though this be not only the tree that the goddess loves, but even the goddess herself, now shall its leafy top touch the ground.” He spoke; and while he poised his axe for the slanting stroke, the oak of Deo trembled and gave forth a groan. At the same time its leaves and its acorns grew pale, and its long branches took on a pallid hue.

In contrast to his companions’ reluctance to commit impiety, Erysichthon, who is referred to as scornful of the gods and unaccustomed to their worship (8.739-40: qui numina divum/ sperneret et nullos aris adoleret odores), readily proceeds with the desecration of the tree. The most pious of his companions, otherwise petrified with astonishment, tries to stop his hand (8.765-69):

Obstipuere omnes, aliquisque ex omnibus audet deterrere nefas saevamque inhibere bipennem. Adspicit hunc “mentis” que “piae cape praemia!” dixit Thessalus inque virum convertit ab arbore ferrum detruncatque caput […].

All were astonished, and one, bolder than the rest,

119 Ov. Met. 8.738-878. On the myth of Erysichthon in extant ancient literature, see McKay 1962: 19-60. 120 See Phillips 1968: 296-300. 148 tried to stop his wicked deed and stay his cruel axe. But the Thessalian looked at him and said: “Take that to pay you for your pious thought!” And turning the axe from the tree against the man, lopped off his head.

The poor wretch indeed pays with his life, his body no less mangled than the bark of the sacred oak.121 What is striking about these lines is their lexical proximity to Lucan’s passage: like

Erysichthon, Caesar brandishes not just any kind of axe, but a bipennis. Besides, both characters are intent on nefas, even though Lucan recasts the term in a context antithetical to that of Ovid: whereas in Ovid the term appears in the speech of Erysichthon’s comrade, who hopes to deter

(deterrere) his leader from a nefarious deed, Lucan’s Caesar proclaims to his subordinates that he has already committed a nefarious deed (me fecisse nefas), thereby persuading them to follow his lead.122 Phillips sees in Lucan’s superimposition of Caesar and Erysichthon an effective way

“to symbolize rather than report historically the character of Caesar.”123 Thanks to the mythical overtones of the passage, Caesar is clearly viewed in terms of “a blasphemous and sacrilegious destroyer.”124 Yet, be it in Callimachus or Ovid’s account, Erysichthon comes to a bad end,125 forced by Ceres’ fury to devour everything he falls upon in the attempt to satisfy his insatiable hunger, to the point where he destroys himself by swallowing his own flesh. Caesar, on the other hand, remains unpunished both at the moment of the desecration and throughout the remainder of the poem. In fact, as I have already argued and as Phillips concedes at the end of his acute

121 Ov. Met. 8.767-70. 122 On the impiety of Caesar’s speech, greater than that of Erysichthon because his speech is more blasphemous and yet shorter, see Keith 2011: 127. 123 Phillips 1968: 300. 124 Ibid. 125 As is the case, in general, for mythical characters who desecrate groves against the will of the gods protecting them: Halirrhothius, son of Poseidon, angered at Athena’s victory over his father in the contest to become tutelary divinity of Athens, tries to cut down the sacred olive tree, but the axe hits his foot or head, provoking his death (Serv. on Georg. 1.18). Paraebius cuts down an oak tree in which was bound up the life of a hamadryad, and he is cursed (Ap. Rhod. Arg. 2.469-89). And Cleomenes seems to have gone mad and to have taken his life after cutting a tree sacred to the gods in Eleusis (Her. Hist. 6.75). The parallel between the fates of Cleomenes and Erysichthon was already noted by Zieliński 1891: 142. In the face of so rich a tradition of desecrators who incur nemesis soon after committing their crime, it is even more extraordinary that Caesar in the BC does not. 149 study, “the divine gives way to Caesar with disheartening regularity.”126 Why do we get the superimposition of these two characters, Erysichthon and Caesar, coupled with the allusive description of a locus foedus that must not be touched? Lucan builds a narrative trajectory that makes us expect nemesis to crush Caesar. This, however, does not happen. It is conceivable that

Lucan did not want to end his narrative in Book 10, but planned to carry it on down to Caesar’s assassination in 44 BCE, and that he might have staged the tyrant’s death in a way suggestive of divine chastisement upon the impious. However, it is surely counterintuitive to suppose that the superi, angered at mankind,127 would be supportive of Fortune’s favorite all the way down to his death, only for them then suddenly, and inexplicably, to change their mind at the very end. It is also possible (to build on what I have argued so far) that Lucan’s allusions to Ovid are meant to show how fundamentally different Caesar is from ordinary mortals. In fact, even the proudest of men, Erysichthon, is struck down as soon as he trespasses the boundary between human and divine. Godlike Caesar, on the other hand, builds his rampart to Massilia undisturbed. In order to stop him, something other than divine chastisement is required.

To conclude, it is worth devoting a few words to the sea-storm in Book 5,128 another instance of unpunished hubristic behavior on Caesar’s part, and another occasion that highlights his omnipotent status in and throughout the poem. Unlike the account of the druidic grove, the storm has a more historical basis: although Caesar does not mention it, Suetonius, Valerius

Maximus, Plutarch and Appian129 all do so. In Morford’s words, the storm “is symbolic of

Caesar’s own tempestuous spirit, of Fortune’s fluctuations, of the upheaval in the Roman world:

126 Phillips 1968: 300. 127 See above, p. 135-36 n. 81. 128 The main model is Virg. Aen. 1.34-222. See Thompson and Bruère 1968: 1-21. 129 Suet. Jul. 58; Val. Max. Mem. 9.8.2; Plut. Caes. 38; App. BC 2.57-58. 150 through it all, Caesar is master.”130 Not even slaves, “whose lives were worthless,”131 would have dared doing what Caesar does on his own along with his Fortune (BC 5.510: sola placet Fortuna comes).132 He finds a boat moored in a cove and demands that Amyclas, the skipper, ferries him over to Italy. As gods often do when they present themselves to humans, Caesar is disguised in the clothes of a common man (5.538: plebeio tectus amictu).133 The arrogance of his speech, though, betrays his real status (BC 5.532-37):

“Expecta votis maiora modestis spesque tuas laxa, iuvenis: si iussa secutus me vehis Hesperiam, non ultra cuncta carinae debebis manibusque importunamve fereris pauperiem deflens134 inopem duxisse senectam. Ne cessa praebere deo tua fata volenti angustos opibus subitis inplere penates.”

“Enlarge your hopes, young man, and look to bounty beyond your humble prayers. If you obey my orders and carry me to Italy, you shall not henceforward owe all to your boat and your own arms, nor shall you be said to have spent a needy old age in lamenting cruel poverty. Be swift to place your destiny in the hands of a god, who wishes to fill your pinched home with sudden wealth.”

At 5.536-37, when Caesar commands the skipper to entrust his life to a god (deo), we stumble upon a startling claim that – to my surprise – is yet to trouble commentators. Morford concisely talks about the arrogance of Caesar, a man who was indocilis privata loqui,135 but nothing else.

On the other hand, Matthews focuses on the fact that “Caesar’s extravagant promise of great wealth in return for the favour of a passage to Italy outrageously flouts the expectations of the reader familiar with ‘theoxeny’ narratives with their emphasis on respect for poverty;”136 yet she

130 Morford 1967: 37. 131 Duff 1928: 276 n. 2. 132 On point are Lucan’s persistent references to the uniqueness of Caesar’s fate in comparison with that of lesser beings (Luc. BC 5.505-506, 509, 536-37). 133 Cf. Val. Max. Mem. 9.8.2. 134 Housman’s insertion. See Duff 1928: 278. 135 Morford 1967: 38. 136 Matthews 2008: 105. 151 glosses over Caesar’s even more extravagant word-choice and fails to posit a very important question: who is the god in whose hands Amyclas is ordered to place his life? To me, the answer is rather clear: it is Caesar who, after Lucan’s abundant references to his godlike nature in the preceding narrative, fully lays claim to his omnipotent status and calls himself by his truest name: deus.137 Later on, in the midst of the raging storm, Caesar lays claim to his omnipotence again, opposing his own will to that of heaven (5.579-80: Italiam si caelo auctore recusas,/ me pete) and calling himself one whom the other gods never desert, and one whom fortune “treats scurvily” when she comes “merely in answer to his prayer” (5.581-83: quem numina numquam/ destituunt, de quo male tunc fortuna meretur,/ cum post vota venit).138

Amyclas’ boat miraculously survives the swelling of the sea and makes it back home safely: Caesar’s boastful statements might sound like the rants of a madman, but he survives against all odds, recovering his Fortune within seconds in spite of the hubristic challenge that he lays down to the heavens’ will.139

To recap: gods may not always get what they wished for; Apollo’s unsatisfied lust for

Daphne, Minerva’s jealousy of Arachne’s craftsmanship and Juno’s anger at Aeneas’ successful mission in Virgil’s Aeneid are but a few examples of this phenomenon. Still, the gods’ power and licentia surpass the capabilities of humankind in every respect, and the same can be said of

Lucan’s Caesar.

137 Cf. Barratt 1979: 176, whose comment is as vague as Matthews’: “Note the confidence that Caesar has in his destiny, so much that he can expect to do as he wishes.” That is exactly the point: Lucan has made Caesar into what his fellow-citizens think of him in Book 3, a godlike figure. 138 In his analysis of this passage Morford comes close to my interpretation, claiming that the poet “brings Caesar before us as something superhuman, to whom gods and men alike are insignificant opponents” (1967: 44). The gods have no power over Caesar because he is represented as their like. 139 Luc. BC 5.676-77. 152 3.4 THE POET’S NEMESIS

Lucan elevates Caesar to the rank of the superi dei before the Senate granted him apotheosis. The superi, although invoked throughout the BC and although somehow involved in securing Caesar’s success, much as is Fortuna, are nevertheless never portrayed in action. As I have argued above, there is only one acting god in the poem: Caesar, already truly divus Julius.

In light of this characterization, I seek to correct the notion that Lucan renounces the divine machinery and jettisons the Götterapparat. Against the general consensus, I believe that Lucan innovates in replacing mythical gods with a historical god named Caesar, but I find it misleading to suppose that he renounces altogether the divine machinery. Instead, I suggest that he changes the constituents of the divine machinery,140 in much the same way as he changes the traditional source of poetic inspiration by making Nero his unconventional muse in Book 1. Just as the fact that Nero supplants Apollo or Bacchus does not mean that Lucan renounces his epic invocation to the muse,141 so too Caesar’s replacement of the traditional gods does not mean that Lucan renounces the epic Götterapparat. Instead, in a manner coherent with a systematic literary plan that transcends the rhetorical effects of hyperbole and dramatization, Lucan enacts through

Caesar that which he declares in a key passage (BC 7.453-59):

Tot similes fratrum gladios patrumque gerenti Thessaliae dabit ille diem? Mortalia nulli sunt curata deo. Cladis tamen huius habemus vindictam, quantam terris dare numina fas est: bella pares superis facient civilia divos; fulminibus manes radiisque ornabit et astris inque deum templis iurabit Roma per umbras.

140 Nix speaks of a poem in which “the divine machinery has been transformed” (2008: 282-83 and n. 7), but, like Friedrich, sees the core of this transformation in the interchangeability of superi, dei and personified Fortuna. Her analysis of Caesar’s Jovian attributes in the poem is limited to the assimilation of Caesar to the fulmen. 141 An invocation worth quoting (Luc. BC 1.63-66): Sed mihi iam numen; nec, si te pectore vates/ accipio, Cirrhaea velim secreta moventem/ sollicitare deum Bacchumque avertere Nysa:/ tu satis ad vires Romana in carmina dandas [But to me you are divine already; and if my breast receives you/ to inspire my verse, I would not care to trouble the god who/ rules mysterious Delphi, or to summon Bacchus from Nysa:/ you alone are sufficient to give inspiration for Roman songs]. On the encomium see Ch. 2 p. 100 ff. 153 Will he [Jove] then grant daylight to Pharsalus that sees the guilt as great, of so many swords wielded by brothers and fathers? No gods have ever had a care for human concerns. Yet for this disaster we have revenge, so far as gods may give satisfaction to mortals: civil war shall make dead Caesars the equal to the gods above; and Rome shall deck out dead men with thunderbolts, haloes and constellations, and in the temples of the gods shall swear by ghosts.

O’Higgins is clear: “Lucan berates the Olympian gods for allowing the slaughter of Pharsalia.

But, he concludes, they will be punished for their laissez-faire attitude, since they will be obliged to regard as peers the , deified emperors of Rome, who are no more than ghosts and dead men. It is the civil wars that will make these new, so-called gods.”142 Thus, Lucan creates far more than an antithesis to Cato’s virtue, which is as impervious to human emotions as Caesar’s wickedness is: he creates an allegory for the destructive effects of Caesarism, the cult of deified emperors, which symbolizes their autocratic rule on earth. Through the deification of Caesar, he anticipates what is going to happen in the aftermath of Caesar’s accomplishments: a universe where the gods cannot but be servile accomplices of the emperors, who shape them and control them all they want through their religious and artistic propaganda.

A key question remains to be addressed: what does Book 10, a short and abrupt book that is structurally and thematically odd, have to do with Lucan’s programmatic depiction of Caesar as godlike? Although Caesar arrives in free from care (BC 10.9: securus), a few lines later we discover that his confidence in fact hides fear (10.14: voltu semper celante pavorem), because the populace is angry. Thus, Caesar realizes that his fortune might be slipping away, as Pompey, whose own fortune seems to change after his decapitation,143 did not die to his advantage (10.13-

14: Magnumque perisse/ non sibi). After Pothinus surrounds the city walls, forcing Caesar to

142 O’Higgins 1988: 221. 143 Luc. BC 9.1-18: Pompey’s spirit raises aloft, smiles at the mockery of his own headless body and a moment later descends into the heart of Brutus, avenger of crimes (9.17: scelerum vindex), and into the mind of unconquered Cato (9.18: invicti…Catonis). We may read these lines as foretelling both Cato’s suicide at Thapsus (an act that kept him ‘unconquered’) and Caesar’s death at Rome (cf. 10.335-42). But this does not mean that Lucan wanted to include these events in additional books; these events reach beyond the scope of the epic. 154 look for a hiding place inside the with Ptolemy, Caesar’s fear grows (10.443-44:

“His pride was touched by rage and fear– fear of attack, and wrath at his own fear”), to the point that he becomes wholly unrecognizable (BC 10.449-64):

Audax Thessalici nuper qui rupe sub Haemi Hesperiae cunctos proceres aciemque senatus Pompeiumque ducem causa sperare vetante non timuit fatumque sibi promisit iniquum, expavit servile nefas, intraque penates obruitur telis. Quem non violasset Alanus, non Scytha, non fixo qui ludit in hospite Maurus, hic, cui Romani spatium non sufficit orbis, parvaque regna putet Tyriis cum Gadibus Indos, ceu puer inbellis, ceu captis femina muris, quaerit tuta domus; spem vitae in limine clauso ponit, et incerto lustrat vagus atria cursu, non sine rege tamen, quem ducit in omnia secum, sumpturus poenas et grata piacula morti missurusque tuum, si non sint tela nec ignes, in famulos, Ptolemaee, caput.

Not long ago, beneath the height of Mount Haemus in Thessaly, Caesar had boldly defied all the magnates of Rome and the Senate in battle array under Pompey’s leadership; and though the badness of his cause was adverse to his hopes, yet he was sanguine of undeserved success. But now he dreaded the wickedness of slaves, and crouched within walls while missiles rained upon him. Alanians, or Scythians, or Moors who mock the stranger by fixing him as a target would have done Caesar no harm; yet he, for whom the whole Roman world is too small, who would not be content to rule at once India and Phoenician Gades, seeks safety in a house like a defenseless child or a woman when her city is taken; he relies for his life upon a closed door; he hastes from room to room, wandering in uncertainty. Yet he has the king for comrade and takes him everywhere, meaning to get satisfaction from Ptolemy and solace, if he himself must die; and, if missiles and firebrands are lacking, he will hurl against the slaves their king’s head.

Not only is Caesar no longer a deus, but he is not even a vir: he is like a child, or a woman.

Throughout the BC, Caesar has almost never felt fear. Both Marti144 and Syndikus145 highlight

Caesar’s proverbial fearlessness, one of the fundamental components of his supernatural, evil nature. The closest approximation to what we find in Book 10 is a scene early in Book 1: for an

144 Marti 1945: 365. 145 Syndikus 1958: 96. 155 instant, when he is about to address Roma and assert by ever growing impiety and success the godlike status he inhabits and embodies until he disembarks on the Egyptian shore, Caesar is afraid..146 The brevity of this vulnerable moment, however, is such that one may easily forget it by the time Caesar finds himself in trouble in Alexandria in Book 10. Yet in the end, here in

Egypt, where Pompey met his death, things take a dramatic turn, and a new, “uncharacteristic”147

Caesar emerges, one who does not resemble in the least the godlike figure who desecrated the druidic forest and bravely endured the rage of the Adriatic Sea. Thus Book 10, the last book of the poem as we have it, reasserts with greater force a feeling that Caesar felt only once before, in

Book 1, the first book of the poem. I believe that this connection is hardly casual, in particular when seen in conjunction with other similarities between the two books, such as the conspicuous omissions of Lucan’s incipit in medias res, a match for the omissions in the unsatisfactory non- ending of Book 10 (we do not know if and how Caesar saved himself, nor what the outcome of the Alexandrian siege was). Such similarities can be interpreted as clues that Lucan intended his project to end where it does.148 Fear, this new and pervasive emotion Caesar feels, is also present in the last scene of the book (BC 10.534-46):

Molis in exiguae spatio stipantibus armis, dum parat in vacuas Martem transferre carinas, dux Latius tota subitus formidine belli cingitur: hinc densae praetexunt litora classes, hinc tergo insultant pedites. Via nulla salutis, non fuga, non virtus; vix spes quoque mortis honestae. Non acie fusa nec magnae stragis acervis vincendus tunc Caesar erat sed sanguine nullo. Captus sorte loci pendet; dubiusque timeret

146 Recall Luc. BC 1.192-94: Tum perculit horror/ membra ducis, riguere comae, gressumque coercens/ languor in extrema tenuit vestigia ripa [Then trembling smote/ the leader’s limbs, his hair stood on end, a faintness stopped his motion/ and fettered his feet on the edge of the river-bank]. 147 I borrow the expression from Masters 1992: 255. 148 Both books 1 and 10 are abrupt in form and content. On the incompleteness of Book 1 see Ch. 2 p. 95 ff.: Lucan shifts from an introduction in which he pays homage to the epic genre to the description of the illegal crossing of the Rubicon. Since he provides no context that might help to understand what caused Caesar to plunge Italy into chaos, one might say that after his introduction Lucan immediately starts with war, through the description of Caesar’s first act of aggression against his fatherland. Similarly, the poem ends with a war, only in Egypt rather than in Italy. 156 optaretne mori, respexit in agmine denso Scaevam perpetuae meritum iam nomina famae ad campos, Epidamne, tuos, ubi solus apertis obsedit muris calcantem moenia Magnum.149

Round him stood his soldiers in the narrow space of the mole; and he was preparing to embark his men on the empty ships, when he was suddenly surrounded by all the fearfulness of war: on one side the shore was lined with close-packed ships; on the other, the infantry assaulted his rear. There was no path of safety either in flight or in valor; he could scarcely hope even for an honorable death. To conquer Caesar then, no route of an army and no heaps of dead were needed, nor any bloodshed at all. Made helpless by the nature of his position, he stood perplexed; and, even as he doubted whether to fear death or pray for it, he saw Scaeva in the serried ranks, that Scaeva who had already won immortal glory on the plains of Epidamnus; for there, when the walls were breached and Magnus trod the ramparts underfoot, Scaeva single-handed beleaguered Magnus.

Masters rightly points out that the expression tota formidine belli at 1.536 is totalizing, “as if all the horror recounted in the course of the poem grips him (Caesar) now, here, at this last moment, in retrospect.” Indeed, different degrees of fear grip the general at different moments throughout the book, following a climactic pattern: at the start it is just pavor, and it is concealed behind a straight face. After Pothinus attacks, pavor becomes metus, yet Caesar still retains at least one characteristic element of his old self, ira, which, however, he can only unleash against his own metus, not against anything or anyone else, as he was formerly wont to do. Is this a hint to the effect that Caesar, much like Ovid’s Erysichthon, is destined to destroy himself before Brutus and the other conspirators will destroy him in history? What is certain is that at this point Caesar cannot even hide his feelings any longer: he becomes like a puer, then like a femina. Finally, formido shatters him, forcing him to look back (respexit) and behold Scaeva, who seemed dead in Book 6, at Dyrrachium.150 When Pompey recalls his past happiness at 7.687-88 (nunc tempora laeta/ respexisse vacat), Lucan uses the exact same verb that he applies here to Caesar. Hübner

149 Clearly Bruère’s statement that the poem breaks off in mid-sentence is false. See Ch. 1 p. 14 n. 4. 150 Luc. BC 6.140-262. 157 comments on the symbolic value of respicere: not only to look back, but also “to bring the past back” to one’s mind.151 Thus, Scaeva might well have died at Dyrrachium, and Caesar might be looking back at the unreachable glories of his past, when one of his soldiers alone was able to defeat Pompey– the sort of that is no longer possible. Why not? Because Lucan, the poet, is exacting revenge upon the godlike character he himself created. The gods in the BC are

Caesar’s accomplices, and Caesar is one of them. Only the poet is able to punish Caesar for the enormous licentia he has enjoyed throughout nine books of nefarious deeds. In fact, the poet is the only other contributor to Caesar’s making of nefas, insofar as he chooses to write about it and thus reenact it. As we saw in Ch. 1, both Masters and Bramble have convincingly argued that

Lucan is torn between, on the one hand, delaying the nefas of civil war through the introjection of morae in his narrative and, on the other hand, his wish to continue such a narrative of nefas.

Thus, there is a confluence of sorts between the narrator and the main subject of his narrative: as

Caesar is waging war, Lucan is writing his poem.152 The two are inseparable.

Yet in Book 10 Lucan turns on his doppelgänger Caesar in an Ovidian manner: through a metamorphosis, if only a metaphorical one, he turns a god into a frightened man, a frightened child, a frightened woman and, in the end, into a complete loser who is unable to look forwards to any tomorrow. Like Pompey before him, Caesar cannot recover past greatness: imagining it or reconstructing it in the fearful semblances of Scaeva is all he can now do. Lucan’s nemesis represents, in a way, the final alteration in the traditional Götterapparat. In so bleak a universe as that of the BC, where the Caesars have supplanted the Olympian gods and their rule on earth, and where a living emperor such as Nero has supplanted the Muses as a source of poetic inspiration,

151 Hübner 1984: 229-30. 152 Masters 1992: 1-10; Bramble 1982b: 533-57. See Ch. 1 p. 20-21. 158 punishment must come from an altogether different source as well: not from a god, but from the poet himself.

After Caesar, the driving force of the poem, the maker of nefas, as he calls himself in

Book 3, has been stripped of his godlike status, the poem must end. Why, though, ending at

Alexandria, before Thapsus, the or Philippi? First, Lucan aims at recalling directly

Caesar’s own work, which also ends at Alexandria. Second, this particular endpoint allows him to avoid recounting even more nefas. Having shown his readers that civil war depends on the new breed of gods to which Caesar gave birth, Lucan kills off the only acting god in his poem before he truly became the tyrant of Rome and, most importantly, before he became a true historical god at the hands of the Senate. My argument in favor of a ten-book design on Lucan’s part can also be read in parallel with Tracy’s recent argument on repetitive patterns of Caesarian defeat within Book 10: before losing control during the siege of Alexandria, Caesar had been already defeated while he was trying to find out more about the Nile River. According to Tracy, the Egyptian Acoreus, modeled on Virgil’s Iopas153 (who symbolizes Virgil’s poetic activity),154 is symbolic of Lucan and his creative process as he explains to Caesar the course of the Nile.155

As Lucan first illustrates the causes of the war in Book 1 and proceeds to illustrate its spatial and chronological development in subsequent books, so also Acoreus proceeds from the possible causes for the origin of the Nile to ‘narrating’ its long journey through spatial and chronological connectives.156 Moreover, as Lucan at times clearly tries to set himself against Caesar, so also

153 Berti 2000: 161. 154 Hardie 1986: 52-66. 155 Tracy 2011: 35. 156 And, as a further clue that the relation between the narrative of the Nile in Book 10 and the narrative of the civil war across a ten-book poem is intentional, one must remember that Lucan reverses the description of the Nile as it is normally conceived (from the illustration of the river’s trajectory and erratic behavior to its genesis and causes): see Sen. NQ 4a 2.3-30. On Seneca’s influence on Lucan for this particular passage see Berti 2000: 162; Gross 1989: 159 Acoreus sets the Nile as a symbolic natural bulwark opposed to Caesar’s hubristic desire to unlock its mysteries: the waters of the river are said to triumph over fire, a natural element clearly associated with Caesar through the simile of the lightning-bolt.157 The greatest similarity between Lucan’s poem as a whole and Acoreus’ speech, however, lies in their endings:158 after promising Caesar that he will provide a comprehensive account of the river’s path (apart from its mysterious source), Acoreus stops just beyond the city of Memphis,159 thus omitting the single most celebrated episode in the story of the Nile, namely its termination in the seven mouths on the Mediterranean shore.160 Eichberger and Diels point to the abruptness of this conclusion,161 but fail to connect it to Lucan’s own ending in Book 10, which is no less anticlimactic. Again, this is hardly a coincidence, as I argued that also Caesar’s powerlessness as he wanders uncertain in the palace of Ptolemy cannot be coincidental: Acoreus leaves Caesar’s desire to control the

Nile (by knowing everything about its beginning and end) frustrated. Similarly, Lucan frustrates

Caesar’s desire to control history by establishing his autocratic rule, and for this reason he stops when the general has temporarily lost control.

Churchill once pointed out how kind history is to those who get to write it. In his own

Bellum Civile, history is certainly kindest to Caesar. Lucan knew this well, and he decided to write a different kind of Civil War. He gave voice to the cause of Cato (BC 1.128: Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni). He gave at least one slim glimmer of hope to those struggling for libertas. Thus, for all his pessimism, the poet used poetry to kill the god that history had created.

170-74; Diels 1886. For accounts similar to Seneca’s see for example Plin. NH 5.51-55; Str. Geogr. 17.1.2-5; Mel. Sit. 1.50-54; Claud. CM 28.8-36. 157 Acoreus states that the river overpowers the force of fire and heat at Luc. BC 10.215, 230-37, 288, 307-308. 158 Tracy 2011: 38 ff. 159 Luc. BC 10.327-29. 160 On the traditional epithets septemgeminus, septemfluus and septemplex in Latin poetry see Postl 1970: 213. 161 Eichberger 1935: 33; Diels 1886: 27. 160 CHAPTER 4 The human stain

We leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen– there’s no other way to be here. Philip Roth

Are you lost or incomplete? Do you feel like a puzzle, you can’t find your missing piece? Tell me, how do you feel? Well, I feel they’re talking in a language I don’t speak and they’re talking it to me. Coldplay

4.1 DREAM OF A SHADOW

If Lucan’s Caesar, an increasingly successful character until his sudden metamorphosis in

Book 10, proceeds from triumph to triumph for most of the BC and is shown to have a profound effect on the continuation of the narrative by his godlike power and interventions, Pompey is portrayed from the start as if he had fallen from a state of grace: he cannot live up to the significance of his name and to the glorious past his name evokes, and he keeps failing. Thus he quickly becomes the all-too-human victim of circumstances he cannot control.1 In Ahl’s words, unlike “Caesar or Cato, he [Pompey] is not self-sufficient and self-reliant…He can stimulate movement, but he cannot move himself. In short, he is amēchanos.”2 In Feeney’s words, despite all the fuss about the honorific title Magnus (bestowed on Pompey at age twenty-five either at the instigation of Sulla, or from the acclamation of his army in Africa, or from the toadying of his circle),3 Lucan doubtlessly presents Pompey as a “paper tiger;”4 it is in fact obvious that he

1 He embodies from the start the idea of commutatio fortunae expounded in clearest terms at Luc. BC 8.84-85: vivit post proelia Magnus,/ sed fortuna perit [Pompey outlives the war,/ yet his fortune dies]. See Lucifora 2007: 177-78. 2 Ahl 1976: 136. For general considerations on the weakness, if not utter powerlessness of post-Homeric epic heroes, of which Pompey doubtlessly is the greatest example in the BC, still pivotal is Lawall 1966: 119-69 on the character of Jason in Apollonius’ Argonautica. More recently, see Lovatt 2014: 211-28. 3 Plut. Pomp. 13. Cf. Liv. Hist. 30.45.6. 4 Feeney 1986b: 239. 161 and Caesar are an ill-matched pair (BC 1.129: nec coiere pares) for the former is but the shadow of his own name (BC 1.135-43):

Stat magni nominis umbra; qualis frugifero quercus sublimis in agro exuvias veteres populi sacrataque gestans dona ducum nec iam validis radicibus haerens pondere fixa suo est, nudosque per aera ramos effundens trunco, non frondibus, efficit umbram; et quamvis primo nutet casura sub Euro, tot circum firmo se robore tollant, sola tamen colitur.

The mere shadow of a mighty name he stood; thus an oak tree, laden with the ancient trophies of a nation and the consecrated gifts of conquerors, towers in a fruitful field; but the roots it clings by have lost their toughness, and it stands by its weight alone, throwing out bare boughs into the sky and making a shade not with leaves but with its trunk; though it totters doomed to fall at the first gale, while many trees with sound timber rise beside it, yet it alone is worshipped.

Of course, as Getty remarks, nomen stands for “reputation,”5 yet what Feeney labels a “reversal of the nomen/ figure”6 wholly applies here, given that the title Magnus used to reflect that greatness7 which Pompey as the rotting oak merely preserves in the static form of exuviae and dona. Indeed, an important logical shift has taken place by the time the general prepares to face his archenemy Caesar in 49 BCE: whereas in the past successful deeds (such as his command of three legions to support Sulla in Picenum in 83 BCE, when he was only twenty-three)8 had

5 Getty 1940 n. 2 ad loc. 6 Feeney 1986b: 239. 7 Lucan enjoys playing with the title Magnus and readers must continuously look out for double entendre. Think of Lentulus’ intimation at Luc. BC 5.46-47: Magnum…iubete/ esse ducem, which may be translated both as “order Magnus to be your leader” or as “order your leader to be great.” Of course the latter translation highlights Pompey’s inadequate performance in the military. It should be noted that Lucan is building on a preexisting tradition: for example, it was said that the actor Diphilus won praise for his address of Pompey as “nostra miseria tu es magnus” (Cic. Att. 2.19.3). A similar sarcastic resentment was shared by some young preeminent citizens: for example, Gaius Porcius Cato would often call Pompey privatus dictator (Cic. Fam. 1.2.15) long before the dissolution of the First . 8 See Plutarch’s account (Pomp. 6-8): youthful Pompey was so to distinguish himself in the eyes of Sulla that he refused to meet him empty-handed (ἀσύµβολος) and decided to test the allegiance of the people of Picenum by rousing them up, becoming their self-proclaimed leader and winning battles on behalf of Sulla. This narrative proves that Pompey’s impatience for military honor based on deeds (rather than idle chat) used to be a match for Caesar’s 162 earned Pompey symbols of greatness such as wealth, triumphs and a special nomen, in the present civil war the greatness symbolized by his previously acquired tokens of power does not match successful deeds. As a result Pompey’s symbolic greatness is no better than a garment; it is, in other words, an ornament to carry about and sustain (as the participle gestans at 1.137 suggests),9 and it is arguably the reason why the Pompeian quercus “totters doomed to fall.”

Through this pointed imagery and language Lucan instantly transforms the weightlessness of a shallow name into the weightiest burden, inviting us to imagine the name Magnus as if it were tantamount to an object of worship vexing a venerable tree. Nor should this come to a surprise, for the fated law by which in se magna ruunt10 (surely a gnomic statement but also a wordplay on Pompey, the human specimen proving the infallibility of this universal law better than anyone else in BC) is indeed a matter of nomina and their subsequent reputation: when the names of individuals or collectivities universally inspire awe due to the intrinsic greatness they evoke, it means that the individuals or the collectivities associated with those names have reached the peak of their greatness and must forthwith incur a reversal of fortune. Lucan never states this in unequivocal terms, but he provides enough clues to deduce it: it is after Pompey has become

Magnus by universal acclaim that his downfall, so persuasively prefigured in the guise of a dying plant, occurs. By contrast, Caesar’s incredible strength is such because it has not yet produced a famous nomen (1.143-44: non in Caesare tantum/ nomen erat nec fama ducis) within the brief timeline of Lucan’s narrative. When it does, and “Caesar” becomes the greatest name of all as it de facto translates “princeps,” then the historical Caesar, too, will fall from eminence: stabbed twenty-three times, a number which curiously recalls the age at which Pompey first rose to

ambition and swiftness of action as it is described in the BC. Sadly old Pompey (Luc. BC 1.129: alter vergentibus annis) is a far cry from the man Plutarch portrays. 9 For further references see OLD 1b. 10 Luc. BC 1.81. 163 prominence in the military, he exhales,11 and proleptic allusions to his violent demise abound in the BC.12

As a further example of the relationship between nomina, reputation, deeds and shifting fortune we may consider the cause for which the Pompeian party and Cato in particular fight:

“liberty” (libertas), the umbrella-term under which the inheritors and defenders of the greatest

Republican achievements are grouped as they oppose the rising name of “Caesar” in all its tyrannical implications,13 is a name and a shadow after Caesar’s trespassing of the pomoerium.14

When he answers Brutus, Cato is categorical on this point (BC 2.297-303):

“Ceu morte parentem natorum orbatum longum producere funus ad tumulos iubet ipse dolor, iuvat ignibus atris inseruisse manus constructoque aggere busti ipsum atras tenuisse faces, non ante revellar, exanimem quam te conplectar, Roma; tuumque nomen, libertas, et inanem prosequar umbram.”

“When a father is robbed of his sons by death, grief itself bids him lead the long funeral train to the grave; he is fain to thrust his hands into the doleful fires, and himself to hold the smoky torch where the lofty pyre rises. So never shall I be torn away before I the lifeless body of my country; and I will follow to the grave the mere name and empty shadow of liberty.”

This statement, more powerful than a prophetic utterance, proclaims the outcome of the war from the onset: in the dramatic years leading to the transformation from Republic to Empire Roma

11 See Suet. Jul. 82.2; Plut. Caes. 66.7. 12 Luc. BC 1.690-93; 5.206-208; 6.791-92; 7.587-96; 9.15-18; 10.341-44. 13 Ibid. 7.691-96: Ceu flebilis Africa damnis/ et ceu Munda nocens Pharioque a gurgite clades,/ sic et Thessalicae post te pars maxima pugnae/ non iam Pompei nomen populare per orbem/ nec studium belli, sed par quod semper habemus,/ libertas et Caesar erit [Like the woeful losses in Africa,/ like guilty Munda and the slaughter by the Nile, so most of the fighting at/ Pharsalus, after Pompey’s departure, ceased to represent/ the world’s love for Pompey or the passion for/ war: it was the never-ending contest between Freedom/ and Empire]. Duff’s decision to translate “Caesar” with “Empire” effectively shows the political implications of the name, especially after Thessaly. 14 Of course “Magnus” and “libertas” share one fate: the two are interconnected in their profoundly anti-Caesarian symbolic significance and undertones. This being said, we will see that Pompey is ambiguous in his attitude toward the preservation of the ideal of freedom, and Lucan does not conceal the fact that Pompey might have shared some of Caesar’s autocratic ambitions. Pompey’s inability to fully espouse the cause of libertas can be seen as a flaw in his character and an alarming symptom of his inherent incompleteness, which is the main topic of this chapter. 164 already appears to be a corpse and libertas is just as lifeless. The wording at 2.302-303 (tuum nomen…et inanem…umbram) instantly recalls the representation of Pompey at 1.135 (stat magni nominis umbra), conjoining the fate of a man and the fate of the ideal he clumsily represent.15

Furthermore, both expressions epitomize the transiency of all things human, sharing in the lyricism of Pindar’s famous hemistich “man is a dream of a shadow” (Pyth. 8.95: σκιᾶς ὄναρ

ἄνθρωπος).16 Thus Lucan exemplifies the insecapable law on ephemerality (again: in se magna ruunt) not only through didactic digressions on universal disintegration such as his description of the ἐκπύρωσις at the beginning of Book 1,17 but also through the force of his poetic imagination, by juxtaposing names and shades to conjure a feeling of evanescence. In doing so he shows us what Pindar’s γνώµη means in practice, for Pompey (the shadow of the name he carries) can dream about the man he once was, but he cannot be the man he once was. To be precise, his dream takes place in Book 7, when he beholds asleep the good old cherishing crowds of Roman citizens who used to hear more than a reminder of past triumphs in “Magnus:”18 at this point in the narrative Pompey literally becomes a dream of a shadow. As for libertas, Cato’s implication when he articulates his response to Brutus is similar to Lucan’s implication in comparing

15 See above, p. 164 n. 14. 16 On the topos in Pindar and in Greek literature see among others Fröhlich 2013: 7-24; Nagy 2000: 97-118; Toohey 1987: 73-87; Lefkowitz 1977: 209-21. Though it is not possible to prove whether Lucan had Pindar or another author in mind, it is interesting that an unconventionally large amount of text in Pythian 8 explains the viewpoint of the vanquished in order to warn “about the impermanence of victory” (Lefkowitz 1977: 216); part of my argument in this chapter concerns the adoption of such a viewpoint by Lucan, and the consequences this has for the narrative of the BC. 17 See Ch. 1 p. 29-41. 18 Luc. BC 7.9-44. See in particular Rutz 1963: 334-45. This dream, in stark contrast with dreams in the epic canon, constitutes a Retardierung in the prosecution of the plot: it is bereft of all action and does not actively engage with the larger narrative it is part of. Furthermore, the dream is wholly about a past that cannot be restored. Because of its deceitful content, Pompey’s vision of himself in his theater “fa risaltare ulteriormente il contrasto con la realtà, che vede ormai Pompeo prossimo alla rovina” (Lanzarone 2016: 79-80). This distance between dream and reality stresses the evanescent nature of Pompey, whose moments of greatest vitality rely on illusions. Lausberg 1985: 1574-75 argues that Lucan modeled his dream on the deceitful dream sent by Zeus to Agamemnon at Hom. Il. 2.6- 34. But Lanzarone, building on Perutelli, points out that in deceitful dreams the message transmitted to a certain character is in general crystal-clear, because the act of deception must be persuasive. In the case of Pompey, Lucan’s per ambages solitas (7.21) makes matters even more complicated, as if to suggest that Pompey might be aware of the delusional nature of his vision and not buy into it after his awakening. 165 Magnus to a quercus: whereas great deeds once matched the symbolic greatness evoked by

“liberty,” the first detectable instances of internecine strife between Caesar and Pompey emptied the name of any factual or actual significance. The point is taken up again – possibly in an even grimmer fashion – at BC 9.204-206:

Olim vera fides Sulla Marioque receptis libertatis obit: Pompeio rebus adempto nunc et ficta perit.

Sincere belief in Rome’s freedom died long ago, when Sulla and Marius were admitted within these walls; but now, with Pompey gone, even the sham belief is dead.

In the aftermath of Pompey’s execution even delusional beliefs held in the name of Rome’s freedom perish:19 libertas has by now not only ceased to represent honorable actions, but also the kind of venerability which the title Magnus can still inspire in Book 1, when it is said that the the tottering oak alone is worshipped in spite of its weakness (cf. 1.143: sola tamen colitur).20 In light of this I would build on Henderson’s observations on the linguistic fluidity of BC: if it is true that “the word[s are] caught up in the “civil war” of Lucan’s text, where opposed senses tear themselves up and rip the signifiers away from signification,”21 it is also true that signifiers may lose signification due to their gradual decay and natural death, rather than to a war of opposites

19 See Holliday 1969: 35: Marius and Sulla started this process, which concludes with Pompey. 20 Day 2013: 212-13 sees a dimension of sublimity in the oak tree, which indeed rises sublimis (Luc. BC 1.136) in spite of its decrepitude and deserves worship for its former greatness. An intricate nexus of Virgilian and Lucretian imagery contributes to the solemnization of the image of the oak: as Hardie 2009: 126-29 and Narducci 2002: 280 argue, Aeneas seen as an Alpine oak that cannot be uprooted (Virg. Aen. 4.441-49) is symbolic of Rome’s might. More precisely, the ineradicable tree symbolizes the assertion of the sublime θαῦµα of Roman history against a Lucretian world-view in which political and military achievements mean nothing, outshone as they are by the sublime state of Epicurean ἀταραξία. Lucan complicates this view through the Pompeian oak, which recalls Virgil’s imagery but is not an immovable tree; contrarily to Aeneas, who is ready to withstand the violence of nature, Pompey yields to the violence of the force of nature that Caesar is (especially when seen as the Jovian lightning- bolt). It is in this defeat that one may discern sublimity, even though of a novel kind: “an intangible and evanescent” sublimity that “makes present only what has already been lost” (Day 2013: 214). On perceptions of sublimity based on loss see also Ankersmith 2005: 183; cf. Benjamin 1999. The point is crucial: even if Day focuses on the sublime in the BC, which is not of especial concern to me, he also points to the striking extent to which Lucan’s language and rhetoric suggest from the start that Pompey evokes the idea of loss. As it will emerge, the association of Pompey and loss is essential to my reading of the character. 21 Henderson 20102: 444. 166 in which “virtue” might denote at once the military valor of old and Scaeva’s perverse audacity.

Therefore what Hershkowitz labels “the human madness”22 of civil war is attained through a twofold rhetorical move: on the one hand Thucydidean-like semantic slippages by which the language of the text mimetically reproduces men at war;23 on the other hand what I would call a simple semantic depreciation, or else the process reducing the great names Magnus and libertas to worthless ruins. Yet regardless of whichever phenomenon adulterates them it is obvious that the key terms dearest to the Republican cause incur death in Lucan’s epic no less than the people they relate to, be they individuals or collectivities. In providing us with a foremost example of this trend Cato aligns his viewpoint with that of Lucan, whose pessimistic exordium encapsulates the contagious and contaminating wickedness of his nefarious subject-matter in the proemial expression in commune nefas (1.6): it is in the proem that for the first time we come across the idea of destructive and self-destructive forces annihilating both men and the meaning of their language, as if the corrosive evil of civil war spared nothing. As Bartsch points out while commenting on Lucan’s equation (in his proem and elsewhere in Book 1) of ius and scelus and virtus and nefas, “antonyms are directly equated in a way that lets the narrator or other characters openly point to the catachrestic effect of civil war.”24 In Books 2 and 9 Cato reiterates Lucan’s pessimistic stance by means of semantic depreciation rather than antonymic equation, but the content of his message remains the same: war pollutes everything. Hence in response to Brutus’

22 Hershkowitz 1998: 199. 23 The most famous discussion on civil discord (στάσις) and its effects, a successful literary topos (Vretska 1976: 578), is Thucydides’ chapter on the Corcyraean stasis (Hist. 3.82.4). As Lintott 1993: 25-32 and Macleod 1979: 52- 68 observe, the interpretation of this passage is difficult and controversial: it is either possible to read it as if the actual meaning of words change at times of profound crisis, so that “recklessness” (τόλµα) would mean “courage” (ἀνδρεία); or as if words simply gained a broader semantic range than they normally have, so that “courage” would refer to various kinds of acts of bravery, including deeds that were once thought to be plainly reckless. Regardless of whichever interpretation one chooses to favor, the semantic adulteration of words is an undeniable consequence of civil war and Thucydides (much like Lucan) seeks to reproduce this phenomenon again and again by reenacting the “ripping of signifiers from signification” described by Henderson in relation to Lucan’s BC. For seminal studies on Thucydides’ linguistic manipulations, see among others Loraux 1986: 97-134. 24 Bartsch 1997: 51. 167 agitated entreaty not to meddle with a nefas whose consequences are certain to turn him into a wrongdoer,25 Cato un-Stoically26 admits his decision to side with Pompey27 and at the same time betrays the criminal nature of such a decision (BC 2.286-87): “Brutus,” he observes, “I recognize that civil war is the most unspeakable evil, but virtue shall follow fearlessly wherever destiny summons her.”28 This is tantamount to an admission of defeat for the party opposed to Caesar long before the action of the BC reaches its climax at Pharsalus and Caesar establishes his dictatorship at Rome: since the fight takes place for the sake of an unrestorable ideal and turns the fighters into co-conspirators in the making of nefas, loss is the necessary precondition of all men embracing the Catonian, pro-Pompeian ideological stance.

To recap, throughout his epic Lucan codifies terms such as libertas and Magnus, as well as what they stand for, so as to mean “loss” by default. In this regard I find that the case of

Pompey is exceptional; several examples throughout the poem strengthen the impression first conveyed in Book 1 that the man stands no chance against Caesar, for his endeavors contradict each other and lead nowhere: it is Pompey’s utter incompleteness, expressed through his failure

25 Ironically, nothing is left to chance in an epic in which chance (Fortuna) rules the universe: this Brutus, portrayed in the BC as the staunchest enemy of anything remotely related to the nefas of tyrannical rule (be it under Caesar or Pompey) is the same man who authored the De Dictatura Pompei, a speech delivered in 51 BCE and designed to oppose Pompey’s dictatorship. See Quint. Inst. 9.3.95; Suet. Jul. 49.2. 26 I cannot agree with Newmyer: “Cato is a character surrounded by the furor of civil war but himself free from it” (1983: 250). Newmyer, building on Burck, argues that because Lucan’s attitude toward Cato and his decision to participate in the war is unwaveringly positive, this must mean that the warrior’s virtus suffers no harm in the midst of battle. However, Cato himself concedes that participating in the war is an act of nefas, a declaration that cannot be discounted. It is true that he blames the invisible gods for creating a situation in which it is impossible to stay innocent (Luc. BC 2.288: Crimen erit superis et me fecisse nocentem), but he admits to becoming nocens. Moreover, his urgent desire to absolve himself by blaming the gods undermines his belief in the Stoic notion of an intrinsically good λόγος and strengthens the impression that he feels guilt at a personal level. There is more: as Johnson 1987: 55-56 shrewdly comments in his analysis of the snakes scene in Book 9, Cato is guilty of vainglory, because his unrealistic standards of excellence cost the life of many of his men. Thus Cato not only fails at being a Stoic, but he also fails at being a vir bonus imbued with a typically Roman militaristic virtus. For further complications in the characterization of Cato see Sklenár 2003: 59-100; Loupiac 1998: 205; Bartsch 1997: 118-23; Martindale 1984: 64- 79. For a more traditional reading see instead Narducci 2002: 368-422; Schrijvers 1989: 73; Ahl 1976: 240; Grimal 1970: 53-117. 27 Luc. BC 2.319-23. 28 “Summum, Brute, nefas civilia bella fatemur;/ sed quo fata trahunt, virtus secura sequetur.” 168 as a leader, his unfulfilled desires and his shortcomings, that symbolizes his unchangeable condition as the loser par excellence in BC.29 Thus in my last chapter I argue that Magnus, a man without end and a body without head, effectively reproduces at the individual and microcosmic level the incomplete status of the epic it is a part of.

In order to better understand the relationship between the χαρακτήρ of Pompey and the shapelessness of the BC, in the section that follows I examine Lucan’s standpoint as the narrator in further detail.

4.2 NOMINA NUDA TENEMUS

As I explained above, in the BC the adulteration of libertas complements the adulteration of Magnus, and both terms in their decay reflect the deterioration of the reality that they signify.

Since both the freedom of the Republic and Pompey are past their prime and have run their course already in Book 1, their names serve as static vessels of memories and are themselves subject to decay. To be fair, one may notice that the cause of Pompey and the cause of fervent

Republicans such as Cato or Brutus do not exactly run parallel, hence coupling them as I do is somewhat misleading. There is no doubt that the behavior of Pompey is inconsistent, making it hard to believe in his steadfast pro-Republican sympathies. Cato himself is torn: he condemns the general’s aspiration to sovereignty in Book 2,30 but delivers an encomium on his behalf after his death, in Book 9.31 A little over a year and a half separates such antithetical judgments.32

29 See above, p. 164 n. 14. 30 Luc. BC 2.319-23: “Quin publica signa ducemque/ Pompeium sequimur? Nec, si fortuna favebit,/ hunc quoque totius sibi ius promittere mundi/ non bene conpertum est: ideo me milite vincat,/ ne sibi se vicisse putet” [“Why should I not follow the standard of my nation and/ Pompey as my leader? And yet I know full well/ that, if fortune favors him, he too looks forward to/ over the world. Let me then serve in his/ victorious army, and prevent him from thinking that/ he has conquered for himself alone”]. 31 Luc. BC 9.190-214, but see esp. 198-200: “Invasit ferrum, sed ponere norat./ Praetulit arma togae, sed pacem armatus amavit;/ iuvit sumpta ducem, iuvit dimissa potestas” [“He snatched the sword; but he knew/ how to lay it 169 However, these and similar considerations do not affect my point; I want to stress that Lucan represents the struggle against what Day calls a “hyper-kinetic…source of destruction”33 as if it were worthless, because the forces opposed to Caesar lose the war before fighting the war: the meaninglessness of Magnus and libertas, bereft of factual and actual validity, communicates this much. Of course it makes some difference whether Pompey intended to preserve the freedom of his fellow-citizens or suppress it in case of personal victory, or if he changed or not his mind in the course of the narrative of the BC, thereby endorsing the ideal of liberty toward the end of his life. But what matters even more is that even if we posited that Pompey’s goal and the goal of more genuine Republicans were to never converge in the BC, Lucan’s “Magnus” should still at the very least signify “military opposition” to Caesar, whereas Lucan’s “libertas” should signify

“ideological opposition.” Yet since I argued that both nomina speak to a past of deeds that they can at best commemorate at the symbolic level but at no point reassert in history, the idea itself of an opposition to Caesar is an illusion. Granted this, it is time to address a crucial question: why would Lucan, who died fighting the same war that Pompey and Cato wage in his poem, go to such lengths to present their and his cause as lost long before enduring such a war? Or, to put it in Lucanian terms, why would the poet want to overemphasize the unhappy notion that Fortune gave rulers to the Romans but no chance to overthrow them?34

down. He preferred war to peace;/ but he was a lover of peace even when he wielded/ the weapons of war. It pleased him to accept office,/ and it pleased him also to resign it”]. Cato’s emphasis on Pompey’s preference for peace is not unheard of, but it echoes Lucan’s early remark at 1.129-31: “Pompey was somewhat tamed by declining years;/ for long he had worn the toga and forgotten/ in peace the leader’s part.” Whereas in Lucan’s words we may discern a vein of bitter irony, as the focus is on the disastrous consequences of Pompey’s defeat due to his inability to wear again the clothes of military leadership, in Cato’s encomium the tone is grave and solemn: at a time in which continuous civil war has killed libertas, Pompey’s natural inclination toward peace is crucial to determine at least his moral superiority to leaders such as Sulla, Marius or Caesar. 32 Cato speaks to Brutus in 49 BCE, whereas he delivers his measured praise of Pompey sometimes in the second half of 48 BCE. 33 Day 2013: 106. Of course he is talking about Caesar. 34 See Luc BC 7.645-46: Post proelia natis/ si dominum, Fortuna, dabas, et bella dedisses [To us, born after that/ battle, Fortune gave a master; she should have/ given us also the opportunity to fight for freedom]. It is obvious that 170 Part of the answer lies in history and its limitations: Lucan’s fictionalizing act cannot renounce verisimilitude, or else it would lose its semblance of authoritativeness.35 Realities such as Caesar’s undisputed military supremacy since the time of his descent from Gaul, or Pompey’s wavering attitude, or the outcome of the war were for the most part unchangeable, because each

Roman citizen knew them from experience (the Roman Empire) and from historical sources:

Caesar, Livy and Plutarch; the later versions of Appian and ; and works we do not possess, such as Asinius Pollio’s lost contemporary history, which inspired authors such as

Plutarch and Appian, and perhaps Lucan too.

A second part of the answer lies in a point Quint expounds with utmost clarity, a point which can be read in parallel with Lucan’s effort to rewrite Caesar through strategic omissions

(cf. Ch. 2) and which sheds further light on the formless and inconclusive characteristics of the

BC: the purpose of epics of resistance such as Lucan’s is the celebration of acts of resistance per se, even when they do not prove successful.36 This is what the American Revolutionary

Joel Barlow eulogizes as the “great national subject”37 of Lucan’s opus in the preface to his own epic, the Columbiad: Republican resistance in the name of freedom from oppression. This same theme also becomes the trademark of other poètes de la résistance who more or less overtly used such a disheartened acknowledgment of defeat (a defeat still affecting the Roman people about a century after the war) would occur in the midst of the atrocities of Pharsalus. Less obvious, instead, is the reason prompting Lucan to maintain the same pessimistic tone elsewhere, as if to suggest that the fight against the Caesars was never real, not even at the time when Pompey, the Senate and soldiers like Cato were alive and arrayed on the battlefield. 35 Pace Getty (1940: xxvii-xxx) Lucan had the ambition to be an authoritative and reliable source despite issues of genre. Of course this does not mean that he was a historian and not a poet, as Petronius, Martial, Servius and others bluntly remarked (see Ch. 3 p. 118 n. 56). Yet Lintott is right when he points out that in the BC “many episodes which at first sight seem poetic fiction…have an independent basis in the historical tradition” (1971: 490). There is, in other words, a historical basis by which Lucan’s work shares at least some traits with the tragic style of history, and its emphasis on pathos and emotional allure (ψυχαγωγία). After all, the influence of this style of history on Roman literarature was recognized since the time of Cicero (Fam. 5.12.4-5; Leg. 1.7). See Walbank 1955: 4-14. Cf. Basore 1904: xciv-xcvi, for whom it is impossible to write about recent history in poetry without severely hindering one’s imaginative powers. I disagree: granted that Lucan strives to be trustworthy when it matters (as in the Rubicon scene), the poet does not forget his medium of choice and gives free rein to his imagination whenever possible (as in the Erictho scene in Book 6). 36 Quint 1993: 131-209. See above, Ch. 1 p. 44. 37 Bottorff and Ford 1970: 380-81. 171 Lucan as a model, including Ercilla in his La Araucana38 and D’Aubigné in Les Tragiques.39 In addition to stylistic and thematic affinities, these latter poems and Lucan’s BC share a sense of aimlessness and lack a trajectory of teleological development, for no teleology is foreseeable in the eyes of subjugated people: Lucan, Ercilla and D’Aubigné all write from the discomforting standpoint of historical losers to honor the efforts that the oppressed undertook to contrast their conquerors. That their effort was worth remembering but for the most part hopeless is obvious from the fact that the side of the vanquished is already represented as courageous, yet with “no end in sight”40 in Virgil’s victory epic, a source of inspiration for those other poets: whosoever loses a war cannot oppose to “the victors’ Virgilian narrative of imperial destiny”41 an equally end-directed narrative of political restoration. In the Aeneid it is who clarifies this point: she may curse the lineage of Aeneas all she wants, but she lacks an alternative through which she might overthrow the Trojan hero’s foundational mission. Instead, she ends her life and dies an untimely death by the sword of the enemy she cursed. As for the curse itself, it certainly sticks, it hurts, it is pivotal to Virgil’s rewriting of Rome’s prehistoric myth and (in accordance with such myth) it will endanger Rome in historic times, during the Punic Wars, but it never becomes anything more than an expression of continued resistance to victors whose fated plan of conquest represents the only true closure upon history in the form of Augustus’ peace.42

Lucan and his emulators turn a side-story of the Aeneid into major epic songs, but the content essentially remains the same: as valiant bards of all future Didos, these poets decide to

38 See Pierce 1984: 71; Held 1983: 114-43; Davies 1979: 405-17; Janik 1969: 83-109. 39 Quint 1993: 188-99; Lestringant 1986: 112-19; Tournon 1984: 273-83; Bailbé 1960: 320-37. Lucan’s influence is less manifest in Les Tragiques than in La Araucana, yet it can be discerned in major themes such as the apocalypse ensuing from the sufferings of the Huguenot church (comparable to the conflagration ensuing from the civil war at Rome); or in the character of Coligny, whose countenance compares to that of Cato and whose fate compares to that of Pompey. On the characterization of Coligny see, in particular, Bailbé 1965: 97-111. 40 Quint 1993: 136. 41 Ibid. 42 Cf. Ch. 3 p. 116-117. 172 make their epic endeavors sound like a vanquished voice in revolt against power. Why? Because even without enjoying victory, fulfillment or a sense of closure, those who retard conquest and express political disagreement at their own risk deserve a place of honor in the epic canon (or, we may say, counter-canon). This being said, in the case of Lucan I wish to build on Quint’s point: I find that Lucan overstates his message to such an extent that also the very ideological content that the losing party identifies with is compromised, and this in turn seems to undermine the honorability of those resisting tyranny. If Pompey is a shadow of the man he once was before his defeat and because of incorrigible deficiencies such as his thirst for personal power and glory, then (loser or not) he is not endorsing those high ideals of resistance to despotism that would make his opposition fully meaningful. Similarly, if Cato makes himself guilty in the moment in which he unsheathes his sword in opposition to Caesar, then he also cannot adequately represent the ideal of virtus that he is supposed to embody better than anyone. Such considerations point to the horrifying extent of Lucan’s annihilation of antonyms: absolutely everything is involved, from opposite words to enemies in a battle. Thus in the BC civil war makes it impossible to preserve innocence and purity of intent, for the wickedness of war automatically disfigures all participants and ideals. It is to this conceit, I believe, that we must turn to articulate a more satisfying answer to the issue of Lucan’s defeatist viewpoint: since Lucan envisions loss as insurmountable and ingrained in the Republican cause, he subtracts meaning from the forces pitted against Caesar by depreciating their names (λόγοι) as well as their deeds (ἔργα) from the onset of his narrative. In doing so the poet aims at producing an alarming literary document that attests to the incurable malady of Rome without offering an antidote. The illness is a miasma of nefas which ends up corrupting everything it touches upon, including Lucan himself, bound to

173 share in Pompey’s and Cato’s guilt as soon as he begins writing.43 Against this nefas, it appears, the only effective palliative is to adopt an ignorant pose, avert one’s prophetic gaze and hope for sudden destruction, as I argue that the poet-vates does: the conflagration envisioned by Lucan is too horrific to sustain or to retell, yet it might be the best possible finis in light of a pandemic in which humans are guilty regardless of the choices they make.

Lucan makes the vanquished his epic heroes as much as he makes Caesar his epic god: he adopts the hopeless viewpoint of Pompey and his successors and he strives and loses alongside them. Thus he is perfectly aware that the strife is illusory from the start. In other words, as he has his Cato declare, he knows that sincere belief in Rome’s freedom died a long time ago.44 And the consequence of the poet’s awareness is, of course, an incomplete poem with incomplete heroes desperately clinging to incomplete ideals. So the history of Rome, when it becomes history of the vanquished, corresponds to a shapeless sequence of accidents with no end, for the Republicans never saw their dreams come true. This is why Pompey, Cato and the cause of libertas are not what we might expect: liberty is a deceitful belief; Cato fails to live up to his professed virtus;45 and Pompey is incomplete on all counts, his mangled trunk a visual reminder of his overall state of ruin. When we read, at BC 1.140, that the Pompeian oak tree casts a shade thanks to its trunk rather than its foliage (effundens trunco, non frondibus, efficit umbram), we are in a way already beholding the decapitated trunk of Pompey: since the man, a shadow in Book 1, will be reduced to a headless bust in Book 8,46 the image of the tree-trunk and its shadow works as a striking

43 See Ch. 1: 30-31 and n. 96. Malamud and Masters point to the guilt of Caesar, who involves Lucan (writer and literary reenactor of nefas) in his crimes. As I argue, they are right. Yet I propose here to see Lucan as a sharer in the guilt of Pompey and Cato as well, since none of these characters is exempt from nefas: the latter because he agrees to fight, and the former because of his unsolvable contradictions, including his selfish ambitions. Simply put, guilt is all encompassing. 44 See above, p. 166. 45 See above, p. 168 n. 26. 46 Luc. BC 8.674-75 and 8.698-99. 174 prolepsis. At the same time it also proves that loss and incompleteness are inherent in Lucan’s

Pompey. In other words, Pompey does not need to die for the poet to see him as a leader without caput or a cause: he is already lacking in life as he shall be in death, thus mirroring the condition of the ‘headless’ epic it is part of.47

Because of his unique characterization, Pompey deserves a closer look. Before I do so, it might be useful to recall the suggestive line that the Benedictine monk Bernard of Morval once wrote about the decadence of Rome in his De Contemptu Mundi: stat Roma pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.48

4.3 POMPEY IN PIECES

Pompey’s troubling passivity in the BC, exemplified by the image of the rotting oak subject to the consuming force of the hyperactive Caesarian lightning bolt, has been the subject of much scholarly attention. And scholars agree on one point: some staggering inconsistencies pertain to the Magnus character, far more so than to the character of Caesar. In particular it has been noted that it is difficult to make sense of the fallen hero’s contradictory nature and attitude toward war, or to reconcile his rapid succession of debacles with Lucan’s increasingly positive tone as he addresses such unmistakable failings. Yet scholars have tried their best to put discordant pieces together in a coherent puzzle, with the result that they end up rehabilitating to some degree Sikes and Marti’s original argument: namely, that Lucan’s attitude toward Pompey changes because the character changes, gaining a wisdom and a fortitude49 which he previously

47 Dinter 2012: 9: “Lucan’s epic of civil war has been accused of headlessness and interpreted as a truncated torso– a disorganized epic that mirrors the chaos of war on all imaginable levels.” 48 I refer to the variant in Hoskier’s edition (1929), which I find most convincing. 49 Pompey would gain the kind of wisdom and fortitude that applies to a προκόπτων, or a Stoic proficiens. This view, originally by Marti 1945: 367 and Sikes 1923, was recently defended by Narducci 2002: 279-353. Although Narducci concedes that the character of Pompey has some contradictory traits, he reads Lucan’s sympathetic attitude 175 lacked. As my analysis will show, I find the arguments in favor of a trajectory of growth and development in the χαρακτήρ of Pompey unsustainable, and I argue that Lucan’s uniquely overemphatic depiction of Pompey as an inconsistent and incomplete Ciceronian rector rei publicae makes sense once we accept the premise of my study: incompleteness is the foremost compositional criterion to which Lucan appeals in his mimetic effort to capture the essence and phenomenology of war. To prove that the conflict between Caesar and Pompey results in the depreciation of individuals, names, ideals and just about anything one could think of, Lucan treats his Pompey as an underdeveloped character, enhancing flaws and contradictions without offering a resolution.

Earlier I noticed that Pompey’s weak appearance in Book 1 as a wooden trunk laid low by honorable gifts proleptically sets up readers for worse to come,50 just as Lucan himself presages the general future of Rome when he introduces the matron (BC 1.674: maiora premunt). To put it simply, defeat and intolerable woes are awaiting due to the weakness of

Pompey. Book 2 corroborates the initial impressions: after Domitius is forced to surrender at

Corfinium despite his willingness to die at the hands of the enemy, Pompey tests his soldiers

(2.529: temptandasque ratus…militis iras). Although still unaware of the blow he just took at

Corfinium, which would be a legitimate reason for concern, he is extremely worried, and his unease is felt in the need to delay his march and find out how much ira animates his troops.51

Contrast with this the picture of Caesar as he confronts Domitius’ army: he, the singular subject towards Pompey as proof of the character’s endorsement of philosophical values that he was previously unable to live up to. Narducci builds on Schönberger 1969: 113-22; Pfligersdorffer 1959: 346; Syndikus 1958: 101-104 and 107-108; Rambaud 1955: 258-96. In my view, Lucan’s preference of Pompey over Caesar must not entail personal growth on Pompey’s part. I thus find myself in agreement with the skeptical positions of Day 2013: 210-33; Rossi 2000: 571-91; Bartsch 1997: 73-100; Masters 1994: 151-77; Ormand 1994: 38-55; Rosner-Siegel 1983: 165-77. These scholars reject the belief in Pompey’s progression to virtue. However, none of them adequately deals with the discrepancies in the presentation of Pompey across different books to understand the true extent of his incurable defectiveness. 50 See above, p. 162-63. 51 Luc. BC 2.526-27. 176 of military endeavors52 made easier by the fact that his nomen alone causes fear in his enemies,53 has no need to retard his action with a preliminary speech to his subordinates. Instead Caesar’s troops and their leader are unsurprisingly presented as parts of the same well-functioning whole, and it would be impossible for the troops to dissent from their dux. Thus Dinter points out that

Caesar emerges as a third person singular in place of the plurality of his legions, even though these legions are always with him.54 As for Domitius, in his vain attempt to oppose resistance he at least proves with facts that he possesses what Pompey seeks to find in his soldiers with words: eager for battle (2.479: pugnax), he limits himself to the basics; first, he imparts brief strategic orders for a counterattack; second, he quits talking and tries to rush his men toward the bridge connected to the town, which he would like to sink (2.490-91: Nec plura locutus/ devolvit rapidum nequiquam moenibus agmen). In the end it is not his fault if he is overpowered, but his men betray him and hand him over to Caesar. When it comes to Pompey, however, we get the worst of the two scenarios I just outlined: differently from Caesar, Pompey is not pars pro toto in relation to his men, but he is so ignorant of their intentions that he needs to test them; and differently from Domitius he lacks the belligerent courage for action which he demands from others (2.532-33: Romana manus…votis deposcite pugnam). All he can do is deliver a muddled speech the effect of which is unnerving: after listening to his words, Pompey’s men grow even more fearful because their leader is incapable of leading them. Domitius’ men, by contrast, turn into traitors only because they fear Caesar.

52 Luc. BC 2.439-46. 53 Ibid. 2.462-65, on the flight of frightened commanders, including Sulla’s son: Etrusca fuga trepidi nudata Libonis,/ iusque sui pulso iam perdidit Umbria Thermo./ Nec gerit auspiciis civilia bella paternis/ Caesaris audito conversus nomine Sulla [The men of Etruria are left defenseless by the/ hasty flight of Libo, and the rout of Thermus has/ already taken from Umbria the power of free action./ Sulla, too, has not the fortune of his father in civil/ war, but turns to flight on hearing the mere name of Caesar]. 54 Caesar evokes a multiplicity of notions and entities, including Rome herself: this happens in Book 10, in which the head of Caesar becomes synonymic with ‘caput mundi’ in the contest between Rome and Alexandria for the supremacy over the world (Luc. BC 10.4-6). More often, though, Caesar is represented as pars pro toto in relation to his army. See Dinter 2012: esp. 22-23. 177 The main reason for the failure of Pompey’s rhetoric is its irreconcilable distance from the present, as if he spoke an altogether different language from the one his army would expect to hear. No word is spent explaining how it might be possible to prevail over the Caesarians and no military strategy is expounded, but the general mocks his adversary, declares his superiority and lastly launches into a narcissistic self-eulogy over military triumphs (against the Cilician pirates and against Mithridates of ) dating between 68 and 64 BCE, hence at least a full fifteen years before the civil war with Caesar broke out. A catalogue illustrating the geographical range of Pompey’s ancient victories follows, proving that no region of earth is left for him to conquer, but the whole oikoumene is filled with his trophies. It will be enough to quote half the catalogue to understand the tone of the speech (BC 2.583-89):

Pars mundi mihi nulla vacat,55 sed tota tenetur terra meis, quocumque iacet sub sole, tropaeis: hinc me victorem gelidas ad Phasidos undas Arctos habet; calida medius mihi cognitus axis Aegypto atque umbras nusquam flectente Syene; occasus mea iura timent Tethynque fugacem qui ferit Hesperius post omnia flumina Baetis.

No part of the world have I left untouched: the whole earth, beneath whatever clime it lies, is occupied by my trophies. On one side, the North knows my victories by the icy waters of the Phasis; the torrid zone is known to me in sultry Egypt and Syene where the shadows fall perpendicular; my power is dreaded in the West, and where Spanish Baetis, remotest of all rivers, beats back the ebbing tide.

Fantham, thinking about the weapons often used as ornaments in monuments of victory (tota tenetur terra meis…tropaeis), deduces that “Pompey has his battlefields in mind.”56 What this means in practice is that he exclusively thinks about his triumphal past. In doing so, I suggest, he is paradoxically proclaiming his inferiority to Caesar books before his withdrawal from the plain

55 Fantham 1992 ad hoc: “no region of earth is left for me .” This is the meaning of the verb in this context. See also vaco in OLD, esp. 4a. 56 Fantham 1992 ad hoc: originally monuments of victory erected at the site of a rout (τροπή), the tropaea later refer to “ornamental groupings of captured weapons set up on public monuments.” 178 of Thessaly takes place, because the language he uses in this passage evokes the same notion that the language of the oak simile in Book 1 also evokes: loss. Pompey is bound to surrender to his adversary, a greater force than he is, due to his inability to understand, cope with and act upon his present situation. Let me be clear: the earth, no part of which seems to be left unconquered by

Magnus, is at the same time Caesar’s new battlefield. Lucan tells us this in unmistakable terms shortly before Pompey starts speaking (BC 2.439-43):

Caesar in arma furens nullas nisi sanguine fuso gaudet habere vias, quod non terat hoste vacantes Hesperiae fines vacuosque inrumpat in agros atque ipsum non perdat iter consertaque bellis bella gerat.

Caesar, frantic for war, rejoices to find no passage except by shedding blood; it pleases him that the land of Italy on which he tramples supplies him with a foe, that the fields which he assaults are not undefended, and that even his marches are not wasted, but battle follows battle with no interval between.

If we keep in mind Caesar’s viewpoint, according to which not even Italy itself is empty of enemies (hoste vacantes Hesperiae fines), Pompey’s self-proclaimed omnipresence in the world means nothing, because the context of civil war turns each land conquered by Romans acting on behalf of the Senate into newly conquerable territories. It is significant that Lucan uses the same verb, vacare, to highlight antithetical perspectives: to Caesar all surroundings are hostile – hence not without danger – until the opposite is proven; to Pompey no surroundings should feel hostile in that none are without his victory monuments, but he does nothing to verify the validity of his feeling. And there’s the rub, to quote Hamlet: whereas Caesar acts like a capable general should and lives in the present, his archenemy does not escape the trap of his past, which makes him a loser by default. Condemned as he is to perceive the world through the distorted and monocular

179 focus of a half-formed leader forgetful of military leadership,57 Pompey refuses to actively engage with his dramatic present circumstances (BC 1.129-135):

Alter vergentibus annis in senium longoque togae tranquillior usu dedidicit iam pace ducem, famaeque petitor multa dare in volgus, totus popularibus auris inpelli, plausuque sui gaudere theatri, nec reparare novas vires, multumque priori credere fortunae.

Pompey, tamed by declining years, had worn the toga a long time and forgotten in peace the leader’s part; courting reputation and lavish to the common people, he was swayed wholly by the breath of popularity and delighted in the applause that hailed him in the theatre he built; and trusting fondly to his former greatness, he did nothing to support it by fresh power.

The man’s nostalgia for the limelight he once enjoyed, first described in the introduction to the oak simile but no less pervasive in his speech in Book 2, has a blinding effect: whether at a conscious or subconscious level Pompey keeps inhabiting the virtual reality of his theatre, his mind feeding on the comforting illusion that his success could be permanent. In Book 7, when

Lucan brings Pompey’s past back to life by granting for a moment his wish of a loving audience in the form of swift dreams, the extent of his delusional fantasies finds its most concrete representation.58 However, that the general’s trust in his former fortune (multum…priori credere fortunae) was always misplaced is a transparent truth for everyone other than for Pompey’s own self, as the poet announces in an apostrophe at the end of Book 2: “tired of your triumphs,

Fortune has abandoned you.”59

57 See above, p. 162-63 n. 8. 58 See above, p. 165 n. 18. 59 Luc. BC 2.727-28: lassata triumphis/ descivit Fortuna tuis. 180 Due to his blindness, Pompey is unable to grasp the meaninglessness of his past trophies, which will soon be trampled on by Caesar just as he tramples on his own patria (2.440-41: quod…terat...Hesperiae fines). A passage in Book 9 further clarifies this point (BC 9.964-69):

Circumit exustae nomen memorabile Troiae magnaque Phoebei quaerit vestigia muri. Iam silvae steriles et putres robore trunci Assaraci pressere domos et templa deorum iam lassa radice tenent, ac tota teguntur Pergama dumetis: etiam periere ruinae.

Caesar walked round the burnt city of Troy, now only a famous name, and searched for the mighty remains of the wall that Apollo raised. Now barren woods and rotting tree-trunks grow over Assaracus’ palace, and their worn-out roots clutch the temples of the gods, and Pergamon is covered over with thorn-brakes: the very ruins have been destroyed.

As Zwierlein first noticed, Lucan models Caesar’s visit to the site of Troy on the visit of his illustrious predecessor Alexander.60 Yet Diodorus,61 Plutarch62 and Arrian63 all confirm that the

Macedonian sovereign had utmost respect for what he saw and recognized. Caesar, by contrast, seems lost amid the thick of “barren woods and rotting tree-trunks.” Ahl and Bartsch denounce his shortcomings as a tourist, noting that without the help of his guide Caesar would be inscius,64 and that his clumsiness fully emerges when he is about to step over what was once the grave of

Hector, or when he neglects to pay homage to the Hercean altar.65 Yet one may notice that in a site where even the ruinae of buildings have perished it would be hard for anyone to recognize ancient monuments. As I have argued earlier, Lucan goes to great lengths to demonstrate how

60 Zwierlein 1986: 465-70. 61 Diod. Bibl. 17.17.3. 62 Plut. Alex. 15.4. 63 Arr. An. 1.11.7-8. 64 Bartsch 1997: 132; Ahl 1976: 215. 65 Luc. BC 9.975-79: Securus in alto/ gramine ponebat gressus: Phryx incola manes/ Hectoreos calcare vetat. Discussa iacebant/ saxa nec ullius faciem servantia sacri:/ “Herceas” monstrator ait “non respicis aras?” [When he stepped/ carelessly over the rank grass, the native bade him/ not to walk over the body of Hector. When/ scattered stones preserving no appearance of sanctity/ lay before them, the guide asked:/ “Do you mean to pass over the altar of Zeus Herceos?”]. 181 easily memory fades and how easily even the symbolic value of physical or abstract realities

(including the name of Magnus) changes overtime.66 Of course Troy is no exception, and the fact that in spite of its extreme degree of unrecognizability Caesar does recognize some places makes him less inscius than scholars have often credited him with being. I thus agree with Rossi, the first to brilliantly understand that Caesar’s cultural memory during his tour at sacred Ilium is not faulty, but selective: Alexander’s wicked successor pays attention to those places (like Hesione’s rock, which becomes an occasion to recall Laomedon’s perjury against Apollo, patron of the

Caesars; or Anchises’ bedchamber, where the hero and Venus conceived Aeneas) that are most functional to his personal vision and version of history, a history in which the Trojans linked to the gens Iulia enjoy divine approval, are blameless and look fit for dynastic rule.67 In this selective history Pompey has no space. It is in fact no coincidence that Caesar fails to recognize the altar of Zeus Herceos: according to the Ilioupersis the son of Achilles Pyrrhus slaughtered old precisely by that altar after denying his last wish that his son Polites be left unharmed.

Since Lucan (as we shall see) intertwines the fates of Priam and Pompey through various intertextual allusions in Book 8, failing to acknowledge the existence of Priam at the site of Troy also entails a failure to acknowledge the more recent existence of Pompey. Thus we have to imagine the tropaea that Pompey so proudly references in his speech in Book 2 as destined to the same fate as Hector’s burial place or the temple of Zeus Herceos are in Book 9: subject to physical decay and (literally) destined to be trampled on by the victor’s foot, already responsible for violating the fines Hesperiae and turning his fellow-citizens into enemies.

When Pompey ends his self-absorbed speech, the men who should wish to die for their leader unsurprisingly refrain from applauding him (BC 2.596-600):

66 See above, p. 161 ff. 67 Rossi 2001: 317-23. 182 Verba ducis nullo partes clamore secuntur nec matura petunt promissae classica pugnae. Sensit et ipse metum Magnus, placuitque referri signa nec in tantae discrimina mittere pugnae iam victum fama non visi Caesaris agmen.

The general’s speech was followed by no applause from his supporters, nor did his men demand at once the signal for the promised battle. Magnus himself was conscious of their fear; and it was decided to recall the standards, rather than expose to the hazard of a decisive engagement an army already beaten by the fame of Caesar before they saw him.

With passages such as this one in mind, it is no wonder that Ormand appropriates the expression vix fidelis auctor68 to refashion it as an accurate explanation for the role and significance of

Pompey throughout the BC: the exitus of Pharsalus and the course of history are hard enough to believe for us contemporary readers and for the bystanders beholding the battered conqueror of

Mithridates after he leaves Thessaly. Yet Pompey as a character is even harder to believe.69 As the author of his own narrative, he constantly generates disbelief in his audience. Subsequently, his expectations are also frustrated. In relation to the speech in Book 2, Ormand goes on to explain that disbelief ensues not only from issues of content such as those I highlighted above, but also from the juxtaposition of multiple viewpoints: first Magnus addresses his troops;70 later he switches to the second person to apostrophize Caesar in derogatory fashion,71 making his nemesis a menacing presence in the audience despite his physical absence; a moment later he switches to addressing his soldiers, and Caesar becomes the intensive pronoun ille;72 then he addresses Fortuna,73 then again Caesar in the second person, famously claiming with supreme self-delusion that the world is not fleeing from Caesar’s invasion, but is following Pompey’s

68 Luc. BC 8.17-18. 69 Ormand 1994: 43-49. See also Fantham 1992 ad hoc (esp. 531 ff.). 70 Luc. BC 2.531-33. 71 Ibid. 2.544-59. 72 Ibid. 2.559-61. 73 Ibid. 2.567-68. 183 southward trajectory (2.575: heu demens! Non te fugiunt, me cuncta secuntur); finally he reverts to his original addressee, his men. Fear, so tangible in Pompey’s words, contaminates at once the troops and the general. What is worse is that Pompey inadvertently increases Caesaris fama

(2.600), a “rumor” carrying a nomen far more impactful than “Magnus” is for the imagination of his soldiers: with his apostrophe to Caesar Pompey turns the attention of his audience away from himself and gives a place of honor to his yet unseen enemy. Of course one ought to keep in mind that the rapid progression of Caesar’s fama to which Pompey contributes will one day produce the same result that it does for Pompey at the time of the civil war, and hence a nomen burdened by past achievements that cannot be reenacted in the present. In this regard Lucan’s history is cyclical: it is bound to repeat itself according to the pattern of growth and decay summarized by the principle in se magna ruunt, the same principle dictating the fall from eminence of Marius and Sulla before those of Pompey, Caesar and his successors. However, such generalizations are the fruit of inference based on faint textual clues: for example, as I mentioned earlier, Lucan’s comment in Book 1 that Caesar does not have so great a name (and reputation) as Magnus leads us to conclude that one day he will, and therefore that he will also have reached the peak of his success and suffer a reversal. This is a plausible deduction, but we do well to remember that it is material for another epic and not for the poem that Lucan wrote: Lucan’s persistent focus on the underdeveloped, unfulfilled and unfinished viewpoint of the Republican losers systematically outweighs all considerations pertaining to the victors’ future losses. So we get a conflagration without hints of rebirth; or a configuration of the universe, human history, the oikoumene, the

Roman body politic and the human body that lacks logic, cohesiveness and linearity from point

A to point B; or a godlike Caesar whose irrational impulses (ira and furor) get satisfied for the

184 most part and never incur the divine punishment that we would expect if we were to judge from the rest of the epic tradition.

The final proof of Pompey’s sloppiness comes at the end of Book 2, when he decides to withdraw to Apulia. No word is pronounced on this occasion, but it does not take a careful reader to discern the man’s hypocrisy: after mocking Caesar’s confidence in his ability to put the world

74 to flight, he is the one fleeing.

I have spent some time delineating this early characterization of Pompey, a delusional man whose obsession with the past forbids him to move forward and mature, because I find that it does not evolve in the course of the narrative: the man’s transfiguration into a wiser leader ready to confront the trickeries of chance follows such an inconsistent pattern that it is not real.

This is a deliberate choice rather than a flagrant act of incoherence on the poet’s part. Even if we grant that the BC is unfinished by accident, we can be sure that the character of Pompey in all his incompleteness reaches a premeditated endpoint in the narrative, for his death is narrated in detail. It is therefore evident that Lucan had the time to think about the ways in which he wanted to represent his (anti-)hero, or else he would not have overlooked his inconsistencies. In this regard it will be useful to recall Vacca on the final status of the poem: “emendaturus, si licuisset, erat”75 records the biographer about Lucan’s attitude towards his epic. Had he lived longer, he would have emended it. In Rose’s opinion, “[t]hat is not how one describes a poem lacking

74 There is no doubt that Lucan is alluding to Cicero’s bitter remarks (Att. 8.7.2): ego vero quem fugiam habeo, quem sequar non habeo. Quod enim tu meum laudas et memorandum dicis, malle quod dixerim me cum Pompeio vinci quam cum istis vincere, ego vero malo, sed cum illo Pompeio qui tum erat aut qui mihi esse videbatur; cum hoc vero qui ante fugit quam scit aut quem fugiat aut quo, qui nostra tradidit, qui patriam reliquit, Italiam relinquit, si malui, contigit: victus sum [Well, I know whom to flee but I don’t know whom to follow. You praise that memorable saying of mine, that I prefer defeat with Pompey to victory with those others. Why, so I do, but with Pompey as he then was or as I thought him to be. But this Pompey, who takes his heels before he knows where he is running or whom he is running from, who has surrendered all that is ours, has abandoned Rome, is abandoning Italy– well, if I preferred defeat with him I have my wish, defeated I am]. See also Macr. Sat. 2.3.7. 75 Vacca Luc. On Vacca and his chronology see Ahl 1976: 333-34. Cf. Rostagni 1944: 176-78. 185 several books.”76 Not only do I agree, but I also want to stress that this is not how one would describe a poem whose main characters needed a serious redoing in order to make sense. If even the ancients, so often skeptical of the poetic talents of Lucan, have nothing to say about the defective characterization of Pompey, we ought to try to make sense of the character without supposing that Lucan would have introduced significant changes. I would like to suggest that the sense of Pompey is exactly his inconsistency, mimetic of two interdependent realities: on the one hand the unfinished status of the rotting Republican body whose head (caput) he comes to represent; and on the other hand the unfinished status of the BC, the epic which itself mimics the rotting Republican organism represented by Pompey.

In Book 3, after the apparition of Julia’s ghost,77 we encounter a different Magnus: firm and resolute in dismissing the apocalyptic vision of his dead third wife, Pompey draws near Cato in declaring himself unafraid of death. Is this a sign of a positive change? Death, he claims, is nothing to him (BC 3.39-40: aut nihil est sensus animis a morte relictum/ aut mors ipsa nihil).78

Accordingly, and with a reference to the greatness of his name, Lucan gifts his hero with a magnifying epithet (3.37: maior)79 to describe his onrush against incumbent ruin (in arma ruit certa cum mente malorum). We are thus left – if only for a while – with the impression that the

76 Rose 1966: 391. See also Masters 1992: 220 and n. 13. Cf. Introduction p. 10. 77 On the apparition and role of Julia in the BC see most recently Chiu 2010: 343-60. 78 Cf. Lucr. Rer. Nat. 3.830 and Sen. Troad. 397. These Lucanian lines spurred a debate among scholars, because at first glance the two alternatives (aut...aut) seem to be expressing the same notion. Various hypotheses have been advanced: the first alternative (nihil est sensus animis a morte relictum) means either that the revelations from the dead (including those made by Julia) have no value, or that death and the metaphysical punishments of Tartarus should cause no distress, as the dead feel nothing. The second alternative (mors ipsa nihil) means either that the soul will be annihilated (a reassertion of the first alternative, that death is the absence of sensations and feelings) or that the soul will survive. If the soul survives, death is no death, but only another form of life. The ancient commentators (Comm. Bern.) prefer this sense, common to consolatory literature since the time of Plato’s Phaedo. See Narducci 2002: 289-90; Stok 1996: 35-73; Hunink 1992 ad hoc; Schotes 1969: 80. Whether Lucan wanted to repeat the same notion in two distinct alternatives or express distinct ideas, the point remains that Pompey is displaying a courageous determination which he lacks elsewhere. 79 See Hunink 1992 ad hoc; Dilke 1972: 77. 186 man finally is a good match for Caesar.80 However, there is little in Books 4 and 5 to corroborate this impression and suggest that Pompey is a man on the path to redemption and greatness. And the reason is simple: Lucan overlooks Pompey for a long stretch of narrative and shifts his focus to other characters and other theaters of war. Only at the end of Book 5 does the narrator return to his weird hero: thus Pompey becomes the protagonist of a pathetic scene with Cornelia, in

Julia’s words the “concubine” (3.27: paelex) who stole her husband and played a role in causing his reversal of fortune. The outcome is fascinating, for yet again we are faced with an altogether different kind of man, one whose features do not speak to his earlier characterizations in Books 1 and 2. In particular, Pompey’s wish to delay his departure, signaled by his struggle to find the right words at night to address his wife or by his tearful cheeks in the morning (when he must send her off to Lesbos to protect her from the incoming war), is symptomatic of a warmth and humanness that was unforeseeable in previous books. This vulnerability induced by love, inspired by elegiac exempla such as the sorrowful separation of Ariadne from Theseus in Ovid’s

Heroides,81 tinges Pompey’s inconsistent portrayal with a truthfulness and depth of feeling that are his most beautiful traits: he might be an auctor vix fidelis when his wish to delay through words a confrontation with Caesar in Book 2 betrays uncertainty on his part, but he is certain of his love and true to himself when he sends his wife away in the hope that she be spared from what is coming (BC 5.728-31):

Dubium trepidumque ad proelia, Magne, te quoque fecit amor; quod nolles stare sub ictu Fortunae, quo mundus erat Romanaque fata,

80 But see Thompson 1983: 210 on Luc. BC 3.37 and its meaning when read in opposition to Virg. Aen. 2.775. 81 Ov. Her. 10.9-16: abandoned by Theseus, unhappy Ariadne searches for the body of her beloved and spreads her arms over her empty bed. So does Cornelia after Pompey sends her away to guarantee her safety (cf. Luc. BC 5.808- 10): Somno quam saepe gravata/ deceptis vacuum manibus conplexa cubile est/ atque oblita fugae quaesivit nocte maritum! [How often, weighed down by drowsiness, she clasped/ the empty couch with cheated arms! And how often,/ forgetful of her flight, she sought her husband in the darkness]. For another possible allusion see Ov. Met. 11.419-43 ff. (Alcyone’s protest at the departure of Ceyx). On elegiac motives in the BC see Conger McCune 2014: 171-98. 187 coniunx sola fuit.

Even you, Magnus, were made anxious and afraid of battle by your love; one thing alone you wished to save from the stroke that overhung the world and the destiny of Rome; and that one thing was your wife.

It turns out that Magnus is for once living in the present, as his concern for his beloved rids him of his self-absorption. Again, it is tempting to include this scene in the catalogue of textual clues signaling a positive trend in the evolution of Pompey. But in truth a fugacious expression of marital love is too weak a sign for us to talk about “trends.” Besides, as Thompson remarks, whereas Pompey’s amor might be at first judged positively, it also implies a ruinous lack of Virgilian : “Pompey is like Turnus whom “… turbat amor …” (Aen. 12.70).”82 He is even worse than Turnus, for the Rutulian went on to fight and lose, whereas Pompey will abandon his army on the battlefield of Pharsalus. The general’s strange blend of pietas, virtus and furor, further thrown into confusion by his misplaced amor (more for his wife than for his homeland), will prove catastrophic.83 Ultimately ambiguity and contradictoriness pollute this affectionate scene of “amore coniugale”84 narrated at the end of Book 5, casting more shadows on Pompey’s leadership: can and will he ever be just what his fellow-Romans need?

Due to the fragmentary narrative ensuing from Lucan’s frequent and unexpected changes of focalization, it is as if the plot itself of the BC plays a role in tearing Pompey to pieces. After anticipating his decapitation through the haunting image of the truncus in Book 1, the narrator keeps returning to Pompey’s fate of bodily mutilation by providing readers with a mutilated portrayal of the character: he never offers the full picture of the man, but he prefers to randomly disperse in the text various snapshots of Pompey’s countenance and behavior. Liebeschuetz,

Menz and Rutz notice that a trademark of Lucan’s narrative technique is the stark juxtaposition,

82 Thompson 1983: 211. 83 Ibid. 207. 84 The expression gives the title to a subchapter in Narducci 2002 (p. 294). 188 so to speak, of narrative tableaux.85 The tendency is quite noticeable in the case of Pompey, not by accident.86 In this regard a brief note about Book 4 will further demonstrate how remarkably disjointed is Lucan’s characterization of Pompey: although the general is absent, his men add to his shortcomings by being the guilty party in the massacre of Ilerda. To be precise, whereas no textual clue points to a trend in the development (or lack thereof) of Pompey’s psychology, for he is not in the text, Afranius and Petreius bring back to mind one of the least favorable traits of the leader they are fighting for: his proverbial violence, displayed since his successful youth at the court of Sulla. Valerius Maximus recalls one powerful epithet to refer to young Pompey, whom Sulla himself saluted as after his first military successes: “teenage butcher”

(adulescentulus carnifex),87 an expression useful to recall the man’s ruthlessness in executing his former friend Gnaeus Papirius Carbo or the talented Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus while he was still in his prime.88 The case of Carbo is interesting, because Pompey himself makes the rhetorical error (are we surprised?) of mentioning his execution with misplaced pride in his speech in Book 2 (BC 2.546-48): “His [Caesar’s] defeat is certain, just as Lepidus was overthrown by Catulus and Carbo, now lying in a Sicilian grave, was beheaded at my request.”

Just how much does it help, one may ask, to evoke an episode of explicit cruelty while bragging about being more blessed than Sulla (2.582: Sulla felicior) at a time when the Roman citizens are facing the threat of a second march on Rome?89 Rhetorical questions aside, it is easy

85 Liebeschuetz 1979: 153; Menz 1952: 196; Rutz 1950. 86 For similar considerations in the case of Virgil’s Aeneid, see La Penna 1966 (addressing Heinze’s comments on the underdevelopment of the character of Aeneas). 87 Val. Max. Mem. 6.2.8. 88 Ibid. Cf. Liv. Per. 89; Plut. Pomp. 10.3-5; App. BC 1.94 (on the death of Carbo). See instead Liv. Per. 89; Eutr. Brev. 5.8.2; Or. Hist. 5.24.16 (on the death of Ahenobarbus). Valerius Maximus builds on a tradition explicitly hostile to Pompey and emphasizes the savagery of his butchery of innocent men. Other accounts are less harsh, but it is evident that Pompey had no issue using violence when it was useful to his interests and career advancement. 89 Postgate 1913, commenting on Luc. BC 7.25, rightly warns that “Sullanus usually has a sinister sense in Lucan, and Pompey is represented as being his apt pupil in cruelty.” 189 to detect a connection between the gratuitous violence of Pompey’s men in Spain and Pompey’s own violent deeds while he was still a rising star, a detail which in his sloppy rhetoric he fails to omit. And none of this, of course, can help anyone seeing Magnus in the way in which he wants to be seen in the BC, and hence a leader worth praising. In sum, the effect of the Ilerda campaign is not simply to allow Cesar to appear morally superior, but also to increase the incoherence in

Pompey’s portrayal.

To recap, in Book 1 Pompey is a vainglorious old man accustomed to wear the toga of peace. As such, in Book 2 he is filled with fear and chooses flight over fight, even though he declares the opposite. A moment later, in Book 3, he exhibits the philosophical wisdom of a good general in his rejection of death. Later in Book 4 his youthful savagery is exemplified by his men’s misdeeds, which cast a serious doubt on Pompey’s goodness. Finally, when with his wife in Book 5, Pompey acts like a good man, but not necessarily like a good commander. So far it is impossible to make an assessment of the man and his virtus. But let us turn to Book 6, in which Pompey’s hesitancy at Dyrrachium forbids a victory against the Caesarians.90 Pietas,

Aeneas’ most characteristic trait, allegedly is the chief reason for this lost opportunity to obtain peace for the world, for Lucan shifts the blame from Pompey to Caesar in equating the latter’s crime (BC 6.304: scelerum…summa tuorum) with the fact that he chose for an adversary a “most scrupulous kinsman” (6.305: cum genero pugnasse pio). Yet not even the narrator’s lenient commentary obliterates the impression that other and more pressing reasons (such as fear) might have sabotaged an otherwise certain victory. It is, after all, hard to forget that right before the

Pompeians gained terrain at Dyrrachium and forced their enemies into a retreat a single

Caesarian soldier, Scaeva, was enough to keep them all at bay while also protecting Caesar

90 Luc. BC 6.278-313. 190 (6.201-202: Stat non fragilis pro Caesare murus/ Pompeiumque tenet). Interestingly, although the text references Pompey, the rest of Scaeva’s ἀριστεῖα shows him slaughtering several

Pompeian soldiers one after another,91 whereas the leader of the shattered army is nowhere to be found. It is only when Scaeva (unrecognizable from the countless wounds he has received to his body and head) stops being a threat and his comrades are busy honoring him and dividing his armor that Pompey materializes on the battlefield to launch his counterattack.92 When he does, he exudes a virtus we would hardly expect from a rotting quercus: as swollen Po overflows its banks and drowns all surrounding plains, so Pompey scatters his forces in every direction until he succeeds in overthrowing the defensive walls of Caesar’s camp. It is easy, though, to display a valor leading to ephemeral success93 after the strongest enemy has been neutralized, and for this reason I find Lucan’s image of the uncontainable Italian river deceitful, if not plainly ironic.

After all, once we recall Pompey’s proneness to avoid armed confrontations as it is described in

Βook 2, when in spite of his capricious demand that his troops declare their eagerness to fight for the defense of Rome he himself runs to Brundisium; or (as we are about to see) in Book 7, when he hastens away from certain defeat at Pharsalus and leaves the remnants of his army and the

Senate to perish without their leader, it is rather natural to imagine him hiding behind his troops while Scaeva is still wreaking havoc on the field. Although Lucan does not write this, his silence speaks more loudly than words.

91 For a punctual analysis of Scaeva’s subverted example of virtus see Gorman 2001: 263-90. 92 It is surprising that no scholar has ever talked about the implications of Pompey’s absence from the battlefield during the narrative of Scaeva’s deeds at Dyrrachium, especially since he is explicitly mentioned at Luc. BC 6.202. 93 On the short-lived success of Dyrrachium see Malcovati 1953: 290. Cicero’s friction with the Pompeian troops in as he tried to dissuade them from fighting suggests that also famous eyewitnesses of the campaign suspected that Pompey did not stand a chance in the long run. See Cic. Fam. 6.21.1; 7.3.2 and Att. 11.4.1. Cf. Plut. Cic. 38.2. Lucan makes no mention of Cicero’s behavior at Dyrrachium, but gives him a role at Pharsalus. On this scene, and on the reason for Lucan’s decision to have Cicero face Pompey before the decisive battle, see below, p. 196-99. 191 In sum, as the plot thickens, we find out that Pompey’s purported belief in the Lucretian stance on the nothingness of death is hypocritical:94 the man cares for his skin more than he proclaims in response to Julia’s ghost. If it were otherwise, he would follow Caesar’s example in casting the die of fortune95 with no reserve. Thus to Brutus’ accusation in Book 2 that Pompey rivals Caesar in his aspiration to sovereignty96 one could add yet another reason for slander:

Pompey, be his secret desire to reign or reinstate the Republic, clamorously lacks the backbone to wage war and tends to cower in fear.

In light of my analysis so far, it is curious that in spite of his hero’s debacle Lucan shows regard for his pietas. Nor is it the first time that the narrator expresses sympathy for his Pompey.

For example, after Afranius and Petreius ignore the peaceful fraternization with the Caesarians, treat them “like a hostis, or foreign enemy”97 and attack them, Lucan reacts as follows (BC

4.254-59):

Tu, Caesar, quamvis spoliatus milite multo, agnoscis superos; neque enim tibi maior in arvis Emathiis fortuna fuit nec Phocidos undis Massiliae, Phario nec tantum est aequore gestum, hoc siquidem solo civilis crimine belli dux causae melioris eris.

Caesar, though robbed of many soldiers, you recognize the hand of heaven. Never indeed were you more fortunate, either on the Emathian plain or on the sea of Phocian Massilia; nor did the coast of Egypt witness so great a triumph, inasmuch as you, thanks to this one crime of civil war, will be henceforward the leader of the better cause.

94 Cf. above, p. 186 n. 78. 95 As is well known, Suetonius attributes to Caesar the expression “the die is cast” () a moment before he crosses the Rubicon. The sentence is probably a mistranslation from the Greek ἀνερρίφθω κύβος (let the die be cast), a quotation from , Caesar’s favorite comic poet. 96 See above, p. 169 n. 30. 97 Roller 1996: 327. 192 In an attempt to downplay Caesar’s merits and clementia, discussed at length in Caesar’s own version of the Ilerda campaign,98 Lucan not only omits “the fact that Caesar had offered the most generous terms to the Pompeians during the fraternization,”99 but he also reduces a negotiation between the Pompeian troops and Caesar (in which the latter had all the time to evaluate the terms of his interlocutors and make a calculated decision) to a mere stroke of luck. Thus it is not

Caesar’s responsibility that his cause is the better one. Rather, it is what Roller labels Petreius’

“alienating view:”100 in the eyes of Petreius his men are fighting a bellum externum, or a war against foreigners, not a bellum internum against fellow-citizens. Even though in the BC it is

Caesar who normally fosters the alienating view (having men like Laelius ready to plunge the sword into their pregnant wife’s belly if he so commanded),101 chance subverts this traditional dynamic in Book 4: Petreius’ rage obfuscates for a moment the notion that the true hostis of

Rome is Caesar himself, a second Hannibal. As a result of this, Bartsch reads Lucan’s apostrophe to Caesar as an unmistakable pro-Pompeian lament: it is thanks to somebody else’s crimen that

Caesar is the dux melioris causae. The pro-Pompeian trend then continues in Book 6, with Lucan praising the “moral fiber”102 of pious Pompey. She is right, but I find her conclusion misleading: according to her, there is no doubt that Lucan unconditionally approves of Pompey in spite of his inadequacy. Her main point is that Lucan, an ironist ante litteram of the sort of Richard Rorty,103 embraces with no reservation the flawed model of Pompey because there is nothing better in the reality in which the BC takes place. Reality must be accepted in its contingency, and its

98 Caes. DBC 1.74-75. 99 Ahl 1976: 195. 100 Roller 1996: 327, his italics. 101 Luc. BC 1.376-78: “Pectore si fratris gladium iuguloque parentis/ condere me iubeas plenaeque in viscera partu/ coniugis, invita peragam tamen omnia dextra” [“If you bid me bury my sword in my brother’s breast or/ my father’s throat or the body of my teeming wife,/ I will perform it all, even if my hand be reluctant”]. 102 Bartsch 1997: 79. 103 For his definition of (moral) ironists and relevant examples, see Rorty 1989: 1-59. 193 imperfections cannot be ameliorated. Hence Lucan would vehemently profess his faith in a man

(Magnus) whom he has no faith in. However, based on the textual clues I just analyzed, I find that the poet’s preference for Pompey over Caesar must not and does not suggest in any way a pro-Pompeian stance without reservation; otherwise Lucan would have no good reason to forge a fragmented hero and painstakingly emphasize all that is wrong about him. Rather, he would subtly manipulate history as he does in the case of the Ilerda campaign (where Caesar is said to be “fortunate” rather than skilled or morally superior) in order to have his Pompey be a better general than he was. I believe that the way in which Lucan operates betrays incurable pessimism, not ironism: anti-Caesarians like Pompey are men in pieces. They are broken citizens and soldiers whose attempts fail in a war already decided.

4.4 THE HEADLESS TRUNK

In Book 7 the discordant characterization of Pompey reaches unparalleled heights.

Whereas in each new scene in which Pompey is a protagonist in previous books either his positive traits unambiguously outweigh the negative or vice versa, the book devoted to the decisive battle of Pharsalus presents him as an inextricable mass of good and bad. Rambaud focuses on the good, demonstrating that Lucan is on occasion perfectly capable of doing for

Pompey what he does for Caesar in Book 4, that is subtly to manipulate the historical data at his disposal in order to have a certain character depicted in a certain way. Thus whereas Caesar writes that the Pompeians began to voice concerns over their leader’s hesitancy a week before battle (with the implication that Pompey ignored his men and arrived unprepared at Pharsalus),104

Lucan counters that his soldiers and foreign allies pressured him into entering the war on the

104 Caes. DBC 3.82.2. 194 same morning in which it took place.105 This version decreases Pompey’s responsibility for taking his chances without a military strategy or a cohesive army, because it implicitly suggests that he had no other choice. Accordingly the reaction of Lucan’s Pompey as he faces his troops’ frustration is one of deep resignation (BC 7.85-86): “The leader groaned: he realized that the gods were playing him/ false, and that destiny was thwarting his purpose.”106 A similar point is also made a few lines before (BC 7.58-59):

Hoc placet, o superi, cum vobis vertere cuncta propositum, nostris erroribus addere crimen?

O gods, when it is your fixed purpose to ruin all things, does it please you to add guilt on our part to mere mistakes?

And here is what Rambaud has to say: “Encore le poète a-t-il pris soin de réfuter aussitôt le reproche d’ambition qui pourrait rester attaché à son héros; les dieux qui poussent les humains dans l’erreur leur inspirent des accusations injustes contre l’homme de bien qui aurait pu les retenir.”107 Contrarily to what Cato states in Book 2, then, Pompey would not be driven by personal ambition (or at least not anymore). Also, Pharsalus is not his fault. It is the gods who are the guilty party and forced upon a mortal a fate that he never had the freedom to choose. As happens in Books 4 and 6, also on this occasion one gets the impression that the editorializing efforts of a politically committed poet paint Pompey in increasingly favorable colors:108 granted that Pompey disappoints his audience and is simultaneously disappointed by his audience, he is a victim rather than the carnifex Valerius Maximus accuses him of being.109 According to

Rambaud (and to Lounsbury, who adopts the same line of reasoning), Lucan’s manipulation of history in Book 7 is in essence a propagandistic effort to refute Caesar’s own effort, a theory that

105 Luc. BC 7.45-85. 106 Ingemuit rector sensitque deorum/ esse dolos et fata suae contraria menti. 107 Rambaud 1955: 263. 108 See Day 2013: 211; O’Hara 2007: 131-42. 109 See above, p. 189 n. 87. 195 seems to make some sense:110 as I argue in Ch. 2, it is doubtless that one of Lucan’s goals is to respond to Caesar and propose an alternate version of events. And I concede that the poet is in part redeeming his epic hero. Yet my analysis so far, by taking into account the χαρακτήρ of

Pompey across various books, proves that things are not straightforward in Lucan. Building on

Masters’ theory of a fractured voice111 I therefore argue that the narrator is keen on denying the possibility of redemption for Pompey at the same time in which he posits it. However, the purpose of this polarity is not a satirical reductio ad absurdum of politically committed writing,112 or else the virulent “dissenting voice with which Lucan narrates the Pharsalia”113 and complains about the passivity of others (including that of Pompey) would make no sense. Nor is this polarity meant, as in Bartsch, to plant in the text the seeds of Rorty’s ironism, because Lucan chastises Pompey just as much as he flatters him. To my mind there is only one viable explanation for the poet’s seemingly contradictory efforts in building so incoherent a character as his Magnus is, and that is to make him incomplete on all counts, therefore a symbol of the dismembered Republican body which he leads.

Let me then do the opposite of Rambaud and focus on the bad parts in Lucan’s portrayal of Pompey in Book 7. To begin with, the author’s manipulation of history might be helpful for blaming others (as the invisible Olympians) for Pompey’s shortcomings, but it has a damning effect for Pompey himself. Cicero plays a crucial role in this process: he is among the many

Republicans waiting for their commander’s orders at Pharsalus, and he is the one who finally springs up and pressures Pompey into an open confrontation with Caesar. Yet since Cicero was

110 Lounsbury 1976: 210-39; Rambaud 1955: 258-96. 111 Masters 1994: 151-77. 112 Contra Masters 1994: 152. 113 Day 2013: 110. 196 at Dyrrachium during the Battle of Pharsalus,114 we ought to ask why Lucan forces his hand upon history and conjures him at Pharsalus. As he recalls the interpretations of Rambaud and

Lounsbury, Leigh invokes “the Republican constitutionalism”115 of Pompey in his answer to this question: Cicero exists in the BC to assert the ethical superiority of Pompey over Caesar after debacles such as the Ilerda scene misleadingly suggest the opposite. In fact, in his attempt τὸν

ἣττω λόγον κρείττω ποιεῖν, Cicero proves that his arguments (and the arguments of Pompey’s soldiers, which Cicero sums up) are unsound. Nevertheless Pompey will bow to the senatorial authority exemplified by his prestigious interlocutor, demonstrating that he is keen on acting within the boundaries of the law and on dissipating all suspicions of his aspiration to autocratic rule. Although I can agree with this reading, I find that there is also a second, less evident and much less edifying reason for the role of Cicero in Book 7. This, I believe, is to remind readers present and future of Pompey’s inadequacy as a Ciceronian rector rei publicae, and there is no better place to do so than before Pharsalus, the narrative climax of the poem. In fact, as soon as the orator ends his harangue, Pompey is called for the first and only time in the BC a rector

(7.85).116 In Lanzarone’s opinion, “[n]el termine si coglie un’allusione alla figura del rector et gubernator civitatis che lo stesso Cicerone aveva delineato nel De re publica...e che egli ora non

è capace di riconoscere nella persona di Pompeo, per cui ne rifiuta la guida.”117 Later in his response Pompey admits to having taken on the role of rector, appropriating the language of

Cicero’s political discourse on the ideal statesman (BC 7.110-14):

Res mihi Romanas dederas, Fortuna, regendas: accipe maiores et caeco in Marte tuere. Pompei nec crimen erit nec gloria bellum. Vincis apud superos votis me, Caesar, iniquis:

114 See above, p. 191 n. 93. 115 Lounsbury 1976: 213-17; Rambaud 1955: 262-65. See also Leigh 1997: 147. 116 See above, p. 195 n. 106. 117 Lanzarone 2016 ad hoc. 197 pugnetur.

O Fortune, you gave me the Roman state to rule: take it back now greater than I received it, and guard it in the hurly-burly of war. The act of fighting will never bring either reproach or glory to me. In the court of heaven Caesar’s prayers for evil prevail over me: the fight is on.

The suggestive “iperbato a cornice” at 7.110,118 with the separation of res from regendas, evokes the separation between Pompey and Rome, a Republic that he is incapable of leading any longer.

To further the impression of inadequacy, Lucan has Pompey attribute his role of guidance of the

Roman state to the same Fortuna which is now forcing him into a war he detests. This persuades us to doubt that Pompey wanted to be a rector in the first place. Appian’s notion of θεοβλάβεια, or divine intervention to damage Pompey,119 is brought to an extreme: whereas according to a popular strand of the historiographical tradition Pompey suffered the blows of fate unawares,

Lucan makes his unhappy hero conscious of losing the favor of the gods and passively resigned to accepting the decrees of fate. This passivity, evocative of the image of the oak in Book 1, translates in Book 7 into the equally disturbing image of a worthless burden left in place of

Cicero’s capable gubernator (BC 7.123-27):

Sic fatur et arma permittit populis frenosque furentibus ira laxat et ut victus violento navita Coro dat regimen ventis ignavumque arte relicta puppis onus trahitur.

With these words he suffers the nations to arm, and gives a loose to their frenzied passion; so the , when mastered by the fury of the gale, makes no use of his skill, but leaves the steering to the winds, and is swept along, an ignominious burden of his vessel.

118 Lanzarone 2016 ad hoc. 119 App. BC 2.67 and 2.71. On this topic see Gabba 1956. The idea that misfortunate Magnus was mistreated by the gods was part of a long tradition designed to exculpate the general, or alleviate his responsibilities in the catastrophe of Pharsalus. 198 It is possible that Lucan found inspiration for this passage in his historical sources, for we find traces of the well-known motif of the ship as metaphor of state also in Plutarch’s biography of

Pompey (Pomp. 67.4):

Ταῦτα καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα πολλὰ λέγοντες ἄνδρα δόξης ἥττονα καὶ τῆς πρὸς τοὺς φίλους αἰδοῦς τὸν Ποµπήϊον ἐξεβιάσαντο καὶ συνεπεσπάσαντο ταῖς ἑαυτῶν ἐλπίσι καὶ ὁρµαῖς ἐπακολουθῆσαι, προέµενον τοὺς ἀρίστους λογισµούς, ὅπερ οὐδὲ πλοίου κυβερνήτῃ, µήτιγε τοσούτων ἐθνῶν καὶ δυνάµεων αὐτοκράτορι στρατηγῷ παθεῖν ἦν προσῆκον.

With these and many similar speeches they forced Pompey from his settled purpose – a man who was a slave to fame and loath to disappoint his friends – and dragged him into following after their own hopes and impulses, abandoning his best-laid plans, a thing which even in the master of a ship, to say nothing of a general in sole command of so many nations and armies, would have been unbecoming.

Regardless of his source of inspiration, though, by casting his simile within the fictive context of an altercation between Pompey and Cicero (who was the most outspoken advocate of the concordia ordinum under the enlightened rule of a flawless statesman) Lucan adds a decidedly

Roman and pro-Republican flavor to an otherwise neutral image. Again, this can only be done to discredit Pompey, even though Lucan is simultaneously working to rehabilitate his hero. The effects of such an inconcinnitas eventually lead to a most bizarre example of , or “self- sacrifice” in the name of one’s army. When he realizes that he is losing to Caesar, Pompey reacts by fleeing, something he already did in Book 2. Below is the relevant passage (BC 7.649-673):

Stetit aggere campi, eminus unde omnes sparsas per Thessala rura aspiceret clades, quae bello obstante latebant. Tot telis sua fata peti, tot corpora fusa ac se tam multo pereuntem sanguine vidit. Nec, sicut mos est miseris, trahere omnia secum mersa iuvat gentesque suae miscere ruinae: ut Latiae post se vivat pars maxima turbae, sustinuit dignos etiamnunc credere votis caelicolas vovitque, sui solacia casus. “Parcite,” ait “superi, cunctas prosternere gentes. Stante potest mundo Romaque superstite Magnus esse miser. Si plura iuvant mea volnera, coniunx est mihi, sunt nati; dedimus tot pignora fatis. Civiline parum est bello, si meque meosque obruit? Exiguae clades sumus orbe remoto? Omnia quid laceras? Quid perdere cuncta laboras? Iam nihil est, Fortuna, meum.” Sic fatur et arma signaque et adflictas omni iam parte catervas circumit et revocat matura in fata ruentes

199 seque negat tanti. Nec derat robur in enses ire duci iuguloque pati vel pectore letum; sed timuit, strato miles ne corpore Magni non fugeret, supraque ducem procumberet orbis; Caesaris aut oculis voluit subducere mortem.

Far off on a rising ground Magnus stayed, to see from there the carnage spread through the land of Thessaly, which the battle had hidden from his sight; he saw all the missiles aimed at his life, and all the prostrate corpses; he saw himself dying with all that bloodshed. But he desired not, as the wretched often do, to draw all things in destruction after him and make mankind share his ruin. Deigning to consider Heaven even yet worthy of his prayers, he consoled himself in calamity by praying that the most of the Romans might survive him. “Stop here, you gods”, he said, “and refrain from destroying all nations. The world may remain and Rome survive, though Magnus is doomed. If you desire to add to my afflictions, I have a wife, sons; all these hostages have I given to fortune. Is civil war still unsatisfied, if it destroy me and mine? Is our overthrow not enough, unless the world be added? Why does Fortune mangle all things and seek universal destruction? Nothing is left now of my own.” Thus he spoke, and rode round his army and the standards and the troops now shattered on every hand, recalling them from rushing upon instant death, and saying that he was not worth the sacrifice. He lacked not the courage to confront the swords and offer throat or breast to the fatal blow; but he feared that, if he lay low, his soldiers would refuse to flee and the whole world would be laid upon the body of their leader; or else he wished to remove his death from Caesar’s sight.

In his fine analysis Leigh recalls the prototypical model of devotio: when the army is in danger the exemplary Roman general, often after a brief prayer to the gods, charges the line of the enemy and sacrifices his life.120 Such a gesture has “an ethical as well as a tactical dimension:”121 ethical because the general, as pars pro toto with his army and sentient head (caput) of it, proves that he cares about his army (and the Roman state they defend and embody) more than about himself; and tactical because it inspires courage and the will to keep on fighting by setting an example. This is the way in which for example Publius Decius Mus, a type of , commander and Republican hero whom Cicero would have approved of, acts after the Latins

120 Leigh 1997: 128-34. 121 Ibid. 128-29. 200 defeat him near the Vesuvius.122 But this is not the way in which Pompey acts at Pharsalus.

Rather, his devotio overturns the pattern of the traditional model: although his prayer to the gods shows genuine care for his fellow-Romans, Pompey’s visualization of his symbiotic relationship with the body of his army is egotistical. On raised ground, separated from the dying body of his army (7.652: tot corpora fusa), which is his own body (7.653: se…pereuntem…vidit), he refuses to sacrifice himself and set an example. Thus it is the totality of the body that sacrifices itself for a part, not vice versa. This separation between the collective body of the army, representative of the Roman res publica, and the general or caput ominously anticipates the dismemberment of

Pompey’s own individual body in Book 8. At the immediate level, though, the scene works as a further proof that in Book 7 the contradictoriness of Magnus is even more problematic than it is in previous books.

To conclude, I turn to the opening of Book 8 (BC 8.1-19):

Iam super Herculeas fauces nemorosaque Tempe Haemoniae deserta petens dispendia silvae cornipedem exhaustum cursu stimulisque negantem Magnus agens incerta fugae vestigia turbat inplicitasque errore vias. Pavet ille fragorem motorum ventis nemorum, comitumque suorum qui post terga redit trepidum laterique timentem exanimat. Quamvis summo de culmine lapsus nondum vile sui pretium scit sanguinis esse, seque, memor fati, tantae mercedis habere credit adhuc iugulum, quantam pro Caesaris ipse avolsa cervice daret. Deserta sequentem non patitur tutis fatum celare latebris clara viri facies. Multi, Pharsalica castra cum peterent nondum fama prodente ruinas, occursu stupuere ducis vertigine rerum attoniti, cladisque suae vix ipse fidelis auctor erat. Gravis est Magno, quicumque malorum testis adest.

And now beyond wooded Tempe, the of Hercules, Magnus made by circuitous paths for the lonely forests of Thessaly; as he urged on his horse which was worn out by rapid flight and deaf to the spur, he confused the traces of his retreat and made a labyrinth of his tracks. He dreads the

122 For the full account see Liv. Hist. 8.9.1-11. Cf. Val. Max. Mem. 5.6.5 and Sen. Ep. 67.9. 201 sound of the trees in the wind; and any of his comrades who falls back to join him causes him terror in his agitation and fear for his own person. Though fallen from his lofty eminence, he knows that the price of his blood is still high; and, mindful of his career, he believes that his death can still earn as great a reward as he himself would give for the severed head of Caesar. Though he seeks solitude, his known features suffer him not to hide his disaster in safe concealment. Many who were on their way to the camp at Pharsalia, before rumor had published his defeat abroad, were startled to meet their leader and astounded by the sudden change of fortune; and he was scarcely believed when he reported his own defeat. The presence of any witness of his woes was grievous to him.

An unheroic fear disfigures Pompey during his flight from the Emathian plains: the oscillatory movements of branches and foliage are enough to perturb him, and he is so caught up in his delusions that he hardly recognizes his comrades, afraid that they might be enemies who approach him from behind with an intent to kill. Readers who at this point recall Pompey’s association of Caesar with a demens in his speech in Book 2 (575), or his senseless behavior at

Dyrrachium at a time when Pharsalus could be avoided will (again) discern untrustworthiness in the hysterical silhouette described here. One might even remember Appian123 and Plutarch,124 who speak about the psychological disintegration of Pompey. Granted these correspondences between the BC and the historical accounts,125 it is all the more evident that if he wished to fully rehabilitate the name of Magnus, Lucan would not be so keen on recording some unmistakable symptoms of Pompey’s lack of heroism and un-Stoicism. In fact, if it is “the mark of the Stoic to be unaffected by external circumstances,”126 the overreactions to sensory stimulations to which

Pompey falls prey during his retreat to Greece break the illusion of a journey toward wisdom. If anything, in light of Pompey’s flustered withdrawal it is legitimate to ask who the demens is

123 App. BC 2.67. 124 Plut. Pomp. 67.4. 125 We may add the testimony of Cassius Dio (Hist. 41.13), unsparing in his judgment as he equates Pompey’s eastward trajectory and downfall to a sort of contrappasso for his previous triumphs, which led him from being victor in Asia to being the most distinguished man in Italy. See Gabba 1956: 128. 126 Sklenár 2003: 125. 202 between him and Caesar. An excerpt from one of Seneca’s epistles might point us in the right direction (Ep. 56.13):

Prior ille sapiens est, quem non tela vibrantia, non arietata inter se arma agminis densi, non urbis inpulsae fragor territat. Hic alter inperitus est, rebus suis timet ad omnem crepitum expavescens, quem una quaelibet vox pro fremitu accepta deiecit, quem motus levissimi examinant.

This man in his first state is wise; he blenches neither at the brandished spear, nor at the clashing armor of the serried foe, nor at the din of the stricken city. This man in his second state lacks knowledge fearing for his own concerns, he pales at every sound; any cry is taken for the battle-shout and overthrows him; the slightest disturbance renders him breathless with fear.

The contrasting picture of a sapiens whose wisdom fosters imperturbability with that of a man inperitus sapientiae (or subject to “slightest disturbances” comparable to the fragorem motorum… nemorum torturing Lucan’s Pompey) follows Seneca’s quote from Virgil’s Aeneid (2.725-29):

“ferimur per opaca locorum, et me, quem dudum non ulla iniecta movebant tela neque adverso glomerati examine Grai, nunc omnes terrent aurae, sonus excitat omnis suspensum et pariter comitique onerique timentem.”

“We pass on amid the shadows; and I, whom of late no shower of missiles could move nor any Greeks thronging in opposing mass, now am affrighted by every breeze and startled by every sound, tremulous as I am and fearing alike for my companion and my burden.”

Also the pious hero to whom Pompey is (somewhat sarcastically?) compared after he refrains from capitalizing on his auspicious counterattack at Dyrrachium fails to live up to his name. In fact, in his speech Aeneas represents himself as one who is terrified of his surroundings. Yet he at least has an excuse for his fear: true pietas causes him to react as he does to unfavorable circumstances. The burden of Anchises, weighing on his shoulders, as well as the proximity of helpless Creusa and

Ascanius render fear not only unavoidable, but also a useful tool for the survival of all: even if it is not explicitly asserted, it is obvious from the context of the scene that the feelings associated with

Aeneas’ natural instinct of self-preservation and preservation of his family make him more alert, favoring his escape from burning Troy. By contrast, the behavior of Pompey is irreconcilable with

Stoic sapientia or military heroism: after performing a strange type of egomaniac devotio in which

203 he offers himself in sacrifice by fleeing instead of dying, fearful Pompey reasserts his egotistic viewpoint, aggravating the extent of his flimsy behavior in ways that do not pertain to Aeneas. Nor do I find it “easily conceivable”127 to interpret Pompey’s retreat in Book 8 as if it were the illustration of some trouble in the character’s process of self-improvement: according to this view, which Narducci endorses,128 we do well to remember that Pompey is a novice, so to speak. Unlike

Cato, Pompey is still far from perfection in spite of his best intentions, and it is therefore to be expected that he might occasionally fall short of his aspirations to a more virtuous life. In other words, Ahl’s apt label of ἀµήχανος would stick with Magnus until his death as the means both to remind his readers of the character’s irrecoverable past greatness and to show limitations in his steps on the path to rehabilitation. Granted this, one could not deny Pompey’s personal growth. I find this interpretation misleading: if the poet’s goal were to turn Pompey into a positive example despite some blunders, it would be counterproductive to interrupt the movement from ἀµηχανία to

σοφία precisely in its last act, hence in the last book in which Pompey is still alive and able to set the record straight. As we have seen in Ch. 3, scholars who speculate that the BC had to end with

Caesar’s murder as an example of tardy divine nemesis (as if the gods had gladly let their equal on earth grow so powerful only to turn their back on him all of a sudden and for no good reason) reach a similar kind of deadlock: in trying to explain away the contradictoriness of Lucan’s

Götterapparat by imagining an endpoint that might offer a satisfactory resolution to the several issues encountered in the poem, they oversimplify its complexities. What if, on the other hand,

Lucan’s point is exactly to problematize all aspects of the mythology and history of Roman

127 Sklenár 2003: 123. It should be noted that after positing the possibility that the Stoic proficiens incurs serious missteps in his path to virtue, even when the path approaches an end, Sklenár opts for a nihilistic explanation: Lucan espouses no cause and displays a sadomasochistic penchant for “nothingness.” I disagree: Lucan believes in fellow- citizens (those slaughtered at Pharsalus) and ideals (libertas) long gone and laments their annihilation in the midst of the triumphal Caesarian nefas. His pessimism makes him no nihilist. 128 See above, p. 175-76 n. 49. 204 civilization without offering a resolution, as he himself is unable to think of one? As we saw in Ch.

1, denial by silence is the only effective alternative to a narrative that – if it kept going – would have ended up immortalizing the unofficial birth of the Roman Empire in 46 BCE, as well as the official beginning of an indefinite period of slavery for Rome. This is the reason why Lucan, the poet-vates, chooses to turn Nigidius Figulus’ wish into a tangible reality: he crystalizes in the form of his unfinished epic a war without end, impressing upon readers the hopeful image of vulnerable

Caesar at Alexandria. Such an image is no fixed resolution, of course, but at least it instills some hope. The hope that the outcome of history might be different in the future from what we know it to be in the past.

To recap, the flawed humanity of Pompey emerges with enough clarity after his first speech to his troops in Book 2, or after the Dyrrachium campaign in Book 6; or, to give a third example, when the defeated general turns his back on his mangled fellow-men in Book 7. It is superfluous, if not confusing, to revive the notion that Pompey has serious flaws also in Book 8, unique in its monocular focus on a single character. Were there any truth to Narducci’s interpretation, it would make sense for Book 8 to be the climax of Pompey’s progression, not a testament to his regression to cowardly behavior. Unless Lucan never intended to draw a trajectory of growth for this bizarre hero of his, nor did he want to provide some heroic pro-Pompeian model worth emulating in historical reality. After all, what good would this sort of pedagogical intent do to an epicist who blatantly disregarded “l’aventinismo di Seneca e di Trasea”?129

It seems to me that the main problem when reading Pompey as a man on the path to redemption, be it Stoic or of some other kind, lies in a faulty presupposition which is based on the notion of completeness: it is in fact erroneously presupposed that the inconsistencies in Pompey’s

129 Gagliardi 1989: 78 n. 27. 205 portrayal, his mixture of good and bad, should lead somewhere; to be precise, that they should lead to a meaningful endpoint through which the skillful reader of the text can figure out how to put together the discordant traits of Pompey into a cohesive portrayal, like pieces in a puzzle. Yet even a quick glance at Lucan’s definitive undoing of Pompey’s alleged growth in Book 8 invites us to conclude that his inconsistencies purposefully remain unsolvable, and that his incompleteness as a character runs in parallel with the incompleteness of the text itself and even contributes to it. In my view, just as the narrative of the BC lacks a clear-cut terminus and stops at a seemingly random point in Book 10, so also Pompey lacks a proper finis. Book 8, the last chapter in Pompey’s life, tells us this much: with the severing of the head from the bust (truncus), the general’s corporeal incompleteness matches his incomplete χαρακτήρ. This is the meaning of Lucan’s unfortunate hero: in a failing universe where chance overrides the blurred, yet still discernible teleology of justice which Virgil set up in his Aeneid, Pompey is a failure himself, an amorphous human stain recognizable precisely by its shapelessness. Lucan puts his finger on this notion in explicit terms

(BC 8.708-11):

Pulsatur harenis, carpitur in scopulis hausto per volnera fluctu, ludibrium pelagi, nullaque manente figura una nota est Magno capitis iactura revolsi.

He is tossed on the sands and mangled on the rocks, while his wounds drink in the wave; he is the plaything of the ocean, and, when all shape is lost, the one mark to identify Magnus is the absence of the severed head.

Mebane has recently linked this passage to the role of the head-of-state metaphor in the Roman political discourse, showing that the metaphorical implications of the beheading of Pompey invite readers acquainted with the organic language of Roman politics to question the “legitimacy of

206 singular rule under the principate.”130 But at a more immediate level the metaphorical implications of this gruesome image put forth a notion familiar from the previous chapters in my study: the centrality of the theme of incompleteness in Lucan’s conceptualization of recent Roman history. In fact, it is the inexistent shape or lack of shape (nulla manente figura) of Pompey that paradoxically becomes the best criterion to identify the once glorious general. The matron predicting future ruin for Rome in Book 1 also emphasizes that Pompey’s degree of recognizability depends on the shapelessness (de-formis)131 of his dead body (cf. BC 1.685-86):

Hunc, ego fluminea deformis truncus harena qui iacet, agnosco.

Him I recognize, that headless corpse lying on the river sands.

Concerning this passage, Hinds aptly remarks that agnosco operates in two ways, signaling both the infallibility of the woman’s prophetic gaze in accordance with the internal logic of the poem and the intertextual allusion to Virgil: “As a prophet she recognizes Pompey, of course, who will lie decapitated where the river Nile meets the sea twenty months and seven books of De Bello

Civili later. But as a reflexive annotator, engaged in another kind of vatic interpretation, she recognizes Priam– dramatizing our own realization, as readers, that we too have seen his

130 Mebane 2016: 192. See also Bexley 2010: 138; Dinter 2005: 295-312; Hill 2004: 213. On the identification of Pompey or Caesar with the single ‘head’ (caput) guiding a group and on their oppositions as rival heads, see Dinter 2012: 19. Cf. Pitcher 2008 and Hardie 1993: 3-10. 131 For forma as “shape,” see OLD 3. Seneca tragic shares Lucan’s interest, as Most 1992: 394-97 illustrates: in the Hippolytus we notice a parallelism between the ‘comeliness’ (forma) of Hippolytus, which is bound to die away quickly, and the ‘shape’ of his body (also forma), which is going to disintegrate to the point of unrecognizability. Nor are instances of extraordinary graphic violence that render characters unrecognizable limited to a single : in the Hercules, Trojan Women and Agamemnon we find overblown descriptions of someone’s forma reduced to a shapeless (deformis) mass, with the result that some have relied on psychoanalysis to understand the reasons for violence in Seneca’s drama (Boyle 1987; Segal 1983; Rozelaar 1976). In truth, though, the phenomenon is typical of Silver Latin Literature: since arguably spurious works such as Seneca’s and also obsess over the degradation of the human body, as do various fragments of Petronius’ Satyricon (Most 1992: 396), it is safe to conclude that anatomically detailed instances of human pain are central to Neronian writers, with the obvious inclusion of Lucan. Among the reasons might be the special abundance, at this time, of spectacles of organized carnage for people’s pleasure: see Segal 1983: 186-87; Williams 1978: 185-88; Fuhrmann 1968: 30. On the violent spectacles themselves, see Coleman 1990: 44-73; Barton 1989: 1-36; Hopkins 1983: 1-30; Robert 19712. What I wish to stress is that Lucan is the only Neronian writer to highlight (through the example of headless Pompey) that the shapelessness of the human body becomes its best, if not only possible, recognizable form. 207 decapitated trunk before: in the second book of the Aeneid.” 132 Indeed, in describing the assassination of Pompey Lucan uses key-terms that evoke the famous death of Priam at Aen.

2.554-58:133 there, too, we read of a headless body amid the sands, a detail that scholars have often interpreted as an allusion to the fate of Pompey.134 There is in fact no mythical tradition presenting us with such an image for the fatal hour of Priam: according to part of the tradition, the Trojan ruler perished inside his royal palace, by the altar of Zeus, after witnessing the death of his own son

Polites; alternatively, Pyrrhus dragged the old man outside the palace, killed him at Achilles’ burial place, decapitated him and set his head on a spike,135 an obvious resemblance to Pompey’s fate as

Sextus remembers it in Book 6 of BC (9.136-40). None of these mythical tales, though, mentions a headless trunk on the shore, as does Virgil. Lucan picks up on his predecessor’s cue, yet he reverses Virgil’s motif of recognition: whereas in the Aeneid old Priam is unrecognizable (558: sine nomine corpus) without his head, in Lucan’s BC it is the absence of Pompey’s caput that makes him recognizable at first sight (8.711: una nota…capitis iactura revolsi).

By the end of Pompey’s journey we are left with a dismembered general, a dismembered army, and the mere memory of a name evocative of past triumph and present loss: indeed, nomina nuda tenemus.

132 Hinds 1998: 9. 133 A passage worth quoting: Haec finis Priami fatorum, hic exitus illum/ sorte tulit Troiam incensam et prolapsa videntem/ Pergama, tot quondam populis terrisque superbum/ regnatorem Asiae. Iacet ingens litore truncus,/ avulsumque umeris caput et sine nomine corpus [Such was the end of Priam’s fate, such fated death/ overwhelmed him as he saw Troy in flames/ and Pergamum in ruins, he who once was the lofty ruler of Asia/ over lands and peoples. Thus he lies now, a huge trunk on the shore,/ his head torn from his shoulders, a body without a name]. On the intertextual allusions and complex allegorical imagery of these lines, see Bowie 1990: 470-81; Sklenár 1990: 67- 75; Mills 1978: 159-66; Camps 1969: 97. 134 Servius, commenting on Virg. Aen. 2.557, posits that Virgil’s ingens is synonymic with Pompey’s title, Magnus. This is unlikely, and the adjective possibly translates the Homeric µέγας, often accompanying Πρίαµος. See Austin 1964 ad hoc. 135 Cf. Sen. Troad. 141: Sigea premis litora truncus [You lie – a trunk – on the Sigean shore]. For a reference to Pompey’s death in Seneca, see Stok 1996: 48-73 and Néraudau 1985: 2036-45. 208 Epilogue

In response to the tragic events of 9/11, in 2002 the Belgian artist Luc Tuymans exhibited an still life inspired by an unfinished work by Cézanne: a translucent jug half-full of water and surrounded by fruit stands at the center of a five-meter long white canvas. Emerging from the vast, white void of the canvas, the over-scale presence of these everyday items, painted with pale strokes of pastel-colors and as if inexorably fading from our sight, demands attention and forces us to ask what is being represented. The answer is as simple as it is complicating: failure.

As the witness of a tragedy that in his eyes was unrepresentable, Tuymans defied the expectations of politically and socially engaged viewers and replaced the spectacle of a terrorist attack with the ostensibly banal outline of scattered fruits and a water-jug. Since the language of art fails to adequately capture the unspeakable phenomenon of terrorism and warfare, the artist denies form to his subject, lets it remain unspeakable, and in its place paints an unfinished scene: the inappropriateness of the subject, the disarming simplicity of its composition and its incomplete execution express the impossible task of representing the unrepresentable.

Poets have at times adopted similar stances in trying to cope with the catastrophic effect of large-scale traumas such as an organized criminal attack penetrating to the core of their nation or, more generally, full-scale war itself. Thus, for example, the Italian poet Eugenio Montale, in reacting to the devastation of World War I, denies form to his subject-matter and resists his imaginary interlocutor’s request for knowledge: “Codesto solo oggi possiamo dirti: ciò che non siamo, ciò che non vogliamo.” Lucan also resists his readers’ request for knowledge: his farsightedness fails him before he reaches the end of the war he is retelling. But in contrast with

Tuymans and Montale, Lucan adopts a bolder stance in striving to represent the unrepresentable.

The inadequacy of his poetry, and hence of his artistic medium of representation, does not translate

209 into a complete negation of form (be it a still life which has nothing to do with terrorism, or

Montale’s emphatic iteration of negatives), but rather into the incomplete form of an open-ended textual body. The effect is that the constitutional features of epic, from a beginning in medias res to an unresolved epilogue, always suggestive of a reprisal of action and of more tribulations to come for the protagonists, are exaggerated to the point that a lack of resolution becomes endemic, as I have argued in the four chapters of my study: Pompey is so split between antithetical cravings that he, much like Robert Musil’s hopeless mathematician Ulrich in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, finds no sense of self and makes no sense of his life before his decapitation; Caesar’s sudden weakness prevents him from moving the plot forward by committing more crimes, but he moves backwards by glancing back at Scaeva and remembering his past of omnipotent wickedness; and

Lucan, mirroring the pose of blissful ignorance adopted by his fictional seers, strikes no balance between the extent of his content and its formal representation, but favors a lack of finish instead: in his world, in his artistic vision, stories and themes which we would expect to conclude within the boundaries of the poem never end.

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