ABANDONING THE CITY: MEANING AND IDENTITY IN LUCAN’S ROME By PHILIP C. COOK A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2016 © 2016 Philip C. Cook To my parents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I express my gratitude to my parents who instilled in me early on a love of books and a desire to learn. I am grateful to the Classics department at the University of Florida for the opportunity to continue to study, and especially to Dr. Jennifer Rea for her patience and encouragement throughout the process of writing. All of my professors at UF have been excellent and I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to them for my experience over the past few years, especially to those on my committee. I appreciate all the input and suggestions from Drs. Van Steen, Smocovitis, and Eaverly. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 6 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 8 2 ROME ABANDONED AND USURPED ................................................................. 15 Panel A: Rome and the Rending of Society ............................................................ 16 Panel B: Mytilene and the Usurpation of Roman Values ........................................ 24 Panel C: Alexandria and the Descent into Nothingness ......................................... 31 3 PLACE AND IDENTITY: PLUNDERING THE TEMPLE ........................................ 38 Context ................................................................................................................... 39 Leges Amissae ....................................................................................................... 43 Libertas Lost ........................................................................................................... 49 Mores Parcorum Avorum ........................................................................................ 55 Identity Abandoned ................................................................................................. 63 4 PLACE AND POWER: THE SENATE IN EPIRUS ................................................. 69 The Speech Itself .................................................................................................... 71 Dissonance ............................................................................................................. 75 Other Romes and Roman Identity .......................................................................... 84 Nero’s Rome and the Exercise of Power ................................................................ 90 5 PLACE AND THE PAST: LIVY’S ROME AND LUCAN .......................................... 96 Livy’s Rome ............................................................................................................ 99 Rome’s Champions .............................................................................................. 104 Lucan and Livy’s Vision ........................................................................................ 109 6 PLACE AND THE FUTURE: ABANDONING NERO’S ROME ............................. 119 Apostrophe I: Connecting to the Audience ............................................................ 121 Apostrophe II: Authorial Judgment ........................................................................ 130 7 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................... 143 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................. 151 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 162 5 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy ABANDONING THE CITY: MEANING AND IDENTITY IN LUCAN’S ROME By Philip C. Cook December 2016 Chair: Jennifer Rea Major: Classical Studies A thematic study of the abandoning of Rome and the loss it entails in Lucan’s Bellum Civile, this dissertation traces a trajectory of devastation as it moves from the actual account of the abandonment of the city in book one to a complete disintegration of Roman values and identity which are dependent on the city. Within this trajectory, a triangulation of place, power, and identity can be discerned which constitute a horizon of meaning for the poet whose loss leads to annihilation. A second tier of understanding in the poem lies in the poet’s vatic posture of engagement with his audience which seeks to involve them in the abandonment of the city and the loss which follows. Through the repeated apostrophe to Rome, the poet keeps the city at the forefront of his audience, and through his indefinite addresses, he ties their engagement both to the abandonment of the city and to attempts to supplant Rome with other centers of power and identity. This proleptic stance combines with consistent similarities between the events of the civil war and Nero’s Rome to allow the poet to project abandonment and loss into his own compositional context. In this way, 6 the poet succeeds in guiding the audience’s reflection on their own relationship to the city and expressing a reproach and lament for the consequences of its abandonment. This thematic thread within the poem responds to wider anxieties about the status of Rome, shifting centers of power and authority, and expanding identities for the governing elite during the principate of Nero. Lucan’s poem represents a traditionalist voice decrying social and political changes regarding place, power, and identity under Nero, using the historical events of the civil war between Pompey and Caesar as a vehicle. In his poetic vision, these changes lead to annihilation and death. 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The Roman poet M. Annaeus Lucanus, whose poem on the civil war serves as our object of study, died by his own hand in 65 CE, specifically because of his involvement in a conspiracy to overthrow the emperor Nero and replace him with a fellow senator named C. Calpurnius Piso.1 This Pisonian Conspiracy ultimately failed, and Nero lived another three years until 68 CE when he, in turn, killed himself outside Rome. Among other charges against Nero, the conspirators alleged murder, the diminution of senatorial power, and the attempted destruction of the city of Rome.2 These charges were all reflective of a deeper dynamic of changing power structures and shifting identities under the Julio-Claudian emperors which Lucan addresses in his poem. The advent of Augustus, the first princeps, and the death of the old Republic over eighty years before the accession of Nero in 54 CE inaugurated a new age and stimulated a sweeping array of social and political changes which reverberated down to Nero’s principate and beyond. These changes necessarily impacted the governing elite centered in Rome who had effectively exercised power for over five hundred years. With Augustus’ victory at Actium in 31 BCE, the princeps became a new source of power and authority whose evolving role restructured not only traditional (republican) seats of 1 Tac. Ann. 15.70. Tacitus does not specify the manner of Lucan’s death, only that it was ordered by Nero. The biographical tradition contributes the fact of suicide. Tucker (1987) suggests that Lucan was in fact executed based upon a reinterpretation of this passage in Tacitus. All abbreviations for Latin authors and their works follow the conventions of the Oxford Latin Dictionary (henceforth OLD). 2 Tac. Ann. 15.51 and 15.67. See also Griffin (1984) 166-170. On the destruction of Rome, Tacitus specifically quotes the military tribune, Subrius Flavus, accusing Nero of arson in the burning of the city, odisse coepi, postquam parricida matris et uxoris, auriga et histrio et incendiarius extitisti. For all references to the Annales of Tacitus, the text is Fisher (1906). 8 power, like the Senate to which Lucan belonged, but also redefined traditional abstractions like liberty, law, and other values of the mos maiorum which were central to Roman culture and identity.3 The expansion of Roman control throughout the Mediterranean further led to an expansion of the sense of patria, homeland, beyond simply the Urbs, the city of Rome. The governing aristocracy formerly rooted exclusively in Italy likewise expanded to an aristocracy of empire by integrating within itself provincial elites.4 Accompanying these changes was a continued extension of Roman citizenship, a process which had characterized the Roman state since its origins in the 7th Century BCE, but which had proceeded fitfully and uneasily.5 All of these changes created anxieties among those whom they impacted, especially anxieties about the place of Rome within an expanding empire and the exercise of power once reserved exclusively to the Senate and Roman people. These anxieties in turn elicited a perceived need among traditional segments of elite society to reassert the centrality and primacy of Rome, both as a physical reality and as an idea.6 Exacerbating these anxieties was the arbitrary rule of emperors like Nero, whose principate brought about the end of the Julio-Claudian