Bellum Civile Research Articles

Si Credere Velis : Lucan’s Cato and the Reader of the Bellum Civile

Si Credere Velis:Lucan’s Cato and the Reader of the Bellum Civile* Christopher L. Caterine INTRODUCTION Despite Berthe Marti’s warning seventy years ago that questions about the hero of Lucan’s Bellum Civile (hereafter BC) were unlikely to find any definitive answer (Marti 1945.343–44), scholars over the last quarter century have engaged in a fierce debate over Lucan’s depiction of Cato the Younger. Recent critics can, for the most part, be placed into one of two camps. For convenience I call “optimists” those who see Cato as the Stoic and republican hero of the BC and who view the poem as a rallying cry for opposition to the government—or at least the ruling family—established by Julius Caesar.1 This position is at root biographical and based on ancient testimony that Lucan participated in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero after a falling out with his boyhood friend.2 On the other hand are those I term “pessimists.” Drawing on the insights of deconstructionism [End Page 339] and narratology, these scholars reject the more hopeful outlook of the optimistic camp and find in Lucan signs of a dysfunctional world in which no heroes are possible.3 As these two stances are mutually exclusive, each side has accused the other of misreading the poem either willfully or out of ignorance;4 attempts to find some middle ground, meanwhile, have met with only limited success.5 My chief goal in this article is to move past the interpretive divide described above. First, I sketch the evidence that each side employs in order to demonstrate that both optimistic and pessimistic critics have good textual reasons for adopting their disparate views. Neither one, in other words, has any inherent claim to superiority. From this I conclude that Lucan’s portrait of Cato is intentionally ambiguous and thus that our ability to judge this most slippery character is intentionally frustrated. I then discuss a series of mythological and scientific excursuses that interrupt the narrative of Book 9.6 Earlier scholars faulted Lucan for the length and apparent irrelevance of these passages, while more recent critics struggle to find meaningful connections between the individual digressions and the narrative proper.7 In each case, however, one may observe the poet directly questioning the possibility of attaining certain knowledge in controversies that admit a multiplicity of explanations. This offers a marked parallel to the contradictory interpretations of Cato that have arisen in the scholarly literature, and [End Page 340] I argue that the digressions consequently invite Lucan’s readers to view Cato in similar terms: although the poem repeatedly urges us to make a definitive judgment of the man known in Lucan’s day as a Stoic hero and sage (Seo 2011), the ambiguity of the portrait found in the BC forces us to doubt whichever choice we ultimately make. Building on this conclusion, I next suggest that rhetorical education at Rome will have made Lucan especially attentive to his audience’s experience of his epic and thus that investigations into the poet’s personal beliefs should give way to alternative lines of inquiry. I end with a brief example of what such an approach might look like, arguing that Lucan’s ambiguous portrait of Cato—and of the civil war more broadly—is a powerful display of mimesis that brings the horrors of that conflict alive within the minds of his audience. COMPETING OUTLOOKS The view proposed by optimistic readers of the BC rests primarily on the authority of the narrator, who explicitly praises Cato throughout his march across Libya (9.1–949). Thus we find assertions that Cato “took in his orphaned fatherland” (“patriam tutore carentem | excepit,” 9.24–25); that he spoke with the voice of an oracle (“ille deo plenus … effudit dignas adytis e pectore voces,” “That man, full of the god … poured forth from his breast voices worthy of a temple,” 9.564–65); and that he was a “true father of his fatherland” (parens verus patriae, 9.601).8 Laudatory claims such as these are frequent and evenly spaced throughout BC 9, comprising nearly seven percent of the Libyan narrative: 1). 9.19–35, reintroducing Cato...

Lucan’s Egyptian Civil War by Jonathan Tracy (review)

Reviewed by: Lucan’s Egyptian Civil War by Jonathan Tracy Eleni Manolaraki Jonathan Tracy. Lucan’s Egyptian Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. viii, 296. $99.00. ISBN 978-1-107-07207-7. Based on the author’s 2009 dissertation, this book explores Lucan’s engagement with two disparate conceptualizations of Egypt: Egypt as bastion of traditional values and social stability, and Egypt as trademark of oriental decadence and political corruption. In De Bello Civili, Tracy argues, this contradiction is made to reflect tensions within Roman society, the relationship between science and politics, and potential avenues of resistance to Nero. Lucan juxtaposes the Pharaonic and Ptolemaic epochs, and he parallels the destructive influence of the Ptolemies on Pharaonic Egypt to the ruin of the Republic by the Principate. While not all of its arguments are equally strong or original, the book makes a solid contribution to studies of Lucan, of Seneca’s Natural Questions, and of Roman Egypt. In the first part (“Pompey in Egypt,” 13–96), Tracy analyzes Pompey’s choice of Egypt as a refuge after Pharsalus. While other sources for that senatorial debate tie Pompey’s flight to Egypt to pragmatic strategies, the consular Lentulus idealizes the land of the Nile as a remote safeguard from the moral bankruptcy of bellum civile. His ethnographic model, however, is fatally out of touch with his contemporary Egypt, where Alexandrian commercialism and Ptolemaic realpolitik have shortened the distance from Rome. In a similarly high-stakes debate, the plainspoken Memphite priest Acoreus fails to convince the young Ptolemy that his loyalties lie with Pompey. The courtier Pothinus trumps Acoreus’ pious yet anachronistic values by dressing cynical expedience with attractive Greek rhetoric. Although different in their circumstances, Lentulus’ unfounded utopianism and Acoreus’ moral isolation point jointly to a central theme in Lucan: [End Page 570] the universal decline of traditional values and the inability of most characters to accept this reality. The linkages between Lentulus, Pompey, and Acoreus as idealist supporters of traditionalism are innovative and engaging. The second part (“Caesar in Egypt,” 97–273) examines Caesar’s Alexandrian sojourn, focusing on his Nile inquiry to Acoreus. It has long been recognized that this episode belongs with the topos of the tyrant’s hostility to nature. In this vein, Caesar’s egotistical imperialism is arrested by Acoreus’ inscrutable Nile. Tracy cuts a narrow path in this well-trodden ground, refining scientific facets of Acoreus’ speech rather than redefining its message. Without denying Acoreus’ role as a mouthpiece for Lucan, he establishes a meaningful connection between his Egyptian ethnicity and his speech: Acoreus rises above his compromised heritage to convey the essence of Egyptian wisdom, but stripped of Egyptian cultural referents. Especially insightful is Tracy’s differentiation between Acoreus’ speech and his Senecan model (N.Q. 4A). Seneca’s optimistic rationalism, which claims a progressive knowledge of nature, becomes in Acoreus a conservative and humbling occlusion of natural mysteries. More adventurous arguments are grounded in macrostructures rather than textual analysis (225–73). Contrary to the prevailing reading of Caesar as impervious to Acoreus, Tracy proposes that Caesar is profoundly, if temporarily, touched by him. Acoreus’ influence emerges in Caesar’s escape from the conspiracy of Pothinus. The Nile speech is the crucible of Caesar’s emotional-ethical shift, because it is the only experience intervening between his fearless megalomania and his fearful hiding in the royal enclosure. Tracy likens the transformative force of this speech to Lentulus’ case for Egypt, as “the sole experience that intervenes for Pompey between his delusional case for a Parthian alliance . . . and his courageous death” (236). The parallel, however, between Lentulus’ ignorance and Acoreus’ insight seems forced, as do the reversed moral transformations of Pompey and Caesar. Moreover, Pompey’s astronomical education (8.165–92) resembles Acoreus’ cosmology more than Lentulus’ naive idealization of Egypt. Tracy concludes by returning to Lucan’s divergences from Seneca through the lens of Neronian politics. He makes the stimulating argument that, by cutting Caesar down to size, Acoreus criticizes Seneca’s flattery of Nero’s own scientific inquiries (N.Q. 1.5.6, 6.8.3, 7.17.2, 7.21.3). The book is well produced; I found a...

In Their Own Words: Practices of Quotation in Early Medieval History-Writing by Jeanette Beer (review)

Reviewed by: In Their Own Words: Practices of Quotation in Early Medieval History-Writing by Jeanette Beer Glynnis M. Cropp Beer, Jeanette, In Their Own Words: Practices of Quotation in Early Medieval History-Writing, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2014; cloth; pp. 176; R.R.P. US$50.00; ISBN 9781442647541. Given current interest in the crusades and chronicles, this book will have a wide readership. Jeanette Beer has here pursued her scholarly work in the field of medieval history-writing through the formative period between [End Page 219] the ninth and the thirteenth centuries, from the Strasbourg oaths to the compilation/translation of Li Fet des Romains. She sets out from Isidore of Seville’s definition of history as the narration of events that deserve to be remembered and which constitute the truth. Hence the importance of eyewitness accounts, ipsissima verba (‘words actually spoken’) and the use of direct and indirect speech in this examination of five landmark texts, three of which are chronicles by Crusade participants. The Strasbourg oaths in Nithard’s Historiae contain the earliest words of French recorded. Building on her analysis in an earlier essay, Beer explains the chancery process and the function of the oaths in the Historiae, where they are preceded by a speech in Latin. She speculates on the understanding of the vernacular by the respective French- and German-speaking armies and on what they reflect of Nithard’s anxiety for the empire. The anonymous Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, a straightforward narrative in Latin, is an eyewitness account of the First Crusade from a soldier’s viewpoint. It has been recognised as the expedition’s unofficial history. The author believed that events in which he participated were of epic importance and frequently used direct speech to endorse the veracity and immediacy of his story. He presented, for example, the pope’s call to the Crusade as though he had been present and heard the very words. Villehardouin, a leader and negotiator in the Fourth Crusade, presented in La Conquête de Constantinople a different viewpoint and experience for an audience interested in diplomacy as well as military activity. He referred to himself and his participation in the third person, speaking also as author and eyewitness in the first person, and sometimes shifting responsibility somewhat ambiguously to li livres, ‘the book’. His use of direct speech is concentrated in the first half of the chronicle, for example, in the account of negotiations with the doge of Venice and the pope. In contrast, Robert de Clari’s account of the Fourth Crusade is that of a poor knight following his overlord and returning home before the eventual débâcle. His lively narrative of ‘le dreite verité’ (p. 58), everything he could remember, as he likes to repeat, using the first person as self-referencing and direct speech, sometimes for dramatic effect, verges on the fabliau style, it is suggested, for he is pre-eminently a storyteller. Two chapters are devoted to Li Fet des Romains, which Beer studied in A Medieval Caesar (Droz, 1976). It is an anonymous compilation translated into the French vernacular from all the known works concerning Julius Caesar, first and foremost from his Commentaries on the Gallic wars and Lucan’s Bellum Civile, with debts and attributions to other classical historians. Interesting points discussed include: Caesar’s dictum, the compiler’s tactical shifting of responsibility when he disagreed with his source material, adaptation of Lucan’s verse epic and its pagan mythology, supplementation, [End Page 220] and interpolation. The compiler/translator astutely employed quotation, sometimes appropriating it, at other times distancing himself from ancient historians and speaking in his own voice to complete the truth. Analysis of the stylistic practice of quotation and self-referencing shows how the five specimen texts significantly contributed to the evolution of medieval history-writing. An Afterword sketches their diffusion and later role as sources, in turn, for quotation. Notes, Works Cited, a Name Index, and a Subject Index complete the work. All French and Latin passages cited are carefully translated into English. Oversights are rare, but in two instances a word was inadvertently repeated: ‘are’ (p. 33, translation l.1), ‘abundantly’ (p...

Caesar Perpetuus ?: Cyclical Behavior in Lucan’s Caesar Similes

Examination of three similes in Lucan’s Bellum Civile shows that Caesar functions according to a cyclical model in which a violent release of energy is followed by a state of exhaustion, which then leads to regeneration in preparation for another outburst. Although the repetition of this process would render him invulnerable, the same similes also suggest that the cycle could be broken—a situation that would ensure Caesar’s demise. These hypothetical outcomes thus serve as opposing templates through which Caesar’s fate in the narrative proper may be evaluated.

Der ‚dekadente‘ Feldherr

Abstract The portrayal of Caesar’s dalliance with Cleopatra in Lucan’s Bellum civile (book 10) exploits the motif of the general who, seduced by a foreign woman, forgets his responsabilities to his country. This motif occurs from Homer through the Greek and Latin epic tradition to Latin historiography and Greek biography. The lexicon for the concept of forgetting is a recurring Leitmotiv.1

Sulla prima fase della fortuna lucanea

The first period of Lucan’s reception is marked by conflicting judgments, but it is perhaps appropriate to clear up some misunderstanding. In fact, the reserves on behalf of Bellum Civile not have prevented it from having a considerable circulation, and an undoubted success. The doubts about the quality of Lucan as a poet, rather derived from the difficulty of classifying his work according to parameters of the traditional epic, but did not concern the high artistic level of his work. In fact, the criticism of Lucan did not prevent that it could be claimed as a model of poetry, along with other prominent poets. Of particular interest is the judgment of the Dialogus of Tacitus (20, 5-7), which marks the entry of Lucan in official canon of the leading Latin poets, next to Virgil and Horace. In short, Lucan, from the beginning, has problems of classification, but is highly respected and enjoys wide popularity. The ambiguous judgment on his work, even if the result of some misunderstanding, continues, albeit in different ways, until the last century.

Landscapes of war

Drawing on established connections between Roman identity and an agricultural landscape, this paper examines how the imagery of disrupted pastoral and agrarian landscapes and characters represent the effects of civil war on the Roman people in Vergil’s Aeneid and Lucan’s Bellum Civile. While disturbance and turmoil are already a part of the natural landscape in Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics, in epic, a genre that concerns itself with how empire and imperial power mediate Roman identity, the displacement of shepherds and agriculture partially redefines Roman identity in militaristic terms. Vergil’s pastoral characters, written into military roles as civic landscapes displace agrarian ones in the Aeneid, survive but fail to find a place in Lucan’s ruined and desolate Pharsalian landscape in the Bellum Civile. There, the broken natural landscape, unfit for agriculture, pastoralism, or trade, mirrors the redefinition of what is “Roman” and the occlusion of Rome’s link to an idealized bucolic past.

Landscapes in the Bellum Civile: From negation to subversion of the locus amoenus

Looking at two descriptions of landscape in Lucan’s Bellum Civile (the sacred grove near Massilia and the Libyan desert), we will try to show that the poet uses bucolic elements to depict some places. However, he does not use these pastoral elements to describe a locus amoenus but a locus horridus. Lucan’s landscape can be defined as an inversion and a subversion of the bucolic one.

Blood and Death of Rome in Lucan’s Bellum Civile

This paper is an analysis of the symbolism of blood in Lucan’s epic poem Bellum Civile. The first part of the article discusses several examples that show Lucan’s interest in the value that blood has when it is flowing inside someone’s body, and conversely the loss of that value when the blood is shed in battle. It then reveals a parallel between the unusual descriptions of the flow of blood, and the more usual descriptions of the natural flow of water. Various examples of this parallel suggest that Lucan develops a striking image of the bloodshed of Romans becoming as normal as natural phenomena. This bloodshed thus represents the inevitable death of Rome caused by this civil war, since Lucan subtly suggests that the bloodshed and death of individual Romans only translates into the bloodshed and death of Rome itself after the main battle of this war. The theory advanced by this paper can add to the theories of some recent scholarship on this poem, which generally argues that Lucan is not so optimistic about the future of Rome as was once believed.

LUCAN'S MILITIA AMORIS: ELEGIAC EXPECTATIONS IN THE BELLUM CIVILE

Lucan's epic depicts the displacement of the elegiac notion of militia amoris by bellum civile through his use of elegiac allusions and topoi. Specifically, Julia's ghost is parallel to Cynthia's ghost in Propertius 4.7; the description of Erictho draws on the thumbnail sketches of witches in elegy; Cleopatra is portrayed as a meretrix who follows Ovid's advice in Ars Amatoria 3; Cornelia is depicted as one of the abandoned heroines; and Pompey is cast as an elegiac lover. In each case, however, Lucan frustrates expectations by negating or inverting the elegiac passage or topos: the civil war thus disturbs even the apolitical world of elegy.

Introduction to Latin. Second Edition by SUSAN C. SHELMERDINE

254 BOOK REVIEWS of civil war in the Bellum Civile. Less convincing, though, is the chapter’s final section, where Dinter quotes at length Mediaeval and Renaissance sources that supplement the abrupt ending of Lucan’s epic. Connections between this section and the rest of the chapter are tenuous at best and, in the absence of any formal conclusion, these last ten pages leave Dinter’s own analysis feeling somewhat “open-ended.” Such disunity sadly characterizes Dinter’s monograph overall; it is difficult to see how the topic of each individual chapter relates to any other, not least because Dinter links his ideas at a metaphorical rather than literal level, which occasionally results in him placing undue weight on the concept of “anatomy.” The book also contains some typographical errors, of which I list the most glaring: “I am” for iam (146); “vigils” for vigiles (71 n. 90); repeated translation in nn. 90 and 91 (71); “in” for “is” (99 n. 56); a translation that exceeds the quotation from Caesar Civ.1.7.1 (135). The presence of such errors is a great pity because, alongside the disjointed argument, they mar a study that displays strong potential and could,ultimately,have had a lotto offer. ERICA BEXLEY The Australian National University, erica.bexley@anu.edu.au * * * Introduction to Latin. Second Edition. By SUSAN C. SHELMERDINE. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing/R. Pullins Company, 2013. Pp. xvi + 376. Paper,$34.95. ISBN 978-1-58510-390-4. The many users of Shelmerdine’s introductory Latin textbook will welcome this new edition. It retains the good qualities of the first and revised editions, and also introduces some improvements. The second edition is again arranged in 32 chapters and can be covered in two 12-week semesters with a class meeting four times per week. In a short preface to the second edition Shelmerdine details the changes she has introduced. It is clear that she has responded to criticism of aspects of her first edition. She has integrated the changes in a sensible way. Thus the passive voice is introduced earlier, as are participles and the subjunctive. These changes will enable students to come to grips with more complex texts earlier and thus provide more reading practice in the last weeks of the course. Such practice is BOOK REVIEWS 255 offered. The last three chapters omit translation-into-Latin exercises and concentrate on reading Latin. More reading practice comes in four “Reading Chapters” where some of the continuous passages have comprehension questions. These chapters recapitulate the work in the preceding chapters and contain exercises involving derivatives as well as Latin phrases and abbreviations still used in English. Overall the approach remains as in the first edition: each chapter contains explanations of morphology and syntax as well as exercises. The exercises are still mostly translation from Latin or from English to Latin, butmanyof the sentences are taken from Latin authors (sources listed on 302–6) and thus students are gradually familiarized with the style of ancient authors and spared the artificial constructions of many introductory Latin textbooks. The number of other exercises where students are to supply endings or to identify agreement, case usage or parts of speech has been increased. The new vocabulary introduced in each chapter is again at the end of the chapter, but is followed by an additional section on derivatives. This aspect of learning Latin was confined to the “Reading” or revision chapters of the earlier edition and will be of use to students in memorizing meanings by linking them to English. Another welcome addition is the increased (from 38 to 48) number of “Readings.” These passages of “real” Latin from Classical authors, (the sources are indicated on pp. 301–2) are initially adapted to suit the level of the student, but later presented with minimal editing. These passages are very valuable in preparing students for the transition to the next level of Latin where they will probably be reading complete works of unadapted Latin. I have been teaching beginners’ Latin to university students for more than forty years and Shelmerdine’s new edition is the best work I have come across for introducing students within one academic year to...

Geography in Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis and its Medieval Reception

Recent scholarship has begun to draw attention to the rich and complex history of the medieval reception of Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis. One aspect of that history resides in the attempts of commentators on the poem to explicate the significant amount of topographic reference found in the Alexandreis. Many of the numerous (and still largely unedited) marginal and interlinear glosses on Walter’s epic respond to its geography. In addition, a number of manuscripts of the Alexandreis contain a world map, usually a visual gloss to Walter’s description of Asia at 1.396-426, but on occasion a larger image located before or after the text. After an overview of Walter’s own use of geography in the poem, this article aligns the evidence of glosses with maps to draw conclusions about the ways in which the poem’s spatial reference was understood in the later Middle Ages. An instant classic, the Alexandreis was read alongside and with reference to Lucan’s Bellum civile and Sallust’s Bellum Iugurthinum, its representation of space at the intersection of history, rhetoric, and ethnography.

A Commentary on Lucan, De Bello Civili IV: Introduction, Edition, and Translation (review)

Reviewed by: A Commentary on Lucan, De Bello Civili IV: Introduction, Edition, and Translation Martin T. Dinter Paolo Asso. A Commentary on Lucan, De Bello Civili IV: Introduction, Edition, and Translation. Texte und Kommentar, 33. Berlin: de Grutyer, 2010. Pp. x, 333. $184.00. ISBN 978-3-11-020385-1. Those working on Lucan nowadays live in happy times and are blessed with an annual stream of secondary literature and commentaries. Lucan needs no apology any more. The last few years alone have yielded Monica Matthew’s 2008 commentary on the über-storm scene in Lucan BC 5.476–721, and Paul Roche’s 2009 full commentary on BC 1. Now we have Paolo Asso’s full commentary on BC 4, published almost simultaneously with Paolo Esposito’s 2009 Italian counterpart (Naples). I shall, however, not compare these two commentaries here, but rather concentrate on the merits of Asso’s book alone. The fourth book of Lucan’s epic on the Roman civil war between Caesar and Pompey contains many of the epic’s most famous scenes: the Battle of Ilerda (vv. 1–401), which sees the besieged Pompeians under Afranius endure thirst and gain Caesar’s pardon; the common suicide of Volteius and his men on their raft (402–581); and the so-called Curio episode set in Africa (581–824), embedded in which we find the myth of the fight between Hercules and Antaeus (661–714). Asso treats us to thirty-six pages of introduction, followed by the Latin text with translation (38–97) and a substantial commentary (100–293). The introduction starts off with a biographical sketch of Lucan’s life drawn from the ancient source material and addresses the question whether Lucan should, could, or ought to be read as a freedom writer once his falling out with Nero had occurred. This section assembles much useful and often scattered material for the convenience of the reader, but needs to be read with the caveat in mind that it is also possible to approach Lucan’s oeuvre without subscribing to a biographical reading. In the same way in which the “myth” of Nero the Tyrant has been created by the ancient sources, these might well have modeled Lucan’s life as counterpart to Nero’s. This quibble, however, should not distract from the merits of Asso’s volume and the importance of allowing the reader to make up his or her own mind. After all, Bellum Civile 4 could well have been the first book written after Nero and Lucan fell out, as some ancient sources imply in their report that before his ban Lucan had already published three books of his epic. The remainder of Asso’s introduction deals with Lucan’s place as Virgil’s epic successor and positions book 4 in the wider structure and content of the Bellum Civile before embarking on a survey of the diction, syntax, meter, and rhetorical devices employed by Lucan. The commentary itself is neatly subdivided into three parts according to the narrative structure of Bellum Civile 4 outlined above, each of which is prefaced by a short summary and in the case of the Battle of Ilerda with dates and chapter references to Caesar’s own account in book 1 of his Commentaria de bello civili. Asso proceeds line by line and provides rich material on lexical, metrical, and syntactical levels as well as a wealth of background information on Lucan’s often tricky geographical, military, or even athletic [End Page 555] matters, as in the case of the wrestling match between Hercules and the giant Antaeus. The latter episode deserves to be singled out for particular praise, as Asso here leaves no stone unturned to provide information ranging from Hercules’ Roman cult titles to a potted history of wrestling in Greece and Rome. Throughout, single lines are frequently illuminated by exhaustive comments. A further strength of Asso’s work is his command of the material and his ability to combine insights from Anglophone and Italian scholarship for a wider audience. Even occasional, and given the enormous amount of referencing forgivable slips—we find both Roland Mayer and Meyer on 20 and Endt 1905 certainly wrote about...

Landscape architecture on pastoral topography in Lucan’s Bellum Civile

Landscape architecture on pastoral topography in Lucan’s Bellum Civile

Lucan's “Bellum Civile”: Between Epic Tradition and Aesthetic Innovation – Edited by Nicola Hömke and Christiane Reitz

Lucan's “Bellum Civile”: Between Epic Tradition and Aesthetic Innovation – Edited by Nicola Hömke and Christiane Reitz

Scribam ipse de me : The Personality of the Narrator in Caesar's Bellum Civile

This article analyzes the strategies by which the narrator of Caesar's Bellum Civile constructs his authority and promotes his version of the civil war. Despite being generally omnipresent, omniscient and un-intrusive, the narrator can abandon his covert position and all-encompassing knowledge and use multiple devices to guide the readers' perception of salient events. Switches of focalization, inferred motivation, presentation through negation and intratextual echoes color the narrative of key episodes, such as the negotiations of peace with Pompey in Book 1 and the descriptions of the battles at Dyrrachium and Pharsalus.

The Role of Cato the Younger in Caesar’s Bellum Civile

This paper demonstrates that Caesar treats Cato with much more restraint in his Bellum Civile than is commonly thought. Cato appears only three times and, although the overall portrayal is far from positive, Caesar consistently shields him from much worse. The reason for this relatively mild presentation has less to do with Cato than Pompey. Caesar, despite his personal animosity toward Cato, decides to use his implacable foe to voice a devastating rebuke of Pompey from within his own faction. Treating Cato with greater restraint ultimately serves to add weight and credibility to his condemnation of Pompey.

Orbis Romanus : Lucan and the Limits of the Roman World

Lucan's Bellum Civile offers two different visions of the geography of the Roman world. In the proem and the praise of Nero, the poem locates Rome at the center of a soon-to-be-completed world empire. In contrast, after the battle of Pharsalus in book 7 the remaining books divide the world into eastern and western parts, locating Rome in the center of the western part of the world. A century after the great territorial expansion of the late Republic, Lucan replaces the apparently optimistic confidence in imminent Roman world conquest with a vision of a limited Roman world.

The Violation of the Eye and the Theft of Vision in Lucan's Bellum Civile

To have one's eye removed represents more than the loss of a body part: without it, humans lose an essential means to communicate and even recognize one another. In this article, I examine the extrusion of eyes in the Bellum Civile , where each instance of eye removal exposes the dysfunction of relationships in Lucan's Rome. The individual citizen, the family and the state display a dearth of introspection, a lack of allegiance to or recognition of friends, family and political allies and an unproductive or perverted desire for intimacy. All these deficits result from mental, intellectual or physical blindness and ultimately contribute to the destruction of the Republic.

Didactic Aggressions in the Nile Excursus of Lucan's Bellum Civile

In the Nile excursus of his Bellum Civile (10.172-333), Lucan portrays Caesar's inquiry into the source of the river, a well-known topos of human ambition, as an act of aggression, an imperialistic push to transgress natural boundaries. This aggressive drive is foiled by the duplicitous response of both the priest Acoreus and the divinity who inspires him. The digressive quality of the episode offers a redirection and setback for the character of Caesar, which are achieved through the momentary transference of the conflict of the epic to the field of didactic exposition.