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27
LUCAN
Petronius' classicistic reaction to Lucan's Stoic epic, the Bellum civile, foreshadows
the later response: why the neglect of convention, the disregard for
precedent, the carelessness about poetry? He prefaces his Civil war (JSatyricon
119—24), a Virgilian pastiche on Lucan's theme, its style a mixture of the old
and the new, with a prescription for the correct approach:
ecce belli ciuilis ingens opus quisquis attigerit nisi plenus Htteris sub onere labetur.
non enim res gestae uersibus comprehendendae sunt, quod longe melius historici
faciunt, sed per ambages deorumque ministeria et fabulosum sentenriarum
torrentem praecipitandus est liber spiritus, ut potius furentis animi uaticinatio
appareat quam religiosae orationis sub testibus fides. (Satyricon 118.6)
Look at the immense theme of the civil wars. Whoever takes on that without being
immersed in literature must falter beneath the load. Historical events are not the
stuff of verses — that's much better dealt with by historians. Instead, the free spirit
must be plunged in complexities of plot, divine machinery, and a torrent of mythological
material. The result should be the prophecies of an inspired soul, not the
exact testimony of a man on oath. (Tr. M. Winterbottom)
Quintilian had no doubts: Lucan is a model for orators, not poets. Martial
shows that prose and verse had become polarized — that sense was now distinct
from sensibility — when he records that Lucan, for many, had forfeited the
name of poet: there were rules, and the rules were there to be followed. 1
Fronto's judgement we might question, but he too helped in the devaluation
of Neronian baroque. 2 What strikes the reader of the ancient testimonia is their
conservatism about the proper limits of poetry and prose, their lack of sympathy
for experiment and innovation, and their distrust of wit and intelligence
in verse: poetry was to be rich, ornamental and mellifluous, not sparse, economical
and cerebral. Lucan, of course, is both rhetorician and poet: the two are
1
Quint. Inst. 10.90 Lucanus ardens et concitatus et sententiis cfarissimus, et ut dicam quod sentio,
magis oratoribus quam poetis imitandus; Mart. 14.194 sunt quidam qui me dicant non esse poetam: | sed
qui me uendit bibtiopola putat.
2
Front. 2.io;f. '. . . in the first seven verses at the beginning of his poem he has done nothing but
paraphrase the "words wars worse than civil. Count up the phrases in which he rings the changes on
this . . . wilt never be done, Annaeus!' (tr. Haines, Loeb). An unfavourable contrast "with Apollonius
follows.
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