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LUCAN
The imminent rupture of all lex and ius, of all Roman values, on the field of
Pharsalus, is foreshadowed by a parallel unwillingness in nature to perform her
proper functions. Lucan then develops the theme through the omens which,
like those of the first book, image Nature's involvement in Roman furor. 1
No single source supplied the basic concepts, nor indeed the method of
treatment. Livy is pointlessly, but necessarily invoked: 2 Augustan epic had
attempted the civil war, but again, fragments yield as little as epitomes. The
early-first-century Bellum Actiacum, partially preserved on a Herculaneum
papyrus, proves that the epic continued to show interest, and that the style
remained prosaic. 3 Lucan's ideas are those of the mass of civil war literature,
his style an extension from the sparse, realistic idiom of Augustan civil war
epic, 4 while the elements of his theme could have been derived from moral
tradition, declamation, or any Republican-biased digest of the events. 5 Only
one thing was anathema, mainstream epic, with its poetic embellishments and
superannuated gods: the deorum ministeria of previous epic are replaced by the
sympathetic reactions of an outraged cosmos, additional colour being supplied
by frequent recourse to witchcraft, omens and magic, while the concepts of
fatum and for tuna — with occasional invocations of generalized dei — supply the
theological basis. 6 In the realms of diction, convention and narrative technique
Lucan consistently adapts the resources of tradition to an unpoetic subject
whose demands went quite counter to those of other epic themes. Homer and
Virgil could not provide a model for the topic of civil war: their methods
would have elevated where Lucan wants despair.
Moralization, cynical and pessimistic, takes the place of organized narrative:
the rhetorical moment, seen whole, and interpreted for its moral implications,
becomes the unit of composition, replacing sequential action. Lucan's plan is
too large, his mood too negative, to dwell on the details of any individual
event. Homer, in describing the act of shooting an arrow, maintains a complete
step-by-step objectivity, //. 4.i22ff.:
. . . and now, gripping the notched end of the bow and the ox-gut string, he drew
them back together till the string was near his breast and the iron point was by die
bow. When he had bent the great bow to a circle, it gave a twang, the string sang out,
and the sharp arrow leapt into the air, eager to wing its way into the enemy ranks. 7
1
There has been no full study of this theme, nor of the related topics of disease in the body politic
and the decay of agriculture; nor of Lucan's images of collapse and cataclysm: all of which help create
a picture of a world on the edge of dissolution.
2
See especially Pichon (1912), who has influenced most later discussion.
3
Text in Anth. Lat. 1.1—6 B; see Bardon (1956) 11 73—4.
* See above, pp. 486—8.
s
For instance, Valerius Maximus' handbook of exempla could have supplied material.
6
For divine machinery,see Petron. 118.6, above, p. 5 3 3. In Lucan, fate and fortune are indistinct:
but they do not take the place of the mythological interventions of previous epic, despite the impression
conveyed by the secondary literature.
7 Rieu's translation (1950).
539
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