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Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

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LUCAN<br />

desertion is premature; worse than that, it is a flight into war. After an orthodox<br />

start <strong>and</strong> central section, a final accommodation to the motif of reversal:<br />

nondum sparsa compage carinae<br />

naufragium sibi quisque facit (1.501—3)<br />

<strong>and</strong> each man makes shipwreck for himself before the planks of the hull are broken<br />

asunder.<br />

If the timbers really had broken up, the ship might reasonably have been<br />

ab<strong>and</strong>oned: as it is, the crew is too hasty. And as Lucan adds, desertion makes<br />

things worse: . . ,.<br />

sic urbe rehcta<br />

in bellum fugitur. (1.503-4)<br />

Thus Rome is ab<strong>and</strong>oned, <strong>and</strong> flight is the preparation for war. Corresponding<br />

to nondum. . . carinae <strong>and</strong> naufragium. . .facit, the two parts of the epigram<br />

bring the perversity to a head. Panic in the face of civil war causes men to<br />

forsake the natural patterns of behaviour, breaking the natural bonds of family<br />

<strong>and</strong> home: the idea is developed at lines 504—9, where the individual points of<br />

the rhetorical scheme are prefixed by negatives:<br />

nullum iam languidus aeuo<br />

eualuit reuocare parens coniunxue maritum<br />

fletibus, aut patrii, dubiae dutn uota salutis<br />

conciperent, tenuere lares; nee limine quisquam<br />

haesit, et extremo tune forsitan urbis amatae<br />

plenus abit uisu; ruit inreuocabile uolgus.<br />

No aged father had the power to keep back his son, nor weeping wife her husb<strong>and</strong>;<br />

none was detained by the ancestral gods of his household, till he could frame a prayer<br />

for preservation from danger; none lingered on his threshold ere he departed, to satiate<br />

his eye with the sight of the city he loved <strong>and</strong> might never see again. Nothing could<br />

keep back the wild rush of the people.<br />

That this was novel, <strong>and</strong> noticed, is borne out by Petronius, who sets the record<br />

straight by omitting the negatives:<br />

hos inter motus populus, miserabile uisu,<br />

quo mens icta iubet, deserta ducitur urbe.<br />

gaudet Roma ruga, debellatique Quirites<br />

rumoris sonitu maerentia tecta relinquunt. 22 5<br />

ille manu pauida natos tenet, Hie penates<br />

occultat gremio deploratumque reliquit<br />

limen et absentem uotis interficit hostem.<br />

sunt qui coniugibus maerentia pectora iungunt<br />

gr<strong>and</strong>aeuosque patres umeris uehit aegra iuuentus.<br />

(_Bell. Civ. 221-30)<br />

547<br />

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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