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

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LUCAN<br />

The horses are stabbed, not spurred; yet even when this is effective, the<br />

increased speed merely brings the rider nearer to the spears of the enemy.<br />

Lucan has begun to make the battle into a non-battle: there was no impetus or<br />

incursus, as would have been natural from a charging horse. For what follows<br />

at 769ft., the epigram pugna perit might have been a suitable motto.<br />

Death takes the place of righting, the paradox explained by two flanking<br />

negations:<br />

ut uero in pedites fatum miserabile belli<br />

incubuit, nullo dubii discrimine Martis<br />

ancipites steterunt casus, sed tempora pugnae<br />

mors tenuity neque enim licuit procurrere contra<br />

et miscere manus. (4.769—73)<br />

And when the piteous doom of battle bore down upon the Roman infantry, the issue<br />

never hung uncertain through any chance of war's lottery, but all the time of fighting<br />

was filled by death: it was impossible to rush forward in attack <strong>and</strong> close with the<br />

enemy.<br />

There were none of the usual hazards of a two-sided battle; nor could anyone<br />

advance <strong>and</strong> join in the conflict. We find a similar one-sidedness in the seventh<br />

book's culminating battle:<br />

perdidit inde modum caedes, ac nulla secuta est<br />

pugna, sedhxnc iugulis, hinc ferro bella geruntur. (7-53 2 ~3)<br />

Unlimited slaughter followed: there was no battle, but only steel on one side <strong>and</strong><br />

throats to pierce on the other<br />

where the abnormality once again displays the special nature of the war. Lucan<br />

continues to innovate with the motif of the cloud of weapons — found in<br />

Homer, Ennius <strong>and</strong> Virgil : — which not only transfixes its victims, but also<br />

crushes them under its weight:<br />

sic undique saepta iuuentus<br />

comminus obliquis et rectis eminus hastis<br />

obruitur, non uolneribus nee sanguine solum,<br />

telorum nimbo peritura et pondere ferri. (4-773—

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