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

LUCAN
and again:
sternitur infelix Acron et calcibus atram
tundit humum (Aen. 10.730—i)
and felled poor Acron, who dying drummed with his heels
On the darkening ground.
Later, in the probably Neronian Latin Iliad—a useful compendium of epic
devices — we find for example:
concidit et terram moribundo uertice pulsat (II. Lat. yj6)
he fell and dying struck the earth with his forehead. 1
No streams of blood then, and no falling bodies: instead, a standing mass of
corpses. There has been no battle in die usual sense of die word, not even an
ordinary one-sided massacre: for Juba has been in the background, the Romans
subjected in isolation to the relentless mechanics of internecine strife, a plight
delineated through Lucan's alterations of die epic format. He wavers momentarily
over Curio's deadi:
non tulit adflictis animam producere rebus
aut sperare fugam, ceciditque in strage suorum
impiger ad letum (4.796-8)
he would not stoop to survive defeat or hope for escape, but fell amid the corpses of
his men, prompt to face death.
As direct narrative takes over from the obliquities of the battle scene, one
heroic deed is on the verge of rescue —but Lucan's negativity wins the day:
et faros uirtute coacta 'brave in forced courage' (4.798). In the cynical coacta
we return from normal epic to the world of civil war.
In Book 5, during his account of Caesar's storm, Lucan's policy of negation
recurs. Through die negation-antidiesis, and a few slight changes in tradition,
he enlivens the prodigies of diepoetica tempestas, 2 converting them into images
of nature's internal dissension — at die same time reversing the role of the hero.
Nature no longer assails a helpless human victim: Caesar rides superior, as
nature fears her own violence. The parallel widi the war is clear: Caesar the
superman, cause of civil strife, measures his stature against the fury of the
storm, and laughs at a world at variance with itself.
Lucan's rehabilitation of disorder begins at line 597 with a concursus uentorum.
if he had simply followed precedent, all four winds would have blown at once —
and probably gone unnoticed. As it is, scientific theory is invoked to make us
more aware of die breach in natural law.
1
Cf. Virg. Aen. 9.708, 488-9, 12.926, //. Lat. J70-1, 381; Miniconi (1957).
2
For background, parallels, and bibliography, see Morford's extensive treatment (1967), chapters
in and iv.
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