Lucan did not compose the Bellum civile in a vacuum. This volume stemming from a 2017 conference at Brigham Young University proposes reading epic and author as shaped by numerous contemporary environments — temporary, geographical, cultural — which ‘are fundamentally relevant to a thorough and nuanced understanding’ (1). Accordingly, instead of reading Lucan's epic as a response to Virgil, a continuation of Ovidian transformations or a forerunner of Flavian epic themes, this volume zooms in on reflections of personal, political, cultural and literary influences of Lucan's own time. Simultaneously, we are moving away from the glare of its ruler Nero and concentrating on factors such as family, geographical background, politics, educational and thus rhetorical practices, philosophical influences as well as sociocultural impact and the ubiquitous memory landscape of the Roman past, all of which have informed the composition of the Bellum civile. These categories are outlined in the volume's introduction, co-authored by the editors, which precedes twelve chapters grouped into four sections. The first presents contemporary authors and traditions, the second the contemporary world and geography, the third Cato's Neronian Nachleben and the last aspects of the memory of the Roman Republic under the Empire. Threads connecting these sections are easily spotted: variations on the theme of Lucan and Seneca appear across three of them and so do ethics, morality and stoicism.
Paul Roche showcases Seneca's letters as influencing Lucan's epic on issues to do with personal philosophy, autonomy, resistance and a virtuous death. For that purpose, he considers three intertextual links between the Bellum civile and Seneca's Letters. Roche acknowledges the chronological challenges of this approach. However, he convincingly demonstrates the shared lexicon of Lucan and Seneca by listing nine linguistic strategies (noted by Wick 2004) the Bellum civile shares with Seneca's Letters which cement the likelihood of exchange between these two texts. Roche then examines BC 2.7–15 side by side with Ep. 16.5; BC 3.145–7 with Ep. 85.28; and BC 4.476–80 with Ep. 76.20. In addition, he contrasts the argumentative structure of the speech of Vulteius BC 4.478–520 with that of Ep. 70, which seems to serve as foil for a deliberate misreading by Lucan. He concludes that Seneca's Letters should be seen as a contemporary context which can offer relevant exegetical commentary on the BC's characters and scenes. Thomas Biggs musters the methodological toolkit of literary studies to approach Lucan and Persius as two authors who emerge from a shared extratextual environment but whose literary interaction is less amenable to established modes of analysis. By sketching instances of literary reference that occur simultaneously within contemporaneous works, he interrogates how works of art from the same ‘temporal slice’ create meaning. I was prompted to wonder whether the Falernian wine parallel discussed here (Sat. 3.1–4 versus BC 10.155-71) is not best classified as what transmedia theory calls a ‘travelling phenomenon’, i.e. a reference whose origin and direction cannot be determined with certainty (a further example would be the sun king ubiquitous in Neronian culture). Biggs's thought-provoking piece ends by suggesting interdiscursivity instead of intertextuality as a fruitful and liberating way of finding meaning and describing literary interaction. Annette Baertschi closes the first section by exploring how Cicero's fictitious speech in BC 7 not only draws on the orator's epistolary correspondence for its composition but also on the suasoria tradition of the Roman declamation schools which reworks and creatively adapts pre-existing material.
The second section kicks off with a further contribution that looks at intra-familial inspiration. Laura Zientek's study of mining and morality unearths the dialogue between epic and natural philosophy. The way Seneca frames mining in respect to the ethical and physical theories of Stoicism informs Lucan's discourse on luxuria, avaritia, the acquisition and exploitation of natural resources and moral corruption. This contribution is paired with two papers which both expand our understanding of Lucan's significant and often subversive use of geopoetics. James Taylor explores the significance of the Syrtes at BC 9.303–18. He reads Lucan's alternative explanations for the origins and structure of this area of ever-shifting coastline and shoals alongside Stoic ideas of cosmic dissolution. In his view, the lack of cosmic cohesion within each explanation matches the lack of a natural end point for Lucan's narrative as their framework of deep time encourages the reader to view the civil war from a wider temporal perspective. In the next chapter, Mauro Serena highlights the role of Parthia within Lucan's epic, in which he finds reflections of contemporary military action in Syria and Armenia under Nero.
Section three presents two papers on Cato Uticensis. David Kaufman revisits Cato's Stoicism and demonstrates how Lucan's portrayal of Cato includes both fundamental aspects of Stoic theory as well as striking misinterpretations of the same. He thus highlights the gap between Stoic dogma and popular (mis-)conceptions of Stoic ideas during the Neronian period. Francesca D'Alessandro Behr employs the figure of Cato to showcase how Lucan and Seneca employ Stoic principles when they depict Cato as sage, soldier, politician and benefactor. She argues that Lucan's Cato is not comprehensible without Seneca's treatment of the good benefactor in De beneficiis, which provides a composite meditation about freedom, death, politics and the responsibilities of the good man.
The final section, entitled ‘Back to the Future’, looks at depictions of the past in Lucan's Bellum civile, which cast shadows over his Neronian imperial present. In this vein, Julia Mebane provides a reading of Sullan imagery and language in Lucan's epic which highlights Sulla's status as exemplum for never-ending cycles of civil bloodshed and his relevance for the political philosophy in Seneca's dialogues. Jesse Weiner succinctly argues that Lucan's Palatine Temple of Apollo can serve both as mnemotope, a site of cultural memory, as well as a site of cultural repression where said cultural memory is annihilated through a revisionist treatment of this very monument. E. V. Mulhern applies the concept of nostalgia to examine the distances between the exempla of the late republic and the cultural environments of the Claudian Neronian world. The chapter's focus on the glorious failure of Cato underlines both the appeal and the challenge inherent in ‘backshadowing’, that is, in rewriting an ostensibly pristine past which is set to crumble under the overload of value and resulting expectations. Andrew McClellan describes how Lucan ‘co-opts’ the body of state metaphor in interstitial poetic spaces between living and dying. He employs Achille Mbembe's concept of deathworlds as ‘forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead’ as a lens through which to view Neronian Rome and analyses the metaphorical language deployed to describe the socio-political circumstances created by decades of monarchical rule.
I very much enjoyed this refreshing collection: many of the contributions are engagingly written and peruse new theoretical approaches to tease out crisp nuances in Lucan's oeuvre. Readers will find links across the book's sections, since many chapters touch on connections between Lucan and Seneca, on Cato Uticensis or geopoetics. The editors deserve our thanks for assembling these rich offerings for Lucanists and lovers of Latin epic alike.
