No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
primo pallentis hiatu
haeret adhuc Orci, licet has exaudiat herbas,
ad manes uentura semel.
Erichtho the Thessalian witch is conducting a necromancy: she has selected a corpse, applied her potions to it and invoked the powers of the Underworld to release its soul to deliver the prophecy. She specifies that this is a recent corpse whose soul has hardly entered the Underworld; hence she describes it as ‘still hesitating at the entrance to pallid Orcus’ chasm’ and as “a soul which will join the dead only once’. However, as Francken says, ‘“exaudire herbas” est absurda iunctura’. The problem lies in either noun or verb. The phrase must refer to Erichtho's magic; the choice is between spells and potion, herbas in the sense ‘Incantation’ is apparently unparalleled, but herbas as a reference to Erichtho's brew is perfectly acceptable, especially given the long description of her concoction of the revivifying potion and of her application of it to the corpse in the preceding lines, 6.667–84. Moreover, only a few lines later Lucan draws a contrast between uerba and herbae, spells and potion (6.768). If herbas is sound, suspicion falls on exaudiat; the occurrence less than ten lines earlier of the uncontroversial exaudite preces, 6.706, which suggests scribal repetition, strengthens the suspicion.
2 Francken, C. M., M. Annaei Lucani Pharsalia (Leiden, 1897) ad locGoogle Scholar.
3 Pace TLL s.v. herba 2618.73ff.
4 Cf. TLL 2618.30ff.
5 The corruption will have occurred either by haplography (after ‘Ziaeret’ or ‘has’) or by simple omission of h; cf.Hall, F. W., A Companion to Classical Texts (Oxford,1913), p. 191Google Scholar.
6 TLL s.v. herba 2618.69. Cf. passages which mention grasses’ juices, e.g. Ov. Met. 6.139.
7 Cf. TLL s.v. exhaurio 1407.80ff.
8 For some other examples of evocative alliteration in Lucan seeMorford, M.P.O., The Poet Lucan (Oxford, 1967), p. 51 n. 1Google Scholar.
9 Also Stat. Theb. 4.603 monslrat…cruorem and, more allusively, ibid. 624–5 mulcelur honoris/muneribus tingitque genas. On necromancy scenes in Greek and Latin epic seeVessey, D., Statius and the Thebaid (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 235–58Google Scholar.