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The Politician Lucan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Charles Martindale
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Extract

The Bellum Civile is a poem great enough to appeal to readers in different periods for different reasons. Thus Dante hugely admired Lucan (quello grande poeta) while not sharing his political views, since he himself favoured a universal monarchy in which the Emperor in possessing all would be free from all appetite, and, therefore, just. Lucan's portrait of Cato so impressed him that in the Convivio, in an allegorical exposition of B.C. 2.326ff., Cato is taken as a figure for God, and in the Divine Comedy he is the guardian at the foot of Purgatory, although he had been a pagan, a suicide, and an opponent of Julius Caesar whom Dante favoured (Brutus and Cassius are with Judas in the mouths of Satan). Nevertheless it is likely that many of Lucan's admirers have been attracted above all by the poet's espousal of libertas and hatred for autocracy. This must account for Shelley describing the Bellum Civile as ‘a poem as it appears to me of wonderful genius, and transcending Virgil’, a judgement that he conceded would be ‘no less unpopular than some of the others I entertain’, and may also help to explain Milton's interest in Lucan. However, in this century the idea has been widespread that the Bellum Civile is not in any real sense a ‘Republican’ poem. There are signs that this view may be hardening into something like an orthodoxy, according to which the poem, if properly understood, and at least as originally conceived, is in no sense a poem of political protest or opposition, and contains no serious criticism of the Principate as such, even if parts of the later books are coloured by Lucan's personal resentment of Nero (it is sometimes even argued that Lucan intended to finish his epic with praise of the imperial peace and of the Principate as a restored Republic). Lucan's political views are thus taken to be (behind the rhetorical fireworks) approximately the same as those of his uncle Seneca. I shall here consider the principal arguments adduced in the debate, and shall indicate briefly why the question is an important one, even for readers primarily interested in the Bellum Civile as poetry.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , April 1984 , pp. 64 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1984

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References

Notes

1. Quoted by Hingley, R., Nightingale Fever (London, 1982), p. 10Google Scholar.

2. Latin Poetry (London, 1895), p. 265Google Scholar.

3. Convivio 4.28.13.

4. De Monarchia 1.11.8–13.

5. Equale uomo terreno più degno fu di significare Iddio, che Catone? Certo nullo; Conv. 4.28.15.

6. Purgatorio 1–2.

7. The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Jones, F. L. (Oxford, 1964), I. pp. 432, 429Google Scholar. Cf. Tucker, R. A., CP 66 (1971), 6—16Google Scholar, and the praise of Lucan by Walpole, Horace as one ‘who alone of all the classics was thought to breathe too brave and honest a spirit for the perusal of the Dauphin and the French’ (Horace Walpole's Correspondence ed. Lewis, W. S. (London and New Haven, 1937–1980), XVI. p. 22)Google Scholar.

8. See Worden, Blair, ‘Classical Republicanism and the Puritan Revolution’ in History and Imagination: Essays in honour of H. R. Trevor-Roper, ed. Lloyd-Jones, H., Pearl, V., and Worden, B. (London, 1981), pp. 182–200Google Scholar; Martindale, Charles, Comparative Criticism 3 (1981), 133–56Google Scholar.

9. See e.g. Brisset, J., Les Idées Politiques de Lucain (Paris, 1964), pp. 171–223Google Scholar; Lebek, W. D., Lucans Pharsalia; Dichtungsstrucktur und Zeitbezug (Göttingen, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar – reviewed Griffin, M., CR 93 (1979), 44– 6Google Scholar; Mayer, Roland, ‘On Lucan and Nero’, BICS 25 (1978), 85–88 (hereafter Mayer I)Google Scholar.

10. See e.g. Ahl, F. M., Lucan: an Introduction (Cornell, 1976), pp. 306–26 (with further bibliography)Google Scholar.

11. For the latter view see Bruère, R. T., CP 45 (1950), 217–35Google Scholar.

12. It is anyway doubtful whether Augustus himself claimed to have ‘restored the Republic’ in the sense usually understood today: see Millar, Fergus, CR 82 (1968), 265–6Google Scholar and JRS 63 (1973), 50–67 (especially 61ff.)Google Scholar; contra de Ste Croix, G. E. M., The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (London, 1981), p. 621 n. 1Google Scholar. If Millar's argument is accepted, it alone refutes the view that Lucan will have regarded the Principate as a restored Republic; for this see e.g. Mayer, R., Lucan Civil War VIII (Warminster, 1981), (hereafter Mayer II), p. 4Google Scholar(reviewed Rutz, W., Gnomon 55 (1983), 22–7)Google Scholar.

13. Mayer II, p. 8. It is a pity that this useful edition takes so negative a view of Lucan. In the Preface Mayer describes Lucan as ‘not a poet of the first rank’. This may be true (few Latin poets are), but it is unlikely that an editor of (say) Marlowe would so firmly insist on his author's second class status. The list of Lucan's admirers through the ages (others are Tacitus, Juvenal, Corneille, Goethe) should alone give us pause.

14. It is, for example, not unknown to find socialist millionaires in capitalist countries (the analogy is sometimes drawn in connection with Seneca). Likewise few Russian dissidents look for a reversal of the Soviet system, and some have intermittently accommodated themselves to it. Tacitus' cynical presentation of the Principate, it is worth recalling, went with a distinguished career (though Tacitus criticizes by innuendo, where Lucan denounces).

15. Gresseth, G. K., CP 52 (1957), 24–7Google Scholar.

16. Mayer I, 86.

17. See Aubrey's, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, A. (Oxford, 1898), II. p. 56Google Scholar; Worden.p. 191; The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ed. Margoliouth, H. M. (Oxford, 3rd edition revised 1971), I. p. 303 (on Tom May's Death)Google Scholar.

18. See e.g. the eight essays reprinted in W. Rutz (ed.), Lucan {Wege der Forschung 235, Darmstadt, 1970), pp. 283–353; Due, O. S., C&M 23 (1962), 93–100Google Scholar; Thompson, Lynette, CP 59 (1964), 147–53Google Scholar.

19. See Brearley, D., Latomus 29 (1970), 799Google Scholar.

20. Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, (London, 2nd ed. 1714), I. p. 226Google Scholar(quoted by Garrison, J. D., Dryden and the Tradition of Panegyric (California, 1975), pp. 34–5)Google Scholar Cf. Horace, Ep. 2.1.229ff.; Suetonius, Aug. 89.3; Ahl, pp. 29–32.

21. Lebek, pp. 81–107.

22. Nisbet, R. G. M. and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace Odes Book I (Oxford, 1970), introduction p. xviiiGoogle Scholar.

23. See Syndikus, H. P., Lucans Gedicht vom Bürgerkrieg (Diss. Munich, 1958), pp. 1–11Google Scholar. Many scholars believe that, because Lucan used Livy as his main historical authority, he referred to no other historian. Mayer (II, p. 8) argues that he would not have had time to read all the authors he is claimed to have done, but Lucan may have read as quickly as he composed (Latin after all was his first language!). At all events the Preface to Pollio's History was celebrated, and Pollio's austere tone is likely to have appealed to Lucan more than that of the romantic Livy. The phrase plus quam civilia may even have been minted by Pollio, since this would give extra point to Tacitus' words about Pollio's son, Asinius Gallus, tamquam.… plus quam civilia agitaret (Ann. 1.12.4); see Nisbet, and Hubbard, , A Commentary on Horace Odes Book II (Oxford, 1978), p. 11Google Scholar. Pollio (like Lucan) sought the origins of the Civil War in the formation of the First Triumvirate, was interested in character (see the set-piece on Cicero quoted by Seneca the Elder, Suas.6.24), ignored the Rechtsfrage, and traced general causes for the decline in the vices of the age (cf. Horace, C. 2.1.2, vitia). In such writing as B.C. 1.67ff., perhaps through Pollio's influence, Lucan becomes the heir of Sallust and precursor of Tacitus. I am grateful to Professor Nisbet for assistance on this point.

24. Mayer I, 85–6; cf. Lounsbury, R. C., TAPA 105 (1975), 209–12Google Scholar and Hermes 104 (1976), 222–8Google Scholar.

25. The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939), p. 480Google Scholar.

26. See e.g. Dilke, O. A. W., ‘Lucan's Political Views and the Caesars’ in Neronians and Flavians, ed. Dudley, D. R. (London and Boston, 1972), pp. 62–82Google Scholar.

27. E.g. B.C. 1.143ff. (especially 150, gaudensque viam fecisse ruina); 2.439–40, 650–51; 3.50–52, 365–6; cf. 5.409–10, etc.

28. B.C. 1.300–301, bellorum o socii, qui mille pericula Martis/mecum, ait, experti; cf Aen.. 1.198ff. O socii … o passi graviora … experti.

29. E.g. B.C. 1.195ff.; 3.211–13; 9.961ff. This tells against Mayer's argument that Lucan, as part of a neo-Augustan literary movement, would have shared the Augustan view of the Civil War (Mayer II, pp. 2–5; cf. AJP 103 (1982), 305–18Google Scholar). It is also worth noting that Augustan writers regularly associate Augustus with Alexander the Great, whom Lucan excoriates and links with Caesar.

30. See Marti, B., ‘Cassius Scaeva and Lucan's Inventio’ in The Classical Tradition: Literary and Historical Studies in Honor of Harry Caplan, ed. Wallach, L. (Ithaca, 1966), pp. 239–57Google Scholar.

31. See Phillips, O. C., CP 63 (1968), 296–300Google Scholar.

32. For Pompey see e.g. Lintott, A. W., CQ 21 (1971), 500–4; Ahl, ch. 5Google Scholar.

33. Cf. Aen. 2.707ff.; 3.11–12. Similarly Pompey's last sight of the hills of Italy (B.C. 3.4ff. esp. 7, dubios cernit vanescere montis) perhaps recalls Aeneas' first glimpse of them (Aen. 3.522–3, cum procul obscuros collis humilemque videmus | Italiam). The Aeneid charts the birth of Rome from the ashes of Troy, the B.C. reverses the theme, recording Rome's spiritual death.

34. B.C.7.119ff.,706 (vincere peius erat). This conception is a commonplace: Seneca,Ep. 14.13; Tacitus, Hist. 1.50.3; cf. Cicero, Fam. 4.9.3.

35. For Lucan's pessimistic presentation of the gods and of providence see Liebeschuetz, J. H. W. G., Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (Oxford, 1979), pp. 118, 140–55Google Scholar.

36. See Syme, pp. 317–18; Liebeschuetz, pp. 101–8.

37. For the idea cf. Tacitus, Dial. 38.2; Hist. 1 .1.1; Ann.1.9.4–5, 3.28.2.

38. For Republicanism at this crisis see Josephus, Ant. 19.186ff. In Dio 60.15.3 Scribonianus holds out a restoration of the Republic, but cf. Suetonius, Cl. 13.2.

39. Wirszubski, Ch., Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate (Cambridge, 1950), p. 129CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. p. 128: ‘The cult of Republican personages … may just as well indicate that republicanism had spent itself as a political force, and survived only in the form of romantic devotion to bygone times and a politically harmless hero-worship.’ See too Hammond, M., HSCP 67 (1963), 93–113Google Scholar.

40. Cf. de Ste Croix, pp. 367–9. Wirszubski himself admits (p. 143) that ‘those who live under a perverse despot are incapable of considering separately the psycho-pathological and the constitutional aspect of their oppression’.

41. Cf. Wirszubski, pp. 136–8; for Galba Tacitus, Hist. 1.16.1–2. See too MacMullen, R., Enemies of the Roman Order (Harvard, 1966), ch. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In Tacitus libertas often refers to the freedom from servility and independence with which a man conducts himself, e.g. Ann. 14.49.1; see Wirszubski, pp. 160–67.

42. Lintott, 503.

43. Cf. e.g. Seneca, Prov. 6.7–9.

44. Cf. Lebek, pp. 208–9. In this section I have made extensive use of Griffin, M. T., Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (Oxford, 1976)Google Scholar, especially chs. 5 and 6. Cf. Brunt, P. A., PBSR 43 (1975), 7–35Google Scholar.

45. See Paschalis, M., Mnemosyne 35 (1982), 342–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. Seneca, De Clem. 2.1.3–4; Apoc. 4; Calpurnius 1.42ff. Lucan, however, uses the theme in a relatively muted way, and does not associate it with the accession.

47. The sinister Republican use (found throughout the poem) is especially common with regnum; B.C. 1.4, 86,109,289, 315,334; 2.315, 563; 3.110, 145; 4.692; 5.207; 7.335,352,386,444,643; 9.27, 210, 258; 10.457. There is one further use of rex in this sense: 9.262, and several of regnare: 2.318; 7.269, 596; 9.90, 206. Even rector can bear mildly pejorative undertones: 1.359; 5.698; 9.194 (an exception is 7.85, perhaps suggesting Cicero's rector rei publicae). For the normal value of rex see also Courtney, E., A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal (London, 1980), p. 343 (on 6.614)Google Scholar.

48. For differences about Pompey see Griffin, pp. 189–90; for religious differences Liebeschuetz, pp. 114–19, 140–55.

49. See Taylor, L. R., Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (California, 1949), ch. 8, especially pp. 170–71Google Scholar.

50. Elsewhere Seneca's treatment of Cato is close to Lucan's: Tranq. 16.1 (Cato, virtutium viva imago, and the Republic died together); Prov. 2. 9–12 (Cato retains his libertas in defeat by suicide); Const. Sap. 2.1–2 (Cato, the only just man in the death throes of the state, died with libertas – neque enim Cato post libertatem vixit nee libertas post Catonem); Ep. 24.6–8,71.8–10,95.71, 104.29–33 (Cato made a party of his own – solus Cato fecit aliquas et rei publicae panes; his endurance of labor is illustrated by his march through the African desert).

51. But cf. Const. Sap 10.4. In one problematic passage B.C. 4.382ff. Lucan suggests that libertas can be won by withdrawal:felix qui potuit mundi nutante ruina / quo iaceat iam scire loco (lines 393–4). This may be opportunism or perhaps irony; cf. also 4.227; 5.228ff. Some allowance must be made for Lucan's willingness to obtain from each situation the maximum in paradox andrhetorical effectiveness (an example is 6.301–5), but this does not usually lead to complete inconsistency.

52. Mayer I, 87.

53. JRS 66 (1976), 87–105Google Scholar(the quotation is from p. 97), JRS 67 (1977), 17–26Google Scholar, JRS 71 (1981), 39–49Google Scholar. See too the ancient material collected in Bramble, J. C., Persius and the Programmatic Satire (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 23–5 (Excursus ‘Literature as a revelation of life’)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54. See Tacitus, Ann. 4.34–5; Ahl, p. 26; cf. Breebaart, A. B., Talanta 7 (1975), 55–75Google Scholar. For Nero's tolerance see Suetonius, , Nero 39Google Scholar.

55. See Martindale, C. A., BICS 23 (1976), 45–54Google Scholar; Bramble, , ‘Lucan’ in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature 11, Latin Literature, ed. Kenney, E. J. and Clausen, W. V. (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 533–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Mayer II, pp. 10–25.

56. Review of Brisset, CR 79 (1965), 299Google Scholar.

57. Bramble, p. 536; see Jal, P., La Guerre Civile à Rome (Paris, 1963)Google Scholar.

58. Aen.2.324; cf. n. 33.

59. B.C. 7.455–9; 8.835, 861–2.

60. Quoted by Whitfield, J. H., in Classical Influences on Western Thought A.D. 1650–1870, ed. Bolgar, R. R. (Cambridge, 1979), p. 142Google Scholar.