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- Title
TWO ALLUSIONS IN LUCAN'S BELLUM CIVILE TO THE PROEM AND CONCLUSION OF VERGIL'S AENEID (BC 3.133-134 ~ AEN. 12.945-947 AND BC 7.847-850 ~ AEN. 1.8-11).
- Authors
Janzen, Darrel
- Abstract
This paper identifies two allusions in Lucan to the conclusion and proem of Vergil's Aeneid. When the tribune Metellus attempts to block Caesar from plundering Rome's treasury of Saturn (BC 3), Caesar's wrath recalls that of Aeneas at the close of the Aeneid as he executes the suppliant Turnus. Such a comparison illuminates how Caesar's threatening, yet less violent exercise of power in this scene expands upon Aeneas's troubling behavior at the close of Vergil's epic, while shedding further light on Lucan and Vergil's differing concerns with how imperial force and anger work. In BC 7, Lucan opens his account of the aftermath of the Battle of Pharsalus with an address to Thessaly, citing its offense to the gods and its unforgettable guilt using phrasing that recalls the proem of the Aeneid. While Lucan shares Vergil's interest in the role that memories of offense to the divine realm play in motivating events that culminate in the contemporary political dispensation, his focus is trained on human offense rather than on any offended divinity. Further, by disinterring the Aeneid-proem's imagery of foundation, Lucan casts Pharsalus's legacy on the Thessalian landscape as a defoundation of the vitiated imperial political system that it precipitates.
- Subjects
AENEID; VIRGIL, 70 B.C.-19 B.C.; ALLUSIONS; POLITICAL systems; PILLAGE; COLLECTIVE memory; ANGER; GUILT (Psychology)
- Publication
Vergilius, 2023, Vol 69, p79
- ISSN
0506-7294
- Publication type
Article