Lucan: De Bello Civili, Book 1 (review)

It is a good time for Lucan, with five books appearing on him in 2010 and 2011 alone. Although Getty's 1940 commentary on book 1 is still useful, we must be very grateful to Paul Roche for this new commentary. The commentator's most important choices are how to analyze the material, i.e., how to articulate the continuous narrative in reasonably distinct sections, and what to include in the commentary entries. With negligible divergences, Roche has divided Lucan's first book according to the subsections isolated by Getty, and it will be clear to those of us who still use Getty that the goal of his update, as Roche states in his preface, has been that of "preserving what is good, of reworking, correcting, or expanding what seems now less relevant in Getty's 1940 commentary" (vii). Roche's sections are 1-7 Proem; 8-32 Apostrophe to Rome; 33-66 Invocation of Nero; 67-97 Causes of the War 1: Fate and Triumvirate ("Lucan's first simile" is a separate subsection, pp. 147-48); 98-120 Causes of the War 2: Deaths of Crassus and Julia; 121-57 Causes of the War 3: Caesar and Pompey; 158-82 Causes of the War 4: Moral Decline at Rome; 183-227 Caesar at the Rubicon; 228-65 Caesar at Ariminum; 266-95 Curio's Speech; 296-351 Caesar's Speech; 352-91 Laelius' Speech; 392-465 Catalogue of the Gallic Tribes; 466-522 Reaction at Rome to Caesar's Invasion; 522-83 Prodigies of Civil War; 584-638 Attempted Purification of the City; 639-72 Astrology of Nigidius Figulus; 673-95 Visions of the Frenzied Matrona.

The commentary achieves its goal in updating Getty, but does much more than that. Roche's major strength is the introduction, which, among other things, summarizes the vexed question about Lucan's sincerity in his praise of Nero (1.33-66), and the related issue of publication date of the first three books of the poem. His view is that Lucan's attitude to Caesarianism is constant throughout the poem: "Nothing in books one to three reaches the same fever pitch of the invective against empire in book seven, but it is in the nature of a climax, such as Pharsalus, that more emphatic statements of thematic preoccupations come to the fore" (7). So phrased, the statement might sound oversimplified, but Roche's ensuing discussion (7-10) relies on previous treatments of Nero's praise that justly emphasize the conventional aspects of Lucan's panegyric and its debit to epic models. Roche's discussion of Lucan's models throughout the commentary is useful, and the reader is grateful for the repertoire of loci that illustrate, for example, Lucan's use of language to evoke cosmological problems (e.g., 367 on vv. 646-647) by tracing not only Lucan's sources for Stoic discourse in Latin (e.g., Cic. ND 2.26), but also the parallels in previous and/or later poetry (e.g., Ov. M. 1.49-51, and V. Fl. 2.475-478). In such cases, however, the reader might have benefited from additional guidance in Lucan's way of using Stoic discourse while intentionally subverting the Stoic belief in regeneration. As Narducci has shown, Lucan's universe collapses without recreating itself. Narducci, "Lo sfondo cosmico della Pharsalia," in P. Esposito and E. M. Ariemma (eds.), Lucano e la tradizione dell'epica latina (Naples 2004) 7-20 is cited twice (108 on v. 6 and 158 on vv. 81-82), but without mentioning his perceptive connection between Lucan's fondness for the polyptoton and his exploitation of Stoic cosmological discourse. Without detailing Narducci's detailed argumentation, it is sufficient to be reminded of Lucan's 1.6 pila minantia pilis, and 75 sidera sideribus, echoing Virgil's use of polyptoton (e.g., Aen. 4.628-629 litora litoribus contraria . . . / . . . arma armis), to exploit the opposition and similarities between man-made events and cosmic dissolution...