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TESTING BOUNDARIES: DIVINATION AND PROPHECY IN LUCAN*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2015

Federico Santangelo
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Extract

Lucan's Bellum Ciuile dates from the Neronian period and is strongly rooted in that historical context, but, as is well known, it offers plenty of food for thought to the student of late Republican religion and intellectual culture. The reading of the Civil War that it puts forward has major implications for our understanding of the ancient interpretations of that period. This is fully in keeping with the ambitions of Lucan himself, who set out to impose his work as a pervasive master-narrative of the late Republican age. The aim of this article is to pursue a narrow but important and often under-explored angle, and to assess the role of divination, especially of the prophetic kind, in the poem.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , October 2015 , pp. 177 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2015 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank John Moles, Rob Shorrock, David Wardle, and an anonymous referee for their comments on drafts of this article. All translations are my own.

References

1 C. Walde, ‘Lucan's Bellum Civile: A Specimen of a “Roman Literature of Trauma”’, in P. Asso (ed.), Brill's Companion to Lucan (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2011), 302. See also the well-known comment of Servius, Aen. 1.382: Lucanus namque ideo in numero poetarum esse non meruit, quia uidetur historiam composuisse, non poema (‘Lucan therefore did not deserve to be numbered among the poets, because he appears to have composed a history, not a poem’), on which see B. Bureau, ‘Lucanus…videtur historiam composuisse, non poema: Lucain, l'histoire et la mémoire poétique’, in O. Devilliers and S. Franchet d'Esperey (eds.), Lucain en débat. Rhétorique, poétique et histoire (Bordeaux, 2010), 77–87, and M. L. Delvigo, ‘Per transitum tangit historiam: Intersecting Developments of Roman Identity in Virgil’, in J. Farrell and D. P. Nelis (eds.), Augustan Poetry and the Roman Republic (Oxford, 2013), 25–8. Lintott, A. W., ‘Lucan and the History of the Civil War’, CQ 21 (1971), 488–505CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 488–98, remains useful on the value of Lucan's work as historical evidence. On Lucan and historiography, see also B. Gibson, ‘Historical Causation in Post-Augustan Epic’, in J. F. Miller and A. J. Woodman (eds.), Latin Historiography and Poetry in the Early Empire. Generic Interactions (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2010), 33–4.

2 For invaluable pointers in this direction, see D. C. Feeney, The Gods in Epic. Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition (Oxford, 1991), 271 (‘The extraordinary series of portents that introduces the climax of the first book has roots in traditions of both history and poetry’); also S. Bartsch, Ideology in Cold Blood. A Reading of Lucan's Civil War (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1997), 149. It is worth noting that Lucan was a member of the augural college: Vita Lucani 335.16 Hosius, with J. Rüpke, Fasti Sacerdotum, ii (Stuttgart, 2005), 756, no. 598. Intriguingly, augury and augural lore hardly feature at all in the poem: the augurs take part in the amburbium before Pharsalus (1.601–4), on which see S. Montero, ‘I sodales Titii: tradizione e innovazione’, in G. Urso (ed.), Sacerdos. Figure del sacro nella società romana (Pisa, 2014), 194–5. See also E. Fantham, ‘Lucan and the Republican Senate: Ideology, Historical Record and Prosopography’, in P. Esposito and L. Nicastri (eds.), Interpretare Lucano. Miscellanea di studi (Naples, 1999), 109–25, and M. Ducos, ‘Le Sénat dans l’épopée de Lucain’, in Devilliers and Franchet d'Esperey (n. 1), 137–48, on Lucan's creative engagement with the political, ideological, and constitutional debate of the late Republican period.

3 For valuable overviews of the prophecies in Lucan's poem, see Dick, B. F., ‘The Technique of Prophecy in Lucan’, TAPhA 94 (1963), 37–49Google Scholar; O. Schrempp, Prophezeiung und Rückschau in Lucans ‘Bellum civile’ (Winterthur, 1964), 6–78. See also J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (Oxford, 1979) 150–2; P. Roche (ed.), Lucan. De bello civili, Book I (Oxford, 2009), 33–5; C. O. Tommasi Moreschini, ‘Lucan's Attitude towards Religion: Stoicism vs. Provincial Cults’, in C. Walde (ed.), Lucan im 21. Jahrhundert (Munich and Leipzig, 2005), 136–40, 147–54.

4 See O'Higgins, D., ‘Lucan as “Vates”’, CA 7 (1988), 208–26Google Scholar, where the emphasis is, however, on Books 5 and 6, and Pillinger, E., ‘“And the Gods Dread to Hear Another Poem”: The Repetitive Poetics of Witchcraft from Virgil to Lucan’, MD 68 (2012), 128Google Scholar.

5 Luc. 1.584–638. As Rambaud, M., ‘L'aruspice Arruns chez Lucain, au livre I de la Pharsale (vv. 584–638)’, Latomus 44 (1985), 289–94Google Scholar, notes, the intervention of Arruns takes place within the framework of Roman public religion; his argument that Lucan is deliberately taking up an aspect of Claudius’ policy towards priesthoods in implicit polemic against Nero is, however, rather far-fetched. See also M. Rambaud, ‘Présages et procuratio au livre I de la Pharsale (vv. 522–638)’, in D. Porte and J.-P. Néraudau (eds.), Hommages à Henri Le Bonniec. Res sacrae (Brussels 1988), 380–4. On the prodigies listed at 1.522–84, see ibid., 373–80.

6 See Roche (n. 3), 341–60; H. Lovatt, The Epic Gaze. Vision, Gender and Narrative in Ancient Epic (Cambridge, 2013), 142–3. Arruns does not appear to correspond to a specific historical figure. He has a ‘recognizably Etruscan praenomen’ (Roche [n. 3], 342), and it is worth noting that the addressee of the teachings of the nymph Vegoia was called Arruns Veltumns: see B. J. Campbell, The Writings of the Roman Land Surveyors (London, 2000), 256.33–258.10 (Rambaud, ‘L'aruspice’ [n. 5], 288–9, discusses other occurrences of the name, but overlooks that instance). It is not unlikely that Lucan was aware of that tradition. Cf. J. N. Adams, Bilingualism and the Latin Language (Cambridge, 2003), 179–82, for the attractive view that the prophecy of Vegoia dates to the Imperial period and is not based on an Etruscan original. Lucan's knowledge of haruspicy is apparently sound: see e.g. A. Bouché-Leclerq, Histoire de la divination dans l'antiquité, iv (Paris, 1882), 68, n. 181; Rambaud ‘L'aruspice’ (n. 5); C. Guittard, ‘L‘Etrusca disciplina chez Lucain’, in D. Briquel and C. Guittard, Les écrivains et l'Etrusca Disciplina de Claude à Trajan, Caesarodunum supp. 64 (Tours, 1995), 94–104.

7 G. O. Hutchinson, Latin Literature from Seneca to Juvenal. A Critical Study (Oxford, 1993), 88.

8 See A. Luisi, ‘Lucano e la profezia di Nigidio Figulo’, in M. Sordi (ed.), La profezia nel mondo antico (Milan, 1993), 239–44; Bartsch (n. 2), 112–13; Roche (n. 3), 359–75; J. Dangel, ‘Les femmes et la violence dans le Bellum Civile de Lucain: écriture symbolique des deviances de l'histoire’, in Devilliers and Franchet d'Esperey (n. 1), 99–101; L. Fratantuono, Madness Triumphant. A Reading of Lucan's Pharsalia (Lanham, MD, 2012), 39–42, 52–3; P. Domenicucci, Il cielo di Lucano (Pisa, 2013), 29–46.

9 Nigidius’ fragments are collected in A. Swoboda, P. Nigidii Figuli Operum Reliquiae (Prague, Vienna, and Leipzig, 1889); see E. Rawson, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (London, 1985), 94–5, 290–3.

10 See E. Narducci, La provvidenza crudele. Lucano e la distruzione dei miti augustei (Pisa, 1979), 42–3; V. Neri, ‘Dei, Fato e divinazione nella letteratura Latina del I sec. d.C.’, in ANRW 2.16.3 (Berlin and New York, 1986), 1998–9 (bibliography at n. 135); E. Narducci, Lucano. Un'epica contro l'impero. Interpretazione della ‘Pharsalia’ (Rome and Bari, 2002), 110–11. It is doubtful that the prophecy can be used as evidence for any of Nigidius’ prophecies, not least because there are some obvious astrological inaccuracies, especially in the order in which planets are listed, that can be explained with literary needs. The fact that Lucan used a Julian calendar, unlike Nigidius, may be a further complication: there is a careful survey of the problem in R. Hannah, ‘Lucan Bellum Civile 1.649–65: The Astrology of P. Nigidius Figulus Revisited’, in F. Cairns and M. Heath (eds.), Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar 9. Roman Poetry and Prose, Greek Poetry, Etymology, Historiography (Leeds, 1996), 175–90; see also Roche (n. 3), 362–3, and Domenicucci (n. 8), 44–6.

11 Suet. Aug. 94.5, on which see F. Santangelo, Divination, Prediction and the End of the Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2013), 233 and D. Wardle, Suetonius. Life of Augustus (Oxford, 2014) 517–19.

12 On this episode, see Schrempp (n. 3), 19–22; J. Connolly, ‘Mapping the Boundary of the Known and Unknown’, in A. Barchiesi, J. Rüpke, and S. Stephens (eds.), Rituals in Ink. A Conference on Religion and Literary Production in Ancient Rome (Stuttgart, 2004), 167–8; Roche (n. 3), 375–90; H. J. M. Day, Lucan and the Sublime. Power, Representation and Aesthetic Experience (Cambridge, 2013), 93–8. See also Hutchinson (n. 7), 67, on the structural coherence of Book 1 and its wider significance within the poem.

13 See Narducci, Provvidenza (n. 10), 41–2; Narducci, Lucano (n. 10), 107–11; S. Casali, ‘The Bellum Civile as an Anti-Aeneid’, in Asso (n. 1), 92–5. On Lucan's depiction of the underworld, see Feeney, D. C., ‘History and Revelation in Vergil's Underworld’, PCPhS 32 (1986), 16–19Google Scholar; Casali (this note), 104–9; T. Sklenáԙ, ‘Lucan the Formalist’, in Asso (n. 1), 322–5.

14 Narducci, Provvidenza (n. 10), 62–6; Narducci Lucano (n. 10), 137–40; J. Masters, Poetry and Civil War in Lucan's Bellum Civile (Cambridge, 1992), 118–33; J.-M. Croisille, ‘Lucain et l'oracle de Delphes’, in Y. Perrin (ed.), Neronia VII. Rome, l'Italie et la Grèce. Hellénisme et philhellénisme au premier siècle après J.-C. (Brussels, 2007), 257–61 (stressing the differences between the two episodes); Casali (n. 13), 101–4; Fratantuono (n. 8), 182–8, 217; Pillinger (n. 4), 128; Day (n. 12), 98–101.

15 Masters (n. 14), 128–9; Croisille (n. 14), 258 (‘traits fantaisistes et outrés’, ‘whimsical and extravagant traits’).

16 O'Higgins (n. 4), 211–14. On the vulnerability of Virgil's Sibyl, see Verg. Aen. 6.77–80, 98–101.

17 Cic. Div. 1.105, 2.75. See F. M. Ahl, Lucan. An Introduction (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1976), 124–5; Feeney (n. 2), 289.

18 Luc. 5.130–40, 146–69. See A. Casamento, ‘Quando gli oracoli passano di moda: l'episodio di Appio e Femonoe nel quinto libro della Pharsalia di Lucano’, in T. Baier (ed.), Götter und menschliche Willensfreiheit. Von Lucan bis Silius Italicus (Munich, 2012), 151–3.

19 On the fragmentation of prophetic knowledge in the Bellum Ciuile, see Masters (n. 14), 141–9; P. Hardie, The Epic Successors of Virgil. A Study in the Dynamics of a Tradition (Cambridge, 1993), 107–8; Croisille (n. 14), 259. On prophecies in the Aeneid, see the recent discussions in J. J. O'Hara, Inconsistency in Roman Epic. Studies in Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid and Lucan (Cambridge, 2006), 78–82, and Santangelo (n. 11), 220–34.

20 Narducci, Provvidenza (n. 10), 64–5; Narducci, Lucano (n. 10), 141; M. Fucecchi, ’Partisans in Civil War’, in Asso (n. 1), 253–4. Dick (n. 3), 49, notes an important difference between the prophecies of the Aeneid and those of the Bellum Ciuile: the latter are always concerned with death. Cf. Cic. Div. 2.53 on Pompey's tendency to rely on divinatory signs and responses. As the encounter with the Egyptian priest Acoreus shows (Luc. 10.172–331), even Caesar may face impervious challenges in accessing religious knowledge, albeit not in divinatory contexts. See the recent readings of F. Barrenechea, ‘Didactic Aggressions in the Nile Excursus of Lucan's Bellum Civile’, AJPh 131 (2010), 259–84 (who stresses the vatic attributes of Acoreus), and J. Tracy, Lucan's Egyptian Civil War (Cambridge, 2014), 144–80.

21 Danese, R. M., ‘L'anticosmo di Eritto e il capovolgimento dell'Inferno virgiliano (Lucano, Phars. 6, 333 sgg.)’, in Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, 9.3 (1992), 197–244Google Scholar, provides an excellent treatment; Pillinger (n. 4), 127–37, is also essential reading. The bibliography is extensive: see the overview in D. Ogden, ‘Lucan’s Sextus Pompeius Episode: Its Necromantic, Political and Literary Background’, in A. Powell and K. Welch (eds.), Sextus Pompeius (London and Swansea, 2002), 262, n. 1. See also A. Gowing, ‘Pirates, Witches and Slaves : The Imperial Afterlife of Sextus Pompeius’, in Powell and Welch (this note), 193–9; C. Tesoriero, ‘Magno proles indigna parente: The Role of Sextus Pompeius in Lucan's Bellum Civile’, in Powell and Welch (this note), 229–47; N. W. Bernstein, ‘The Dead and Their Ghosts in the Bellum Civile: Lucan's Visions of History’, in Asso (n. 1), 263–5; K. Welch, Magnus Pius. Sextus Pompeius and the Transformation of the Roman Republic (Swansea, 2012) 98–9 (with a critique of Gowing); Day (n. 12), 102–4; Fratantuono (n. 8), 238–67; Tracy (n. 20), 169–71. See also the fitting epigrammatic statement of R. Gordon, ‘Lucan's Erictho’, in M. Whitby, P. Hardie, and M. Whitby (eds.), Homo viator. Classical Essays for John Bramble (Bristol and Oak Park, IL, 1987), 231: ‘the figure of Erictho refuses to be exorcised’.

22 Pillinger (n. 4), 134. On witchcraft and prediction in Lucan, see also Liebeschuetz (n. 3), 151; on Lucan's depiction of Thessalian magic and its influence on the gods, see Danese (n. 21), 204–11.

23 Val. Max. 6.2.8. See D. Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford, 2001), 151; H.-F. Mueller, Roman Religion in Valerius Maximus (London and New York, 2002), 165–6. On the political and rhetorical setting in which the exchange belongs, see C. Steel, ‘Pompeius, Helvius Mancia, and the Politics of Public Debate’, in C. Steel and H. van der Blom (eds.), Community and Communication. Oratory and Politics in Republican Rome (Oxford, 2013), 151–9.

24 Plin. HN 7.178–9. See Gordon (n. 21), 232–3, and Ogden (n. 21), 250–1 (and ibid., 251–4, for other less safe associations between the Pompeii and necromancy).

25 Phlegon, Mir. 3.

26 Strabo 5.4.5.

27 Cic. Vat. 14: cum puerorum extis deos manis mactare soleas (‘since you are used to appease the Manes with the entrails of murdered boys’). On this passage, see Ogden (n. 23), 149–51. Cf. the reference to child murder in the portrait of Erictho: Luc. 6.554–60.

28 Apul. Apol. 42.7–8. There is some informed speculation in Ogden (n. 21), 253. Nigidius certainly did not introduce necromancy to Rome (Ogden [n. 23], 150).

29 See the list of divinatory practices that are contrasted with necromancy in 6.423–34, on which see Domenicucci (n. 8), 47–58.

30 Lucan had a competent knowledge of magic: Gordon (n. 21), 235; Ogden (n. 23), 257–62.

31 Evidence and discussion in Gordon (n. 21), 241, and Ogden (n. 23), 256–7.

32 Tesoriero (n. 21), 231–9.

33 See Danese (n. 21), 217–19 ,and Gordon (n. 21), 237–41, discussing the contrasting representations of magic in 6.438–506 and 6.507–88. The discourse on magic was remarkably diverse and fragmented in the Roman world: for a recent assessment, see Gordon, R., ‘Magic as a topos in Augustan Poetry: Discourse, Reality and Distance’, ARG 11 (2009), 209–28Google Scholar.

34 R. Gordon, ‘Religion in the Roman Empire: The Civic Compromise and Its Limits’, in M. Beard and J. North (eds.), Pagan Priests (London, 1990), 254–5.

35 See Narducci, Provvidenza (n. 10), 60–1; Narducci, Lucano (n. 10), 135–7; Pillinger (n. 4), 137.

36 Ahl (n. 17), 146–7, and Pillinger (n. 4), 137, n. 1: whether the absence of Pompey's prophecy is intentional or not hinges, of course, on whether the poem was brought to completion.

37 Luc. 9.511–86, with Ahl (n. 17), 262–8, who insists on Cato's own oracular nature (264); also B. Tipping, ‘Terrible Manliness? Lucan's Cato’, in Asso (n. 1), 231. See also Long, A., ‘Lucan and Moral Luck’, CQ 57 (2007), 189–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on the place that the tension between fortune and virtue has in the questions that Cato refrains from asking the oracle.

38 Luc. 9.579–84. See Narducci, Provvidenza (n. 10), 65–6; Narducci, Lucano (n. 10), 141–2; Neri (n. 10), 1992–4; P. Chaudhuri, The War with God. Theomachy in Roman Imperial Poetry (Oxford, 2013), 189–91. On Cato's character in the poem, his Republicanism, and his debt to Stoic wisdom, see George, D. B., ‘Lucan's Cato and Stoic Attitudes to the Republic’, ClAnt 10 (1991), 237–58Google Scholar, with exhaustive bibliography (see esp. 251–2 on Cato's foresight); Bartsch (n. 2), 114–23; J. M. Seo, ‘Lucan's Cato and the Poetics of Exemplarity’, in Asso (n. 1), 199–221; Tipping (n. 37), 223–36. Feeney (n. 2), 283–4, remains essential reading on the extent of Lucan's debt to and radical independence from Stoicism; for a very different view see Liebeschuetz (n. 3), 151–2, who establishes a link between Lucan's Stoic allegiance and his take on divination.

39 Cic. Div. 2.28. See Santangelo (n. 11), 29–31, on this passage and its links to late Republican theological debates.

40 See e.g. Jal, P., ‘Les dieux et les guerres civiles’, REL 40 (1962), 178–88Google Scholar; Dick (n. 3), 37–8. Luc. 7.445–7 is the most radical statement (esp. 747: mentimur regnare Iouem [‘We falsely say that Jupiter reigns]’), but its emotional charge should warn against drawing general implications from it: see Hutchinson (n. 7), 253–4, and Chaudhuri (n. 38), 173–4, 306; a different approach can be found in Nickau, K., ‘Inque deum templis iurabit Roma per umbras: der Erzähler und die Götter bei Lucan’, Hermes 131 (2003), 489–91Google Scholar.

41 See E. Fantham, ‘The Angry Poet and the Angry Gods: Problems of Theodicy in Lucan's Epic of Defeat’, in S. Braund and G. W. Most (eds.), Ancient Anger. Perspectives from Homer to Galen (Cambridge, 2003), 229–49 (= E. Fantham, Roman Readings. Roman Responses to Greek Literature from Plautus to Statius and Quintilian [Berlin and New York, 2011], 535–58); Chaudhuri (n. 38), 156–92.

42 On fortuna and fatum in the Bellum Ciuile, see Friedrich, W. H., ‘Cato, Caesar und Fortuna bei Lucan’, Hermes 73 (1938), 405–21Google Scholar; Dick, B. F., ‘Fatum and Fortuna in Lucan's Bellum Civile’, CPh 52 (1967), 235–42Google Scholar; Ahl (n. 17), 297–305; Long (n. 37), 183–97; U. Eigler, ‘Fama, fatum und fortuna: innere und äussere Motivation in der epischen Erzählung’, in Baier (n. 18), 50–3; C. Walde, ‘Fortuna bei Lucan: Vor- und Nachgedanken’, in Baier (n. 18), 70–3.

43 Feeney (n. 2), 278–9, 294–5; Bartsch (n. 2), 112–14.

44 See E. Fantham, ‘The Perils of Prophecy: Statius’ Amphiaraus and His Literary Antecedents’, in R. R. Nauta, H.-J. Van Dam, and J. J. L. Smolenaars (eds.), Flavian Poetry (Leiden, 2006), 147–62, esp. 157–58 (= E. Fantham, Roman Readings [n. 41], 607–23); R. T. Ganiban, Statius and Virgil. The Thebaid and the Representation of the Aeneid (Cambridge, 2007), 44–69; Lovatt, H., ‘Statius, Orpheus, and the Post-Augustan vates’, Arethusa 40 (2007), 145–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chaudhuri (n. 38), 277–80. On the Thebaid, see also W. Hübner, Dirae in römischen Epos. Über das Verhältnis von Vogeldämonen und Prodigien (Hildesheim and New York, 1970), 77–100; Neri (n. 10), 2006–26, who stresses the bond between divination and providence in the poem; A.-M. Taisne, ‘Stace et l‘Etrusca disciplina’, in Briquel and Guittard (n. 6), 115–27.

45 See esp. Val. Flacc. Arg. 1.531–560: the distance between this prophecy of Jupiter and its model in the Aeneid could hardly be clearer. See Neri (n. 10), 1999–2006; Manuwald, G., ‘What Do Humans Get to Know about the Gods and Their Plans? On Prophecies and Their Deficiencies in Valerius Flaccus' Argonauticaz’, Mnemosyne 62 (2009), 586–608CrossRefGoogle Scholar; T. Stover, Epic and Empire in Vespasianic Rome. A New Reading of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica (Oxford, 2012), 151–79 (stressing the differences in outlook between Lucan and Valerius). Like Lucan, Valerius Flaccus was directly involved with public divination, as he probably was a quindecimuir s.f.: see Boyancé, P., ‘La science d'un quindécemvir au 1er siècle après J.-C.’, REA 42 (1964), 334–46Google Scholar (= P. Boyancé, Études sur la religion romaine [Rome, 1972], 347–58), and Rüpke (n. 2), 1349, no. 3398.

46 Bartsch (n. 2), 13–47. See also J. J. Lennon, Pollution and Religion in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, 2014), 37, 45, 108–9, for valuable remarks on the link between boundaries and purity in Lucan's work.

47 See V. Rosenberger, Gezähmte Götter. Das Prodigienwesen der römischen Republik (Stuttgart, 1998), 107–26; Santangelo (n. 11), 89–90.