Lucan: De Bello Ciuili Book VII

Accessible and detailed guide to this crucial book within an important Latin epic, covering Lucan's style, sources, language, and context.

Paul Roche (Edited by)

9781107614451, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 May 2019

292 pages
21.5 x 13.8 x 1.6 cm, 0.37 kg

Book VII of Lucan's De Bello Ciuili recounts the decisive victory of Julius Caesar over Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus on 9 August 48 BCE. Uniquely within Lucan's epic, the entire book is devoted to one event, as the narrator struggles to convey the full horror and significance of Romans fighting against Romans and of the republican defeat. Book VII shows both De Bello Ciuili and its impassioned, partisan narrator at their idiosyncratic best. Lucan's account of Pharsalus well illustrates his poem's macabre aesthetic, his commitment to paradox and hyperbole, and his highly rhetorical presentation of events. This is the first English commentary on this important book for more than half a century. It provides extensive help with Lucan's Latin, and seeks to orientate students and scholars to the most important issues, themes and aspects of this brilliant poem.

1. Book VII
2. Battle
3. The gods and religion
4. Stoicism and epicureanism
5. Pompey and Caesar
6. Sources, models, intertexts
7. Viewing, seeing, spectatorship
8. States of mind: madness, hope, fear, anger, joy
9. Paradox and hyperbole
10. Apostrophe
11. Sententiae
12. Diction, word order, metre
13. Transmission and text
14. Manuscripts cited
M. Annaei Lvcani De Bello Civili Liber Septivs
Commentary.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]