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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
Book 8 of Lucan's Bellum Civile opens with Pompey in desperate flight from Caesar after the disaster of Pharsalus, and in equally desperate search for a reliable ally. Before the fateful decision is taken that Pompey should make for Egypt, where he will be murdered upon arrival by minions of the treacherous Ptolemy XIII, Pompey dispatches his Galatian client-tetrarch Deiotarus to sound out the distant Parthians and summon their armed hordes to wage war on his behalf (8.209-38); the king promptly embarks on his arduous errand (8.238-43), never to reappear in Lucan's text. Although Pompey is said by several historical sources to have expressed an interest in exploring the prospect of an alliance with Parthia, the mission of Deiotarus is almost certainly a complete fiction, as Duff has convincingly demonstrated. What could Lucan's motive have been for inventing this episode out of whole cloth?
1 See Duff, J.D., ‘Some notes on Lucan VIII’, Journal of Philology 32 (1913), 125–35Google Scholar, at 128–9.
2 See Duff (n. 1), 129–30; J.P. Postgate, M. Annaei Lucani De Bello Civili Liber VIII (Cambridge, 1917), xxxiv; R. Mayer, Lucan Civil War VIII (Warminster, 1981), 112–13; and G. Viansino, Lucano: La Guerra Civile (Farsaglia), 2 vols. (Verona, 1995), 2.774.
3 Mayer (n. 2), 113.
4 All quotations of Lucan are taken from Housman's 1926 edition, which remains definitive, and on which Shackleton Bailey's 1988/1997 Teubner edition is largely based; all translations of Latin and Greek are by the author.
5 See e.g. BAlex. 39. For a modern discussion of Deiotarus’ actions and experiences after Pharsalus, see P.-S.G. Freber, Der hellenistische Osten und das Illyricum unter Caesar (Stuttgart, 1993), 87–9; see also D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor to the End of the Third Century after Christ, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1950), 1.406, 411 and 413–14.
6 See Duff (n. 1), 129–30, and Mayer (n. 2), 112–13.
7 See Postgate (n. 2), xxxiv. Postgate also notes perceptively (xxxiv n. 4) that Lucan has perhaps already alluded to this defection earlier in the poem, in Book 5, during the account of honours voted to foreign allies by the Senate in exile at Epirus, where Lucan describes Deiotarus as fidum … per arma , ‘loyal through the course of warfare’ (5.54), rather than per fugam, ‘through the course of flight’, in other words, as faithful during battle but not necessarily afterwards.
8 Postgate (n. 2), xxxiv n. 4.
9 See J. Radicke, Lucans poetische Technik (Leiden, 2004), 442.
10 Mayer (n. 2), 117.
11 Postgate (n. 2), xxxv.
12 Pompey does not, however, reveal this mission in his subsequent speech to the Republicans assembled at Syhedra (8.262-327), as is observed by F. Ahl, Lucan: An Introduction (Ithaca, 1976), 171.
13 Viansino (n. 2) on Luc. 8.240 cites Caesar's disguise at 5.338 as a comparandum, although he does not infer any authorial censure of Deiotarus from the parallel.
14 These connections are noted by Radicke (n. 9), 442.
15 For disapproval of disguise as a key component of Rome's founding national ideology, consider Verg. Aen. 2.386-412, where the Trojans’ adoption of Greek armour, together with Greek dolus (‘trickery’), is shown to have disastrous consequences; see E. Wheeler, Stratagem and the Vocabulary of Military Trickery (Leiden, 1988), 50–92 for the legal and moral nuances to the Latin vocabulary of deception. One may contrast the subterfuge of Lucan's Brutus with the conduct displayed at Philippi by Cato's son, who removed his helmet in order to be recognized and present a more conspicuous target as he fought to the death (App. B Civ. 4.135). See the discussion of the Brutus episode by M. Leigh, Lucan: Spectacle and Engagement (Oxford, 1997), 103–9.
16 There is an echo of the adjective regiis (inadmissible in hexameter) in Lucan's aulae, given that the substantive regia = aula (‘palace’).
17 For the importance of clementia to Caesar's presentation in the Bellum Alexandrinum, see J.F. Gaertner and B.C. Hausburg, Caesar and the Bellum Alexandrinum: An Analysis of Style, Narrative Technique, and the Reception of Greek Historiography (Göttingen, 2013), 100 and 102. See also the discussion of the Caesar-Deiotarus dialogue in the Bellum Alexandrinum by L. Canfora, Julius Caesar: The People's Dictator (Berkeley, 2007), 223–4.
18 Likewise, if we interpret praesentibus as a reference to temporal rather than physical immediacy (‘to obey the present-day authorities/orders’), Lucan's Deiotarus may come to regard Pompey's current instructions as superseded (especially after Pompey's death) by fresh orders from his new overlord Caesar.
19 Deiotarus also enjoyed the continued friendship and esteem of Brutus, who, like Cicero, was swiftly reconciled with Caesar after Pharsalus.
20 On Cicero's (unhistorical) intervention in Lucan 7, see e.g. Ahl (n. 12), 160–3, Radicke (n. 9), 379–80, and especially E. Narducci, ‘Cicerone nella “Pharsalia” di Lucano’, in E. Narducci (ed.), Aspetti della fortuna di Cicerone nella cultura latina (Florence, 2003), 78–91.
21 See Cic. Div. 2.79 and Plut. Pomp. 73.6.
22 Postgate (n. 2), xxxiv-v.
23 The story is, for instance, rejected by Cassius Dio (42.2.5-6).
24 On this point see e.g. J. Tracy, Lucan's Egyptian Civil War (Cambridge, 2014), 25–9.
25 See Tracy, J., ‘ Fallentia sidera: the failure of astronomical escapism in Lucan’, AJPh 131 (2010), 635–61Google Scholar.
26 Lucan also omits the craven supplication of Caesar by either Gaius or (more probably) Lucius Cassius, in spite of the latter's superior forces, upon their encounter in the Hellespont after Pharsalus, as recorded by Suetonius (Iul. 63) and Appian (B Civ. 2.88).
27 See J. Tracy, ‘Internal evidence for the completeness of the Bellum Civile’, in P. Asso (ed.), Brill's Companion to Lucan (Leiden, 2011), 33–53, as well as the suggestion offered by D. Quint, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton, 1993), 151. The first, seminal defence of the poem's completeness by a modern scholar was offered by J. Masters, Poetry and Civil War in Lucan's Bellum Civile (Cambridge, 1992), 216–59.
28 On this controversial passage, see most recently the discussions by H. Day, Lucan and the Sublime: Power, Representation, and Aesthetic Experience (Cambridge, 2013), 172–3, L. Fratantuono, Madness Triumphant: A Reading of Lucan's Pharsalia (Lanham, MD, 2012), 8–11, S. Casali, ‘The Bellum Civile as an anti-Aeneid’, in P. Asso (ed.), Brill's Companion to Lucan (Leiden, 2011), 81–109, at 89–92, and P. Roche, Lucan De Bello Civili Book 1 (Oxford, 2009), 7–10 and 130–46, as well as Roche's bibliographical note (129–30).
29 See the discussion of these lines by Leigh (n. 15), 12–15, as well as Leigh's general treatment of the key theme of ‘engagement’ in Lucan. Lucan also pledges to bridge the spatial distance between contemporary Rome and Pompey by repatriating the latter's remains from faraway Egypt back to Italian soil (8.835-50).
