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Caesar criss-crossing the Rubicon : a palindromic accrostic in Lucan (BC 1.218-22)
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Giusti, Elena (2015) Caesar criss-crossing the Rubicon : a palindromic accrostic in Lucan (BC 1.218-22). The Classical Quarterly, 65 (2). pp. 892-894. doi:10.1017/S0009838815000051 ISSN 0009-8388.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009838815000051
Abstract
Lucan's account of Caesar crossing the Rubicon (1.213–22) is dense with metapoetic allusion. Although the river has been specified as a small stream at Caesar's arrival (ut uentum est parui Rubiconis ad undas, 1.185), it becomes swollen, tumidus, as soon as Caesar ‘breaks the delay of war’ and ‘carries his standards in haste over the [now] swollen river’ (inde moras soluit belli tumidumque per amnem | signa tulit propere, 1.204-5). This has been pinpointed both as a metapoetic signpost of Lucan's engagement with the anti-Callimachean swollen river of grandiose epic (Callim. Hymn 2.108-9) at the outbreak of (his) Civil War, and as a programmatic statement that the whole Bellum Ciuile will set up a series of contrasts between Caesar's urgency in crossing boundaries and Lucan's narrative obstructions to or compliances with Caesar's progress. In fact, as Jamie Masters notes, ‘in spite of the “undoing of delay,” the perfect “tulit” and the adverb “propere,” Caesar has not crossed the river yet; or if he has, he must do it again’, precisely at 1.213–22. Within this densely self-reflexive passage, Lucan inserts a palindromic acrostic which signals both the doubling of Caesar's action (or at least the poet's double mention of the action) and Lucan's poetic representation of Caesar taming the forces of nature.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PA Classical philology | ||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > Classics and Ancient History | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Lucan, 39-65. Pharsalia, Caesar, Julius -- In literature, Epic poetry, Latin -- History and criticism, Rome -- History -- Civil War, 49-45 B.C. -- Literature and the war | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | The Classical Quarterly | ||||||
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press | ||||||
ISSN: | 0009-8388 | ||||||
Official Date: | 22 May 2015 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 65 | ||||||
Number: | 2 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 892-894 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1017/S0009838815000051 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 21 November 2017 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 22 November 2017 |
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