SOURCE: "Caesar and the Mutiny: Lucan's Reshaping of the Historical Tradition in Civili 5.237-373," Classic Philology, Vol. 80, No. 2, April, 1985, pp. 119-31.

[In the following essay, Fantham explores Lucan's dramatization of mutiny and his relationship to the Alexander tradition.]

Lucan must surely be one of the most challenging authors for the student of Roman literature, since his fusion of history and imaginative art doubles the hazards of any interpretation of his poeticmethods, or his relation to the historical tradition. I was prompted to this investigation when the accident of teaching the first and fifth books of the De bello civili in immediate succession made me aware of the relationship which Lucan has constructed between Caesar's first encounter with his soldiers, set at Ariminum in 1. 231-32, and the later confrontation at the mutiny of Placentia, which occupies a similar position in Book 5. But what started as a rhetorical interpretation required an understanding of historical sources—if not of actual relation to fact—and of Lucan's structure within the individual book and the work as a whole, and led finally to investigation of the complex relationship between Lucan and the Alexander-tradition. The scene in Book I needs no separate analysis: it has been well discussed both by R. J. Getty in his separate edition¹ and in A. W. Lintott's wider study, "Lucan and the History of the Civil War."² My concern is rather with Lucan's interpretation of the mutiny. Why and how has he reshaped the historical tradition in his presentation of this dramatic scene?

I. Historical

In discussing Caesar's close bond with the men of his legions, Suetonius (Iul. 69-70) reports two occasions on which he was confronted with mutiny; in both cases the historical context seems to be undisputed. Late in 49 when Caesar was returning from Spain, he sent orders ahead for the men of the ninth legion to proceed to Brundisium, orders which clearly indicated a forthcoming campaign in Greece or the East. The ninth had been with Caesar since 58 without change of personnel, and the prospect of being sent East when they were newly returned from the western limits of civilization was too much. They mutinied against their officers, and it took Caesar himself to quell them, which he did by execution of the ringleaders and the threat of ignominious discharge.³ Two years later the men of the tenth legion—another long-service legion—rebelled in Campania, when they found that they were to be sent to Africa. After others had failed or died restoring order, Caesar unhesitatingly confronted them, shaming them by the single epithet Quirites, "Roman civilians," into new eagerness to serve, although he declared himself ready to disnmiss them.⁴ Both stories are confirmed by later historical tradition; we may compare Appain 2. 47. 194 for the mutiny at Placentia and 2. 93. 388-96 for the later episode. Dio likewise reports both affairs, crediting Caesar with a long moralizing speech at Placentia that would certainly have bored any self-respecting legionary into violence or despair (41. 27-35), but giving only a brief account of the later mutiny (42. 52-55) featuring the celebrated use of "Quirites." The first mutiny appears in Plutarch's life of Caesar only as a shadowy allusion to discontent,⁵ and is not surprisingly suppressed by Caesar's own narrative, so that Suetonius' account has the most authority; only Lucan offers an earlier surviving version. But it would be reasonable to assume that Pollio included the episode in his histories, and its omission from the Epitome of Livy 110 does not exclude the likelihood that it was treated by Livy. H. P. Syndikus in fact considers Livy as Lucan's source for the episode, and has argued, from common treatment of the mutineers' grievances in Appian and Dio, that Livy presented their complaints in indirect speech, as in Dio, and gave direct speech only to Caesar himself.⁶ Lucan, as we shall see, represents both the mutineers' alleged grievance (that they were exhausted by long years of fighting) and the motive which Livian tradition saw as their real complaint (that they were not allowed to sack Rome), but was to change the color of the whole episode to serve his portrayal of Caesar as the embodiment of scelus (5. 262, 286, 314). But Syndikus' analysis will also be rhetorically important, because he is able to show that in the episodes corresponding to Book 5 and to the Ariminum scene of Book I Livy provided a single speech, for Caesar the commander, and that it is Lucan who hasturned each speech into a pair: but whereas in Book I he provides Caesar with an answer from the loyal centurion Laelius, in Book 5 he supplies the speech of the mutineers to which Caesar gives his scornful reply.

II. Structural

Within the compass of this paper it is only possible to indicate briefly how this episode relates to Lucan's organization within Book 5, and to parallel episodes, whether of mutiny or of other relations between Caesar and his men, in other books of the epic. However, some understanding of the narrative sequence in Book 5 will be necessary if we are to appreciate the setting and dramatic color of our episode.⁷

The book is introduced by the key sentence "alterna duces bellorum vulnera passos … / servavit fortuna pares" (1, 3); thus it covers the actions of both leaders during a time when they maintain equal success. It begins and ends with Pompey, presiding over the quasi-Senate (15-57) and deciding to send Cornelia to safety (722-815): both sections culminate in an ominous fore-shadowing of Pompey's downfall (814-15) and death (57-64a). The extended account of Appius' consultation of Phemonoe at Delphi (65-236) ends in a picture of death and sea-violence, before Lucan breaks off represents abruptly, to resume with a series of scenes that follow the sweeping progress of Caesar from western Spain across Europe. The mutiny at Placentia (237-373) is quelled, and leads to the forced march to Brundisium, Caesar's crossing with the unhistoric nocturnal seacalm (412-60), his impatience with Antonius' delay (461-503), and the extended and climactic sequence of his attempted recrossing of the Adriatic during the great storm (504-702). Appius, like Caesar, is impatient and enforces obedience, and Lucan imparts to this quieter theme of prophecy a sense of spiritual storm which is part of the ebb and flow of violence, of action and inaction, in the wider context of 64-703. We might note the words quies (148 and 195) and cessare (157), which will recur in later episodes, the sea storm image of 216-18 "nec fessa quiescunt / corda, sed ut tumidus Boreae post flamina pontus / rauca gemit," and "Rhamnus, artatus rapido fervet qua gurgite Pontus" (234). In Caesar's calming of the mutineers we have a movement from storm to calm, which we might compare with the actual sea-calm of 424-55, itself invented as a foil for the storm of 504-653. Besides the recurring variations on quies (desired at 373 parta quies, deadly in 442, and again desired in 505) and on cessare (deadly at 444, obstructive in 498, and negated by the action of the winds in 608 non Euri cessasse minas), there is a clear sequence of storm-words grouped so as to parallel the metaphorical storm of Caesar's mutineers and the real tempest of the Adriatic:

MUTINEERS

• 255 murmur
• 261 effudere minas
• 303-4 nec dum desaeviat ira / expectat, medios properat temptare furores
• 300 tumultus

ADRIATIC

• 571 murmura ponti
• 578 sperne minas … pelagi
• 583 medias perrumpe procellas
• 586-87 nec longafurori / ventorum saevo dabitur mora
• 592 pelagi caelique tumultu

Indeed the impatience of Caesar confronting the mutiny (303-4 above) foreshadows his impatience both in spurring his own contingent to cross the Adriatic (409-11) and in addressing the reluctant Antonius (492-94 "ne retine dubium cupientes ire per aequor, / si bene nota mihi est, ad Caesaris arma iuventus / naufragio venisse volet"), and finally in braving the storm-laden night, "sponte per incautas audet temptare tenebras" (500). From the beginning of the mutiny to the end of the storm the tempo is controlled by Caesar's speeches, retarding and calming in 319-64, impetuous and accelerating in 413-23, 481-96, 577-93, and 654-71. Shipwreck, literal and metaphorical, binds this section of the book, in the paradoxes at 455 naufragii spes omnis abit and in 494 naufragio venisse volet, and is embodied in the imaginary naufragus of 520 and 573 and in Caesar's own charmed survival as felix naufragus (699).

The mutiny itself has been shown by H. Nehrkorn to have its counterpart at 9. 217-93, where Tarcondimotus' attempt at desertion is quelled by Cato's great speech in the name of liberty (256-83).⁸ This occupies the corresponding position in the first book of the third tetrad, in which Cato replaces Caesar as the dominant leader of men, as established by Rutz's reconstruction of the twelve-book epic. Cato's reproof shows the hollowness of Caesar's personal assertion of supremacy over his men. The spokesman thinks only of personal loyalty to Pompey and asks, like the mutineer of 5. 273, "nam quis erit finis, si nec Pharsalia pugnae? / nec Pompeius erit?" (9. 232-33). His appeal to old age (233-35), his protest against the scelus of continuing the war now that Pompey is dead (248; cf. 5. 262, 286), correspond to the protests of Caesar's men at Placentia, and the structural parallel is maintained by Cato's reply. "Desert in peace!", vadite securi (9. 272), echoes Caesar's vadite, meque meis … relinquite fatis (5. 325). Let them kill him and claim their reward (280 mercede; cf. 281-82 cervicis pretio … meritum), Cato will fight for libertas—the libertas which we know he will achieve only with death at the real end of this struggle. The final proof of this compositional parallel comes in Lucan's epiphonema, "sic voce Catonis/inculcata viris iusti patientia Martis" (9. 292-93), to which we will return.

Nehrkorn has also shown how Caesar recalls several of the issues raised by the mutineers in his pre-battle speech at Pharsalus, reversing his own claims to give them a sense of responsibility for the victory to come.⁹ But it appears that students of Lucan have not noticed the significant inversion, in this confrontation of mutineers and commander in Book 5, of the first encounter between Caesar and his men at Ariminum, where his speech provokes the endorsement of the primipilus Laelius. A rhetorical analysis based on key phrases and arguments will be necessary to confirm this claim.

III. Rhetorical

The picture of a seditious crowd or mutinous force quelled by a man of strong personality and eloquence is a favorite theme of both epic and historical writing in the Roman tradition. The first major simile of the Aeneid (1. 148-54) portrays a potential revolution quelled by a statesman who "regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet" (1. 153). Livy presents a major mutiny against Scipio Africanus in Spain; the grievances of the malcontents are given in indirect discourse (28. 24-26), but to Scipio he gives a magnificent speech occupying three chapters (28. 27-29). Tacitus, too, devotes a large part of Annals I to the mutiny on the Rhine and Germanicus' response (1. 31-32; cf. 34-44); we shall see in the last section how Quintus Curtius took over from Greek historiography a glamorized tradition of Alexander's courage and charisma in dealing with mutiny on two separate occasions. For the rhetorical tradition of Rome there was no greater proof of the importance of eloquence and auctoritas than this power of the orator to calm an angry mob.¹⁰

It is not surprising, then, that Lucan chooses to make a battle of wills out of the mutiny at Placentia and designs the rhetoric of this confrontation to serve both a dramatic purpose—illustrating the changed relationship of leader and men—and a structural function, recalling our first experience of Caesar's power to control his men. In terms of geography and narrative sequence, Lucan has departicularized whatever he found in his sources, using the episode instead to develop in isolation (neither Placentia nor northern Italy is named) the battle for control between master and men. The counterpart is the first contio set by Lucan at Ariminum but based ultimately on Caesar's speech to the thirteenth legion at Ravenna in Bellum civile 1.7. Lucan has concealed the fact that different legions are involved. As far as his readers are concerned, these are the same men, and this assumption increases the emotional impact of their changed attitude. Lucan has composed paired speeches for both occasions to balance the scenes, and provided a chiastically symmetrical arrangement. Before invading Italy, Caesar appeals to his legion for support in a speech of fifty-two lines (1. 299-351) and is answered, after a short sketch of their reactions, by the loyal declarations of the centurion Laelius in a speech half the length (358-86): returning to Italy after the Spanish campaigns, the ninth legion protests to Caesar (5. 261-95) and, after Lucan's own extended apostrophe and editorial intrusion,¹¹ is answered by Caesar in a longer and conclusive speech (5. 319-64). In both contexts the effect of his speech is obedience beyond expectation and the guarantee of his total control over his forces.

But the symmetry is carried through by Lucan in every detail of argument and phrasing. Caesar at Ariminum addresses his men as comrades (1. 299 bellorum O socii), basing this title on their shared hardships experienced in the northern lands (301 Arctots … in arvis) and Alpine cold. After a powerful account of Pompey's injustices at Rome (303-32), he calls for an end of this oppression, "quem tamen inveniet tam longa potentia finem" (333), and complains that the rewards of toil are being snatched from his men (341 praemia belli) and himself (340 merces). Let them enjoy their triumph under any commander, even if he is victimized. After protesting vigorously (343-45) that they are being cheated by the Senate of their plot of land at home for security in old age (senectus), he appeals for action to recover their rights and guarantees them divine support (349 nec numina derunt).

Each of these points will have its counterpart in Lucan's organization of the mutineers' grievances in Book 5. So too will the main points raised in Laelius' reply to Caesar. He begins in indignation at Caesar's patientia (1. 361), his long-suffering in enduring such tyranny from a civilian Senate (compare also 365 degenerem patiere togam regnumque senatus). He calls the Civil War just that (366), although Caesar had not invoked the word: "Is it so wretched," he asks, "to be victor in civilwar?" (civili vincere bello). They have been to the farthest Ocean for him (370) and wish only to follow him. For him they will kill kinsmen, plunder temples, and take cities by storm, be it Rome herself that they sack. After the speech all swear the service of their manus (a recurring term used to treat the soldiers as a mere weapon or instrument of Caesar's warfare) to serve in whatever wars he commands.

So in Book 5 Lucan cuts from his description of Appius Claudius' consultation at Delphi to Caesar, apparently at the ends of the earth; returning after subjugating Spain, he is about to carry his banners into another world (238). At this moment the gods almost divert the course of fate, and his soldiers, fideles / per tot bella manus (242-43), all but desert him. Released from individual fear by collective action, they voice their protests against him, apparently to his face. But where are they, and where is he? No hint that they are separated by the distance between Massilia, from which Caesar hurries to join his forces, and Placentia; no hint yet that he is not with them, and no naming of the legion; they are apparently isolated, face to face as the crisis approaches, in a limbo defined only by the cosmic aquilas alium laturus in orbem (238).

The anonymous or collective mutineers are given a speech incorporating the themes raised by both Caesar and Laelius in the contio at Ariminum, so as to reverse Caesar's former claims and the response of his original audience. Beginning with the appeal liceat discedere, Caesar, a rabie scelerum (261-62), in which the scelus to which they seek an end has become Caesar's, instead of that of Pompey and the Senate, they reject his quest for war over land and sea, reminding him of their services terris Arctois (268). In return for those real wars he has given them civil war (they welcomed this in Book 1). They have taken Rome, but they were not allowed after all to plunder the gods' temples. If Rome is not enough, what end will there be—-finis quis quaeritur armis? (273). Like the theme of scelus, 'the search for an end has been transferred from Pompey to Caesar's war-lust. Let him look at their old age, denied a peaceful death at home, and recognize who gets the rewards of the crime of civil war; thus the merces-theme is now subverted by the defining genitive sceleris (285). Let him discover that his success depends on their services, istas … manus (287-88). Caesar was a real commander, dux, by the Rhine; here he is merely a socius, an accomplice in crime. Thus the word he generously applied to them at Ariminum (299) is turned against him. Nor need he hope for victory from divine support (293-94); if his soldiers turn away from him he will have to accept peace; for Caesar's inverted morality, this ideal is paradoxically represented as a terrible threat.

In the editorial interlude Lucan invokes divine intervention; when morality fails, then let discordia at least impose an end on the civil war, finem civili faciat discordia bello (299). He even repeats the mutineers' opening outcry, liceat scelerum tibi ponere finem (314), thus combining 261 and the allusion to scelus in 286, as if Caesar, or Lucan, could now reverse history. But Lucan knows how to make Caesar a more powerful orator than his mutineers, and his address interweaves all the motifs of both the contio at Ariminum and the mutineers' collective denunciation. Ironically, Lucan can do this while making it clear that Caesar was absent during the protest and so has not heard the speech in person: compare 319 "qui modo in absentem voltu dextraque furebas." His reply is unanswerable, not on moral grounds, but as an appeal to their self-interest, showing it to be bound up with his own.

Baring his breast to their blades, Caesar offers them an end to war—over his dead body. They areno longer honored as socii, but called by the contemptuous collective miles, and he vindicates his own status as dux invictus (324), denying both his former use of socius and theirs. His own hands (manus again) and fate will find him soldiers and a crowd to share his triumphs and take the rewards of their toil (331 rapta mercede laboris), leaving them a shabby crowd of old men to watch as civilians (334 iam plebs Romana) the triumph of other men. The gods are indifferent to the common folk, and all humankind lives for the benefit of the few great men. Their reputation as terror of the North (344 orbis horror … Arctoi) would have been failure and defeat with a Pompey to lead them; they would be like the deserter Labienus, now wandering over land and sea. In this way he inverts their claim that victory depends not on the favor of the gods but on their own support. Surely the gods do not care for them, since they have guaranteed Caesar the advantage of fighting instead with fresh soldiers (351-53). He has the chance to arm hands greedy for everything, for whom the world is not enough (356 quibus hic non sufficit orbis). With the words iam certe mihi bella geram (357), Caesar turns to impose his control over them, ordering their departure; discedite castris literally grants their original request, liceat discedere, Caesar, and to cap the dismissal he calls them ignavi Quirites, bidding them hand over their standards to real men, while the ring-leaders take the punishment they deserve.

At Placentia order—a perverted order—and obedience—to a wicked purpose—have been restored. The echoes and correspondences do not end with Caesar's speech. Lucan portrays the men as exceeding their leader's expectations in their submissiveness (369-70 vicit patientia saevi/spem ducis), for they provide not only willing instruments for his verdict but eager victims, offering their throats for the cutting. Patientia occurs only five times in Lucan's epic: in the soldiers' first protest against Caesar's long-suffering of Pompey's potentia in the contio of Book 1, in this demonstration of their submission to Caesar, and three times as a positive moral value in Book 9; the first of these is Lucan's epiphonema on Cato's suppression of the mutiny, "sic voce Catonis / inculcata viris iusti patientia Martis" (9. 292-93).¹² In these words we read a comment on the evil patientia of Caesar's army.

Why did Lucan transfer to this first mutiny Caesar's famous use of Quirites when he put an end to the second affair and dealt with the revolt of the tenth legion in Campania in 47 b.c.? Surely because he did not intend to treat the second mutiny; one such episode is enough. But this does not prove that he did not intend to cover the major events up to and including the African campaign. If, as I believe, he saw the death of Cato as the consummation of his epic, he had nothing to gain by reporting a second successful assertion of power by his antagonist in terms similar to the first.

IV. Literary-Historical: Lucan and the Alexander-Tradition

The other aspect of this episode which provokes attention is the calculated discontinuity of its introduction. The historical context is reduced to the simple domitis … Hiberis, as though Caesar had newly conquered the Spanish tribes for Rome, and his troop-movements are idealized as aquilas alium laturus in orbem, raising to a level of heroic warfare the reality of a mutiny in a familiar Cisalpine town and embarkation for northwest Greece; the earlier phases of the mutiny are similarly ignored in order to focus the reader upon the figure of Caesar, and Caesar alone, perched on his little mound of turf (316-17), taming a raging mob and setting the fates on their course again. Without falsifying the historical record, Lucan has stylized it and given it a heroic color drawn, I would argue, from the idealized tradition of Alexander's campaigns.

What we have, of course, is not Caesar's imitation of Alexander, but literary Alexander-aemulatio such as P. Green has recently illustrated from other authors before and besides the De bello civilii¹³ Such coloring is well attested elsewhere in Lucan and demonstrated by W. Rutz, not only for Lucan's portrayal of Caesar himself at Ilium and Alexandria (9. 957-99; 10. 14-53), but more extensively in his presentation of the true hero, Cato, and his march across the desert in Book 9.¹⁴ The imitation began before Lucan and can be illustrated from the Suasoriae of the Elder Seneca, of which the fourth deals with Alexander's entry into Babylon in face of the omen portending his death, while the first suasoria, Deliberat Alexander an Oceanum naviget, is particularly relevant to this aspect of our theme—the emphasis on Ocean and the limits of the world. Seneca's excerpts from Augustan declaimers repeatedly harp on Ocean and alius orbis: compare Argentarius (1. 2) resiste, orbis te tuus revocat; Moschus (1. 2) non quaerimus orbem sed amittimus; Silius (1.3) imperium tuum cludit Oceanus … Alexander orbi magnus est, Alexandro orbis angustus est; Marullus (1. 3) orbem quem non novi quaero, quem vici relinquo. But closest to Lucan is the excerpt not from prose but from epic, not on Alexander, but on the exploits of Germanicus Caesar. It is Albinovanus Pedo who voices this protest (Sen. Suas. 1. 15):

quo ferimur? fugit ipse dies orbemque relictum
ultima perpetuis claudit natura tenebris.
anne alio positas ultra sub cardine gentes
atque alium flabris intactum quaerimus orbem?

For Pedo, the other world is imagined beyond the northern Ocean; for the Alexander-writers, too, the assumption was that he had led his army not just to the Beas (Hyphasis) or even to the Ganges beyond, but within reach of the eastern Ocean itself. When Caesar is depicted as carrying his standards alium in orbem, Lucan can only be suppressing geographical reality to foster a comparison with Alexander. This characterization is also to be found in the Roman Alexander-narrative of Q. Curtius Rufus, and the rest of my paper is concerned to show how Lucan has derived the coloring for his Caesar from the Alexander-tradition which we can see independently applied by Curtius in the two famous mutinies of Books 9 and 10. There are formal resemblances both of rhetorical shaping and of episodic sequence so close that one is tempted to argue for a relationship of direct adaptation, but any attempt to formulate such a hypothesis founders on scholars' continued disagreement about Curtius' dating.

The historian has been variously assigned to the time of Claudius or of Vespasian's accession, or in the most recent study, to the principate of Trajan. Dating is usually influenced by the well-known outburst of joy and gratitude at the accession of the new emperor, who is supposed to have saved the state from civil war. This passage comes near the end of the work, at 10. 9. 3-6, and, since J. Stroux, has been commonly related to the relief felt at the advent of Vespasian in A.D. 69. But A. B. Bosworth has now argued from details of military technique in the narrative that Curtius can hardly have written before the time of Trajan.¹⁵ On stylistic grounds I would place Curtius rather with Velleius and Valerius Maximums in the generation before Lucan, a time still uninfluenced by the new style of Seneca, or of course Tacitus. But it is not necessary to invoke Curtius' priority when Lucan's treatment can clearly be related to the wider tradition.

In the latest study of Curtius' narrative of the mutiny at Opis, W. Rutz suggests that the resemblances between the speech composed by Curtius for Alexander and Caesar's speech in Lucan Book 5 arise from their separate dependence on Livy;¹⁶ but although he makes a good case for affinities between Curtius and Livy's version of the Scipionic mutiny (Livy 28. 27), there are no strong leads to the influence of Livy on Lucan in our passage.

Twice in the later phases of Alexander's eastern expedition the King was confronted by a mutiny; the first time, in fact, proved the turning point at which he was forced to retreat. Both Arrian and Curtius tell how he had led his men to the last river of the Punjab, the Beas, and was eager to press on beyond it into India proper toward the Ganges, when his men, worn out, soaked by monsoon, and panicked by tales of the monstrous elephants of the Indian kingdoms beyond the river, refused to go any father.¹⁷ Both Arrian and Curtius, as Tarn has argued, depend on Ptolemy and so represent the same subtradition, and both provide a pair of speeches, for Alexander and for his lieutenant, Coenus, voicing the men's despair. We find a similar format in the later mutiny at Opis, when Alexander planned to send home his oldest veterans and the Greeks and Macedonians mutinied, demanding that they too be allowed to return: here again Arrian and Curtius provide a speech for Alexander, but the speeches have little in common with each other.¹⁸ In his appendix "The Speeches in Arrian," Tarn has shown that Curtius has on both occasions composed his speeches independently of Arrian's model, but has transferred from the famous speech at Opis the finale, which he inserts into his presentation of the harangue at the Beas.¹⁹ That is, Curtius composes without concern for historicity, and is concerned only with the potential rhetoric of the situation. But it is precisely the rhetorical finale in each of Curtius' speeches which comes closest to the key passage in Lucan from 5. 325-58. First, consider the speech at Opis, Curtius 10. 2. 27-29:

"facessite hinc ocius! ego cum Persis abeuntium terga tutabor. neminem teneo; liberate oculos meos, ingratissimi cives … triumphabo mehercle de fuga vestra, et, ubicunque ero, expetam poenas hos cum quibus me relinquitis colendo praeferendoque vobis. iam autem scietis, et quantum sine rege valeat exercitus, et quid opis in me uno sit."

As Tarn points out, the use of cives, meaningless in its Hellenistic context, shows contamination, less from the literary tradition of Caesar (of which Lucan is the earliest datable and extant witness) than from the anecdotal tradition of exempla and dicta memorabilia traded in the declamatory school.²⁰ Indeed Curtius presents the whole episode as an exemplum; the soldiers watch the arrest of the ringleaders without protest: "sive nominis … sive propria ipsius veneratio sive fiducia tanta vi exercentis imperium conterruit eos; singulare certe ediderunt patientiae exemplum" (10. 3. 3).²¹ Surely this tale of submissiveness has served in part as a model for the Caesarian mutiny as Lucan came to know it and has presented it in Book 5.

We find the same basic color in the last phases of Alexander's speech at the Beas, in Curtius 9. 2. 33-34. Curtius thought it worth borrowing from the Greek tradition of the second mutiny, and his finale is similar to the one discussed above:

"inveniam qui desertum a vobis sequantur. Scythae Bactrianique erunt mecum, hostes paulo ante, nunc milites nostri. mori praestat quam precario imperatorem esse. ite reduces domos! ite deserto rege ovantes! ego hic aut vobis desperatae victoriae aut honestae morti locum inveniam."

The tone is more self-pitying than that of Caesar, who would never have admitted the possibility of challenge to his imperium, or death and defeat, but the motif is the same. And we find another echo in the reply of Coenus, who voices the exhaustion of Alexander's men, paene in ultimo mundi fine consistimus … in alium orbem paras ire (9. 3. 7-8). Had Curtius perhaps spent some of his youth on that favorite first suasoria?

One other episode from the Alexander-tradition is relevant to this central portion of Lucan's fifth book. Shortly after the enforced abandonment of his march East, Alexander, smarting to wipe out the shame of a moral defeat, risked his life in an attack on a city of the Malloi (Multan, as it is now called);²² scaling the walls ahead of his hetairoi, he became isolated in combat with the townsfolk and was severely wounded, so that several days passed during which men feared for his life.

Only when he is recovering does Craterus voice the universal indignation that he could risk his life for so small a cause. He argues, "It is you who make us victorious: do not endanger all your people by risking your life. For who either desires or is able to survive you?", quis enim tibi superstes aut optat esse aut potest? (9. 6. 9); "leave us to face the routine hazards and save yourself for exploits worthy of your greatness. I beg you, let us be worthless in your sight [viles tibi] in some other way; we will go wherever you command" (9. 6. 14). Caesar, too, exposed himself to danger after quelling the mutiny, though the celebrated night voyage was some four to five months after the episode at Placentia. Lucan leads into this episode as soon as Caesar has landed in Epirus. When Caesar has almost perished in the storm, and even uttered his own funeral laudatio (Lucan 5. 654-71), a timely tenth wave casts him up on the shores of Epirus as the dawn approaches. Angry at the risk to his life, his men surround him with protest. Why does he risk his life leaving them, viles animae (683), to suffer their fate? Did none of them deserve the honor of not surviving him, "nullusne tuorum / emeruit comitum fatis non posse superstes / esse tuis?" (687-89). Both turns of phrase occur in a few lines, as they do in Craterus' protests. If anything, the awkwardness of Lucan's double negative nullusne … emeruit non posse … esse bears the mark of secondary composition, aemulatio which does not quite succeed; it is almost as if in outdoing Craterus Lucan had obscured his meaning.

In both authors we have the same sequence of moods—the disloyalty of mutiny followed by shaming and restored loyalty; in both, the external danger to the leader renews the devotion of his men. But whereas Alexander's comrades have passed days afraid for his life, Caesar's men in Lucan have slept all night to be confronted at reveille by a wet but healthy commander, so that they have to imagine the dangers he might have succumbed to. We know that Lucan greatly exaggerated the episode of the night voyage, which was originally little more than a wild crossing of the Aous estuary.²³ We can also compare a similar movement in Plutarch²⁴ and Appian for evidence that this particular emotional sequence was used by the Caesar-tradition before either Plutarch or Lucan. For Plutarch follows the discontent of Caesar's soldiers on their way to Brundisium with remorse, when they find Caesar departed and sit on the cliffs looking with longing toward Epirus, waiting to be reunited with him. The next anecdote is the desperate night voyage that ends in the reproaches of Caesar's men when he returns to the camp, because he did not trust them enough to fight without summoning Antony's contingent: this contrast of resentment, followed by Caesar's daring and his men's reproach, surviving even in Appian's brief version (2. 57-58), presumably goes back to Pollio. Plutarch and Lucan both depict the relationship between the commander and his men in terms of the irrational shifts of lovers' passion: the soldiers act like erastai toward their beloved Caesar, a patternrecognizable both in Greek sources for Alexander and his hetairoi and in Curtius' Roman version. Again, despite the close verbal echoes, it seems rather that Curtius and Lucan are adapting the same rhetorical tradition based on the Alexander-narratives, Curtius for the original theme and material, whereas Lucan has used it to reinforce the element of Alexander, the proles vesana Philippi,²⁵ in his anti-hero Caesar.

In conclusion, we find that Lucan has deepened the significance of his drama of mutiny by two principal techniques: first, by recalling the key episode at Ariminum from Book 1 in which Caesar's initiative met with loyal encouragement from his men at the moment of entry into Italy and civil war; and second, by importing into his characterization of Caesar here and in adjoining episodes of Book 5 details from the tradition of the world-conqueror at the eastern edge of the oikoumene. These, I would suggest, were known to him not from continuous histories, whether in Greek or Latin, but from declamations or declamatory excerpts memorized and preserved in the schools.

Notes

The original version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of Canada in Ottawa in June 1982. I would like to express my appreciation to M. Morford for his generosity in discussing the topic with me and making available his own research in progress; his suggestions gave me new and wider perspectives (chiefly in sections II and IV), and convinced me of the dependence of both Lucan and Curtius on the declamatory tradition about Alexander.

¹Lucan: "De Bello Civili" Liber I (Cambridge, 1940; repr. 1955), pp. xxxiii-xxxiv.

²CQ 21 (1971): 488-505, esp. pp. 497-98.

³ For other sources, cf. M. Gelzer, Caesar: Politician and Statesman, trans. P. Needham (Oxford, 1968), p. 219, n. 6.

⁴ Cf. Gelzer, Caesar, p. 263 and n. 2.

⁵Caes. 37.

⁶Lucans Gedicht vom Burgerkrieg (Ph.D. diss., Munich, 1958), pp. 38-39. Syndikus assumes Livy's distinction between the alleged and real motives of the mutineers on the basis of Dio 41. 26. 1, where the alleged motive corresponds to Lucan 5. 262-67 and 273-7 4, the real motive to 5. 267-73. Note that in the Spanish mutiny of Livy 28. 24-29, the grievances of the malcontents are merely represented in indirect speech, whereas Scipio is given a full-dress harangue (28. 27-29).

⁷ On the structure of Book 5, see the excerpt from W. Rutz, Studien zur Kompositionskunst und zur epischen Technik Lucans (Ph.D. diss., Kiel, 1950), reprinted in Wege der Forschung 235: Lucan, ed. W. Rutz (Darmstadt, 1970), pp. 181-84. Note also Rutz's argument (Das römische Epos, ed. E. Burck [Darmstadt, 1979], pp. 167-68) that the mutiny of Placentia, which belongs to Book 4 both in place and time, has been deliberately postponed to this position. Rutz believes Lucan wanted toend Book 4 with the death of Curio and open the second tetrad with the powerful scene of Pompey's assumption of the command in Greece. I would suggest an additional motive for the displacement—Lucan's desire to contrast Pompey's receipt of the command from the Senate with Caesar's demonstration of his power to reassert command over the army which had originally put itself into his hands: this is a contrast of legitimate and illegitimate command, of authority given and authority given and authority almost withdrawn.

⁸ "Die Darstellung und Funktion der Nebencharaktere in Lucans Bellum Civile" (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins, 1960), pp. 259-60. On Lucan's tetradic composition and proposed end, see Rutz, Studien, pp. 210-16. F. M. Ahl, An Introduction to Lucan (Ithaca, 1976), pp. 316-26, reviews other arguments for the death of Cato as the intended terminus of the epic.

⁹ See Nehrkorn's discussion of the mutiny episode, Darstellung und Funktion, pp. 164-69, and Ahl, Lucan, pp. 202-4. Note especially the echoes that Nehrkorn singles out from Book 5 to Book 7: 7. 250-53 rerum fortuna mearum … in manibus vestris quantum sit Caesar habetis reverses 5. 327 and 354; 7. 263 mutato iudice recalls 5. 291 ingrato … iudice; 7. 264 non mihi res agitur corrects 5. 357 iam certe mihi bella geram; and 7. 268 omnia dum vobis liceant nihil esse recuso recalls 5. 288 omnia posse manus. She sums up (p. 170). "Caesar hat gewiesen, dass er beides sein kann, Führer (dux) und Kamerad (socius)."

¹⁰ Compare from De oratore: 1.31 "(quid) tam potens tamque magnificum quam populi motus … unius oratione converti?"; 2. 35 "eiusdem et languentis populi incitatio et effrenati moderatio"; 2. 337 "quia summa dignitas est populi, gravissima causa rei publicae, maximi motus multitudinis … maximaque pars orationis admovenda est ad animorum motus … concitandos, saepe etiam a temeritate … revocandos."

¹¹ Lucan's narrative (295-96 and 316-18) frames a sequence of comment (5. 297-315) which is itself enclosed by apostrophe to the gods (297-99) and to Caesar (310-16).

¹² The other instances are 9. 403 graudet patientia duris and 880-81 sic dura suos patientia questus / exonerat.

¹³ "Caesar and Alexander: aemulatio, imitatio, comparatio," AJAH 3 (1978): 1-26.

¹⁴ "Lucan und die Rhetorik," in Lucain, Entretiens sur 1'antiquité classique 15 (Geneva, 1968), pp. 233-58.

¹⁵ For the dating of Curtius, see J. Stroux, "Die Zeit des Curtius," Philologus 84 (1929): 233-51; W. W. Tarn, Alexander the Great, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1948), pp. 91-122; and now A. B. Bosworth, "History and Rhetoric in Curtius Rufus," CP 78 (1983): 150-54.

¹⁶ See "Seditionum Procellae: Livianisches in der Darstellung der Meuterei von Opis bei Curtius Rufus," in Livius: Werk und Rezeption: Festschrift für Erich Burck zum 80 Geburstag, ed. E. Lefèvre and E. Olshausen (Munich, 1983), pp. 399-409. Rutz draws no conclusions about the possible dependence of Lucan on Curtius, or vice-versa: "alle Gemeinsamkeiten dürfen durch dasgemeinsame Vorbild Livius erklärbar sein" (p. 408, n. 29).

¹⁷ Arrian 5. 25-27, with which compare Curtius 9. 2-3. Plut. Alexander 62 makes the river the Ganges. On the speeches, see Tarn, Alexander the Great, vol. 2, appendix 15: "The Speeches in Arrian (and Some in Curtius)," pp. 285-89. For a modern narrative of the episode retaining the spirit of Curtius, see R. Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (London, 1973), pp. 366-72. Tam argues that Coenus was never present. Lane Fox interprets the conflicting evidence to assume that Coenus was present, but died shortly after the speech.

¹⁸ Arrian 7. 9-10, with which compare Curtius 10. 2-3; cf. Lane Fox, Alexander the Great, pp. 423-30.

¹⁹Alexander the Great, 2: 287.

²⁰Alexander the Great, 2: 296, where he oddly claims that Curtius "is therefore copying from the incident itself." Rutz, Livius: Werk und Rezeption, pp. 401-7, drawing on C. Hosius, "Lucan und seine Quellen," RhM 48 (1893): 380-97, notes these affinities between the final section of Alexander's speech in Curtius and Lucan's writing for Caesar, and compares also the narrative coloring of Curtius 10. 3. 4 with Lucan 5. 369-73.

²¹ Note, however, that neither the mutinies against Caesar nor those of Alexander are listed under, e.g., de disciplina militari in Val. Max. 2. 7. I list here for convenience the anecdotal material from the Career of Alexander used by Valerius Maximus: 1. 1 ext. 5 de religione neglecta (blinding of his soldiers at Miletus); 1. 4 ext. I de auspiciis (founding of Alexandria); 1. 7 ext. 2 de somniis (dream of assassination attempt by Cassander); 1. 8 ext. 10 de miraculis (omen of his approaching death); 3. 8 ext. 6 de constantia (trust in his doctor Philippus); 4. 3 ext. 4 de abstinentia (Diogenes and A.); 4. 7 ext. 2 de amicitiae vinculo (A. and Hephaestion); 5. 1 ext. I de clementia (A. and the frozen soldier; A.'s generosity in death); 6. 4 ext. 3 de graviter dictis (A., Parmenio, and the defeated Darius); 7. 3 ext. I de vafre dictis (A. and the muleteer); 8. 14 ext. 2 de cupiditate gloriae (the world too small); 9. 3 ext. I de ira et odio (his killing of Cleitus and Callisthenes); 9. 5 ext. I de superbia et impotentia (claim of divine paternity).

²² See Lane Fox, Alexander the Great, pp. 379-82; Curtius 9. 4. 15 (Malli), 9. 4. 26-5. 30 (siege and wound). Craterus' speech is given at Curtius 9. 5. 6-6. 15, where Ptolemy is reported as making the same protests. Plut. Alex. 63 narrates the episode immediately after the retreat from the last river; but although he is consciously creating parallels between his lives of Alexander and Caesar, he does not in Alex. 63 provide a sample of loyal reproaches parallel to Caes. 38.

²³ See Gelzer, Caesar, pp. 228-29 and n. 1; Syndikus, Lucans Gedicht, p. 9. Pollio is the likely source of both Appian and Plutarch. Dio (41. 46), like Lucan, romanticizes the episode.

²⁴Caes. 37 (complaints on the march to Brundisium), 38 (the boat on the Aous). Note that Plutarch equips Caesar with a twelve-oared boat and terminates his voyage before he reaches the open sea.

²⁵ Lucan 10. 20.