Caesar criss-crossing the Rubicon: a palindromic acrostic in Lucan (1.218-22)

Giusti, E. (2016) Caesar criss-crossing the Rubicon: a palindromic acrostic in Lucan (1.218-22). Classical Quarterly, 65(2), pp. 892-894. (doi: 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: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Giusti, Dr Elena
• Authors: Giusti, E.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities > Classics
• Journal Name: Classical Quarterly
• Journal Abbr.: CQ
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• ISSN: 0009-8388
• ISSN (Online): 1471-6844