The dramatic story of Pompey’s Egyptian murder, and the inexorable, poignant steps that brought him to the fabled land that would witness his treacherous end, is as captivating a narrative as anything in Lucan’s Bellum Civile. Alessio Mancini has done a marvelous service for anyone interested in Lucan’s epic and the history of Pompey’s civil war with Caesar. This major edition of Book 8 of the poem is one of the finest recent titles in the field of Latin epic, and it will be consulted with profit and pleasure by anyone working on Lucan and other silver poets. It is easy to be lost in these pages, given the various rabbit burrows the explication of Lucan invites one to explore. But to descend into those warrens with Mancini’s commentary is to be reminded of the astonishing achievement of the twentysomething Lucan, and to be grateful to the heroic scholarly endeavors of those who have tried to come to terms with one of the more difficult and demanding of Latin poets.
Mancini certainly fills a significant gap in commentary coverage. Aspiring Lucan exegetes have a strong foundation for their work in both the published scholia and in such superlative editions as those of Oudendorp (truly a monumental treasure), Burmann, and Housman. But Book 8 had languished without full-scale attention, notwithstanding its noteworthy innate appeal and human interest. Alongside Haskins’ somewhat underappreciated (and undeservedly so) guide to the entire poem, Postgate’s 1917 Cambridge edition of Book 8 is sound and modest; Mayer’s 1981 Aris & Phillips volume is reliable and judicious within the constraints of its series. But none of those admirable predecessors intended quite the mammoth coverage that Mancini has provided. For sheer scale and accumulation of information about the poet’s language and meter, this edition stands forth as a model for future commentaries on books of Latin epic.
The text (as one would expect) is essentially Housman’s (distilled by the labors of both Shackleton Bailey and Badalì); there are but nine divergences. The apparatus is streamlined due to the thorough account of textual problems in the notes. The prose translation is keyed closely to the commentary, in particular to aid the understanding of connective particles and the nuances of colorless adjectives (a hallmark of Lucan’s engaging style and art). The introduction is succinct and anticipatory of the commentary; it is particularly good on analyzing questions about the intended extent of Lucan’s work, the problem of reconstructing hypothetical later books of the epic, and situating Lucan within the tradition of epic accounts of downfalls, both of cities and of individuals (that is, Virgil’s depiction of Neoptolemus’ impious slaughter of Troy’s last king). These issues relate to difficulties that cannot be explicated fully in the absence of evidence, not least about the question of the intended extent of the epic (for example, how Lucan’s account of Pompey’s Priamic end in Book 8 may anticipate Caesar’s own eventual violent demise, and the possible significance of the poet’s recounting of the Julian scion’s visit to the site of Troy in Book 9 in light of the evocation of the murder of the great Trojan monarch in 8).
The commentary is the heart of the work, and here one finds first and foremost a thorough recapitulation of everything of note that has been said before about the text. Bibliographical thoroughness is a hallmark of this weighty tome. Parallel passages are cited with equally enthusiastic rigor. Lexical entries, metrical phenomena, and syntactical peculiarities receive pride of place in the lemmata. To use Mancini’s commentary with care and attention is to receive a thorough lesson in the art of tracing the history of the use of Latin vocabulary, as well as in the development and refinement of the Latin hexameter. Rhetorical devices receive the full consideration one would expect in a Lucan commentary. Mancini is particularly good at explicating the deft sleights of hand the poet permits his interlocutors, and the ways in which these craft something of a text within the text. Lucan’s depiction of Pompey’s wife Cornelia is indebted to Propertius in particular; this intertext is explored at length. The same treatment is given to Lucan’s pervasive engagement with Virgil, and the sometimes underappreciated debts to Horace. Mancini’s Lucan displays the same laudable concern with the poet’s debt to military prose that is on display in Horsfall’s Virgil commentaries; there is good engagement here with the importance of Sallust and Livy to a better appreciation of the Bellum Civile.
Throughout the commentary there is more attention to poetic than to historical matters, which is both reasonable and appropriate. Geography is a key interest of Lucan, and the notes herein provide a good range of references both to important primary sources like Pomponius Mela, and to useful secondary scholarly works on a vast and challenging subject. Intratextual coverage is more than generous: Mancini throughout illustrates the connections between Book 8 and other sections of Lucan’s epic, in particular Book 3. This is a philological commentary; those interested in more theoretical concerns will be happier absorbing the lessons of other books. If there were any areas that might have elicited more attention, it would be the importance to Lucan of Attic as well as republican tragedy, and the Greek epigrammatic tradition. But in a very long book that is both economical in its prose and dense in its coverage, any such desiderata are mentioned only for the sake of highlighting potentially profitable areas for further and more extensive investigation. The relationship of Lucan to Manilius merits its own monograph; astronomical concerns are not as pronounced in Book 8 as elsewhere in the epic, but here too there is room for significant work. Petronius poses his own problems for Lucan exegetes; here too Book 8 offers fewer avenues for intertextual engagement, though there may be profit in considering more closely verbal connections between the later books of the Bellum Civile and Eumolpus’ challenging composition. Again, for a book of this size and economy of expression, one cannot expect quite everything. Nachleben is not a major concern, and wisely so: this is already a very long study.
Admirably (and in line with the welcome, general practice of recent Lucan scholars), Mancini is kind to his predecessors, eschewing polemic and preferring gentle engagement with opposing viewpoints. The commentary seeks more to provide a firm foundation for future investigations than to propose dogmatic readings of the poet. The same holds true (perhaps even more so) for the introduction, which carefully delineates Lucan’s debt to Virgil’s second book of the Aeneid, not to mention elegiac antecedents for the depiction of Cornelia. A great virtue of Mancini’s edition is that one may emerge from its consultation with more interpretive questions than answers. The result is that scholars of widely divergent views on Lucan’s intentions and accomplishment will profit equally well from deep consideration of the notes found here. Mancini provides a solid foundation for a diverse range of approaches to a challenging text. There is little of controversy in these pages, principally because Mancini’s purpose is to assemble the necessary tools to study Lucan closely, and his methodology is to evaluate judiciously the evidence he amasses. There is nothing groundbreakingly innovative here, and that is one of the virtues of this volume. It will remain a valuable trove for reference, not only for the impressive quantity of material assembled, but also for its resistance to any temptation to indulge overmuch in critical speculation. Scholars of diametrically opposed views on such matters as Lucan’s view of the Neronian principate, his sentiments about Virgil’s depiction of the fall of Troy and the death of Priam, and the place of divine apparatus in epic will find much of value in Mancini.
Among the “back of book” features, Mancini’s index locorum is both essential for utilizing fully the riches of the commentary, and an important roadmap for further research on Lucan’s debts and gifts to other poets. The listing of editions of Lucan and the scholia is particularly welcome, together with the more than generous bibliography already mentioned.
For some years now, the De Gruyter “Texte und Kommentare” series has produced a number of works on authors both canonical and less familiar. Mancini’s Lucan 8 is a gem of the collection. It merits the full attention of lovers of Lucan and Latin poetry, and is a model of the commentator’s art. Both author and press are to be commended for the care and attention expended on this most welcome addition to the bibliography on Neronian literature.
Lucan’s eighth book closes with haunting reflections on the nature of mendacity, of the place of Pompey in Roman history and (implicitly) the place of republican sentiment and heroic memory in the Neronian Age. Lucan deliberately does not always provide answers to the questions he poses of his reader. The present commentary does not seek to solve the insoluble, but it does help the student of the Bellum Civile to appreciate better why the poet posed his queries in the way he did, and along the way to come to terms with how and why Lucan conceived of epic as the best vehicle for confronting the ironies, perplexities, and ultimate irrationality of the principate in which he both declaimed his poetry and met his untimely end.