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...