A Lucanian Reading of Ovid’s Medea
(De Bello Civili 6 and Metamorphoses 7)

Sean M. Easton (Arizona State University)

The Metamorphoses account of Medea is a fractured tale, divided into two halves: the first describes the psychological trials of Medea the vulnerable innocent; the second recounts the deeds of Medea the remorseless witch.  Medea’s visit to Thessaly to gather magical herbs marks the boundary between the two halves of Ovid’s Medea narrative.  The poet makes no attempt, however, to resolve the disparity between the earlier and later personae of Medea (Newlands 1997).  Lucan, however, offers a solution.

Lucan’s description of the Thessalian witches (De Bello Civili 6.443-506) and the necromancy of Erictho (DBC 6.667-669) is replete with verbal echoes of the ritual activities of Medea described in Metamorphoses 7.  Ovidian Medea conducts these in preparation for and upon return from a trip to Thessaly to gather magical herbs.  Lucan prefaces his own account of Thessalian witchcraft with an explicit reference to Medea’s visit (DBC 6.441-42), an event recorded elsewhere only in the Metamorphoses (Anderson 1972).

Metamorphoses has been primarily understood in this connection as a source of magical detail for Lucan’s Thessalian episode (Morford 1967); however, further parallels suggest that the very region negatively impacts visitors.  When Sextus Pompey arrives to consult the witch Erictho, “the place itself assists his empty and cruel madness’ (vanum saevumque furorem / adiuvat ipse locus…[DBC 6.434-35]).  A few lines later comes Lucan’s allusion to Medea, designated ‘the Colchian visitor’ (hospita Colchis [DBC 6.441-42]).  Lucan marks his Colchian visitor as Ovid’s Medea and chooses for his point of reference the event which marks the division between Medea the seduced innocent and Medea the vengeful witch in Ovid’s Medea narrative, suggesting that it is Thessaly, as Lucan describes it, which in the Metamorphoses transforms Ovid’s Medea from the innocent to the murderer.