Lucan’s Bellum Civile 7.617-646:
Rhetorical Questions and an “Open-Ended” History?

Matt Crutchfield (University of Missouri, Columbia)

Quintilian describes Lucan as a more appropriate model for orators than for poets (Inst. 10.1.90). Many scholars have followed him and used the term “rhetoric” to make disparaging comments about Lucan’s narrative. Since 1987, however, scholars (Henderson 1987, Johnson 1987, Masters 1992, Leigh 1997, Bartsch 1998) have shown greater appreciation of Lucan’s rhetorical tendencies. They have all made significant advances in our understanding of how Lucan uses rhetoric as an important feature to his narrative technique. This paper examines how Lucan uses rhetorical questions to invite his readers to complete the story of Pharsalus and in what ways this “opened-ended” narrative invites the reader to compose their version of history.

Lucan’s narrative is often presented in a “fractured voice” that is composed of asides, exclamations and rhetorical questions which address the audience. These elements frequently appear in his account of the battle of Pharsalus in B.C. 7, which he refuses to narrate in a coherent manner. Rather, he prefers to interrupt his narrative with an “authorial” voice, which has been argued is evidence of the poet’s wish to engage in the civil war. Scholars, however, have neglected what I contend to be a voice equally important to the narrative: that of the reader. As the narrator is not content to remain objective, so he is also not content to allow his reader to be an idle viewer of the war and he elicits his or her involvement through the use of rhetorical questions. By considering the questions which Lucan poses, the audience will form their own version of the history and, inevitably, their ideology of the battle.

Lines 7.385-616 present the battle of Pharsalus in a narrative split between the objective narrator and subjective “authorial” voice. At line 7.617 Lucan refuses to narrate the massive bloodshed at Pharsalus because of his shame (Impendisse pudet lacrimas in funere mundi/ mortibus innumeris, ac singular fata sequentem 7.617-618), he then presents the reader with a series of indirect questions, beginning with quaerere at line 619 and continuing to line 630. The answers to his questions would constitute an aristeia typical to Homeric and Vergilian epic: whose guts were pierced (7.619-620), who spilled his vitals (7.620), whose throat was pierced by whose sword (7.621-622), who fell (7.623), how they fell (7.623-624), whose blood shot into the air (7.625-626), whose head is cut off, who is mutilated (7.626-630). Lucan then asks his audience if they deserve the history they have inherited (7.642-645).

Rhetorical questions are generally used to engage the audience emotionally, intellectually or ideologically. By asking his audience these questions, Lucan does two things, first he engages them in the telling of his epic and secondly he gives them an ideological choice to be content with its story, or not. Lines 7.207-213 indicate how Lucan wants us to read his poem; he wants us to be ideologically active participants.  By engaging the reader in this way, the poet therefore forces his audience to come to terms with their own history, and to confront their own understanding of Roman identity.