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Notes on Lucan1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Nigel Holmes
Nigel Holmes
Affiliation:
York
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Extract

‘Phoceus’is ambiguous. It could mean ‘Phocian, of Phocis’, and thus ‘Massilian’. Massilia was founded by refugees from Phocaea; but Latin writers sometimes put instead Phocis, a name which Lucan also used for Massilia. Alternatively it could be a proper name appropriate to a Massilian. It is difficult to decide between the two readings: while no other participant is mentioned simply as a Roman or a Greek, some do appear unnamed. I prefer to see ‘Phoceus’as the swimmer's name. It seems attractive to divide off the four lines describing his life in peacetime (697–700) from ‘pugna fuit unus in ilia’ in 696; and this cannot be done if we must take ‘unus’ with ‘Phoceus’. Secondly, it seems strange of Lucan to give the swimmer four lines of description and Homeric pathos, and then not give him a name.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , May 1991 , pp. 272 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

2 Sen. Cons. Helv. 7.8; Luc. 3.340; 5.53; Gell. 10.16.4.

3 Luc. 4.256; cf. Sid. Ap. Carm. 23.13.

4 Cf., e.g., Tyrrhenus in 3.709ff.

5 E.g. 603ff.; 652ff.

6 Unus is clearly contrasted with the other drowning combatants ‘pugna in ilia’, ‘eximius’ explains why he was remarkable; but we do not find a clear statement of the uniqueness referred to in 696 until 701f. I take ‘unus’ as substantive, in apposition to ‘Phoceus’, ‘There was one man [i.e. one man alone] in that fight, Phoceus…’

7 Steph. Byz. s.v. Φѡκαία FHG ii.223, 35, attributed by Muller to Heraclides Ponticus, now more commonly attributed to Heraclides Lembus – see Dilts, M. R., Heraclidis Lembi excerpta politiarum (Durham, 1971), pp.3 6, 13f.Google Scholar; Head, B. V., Historia Numorum (Oxford, 1911), pp. 587f.Google Scholar; Keller, O., Die antike Tierwelt, i (Leipzig, 1909), p. 407.Google Scholar

8 See Housman, p. xxxiii.

9 In the margin of the 1627 edition of Grotius, British Library 684. b.12 (‘ripasque’ reported by Hedicke, E., Studio Bentleiana, vi (Freienwald, 1910), seems to be a misreading).Google Scholar

10 Duff translates ‘but the rushing Cinga bounds the plains’.

11 The manuscripts give: 20 coerces ζ -ens Ω, -ent U, -et M2U2;, 22 tuo ζ, suo Ωc, ‘TUO legitur et suo’ a; 23 tibi. Housman comments ‘cum aeque a traditis distent coercent…suo et coerces…tuo, utrum alteri praeoptandum sit ex 23 discere nolle cuius est perversitatis’.

12 In Lucan ‘adversative’ -que occurs when giving the positive aspect to a previous negative statement. Of the examples of adversative -que in Lucan provided by Schonberger, O., Untersuchungen zur Wiederholungstechnik Lucans, diss. (Heidelberg, 1961), pp. 213–15Google Scholar, almost all are of this kind. The other instances he claims are 3.569, 4.519, 1.510, 4.20 and 7.676. In this last instance (with an unemended text) the usage seems impossible, with ‘adversative’ -que immediately following a copulative -que. 3.569 and 4.519 are both rather to be regarded as ‘theme and variation’. At 1.510 the ‘que’ links a combination of two circumstances that arouses the writer's anger.

13 T.L.L. ix (2), p. 686, Iff.

14 ‘permissa’, as elsewhere in Lucan, combines the ideas of permission (with ‘licentia’) and geographical openness, cf. 10.330f. ‘prima tibi campos permittit apertaque Memphis | rura modumque vetat crescendi ponere ripas.’