Lucain et la mémoire de Pharsale : le chant VII de la Pharsale comme tombeau poétique de Rome

Abstract

If the motive of Rome’s death is already evoked in the Augustan era, it finds an original reinterpretation in Lucan’s epic. Indeed, Lucan does celebrate a real disaster: Pharsalus consecrates the death of Rome and Lucan’s epic, especially book VII, appears like a poetic tomb of the Res publica romana. Lucan presents Pharsalus as a total disaster whose scope is at once human, historical and political, but also mythical and cosmic. The poet finally presents this battle as a poetic disaster, where the dactylic hexameter is reconfigured stylistically, not to celebrate the exploits of the past, but as a memorial for a paroxysmal catastrophe – the death of Rome.

Keywords

• Battle of Pharsalia
• civil war
• dactylic hexameter
• disaster
• Lucan
• Pharsalia