This dissertation examines the maltreatment of dead bodies in the epic poems of Lucan (Bellum Ciuile), Statius (Thebaid), and Silius Italicus (Punica). I focus on the depiction of corpses, their varied functions in each epic, and the literary engagement these authors have with the treatment of corpses in epics past, particularly Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid. I demonstrate the ingenuity with which these poets deploy corpses in their works by emphasizing the interplay and intertextuality between these authors, how they strive to be different from their epic predecessors and each other through their skillful elaborations on a major epic motif. The two main categories of maltreatment I analyze include the physical abuse directed at an enemy corpse and, similarly, the withholding or perversion of burial rites. In my Introduction I identify a major gap in scholarship concerning the treatment of corpses in Roman Imperial epic that my dissertation aims to fill. My project begins from a number of studies on corpse treatment in the Iliad, and my desire to provide a similar analysis of this theme for the Roman epics. Chapter 2 sets a baseline for epic corpse treatment by looking in detail at the Iliad and Aeneid, with the intention of establishing a normative framework which proves valuable for highlighting deviations from the norm in the treatment of corpses in Imperial epic. Chapter 3 analyzes decapitation in Lucan, Statius, and Silius, scenes which directly target and exploit less explicit constructions in Homer and Virgil. Chapter 4 looks at the wide array of burial perversions and abuses in Lucan, with a focus on Pompey’s fragmented burial rites. Chapters 5 and 6 analyze burial perversions in Statius and Silius, respectively, structured around Creon’s burial denial edict in the Thebaid and Hannibal’s warped funerals for Roman generals in the Punica. A brief Conclusion summarizes my findings, and looks ahead to further research on this topic. My project shows that encapsulated in the corpses and their treatment, these epics reveal a deep concern with violence, horror, life, and death, that reflects the larger disturbed functioning of each poet’s epic universe.

background

Vergil's Tragic Vision: The Death of Priam

Dead and deader : the treatment of the corpse in latin imperial epic poetry

to the minutiae of writing and ideas. Finally, I cannot envision the completion of this thesis without T. Keith Dix, whose patience, affability, prodding, and inimitable editing made this as polished a work as I can produce. Gratias vobis omnibus!

Altar, sacrifice, and prophecy : the children of Priam in Books 2 and 3 of Vergil's Aeneid

THE LAUREL REMAINS an enduring and, on the face of it, straightforward icon of Graeco-Roman glory. With its evergreen leaves, purgatory properties, and association with athletic and military victory since Apollo’s defeat of the Python, the laurus symbolically transmuted violence into cultural capital, or laus. This tree featured prominently in the iconography of the principate since Augustus’ foundational “return” of the res publica to the senate and people in 27 BCE in exchange for their gifts of laurels, an oak crown, a “shield of virtue,” and his honorific name. These signs helped convert Augustan potestas into auctoritas, dominion gained through civic violence into more fungible, evidently consensual sociopolitical currency. As displayed onAugustus’ Palatine doorposts and elsewhere in visual culture, the laurels of victory and the oak corona civica signifying “citizens saved” formed a meaningfully balanced tableau—perhaps even, with the clupeus virtutis, a mirror for princes. These arboreal signs are literally two sides of the same aureus at figure 1; in the type at figure 2, the auctoritas of Augustus’ obverse portrait seems to rest on the values encoded by the laurel/oak mise-en-scène on the reverse. The laurels not only rationalized and sanctifiedAugustus’ power during his lifetime, but posthumously featured prominently in the imperial cult, if not as cultic objects in their own right. The laurels’ symbolic service to power was no doubt clear to contemporary observers. In my view, however, Vergil and Ovid reverse these trees’ discursive transformation, peeling back their leaves to reexamine the bloodshed at their roots, in two texts that have not yet been connected: the stories of Pyr-

Blood beneath the Laurels: Pyrrhus, Apollo, and the Ethics of Augustan Victory

A Structural analysis and visual abstraction of the pictorial in the Aeneid, I-VI

The criteria for determining the significance of allusion or intertextuality have often been discussed and can be difficult to evaluate. For example, Wills has provided two general criteria that are useful for the task: (i) context and (ii) content, that is, echoes of the text—whether verbal, positional or rhythmical.1 (i) may be insufficient on its own, but when combined with (ii) it can make a very strong case. (ii) is by far the most important, and the more unique the evidence is the more confident we can be in the allusion, provided the uniqueness cannot be accounted for by an earlier source or topos.2 In this note I want to look at some possible allusions to Priam and Pompey at the end of Suetonius’ Galba with regard to these two factors. I shall then show what significance the allusion has for the wider interpretation of the text. Let us begin by looking at a case which to some extent anticipates my argument, yet does not convince because it is less cogent on our two conditions for significance, particularly (ii). Benario argues that Tacitus alludes to Priam through the death of Galba in his Histories.3 His case rests largely on four parallels of context: both are elderly rulers; they arm themselves in vain, are killed near a sacred spot, and then decapitated. To these Benario adds two parallels of content. First, he claims that Tacitus’ description of Galba as imperatorem . . . inermem et senem (Hist. 1.40.2, ‘the emperor, a defenceless old man’) recalls Virgil’s epithet for Priam: senior (Aen. 2.509, 544, ‘the old man’). Second, he compares Priam’s trementibus aeuo / . . . umeris (509–10, ‘shoulders trembling from age’) to Tacitus’ phrase neque aetate neque corpore sistens (1.35.1, ‘he had neither the youth nor strength to stand’), suggesting that neither ruler can bear the weight of his armour. However, Benario fails to compare all the accounts of Galba’s death. His four contextual parallels are all present in the other three versions of Plutarch, Suetonius and Dio. Therefore, if these similarities were shaped with Priam in mind, it was probably done by an earlier source, not by Tacitus.4 The content cited by Benario is also too general. The description of Galba as ‘the emperor, a defenceless old man’ is found in the same place in two of the other accounts, and is therefore not unique.5 792 SHORTER NOTES

Vergil's Tragic Vision: The Death of Priam

Citations

Dead and deader : the treatment of the corpse in latin imperial epic poetry

Altar, sacrifice, and prophecy : the children of Priam in Books 2 and 3 of Vergil's Aeneid

Blood beneath the Laurels: Pyrrhus, Apollo, and the Ethics of Augustan Victory

A Structural analysis and visual abstraction of the pictorial in the Aeneid, I-VI

Priam and pompey in suetonius' galba