Vt Lucanus

How did ancient literature come down to us? A standard answer is to refer to the manuscripts, papyri and the copyists who passed on ancient writings. This book focuses not so much on the copies of Lucan’s Bellum ciuile as on another vector of transmission – quotations. Ancient and medieval literature abounds with quotations from Lucan’s civil war epic, showing that it continued to be read and recommended. This is a ground-breaking study of quotations from Lucan’s Bellum ciuile in writings prior to the 11th century. The approach first involves compiling the different traces of Lucan’s text from among the authors who quote him so as to better picture the many uses made of the poem in a corpus of over a thousand quotations. The examination of quotations from Bellum ciuile provides an original slant on the poem’s reception over a period of ten centuries across a wide range of cultural areas. Finally, this study provides a philological perspective on the evolution of the epic through its indirect tradition by comparing it with the main manuscripts on which the editors based the text of Pharsalia. By looking at quotations from Lucan’s epic, this book offers a fresh perspective on how the text’s indirect tradition informs us about the poem’s reception and transmission.