After 69 Ce - Writing Civil War in Flavian Rome (Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes) (Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes, 65)

The fall of Nero and the civil wars of 69 CE ushered in an era scarred by the recent conflicts; Flavian literature also inherited a rich tradition of narrating __nefas__ from its predecessors who had confronted and commemorated the traumas of Pharsalus and Actium. Despite the present surge of scholarly interest in both Flavian literary studies and Roman civil war literature, however, the Flavian contribution to Rome’s literature of __bellum ciuile__ remains understudied. This volume shines a spotlight on these neglected voices. In the wake of 69 CE, writing civil war became an inescapable project for Flavian Rome: from Statius’s __fraternas acies__ and Silius’s suicidal Saguntines to the internecine narratives detailed in Josephus’s __Bellum Iudaicum__ and woven into Frontinus’s __exempla__, Flavian authors’ preoccupation with civil war transcends genre and subject matter. This book provides an important new chapter in the study of Roman civil war literature by investigating the multi-faceted Flavian response to this persistent and prominent theme. Contents 7 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 11 Part I: Lucanean Lenses 35 Flavian Epic: Roman Ways of Metabolizing a Cultural Nightmare? 35 Sparsis Mauors agitatus in oris: Lucan and Civil War in Punica 14 61 How It All Began: Civil War and Valerius’s Argonautica 79 Part II: Narrating Nefas in Statius’s Thebaid 99 Signs of Discord: Statius’s Style and the Traditions on Civil War 99 Civil War and the Argonautic Program of Statius’s Thebaid 119 Civil War on the Horizon: Seneca’s Thyestes and Phoenissae in Statius’s Thebaid 7 133 Part III: Leadership and Exemplarity 155 Reading Civil War in Frontinus’s Strategemata: A Case-Study for Flavian Literary Studies 155 Inuitas maculant cognato sanguine dextras: Civil War Themes in Silius’s Saguntum Episode 189 Vespasian’s Rise from Civil War in Josephus’s Bellum Judaicum 209 Embroidered Histories: Lemnos and Rome in Valerius Flaccus’s Argonautica 237 Part IV: Family, Society, and Self 263 Band of Brothers: Fraternal Instability and Civil Strife in Silius Italicus’s Punica 263 Civil War, Parricide, and the Sword in Silius Italicus’s Punica 281 Engendering Civil War in Flavian Epic 305 A last act of love? Suicide and civil war as tropes in Silius Italicus’s Punica and Josephus’s Bellum Judaicum 331 Part V: Ruination, Restoration, and Empire 351 Domesticating Egypt in Pliny’s Natural History 351 Valerius Flaccus’s Collapsible Universe: Patterns of Cosmic Disintegration in the Argonautica 373 Instability and the Sublime in Martial’s Liber Spectaculorum 397 Bibliography 421 Notes on Contributors 453 Thematic Index 457 Index of Passages 473

The fall of Nero and the civil wars of 69 CE ushered in an era scarred by the recent conflicts; Flavian literature also inherited a rich tradition of narrating nefas from its predecessors who had confronted and commemorated the traumas of Pharsalus and Actium. Despite the present surge of scholarly interest in both Flavian literary studies and Roman civil war literature, however, the Flavian contribution to Rome’s literature of bellum ciuile remains understudied. This volume shines a spotlight on these neglected voices. In the wake of 69 CE, writing civil war became an inescapable project for Flavian Rome: from Statius’s fraternas acies and Silius’s suicidal Saguntines to the internecine narratives detailed in Josephus’s Bellum Iudaicum and woven into Frontinus’s exempla, Flavian authors’ preoccupation with civil war transcends genre and subject matter. This book provides an important new chapter in the study of Roman civil war literature by investigating the multi-faceted Flavian response to this persistent and prominent theme.

"The fall of Nero and the civil wars of 69 CE ushered in an era scarred by the recent conflicts; Flavian literature also inherited a rich tradition of narrating nefas from its predecessors who had confronted and commemorated the traumas of Pharsalus and Actium. Despite the present surge of scholarly interest in both Flavian literary studies and Roman civil war literature, however, the Flavian contribution to Rome's literature of bellum ciuile remains understudied. This volume shines a spotlight on these neglected voices. In the wake of 69 CE, writing civil war became an inescapable project for Flavian Rome: from Statius's fraternas acies and Silius's suicidal Saguntines to the internecine narratives detailed in Josephus's Bellum Iudaicum and woven into Frontinus's exempla, Flavian authors' preoccupation with civil war transcends genre and subject matter. This book provides an important new chapter in the study of Roman civil war literature by investigating the multi-faceted Flavian response to this persistent and prominent theme"-- Publisher's website