Lost in the Fray of War: Consumption and Destruction in Lucan's Pharsalia
Document Type
Panel Presentation
Start Date
19-4-2019 3:30 PM
End Date
19-4-2019 4:45 PM
Keywords
classics, civil war, Lucan
Biography
Mary Anna Ball is a Humanities: Classics and Latin senior with a minor in Ancient Greek. Along with her academic pursuits, she is a soloist with the Charleston Ballet and the associate producer of the documentary Andre Van Damme & the Story of the Charleston Ballet, which has been featured at film festivals across the U.S. and Canada.
Major
Humanities: Classics, Latin
Advisor for this project
Dr. Christina Franzen
Abstract
In Lucan's Pharsalia, standard boundaries of space, agency, and time have been destroyed in the fray of civil war by means of an all-encompassing consumption, noted by the Latin verb "consumere." With the use of "consumere" throughout the epic, Lucan is able to expand the sense of destruction of battle to new limits which had not been seen before. Through his poetic language and exaggerated horror, Lucan is able to present a Rome so affected by the civil war that all aspects of Roman Empire and society have been consumed, and I aim to show that this extent of consumption has passed through time and continued on through Roman history and future, especially in regard to the formation of the Julio-Claudian reign.
Lost in the Fray of War: Consumption and Destruction in Lucan's Pharsalia
In Lucan's Pharsalia, standard boundaries of space, agency, and time have been destroyed in the fray of civil war by means of an all-encompassing consumption, noted by the Latin verb "consumere." With the use of "consumere" throughout the epic, Lucan is able to expand the sense of destruction of battle to new limits which had not been seen before. Through his poetic language and exaggerated horror, Lucan is able to present a Rome so affected by the civil war that all aspects of Roman Empire and society have been consumed, and I aim to show that this extent of consumption has passed through time and continued on through Roman history and future, especially in regard to the formation of the Julio-Claudian reign.
