Pompey does not accept defeat at Pharsalus. Rather, in an effort to gain support from powers beyond Rome, he makes for Egypt and, unbeknownst to him, his decapitation. As narrated in Lucan's Bellum ciuile, after deliberating in Cilicia with his senatorial advisers (8.259–455), Pompey stops at the island of Cyprus (8.456–9):
Then they left the Cilician soil and steered their vessels in haste for Cyprus—Cyprus which the goddess, mindful of Paphian waves, prefers to any of her shrines (if we believe that deities have birth, or if it is lawful to hold that any of the gods had a beginning).
In Lucan, Pompey's trip to Cyprus is brief and includes a somewhat curious reference to Venus (diua), her origins (undae … Paphiae) and the birth of the gods.Footnote 2 Other authors also record Pompey's visit to Cyprus, although the details vary. Some, including Julius Caesar, set his deliberations not in Cilicia but on Cyprus itself (Caes. BCiu. 3.102.3.1–8.1; cf. Plut. Vit. Pomp. 77.1.1–2.1). Others, it seems, provide few if any details of Pompey at the island, for example the scanty evidence from Livy, Per. 112.1–10.Footnote 3
A particularly suggestive version of Pompey's visit to Cyprus comes from a generation prior to Lucan in the Facta et dicta memorabilia of Valerius Maximus (De ominibus, 1.5.6.1–11):
Pompeius uero Magnus in acie Pharsalica uictus a Caesare, fuga quaerens salutem cursum in insulam Cyprum, ut aliquid in ea uirium contraheret, classe direxit adpellensque ad oppidum Paphum conspexit in litore speciosum aedificium gubernatoremque interrogauit quod ei nomen esset. qui respondit Κατωβασίλεια uocari. quae uox spem eius [quae] quantulamcumque [restabat] conminuit, neque id dissimulanter tulit: auertit enim oculos ab illis tectis ac dolorem, quem ex diro omine ceperat, gemitu patefecit.
When Pompey the Great was defeated by Caesar at the battle of Pharsalia, he sought safety in flight and directed his fleet to the island of Cyprus in the hope of gathering some force there. Putting in at the town of Paphos, he observed a handsome edifice on shore and asked the skipper its name. The same replied that it was called Catobasileia. His words shattered what little hope Pompey had left, nor did he try to conceal it. He turned away from the structure and with a groan made plain the distress the baleful omen had caused him. (transl. D.R. Shackleton Bailey, Valerius Maximus: Memorable Doings and Sayings, vol. 1 [Cambridge, Mass., 2000], 61)
Valerius’ narrative, which does not occur elsewhere, includes a mythical reference that helps to make sense of Lucan's version. In the Memorabilia, Pompey observes a building (aedificium, illis tectis) named the Catobasileia. For Pompey, who is fleeing (fuga) for his life, such a name could certainly evoke its translation, that is, the ‘Kingdom Below’ or Hades, a possibility his emotive response confirms: in response to the Charon-like ferryman (gubernator), he loses hope (spem) of survival and makes clear his pain (dolorem patefecit) with a groan (gemitu).Footnote 4 For Valerius, the mythological connotations of Cyprus ominously (diro omine) reorient Pompey's environment and prefigure his death. Like Valerius, Lucan also includes a mythological detail, that is, the Birth of Venus, though he leaves out any emotional reaction by Pompey. Instead, after mentioning Venus, Lucan includes a seemingly tangential speculation on the birth of gods.Footnote 5
If this moment in Pompey's itinerary provides an opportunity for other Roman authors to foreshadow the general's death, what should we make of the Birth of Venus in Luc. 8.456–9? In fact, it may serve a similar function. The cult of Venus was a well-known locus of political rivalry in first-century b.c.e. Rome. Sulla was probably a devotee of the goddess and, in addition to Felix, took the adnomen Epaphroditus.Footnote 6 Pompey himself established a cult to Venus Victrix, included a temple to the goddess in his theatre, and employed her image on coinage.Footnote 7 Yet, no Roman general of the first century associated himself with Venus more than Julius Caesar. In his eulogy for his aunt Julia, Caesar claimed not only devotion to the goddess but also direct genealogical descent (Suet. Iul. 6) as his dignitas generis (‘excellence by birth’). As Krebs states, ‘in the heat and aftermath of the Civil War, Venus adorned coins as conqueror of Gaul, ran as Venus Victrix in the battle cry of Pharsalus, and inhabited as Venus Genetrix a temple consecrated in 46 (in Caesar's own forum) … in arms she even sealed with wax countless Caesarian communications’.Footnote 8 The Caesarian association with Venus certainly continued to Lucan's day, with special attention paid to her birth from the waves. Pliny the Elder (HN 35.91) attests that Augustus consecrated Apelles’ Venus Anadyomenē (‘Venus rising from the sea’) in the temple to Caesar and that, when the painting had deteriorated, Nero himself commissioned a replacement to be made by Dorotheus.Footnote 9
After Pompey's defeat, the reference to the mythic origin of Venus could trigger this historical politics of the goddess. At Pharsalus, Caesar won both the battle and the claim to Venus. Lucan takes advantage of Pompey's geographical itinerary to introduce this particular mythopolitical reference, by which readers are reminded of Caesar's familial affiliation with Venus as part of his ideology and propaganda.Footnote 10 In this way even Lucan's choice of the word nasci (‘born’, 8.458) echoes the epithet of Caesar's Venus Genetrix and amplifies the thematic resonance. Pompey cannot escape Caesar's victory, a pitiful fact heralded by the reference to Venus’ birth at Cyprus. For an audience attuned to the mythopolitical valences of Venus, the reference would foreshadow Pompey's demise.
Yet, there is additional complexity to the mythological allusion that prefigures themes and imagery found later in the Bellum ciuile. In these lines, I propose that Lucan references Hesiod's Theogony and its own narration of the birth of Aphrodite, and that the Theogony is fundamental to our understanding and appreciation of the passage.Footnote 11 The Theogony provides the locus classicus for the birth of Aphrodite. After the castration of Ouranos by his son Cronos (Theog. 159–82), Ouranos’ genitals float across the Aegean Sea from Cythera to Cyprus (Theog. 190–5):
thus (his genitals) were borne along the water for a long time, and a white foam rose up around them from the immortal flesh: and inside grew a maiden. First she approached holy Cythera, and from there she went on to sea-girt Cyprus. She came forth, a reverend, beautiful goddess, and grass grew up around her beneath her slender feet.
Two details in the language of the Lucanian passage provide more certainty that Lucan refers to Hesiod. First, both Hinds and Conte have shown that Roman poets alluded to other texts through explicit attention to ‘memory’.Footnote 12 Venus as memor (‘mindful’, 8.457), surrounded by the mythical reference to the undae … Paphiae, could plausibly trigger a context of allusion. Moreover, Lucan also provides a double reference to the dominant theme and indeed to the title of Hesiod's Theogony in the parenthetical aside: si numina nasci | credimus aut quemquam fas est coepisse deorum (8.458–9). Both numina nasci and coepisse deorum are Latin calques of the Greek Theogonia, a title that was also given in periphrasis by other authors.Footnote 13 Lucan emphasizes the phrases not only through pleonastic repetition of the same idea—that is, the birth of the gods—but also by placing them in chiastic word order (noun-infinitive, infinitive-noun), syntactically at either end of the si-clause, and metrically stacked at line end.
The above evidence—that is, the mythic reference to the Birth of Venus-Aphrodite, the language of allusion (memor), and the emphatic double calque of the Theogony (numina nasci … coepisse deorum)—suggests that readers should have Hesiod's epic in mind. It is important that they do, as this intertextual frame alerts the reader to Hesiodic themes and imagery of familial violence and succession found later when Pompey meets his end at Egypt. After his beheading, the Egyptians embalm Pompey's head through ‘forbidden art’ (arte nefanda; cf. fas est, 8.459).Footnote 14 Soon after, Lucan describes the headless corpse of Pompey floating in the sea in lines reminiscent of the castration of Ouranos (8.705–11):
Pompey was the only man who never experienced good and evil together: his prosperity no god disturbed, and on his misery no god had mercy. Fortune held her hand for long and then overthrew him with one blow. He is tossed on the sands and mangled on the rocks, while his wounds drink in the wave; he is the plaything of Ocean, and, when all shape is lost, the one mark to identify Magnus is the absence of the severed head.
Similar to Cronos castrating Ouranos in the Theogony (178–82), Fortuna strikes Pompey with a ‘delayed hand’ (impulit … dilata manu).Footnote 15 The designation of Pompey's corpse as the ‘plaything of Ocean’ (ludibrium pelagi) likewise recalls the language of the Theogony's aetiology of Aphrodite (for example the Greek πέλαγος [Theog. 190] in the same sedes), its characterization of Aphrodite as from seafoam (a figura etymologica that may likewise be behind Lucan's mention of nulla … figura), and the final reference to the dismemberment of Ouranos at the end of the passage (Theog. 196–200).Footnote 16 Moreover, in Lucan the rare word ludibrium has a familial context similar to the violent encounter between Cronos and Ouranos. In his final words to his troops before Pharsalus, Pompey predicts that, ‘unless you conquer, I, Magnus, am an exile, a plaything to my socer and a disgrace to you …’ (Magnus, nisi uincitis, exul, | ludibrium soceri, uester pudor, 7.379–80). socer certainly denotes Caesar, Pompey's father-in-law by his former marriage to Caesar's daughter Iulia.Footnote 17 Through the watery association of Venus and Caesar at Cyprus (undae), Lucan seamlessly replaces ludibrium soceri with ludibrium pelagi and fulfils Pompey's prediction. Through its reuse, ludibrium conjures connotations of familial strife that are augmented by the Hesiodic frame, combining themes of intergenerational conflict from Pompey's speech as well as the Hesiodic birth of Aphrodite.
The Birth of Venus-Aphrodite likewise haunts Pompey's burial and the flight of Cato and of Pompey's wife Cornelia. Before the quaestor Cordus can cremate and inter Pompey's remains on the Egyptian coast (8.716–872), Lucan explains Cordus’ presence: ‘as quaestor he [Cordus] had made the ill-starred voyage with Magnus from the Idalian shore of Cyprus, where Cinyras once reigned’ (quaestor ab Idalio Cinyreae litore Cypri | infaustus Magni fuerat comes, 8.716–17).Footnote 18 Aphrodite looms in the ominous epithets as both the tutelary deity of Idalium (cf. Verg. Aen. 1.681) and the lover of Cinyras’ son, Adonis. Her birth from foamy mutilation emerges again in the extended labour of Cordus to extract Pompey's corpse from the notably Hesiodic ‘white sea’ (cano sed discolor aequore truncus | conspicitur, Luc. 8.722–3 ~ λευκὸς ἀφρός, Hes. Theog. 190–1), from which he finally retrieves the body (pelagoque iuuante cadauer | impellit, 8.725–6; cf. transuerso … aestu, 8.462; ludibrium pelagi, 8.710; and impulit, 8.707). After Pompey's burial, the narrative shifts to Cato, whose itinerary also plots his doom with reference to the dead (apertam Taenaron umbris, 9.36) and to the other Theogonic island of Aphrodite's birth, Cythera (9.37; cf. Theog. 192). Likewise, when Cornelia flees to Cato's camp in Libya, the island of Cyprus ‘first received her ship with its foaming waves’ (prima ratem Cypros spumantibus accipit undis, 9.117; cf. undae, 8.458). Through the aquatic imagery of foaming water, Lucan recalls Aphrodite's birth as a reminder of Caesar's inescapable victory over those he has conquered.Footnote 19
As a resource for themes and imagery of the Birth of Venus-Aphrodite from intergenerational conflict, the use of Hesiod's epic construction enriches the politics of Venus in Lucan. As a myth, the Birth of Venus certainly functions on its own as exemplum of contestation between members of the same mythical, political and social family. Similar to Valerius Maximus, we see Lucan engaging in mythological elaboration in a detail of Pompey's flight from Pharsalus to Egypt. With the reference to Hesiod, however, Lucan imbues the moment with additional significance. By alluding to Hesiod's narrative of the Birth of Aphrodite, Lucan accesses its dominant themes of intrafamilial war. By alluding to the father-son dismemberment of Ouranos by Cronos in the familial relationship of Pompey and Caesar, Lucan magnifies themes of intrafamilial civil war from the Theogony that are central to his historical epic. Through the Birth of Venus, Lucan recalls Caesar's victory; by alluding to Hesiod, he provides his readers with a mythological frame for subsequent themes and with imagery of familial violence.
Finally, there is the possibility that Lucan also intended readers to recognize an additional textual interlocutor for his treatment of Hesiodic Venus. Other Roman poets had, of course, also included the birth of Venus in their poetry.Footnote 20 Most notably for our purposes, in Book 5 of the Aeneid Neptune mentions the birth of Venus while talking to the goddess herself: fas omne est, Cytherea, meis te fidere regnis | unde genus ducis (‘it is entirely right, Cytherean, that you trust my kingdom, from which you are born’, Aen. 5.800–1). The Hesiodic background of these lines was not lost on Servius, who in his commentary cites the account of the Birth of Venus found in the Theogony, including the castration of Caelus by his son Saturn (cf. Saturnius, Aen. 5.799) as well as a citation of the Greek etymology of her name ‘from the foam’ (unde et Ἀφροδίτη dicitur, ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀφροῦ; cf. τὴν δ᾽ Ἀφροδίτην | ἀφρογενέα τε θεὰν … οὕνεκ᾽ ἐν ἀφρῷ | θρέφθη, Theog. 195–8).Footnote 21 It is noteworthy that both Lucan and Virgil employ not only the same myth but also similar language: both speak of trust or belief (fidere ~ credimus) and assert positions concerning rightfulness (fas) for such trust or belief with the same rare phrase, fas (omne) est.Footnote 22 Virgil's use of the topographical adjective Cytherea attests to the goddess’ multiform birth narratives (cf. celsa est mihi Paphus atque Cythera | Idaliaeque domus, Aen. 10.51–2), something I suggest Lucan acknowledges as well (cf. Cato and Cythera above). Both versions emphasize Aphrodite's watery birth, a detail that contrasts with other accounts of her origins, for example as the child of Zeus and Dione in Homer (Il. 5.370–82; cf. Dionaeae, Aen. 3.19). With these similarities in mind, we could reasonably recognize Virgil functioning as a type of ‘window reference’ or ‘two-tier allusion’ for Lucan to Hesiodic Aphrodite.Footnote 23
If Lucan indeed responds to Virgil's use of the myth and its Hesiodic background, his response differs in both tone and sentiment. In Virgil, Neptune proclaims the goddess’ birth from the waves unequivocally and with authority, all so that she may ‘trust’ (fidere) in his domain (meis … regnis), that is, the sea. Conversely, Lucan's narrator questions whether it is right to speak of the birth of gods at all. As we have seen, the foamy waters associated with the goddess’ origins are anything but trustworthy for the enemies of Caesar. In this inversion, we may recognize what Narducci, Conte and Asso have called the ‘antiphrastic’ stance of the Bellum ciuile to the Aeneid.Footnote 24 Lucan noticeably inverts structural, linguistic and thematic aspects of Virgil's Aeneid, including the itinerary of Aeneas westward to Italy in the movement eastward of Pompey and Caesar.Footnote 25 Similarly, whereas Virgil employs the Birth of Venus without problematizing its violent origins, Lucan seizes it as an opportunity to question the Theogony and its themes of violent succession.
It is thus possible to recognize parallels between the intertextual use of Hesiod by Lucan and Virgil and the political use of Venus in the historical politics of first-century b.c.e. Rome. Virgil upholds the political order of Olympus textualized in the Theogony, wherein Zeus violently ascends to power and dominion of the cosmos. Through her birth in the waves Aphrodite emerges from this ascendancy and through her progeny—including Aeneas himself (Theog. 1008–10)—extends Zeus's political order to mortals. Virgil, too, promulgates a Hesiodic cosmology in the Aeneid through the Birth of Venus and the explicitly divine origins of the Principate (for example Augustus Caesar, diui genus, Aen. 6.788–95).Footnote 26 In contrast, Lucan questions Hesiod's text and the role it serves in legitimizing the cosmic order that gave rise to mortal progeny, the dignitas generis of Caesar, and the bloodshed of the Civil War. Instead of importing its gods into his poem, Lucan opens Hesiod's poem to criticism—quite literarily if we read numina nasci and coepisse deorum as calques of the poem's title: ‘if we believe the Theogony …’. The contestation of Venus mirrors this intertextual dispute, but with the difference that Lucan invokes Hesiodic mythology not to claim it as his own but to reject it.Footnote 27
By raising doubts about the Theogony and by stressing its familicidal imagery and themes, Lucan lumps it together with previous Roman epics and their gods. As Feeney has argued,
from any viewpoint which was unsympathetic to what the emperors had done to the res publica, the divine characters of Naevius, Ennius, and Vergil were no longer available as a vehicle for communal meaning, since they had become the creatures of the princeps. They are the gods of the victor, of course, hence repulsive to Lucan's representation.Footnote 28
I suggest that, based on the intertextual evidence above, we could plausibly add Hesiod to Feeney's list of authors whose divine characters—filtered through previous Latin epics as well as directly accessible in the Theogony—Lucan rejects. The mythopolitical significance of Venus, which had preoccupied the generals of first-century b.c.e. Rome and the Principate thereafter, takes a Theogonic form in Lucan's account of Pompey's visit to Cyprus, unlike any other version of his flight to Egypt. The familial violence in Hesiod that gave rise to Venus’ birth from the waves emblematizes the conflict of Pompey, Caesar and the cognatas acies (1.4). The differentiation from Virgil's use of the myth allows Lucan to evoke Hesiodic themes and imagery more evocatively, a fact we see in vivid detail in Pompey's corpse manipulated by the foamy waves off the coast of Egypt.
