Book 8 of Lucan's Bellum Civile opens with Pompey in desperate flight from Caesar after the disaster of Pharsalus, and in equally desperate search for a reliable ally. Before the fateful decision is taken that Pompey should make for Egypt, where he will be murdered upon arrival by minions of the treacherous Ptolemy XIII, Pompey dispatches his Galatian client-tetrarch Deiotarus to sound out the distant Parthians and summon their armed hordes to wage war on his behalf (8.209-38); the king promptly embarks on his arduous errand (8.238-43), never to reappear in Lucan's text. Although Pompey is said by several historical sources to have expressed an interest in exploring the prospect of an alliance with Parthia, the mission of Deiotarus is almost certainly a complete fiction, as Duff has convincingly demonstrated.Footnote ¹ What could Lucan's motive have been for inventing this episode out of whole cloth?

All previous commentators on the passageFootnote ² explain it as designed to showcase or establish the unabated loyalty of at least one member of Pompey's princely retinue, in spite of his subsequent betrayal and assassination by another royal client. Mayer thus suggests: ‘Within the economy of the eighth book the king's ready service and unhesitating devotion stand in sharp contrast to the devious perfidy of Ptolemy.’Footnote ³ On the face of it, this is a reasonable supposition, for Lucan opens the scene by commenting on Pompey's illustrious company in exile, the turba fidelis, ‘loyal crowd’ (8.205), of kings and senators who still attend him even in the face of his misfortune (8.206-9):Footnote ⁴

Deiotarus is then introduced as one of these faithful comrades, qui sparsa ducis uestigia legit, ‘who made his way over his leader's scattered tracks’ (8.210), and is addressed by Pompey as fidissime regum, ‘most faithful of kings’ (8.212), an allusion to Cicero's praise of him (Brut. 21): Deiotari fidelissimi atque optumi regis, ‘Deiotarus, the most faithful and excellent king’. Pompey has previously declared an intention to search the world for a people as steadfast as the Lesbians, who have offered him shelter and aid against the victorious Caesar (8.139-46); now, it appears to Pompey that at least Deiotarus measures up to the standard of Lesbos.

Nevertheless, there is a major problem with regarding Deiotarus as a type of loyalty in adversity (at least within Lucan's narrative), namely the well-known historical fact of his swift accommodation with Caesar after Pharsalus, a defection from the anti-Caesarian party that occurred early enough for Deiotarus to have pledged financial support to Caesar by the initial stages of the latter's Alexandrian campaign (BAlex. 34); Deiotarus’ forces subsequently fought alongside Caesar's against Pharnaces.Footnote ⁵ At Deiot. 13, Cicero even gives the impression that Deiotarus abandoned Pompey immediately after Pharsalus, although, in attempting to placate Caesar on Deiotarus’ behalf, Cicero has grounds to understate Deiotarus’ devotion to the Pompeians. In Div. 2.79, at any rate, Cicero offers, in rapid sequence, the images of Deiotarus’ flight with Pompey, departure from Pompey, and entertainment of Caesar as his guest. There was also a pro-Caesarian historical tradition that strongly emphasized Caesar's clementia toward Deiotarus. This is apparent from Bellum Alexandrinum 67–8 (a passage I will discuss further below) and also from Cassius Dio, who cites Deiotarus as proof of Caesar's φιλανθρωπία (‘benevolence’) after Pharsalus (41.63.1): τεκμήριον δὲ ὅτι Σαδάλου μὲν τοῦ Θρᾳκὸς καὶ Δηιοτάρου τοῦ Γαλάτου, καίτοι καὶ ἐν τῇ μάχῃ γενομένων … ἐφείσατο, ‘And the proof [of Caesar's mercy] is that he spared Sadalus the Thracian and Deiotarus the Galatian, even though they too had been in the battle [of Pharsalus]’. Indeed, Dio goes out of his way to defend Caesar from the accusation that he had treated Deiotarus at all unfavourably or vindictively (41.63.3).

This is not to say that Deiotarus ever gained Caesar's complete trust or favour: the circumstances of Cicero's speech Pro rege Deiotaro argue otherwise, while Cicero portrays Caesar as implacably hostile to Deiotarus’ interests at Phil. 2.94 (albeit with the obvious rhetorical goal of emphasizing Antony's alleged corruption). Nevertheless, like Cicero himself, Deiotarus was most certainly (and famously) not to be reckoned among the diehards who, in contrast with the practitioners of reconciliation, carried on the struggle against Caesar until their last breath; unlike Cato or Juba, whose dedication to the anti-Caesarian cause was sealed with their suicide upon the defeat at Thapsus, Deiotarus was fated to die peacefully (as a very old man) in 40 b.c., having successfully appeased both Caesar after Pharsalus and the triumvirs after Philippi. It is, however, precisely a diehard that Pompey's commission to Deiotarus, with its projection of a lengthy and difficult journey, seems to assume and require. Lucan, then, shows Deiotarus beginning a mission that, by the historical record, he will never go on to complete, since he will swiftly come to agreement with Caesar.

Where Duff and Mayer simply ignore the issue,Footnote ⁶ Postgate at least admits the fact of Deiotarus’ wavering loyalties.Footnote ⁷ According to Postgate, Lucan's account of the embassy is designed precisely to gloss over and cover up the king's inconstancy: ‘Lucan has got rid of it in characteristic fashion. It was insupportable that the “most trusty of monarchs” should leave his leader at the first convenient opportunity. So he is despatched on a dangerous and yet futile mission to Parthia, of which of course nothing further is heard.’ Pompey's designation of Deiotarus as fidissime regum at 8.212 is thus a case of Lucan ‘protesting too much’Footnote ⁸ in order to rehabilitate Deiotarus as a consistently faithful ally of Pompey.

As Postgate acknowledges in the above quotation, however, Lucan does not show Deiotarus actually completing his assigned task; this is in contrast with Pompey's widow Cornelia, who conscientiously executes his final instructions (9.84-100). More important, any goal of rehabilitation is seriously undermined by the deceitful manner in which Lucan's Deiotarus sets about his journey, for he emulates the arch-trickster Odysseus by disguising himself as a pauper (8.239-40): positis … insignibus aulae | egreditur famulo raptos indutus amictus, ‘With the trappings of the palace laid aside, he goes out dressed in a cloak snatched from a servant’.

Deiotarus’ disguise has received no satisfactory explanation from scholars. Radicke underscores the seemingly gratuitous and ‘put-on’ character of the disguise element in this episode: he explains it as a heavy-handed attempt by Lucan to bind together Books 5 and 8 (the first and last books of the second tetrad of Lucan's planned poem, according to Radicke's structural analysis) through the shared motifs of the pauper's disguise and the praise of true poverty, in connection with Caesar's incognito visit to Amyclas in the earlier book.Footnote ⁹ I will be arguing, however, that there is more to Deiotarus’ disguise than mere structural artifice lacking any deeper connection to the immediate narrative context.

Mayer simply states that ‘[i]t was a commonplace that servile or inconspicuous dress preserved the prominent from harm’,Footnote ¹⁰ citing a couple of literary precedents, but he does not explain why Lucan has chosen to represent Deiotarus specifically, out of all the characters embroiled in the perilous events of his poem, as resorting to such a ‘commonplace’ device. After all, the Asian territories through which Deiotarus must now venture are surely not more dangerous than the many other more active theatres of war that Lucan has depicted over the course of the poem. In Book 6, for instance, Sextus Pompey, who is otherwise portrayed by Lucan as an abject coward, nevertheless dares to traverse the no man's land of Pharsalus on the eve of battle in search of the witch Erichtho without the aid of any such concealment (6.570-3); neither does the timorous Pompey adopt a disguise in his flight from Pharsalus at the beginning of Book 8 (8.1-32), even though Lucan states that he would have preferred to go unrecognized (8.19-21). From whom, in short, is Deiotarus seeking to conceal himself?

Postgate's proposed solution to this problem, namely that Deiotarus ‘may yet have found some disguise a convenience to screen his departure from the eyes of the Pompeians at Ephesus’,Footnote ¹¹ seems insufficient, especially given that Pompey himself does not instruct Deiotarus to keep the mission secret; indeed, Pompey seems at his most boastful and least furtive during this passage, and he even concludes his speech with an assurance that the Romans will welcome and applaud his new Parthian allies (8.237-8), which would obviate any need for concealment of the plan from Pompey's compatriots.Footnote ¹² The disguise can therefore be better understood as a carefully chosen means of conveying Deiotarus’ fundamental deceitfulness.

Deiotarus’ replacement of his royal vestments with humbler attire invites comparison not only with Odysseus but also with Lucan's villain Caesar, who is similarly disguised as a commoner, plebeio tectus amictu, ‘covered by a plebeian cloak’ (5.538), when he ventures alone on his dangerous attempt to cross the Adriatic in Book 5.Footnote ¹³ The two scenes are likewise connected by the motif of a rhetorical laus paupertatis in which Lucan extols poverty as a guarantee of safety in wartime (compare 5.527-31 and 8.241-3).Footnote ¹⁴ Caesar shares with Deiotarus the mere simulation of such poverty, in contrast with the genuinely poor man, who is exemplified by the skipper Amyclas in Book 5 and by the generic uerus pauper, ‘true pauper’, of 8.243; where Deiotarus is thus implicitly lacking in ueritas, ‘truthfulness’, Caesar is twice said to have engaged in fallere, the act of deceiving, during the episode in Book 5 (5.512 and 5.679).

Although it is true that in Book 7 the noble Brutus too is shown concealing himself as a common soldier, with the goal of reaching and killing Caesar on the field of Pharsalus (7.586-7), this is a very different scenario from the less heroic adoption of a disguise to ensure a safe journey, as in the cases of Caesar and Deiotarus, since there would be no returning alive from such a desperate feat. In the ensuing lines, moreover, with which (through an apostrophe) he seeks to dissuade Brutus from his reckless design, Lucan begins by addressing him as o decus imperii, spes o suprema senatus, | extremum tanti generis per saecula nomen , ‘O glory of our dominion, last hope of the Senate, final name of a family so great through the centuries’ (7.588-9). The implication is clear: instead of hiding his light under a bushel through such an anonymous and underhanded tactic, Brutus must await the day when he can claim his birthright and acquire undying glory through an act of public vengeance committed under his own illustrious nomen. The apostrophe as a whole is framed by emphatic reminders of that name (at 7.587 and 7.596). This brief episode therefore serves to support, rather than contradict, the argument that Lucan (like many of his compatriots) regarded disguise as unworthy of a Roman (and, conversely, typical of a decadent easterner like Deiotarus).Footnote ¹⁵

Most tellingly, the disguise seems intended to evoke the actual historical account (offered in the Bellum Alexandrinum) of Deiotarus’ craven supplication of Caesar in 47 b.c., when he sought and obtained Caesar's forgiveness for his former support of Pompey, which he claimed to have given only under duress (BAlex. 67): depositis regiis insignibus neque tantum priuato uestitu sed etiam reorum habitu supplex ad Caesarem uenit oratum ut sibi ignosceret, ‘with his royal trappings laid aside, and not only in the dress of a private citizen but even in the costume of defendants at trial, he came as a suppliant to Caesar to beg him to forgive him’. Note the close correspondence between Lucan's ablative absolute phrase positis … insignibus aulae (8.239) and the depositis regiis insignibus of the Bellum Alexandrinum: this suggests a reminiscence not only of the historical incident but even of the actual text.Footnote ¹⁶ In consequence, the exchange of royal for commoner's dress at once highlights Deiotarus’ innate untrustworthiness and, more specifically, serves to prefigure his imminent appeasement of Caesar.

The author of the Bellum Alexandrinum in fact exploits Deiotarus as a kind of poster-child for reconciliation in the aftermath of Pharsalus, since (after the striking visual image of Deiotarus’ penitent self-abasement) we hear the mitigating arguments by which Deiotarus seeks to exculpate himself for his previous support of Pompey (BAlex. 67.2), Caesar's stern refutation of such reasoning (68.1), and finally Caesar's magnanimous grant of pardon to the unworthy Deiotarus, in an act of purest clementia (68.1).Footnote ¹⁷ As a vehement anti-Caesarian, Lucan could well mistrust a figure willing to be embraced so publicly within Caesar's fold (admittedly not in a very warm embrace) after a regretted Pompeian past. Ominously enough for Lucan's Pompey, Deiotarus here states in his defence (BAlex. 67.2) that it was not his place to judge between the factions of the Roman people, but merely ‘to obey the authorities who were present’, parere praesentibus imperiis. Consequently, even if Lucan's Deiotarus is ready enough to obey Pompey's commands (parere … non piguit, ‘it did not displease him to obey’, 8.238-9) while the latter is in physical proximity, such compliance will not necessarily survive Deiotarus’ long road to distant Parthia for Pompey's sake, but away from Pompey's side.Footnote ¹⁸

It would have been very easy for Lucan to portray Deiotarus, simply and straightforwardly, as Pompey's loyal ally and a steadfast friend to the Republic. This is certainly how Cicero consistently represents him; why, indeed, should Cicero have borne Deiotarus any ill will for coming to a pragmatic accommodation with Caesar after Pharsalus when Cicero himself, along with so many of his peers, had done exactly the same?Footnote ¹⁹ We should, however, be wary of assuming that Lucan shared Cicero's high opinion of Deiotarus (or wished his readers to share it). After all, Lucan's sympathies were entirely with the diehards among the Republicans, not with the conciliators who felt that, after Pompey's defeat and certainly after his murder, they could feel free to support whomever they chose. Through the mouth of Cato, for instance, Lucan issues a stern rebuke to the Cilician ruler Tarcondimotus for leading a movement among the surviving Pompeian soldiers to abandon Cato's camp and come to terms with Caesar upon the news of Pompey's death (9.219-24); Tarcondimotus, it should be noted, was held up by Caesarian propaganda along with Deiotarus as a beneficiary of Caesar's clementia toward erstwhile Pompeian allies (Cass. Dio, 41.63.1). Indeed, Lucan also offers harsh criticism of Deiotarus’ friend Cicero himself for (according to Lucan's version of events) precipitating the battle of Pharsalus out of his weariness with military life and eagerness to return to the civilian world of oratory (7.62-7): Lucan thus, by implication, prefigures and condemns Cicero's swift resumption of peacetime activities after Pharsalus.Footnote ²⁰

If Lucan had wished to endorse the Ciceronian picture of Deiotarus, he could simply have stuck to the attested fact that Deiotarus faithfully attended Pompey during the initial flight from Thessaly.Footnote ²¹ Even though Deiotarus subsequently went over to Caesar, his accommodation to political realities presumably occurred after Pompey's demise and could not, under these conditions, be considered a personal betrayal of his now-defunct commander (and was certainly not regarded as such by Cicero). Instead, by inventing a scene in which Pompey entrusts Deiotarus with a vital mission upon the latter's departure from his side, Lucan has recast Deiotarus’ pragmatism as active disloyalty, for he has artificially contrived a scenario whereby true faith to Pompey would require Deiotarus to carry on the struggle against Caesar even after Pompey's death, in obedience to Pompey's parting wish. Deiotarus is enjoined to raise a Parthian army to wage war in Pompey's cause, and this cause extends beyond Pompey's own lifetime, as he makes clear with his final exhortation to his sons, passed on by Cornelia at 9.87-97. Deiotarus, however (Lucan implies), will end up neglecting his doomed leader's last command in order to curry favour with Caesar: a long and laborious journey to Parthia on Pompey's behalf is clearly incompatible with the well-known facts of Deiotarus’ support for Caesar in the Alexandrian campaign and against Pharnaces and his abject supplication of Caesar. Lest this subtext should be lost on his readers, Lucan drives the point home through the gratuitous and historically resonant detail of Deiotarus’ disguise. It should also be kept in mind that, as Postgate points out,Footnote ²² Lucan's fiction of the Parthian mission of Deiotarus is perhaps inspired by historical accounts (for example, Caes. BCiv. 3.82) that record Pompey dispatching the senator Lucilius Hirrus as an envoy to Parthia (albeit prior to Pharsalus). Lucan has thus made the choice to substitute the inconstant Deiotarus for Lucilius, who is known to have diligently carried out Pompey's commission and to have suffered imprisonment for his pains (Cass. Dio, 42.2.5).

As a result, Lucan's purpose in inventing this episode must be to highlight not Deiotarus’ fidelity but rather Pompey's pathetic naiveté and misplaced trust in the people around him, particularly easterners, whose unreliability during the battle of Pharsalus is lamented by Lucan at 7.525-7. The superlative expression fidissime regum at 8.212, taken almost verbatim from Cicero's Brutus and put in the mouth of the deluded Pompey, accordingly takes on a bitter irony, for if Deiotarus is truly the most faithful of the world's monarchs, Pompey's future prospects are grim indeed. This fact is fully borne out by the sequel, namely Pompey's murder at the hands of another king, Ptolemy XIII, who owed him a considerable debt of gratitude; Lucan connects Deiotarus to Ptolemy very directly by designating the former a tyrannus (8.241), a term overwhelmingly applied to Ptolemy over the course of the poem (Ptolemy accounts for eighteen of its twenty-nine occurrences). Another layer of delusion is thereby added to Pompey's address of Deiotarus: not only can he not depend upon the allegiance of the Parthians, of which he vaingloriously assures himself on the basis of his former eastern victories (8.222-32), but he cannot even trust this petty client-king to carry out his orders to the end.

By lending such weight to the possibly fictitious story of Pompey's flirtation with a Parthian alliance,Footnote ²³ Lucan may have sought to suggest the seductive appeal of Eastern-style monarchy for a man who had styled himself ‘the Great’, a temptation from which Pompey must be sharply recalled by Lentulus’ stirring Republican-minded suasoria.Footnote ²⁴ If that is so, the Deiotarus episode suggests the extreme hollowness of Pompey's pretensions: Pompey may fancy himself a ‘king of kings’ on the Parthian/Persian model, but Deiotarus’ loyalty to Pompey will only endure until he comes face to face with Caesar instead, the true embodiment and promoter of Parthian-style despotism within the Roman world.

In any case, Fortune proves as fickle in her gift of reges … ministros, ‘servant-kings’ (8.207), as in all her other benefactions to Pompey, and Lesbos is the very last abode of genuine fides that he will encounter during his life; Pompey even finds himself forsaken by the stars above, to which he looks for inspiration and salvation in the scene immediately preceding his address to Deiotarus.Footnote ²⁵ We should appreciate Lucan's considerable subtlety in deploying this minor character. Book 8 is dominated by a very obvious example of a faithless king, Ptolemy XIII, against whose treachery Lucan inveighs repeatedly and explicitly. Lucan has, however, chosen to complement, precede and foreshadow his brutally overt narrative of Ptolemy's crime with an understated hint of another, less egregious royal betrayal; he thus builds up gradually to the climax of Book 8 with a picture of Pompey's increasing isolation and vulnerability, instead of plunging the reader abruptly into the full horror of Pompey's death.

Beyond the confines of Book 8, it remains to consider the significance of the Deiotarus episode for the overall design of Lucan's poem. The (or at least a) fundamental dividing line of the Bellum Civile falls between the pre- and the post-Pharsalus epochs, for Pharsalus was the one terrible moment when the whole world changed (as Lucan laments at 7.385-459 and elsewhere). One of the most striking transformations wrought by Pompey's defeat was the gradual, progressive accommodation of Rome's senatorial elite (with a few diehard exceptions) to autocratic rule by the Caesars. By (subtly but unmistakably) foreshadowing Deiotarus’ imminent self-prostration before Caesar, Lucan hints at the reconciliation of the entire class of Republican-minded Romans with whom Deiotarus (although a foreigner) had enthusiastically aligned himself, a class that included such outspoken friends of Deiotarus (and such celebrated recipients of Caesar's pardon after Pharsalus) as Cicero and Brutus; and this reconciliation in turn points toward the ostensible ‘partnership’ between emperor and Senate that was such a hallmark of the early Principate. It is, however, noteworthy how indirectly Lucan alludes to this entire process during the final books of his poem. The only overt defector from Pompey's cause after Pharsalus that we encounter (unless one counts the despicable Ptolemy, who had never enthusiastically backed Pompey anyway, at least within Lucan's poem) is the relatively minor foreign kinglet Tarcondimotus (9.219-24). When the Roman soldiers are on the verge of following Tarcondimotus’ example, they are speedily and effectively checked by an exhortation from Cato (9.224-93). Even Cicero, whom Lucan abhors, is depicted merely as longing for the peacetime sphere in which his oratorical talents can shine brightest, not as one destined to employ those talents in abject flattery of Caesar through such speeches as the Pro Marcello. As for Brutus, there is no whiff in Lucan of his (temporary) rapprochement with Caesar; instead, we see him foreshadowing his most glorious deed with an attempted assassination of Caesar on the field of Pharsalus (7.586-96), along with other allusions to the Ides of March scattered through the final books (for example, 8.610 and 10.342).Footnote ²⁶

The Deiotarus episode, through its unique allusion to the reconciliation with Caesar of a leading Pompeian partisan, thus simultaneously demonstrates Lucan's keen awareness of the phenomenon of post-Pharsalus appeasement and (through its obliqueness, as well as through its uniqueness) suggests his discomfort with such inconstancy among his beloved senatorial champions, a discomfort that could only intensify as the historical narrative unfolded. In spite of the earlier submission to Caesar by Afranius in Spain (4.337-62), Lucan was still able to present the senatorial order in its entirety, apart from a few third-rate renegades, as resolutely united against Caesar both in the prelude to Pharsalus (5.1-65) and at the battle itself (7.578-81, 7.597-8). Such inspiring unanimity among ‘respectable’ senators cannot, however, be claimed for the years after Pharsalus, with the high-profile defections of Cicero, Brutus, and Cassius, the withdrawal from the fight by the leading anti-Caesarian consular Marcus Claudius Marcellus, and so on. Lucan's uneasy handling of Deiotarus may therefore lend some support to the idea (which I argue elsewhere)Footnote ²⁷ that he in fact made a deliberate choice not to extend the narrative of his poem beyond the point where it currently stops, in order to impose a terminus offering a degree of hope for Republican partisans. By continuing the story down to (for instance) the battle of Thapsus in 46 b.c. or of Munda in 45 b.c., Lucan either would have needed to engage in a wholesale distortion and obfuscation of historical reality or would have been unavoidably confronted with the spectacle of senators as a group increasingly coming to terms with life under (a) Caesar.

Of course, such a life was also Lucan's, and therein lies the principal (and in my view intentional) irony of the Deiotarus episode. Whatever ambiguities and veiled dissent may be detectable in Lucan's infamous praise of Nero at the start of his poem (1.33-66),Footnote ²⁸ we should read those flattering lines, at least in part, as Lucan's necessary accommodation with overwhelmingly present imperial power, at the expense of his allegiance to the long-vanished Republic and to the long-dead Pompey who had championed it. In other words, Lucan's own conflicted situation, like that of Deiotarus (in Lucan's allusive portrayal), and also like that of Lucan's Neronian audience, can be summed up as a problem of loyalty at a distance. Deiotarus finds it easy enough to commit himself to fulfilling Pompey's mission with ready zeal while Pompey is near, but, with Pompey gone and the victorious (and irate) Caesar standing before him, he will feel obliged to prostrate himself as abjectly as does Lucan in his laudes Neronis; once again, the indirectness with which Lucan alludes to Deiotarus’ prostration suggests his personal discomfort with such conduct, but the fact that he does allude to it at all, through the clear signal of Deiotarus’ otherwise gratuitous disguise, shows that Lucan is also unwilling to shy away from acknowledging the harsh exigencies of life after Pharsalus. To keep the faith from afar, pursuing a remote ideal to the bitter end, is the hallmark of a saint like Lucan's Cato, but it may well be beyond the capacities of ordinary flawed mortals, however well-intentioned (as Deiotarus undoubtedly is). This is precisely why Lucan sees it as his poetic mission to collapse the temporal gulf dividing his audience from the events of the Roman civil war, in a way that makes his readers feel passionately, immediately engaged with Pompey and his cause (7.207-13):

By keeping Pompey's struggle vividly present in his readers’ imaginations, Lucan encourages them to continue the fight that Deiotarus too quickly abandoned in Pompey's absence, and that Lucan himself neglected during the wasted years of his youth when he basked in Nero's favour and sang Nero's praises.