Lucan's epic poem
Pharsalia tells the story of the cataclysmic end of Rome through the victory of Julius Caesar and Caesarism in the civil wars of 49-48 BCE. In
Thunder and Lament, Timothy Joseph argues that Lucan's poetic agenda moves in lockstep with his narrative arc, as he fashions the
Pharsalia to mark the momentous end of the epic genre. In order to accomplish the closure of the genre, Lucan engages pervasively and polemically with the very first works of Greek and Roman epic--inverting, undoing, and closing off many of the tropes and themes introduced in Homer's
Iliad and
Odyssey and in the foundational Latin epic poems by Livius Andronicus, Naevius, and most of all Ennius.
Thunder and Lament is the first book-length study of Lucan's engagement with the Homeric poems and the works of early Latin epic. By looking at Lucan's effort to surpass the poets of old--a phrase the poet Statius would use of his achievement--this study thus broadens our appreciation of Lucan's
poetic ambitions and accomplishment. Statius also read Lucan as a poet who both thunders and laments, and Joseph argues that Lucan closes off epic's beginnings through gestures of thundering poetic violence and also through a transformation and completion of the traditional epic mode of lament.
With these accompanying registers of thematic and poetic expression, Lucan closes off the beginnings and marks the end of the epic song.
