Knowledge, Fear, and Snakes: The Influence of Nicander on Lucan’s Bellum civile Book 9

Abstract

This paper reexamines the literary influence of Nicander’s Theriaca on the snake episode in Lucan’s Bellum civile Book 9. Although often cited as an early zoological source, Nicander’s contributions to the aesthetic and thematic aspects of Lucan’s epic have gone largely overlooked. While his zoological knowledge drew mostly from intermediary sources such as Aemilius Macer, Lucan’s use of venomous serpents as disruptive, destabilizing forces closely follows the poetic innovations of the Theriaca. Contrasting the unknowable, unpredictable threat of venomous creatures with horrifyingly graphic depictions of their bites, both authors construct poetic works that challenge and subvert contemporary literary and intellectual conventions.