Orbis Romanus: Lucan and the Limits of the Roman World

Abstract

Lucan's Bellum Civile offers two different visions of the geography of the Roman world. In the proem and the praise of Nero, the poem locates Rome at the center of a soon-to-be-completed world empire. In contrast, after the battle of Pharsalus in book 7 the remaining books divide the world into eastern and western parts, locating Rome in the center of the western part of the world. A century after the great territorial expansion of the late Republic, Lucan replaces the apparently optimistic confidence in imminent Roman world conquest with a vision of a limited Roman world.