Journal Article

“Sit pietas aliis, miracula tanta silere”: Stars, Sublimity, and Scientific Inquiry In Lucan’s Nile Excursus

Sanderson, Elaine C

2024

Overview

In the final extant book of Lucan’s Bellum Civile , the Egyptian priest Acoreus outlines theories surrounding the Nile flood and previous attempts to access the source of the Nile (Luc. 10.194–331). This elaborate digression—which emphasises the river’s scale (Luc. 10.298–331), its relationships with celestial bodies (Luc. 10.225–35, 259–61), and the unknowability of its origins (Luc. 10.213–14, 271)—frames the Nile as a cosmic landscape, a universal wonder, and source of the sublime from a distinctly cosmic perspective. As has been shown by scholars such as Eleni Manolaraki, Lucan follows the lead of Homer and Manilius (Hom. Od. 4.477, 581; Manil. 3.273–74) to conceive of the Nile in celestial terms, the latter of whom represents a crucial if overlooked influence on the Bellum Civile . This article considers the Nile digression’s debts to Manilius’s conceptions of Egypt and his modes of inquiry into sublime and quasi-cosmic entities; the episode’s status as a site where scientific, didactic, and poetic traditions converge; and the metonymic implications of the Nile’s sublime character for our reading of Lucan’s Egypt. After highlighting the parallels between Lucanian and Manilian representations of the Nile, I will show that, while detailing how to inquire into the Nile’s secrets (Luc. 10.194–98, 268–87), Lucan’s Acoreus recalls Manilius’s guidelines for engaging with and understanding the (sublime) cosmos (Manil. 2.122–27; Volk 2001). I suggest that, in doing so, Lucan equates the river with Manilius’s cosmos and, by extension, the brilliant and dangerous shades of the sublime which it embodies. Finally, given Lucan’s metonymic use of Nilus to refer to Egypt, I then consider the implications of acknowledging the Nile’s sublime qualities for our understanding of the Bellum Civile ’s wider representations of Egypt and its peoples.

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Subject: Autumnal equinox / Cancer / Metonymy / Rivers