Rome's Crisis of Self-Destruction
Benjamin Twist
- Published Content: 56
- Total Views: 13,177
- Favorited By: 1 CPs
Chaos Vs. Order in Lucan's Civil War
In Lucan's Civil War there is a clear, strong theme of order vs. chaos. Caesar represents chaos, as Pompey fights for order and right, and Cato is presented as the quintessence of the orderly republicCaesar is clearly presented as a chaotic influence. His crossing of the Rubicon with military forces was a gross violation of law, tradition, and general acceptability. As he himself says, "Here I abandon peace and desecrated law...farewell to treaties...now war must be our referee." (1.225-8) He is seen as the cause of the great, unnatural evil of the civil war, which is so unbearably wrong that a war with all of Rome's enemies combined would be preferable to it ("make us again the enemies of all the peoples, only ward off civil war", 2.52-3). Caesar is violent for the sake of it, enjoys warfare to the point where he seeks it out when he is not challenged in Italy, and wishes that his troops, rather than tiring of the fighting, would want to commit even more atrocities (5.305-9).
Pompey, on the other hand, is fighting Caesar to bring order back to Rome. He is portrayed as noble and orderly, everything that Caesar is not. His troops are well-disciplined and he has high ideals about the defense of Rome from Caesar's ravages. As the ancestor of Nero, he is seen in a particularly flattering light (even to the point where the civil war he fights is justified because it will eventually cause Nero to come to power, 1.33-45).
Cato, the republican, is the strongest influence for order and right in the epic. He chooses to side with Pompey only as the lesser of two evils, while he really has a desire to reinstate the Senate and bring power back to the people. This is the truest form of order advocated in the epic - while Pompey is fighting against Caesar's chaotic influences, he is ultimately interested in the same thing: power over Rome as an individual.