CAESAR'S ‘VIRGILIAN’ KATABASIS AT TROY IN LUCAN BELLVM CIVILE 9.950–99

Caesar's visit to Troy has always been something of an enigma. Historically, the episode is unattested. Caesar wanders through a congeries of sites at Troy ranging from Ajax's grave on the Rhoetium promontory at its beginning to Priam's Herceian altar at the end. Numerous interpretations have been offered. Bruère has argued for Aeneas' tour through the future site of Rome in Aeneid 8 as a backdrop. Ahl has noted the connection between the ruins of Italy described in Bellum Ciuile (B.C.) 7 and the ruins of Troy in B.C. 9. Rome/Italy and Troy merge in essence as vanishing fabulae, which the poet keeps alive. Zwierlein sees Caesar's visit as modeled on Alexander the Great's visit nearly three hundred years earlier. Caesar through this scene is established as a destroyer of empires, inferior only to Alexander. Ormand stresses Caesar as an authoritative reader of the ruins of Troy, where Caesar reads the Aeneid instead of the Iliad. Rossi similarly focuses on Caesar as reading Troy's ruins to the advantage of the Julian dynasty. Gergo has opened up the passage with the correct observation that Lucan has in mind Aeneas’ katabasis in Aeneid 6. But the relationship between the brief tour at Troy and Aeneid 6 is both more comprehensive and precise. Indeed this essay will present a systematic interpretation of Caesar's tour as a parallel to Aeneid 6 in its entirety, a parallel to which Lucan most likely does not give his character Caesar access.