The Bellum Civile as an Anti-Aeneid

This chapter studies the intertextual relationship between Lucan and Virgil. This relationship is traditionally seen as a radical opposition: the Bellum Civile is an anti-Aeneid. This chapter retraces the question, especially by looking at Lucan's oracular figures as complicated reduplications of the poet himself, who is particularly obsessed with the idea of repetition. Lucan's oracular moments highlight the ways in which Lucan's Bellum Civile exploits the contradictions already present in the Aeneid.