This article explores the dilemmas of reform in weak states through an examination of efforts to decentralize the fiscal system in post-Soviet Ukraine in the 1990s. Despite increased attention to the state, many reform efforts still ignore the full implications that state weakness has for institutional transformation. Inattention to the problems of institutional capacity has led to a misdiagnosis of the problems facing intergovernmental institutions in post-Soviet Ukraine. Overcentralization and soft budget constraints built into formal institutional design demand an unrecognized (...) degree of institutional capacity that is frequently weak or absent in the post-Soviet context. In addition, reform measures that fail to take into account the problems of weak institutions have inadvertently reduced the authority of already enfeebled state institutions. (shrink)

This article explores the dilemmas of reform in weak states through an examination of efforts to decentralize the fiscal system in post-Soviet Ukraine in the 1990s. Despite increased attention to the state, many reform efforts still ignore the full implications that state weakness has for institutional transformation. Inattention to the problems of institutional capacity has led to a misdiagnosis of the problems facing intergovernmental institutions in post-Soviet Ukraine. Overcentralization and soft budget constraints built into formal institutional design demand an unrecognized (...) degree of institutional capacity that is frequently weak or absent in the post-Soviet context. In addition, reform measures that fail to take into account the problems of weak institutions have inadvertently reduced the authority of already enfeebled state institutions. (shrink)

The problem of history and the development of national theological education is one of the most urgent in our time. This is the sphere of the spiritual life of a human society that is constantly undergoing reform. Therefore, the study of the history of theological education, when it was due to the specificity of historical events in the pan-European space, in particular the territory of Bukovina in the late XIX - early XX century, require a more specific study than it (...) was today. (shrink)

An anonymous biography of Lucan known as the Life of Vacca attributes to the poet the composition of a work called Siluae. This information has been accepted by scholars with regard to both Lucan and Statius, thus transforming Lucan into a predecessor of Statius’ Siluae. This article seeks to demonstrate that neither the manuscript tradition of Lucan's biography nor alleged references to Lucan's Siluae in Statius’ collection substantiate the affirmation that Lucan composed a work (...) called Siluae. It is argued that the Life of Vacca is most probably late and its very long catalogue of works (mostly problematic or otherwise unknown) aggrandizes Lucan in response to the need for a commendatory biography of the poet when he became a school author. Pomponio Leto is responsible for perpetuating the mention of Lucan's Siluae by including it in his influential biography of Lucan (the first to reach the printed press). It is further argued that the circumstances of the tradition of Statius’ Siluae explain Leto's acceptance of Lucan's work of the same title. Leto was working on a commentary on the recently rediscovered Siluae, which explains his inclusion of a work called Siluae in his biography of Lucan, a great poet who had preceded Statius. Finally, this article deconstructs the theories that find references to Lucan's Siluae in Statius’ Siluae or that justify Statius’ silence about Lucan's Siluae with its political motifs. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive study of the sublime in Lucan. Drawing upon renewed literary-critical interest in the tradition of philosophical aesthetics, Henry Day argues that the category of the sublime offers a means of moving beyond readings of Lucan's Bellum Civile in terms of the poem's political commitment or, alternatively, nihilism. Demonstrating in dialogue with theorists from Burke and Kant to Freud, Lyotard and Ankersmit the continuing vitality of Longinus' foundational treatise On the Sublime, Day charts (...) class='Hi'>Lucan's complex and instructive exploration of the relationship between sublimity and ethical discourses of freedom and oppression. Through the Bellum Civile's cataclysmic vision of civil war and metapoetic accounts of its own genesis, through its heated linguistic texture and proclaimed effects upon future readers and, most powerfully of all, through its representation of its twin protagonists Caesar and Pompey, Lucan's great epic emerges as a central text in the history of the sublime. (shrink)

This paper reads Foucault’s 1975-6 lecture series Society Must Be Defended. It argues that the notion of counter-history developed in these lectures depends on a particular construction of Rome, as that which counter-history counters. Foucault’s version of Rome in turn depends on a surprisingly conventional reading of two monumental histories as ‘the praise of Rome’. Reading Foucault’s work instead with Lucan’s Pharsalia renders visible a counter-history within Rome itself. This reading demonstrates the ways in which reception theory can usefully (...) illuminate and supplement Foucauldian genealogy as a critical-historical method. (shrink)

This paper explores the aesthetics of miniaturization in Statius’ Silvae 2.7, in relation to Statius’ unexpected decision to write a tribute to the dead epic poet Lucan in hendecasyllables. The choice of a meter associated with irreverence, ephemerality, speed, and fun has been variously justified as expressing the poet’s ambivalent mood—mourning and celebration combined—or encapsulating his subject’s brief life. This paper builds on these explanations from a different angle. The epitome of miniature, playful poetry in the Silvae is the (...) pseudo-Virgilian Culex, mentioned first in Statius’ opening preface as a model for his collection and then in the tribute to Lucan as a yardstick for the young poet’s precocity. This is no casual coincidence. Statius’ résumé of baby Lucan’s future career uses techniques of retrospective prophecy similar to those with which the Culex-poet anticipates and absorbs Virgil’s entire oeuvre. Other clues suggest that Statius is engaging with the faked juvenile work more than sporadically, writing the equivalent for Lucan in the smallest meter imaginable while aiming to surpass both Virgil and Lucan as a poet of speed and synoptic vision. (shrink)

From a purely historical point of view Lucan's epic is important, because it represents an intermediate stage between the contemporary account by Caesar of his defeat of the Pompeians and the later versions in Plutarch, Appian, and Cassius Dio. However, it does not merely show us the development of the historical tradition about the war, in particular that part of it which did not stem ultimately from Caesar himself. It is a milestone in the development of Roman ideas about (...) the fall of the Republic. For, while we can only tentatively deduce the attitude which Augustan writers, especially Pollio and Livy, adopted towards this war, Lucan represents the views of those who had not only lived under the monarchy which was the final product of the conflict begun in 49 B.c., but had experienced its less agreeable consequences under the later Julio-Claudians. (shrink)

The histories of literature tell us that these three poets were out of favour with scholars during the second and third centuries and the first half of the fourth. Lucan and Statius certainly had a vogue in the first: Suetonius studied Lucan at school , and Statius can say to his book: ‘Iam te magnanimus dignatur noscere Caesar Itala iam studio discit memoratque iuuentus.’.

In the eighth book of Lucan'sBellum Ciuile, Pompey sends the Galatian king Deiotarus into the distant East to seek an alliance with Parthia, the vast empire beyond the Euphrates ruled by the Arsacid dynasty. His instructions to Deiotarus begin with these lines (8.211–14):‘quando’ ait ‘Emathiis amissus cladibus orbis,qua Romanus erat, superest, fidissime regum,Eoam temptare fidempopulosque bibentisEuphraten et adhuc securum a Caesare Tigrim.’.

This paper provides a narratological analysis of Lucan's Bellum Civile, focusing on the role of internal and external narratees . In particular it treats Pompey and Caesar in the roles of narrator and reader, respectively. An important passage characterizes the external narratees of the Bellum Civile as astonished by the events of the epic, and indeed unwilling to believe the historical fact of Pompey's defeat as Pharsalia. Similarly, characters within the epic repeatedly refuse to believe Pompey's narrations. Pompey's failure (...) as a general is, therefore, underscored by his failure as a narrator. Even in his death, Pompey becomes a text that, when read by passersby, will not gain credence. Caesar, by contrast, is a reader. By reading texts selectively he constructs for himself a noble past, a sure future, and epic fame. When he is called upon to create a narrative himself , his narrative, too, is disbelieved. But Caesar, unlike Pompey, anticipates and reacts positively to the failure of his narrative to convince. The story that Lucan presents is constructed as unbelievable. It is a text of ruin, of that which specifically cannot be narrated. For epic narration has at its core the rescue of events, people, and places from oblivion. An epic of ruin is, therefore, a contradiction in terms. Thus, the Bellum Civile succeeds by its very failure to convince, recreating in its unbelievable narrative the failure of events themselves. (shrink)

primo pallentis hiatuhaeret adhuc Orci, licet has exaudiat herbas,ad manes uentura semel.Erichtho the Thessalian witch is conducting a necromancy: she has selected a corpse, applied her potions to it and invoked the powers of the Underworld to release its soul to deliver the prophecy. She specifies that this is a recent corpse whose soul has hardly entered the Underworld; hence she describes it as ‘still hesitating at the entrance to pallid Orcus’ chasm’ and as “a soul which will join the (...) dead only once’. However, as Francken says, ‘“exaudire herbas” est absurda iunctura’. The problem lies in either noun or verb. The phrase must refer to Erichtho's magic; the choice is between spells and potion, herbas in the sense ‘Incantation’ is apparently unparalleled, but herbas as a reference to Erichtho's brew is perfectly acceptable, especially given the long description of her concoction of the revivifying potion and of her application of it to the corpse in the preceding lines, 6.667–84. Moreover, only a few lines later Lucan draws a contrast between uerba and herbae, spells and potion. If herbas is sound, suspicion falls on exaudiat; the occurrence less than ten lines earlier of the uncontroversial exaudite preces, 6.706, which suggests scribal repetition, strengthens the suspicion. (shrink)

primo pallentis hiatuhaeret adhuc Orci, licet has exaudiat herbas,ad manes uentura semel.Erichtho the Thessalian witch is conducting a necromancy: she has selected a corpse, applied her potions to it and invoked the powers of the Underworld to release its soul to deliver the prophecy. She specifies that this is a recent corpse whose soul has hardly entered the Underworld; hence she describes it as ‘still hesitating at the entrance to pallid Orcus’ chasm’ and as “a soul which will join the (...) dead only once’. However, as Francken says, ‘“exaudire herbas” est absurda iunctura’. The problem lies in either noun or verb. The phrase must refer to Erichtho's magic; the choice is between spells and potion, herbas in the sense ‘Incantation’ is apparently unparalleled, but herbas as a reference to Erichtho's brew is perfectly acceptable, especially given the long description of her concoction of the revivifying potion and of her application of it to the corpse in the preceding lines, 6.667–84. Moreover, only a few lines later Lucan draws a contrast between uerba and herbae, spells and potion. If herbas is sound, suspicion falls on exaudiat; the occurrence less than ten lines earlier of the uncontroversial exaudite preces, 6.706, which suggests scribal repetition, strengthens the suspicion. (shrink)

the scholion of the “Commenta Bernensia” to Lucan 8, 824–826 about the Sibylline oracle concerning the prohibition for the Romans to send a military contingent to Egypt reveals both the influence of late antique commentaries cum notis variorum and the presence of allegedly genuine details about the history of the late Roman republic from sources now lost.

So a frenzied matron cries out to Phoebus as she rushes through an appalled Rome. In CQ 34 , 454f. I pointed out that the words primos in ortus could not here bear their normal sense ‘to the far east’ , which in view of the next line would be geographically absurd, and, distraught as the lady was, even so highly improbable. I did, however, then think R. J. Getty right in taking the expression primos ortus as simply = ‘the (...) east’, and adding ‘the epithet primos appears to be otiose’. But I now feel very doubtful about the epithet being viewed as otiose in order that the words may denote Egypt; quite different are the passages noted in OLD primus 6 ‘belonging to the rising sun, eastern’, as Stat. Silv. 1.4.73 ‘occidiias primasque domos’ in the cited Sen. Oed. 116 ‘miles… ausus Eois equitare campis / figere et mundo tua signa primo’ the literal meaning is no doubt ‘on the world's first edge’ , but its development into ‘eastern’ is readily seen. Egypt, however, as viewed by Rome, is but the bare beginning of the east, and that is what primos must indicate above : see OLD primus 10 b ‘the nearest part of, the entrance, threshold, or sim., of, noting e.g. Ov. Fast. 1.717 ‘horreat Aeneadas et primus et ultimus orbis’, Cic. Fam. 3.6.2. ‘te in prima prouincia uelle esse, ut quam primum decederes’. In a characteristic departure from their stock meaning Lucan's words primos in ortus must then mean ‘to the threshold of the east’, i.e. the delta of the Nile, as explained in the next line : contrast 7.360 primo gentes oriente = ‘the nations of the far east’ . For Egypt viewed as the beginning of the east, cf. Mela 1.9 ‘Asiae prima pars Aegyptus’, Plin. Nat. 5.47 ‘[Africae] adhaeret Asia, quam patere a Canopico ostio [Nili] ad Ponti ostium Timosthenes…tradidit’, Mart. Cap. 6.675 ‘Aegyptus… Asiae caput, 3 quae una ab ostio Canopi ad ostium Ponti habet… milia passuum’; cf. the close association of Egypt with the east in Virg. Aen. 8.687 ‘Aegyptum uiresque Orientis’. For the varied use of the word primus should be noted too Luc. 9.413f. ‘nee… plus litora Nili / quam Scythicus Tanais primis a Gadibus absunt’, ‘from Gades in the far west’ , ‘Gades the first place in the west’ , i.e. the threshold of the Mediterranean. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new synthetic account of the presence of Cicero as both character and source in Lucan's Bellum Ciuile. Lucan's treatment is derived primarily from Virgil's technique for creating intertextually complex characters, but further builds on Sallust's displacement of Cicero in his narrative of the Catilinarian conspiracy and on the declamatory practice of reducing the orator to a few prominent and recognizable traits. Cicero the character, as he briefly appears at the opening of the seventh book, (...) is not simply an ahistorical caricature: he is constructed through a careful series of allusions designed to indict his use of violence in the suppression of Catiline. Other prominent aspects of Cicero in the tradition are displaced and transferred to other characters more important to Lucan's design, Cato and Pompey. Lucan's depiction of Pompey, especially his death and decapitation, draws on the language and affect of the tradition associated with Cicero, using Cicero's own words and the obituary of Cicero in the lost historical epic of Cornelius Severus. Finally, the language of Cicero's peace-making efforts in his correspondence, suppressed in Lucan's depiction of him as a warmonger, forms an important part of the narrator's own emotional evocations of the impending catastrophe of civil war. The combination of models Lucan uses is more broadly reflective of his technique in composing a historical epic. (shrink)

The subject is in both cases the voyage of the Argo, and therefore the use of the same words is not likely to be coincidental, even though the words themselves are scarcely uncommon. One would hesitate to deny, however, that such reminiscence might be unconscious; that Lucan had famous tags in his head is suggested by another allusion to famous opening lines.

Book 8 of Lucan's Bellum Civile opens with Pompey in desperate flight from Caesar after the disaster of Pharsalus, and in equally desperate search for a reliable ally. Before the fateful decision is taken that Pompey should make for Egypt, where he will be murdered upon arrival by minions of the treacherous Ptolemy XIII, Pompey dispatches his Galatian client-tetrarch Deiotarus to sound out the distant Parthians and summon their armed hordes to wage war on his behalf ; the king (...) promptly embarks on his arduous errand, never to reappear in Lucan's text. Although Pompey is said by several historical sources to have expressed an interest in exploring the prospect of an alliance with Parthia, the mission of Deiotarus is almost certainly a complete fiction, as Duff has convincingly demonstrated. What could Lucan's motive have been for inventing this episode out of whole cloth? (shrink)

Read thus the simile presents nothing eccentric. In ver. 101 Hosius and Lejay read male separat, which not only common sense requires but codd. VUQ authorize: not so Mr. Haskins, who follows a multitude of codd. in offering mare separat. But a slight further correction is necessary: to read Aegaeon in 103 for the MS. Aegeo, ‘Withdraw the land, and Aegaean would smash Ionian Sea.’ Those who make Isthmos the subject of frangat cite Stat. Silu. IV. iii. 59.

hoc est, Capitolium’. This sentence comes in a passage based on a portion of the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, but is not itself to be found in Geoffrey. Since Luard was unable to find the words attributed to him ‘in Lucan’, he concluded that the chronicler who was responsible for their inclusion had made a mistake. He offers no suggestions about the origins of the quotation. In a posthumous work of G. Gundermann's edited by G. Goetz, (...) Trogtis und Gellius bei Radulfus de Diceto, we find the quotation described as ‘einen angeblichen Lucanvers'. W. Morel learned of its existence from this reference and printed it as fr. 12 of Lucan. (shrink)

hoc est, Capitolium’. This sentence comes in a passage based on a portion of the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth , but is not itself to be found in Geoffrey. Since Luard was unable to find the words attributed to him ‘in Lucan’, he concluded that the chronicler who was responsible for their inclusion had made a mistake. He offers no suggestions about the origins of the quotation. In a posthumous work of G. Gundermann's edited by G. (...) Goetz, Trogtis und Gellius bei Radulfus de Diceto, we find the quotation described as ‘einen angeblichen Lucanvers'. W. Morel learned of its existence from this reference and printed it as fr. 12 of Lucan. (shrink)

This article aims to offer a fresh analysis of two passages in the extensive necromancy episode in Lucan's Bellum Ciuile: the ritual to reanimate the dead soldier's corpse (6.667–73), and the surgical procedure Erichtho then proceeds to undertake (6.750–7), resembling the practice of a vivisection. The study will focus mostly on the strong connection of magic to medical traditions in antiquity, with a commentary on, and analysis of, these verses through the lenses of medical vocabulary, themes and motifs. It (...) ultimately concludes that Lucan was familiar with the language and characteristics of the medical tradition, enriched his report with them, and was playing with his audience's knowledge of the same. (shrink)

Discusses Stoic ethics and cosmology in Lucan. Argues that Lucan's Cato embodies a perverted, distorted form of Stoicism that corresponds to the inversion of Stoic cosmology and theology generally. All those forms of inversion serve to create alienation and a dystopian world view.

463 ante 462 VGP et ante corr. ut uidetur U, item adnotator super Lucanum ed. Endtii p. 276 et Statii scholiastes ad Theb. VI 760, qui 462 et 464 coniunctos legerunt. 462 ante 463 MZ et ex corr. U. 463 quam MZPGV, qua ex corr. U. 462 manum VGP, lemma schol. Bern., Statii schol., manus Z et ex corr. U de M non liquet. tempus quo noscere possent VGP et ut uidetur M, adn. sup. Luc, Z , Statii schol. , (...) tempus = q.t.i.r.n.p. lemma schol. Bern., uultusque agnoscere quaerunt ex corr. U, Z2 G2, uultus etiam V2. (shrink)

Both, Lucan and Seneca refer to the Stoic concept of metus lymphaticus; whereas Seneca intends to warn his readers of the negative outcome of irrational panic, Lucans illustrates its disastrous consequences. In this paper, focus is thus brought to their similarities, and especially to their different presentations and purposes.