Lucan and Virgil: From Dante to Petrarch (and Boccaccio)

Many recent works on ‘Dante’s Lucan’ emphasize the opposition between Lucan and Virgil in the Divine Comedy. To different extents, these studies appear informed by 20th-century views of the Bellum Civile as an anti-Aeneid, meant as a parodic subversion of Virgil’s poem and characterized by a turn from mythology to history, an anti-imperial agenda and an anti-providential, ‘nihilistic’ stance. Building on an argument put forth by Ettore Paratore, this article contends that rather than reading Virgil and Lucan in conflict with one another, Dante regards and reuses the figures and works of the two Latin poets as fundamentally consonant with each other. In keeping with high-medieval Latin commentaries on Lucan, Dante interweaves Lucan’s and Virgil’s texts in his Comedy to evoke the same world of ancient history and magic. In the Monarchia and Epistles, Dante combines the Bellum Civile and the Aeneid to support his philo-monarchic agenda, effacing the contrast between Roman Republican and Imperial values. Furthermore, Dante cites Lucan as a reliable moral–philosophical authority: in the Convivio he appropriates

Lucan's voice and applies to the Bellum Civile the same allegorizing reading he adopts for the Aeneid.
The article demonstrates the difference between Dante's and slightly later, early-humanist views of Lucan in relation to Virgil. Unlike Dante, Petrarch sponsors a strongly biographical conception of the ancient epic canon: following Suetonius, he highlights the most controversial aspects of Lucan's life and the concept of his poetic rivalry with Virgil, which are absent in Dante's works. The elements are also recalled by Boccaccio, who moreover underlines Lucan's anti-Neronian stance. Therefore, Petrarch and Boccaccio play a historically crucial role in marking the contrast between Lucan's and Virgil's poetic personae. However, the concept of Lucan's anti-Virgilianism, which underlies 20th-century interpretations of the Bellum Civile, is much more nuanced in 14th-century receptions of the poem, where it emerges only gradually and in a very limited, mostly biographical, sense.

Dante's Mentions of Lucan
Dante's direct mentions of Lucan unquestionably acknowledge the latter as a canonical poet. Lucan appears in the bella scola of Inf. IV, next to Homer, Virgil, Horace and Ovid: Lo buon maestro cominciò a dire: 'Mira colui con quella spada in mano, che vien dinanzi ai tre sì come sire: quelli è Omero poeta sovrano; l'altro è Orazio satiro che vene; Ovidio è 'l terzo, e l'ultimo Lucano.' 3 Scholars have often wondered about Dante's epithetical characterization of Lucan as 'the last one'. Critics such as Paratore and Marsili explain this enigmatic phrase as referring to Lucan's historical-chronological 'posteriority' in relation to the Augustan poets, more than as an indicator of Lucan's subordinate position within a precise taxonomic ranking of ancient poetry. 4 Indeed, in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Bellum Civile had sometimes been classified as the work of a 'historian', rather than that of a 'poet'. 5 However, Dante explicitly and repeatedly names Lucan as a major poeta, without any suggestion of the Bellum Civile's generic ambiguity. What is more, throughout Dante's corpus ancient poetry is classified in an open and plurivocal way. The same four Latin poets who make an appearance in the bella scola are listed in Vita Nova XXV,9,where Dante provides examples of the various sorts of literary personification. Here the names of Virgil, Lucan, Horace and Ovid are listed in a different order than in Inf. IV: Che li poete abbiano così parlato come detto è, appare per Virgilio […] Per Lucano parla la cosa animata a la cosa inanimata […] Per Orazio parla l'uomo a la scienzia medesima sì come ad altra persona; e non solamente sono parole d'Orazio, ma dicele quasi recitando lo modo del buono Omero […] Per Ovidio parla Amore, sì come se fosse persona umana, ne lo principio de lo libro c'ha nome Libro di Remedio d'Amore […] 6 In DVE II, vi, 7, Lucan is mentioned within a different taxonomic scheme, namely, within the traditional medieval canon of four hexametric poets (Virgil, Ovid, Statius, Lucan), whose technique of constructio should, according to Dante, be particularly imitated: Nec mireris, lector, de tot reductis autoribus ad memoriam; non enim hanc quam suppremam vocamus constructionem nisi per huiusmodi exempla possumus indicare. Et fortassis utilissimum foret ad illam habituandam regulatos vidisse poetas, Virgilium videlicet, Ovidium Metamorfoseos, Statium atque Lucanum […]. 7 Footnote 5 continued Martellotti, 'La difesa della poesia nel Boccaccio e un giudizio su Lucano', Studi sul Boccaccio, 4, 1967, pp. 265-79, at pp. 266-70; P. von Moos, 'Lucan au Moyen Â ge', in Entre histoire et littérature: Communication et culture au Moyen Â ge, Florence, Sismel, 2005, pp. 89-202, at pp. 102-28. In highmedieval literary culture, however, these two possible definitions of Lucan and his work were not necessarily perceived as mutually exclusive. In many instances, the Bellum Civile was described as characterized by a mixture of history and poetic fictio (B. M. Marti, 'Literary Criticism in the Medieval Commentaries on Lucan', Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 72, 1941, pp. 245-54, at pp. 246-7; Von Moos, 'Lucan au Moyen Â ge', 116; E. M. Sanford, 'The Manuscripts of Lucan: Accessus and Marginalia', Speculum, 9, 1934, pp. 278-95, at pp. 285-6; F. Fontanella, L'impero e la storia di Roma in Dante, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2016, p. 246, n. 106). 6 Dante Alighieri, Vita nova, ed. D. De Robertis, Milan-Naples, Ricciardi, 1980. 'That poets have written as I have said above is evident in Vergil […] Through Lucan a thing animate speaks to a thing inanimate […] Through Horace one speaks to one's own poetic faculty as to another person -and not only are they Horace's words, but he speaks them while reciting in the manner of the good Homer […]  In Dante's works Lucan is, thus, repeatedly equated with Virgil as a pre-eminent ancient poeta and an excellent hexametric poet in particular. In all these passages, Dante recalls Lucan as an established literary auctoritas and demonstrates no interest in his controversial biography or in the idea of his possible rivalry with Virgil. As I will show, these biographical elements, unmentioned by Dante, will be emphasized later in the 14th century, by the early humanists Petrarch and Boccaccio. 9 However, studies on Dante and the classical tradition have often underlined Lucan's relative subordination and distance from Virgil in Dante's 'epic canon'. 10 In Inf. XXV, 94-9 Dante compares the incredible transformations he is going to describe to the marvels recounted by Lucan and Ovid, in what Marchesi has defined an 'emulative canon confirmation' 11 : Taccia Lucano omai là dov'e' tocca del misero Sabello e di Nasidio, e attenda a udir quel ch'or si scocca. Taccia di Cadmo e d'Aretusa Ovidio, ché se quello in serpente e quella in fonte converte poetando, io non lo 'nvidio; […] 12 Linking these lines with the passage from Inf. IV discussed above, some scholars have claimed that Dante draws an implicit and yet clear distinction within the group of four poetae regulati, representing Virgil and Statius as superior to, and more dignified than, Lucan and Ovid. This thesis is grounded in the fact that in Inf. IV Lucan and Ovid are named last and without remarkable literary epithets and in Inf. 8 Conv. IV,xxviii,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19] (see this article, section '''Nihilism'' and Morality'). 9 Suetonius's 'Life of Lucan' was included at the beginning of the Commenta Bernensia and other commentaries (e.g., Clm 4593), but does not seem to have played as crucial a role for Dante as it did for Petrarch. 10 For the sake of simplicity, in this article I use the term 'epic' with reference to works such as Virgil's Aeneid and Lucan's Bellum Civile; as it is well known, however, his medieval conception of literary genres was different from ours, and Dante would have probably called these texts ' XXV they are silenced by Dante with an agonistic attitude which contrasts with the respectful consideration he shows to Virgil and Statius. 13 I agree that Dante demonstrates a special predilection for Virgil, his maestro and autore (Inf. I, 85): as is well known, the author of the Aeneid stands as Dante's guide in the first part of the journey described in the Comedy and is elsewhere defined as the major Roman poet. 14 It is also true that Dante could have perceived numerous affinities between Lucan and Ovid, based on their common engagement with mythic history, as well as with extraordinary marvels. In Inf. XXV Lucan and Ovid are evoked as pre-eminent in describing metamorphoses that violate the integrity of the human body; similarly, in Mon. II, vii, 9-10 they are cited together as the main authors recounting the fight between Antaeus and Hercules.
Nevertheless, in my opinion, the opposition between Lucan and Virgil has been exaggerated by scholars of Dante. The limited textual evidence of Inf. IV and XXV has informed interpretations ultimately based on 20th-century understandings of the Bellum Civile as an anti-Aeneid, characterized by the absence of pietas or providential vision, the choice of history instead of myth and an anti-imperial stance. Montefusco, for instance, underlines the ideological and generic 'eccentricity' of Lucan's poem and suggests that Dante might want to exclude the Cordovan poet from the epic canon he implicitly traces in his Comedy. 15 Wetherbee, who speaks of 'Lucan's fleeting appearance as the last of the ''bella scola'' in Limbo and the dismissive naming of him in Inferno 25', similarly insists on the anti-Virgilian character of Lucan's work and attributes to Dante a conception of the Bellum Civile as 'mockery', 'parody' and 'caustic exploitation' of the Aeneid. 16 Assumptions of this kind especially inform recent readings of the episodes of Erichtho and Antaeus, in which Virgil the character indirectly cites, or refers to, Lucan's narration.

Erichtho and Antaeus
The first of these two instances occurs in Inf. IX, where the pilgrims approach the entrance of the City of Dis. Dante, who distrusts Virgil's experience of the path, asks his guide whether any soul has ever descended from Limbo into lower Hell. Virgil replies that, in fact, he himself did so when Erichtho asked him to bring back a soul from Judas's circle (Inf. IX,(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30). This story, which finds no precise literary parallels outside the Comedy, has puzzled ancient and modern commentators, since it is seemingly anachronistic or, at least, presents some chronological difficulties: Virgil was alive at the time Erichtho was active according to Lucan (i.e., around 48 B.C.). Moreover, Virgil's tale seemingly endorses the belief that black magic can recall the souls of the damned from Hell. 17 The second episode takes place in the Well of Giants of Inf. XXXI. Wishing to move from the eighth to the ninth circle, Virgil seeks Antaeus's help through a flattering speech which recalls the giant's legendary strength and deeds (Inf. XXXI,. In this passage, the character of Virgil appropriates Lucan's narration about Antaeus, as confirmed by various textual affinities. 18 The importance of the Bellum Civile for these lines of the Inferno was noted by 14th-century commentators on the Comedy before modern scholars 19 ; moreover, Dante openly acknowledges Lucan's role as a source on the Hercules-Antaeus episode in the above-mentioned passage of the Monarchia (Mon. II,vii,9).
The two passages from Inf. IX and XXXI have often been read as ridiculing the character of Virgil through parodic intertextuality. Barolini and Clogan both point out that Virgil's supposed familiarity with Erichtho's nefarious world casts a shadow on him in Inf. IX 20 ; other scholars take the argument a step further and read Dante's allusions to Lucan's text as intrinsically threatening to Virgil's authority. According to Butler, Dante juxtaposes Virgil against Lucan and Statius (the later innovators of the epic genre) to expose the former's fallibility: Virgil's unacknowledged quotation of Lucan on Erichtho suggests dishonesty and creates an anachronism we are meant to notice, while the Antaeus episode represents a similar 'intertextual struggle' with Lucan in which Virgil 'unknowingly' affirms 'the truth presented in Lucan's text' and appears unable to produce a reliable response to the Bellum Civile. 21 Likewise, Hollander argues that Virgil's reuse of Lucan's account of Antaeus is comic in that the predecessor 'steals' from his imitator, and not vice versa. 22 Other scholars highlight the inherent contrast between Lucan's and Virgil's texts in Dante's eyes. In his analysis of the Erichtho episode, Quint emphasizes the divergence between the Virgilian descent to the underworld (Aen. VI) and the conjuration scenes described by Lucan and Statius: confronted with the two options, Dante would choose the Virgilian model, by which 'divine significance enters the poetic universe'. 23 Wetherbee similarly remarks that the horrific tones and dark humour of Lucan's poem make it a very apt model for Dante's Inf. IX, whereas Virgil's Aeneid appears an inappropriate precedent at this stage, given its very high seriousness. 24 These readings hint at the structural dissimilarities between Virgil's and Lucan's epics. Yet, they are primarily based on 20th-century views of Lucan's text as anti-Virgilian, in line with an interpretive trend championed by Narducci and other contemporary critics. 25 The idea of a 'radical opposition' between the Aeneid and the Bellum Civile has, however, recently been revisited by scholars who have underlined the complexity of both poems, as well as the problematic nature of Lucan's supposed anti-Caesarism. 26 Second, and more importantly, this 'modern' interpretation of Lucan's work as anti-Virgilian hardly corresponds with Dante's view of the Bellum Civile. Already thirty years ago Marsili suggested that there are fundamental differences between medieval and post-Enlightenment understandings of the Bellum Civile and its 'ideology'; Paratore similarly pointed out that Dante's understanding of the relation between Lucan and Virgil is open to question: as a medieval reader, Dante was likely to appreciate the similarity and integration, rather than the opposition, between the most representative texts of the great, ancient Latin epic. 27 We have already seen that, in the Comedy as well as in the De vulgari eloquentia and the Convivio, Dante often mentions Lucan alongside Virgil, recalling him as a highly serious model and defining him as 'a great poet', without any hint to an opposition or rivalry between Lucan and Virgil.
Dante likely interpreted classical texts through methods and categories common to his contemporaries and to the world of late-medieval commentaries and rhetorical schools. 28 In late-medieval commentaries on the Bellum Civile, Virgil is, in fact, often quoted and mentioned as an important point of reference for Lucan's narration about Erichtho and Antaeus. Virgil is the most referenced author in the Adnotationes super Lucanum: here the commentary on the two episodes under consideration frequently includes the phrase 'ut (ait) Vergilius', followed by Virgilian passages about magic and mythological history. For example, on Lucan. VI, 452 ('carmine Thessalidum') we read: 'exaggeratio magicae potestatis, ut ait Virgilius ''carmina vel caelo possunt deducere lunam''' 29 ; Lucan. VI, 460 ('vertigine fili') is explained thus: 'ut Virgilius amorem incutiens hoc fieri iubet: ''necte tribus nodis ternos, Amarilli, colores'' ', etc. 30 Similar citations of Virgil are present in the Commenta Bernensia -here, for instance, Lucan. IV, 611 ('magnanimum Alciden') is explained with a reference to Virgil's narration about Hercules: 'Virgilius ''attulit et nobis aliquando optantibus aetas/auxilium adventumque dei.''' 31 The same is true for the glosses gathered by 27 Marsili, Lucano e Dante (n. 4 above), 7-11; for Paratore's studies, see n. 2 above. Weber 32 and for other manuscripts of Lucan, such as Clm 14505 (11th century) and Clm 4593 (12th century), where Lucan's passages about Erichtho and Antaeus are glossed with these and other quotations of Virgil. 33 Dante's juxtaposition of Lucan and Virgil seems to develop from an analogously integrative view of classical antiquity. In her detailed analysis of the Erichtho episode, Sonia Gentili has grounded Dante's interweaving of Virgil and Lucan in the precedents of medieval manuscripts of Virgil, Lucan and Dracontius -where Erichtho is often compared to the Virgilian Aletto and Sybilla -and medieval legends on Virgil's katabasis. Gentili has also suggested that already in Lucan's text Erichtho is not an entirely disruptive force, as she recognizes the supremacy of fate, and that the sorceress comes to play a truly providential role in Dante's Comedy. 34 Furthermore, interpretations of Inf. IX should not overlook the fact that Virgil's puzzling story about Erichtho is, in context, intended principally to reassure Dante. This aspect was noticed already by late-medieval commentators on the Comedy, such as Pietro Alighieri and Benvenuto da Imola; Jacopo della Lana further adds a meta-literary explanation that connects Lucan's and Virgil's narrations on nekyia and the underworld. 35 The strongly contextual function of Virgil's reference to Erichtho has also been pointed out by many contemporary scholars, among whom is  Scott, whose study also remarks that, in general, 'Dante succeeded in marrying both Vergilian and Lucanian elements in his Comedy.' 36 As for the Antaeus episode, Virgil's complimentary address to the giant does have humorous implications. However, Virgil's knowledge of the ancient mythological story of Hercules and Antaeus is not at all surprising, especially considering that for Dante and the Middle Ages he was an almost omniscient sapiens. 37 As the medieval commentator of Clm 4593 notices in glossing Lucan. IV, 593, Virgil's Aeneid includes a mention of another famous giant, Briareus. 38 Briareus's name actually appears also in Inf. XXXI, ll. 97-105. Scholars have pointed out that, here, Briareus is defined as 'immense' ('smisurato', l. 98) following Statius, Theb. II, 596 ('immensus […] Briareus'), is linked to Antaeus as in Lucan's text (Lucan. IV, 596) and is described by Virgil with words that are reminiscent of Aen. X, 565-6. 39 Thus, Dante's canto XXXI reassembles and rewrites the mythological repertory on giants as transmitted by different ancient epic authors, whose words are often interwoven already in the medieval commentary tradition. Dante, who in the episode is pointed out by Virgil as a poet who can make Antaeus famous, stands as the heir of the ancient epic tradition as a whole.

History and Mythology
While read against the backdrop of late-medieval literary culture, the intertextual strategy of Inf. IX and XXXI suggests that Lucan and Virgil were regarded by Dante as belonging to the same moral-ideological and literary culture, and describing different aspects of essentially the same world of ancient magic and mythological history. Therefore, these canti confirm another fact, namely, that the supposed opposition between Virgil as a writer of mythological epic and Lucan as a writer of 'historical truth' and 'nonfiction' was probably not a feature of Dante's literary understanding. 40 In this regard, it is true that Dante often refers to Lucan as a historical witness, 41 and as an almost scientific auctoritas. In the De vulgari eloquentia and Convivio, Dante draws from the Bellum Civile some anthropological and geographical 36 J. A. Scott, Understanding Dante, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2004, pp. 247, 250-51 with bibl. 37 Hollander remarks that it was impossible for Virgil to have read Lucan (Hollander, 'L'Anteo dantesco', [n. 1 above]), but the story of Hercules and Antaeus was part of the ancient mythological encyclopedia. 38 F. 51r 'Et Virgilius ''Centumgeminus Briareus''' (Virg, Aen. VI, 287). 39 Butler, 'Statius, Lucan' (n. 1 above), pp. 11-16; Hollander, 'L'Anteo dantesco' (n. 1 above), pp. 5-7. 40 The idea of such an opposition characterizes, for example, Picone, 'Dante and the Classics' (n. 1 above), p. 337; Montefusco, La presenza' (n. 1 above), pp. 94-6; Marchesi, 'Lucan at Last' (n. 1 above), pp. 483-4. 41  concepts, 42 while in the Comedy he readapts Lucan's astronomical periphrases. 43 Dante's redeployment of Lucan's scientific notions in the Comedy finds a parallel in the Rime, and especially in the petrose. 44 However, a distinction between history and mythology, or between science and poetry, seems alien to Dante's Comedy, which is a profoundly holistic project. In this context, the Bellum Civile is reused in a markedly multifunctional way. In the Comedy, Lucan's poem is cited as a source about late Republican Roman history as well as about Erichtho's magic and about mythological creatures like Antaeus and the Furiae. 45 In fact, and more fundamentally, for Dante the stories of Hercules, the giants and Aeneas himself were not less 'historical' than the Caesar-Pompey civil war. 46 As I will shortly discuss, in the second book of the Monarchia Dante also interlaces quotations of Virgil's 'mythological' epic and of the Bellum Civile to support his thesis about the historically providential role of the Roman Empire. 47

Republic and Empire
The presumed dichotomy between Lucan's Republicanism, or anti-imperialism, and Virgil's imperial faith is equally hard to discern in Dante's works. Like other medieval authors and unlike later humanists, Dante regarded Caesar as a divinely appointed ruler and did not, in fact, have a full historical understanding of the transition from Roman Republic to Principate. 48   'complementary opposition' to each other: Cato's virtus justifies, and is only possible within, the just and divinely ordered Roman Empire. 49 More specifically, Walde has recently observed that, in the context of Dante's Comedy, Lucan does not necessarily challenge Virgil's supremacy, nor is he necessarily seen as an 'anti-imperial' writer because of his presumed Republicanism. 50 This remark, which is in line with my understanding of Dante's reception of Lucan as explained thus far, finds further confirmation in Dante's Monarchia and Epistles, where Lucan's and Virgil's voices are combined to corroborate Dante's argument about the providential nature of Roman history and of the Holy Roman Empire. 51 In the second book of the Monarchia, Dante claims that the Romans rightfully gained the empire of the world (imperium mundi): he always speaks of 'Roman authority', without distinguishing between the Roman Republican and Imperial phases. In this rhetorical context, Virgil's Aeneid is quoted to praise the splendour of both Republican and Imperial Rome. Often combined with Livy, Virgil is cited to recall the courage of the Republican Fabricius, Camillus and Brutus, as well as Anchises's prophecy about Imperial Rome. 52 Similarly, Dante reuses the supposedly Republican Lucan -which he also combines with Livy 53 -to underscore the 'providential' character of Rome's history, from its monarchic origins to its Republican and Imperial developments.
In Mon. II, iv, 4-6, Dante references Lucan alongside Livy to recall the prodigious fall of a shield from the sky while King Numa was officiating at a sacrifice. 54 Significantly, the example subsequently adduced by Dante is the Campidoglio geese legend as told by Virgil and Livy. 55 Not only do citations from Lucan and Virgil appear almost interchangeably alongside Livy, but Lucan's text is used to prove the righteousness of ancient Roman monarchy, while the presumably philo-imperial Virgil is evoked about an event which dates to the Republican stage 49 Paratore, 'Lucano' (n. 30 above), pp. 701-2 with bibl.; R. Hollander and A. L. Rossi, 'Dante's Republican Treasury', Dante Studies, 104, 1986, pp. 59-82;J. A. Scott, 'Cato: a Pagan Suicide in Purgatory', in Dante's Political Purgatory, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996, pp. 69-84, at pp. 78-84. 50  of Roman history. In Mon. II, viii, 11-2, Dante extolls the final triumph of the Romans as dominators of the world through quotations of Virgil and Lucan. 56 Dante thus combines the Aeneid and Bellum Civile to underpin his discourse on the providential superiority of the romanum imperium.
A similarly integrative reuse of Virgil's and Lucan's texts characterizes Dante's epistles in support of Henry VII's Italian expedition. 57 In Epistles V and VII, the emperor is assimilated to both Caesar and Augustus, namely, the leaders made famous by Lucan and Virgil. 58 Epistle VII, directly addressed to Henry, urges him to move from northern Italy to Tuscany by quoting Curio's advice to Caesar and Mercury's exhortation to Aeneas. 59 Therefore, as a further indicator of Dante's integration of Lucan and Virgil, the Bellum Civile is once more combined with the Aeneid to substantiate Dante's philo-imperial claims. 60

'Nihilism' and Morality
Far from being accused of anti-providentialism or nihilism, Lucan is repeatedly recalled by Dante as a moral-philosophical auctoritas. This is particularly evident in book IV of the Convivio (ca. 1307), where Lucan appears as a very important point of reference for Dante's attempt to discredit the value of wealth in determining nobility. In Conv. IV, xi, 3, Dante aims to show that riches are base and lacking in nobility, and cites Lucan as the first auctoritas in this regard: E ciò testimonia Lucano quando dice, a quelle parlando: 'Sanza contenzione periro le leggi; e voi, ricchezze, vilissima parte delle cose, moveste battaglia.' 61 Lucan's famous apostrophe to riches ('pereunt discrimine nullo/amissae leges; sed, pars vilissima rerum,/certamen movistis, opes') 62 is translated by Dante into Italian vernacular and becomes part of his argumentative strategy. The voices of the ancient and the medieval philosophers overlap as the latter strives to rectify common definitions of nobility. In Dante's treatise, Lucan's authority intersects with that of Boethius, invoked as the sapiens par excellence. Conv. IV,xiii,[11][12][13] Dante claims that the possession of riches causes evil: in this passage, Dante combines words by Boethius,'lo Savio',and by Lucan 63 : poverty. Overall, Lucan's Stoic dismissal of riches provides a framework for Dante's advocacy of inborn over hereditary nobility and of Church pauperism.
As has partly emerged, translation plays an important part in Dante's readaptation of Lucan's text in the Convivio. At a macro-textual level, Lucan's poem becomes part of the patrimony of philosophical wisdom made accessible by Dante's vernacular treatise. Not only does Dante translate passages of the Bellum Civile in his Convivio, he also explains them allegorically. In Conv. III, iii, 5-7, the story of Hercules and Antaeus is reinterpreted philosophically. 68 Furthermore, Conv. IV, xxviii, 13-19 provides a translation and detailed allegorization of Lucan's narration about Cato and Marcia (Lucan. II, 326-91), interpreted as signifying that, in old age, the noble soul returns to God, its harbour and blesses the journey it has made.
Dante first provides an allegorizing summary of the events from Marcia's adolescence and first marriage with Cato to her union with Hortensius and her later return to Cato after Hortensius's death (Lucan. II, 326-37). Dante explains that Cato signifies God and Marcia stands for the noble soul, who goes back to the Lord at the beginning of old age (Conv. IV,xxviii,(13)(14)(15)). Dante's allegorization of the story builds on Lucan's poem and medieval exegesis on it, where Cato is considered 'almost divine', 69 and yet stretches this tradition still farther, regarding Cato as a figure of God himself. The passage continues with a translation of Marcia's speech to Cato (Lucan. II, 338-45), which is glossed allegorically by Dante with a rather lengthy, word-by-word explanation (Conv. IV,xxviii,(16)(17)(18)(19).
Lucan's poem is read by Dante as an historical account which also carries profound religious-philosophical meaning in a moral and anagogical sense. 70 Strikingly, Dante applies to the Bellum Civile the reading and interpretive practices 68 In this Dantean passage, the story is used to signify the special connection between the human body and the place of its generation. Medieval exegetes give various allegorical interpretations for the story of Hercules and Antaeus. According to Fulgentius (Myth. II, 4) and the third Vatican mythographer (ed. G. H. Bode, Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini tres Romae nuper reperti, Cellis, Schulze, 1834, myth. III, 13, 2), Antaeus symbolizes lust (libido), ultimately subdued by virtue. In his commentary on Inf. XXI, 118, Guido da Pisa similarly explains that the fight between Hercules and Antaeus signifies the struggle between spirit and flesh (Expositiones, ed. Rinaldi [n. 19 above], pp. 907-8). 69 Lucan IX, 254-83, 554-86. See V. De Angelis, '… e l'ultimo Lucano', in Dante e la 'bella scola' della poesia. Autorità e sfida poetica, ed. A. A. Iannucci, Ravenna, Longo, 1993, pp. 145-202, at pp. 165ff.; Ead., 'Il testo di Lucano, Dante e Petrarca', in Seminario Dantesco Internazionale (n. 34 above), pp. 67-109, at pp. 72-6; Fontanella, L'impero (n. 5 above), pp. 270-72 on Cato in medieval commentaries on Lucan. Also in Conv. IV,v,16;Conv. IV,vi,10; and Purg. I, Cato's almost-divine aura is described in terms reminiscent of Lucan. On Lucan's importance for these Dantean descriptions of Cato's quasi-divinity, see for example, W. Fischli, Studien zum Fortleben der 'Pharsalia' des M. Annaeus Lucanus, Lucerne, Haag, 1944, pp. 37-40; Paratore, 'Lucano e Dante' (n. 4 above), pp. 18ff.; Scott, 'Cato' (n. 49 above), pp. 70-77; W. Boggione, 'La custodia, la vera libertà, la colpa, la pena. Ancora sul Catone dantesco', Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, 189, 2012, pp. 321-53, at pp. 321-3; G. Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the 'Divine Comedy ', Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1979, p. 61. 70 Fioravanti suggests that Dante reads Lucan's text as an 'allegory of theologians' (Dante Alighieri, Convivio, ed. G. Fioravanti and C. Giunta, in Dante Alighieri, Opere, vol. II, ed. M. Santagata, Milan, Mondadori, 2014, p. 793). However, Dante's treatment of the concept in Conv. II, 1 seems to imply that the 'anagogical' sense could also be part of the 'allegory of poets'. Nevertheless, the degree of attention that Dante devotes to the word-by-word allegorical reading of Lucan's passage is striking. that he otherwise reserves for the most authoritative of texts, such as the Aeneid or the Bible itself. Indeed, Virgil's narration about Aeneas, which, as has been noted, had a historical value for Dante, is subject to a sustained moral allegorization in the same fourth book of the Convivio. In a passage which is reminiscent of Fulgentius's Expositio and yet clearly departs from it, Dante interprets books IV-VI of the Aeneid as signifying the virtues of temperance, affection, courtesy and loyalty in the age of gioventù. 71 Dante's combination of the Bellum Civile and the Aeneid within the allegorizing discourse of his philosophical treatise is a further indicator of his integrative view of Virgil's and Lucan's poems and of his appreciation for the allegedly 'constructive' aspects of Lucan's philosophical thought. Rather than emphasizing the anti-providential implications of the Bellum Civile, the Christian Dante confers upon Lucan the role of an authority on philosophical and religious matters. 72

Petrarch's and Boccaccio's Biographical Approach
Petrarch's representation of Lucan in relation to Virgil presents continuities with Dante's view, but also significant differences from it, and is intimately connected with Petrarch's reception of the figure and work of Dante himself and with his attempt to establish a contemporary literary canon. Indeed, Petrarch re-reads the history of ancient Latin literature through a strongly biographical lens. His depiction of the ancient, as well as contemporary, literary canon is grounded on a notion of rivalry between great authors. Moreover, Petrarch represents Lucan as a historical individual, as well as a literary-philosophical auctoritas, and expresses reservations on his personal moral conduct. 73 Like Dante, Petrarch also considers Lucan a key literary model, a fundamental source and an important guide on philosophy and ethics 74 ; Petrarch also regards Lucan as a 'poet', rather than a historian, as revealed by Petrarch's recurrent use of the epithet poeta or vates to identify Lucan. 75 Petrarch's works, too, present instances of integration of the Bellum Civile with the Aeneid, and of association between the figure of Lucan and that of Virgil. 76 In his Collatio laureationis, Petrarch names Lucan alongside Virgil, Ovid and Statius, in line with a common medieval tradition and with Dante's own practice in the De vulgari eloquentia. 77 Moreover, as Crevatin has noticed, Fam. V, 5, which deals with the faculty of poetic description, presents an implicit 'formalization' of the epic triad Homer-Virgil-Lucan. 78 However, Petrarch also discloses the tensions intrinsic to this epic-poetic canon. He portrays Lucan as talented but overambitious, for he dared to compete with Virgil, the greatest Roman poet. In Sen. V, 2 a letter addressed to Boccaccio, Petrarch praises his addressee's humility and observes that underestimation of one's own skills is more commendable than their overevaluation. According to Petrarch, this latter mistake was proper for Lucan, who presumed to challenge Virgil's supremacy 79 : Hic me locus admonet Lucani cordubensis qui, ardentis vir ingenii atque animi -que ut ad ascensum sic ad precipitium via est -, cum se adhuc iuvenem et provectum suorum iam prosperum studiorum cerneret, et etatem suam et rerum a se ceptarum reputans initia successusque operum elatus seque ipsum cum Virgilio comparare ausus, libri, quem de civili bello, morte perventus, inexpletum liquit, partem recitans in prefatione quadam dixit: 'Et quantum restat michi ad Culicem?' Huic insolenti percontationi an tunc a quoquam amicorum quid ve responsum fuerit incertum habeo; certe ego, ex quo illam legi primum, gloriabundo illi sepe tacitus et indignans hoc respondi: 'Bone homo, ad Culicem quidem nichil, sed immensum ad Eneyda'. Quidni ergo pluris faciam hu'militatem tuam, me tibi tuo iudicio preferentis, quam illius iactantiam vel preponentis se Virgilio vel equantis? 80 By retelling, and commenting on, Suetonius's anecdote on Lucan's challenge to Virgil, Petrarch sponsors a strongly biographical conception of the ancient epic canon, based on the notion of personal competition between great poetic figures. In Petrarch's view of this canon, Lucan is firmly subordinated to Virgil among the greatest ancient poets. 81 Petrarch's hierarchical classification of the major ancient poets is of relevance for his definition of a contemporary literary canon. In the continuation of Seniles V, 2, Petrarch argues that Boccaccio's possible intolerance of the second or third place would make him even more haughty than those who yearn for the first place. Indeed, in the hierarchy suggested by Petrarch, Dante ('the master of our vernacular literature') and Petrarch himself hold the first two places, while Boccaccio is assigned the third place. 82 The triad of the 'modern' Italian poets (Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio) thus appears to replicate the ancient triad of Homer, Virgil and Lucan. We might argue that Petrarch's questioning of Dante's hegemony finds a parallel in his frequent displacement of Homer in favour of Virgil. 83 More obviously, in this passage of the Seniles, the poetic persona of Boccaccio overlaps with that of Lucan: the author of the Bellum Civile becomes a figure of Boccaccio, or of the kind of poet that Boccaccio both could, and should not, be. Paradoxically enough, in order to avoid Lucan's iactantia, Boccaccio has to accept Lucan's place, that is the third position in the 'modern' poetic canon established by Petrarch.
As scholars have occasionally noticed, Petrarch's estimate of Lucan is influenced by moral disapproval of the poet's suicide. This especially emerges from Fam. 80 'This topic reminds me of a passage in Lucan of Corduba [Cordova], a man of lively talent and intelligence, which is the pathway to great heights as well as the precipice. When he felt himself already quite advanced in his studies, though still young considering his age and his initiatives, and elated over the success of his works, he dared compare himself with Virgil. Reciting part of the book about the civil war [Pharsalia], which he left unfinished when he was cut short by death, he said: ''What will it take for me to match the Gnat [Culex]?'' I am uncertain whether one of his friends then answered this insolent question, or what the answer was, but ever since reading it I often answered that arrogant fellow silently and indignantly as follows: ''My good man, nothing prevents you from matching the Gnat but a great deal indeed from equaling the Aeneid''. Why, then, should I not appreciate your humility which prefers me to you in your opinion more than the boasting of that writer who put himself above Virgil or equal to him?' (Sen. V, 2, 10-11; transl. A. S. Bernardo, S. Levi, R. A. Bernardo, Francesco Petrarch; Letters of Old Age, New York, Italica Press, 2005, vol. I, p. 159). 81 Petrarch asserts Lucan's poetic inferiority to Virgil also in Contra quendam 96. 82 Sen. V, 2, 15. 83 When dealing with the matter of Virgil's possible rivalry with, and superiority over, Homer, Petrarch is either reticent or overtly in favour of the Roman poet (e.g., Fam. VI,4,12;XXII,10,6;XXIV,4,[8][9][10]cfr. Fam. I,2,23;XIII,6,4;XIII,7,12,17;XXI,15,5, where Homer and Virgil are praised in conjunction; see M. Feo, Petrarca, Enciclopedia Virgiliana, vol. VI, Rome, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1988, pp. 53-78, at p. 70). An extended account of Petrarch's opinion of Dante is contained in his well-known letter to Boccaccio (Fam. XXI,15). XXIV, 11, a poetic letter addressed to Virgil. This epistle opens with a praise of the author of the Aeneid as the most splendid master of eloquence and Rome's true glory. Petrarch asks which part of Avernus Virgil inhabits, the palace of Hades or the Elysian fields (ll. 4-8). If Virgil is in the Elysian fields, Petrarch continues, he will be in the company of Orpheus and Horace, but surely not alongside Lucan and Lucretius, who killed themselves and have thus been placed in a different region of the underworld (ll. 9-17): he also shares an 'ardent' temperament and inordinate ingenium 87 : Lucan and Lucretius are represented by Petrarch as both poetically and morally inferior to Virgil, 'the most splendid of bards'. 88 Following Suetonius, Petrarch states that Lucan killed himself because of his fear of a more severe punishment and a shameful death. 89 Such a reconstruction denies any heroism in the poet's death. In this account, it should be noticed that Petrarch's attitude to Stoic suicide is also much more condemnatory than Dante's in the case of Cato Uticensis, whose self-inflicted death Petrarch fiercely denounces, in contrast with Dante's moral absolution and glorification of the character praised by Lucan. 90 Petrarch's biographical approach to ancient Latin epic and his emphasis on the dynamics of competition internal to the ancient canon appear to have influenced the reception of the figure of Lucan by later humanists, and by Boccaccio in particular. 91 Like Petrarch, Boccaccio regards Lucan as a crucial poetic model and yet expresses some misgivings about his moral attitudes. 92 Drawing upon Suetonius and Tacitus, and under Petrarch's likely influence, Boccaccio refers to Lucan's arrogant challenge to Virgil and his violent suicidal demise in the short biography of the Cordovan poet that he provides in his 'literal exposition' of Dante's Inferno IV, dating from late in his life. 93 Here, Boccaccio concludes that Lucan's selfcomparison to Virgil was seriously misguided 94 ; in fact, in Boccaccio's as in Petrarch's opinion, Lucan's greatness does not make him comparable to Virgil. 95 In keeping with Suetonius and Petrarch himself, Boccaccio depicts Lucan's selfinflicted death as strikingly cowardly and anti-heroic. 96 Boccaccio's Esposizioni also highlights Lucan's anti-Neronian sentiments, which are not mentioned explicitly by Petrarch. 97 In his biography of Lucan, Boccaccio follows Tacitus as well as Suetonius in mentioning Nero's envy towards the Cordovan poet and the latter's involvement in Piso's conspiracy. 98 This matter is discussed at length in a later passage of the Esposizioni, where Boccaccio attempts to explain and justify Dante's surprising choice to place in Limbo such sinful ancient characters as Lucan, who claimed for himself the right to punish Nero for his excesses. 99 Boccaccio thus emphasizes, and condemns, not only Lucan's inglorious self-murder, but also his choice to violently oppose Nero. 100 To some extent, Boccaccio's notion of Lucan's anti-tyrannical stance might have influenced his reading of the Bellum Civile as an anti-Caesar text: indeed, for Boccaccio, Lucan is clearly the poet of Pompey rather than Caesar. 101 However, Boccaccio's rereading of the Bellum Civile is not a strongly or consistently politicized one, as I hope to show in a future study. 102 Moreover, Lucan's possible Republicanism does not seem to make him an anti-Virgil in Boccaccio's eyes. Also in the Esposizioni, after all, Boccaccio's rhetorical strategy serves to support Dante's placing Lucan with Virgil among the great poets of the Limbo, refuting any potential objections concerning Lucan's inadequacy for the role. 103 In his Esposizioni, Boccaccio considers some further contrasts between Lucan and Virgil, such as the difference in their styles. However, Boccaccio aims at conciliating, rather than stressing, these oppositions. Boccaccio's biography of Lucan reports the widespread opinion according to which Lucan's style was more suitable to metrical historiography than poetry; Boccaccio admits that Lucan's style is indeed different from Homer's and Vergil's heroic style and other poetic styles. Yet, Boccaccio concludes that, whatever style he may have adopted, Lucan was undoubtedly talented ('ma come ch'e' si trattasse, maravigliosa eccellenza d'ingegno dimostra'). 104 As Velli has noted, Boccaccio's concluding statement is a clear attempt to redeem Lucan from the insinuations made by medieval commentators. 105 While Boccaccio's observations speak to his familiarity with lateantique and medieval exegetical debates on Lucan, they do not trace a clear-cut distinction between the Bellum Civile and the Aeneid, which are often combined in Boccaccio's own works. 106 To conclude, therefore, Petrarch's and Boccaccio's emphasis on Lucan's biography is an element of discontinuity from Dante, one consonant with their early-humanist interest in the lives and personalities of the great authors of antiquity. Unlike 12th-century scholars, however, Petrarch and Boccaccio underscore Lucan's 'anti-Virgilianism' as a biographical trait more than as an element which become part of ideologically characterized readings of the Bellum Civile as an anti-Aeneid.