Introduction

The Introduction begins with a reading of the poet Statius’s “birthday ode” to Lucan (Silvae 2.7), written some twenty-five to thirty years after the earlier poet’s death. Statius, through the character of Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, reads Lucan as a poet who surpasses all prior epic poets and who brings closure to the epic genre, and also as one whose poetic voice both thunders and laments. Statius thus stands as a model reader for understanding Lucan’s poetic aims and ambitions. The Introduction also establishes the ongoing fame and significance into Lucan’s time of Homer and Ennius, the poetic foils most central to this book’s argument, while also introducing the methodology of considering Lucan’s use of “anchoring” allusions to early epics as well as his inversion of larger master-tropes that were central to these foundational epics.