Mark THORNE Cato and the Snakes in Lucan: Whose aristeia Is It Anyway? (Pharsalia 9.700-889)

There is perhaps no more infamous passage in Lucan’s Pharsalia than Cato’s encounter with the snakes in Book Nine, an episode repeatedly described as horrific, ludicrous, even sordide and répugnant (Johnson 1987, 55; Bartsch 1997, 29; Aumont 1968, 107). Fred Ahl reads it as Lucan’s attempt to give Cato a Homeric aristeia so as to highlight his virtue (Ahl 1976, 74), but I argue that in fact it is not Cato but rather the army of snakes that claims the aristeia, showing off its martial prowess by notching one kill after another. The outcome of such success, however, is striking, for what in Homeric epic would be a triumph becomes in Lucan a de facto failure&emdash;Cato’s march carries onward regardless, despite the snakes’ “victory.” Cato ultimately does emerge victorious in the end, but in decidedly un-Homeric terms.

Some have questioned recently whether one should read the episode as an aristeia at all (Leigh 1997), but I argue that Lucan himself invites such a reading through his military imagery and details of the individual “combats.” Furthermore, the snakes as a plurality may be seen to represent Libya as the larger individual entity opposed to Cato’s march, emphasized by the preceding Medusa myth explaining that the snakes were conceived from the Libyan sands where poisonous drops of the Gorgon’s blood fell (Loupiac 1997; Fantham, 1993). Cato’s journey begins with an image of invasion, surprisingly not by Cato but by the land itself (invasit Libye securi fata Catonis, 9.410). Libya’s weapons are successive assaults of sandstorms, parching thirst, and finally venemous snakes, these last recognized by Cato’s men as their real enemies when they cry out, pro Caesare pugnant! (9.850) Also, the individual pairings of snake and victim provide specific details that recall the epic language of the aristeia: the natures and poisons of individual snakes are given in often gruesome detail, while the poet tells us that Aulus is a youth of Etruscan blood (9.737) and Numidius is a plowman from a Marsian farm (9.790).

It is essential to note that this episode is depicted as an aristeia by the snakes against Cato’s army and not against Cato, who is himself untouched while he “watches” the horrible sufferings of his men like a spectator (insolitasque videns mortes, 9.736). Cato is essentially a non-combatant, so this technically cannot be his aristeia. In turn, however, Lucan’s epic of the civil war&emdash;of a world whose very logic has been turned upside down by the horrors of civil evil&emdash;subverts the traditional norms of epic by showing us that Libya’s “success” through the snakes’ aristeia is ultimately unsuccessful within the narrative of the poem. Cato remains unharmed, the army survives essentially intact, and they all reach their destination of Leptis Magna by the end of the book. Yet this seeming purposelessness is emblematic, I argue, of one of Lucan’s primary message in his Pharsalia, namely the self-defeating nature inherent to civil war. Just as Lucan’s prologue presents the “victorious” hand that plunges the sword into the victor’s own belly (1.3), so the aristeia of the snakes and of Libya herself is subverted by the poet to emphasize his message that traditional military success does not bring true victory in civil war. The snakes enjoyed their aristeia, but virtuous Cato is depicted ultimately as the aristos, the best.