Classical World

I. Introduction

Tum vox Lethaeos cunctis pollentior herbisexcantare deos confundit murmura primumdissona et humanae multum discordia linguae.Latratus habet illa canum gemitusque luporum,quod trepidus bubo, quod strix nocturna queruntur,quod strident ululantque ferae, quod sibilat anguis;exprimit et planctus illisae cautibus undaesilvarumque sonum fractaeque tonitrua nubis.Tot rerum vox una fuit.

(Luc. 6.685–693)

Then her voice, more powerful than every herb for summoning the infernal gods, first coalesces as a dissonant murmur that is greatly inharmonious to human speech. She pronounces the barking of dogs and the howl of wolves, what the fearful owl and the nocturnal screech-owl complain, what the beasts hiss and howl, what the snake hisses; she renders also the strike of the wave dashed on rocks and the sound of forests [End Page 49] and the thunderings of the broken cloud. One voice was the source of so many sounds.¹

So Lucan describes the utterances of Erictho the Thessalian magos in the midst of her necromantic rite. These polyphonic vocalizations evoke horror and curiosity. Erictho's demonstrated power and the poetic meshing of human and environment come together to present an extraordinary representation of a woman's voice and speech in Latin literature. Does horror spring from something like an uncanny valley that yawns open between Erictho's assimilation of nature and her eroding humanity? While the details of the portrait of Erictho and the other Thessalian witches in book 6 are unparalleled in extant Roman or Greek literature (Ogden 2002: 124),² rituals that allow the living to speak to the dead are certainly not rare in ancient epic. Prophecy in its many forms—from the interpretation of signs to the institutional speech of an oracle—is narratively commonplace and metapoetically rich. Erictho's spells (carmina) are part of the mechanism of her prophecy, but they also represent the simultaneous unity and multiplicity that characterizes so much of Lucan's poem, a signifying and interconnected narrative universe composed with reference to principles of Stoic philosophy. Erictho's many utterances in one voice (tot rerum vox una fuit, 6.693) parallel the structural layering of microcosm and macrocosm throughout the poem, particularly in the moments of contact between characters and their poetic environment.

Erictho and two other speakers of prophecy are the subjects of this analysis, which focuses on their voices, environments, and power through the lens of ecofeminist theory. Erictho appears only in Lucan's sixth book, consulted in a moment of desperation by Sextus Pompey ahead of the battle of Pharsalus. Two women who appear earlier in the poem establish models of prophetic speech and thus, a basis for comparison with Erictho. One is an unnamed woman in Rome, characterized by Lucan as a matrona, who rushes through the city in a frenzy, inspired by Apollo, amid the confusion prompted by Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon and approach to the city in book 1. The other is Phemonoe, the current Pythia, at Delphi, consulted in book 5 by Appius Claudius Pulcher after Pompey and his allies fled Italy to Greece. [End Page 50]

Agency is a key difference between Erictho and other speakers of prophecy in the poem; Erictho is the one who keeps her own mind and enacts her own power. She stands apart from the Roman matrona of book 1 and the Delphic Pythia of book 5, but also stands out from the other witches of Thessaly in the extent of her transgressions against nature (6.507–508). In her power over the natural world, enacted through her carmina, she is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. As an avatar of an unfettered voice and power, she embodies horror by existing outside the pattern of androcentric subjugation of both women and the earth. These patterns, as well as questions of agency and subjectivity, are core precepts in ecofeminist analysis (Quartarone 2006: 177; cf. Banks 2017) and suggest the value of an ecofeminist interpretation of Lucan's prophetic women. As Chaone Mallory (2018: 13) neatly puts it: "the basic thesis of ecofeminism is that environmental and social oppressions are entangled and must be addressed concomitantly." Contemporary ecofeminist theory seeks, among other goals, to deconstruct the human/nature dichotomy. Although this dichotomy certainly has a consistent presence in classical texts, because Lucan approaches his civil war narrative as a systemic breakdown of order in the cosmos of his poem, it seems quite apt to consider a specific theory, trans-corporeality, as a tool of interpretation.

Trans-corporeality did not spring fully formed from the head of its author but exists as part of a complex critical tradition, worth outlining here as part of the introduction to an analysis of women's voices, speech, and environment. The ideas of ecofeminism originally arose more from activism than from criticism. Various social movements, including the feminist, peace, and ecology movements in the late 1970s and early 1980s adopted the term—which first was used by Francoise D'Eaubonne³—in the context of protests against environmental destruction (for example, the 1970s Chipko Movement of women in Himalayan India in defense of local forests [Mack-Canty 2004: 169], and in response to the partial nuclear meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania in 1979 [Mies, Shiva, and Salleh 2014: 13–14]). Protests and other such responses to environmental damage and to the damage caused to human and animal life nearby were not the sole activity of western activists and thinkers, but a great deal of the scholarship that makes [End Page 51] up the foundational stage of the movement—and was united in part of the use of the term ecofeminism—was Euro-Western.

The first ecofeminist conference, "Women and Life on Earth: A Conference on Eco-Feminism in the Eighties," took place at Amherst College in March 1980. One of the conference organizers, Ynestra King, set out an early definition of ecofeminism:

Ecofeminism is about connectedness and wholeness of theory and practice. It asserts the special strength and integrity of every living being…. We are a women-identified movement and we believe we have a special work to do in these imperilled times. We see the devastation of the earth and her beings by the corporate warriors, and the threat of nuclear annihilation by the military warriors, as feminist concerns. It is the same masculinist mentality which would deny us our right to our own bodies and our own sexuality, and which depends on multiple systems of dominance and state power to have its way…. In defying this patriarchy we are loyal to future generations and to life and this planet itself.

(King 1983: 10)

King's activist focus on the connections between experience and knowledge, women and environment have a mirror in writer Carolyn Merchant's ideas about the agency of nature and the reciprocal relationship between humans and the nonhuman world (Merchant 1989: 8). Merchant also engages with classical material, citing the identification of Gaia with both motherhood and the earth (1996). Other early writers in the movement worked on identifying various standpoints from which ecofeminism developed, including "the gender/race/species/ecology/nation connections operating in hierarchical dualist thought," the "logic of domination," and various other perspectives including the "spiritual, psychological, political, philosophical, historical, economic, and activist" (Gaard 2017: xiv).

As ecofeminism continued to develop, a process neither linear nor complete, collaborative works and monographs turned their focus to a number of (what are now) key concepts, including but not limited to: ecofeminist democracy and citizenship (Sandilands 1999), global feminist environmental justice (Sturgeon 1997), Green politics (Gaard 1998), social ecofeminism and the erotic (Heller 1999), speciesism and Marxist ecofeminism (Noske 1997), the politics of reproduction (Diamond 1994), and globalization and biodiversity (Hawthorne 2002). Simultaneously, interrogation of these key concepts and of the foundational assumptions of ecofeminism came from writers both internal and external to the movement. These critiques—particularly those that focused on essentialism and eurocentrism—sustained the movement, which soon encompassed [End Page 52] works on postcolonial environments and ecocriticism (Huggan and Tiffin 2010; Wright 2010), and intersections of race, gender, and species (Harper 2010; Kemmerer 2011; Adams and Gruen 2014). In the past fifteen years, the movement shows concrete development beyond the limits of essentialism and eurocentrism (Nhanenge 2011; Gaard, Estok, and Oppermann 2013; and others).

Of particular interest to my analysis is the materialist perspective, from which Stacy Alaimo describes the essentialist connection between woman and nature as "long … defined in Western thought" and a reason that "most feminist theory has worked to disentangle 'woman' from 'nature'" (Alaimo 2000). She works to disrupt the implicit dualism of this idea (human/nature) and draws on Carolyn Merchant's work on the "agency of nature" and Karen Barad's work on materiality, "intra-agency," and "thingification" (Alaimo 2008: 245–49; cf. Barad 2008). Alaimo has proposed the concept of "trans-corporeality," as the "time-space where human corporeality, in all its material fleshiness, is inseparable from 'nature' or 'environment'" (Alaimo 2008: 238). Trans-corporeality views the human and the environment as intermeshed and interreactive, as for example in food ("plants or animals become the substance of the human" [Alaimo 2008: 258]) or toxicity ("toxic bodies insist that environmentalism, human health, and social justice cannot be severed" [Alaimo 2008: 262]). Within the last five years, critical ecofeminism (Gaard 2017, especially) has been highlighting "scholarly activist engagement with environmental justice, interspecies justice, queer climate justice, posthumanisms (i.e., plant studies), and sustainability efforts" (Gaard 2017: xvi).

Lorina Quartarone's work applying ecofeminism to Vergil's Aeneid provides a model for interpreting ancient literature through this particular modern critical lens. Quartarone (2006: 177) selects specific ideas from within the field of ecofeminism: 1) "that, in western culture, there has historically been a strong association between the earth and the female"; 2) "that the dominant forces which have shaped western culture are masculine (or androcentric)"; and 3) "that those androcentric forces (according to ecofeminists) have subjugated both the earth and the female"; ideas which are "essential to all subfields of ecofeminism."⁴ So examining female speakers of prophecy, whose voices and actions are connected to the natural world and whose characters prompt questions about agency [End Page 53] and power, pushes the boundaries of this model of interpretation. In what follows, I will present three female speakers of prophecy—a Roman matrona, the Pythia at Delphi, and Erictho the Thessalian necromancer—as case studies that explore the potential of ecofeminist interpretation.⁵

A few words on prophecy are necessary at the outset, too. Prophecy is a frequent occurrence in Lucan's Bellum Civile.⁶ While interpretation of signs in the poem takes forms including astrology and haruspexy, seers (either divinely inspired or autonomous) are more bombastic. We can see Apollonian-inspired prophecy in the words of a Roman matrona at the end of the first book of the epic and in the violently evoked speech of Phemonoe, the Pythia at Delphi, in book 5. In both cases, portrayals of individual agency and institutional power follow expected patterns: neither woman is given a choice but to act as a conduit for divinely-sourced prophetic vision and speech and, although they suffer the results of this inspiration, their roles as oracular speakers fit into the established understanding of prophecy in epic poetry. The Thessalian necromancer, Erictho, is the subject of much of the Bellum Civile's sixth book and seems to be the most outrageous purveyor of prophecy due to her status as an outsider, her characterization as a disrupter of natural processes, and her continued possession of agency and power within the narrative. While each instance of prophetic speech taps into the continuously growing narrative of the Republic's fate in civil war, Erictho alone seems to present an unexpected and terrifying potential alternate future. Erictho is more autonomous as a voice of prophecy than any other seer in the poem in that she creates a conduit for the message rather than acting as one herself. As a Thessalian magos, she can rival nature and thus disrupt or change the signa in the natural world that provide the basis for interpreting omens or portents.

Erictho's characterization as female, non-Roman, and an expert in magic sets her apart, and highlights the subversive nature of her prophecy.⁷ Aside from the taboo of her treatment of the dead and her practice of necromancy, it matters that her voice is female and that her voice is [End Page 54] uncontrollable.⁸ How and what she speaks are non-institutional, non-divine, and even nefas. Likewise, unlike other seers—in particular the Roman matrona and the Pythia—she does not fear the process or content of prophecy but inspires fear in others, particularly those connected to the cause of the Republic, Sextus Pompey and other Pompeian soldiers who seek information from her about their future. As she represents a threat to the order of things, her speech evokes the fear that she could enact change on that established order. Erictho's power is tied to her speech, from invocations of underworld powers to spells (carmina), and the horror of her character is most insidious in the way readers of and characters within the text can both extrapolate the extent of the damage her speech could do.⁹

An ecofeminist lens brings issues of agency and power into focus in the cases of woman speaking prophecy, from the Roman matrona to the Pythia to Erictho herself, but also works in tandem with Lucan's stoicizing philosophical composition of his poetic cosmos. A philosophy that posits a virtuous and rational life as one that exists in accordance with nature¹⁰ represents the kind of essentializing foundation alternately critiqued and embraced by ecofeminist scholars that identifies the diachronic, cross-cultural pattern of "woman : nature = man : culture" (Buell 2005: 109; cf. Ortner 1974).¹¹ In the stoicized cosmos of Lucan's poem, divinely-inspired prophecy is rational and explicable, as well as a justification for the pattern of subjugation of the women who speak it. In this cosmos, however, where virtue is attached to one's living in accordance with nature, Erictho's control over natural processes makes her a danger to the cosmic system writ large. Her power, expressed through her speech, becomes something horrific in their transgression of established norms of gender, political and national identity, and ontological agency. [End Page 55]

II. The Roman Matrona

The pattern of inspired prophetic speech given by a woman who is acting under the influence of an external force begins with the Roman matrona who speaks at the end of the first book of the poem.¹² The matrona appears as Rome learns of Caesar's approach to the city and follows attempts by Arruns, a haruspex, and Figulus, an astrologer, to interpret omens. One could argue that the matrona represents more than simply herself. Like the vision of Roma that meets Caesar at the Rubicon at the beginning of book 1, she may be able to stand in for the Roman people as a whole.¹³ Because her defining characteristic is her prophetic vision, through her character and experience, Lucan transfers the ability to know ahead and to see beyond the scope of any single human's ability to any Roman—or, in fact, any reader of his poem—who wishes to see the results of the civil wars. The matrona seems to transcend the limits of her social identifier and even her humanity; she is an anthropomorphic amalgamation of the connection between vision, perspective and perception, and knowledge. Her anonymity is paradoxical, though, because it is limited or specific. Her individuality does not matter, but her status does; while Lucan could have placed this prophetic vision in the mind and mouth of a Vestal Virgin, a soldier, or a senator, he chose a matrona. She is established in her place in society: married, respectable, and elite.

Like the Pythia later, she is also under the influence of Apollo, and thus serves as a conduit for the knowledge of future events that he can access. The matrona's Apollonian connection is a more explicit case of divine control than the paradoxical ambiguity of divine influence at Delphi. Both the narrator and the matrona's own words characterize her connection to the god:

                                    Nam qualis vertice PindiEdonis Ogygio decurrit plena Lyaeo,talis ‹inops animi subitoque instincta furoresaevit› et attonitam rapitur matrona per urbem [End Page 56] vocibus his prodens urguentem pectora Phoebum'quo feror, o Paean? … '

(Luc. 1.674–678)

For just as a Bacchante full of Ogygian Bacchus rushes down from the peak of Pindus, so (helpless in her spirit and impelled by sudden madness she rages) also a matrona is taken through the stunned city, showing with these words Phoebus urging on her breast: 'To what place am I carried, O Paean? … '

The matrona can see beyond her normal abilities. The matrona's first-person perspective is impossible to miss. She speaks of actions happening to her (feror: 1.678, 683, 687; abripimur, 1.690), her sight (video, 1.679; agnosco, 1.686; vidi, 1.694), her travels (remeamus, 1.690; eo, 1.693), and focuses on the way Apollo's influence affects her (me, 1.678, 683; mihi, 1.693). Note that the passive verbs of motion (feror and abripimur) reflect the fact that the matrona's mind travels via Apollo's power, but the active verbs of seeing (video, agnosco, vidi) return agency to her and make her the focus of the vision.

Unlike other Apolline seers, she is more than a metaphorical "lens," because she tells her own experience rather than conveying only the message of the prophecy. The aggressively first-person speech is an unmistakable case of autopsy and, though other speakers do use the first person as well, a number of these particular verb forms appear in the poem only in the matrona's speech, beginning with her first question, quo feror (1.674). The way Lucan writes her speech makes her distinct, a character whose defining traits are her ability to observe and her mental travel throughout the world via the power of Apollo.¹⁴ We may also infer the matrona's unique position by the diction within her speech: in 1.675 alone, all three Greek names, Edonis, Ogygius, and Lyaeus, appear only once in the Bellum Civile, and several of the verbs of motion (abripimur and remeamus, 1.690) and sight (video, 1.679; agnosco, 1.686) are also unique in the forms in which they appear here.¹⁵ [End Page 57]

Where Erictho exists outside the established institutions of poetic and oracular prophetic speech, however, the matrona predicts her Delphic counterpart. Both she and the Pythia experience their visions through the influence and force of Apollo. It is interesting to note, however, that even Lucan's classification of these three women sets the matrona apart: while Phemonoe and Erictho are both called vates (5.115, 6.651), a term also applied to Apollo's inspirational force itself and the reanimated necromantic corpse (O'Higgins 1988: 208n2), at the end of book 1, neither the matrona nor Apollo is called vates (though Arruns the haruspex is) (Masters 1992: 138–41). Something else contributes to the scene that complicates their classification.

Apollo's influence governs the similarity between the visions and prophetic speech of the matrona and the Pythia. Lucan does not merely state that the matrona and Phemonoe are each under the influence of Apollo, he makes this similarity clear down to the language he uses to express how the mechanism of their prophetic sight functions. Apollo grants this sight to both women (da mihi cernere, 1.693; dedit sedem … dedit ille minas inpellere belli, 5.107–108); his power occupies the same location in their bodies (urguentem pectora Phoebum, 1.677; sub pectora, 5.116); he seizes them in the same way (rapitur … raptam, 1.676–678; corripuit, 5.127); and when the matrona and Phemonoe are filled with a divine force (plena Lyaeo, 1.675; plena … Phoebo, 5.186–187), Lucan compares both to Bacchantes (Edonis, 1.675; bacchatur, 5.169). Moreover, as the Pythia can see every part of the world from its beginning to its end (5.177–182), the matrona is made to see the geographical, temporal, and destructive future of the civil wars, arguably the extent of the world in Lucan's poem. Yet despite the similar mechanism and panoptic scope, in the case of the matrona, the institution and trappings of the oracle are absent and she is not classified as vates. Her characterization as an ordinary woman in extraordinary circumstances highlights the difference between the style of each vision and speech: whereas the matrona's speech is a first-hand account of what she has witnessed, the Pythia's is something more like interpretation.¹⁶ [End Page 58]

Following her description of her vision, the matrona then succumbs to exhaustion and her loss of consciousness coincides with a 'fade to black' at the end of the first book of the poem: haec ait, et lasso iacuit deserta furore ("she speaks these words, and lies fallen, deserted by exhausted frenzy," 1.695). The matrona also fits the profile of a woman made to speak an Apollonian vision in her loss of physical and mental autonomy. The ominous nature of her vision sets up a sense of foreboding early in the narrative, but her semi-anonymous nature and disorientation are characteristic and representative of the loss of agency to the external force—here associated with Apollo—that makes her a conduit for prophecy.

III. The Pythia at Delphi

Like the Roman matrona, Phemonoe, the Pythia at Delphi in book 5, is an unwilling oracle. The location and mechanism of her prophecy are rooted in both historical accounts and theories of natural philosophy, but Phemonoe is also representative of the pattern of subjugation of women observed by ecofeminist critics. Her words and their impact must be contextualized through her local environment, the depiction and role of divinity, and her individual agency.

In his descriptions of Delphi, as later in Thessaly, Lucan delves into the deep history of the local environment to characterize the people who inhabit it and the civil war events that unfold within it. The early natural and geologic history of Mt. Parnassus (5.75–78) introduces an ecphrasis of Delphi's topography and, in particular, the physical location of the Pythia's sanctuary in the temple of Apollo. The construction and mechanism of prophecy at Delphi are inextricably intertwined with the place itself:

Ut vidit Paean vastos telluris hiatusdivinam spirare fidem ventosque loquacesexhalare solum, sacris se condidit antris,incubuitque adyto vates ibi factus Apollo.

(Luc. 5.82–85)

When Paean saw that the vast chasms of the earth breathe divine faith and that the earth exhales vocal winds, he established himself in the sacred caves, and Apollo, made a prophet there, rested in the adyton. [End Page 59]

The form of the Delphic sanctuary and the process that enables its oracles is here attributed to a chasm in the earth, the exhalation from that chasm of an inspirational force, and the location of this chasm—and the sanctuary's adyton—in a cave.¹⁷ Lucan's construction of this particular poetic environment provides a base-line for the connection between women's prophetic speech and the environment within the Bellum Civile.

Lucan's choice to furnish his Delphi with a cave-like or cave-adjacent adyton, a chasm, and divine vapors activates a range of intertextual and philosophical points of interest.¹⁸ The presence of the cave alludes to the Aeneid, where the Sibyl of Cumae's place of prophecy is also in a cavern (Verg. Aen. 6.237–242). Since the Cumaean cave doubles as an entrance to the underworld, a double role associated with caves since at least the fifth century bce,¹⁹ the combination of cavern, prophecy, and the underworld puts Delphi in contrast to the cave in Thessaly in book 6 where Erictho performs the necromancy, combining literary elements of catabasis and prophecy.

At Lucan's Delphi, the chasm from which the exhalations emerge is vastos telluris hiatus (5.82), vast gapings of the earth. The poet's choice to integrate the chasm and vapors into his own Delphic environment echoes the portrayal of the earth, its exhalations, and subterranean activity that is present in natural philosophical sources. The heart of this connection is /spiritus, the inspirational force affecting the Pythia. The early Stoics conflated the prophetic sense of the word with the philosophical conceptions of a divine that pervaded the cosmos.²⁰ The perception of the natural phenomena produced by the earth—such as [End Page 60] the at Delphi—as something material enabled the connection between the mantic inspirational force affecting the Pythia and the cosmic posited by the Stoics.²¹ Where in the Pythia's chamber at Delphi connects earth and god, the larger cosmic is, according to the Stoics, identical to the divine force that pervades the natural world. Lucan's mode of presenting the cavern with its chasm and the spiritus (5.132, 165) that emerges from it conforms to earlier philosophical explanations of the site.²²

The role of Delphi, its oracle, and the Pythia herself depends on the physical reality of the mechanism of prophecy and the peculiar kind of omniscience Lucan attributes to the place and the Pythia. The episode hinges on three points: Delphi as a locus of divinity, the interpretation of divinity within the Bellum Civile as something ambiguously anthropomorphic yet still of nature, and the spatio-temporal perspective of the oracle. The Pythia's voice, whether speaking her own or inspired words, must be understood in the context of Delphi's local landscape.

Lucan's philosophical contextualization of Delphic prophecy makes quantifying divinity more expansive than naming Apollo alone. The shrine itself is rightly identified as Apollo's: Appius unbars Phoebus' temple (5.69), Parnassus is sacred to Phoebus (5.73), Apollo's victory over Python precedes his arrival in what was then Themis' shrine (5.79–85). The divine force housed in Delphi's caves, however, is compressed from the air itself (quod numen ab aethere pressum / dignatur caecas inclusum habitare cavernas, 5.86–87) and linked to Jupiter:

            Forsan, terris inserta regendisaere libratum vacuo quae sustinet orbem,totius pars magna Iovis Cirrhaea per antraexit et aetherio trahitur conexa Tonanti.

(Luc. 5.93–96) [End Page 61]

Perhaps a great part of all Jove, inserted into the earth to govern it, a part which holds up the world, poised over empty air, goes out through Cirrhaean caves and is drawn in, connected to the ethereal Thunderer.

The spiritus emitted from the earth at Delphi is linked with Jupiter, a figure representative in Stoic thought of a universal divine force (cf. Sen. QNat 2.45.1).²³ This numen, embodied as an equivalent to the spiritus that inspires the Pythia's prophecy, being all-pervasive, is thus the same force associated with the continuous chain of causation linking the beginning of the universe with the end. This connection grants the numen knowledge of events occurring at any point in the chain. So when Lucan's deus is omniscient as to the entire course of time (omnia cursus / aeterni secreta tenens mundoque futuri / conscius, 5.88–90), it is in line with the same theories about the universe, fate, time, and causality that can be found in contemporary Stoic natural philosophy.²⁴ Stoic divination used signs in nature to infer coming events, a process only theoretically plausible and acceptable because of the deterministic view of the world (causa causarum).

There is a dual conception of divinity at Delphi: the expansive nature/god concept at work in the mechanism of prophecy and the named Apollo who forces vision and speech upon Phemonoe. The Pythia's engagement with the process of prophecy at Delphi is paradoxically divided: the mechanism is stoicized and the prophetic speech itself depends on the poetic construction of a cosmos united by divine reason, but at the same time Phemonoe's suffering is brought on by the figure of Apollo. While we might consider this dichotomy to be representative of the overarching theme of civil conflict as well as Lucan's tendency towards paradox (Henderson 2010), two elements of this scene come into clear focus under an ecofeminist lens: the place of speech in the stoicized universe of the Bellum Civile and the narrative's engagement with the pattern of subjugation observed by ecofeminist critics.

The insight of the anthropomorphic Apollo is exchanged for the omnipresence and omniscience of the anima mundi, filtered through the Pythia as spiritus (5.132, 165), that emerges from the chasm in the cavern adjacent to the shrine (5.82–85). Lucan is himself acting the vates [End Page 62] (cf. O'Higgins 1988) when he describes what Phemonoe, inspired by the spiritus, can see:

                                    Venit aetas omnis in unamcongeriem, miserumque premunt tot saecula pectus,tanta patet rerum series, atque omne futurumnititur in lucem, vocemque petentia fataluctantur; non prima dies, non ultima mundi,non modus Oceani, numerus non derat harenae.

(Luc. 5.177–182)

All time comes into one mass, and so many ages press her wretched breast, such a great series of events lies open, and the entire future strives into the light, and fates, seeking her voice, struggle; neither the first day nor the end of the world nor the measure of the Ocean nor the number of the sand is lacking.

In the Pythia's mind, all time is condensed into one vision and, because of this temporal unity, the chain of causation linking universal beginning to universal end is also visible to her. In the same way that the future, like the past and present, is accessible to the anima mundi, it is also illuminated to Phemonoe. Moreover, the extent of the physical world also lies open to the Pythia in all its detail: she can know everything from the grandest scale, the depths and reach of the ocean, to the smallest, enumerating the grands of sand (cf. Hdt. 1.47.3). Phemonoe is more than an individual here, she is an institution; she is a fixed point in Delphi's history who shares the name of the first Pythia (cf. Strabo 9.3.5). Nothing in the entire scope of existence—temporal or spatial—lies outside her power of observation. And with everything in existence condensed into one place and time (i.e., the Pythia's mind) the entire space-time continuum appears as a singularity.

The language describing the extent of the Pythia's vision is characteristic of Roman analyses of Stoic physics, causality, and predetermination. Lucan uses rerum series (5.179) for the causal chain of events, a phrase with rich philosophical value. In his De Divinatione, Cicero cites Posidonius on Stoic perceptions of divination, using ordo seriesque causarum (1.125) for the Stoic idea of destiny, in the context of the web of connections in the world and the resulting ability to use signs to indicate what is to come.²⁵ Seneca uses similar wording in his own discussions [End Page 63] of fate, predestination, and divination at Ep. 106.3 (series rerum as the causal relationship between events through time) and QNat 2.32.4 (fatorum series). Because all things and events were connected, signs could be found everywhere (cf. Williams 2012: 312).²⁶ Lucan's use of rerum series is symptomatic of the stoicizing perspective and is more extensive than simply the Delphi episode. In the proem, fatorum series (1.70) leads Rome into civil conflict and leads the poem into its first simile, the fall of the Roman Republic as end of the world (1.72–80). Series rerum (3.75) describes the achievements for which Caesar would have been honored at Rome if he had not crossed the Rubicon. Later, during the exegesis on Thessalian magic and divination, causarum series (6.612) refers to the Stoic theory of causation and predetermination directly.

Phemonoe is an exemplum of the loss of agency and power that characterizes narratives of the subjugation of women. When Phemonoe is approached at Delphi by Appius Claudius Pulcher for information about Rome's future, she is under the influence of Apollo who uses her as a conduit for the knowledge of future events. The poet names Apollo as the divine presence in the shrine on Mt. Parnassus (5.82–85) before explaining his control over Phemonoe:

Hoc ubi virgineo conceptum est pectore numen,humanam feriens animam sonat oraque vatissolvit.

(Luc. 5.97–99)

When this divine force is taken into the maiden's breast, battering her human spirit, it sounds out and opens the prophetess' mouth.

Lucan also notes that the Pythia, when overtaken by Apollo, loses autonomy over her own voice. This disruption between voice and thought seems less of a problem to the matrona, who simply conveys what she sees extemporaneously, but for the Pythia, nec tantum prodere vati / quantum scire licet ("it is not allowed for the prophet to reveal as much as it is allowed for her to know," 5.176–177). Apollo's influence brings on [End Page 64] a frenzied madness, with the Pythia, out of her mind and dashing around the cave in a fashion similar to a bacchante : bacchatur demens aliena per antrum / colla ferens ("mad, she runs wild through the cave with frenzied neck," 5.169–170). This divine influence extends Phemonoe's sight beyond her normal abilities, at which point she must face a vision of the entire cosmos collapsed into a singularity (5.177–182). Following her vision, she is overwhelmed and collapses, and as her vision leaves her, so does her life (5.222–224).

Before Phemonoe is forced into the act of prophecy, however, she tries to divert the request for an oracle, but both her attempt at persuasion and her falsified prophecy fail. Phemonoe acts out of fear (pavidam … vatem, 5.124) and constructs a trick (cassa fraude, 5.130) to turn Appius away: she claims that the Delphic oracle is silent, with its god gone, trapped, or unwilling to speak to contemporary petitioners (5.130–140). While Phemonoe's gambit may allude to clever/threatening women in epic,²⁷ Lucan immediately reverses the effect of her trick so that her own fear convinced her of the oracle's power.

In her next attempt to keep herself separate from the oracle, she partially enters the temple and pretends to be receiving a vision from the god:

                    Illa pavens adyti penetrale remotifatidicum prima templorum in parte resistitatque deum simulans sub pectore ficta quietoverba refert, nullo confusae mumure vocisinstinctam sacro mentem testata furore,haud aeque laesura ducem cui falsa canebatquam tripodas Phoebique fidem.

(Luc. 5.146–152)

Fearing the inner room of the remote adyton, she resists the prophet in the first part of the temple and, imitating the god, speaks false words from her undisturbed breast, proving by no utterance of disturbed voice that her mind is impelled by sacred madness. She is not as likely to harm the general to whom she was reciting false words as the tripods and credibility of Phoebus.

Her words, however, lack the sublime sound of the true oracle, and her trick is revealed. Phemonoe is one in a long tradition of women who acted as the Pythia, a title held first by another Phemonoe (Strabo 9.3.5), [End Page 65] whose name's allusions to both speech and perception are apt for an oracle. Lucan recalls Phemonoe's namesake, but also erases her individual identity by making her character a palimpsest of her predecessors and her office. She evokes the allusive tradition of prophetic speech in the mouths of women in poetry, including Cassandra (Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Seneca's Agamemnon) and the Sibyl of Cumae (Vergil's Aeneid). The Pythia, moreover, represents a pattern of inspired prophetic speech in Lucan's poem in which a woman serves as an unwilling conduit for the knowledge imparted by Apollo, speaks, but mainly describes visions forced upon her from an outside source. Her autonomy—of both body and mind—is under threat.

Delphi is a singularity; a lens through which all other parts of time and space become clear. In this presentation, however, it is also a paradox that juxtaposes unity and multiplicity at every level: Delphi's role as a center point in the Hellenic world is contrasted by its identification with Parnassus and the mountain's own duality in its peaks; the Pythia and her vision are a single point encompassing many disparate times and places; the Pythia is also many in one, the Phemonoe of the Bellum Civile and her namesake Phemonoe the first Pythia, individual and institution; finally, the Pythia's interactions with the divine presence at Delphi reveal both its ambiguity (cosmic force and anthropomorphic Apollo) and its force (conduit for prophetic speech and subjugator of the woman who speaks that prophecy). Lucan gives a rare glimpse of two voices from the same woman: Phemonoe's replies to Appius and pleas to Apollo, and the Pythia's recitation of prophecy.

IV. Erictho, Speech, and Power

In her 2000 monograph, Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Space, Stacy Alaimo (2008: 239) argues that "because 'woman' has long been defined in Western thought as a being mired in 'nature' and thus outside the domain of human transcendence, rationality, subjectivity, and agency, most feminist theory has worked to disentangle 'woman' from 'nature.'" Erictho seems an ideal exemplum of the foundations of and challenges to this association of woman with nature.²⁸ The [End Page 66] composition of book 6—excursus on Thessaly's history (6.333–412), introduction of Thessalian magoi and their abilities (6.430–506), Erictho and the necromancy (6.507–830)—creates a clear identification between women and landscape, yet Erictho remains distinct from the other Thessalicae, the magic-using women of Thessaly.

Before the poem's climactic point at the battle of Pharsalus, the narrator describes the Roman factions camped in Thessaly. Pompey's son, Sextus, seeks out knowledge of the future, but avoids oracles at Delos, Delphi, and Dodona (6.425–427) as well as haruspexy, augury, and astrological interpretation (6.427–430). According to Sextus, Erictho, as a Thessalian magos, can both know and affect Fate (populis quae pandere fata / quaeque suo ventura potes devertere cursu, 6.590–591). This second part of her characterization gives her the true autonomy that the matrona and Phemonoe lack, it corresponds to the roots of her power, and it underlies the fear she inspires in others. Erictho is not horrific only because she robs graves, mutilates corpses, and speaks in tongues; she is horrific because she retains her own agency and power in her engagement with a non-anthropocentric cosmos.

Erictho's expression of power in the world of the poem must be considered in light of her gender. Beyond her outsider status in relation to Rome and even to her own regional community, gender dynamics and power dynamics are in dialogue in Lucan's portrayal of Erictho. The poet furnishes Erictho with an incredible ability to act, speak, and know, so that she becomes both the mouthpiece for the poet himself and poetic facilitator of prophecy.²⁹ As a poetic alter ego for Lucan, Erictho's powerful speech hints at the power and threat Lucan's poetry might have intended towards Nero (Celotto 2018: 641; cf. Quint 2020: 8).

Erictho's connection to the natural world is one of the key elements of her power. To interpret Erictho in relation to her environment is fairly straightforward, because Lucan makes a point to describe the landscape of Thessaly and then to tie together the land and its inhabitants with a catalogued history of violence. The deep history of Thessaly begins with seeds of war sown into the land (hac tellure feri micuerunt semina Martis, 6.395) and the autochthonic growth of the war horse as a harbinger of future violence (Thessalicus sonipes, bellis feralibus omen, / exiluit, 6.397–398). Inhabitants are already poised for war: Argonauts, Giants, [End Page 67] and Centaurs sprout like seedlings and like plants absorb the tainted nutrients of the land in which they grow. Among these inhabitants are the magicians—sometimes called witches in translation or scholarship—whom Lucan introduces soon after:

                                    Vanum saevumque furoremadiuvat ipse locus vicinaque moenia castrisHaemonidum, ficti quas nulla licentia monstritransierit, quarum quidquid non creditur ars est.Thessala quin etiam tellus herbasque nocentesrupibus ingenuit sensuraque saxa canentesarcanum ferale magos.

(Luc. 6.434–440)

The place itself supports [Sextus Pompey's] empty, savage madness, as do the cities of Haemonians near the camps, cities which no free rein of made-up monstrosity may surpass, and whose skill is whatever is not believed. In fact the Thessalian land gave birth to noxious grasses on its cliffs and stones that perceive the magicians singing their deadly secret.

Lucan distinguishes between place (ipse locus) and environment (Thessala … tellus), but connects them via the sense of agency granted to the earth when it gives birth (ingenuit) to harmful plants. The metaphor of birth for sprouting also implicitly figures the earth as female.³⁰

The magicians, identified by Lucan with the plural feminine adjective Thessalicae, have their established connection to the environment in which they live;³¹ they take from it (gathering herbs, plants, poisons) and give back to it by changing it. These magicians have the power to cause natural processes to cease:

Cessavere vices rerum, dilataque longahaesit nocte dies. legi non paruit aether,torpuit et praeceps audito carmine mundus,axibus et rapidis impulsos Iuppiter urguensmiratur non ire polos.

(Luc. 6.461–465) [End Page 68]

Natural processes stopped, and the day, delayed by long night, stands still. The ether did not obey the law, the hasty universe slowed down when the spell was heard, and Jupiter, urging on the sky driven on whirling axles, marvels that it does not go.

More extensively, a Thessalian magos can also change the winds, halt waterfalls, cause rivers to flow uphill, change the courses of rivers (no Nile flood, Maeander no longer meanders), level mountains and raise valleys, and is able to out-predator or out-venom tigers, lions, and snakes (6.465–491). We could read these abilities as poetic affectation for weather or landscape or natural disasters, but what an ecofeminist reading shows is the substitution of human abilities for environmental processes or, perhaps, the absorbing of the human into the natural, thus disrupting the dualist pattern of human vs. nature.

Lucan presents Erictho's power as guided and represented by her speech. In addition to direct speech, the poet also identifies the songs or spells of Erictho and the other magoi in Thessaly as carmina. Of course, carmen draws attention in a metapoetic sense, prompting readers to consider the spell as carmen within the context of the epic poem as carmen. The spells sung by Erictho and her like are in the majority, though, occurring twice as often as any other use of carmen in the Bellum Civile. Erictho and the other Thessalian magic practitioners sing carmina fourteen times,³² compared to seven other uses, of which three are prophecy sung by the Cumaean Sibyl (1.564, 5.138, 8.824), another is the Sibylline books (1.599), two are epic poetry (1.66, 1.449), and one is a spell sung by a member of the Psylli (9.927). Neither Phemonoe nor the Roman matrona speak carmina.

The carmina sung by Thessalian magicians like Erictho can interrupt, reverse, or otherwise alter natural processes, adding an active component to the observation and knowledge of the world involved in speaking prophecy.³³ Whereas the matrona seems to fly over the world and Phemonoe observes the vastness of the cosmos, a Thessalian can enact change with her spells. A voice is the source of a power significant enough to bring the universe to a halt (torpuit et praeceps audito carmine mundus, [End Page 69] 6.463) or turn back the ocean's tides (impulsam sidere Tethyn / reppulit Haemonium … carmen, 6.479–480). Even a reading of these references as poetic affectation for weather, landscape, or natural disasters makes clear that a character like Erictho has the power to affect the environment on a massive scale. The connection between Thessalian magoi and natural processes allows influence to move in both directions, but also implies an understanding of the world, humanity's role in the cosmos, and how both function together.

Erictho stands out among the Thessalicae, considering their abilities to be too holy (nimiae pietatis, 6.508). Although the poet describes Erictho moving about through necropoleis and battlefields, she is most closely linked to the place where she performs the necromancy. There, in praeceps subsedit humus ("the earth sinks down into a precipice," 6.643) almost to the depths of the underworld. The cavern is dark, covered by a dense forest (nullo vertice caelum / suspiciens Phoebo non pervia taxus opacat, 6.644–645), and oppressive, with no moving air currents (non Taenariis sic faucibus aer / sedit iners, 6.648–649). This cavern in which Erictho performs her work seems to be an environmental reflection of Erictho herself.³⁴ Lucan tells us that her face is profanae / foeda situ macies ("gaunt and foul with decay: unknown to clear sky," 6.515–516), echoing the inability of Phoebus (the sun) to reach the depths of the cavern. Likewise, her face is terribilis Stygio facies pallore gravatur / impexis onerata comis ("weighed down by Stygian pallor, burdened with uncombed hair," 6.517–518), recalling the Stygian shades in close proximity to the cavern (Stygias … umbras, 6.653), itself pale (pallens, 6.646) with decay (situs, 6.647). The matted hair covering Erictho's face (comis) looks back to the drooping leaves (comis, 6.644) of the forest. While Lucan seemed to disrupt the human/nature binary with the Thessalicae, with Erictho he doubles down on it, identifying the human with the environment. Or, perhaps, it may be more useful to employ Alaimo's theory of trans-corporeality, in which the line between human and nature blurs and both human and environment can affect each other (Alaimo 2008: 238). We might even read Erictho's corrupting breath (non letiferas spirando perdidit auras, 6.522) as taking the place in the still cave of the kinds of breezes sometimes associated with entrances to the underworld. Earlier, [End Page 70] we saw the inhabitants of Thessaly soak up evil like plants from their roots; here, Erictho exudes it from within herself as breath and speech.

In subsequent descriptions of Erictho's person, the darkness of the cavern and the darkness of night when she moves about are linked to her magic as well. The cloud obscuring her head (maestum tecta caput squalenti nube, 6.625) recalls the clouds that cover the stars (nimbus et atrae / sidera subducunt nubes, 6.518–519). Her maestum head as she wanders the battlefield may allude to the grieving matronae at the temples as recalled by a Roman elder in book 2 (2.28–29), though with a Lucanian substitution of sacred for profane space.

Erictho's potentially world-altering speech overlaps with her speech as it is linked to knowledge of Fate. While Thessalian magoi and Erictho have great power over nature and its constituent parts, they are not omnipotent. Erictho herself concedes that while she and her kind can delay death and aging in individual cases, affecting the fate of a single person (6.607–610), events that involve humanity as a whole are controlled by larger forces. Plus Fortuna potest ("Fortune is more powerful," 6.615), particularly when considering time and events on a cosmic scale. In Erictho's words, this spatial-temporal totality is the causarum series (6.612), the series of cause and event linking past to present to future. The phrase echoes rerum series (5.179), the series of events made visible to Phemonoe, when under Apollo's influence. Likewise, both causarum series and rerum series recall the fatorum series (1.70), the chain of events or chain of Fate, that Lucan uses to set up the seemingly inexorable slide into civil conflict in the proem. Causal interconnection gives structure to the poetic cosmos of the Bellum Civile³⁵ and lends greater significance to other connected systems, including the vices rerum ("natural processes," 6.461) over which the Thessalians have some measure of power.

In light of the nexus of reality, knowledge of reality, and access to that knowledge, the narrator's introduction to the second book of the poem stands out. This book picks up immediately after the matrona's vision, when the poet sees the cosmos giving portents of war (manifestaque belli / signi dedit mundus, 2.1–2) and rather than cataloguing individual signs, focuses on the changing interactions between nature and reality: foedera rerum / praescia monstrifero vertit natura tumultu / indixitque [End Page 71] nefas ("prescient nature turned over the laws of reality with a disturbance full of portents, and announced nefas," 2.2–4). Where nature overturns its own systems (foedera rerum) and declares civil war (nefas) in book two, by the time the poet turns attention to Erictho in book six, she seems to have assumed a parallel role. As a Thessalian magos, she can halt natural processes (cessavere vices rerum) and later during the necromancy itself, she makes it conditional that the underworld powers she invokes will hear her words if her mouth—and thus her speech—is polluted enough for them (si vos satis ore nefando / pollutoque voco, 6.706–707).

For Erictho's mouth to be nefandus and her voice to be polluted sets quite a contrast to the relatively unmarked speech of the matrona and Phemonoe. Although Phemonoe, before speaking as the oracle, groans and mutters (gemitus … clara … / murmura, 5.191–192) in accompaniment with the mournful howling of the cave (maestus … ululatus, 5.192), words spoken in her voice are still human (sonant … voces, 5.193) before the oracle takes over. Erictho combines unspeakable spells (infando … carmine, 6.682; cantu … Haemonio, 6.693–694) with a cacophonous range of non-human vocalizations that are dissona et humanae multum discordia linguae ("dissonant and greatly inharmonious with human language," 6.687). This polyphony of animalistic utterances and nature sounds taken to the level of the sublime give her single voice an element of horror.³⁶ She seems inhuman, but the poet reminds us that her single voice was the source (tot rerum vox una fuit, 6.693). Rather than the knowledge or communication coming from an external source (from Apollo or from signs in nature, for example), Erictho creates these vocalizations as part of her incantation (excantare, 6.686). These noises as well as the invocation of underworld powers are all performed willingly.

Since ecofeminism examines nonhuman beings in the environment as well, the striking and repeated association between Thessalicae and animals—and between Erictho and animals—can also inform our analysis of Lucan's depiction of Erictho's vatic role. Snakes or serpents seem to be favorites of the poet, showing up several times in his descriptions of Erictho's clothing (6.654–656), the powers of the Thessalicae (6.489–491), the necromancy rite, and later, most notably, in an extended and violent episode in book 9. The distinction the poet sets up between the Thessalicae and Erictho in terms of how they relate to their environments [End Page 72] continues in their relation with animals. The Thessalicae show an affinity for deadly animals and seem to exceed certain apex predators (tigers, lions, venomous snakes) in their deadliness (6.485–491). But while animals fear the Thessalicae (pavet Haemonias, 6.486), they flee from Erictho: continuo fugere lupi, fugere revulsis / unguibus impastae volucres, dum Thessala vatem eligit ("the wolves fled, the vultures, unfed, fled with talons torn free, while the Thessalian selects her prophet," 6.627–628). A common thread of ecofeminist scholarship—the attention to the historical subjugation of "the earth and the female"—can shed some light here, especially in comparison to the unwilling speakers of divinely-controlled prophecy examined earlier. The poet classes the Thessalicae as city-dwellers, but consistently describes them as women. Erictho is solitary. The only men in sight are the corpses of the dead on the battlefield and the Roman visitors led by Sextus Pompey. At no point do any of the Thessalicae or Erictho seem to be under the power of anyone but themselves, and in fact, seem to possess the ability to alter the very fabric of the world. Erictho's animalistic or inhuman aspects both connect her to the earth and do so in a way that the poet depicts as horrifying because she is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Likewise, her carmina threaten to overtake the role and power of Apollo's or even, perhaps, of the poet himself.

Stacy Alaimo's theory of trans-corporeality is also relevant here. It deals with more than contiguous or neighboring bodies: it blurs the line between the categories of human/self and environment/other (Alaimo 2008: 238), thus providing a resonance for Erictho's blurring with her environment that does not rely solely on the human vs. nature dichotomy. For Erictho, this blurring between human and non-human eventually centers on her willingness and ability to transgress past what we might call the "natural order." From early in her characterization, she—horrifyingly—takes corpses when she can get them and creates them when she cannot:

Et quotiens saevis opus est ac fortibus umbrisipsa facit manes. hominum mors omnis in usu est.Illa genae florem primaevo corpore vulsit,illa comam laeva morienti abscidit ephebo.

(Luc. 6.560–563)

And whenever there is a need for savage and strong shades, she makes ghosts. Every human death is in her use. She tears the cheek's bloom from a youthful body, she cuts away hair from a dying youth with her left hand. [End Page 73]

She disrupts the rhythm of birth, growth and death, taking babies from the womb, and gathering young men's first facial hair, symbolic of their maturing. In her treatment of the body she chooses for the necromancy, however, Erictho herself takes on the role of subjugator of natural processes and natural resources. The list of fantastical ingredients make up a potion that, along with spells (carmina), Erictho uses to reanimate the cadaver and recall its spirit, reversing the process of death. And while Erictho still seems non-human, she is certainly not animalistic, since the many animal parts that make up the potion read like a strange and distasteful catalog of exotic foods for the Roman table (cf. Luc. 10.155–171). There might be a paradox here: Erictho as identified with her environment, but Erictho as subjugator of environment? Lucan's text certainly contains paradoxes, but this may also be pushing the limits of ecofeminist analysis.

Likewise, she maintains control over the act of prophecy during the necromancy itself. She invokes the underworld gods to grant her a soul (6.712–718) by making commands (exaudite, 6.706; parete, 6.711). After invoking the underworld gods to grant her a soul, Erictho uses the reanimated corpse of a soldier as a conduit to recite (canat, 6.717) the prophetic knowledge her powers can access. Her own speech is what prompts and enables the soldier to speak: when he remains silent (sed murmure nullo / ora astricta sonant, 6.760–761), she commands him to speak ('dic' inquit Thessala 'magna, / quod iubeo, mercede mihi … ', 6.762–763), she offers him protection in the underworld through her spells (Stygio cum carmine, 6.766), and then with her words grants him access to the knowledge necessary to answer her requests (addidit et carmen, quo, quidquid consulit, umbram / scire dedit, 6.775–776). The parallel power dynamics between (on one hand) Apollo and the matrona or Phemonoe and (on the other) Erictho and the reanimated corpse are clear, though the poet emphasizes the central role of Erictho's voice in crafting prophetic speech through necromancy. She neither inhabits nor interprets the corpse's words, but rather speaks into being an opportunity for them to exist.

V. Conclusion

This paper began with an explanation of the development of ecofeminism in order to give depth to the complex ideas that contribute to trans-corporeality. The twenty-first-century interpretive context, however, strikes its own contrast to the compositional context of the poem itself. The words of the matrona, of Phemonoe, and of Erictho, like the characters [End Page 74] themselves, exist within the world of the poem, so Lucan's poetic authority informs everything about them. Lucan's text is very much a product of its time,³⁷ and Lucan himself would have possessed the cultural knowledge of mid-first-century imperial Rome and, more locally, the influence of those closest to him. The characters in his poem, then, should be understood in this context as well. Scholars have argued for his uncle Seneca's influence on the philosophical aspects of the poem.³⁸ But is there anything of a woman's voice in the poem itself? Though some information about the poem's composition is known (e.g., in Roche 2020: 17–19), little to no evidence can truly answer that question. Authors and thinkers in later centuries credited Polla Argentaria, Lucan's wife, with influence ranging from inspiration to editorial control, though the origins of this tradition are unclear.³⁹ Our knowledge of Polla comes primarily from sources that postdate Lucan's death by decades: Statius, Silvae 2.7 (the Genethliacon Lucani ad Pollam), and four poems by Martial (e.g., Ep. 10.64). Polla was, at that time, a patron of the arts herself and a woman who embodied many of the "more conventional female virtues: … chastity, beauty, simplicity, kindness, charm, and grace" (Hemelrijk 2015: 300). Her patronage of literature implies her own education on the topic, while still framing her within the proper role of the Roman matrona (George 2015: 1053). The exemplary ideal of womanhood—and its inverse negative presentation—were also deliberately embodied by the women of the imperial household, a project established as early as Augustus' time (Mordine 2013: 103). During Lucan's lifetime, Agrippina the Younger, mother of Nero, maneuvered skillfully to establish her own power within the imperial household, independently from his husband Claudius and later in tandem with her son Nero. Her negative exemplarity in literary sources casts her as immoral in comparison to the "positive Roman female type: the nurturing materfamilias, the faithful wife, the subservient woman" (Mordine 2013: 109). On a cultural level, Lucan would have been aware of Agrippina's power and its social acceptability; [End Page 75] on a personal level, Polla Argentaria's literary education must have carried some weight. And while the personal is more obscure, arguments can be made for the cultural influences within the poem. So in the same way Lucan's statesmen and soldiers reflect conventional masculine virtues—or a striking lack thereof—, his matronae and prophetesses also measure up against certain expectations.

Prophecy through women's voices in Lucan is tied closely to agency and power: the matrona, Phemonoe, and Erictho all speak (we even get the conversational ait for all three). The matrona and the Pythia both describe a vision Apollo forces them to see. Erictho takes over the position of the god, creating her own conduit for prophecy, which comes through the voice of the reanimated corpse. Erictho, however, is subversive:⁴⁰ she could change the course of nature, and therefore disrupt the interpretation of portents. She even seems to have some power over the gods, and the poet claims they fear her. While she does not confront Apollo, at least as the poem stands (incomplete at 9.5 books), Erictho seems to get the last word on inspired prophecy. As readers, the main way we see her change the processes of nature is actually in her reanimation of the corpse, an event which taps into the knowledge and communication about past and future events that seems to be possible in the underworld.⁴¹

In Lucan's poem, the unease Erictho evokes runs deeper and is more insidious than horror at her abjection.⁴² Not only can she access knowledge about Fate that is supposedly beyond human means to grasp, but with her speech (her carmina), Lucan offers the possibility that she could change it. In her speech is her power and thus the very thing that makes her threatening and dangerous. Erictho presents a threat to the order of reality (series rerum) not because of whether she can change the course of events or not, but because she seems to her audience like she could. In a poem focused on a civil war and on the breakdown of societal, natural, and even linguistic order, the kind of threat Erictho and her speech represents is existential.⁴³ [End Page 76]

Ecofeminist theoretical tools draw on "the value of interdependence and diversity of all life forms" and on "the insights of a social analysis of women's oppression that intersects with other oppressions" (Mack-Canty 2004: 169; cf. Lahar 1991: 42), and thus translate effectively into the analysis of a poem in which the world is interconnected and the Roman characters in that world cannot escape the consequences of civil conflict. This discordia, like the "trans-corporeal transits of toxicity seem to spare no place and no body" (Cielemęcka and Åsberg 2019: 102; cf. Alaimo 2008). For the matrona, Phemonoe, and Erictho, we can read environmentally and gender-based depictions of power and subjugation within the poem's larger narrative of civil conflict. Lucan's poem should not be considered proto-feminist,⁴⁴ but the ecofeminist lens helps bring into focus interactions between gender, power, and environment, and adds yet another layer to Erictho's horror in context. Erictho remains simultaneously a stand-in for the male poet's perspective and a fearsome phantom representing the threat of a powerful, vociferous woman to the established patriarchal and imperial order.

The transformations of historical figures and events in Lucan's poem are anchored by contemporary modes of thought and cultural values. The Roman matrona in her anonymity represents her whole social category. The Pythia, though named, is one in a long line of women who shared the same title through the centuries. Erictho—powerful woman and non-Roman—is not the voice of a community. Her portrayal is indeed monstrous, but she embodies the inextricable connection between environment and individual. The activism and pursuit of eco-justice that still constitute parts of the ecofeminist movement seem perhaps an odd juxtaposition to Erictho. Her voice and agency, however, clarify and amplify some of the questions of justice and virtue that the poem as a whole asks. If the civil wars, Lucan-style, are an apocalyptic breakdown of social, political, and cosmic order—and thus a breakdown of virtue, of religion, of understanding of Rome's place in the world—then what is more monstrous: Erictho or the broken system she meets? [End Page 77]