Lucan's Bellum Ciuile and the Epic Genre
This thesis demonstrates that Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile takes epic to a new level, testing the generic paradigm, because Rome’s civil war is a new subject for epic poetry. Lucan’s epic presents civil war as the self-destruction of republican Rome, and close reading reveals the poem’s intricate relationship with Homeric, Virgilian and Ovidian epic. We see that it changes and exaggerates characteristic tropes of the genre, by techniques such as delay, digression and frequent intervention by a complex narrator / persona, whose dramatic intrusions are like the speeches of characters in a tragedy. Such a politically risky subject, a type of impious war where Romans fight against and kill Romans, necessitates a long preamble and an insistent narrator’s voice to justify poetic commemoration of such a crime. 
Unlike earlier epic where civil war is rare or treated only as an unfortunate but necessary prelude to peace, Lucan’s poem is wholly taken up with this type of internecine war, the civil war between Caesar and Pompey. It also includes the civil wars of Marius and Sulla, introduced as a mise en abyme to intensify this subject, which suggests the predictability of recurring civil war and ideas of persistent political instability. Lucan’s poem offers a detailed portrayal of the sea-battle at Massilia, and paradoxically, this inventive battle is the most ‘epic’ of its civil war battles, because many conventions of epic land battles are applied to this conflict on ships. Lucan’s sea-battle re-presents and revitalises epic topoi by their new location, the sea. 
The episode concerning Hercules and Antaeus is also an example of a mise en abyme, reflecting the focus of Lucan’s poem, the idea that civil war degrades both sides equally. It argues that the wrestling match between Hercules and Antaeus illustrates how participants in combat become similar and assume corresponding characteristics. This episode shows how the poem interacts with its own past battle narrative, relates to accounts of conflict in earlier epic, and reflects Roman gladiatorial spectacle. Lucan’s paradoxical poem presents the battle at Pharsalus more symbolically than a typical epic battle narrative. Rhetorical praeteritio of the unspeakable wounds, weapons and forms of death in civil war draws a parallel between the human body and the state of Rome. 
Lucan’s epic stretches the limits of the genre to overcome the difficulty of recounting Romans fighting against fellow Romans in civil war and demonstrates that there is more to this type of war than blood and guts and gruesome mutilation. Lucan’s poem is evidence for how much has been and how much more can be articulated through the language and tropes of epic.
Statius and Epic Games: Sport, Politics and Poetics in the Thebaid
Introduction 1. The chariot race: epic games and real games 2. The running: audiences 3. The discus: gigantomachy 4. The boxing: national identity 5. The wrestling: bodies 6. The sword fight: games and war 7. The archery: controlling the narrative Conclusion.
Roman Culture and Society: Collected Papers
Prodigy lists and the use of the "Annales Maximi" L.Crassus and Cicero - the formation of a statesman the literary sources for the pre-Marian army Cicero the historian and Cicero the antiquarian Scipio, Laelius, Furius and the ancestral religion the eastern "Clientelae" of Clodius and the Claudii the interpretation of Cicero's "De Legibus" religion and politics in the late second century BC at Rome Caesar's heritage - Hellenistic kings and their Roman equals architecture and sculpture - the activities of the Cossutii the Ciceronian aristocracy and its properties "Homo Novus Arpinas ex M.Crassi familia" more on the "Clientelae" of the patrician Claudii the first Latin annalists the identity problems of Q.Cornificius Caesar, Etruria, and the "Disciplina Etrusca" the introduction of logical organization in Roman prose literature M.Aeficius Calvinus and his "grammaticus" Caerellii, Juno Populona, and Aquinum L.Cornelius Sisenna and the early first century BC chariot-racing in the Roman Republic history, historiography, and Cicero's "exposito consiliorum" "Crassorum Funera" the life and death of Asclepiades of Bithynia Cicero and the Areopagus theatrical life in Republican Rome and Italy Cassius and Brutus - the memory of the Liberators "Discrimina Ordinum" - the "Lex Julia Theatralis" Sallust on the '80s "Speciosa locis morataque recte" the antiquarian tradition - spoils and representations of foreign armour.