The meaning of Petronius’ Bellum civile as a reaction to Lucan is one of the greatest conundrums of both the Satyricon and the Latin epic. Petronius’ portrayal of the epic deorum ministeria in the inverted universe of the bellum civile reflects the “civil war theology”, the highly topical literary theme following Lucan’s Pharsalia. This book focuses on the role of the gods at the outbreak of the conflict, the deconstruction of the traditional divine apparatus, the ambivalent status of the “hero” Caesar and the paradoxes of the epic voice of the poeta furens Eumolpus. In this investigation it is necessary above all to unfold the poem’s sophisticated intertextuality. It turns out that models such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses have been underestimated and the connections to other texts [such as the Flavian epics] must be viewed in a new interpretive framework. Far from being a “marginal” text, Petronius’ Bellum civile offers a most valuable perspective on the development of Roman epic, both shedding light on the tensions embedded in the Augustan classics and emblematically embodying the crisis of the epic form after Lucan’s revolution.weiterlesen