"As Lucan Says": Dante's Reuse of the Bellum Civile in the Monarchia and the Political Epistles

Abstract

Much has been written about Lucan's presence in Dante's works, especially in the Divina Commedia. The vernacular Dante is, indeed, the medieval author whose reception of the Bellum civile has been investigated the most thoroughly. 1 Between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, scholars such as Moore, Belloni, Proto, and Ussani produced a series of detailed surveys on the topic; 2 from the 1960s onwards, Paratore, Marsili, and others developed this basis, highlighting that Dante's imitation of Lucan's poem involves structural affinities that go beyond formal reverberations. 3 Many later scholarly works focus on Dante's treatment of Caesar and Cato, who in the Commedia are described in keeping with Lucan's text. 4 Similarly 1 For a bibliographic overview, in addition to the texts cited below,