In Lucan’s Bellum Civile (the epic also known as Pharsalia), Nigidius Figulus predicts the outcome of the struggle between Julius Caesar and Pompey through a series of learned observations of the heavens. He notes Mars’s dominant position in the sky and the brightness of Orion’s sword. The upshot is grim. Rome is about to succumb to harrowing civil war: ‘The power of...
The Roman Republic of Letters: Scholarship, Philosophy and Politics in the Age of Cicero and Caesar by Katharina Volk. For the Roman senatorial elite, networks of knowledge production were also social networks. They read each other’s work, lent each other books and discussed philological and philosophical matters. Caesar dedicated De Analogia to Cicero; Varro dedicated a book on Roman antiquities to Caesar; Brutus dedicated De Virtute to Cicero; and Cicero dedicated work to friends including Brutus and Varro.
