The Appropriate Goddess. The Role of Erichtho in Lucan’s Pharsalia
The Appropriate Goddess. The Role of Erichtho in Lucan’s Pharsalia

Summary/Abstract: Unlike classic war epics such as the Iliad or Virgil’s Aeneid, whose heroes fight against external enemies, Lucan’s Pharsalia tells the story of a civil conflict. This circumstance makes it virtually impossible to include any gods in the action of the poem, as doing so would require them to take sides in the conflict, which would be highly inappropriate. Therefore, inspired perhaps by Aristophanes (or drawing on his own powers of invention), Lucan substituted the ‘traditional’ Graeco‑Roman deities with the Thessalian necromancer Erichtho – who, though human, turns out to be more powerful than the gods themselves. Endowed with qualities that mirror those of the Civil War itself – as well as supernatural powers and a sinister kind of creativity (by means of which she destroys life in order to create death) – Erichtho proves to be the only appropriate ‘divine’ patron for an epic about civil conflict and – in effect – may be seen as an allegorical ‘goddess’ of the Civil War.

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