A prayer for war against strangers

Rome on the eve of civil war. The matrons pray — and ask for the exact opposite of what prayer always asks.

Non pacem petimus, superi — we do not ask for peace, you gods above. What follows is a list of disasters requested in earnest: rage for the nations, savage cities roused, the world conspiring in arms, the Medes pouring down from Achaemenid Susa. The Parthians, who destroyed Crassus at Carrhae, are summoned against Italy as the lesser evil.

And the logic is unanswerable. Any war is better than the one beginning, because in any other war Romans would be killing someone who is not Roman. The women praying have not lost their reason — they have correctly assessed the choice left to them.

This is Lucan entire. His poem is built on inverted piety: rites are performed backwards, the gods are absent, and prayer turns out to be the only form in which despair can be uttered while still speaking Roman. This stanza is its specimen.