- heu, quantum terrae potuit pelagique parari
- hoc quem civiles hauserunt sanguine dextrae,
- unde venit Titan et nox ubi sidera condit
- quaque dies medius flagrantibus aestuat horis
- et qua bruma rigens ac nescia vere remitti
- astringit Scythico glacialem frigore pontum!
Oh, how much land and sea could have been acquired
by this blood which the right hands of citizens have spilled,
[in the regions] whence Titan comes and where the night hides the stars
and where midday boils with flaming hours
and where winter, stiff and ignorant of its release by spring,
makes the icy sea to contract with Scythian cold!
Notes: Lucan follows his questions in 8-12 with a lamenting exclamation. The exclamation is connected to the question by the repeated image of blood. The blood (cruorem) that the Romans offer to ‘hated nations’ for free (i.e., they get nothing for it) is the same blood (sanguine) that they could have used to ‘buy’ (cf. the old commentary on Book 1 by Heitland and Haskins, available on Google Books, where parari is glossed as comparari = ‘bought’) a great deal of land and sea (terrae…pelagique).
The Roman empire, in fact, could have been enlarged in all four cardinal directions of the map: east (l.15) (Titan, which can be used to refer to the sun-god–see L&S s.v. Titan B: the ‘orginal’ Titan is the son of Coelus and Vesta and the older brother of Saturn, and ancestor of the Titans; the sun-god is the grandson of Titan and the son of Hyperion); west (l.15) (that is, the land of the sunset and darkness); south (l.16); and north (ll.17-18). Each item in the list undergoes expansion: the first is three words and fills 2 1/2 feet; the second is five words (including the connective) and fills up the rest of that line; the third is six words and fills a whole line; and the fourth is 13 words and fills two entire lines. In the last image, that of the north, one can almost picture the sea in humanized fashion, drawing all it parts close together as a defense against the cold.
I like parari as comparari. I always remind my Vergil students to keep its compounds in mind when a simple verb is encountered.
Also (and maybe this is too obvious to mention) the bella plus quam civilia in which Rome gutted herself with her own dextra is to be contrasted with civiles dextrae.
So far Lucan strikes me as highly rhetorical and quite clear. Keep it up. This is fun.
Yes, I think that the repetition of dextra in close connection with a form of civilis is important. I’m not sure that there’s very much that is too obvious to mention–it seems to me that often the ‘obvious’ is assumed or read past and not given its due weight. Something often is not any less significant for its obviousness. And in this particular case, I had missed it until you pointed it out!