While it is no secret that Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica explores civil-war themes at great length, the conflicts arising on the island of Peuce between the Colchians and the Argonauts and within the Argonautic party itself in the epic's final book (8.217–467) have been overlooked in critical studies of Valerian civil war. This article argues that Valerius presents the conflicts on Peuce as examples of civil war—emphasizing the bonds of kinship between the conflicting parties and illustrating effects of this discord using imagery of stasis and cosmic dissolution associated with civil war in the wider Latin literary tradition—and thus invites reflection on the development and manifestation of internecine strife within the Argonautica.

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This article examines the Bellum Civile's presentation and provocation of experiences that we might now consider to be uncanny. The first section offers an overview of the uncanny from psychoanalysis to literary and aesthetic criticism and outlines the framework through which I will approach the Bellum Civile's uncanny elements. The second section discusses how we may use this model of the uncanny to explore how Lucan represents his internal characters' incomprehension, confusion, and a lack of physical mastery when faced with the reality of civil war. The final section will consider how these uncanny experiences are projected beyond the page through the metonymic use of nefas (crime/horror), Lucan's overarching civil war signifier.

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