ABSTRACT
Lucan’s Bellum civile, written in the first century CE, contains the startling suggestion that the notorious inhabitants of Cilicia, pirates and Isaurians alike, at some future time might be integrated into society and transformed into participating members of the Roman Empire: Itque Cilix iusta, non iam pirata, carina, “And now Cilicia no longer a pirate, sets forth in legal ships of war.”1 The Oxford Classical Dictionary indicates that despite the “bizarre effects and farfetched paradoxes” that abound in Lucan’s works, he displays “notable instances of penetrating insight.”2 Yet Lucan’s vision of transformation ran as much counter to the Roman perception of the inhabitants of Cilicia as it does to the position of current scholarship regarding the Isaurians.
