This article identifies a potential authorial signature in the opening lines of Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile. The adjacent letters LVCAN appear in a central position of emphasis in the poem’s first two lines and constitute the core of a signature that can be extended in multiple directions to form longer intexts such as LVCANI SVM (‘I am Lucan’s’), LV(canus) AN(naeus) M(arcus), LVCANI MVSIS (‘with the Muses of Lucan’) and LVCANI M. VIS CERA DEXTRA (‘the power of M. Lucanus with his right hand on the wax’, or ‘the power of M. Lucanus on the wax on the right-hand side’). The article proposes that this multiform signature is accompanied by signposts to help identify it and that it engages with models of such wordplay in Aratus, Lucretius, Virgil and Ovid.
