What metaphors are used in The Pharsalia by Lucan?

The metaphor of the sacred wound, as the Massiliotes' speech would lead us to suspect, is paramount to the meaning of Book 3. The sacred wounds are the wounds to the divine tree, the murder of Pompey, the wounds suffered by all those who fight, and the wounds to the body politic. They are sacred in the most fundamental way, for the violator, no less than the violated, is set apart: both are sacer, both are part of a sacred rite. They form the metaphor with which Lucan shapes his epic view of the events of the Civil Wars. Though sacrilegious in the extreme, these wars were nevertheless necessary to the divine order (which had already made Rome mistress of the known world) and, therefore, sacred in their very horror.