Richard Garnett and John Percival Postgate

“ Lucan never speaks of himself, but his epic speaks for him. He must have been endowed with no common ambition, industry and self-reliance, an enthusiastic though narrow and aristocratic patriotism, and a faculty for appreciating magnanimity in others. ”

“ Yet these defects, though glaring, are not fatal or peculiar to Lucan. The false taste, the strained rhetoric, the ostentatious erudition, the tedious harangues and far-fetched or commonplace reflections so frequent in this singularly unequal poem, are faults much more irritating, but they are also faults capable of amendment, which the writer might not improbably have removed. Great allowance should also be made in the case of one who is emulating predecessors who have already carried art to its last perfection. Lucan’s temper could never have brooked mere imitation ”

“ The Pharsalia is not true to history, but it cannot shake off its shackles, and is rather a metrical chronicle than a true epic. If it had been completed according to the author’s design, Pompey, Cato and Brutus must have successively enacted the part of nominal hero, while the real hero is the arch-enemy of liberty and Lucan, Caesar. ”