Lucan

“ We can imagine the feverish delight with which a youth of three and twenty found himself recognised as prince of Roman poets. But Lucan had a spirit of truthfulness in him that pined after better things. At the lectures of Cornutus, in the company of Persius, he caught a glimpse of this higher life. And so behind the showy splendours of his rhetoric there lurks a sadness which tells of a mind not altogether content, a brooding over man's life and its apparent uselessness, which makes us believe that had he lived till middle life he would have struck a lofty vein of noble and earnest song. ”

“ Alas! when detection came; when he saw knights and senators and soldiers sinking all around him into treacherous weakness; when the grim executioner stood at his elbow pointing to the rack, Lucan had none of the inward strength or ennobling convictions which might have enabled him to retain his manhood. Sinking to an incredible depth of baseness, he betrayed the name of his own mother as an accomplice in the plot. His momentary infamy did not save his life, though it must have cost him a pang worse than that of death. Bidden to die, he opened his veins in four places, and went into a hot bath. ”

“ When I consider that Lucan died at twenty-six, I cannot help ranking him among the most extraordinary men that ever lived.— Macaulay.
The whole production (the Pharsalia) is youthful and unripe, but indicative of genuine power.—Teuffel, Schwabe, and Warr, History of Roman Literature, vol. 2, p. 78.
Lucan was born in Spain; was taken early to Rome; was carefully educated; wrote much; and was much admired; but was disliked by Nero, who forbade him to publish poems or recite them, and finally put him to death on the charge of complicity in the conspiracy of Piso. ”

“ Lucan’s oratory, however, frequently approaches the regions of poetry, e.g. the apotheosis of Pompey at the beginning of the ninth book, and the passage in the same book where Cato, in the truest spirit of the Stoic philosophy, refuses to consult the oracle of Jupiter Ammon. Though in many cases Lucan’s rhetoric is frigid, hyperbolical, and out of keeping with the character of the speaker, yet his theme has a genuine hold upon him; in the age of Nero he celebrates the republic as a poet with the same energy with which in the age of Cicero he might have defended it as an orator. ”

“ Here is the satire of Cicero's second Philippic reappearing, but with added bitterness. [44] Being thus without belief in a divine providence, how does Lucan govern the world? By blind fate, or blinder caprice! Fortuna, whom Juvenal ridicules, [45] is the true deity of Lucan. As such she is directly mentioned ninety-one times, besides countless others where her agency is implied. A useful belief for a man like Caesar who fought his way to empire; a most unfortunate conception for an epic poet to build a great poem on. ”

“ I also love Lucan, and willingly read him, not so much for his style, as for his own worth, and the truth and solidity of his opinions and judgments. As for good Terence, the refined elegance and grace of the Latin tongue, I find him admirable in his vivid representation of our manners and the movements of the soul; our actions throw me at every turn upon him; and I cannot read him so often that I do not still discover some new grace and beauty. Such as lived near Virgil's time complained that some should compare Lucretius to him. ”

“ One might think you quite meek, to look at you, whereas, on the contrary, you are very harsh, very tyrannical."
"Ferocious!" said Lucan.
"At any rate, I have no fault to find with you for that. You were right; poor Pierre is too weak with me. I like a man to be a man. And yet he is very brave, is he not?"
"Extremely so," said Lucan; "he is capable of the most energetic actions." ”

“ After a pause:
"Monsieur de Lucan?" resumed Julia.
"Dear madam?"
"Do explain to me in what consist the usages of society; for there are things which I do not understand. Is it admissible—is it proper to allow a woman of my age and a gentleman of yours to return from a ball, tete-a-tete, at two o'clock in the morning?"
"But," said Lucan, not without a certain gravity, "I am not a gentleman; I am your mother's husband."
"Ah! that is true; of course, you are my mother's husband!" she said, emphasizing these words in a ringing voice, which caused Lucan to fear some explosion. ”

“ LUCAN [Marcus Annaeus Lucanus] , (A.D. 39-65) , Roman poet of the Silver Age, grandson of the rhetorician Seneca and nephew of the philosopher, was born at Corduba. His mother was Acilia; his father, Marcus Annaeus Mela, had amassed great wealth as imperial procurator for the provinces. From a memoir which is generally attributed to Suetonius we learn that Lucan was taken to Rome at the age of eight months and displayed remarkable precocity. One of his instructors was the Stoic philosopher, Cornutus, the friend and teacher of Persius. ”

“ He was the nephew of Seneca, and his father was a public servant held in esteem in the city. Our data for a biography of Lucanus are very scanty. He wrote poems before he left Cordova, and encouraged the writing of Latin verse among{86} the Spanish residents. His great work, the Pharsalia, was left unfinished.
Lucan was lauded by Tacitus as a poet. He went to Rome, and it is recorded that he vanquished Nero in one of the poetical tournaments in which that monarch delighted. The egotistic emperor never forgave Lucan for beating him in this literary contest. ”

“ Men might ask what was the use of substituting one actor like Piso for another like Nero, but if a republic was impossible, Lucan felt that no change of a Cæsar could be for the worse, and in his burning hatred promised that he would slay the Emperor with his own hand. ”

“ The version of Lucan is one of the greatest productions of English poetry; for there is, perhaps, none that so completely exhibits the genius and spirit of the original. Lucan is distinguished by a kind of dictatorial or philosophick dignity, rather, as Quintilian observes, declamatory than poetical; full of ambitious morality and pointed sentences, comprised in vigorous and animated lines. This character Rowe has very diligently and successfully preserved. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Death of Persius.
„ 63. Marries Polla Argentaria, a marriage of affection.
„ 64. Nero, from jealousy, forbids Lucan to publish poems or to recite them.
„ 65. Pisonian conspiracy discovered. Lucan compelled to die.
Lucan was a nephew of M. Annaeus Novatus (the Gallio of Acts xviii. 12-17) , and of Seneca, the philosopher and tutor of Nero. ‘Rhetoric and Stoic dogma were the staple of his mental training. For a much-petted, quick-witted youth, plunged into such a society as that of Rome in the first century A.D., hardly any training could be more mischievous. ”

“ Apply thyself to the true riches. It is shameful to depend for a happy life on silver and gold.”
Lucan (39-65 A.D.) , the nephew of Seneca, though born at Cordova, was brought up at Rome, and there became the fellow-pupil and favorite companion of Nero. But the superior genius of the Spanish youth provoked the jealousy of his royal master, who had rather too high an opinion of his own attainments, and was nettled by the public verdict that Lucan, then only twenty-three years of age, was the greatest of living poets. ”

“ Whoever was intended by the poet for his hero, the fact remains that Caesar dominates the poem as none save the hero should do. He is the hero of the Pharsalia as Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost. [276] It is through him above all that Lucan retains our interest. The result is fatal for the proper proportion of the plot. Lucan does not actually alienate our sympathies from the republic, but, whatever our moral judgement on the conflict may be, our interest centres on Caesar, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the true tragedy of the epic would have come with his death. ”

“ May's English and Latin continuations of Lucan belong in part to both these classes. ‘A Continuation of Lucan's Historicall Poem till the death of Julius Cæsar, by T. M.,’ 8vo, 1630, 1633, 1657. ‘His supplement to Lucan,’ says Clarendon, ‘being entirely his own, for the learning, the wit, and the language, may be well looked upon as one of the best dramatic poems in the language’ (Life, i. 32, ed. 1857) . 7. ”

“ As a result, we get long passages that belong to the region of elevated political satire. They are not epic, but they are often magnificent. It is in them that Lucan's political feeling appears at its truest and strongest. [302] The actual fortunes of the republican armies, as recounted by Lucan, must fail to rouse the emotions of the most ardent anti-Caesarian, and it is doubtful whether they would have responded to more skilful treatment. But in the apostrophes grief and indignation can find a voice and stir the heart. They may reveal a monstrous lack of the sense of historical proportion. ”

“ In discussing political and social questions Lucan shows considerable insight. He could not, any more than his contemporaries, understand that the old oligarchy was an anachronism; that the stubborn pride of its votaries needed the sword to break it. But the influence of individual genius is well pourtrayed by him, and he seizes character with a vigorous grasp. As a partisan of the senate, he felt bound to exalt Pompey; but if we judge by his own actions and his own words, not by the encomiums heaped on him by the poet, Lucan's Pompey comes very near the genuine historical man. ”

“ Compare the passage in Tacitus, "Histories", ii., 45, in which the historian describes how the troops of Otho and Vitellius wept over each other after the battle and deplored the miseries of a civil war. "Victi victoresque in lacrumas effusi, sortem civilium armorum misera laetitia detestantes." (11) "Saecula nostra" may refer either to Lucan's own time or to the moment arrived at in the poem; or it may, as Francken suggests, have a more general meaning. (12) "Petenda est"? — "is it fit that you should beg for the lives of your leaders?" ”

“ We find also in Lucan, a contemporary of Nero, a similar display of bombast, which distorts everything great into nonsense. The state of constant outrage in which Rome was kept by a series of blood-thirsty tyrants, gave an unnatural character even to eloquence and poetry. ”

“ 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 father of Lucan, M. Annæus Mela, was a Roman knight, who made a large fortune as a collector of the imperial revenue. He is supposed by some to have been identical with the geographer Pomponius Mela, who was the author of a brief description, in three books, of the coasts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The style of this writer is concise, as is suitable to a mere sketch or abridgment; and his matter, although derived from other sources, and not from personal observation, is accurate and interesting. The poet was born at Corduba (Cordova,) on the beautiful banks of the Bætis (Guadalquiver.) ”

“ It is well known that Lucan, belonging to the Spanish family of the Senecas, had thrown off many of the conventions of Roman literature, and discarded the machinery of epic mythology in his Pharsalia. He had also incurred the literary jealousy of Nero. The attack in the Satiricon on Lucan’s literary aberrations can hardly be mistaken. The old poet Eumolpus is introduced to defend the traditions of the past. ”

“ Originally written in Latin, approximately A.D. 61-65, by the Roman poet Lucan, and probably left unfinished upon his death in A.D. 65. Although the work has been generally known through most of history as the "Pharsalia", modern scholarship tends to agree that this was not Lucan's choice for a title.
This electronic edition was edited, proofed, and prepared by Douglas B. Killings ([email protected]) , May 1996.
BOOK I THE CROSSING OF THE RUBICON Wars worse than civil on Emathian (1) plains,
And crime let loose we sing; how Rome's high race
Plunged in her vitals her victorious sword ”

“ He made a mighty slaughter among the enemy's horse; which destruction to stop, Bl-ckm-re, a famous Modern, but one of the mercenaries, strenuously opposed himself, and darted his javelin with a strong hand, which falling short of its mark, struck deep in the earth. Then Lucan threw a lance, but Æsculapius came unseen and turned off the point. "Brave Modern," said Lucan, "I perceive some god protects you, for never did my arm so deceive me before: but what mortal can contend with a god? Therefore let us fight no longer, but present gifts to each other." ”

“ Lucan joined the conspiracy of Piso, and was forced to commit suicide, April 30, 65 A. D.
Lucan wrote several works, chiefly in verse, but the only, one extant is an epic poem in ten books, entitled De Bello Civili (On the Civil War) , ordinarily called [Pg 186] Pharsalia, in which he tells the story of the civil war to the time when Cæsar was besieged at Alexandria. The Pharsalia. The narrative is prosaic and somewhat dull, but the tedium is relieved by vivid descriptions and really eloquent speeches. The chief historical source is Livy, though other writers seem to have been consulted. ”