Born: Marcus Annaeus Lucanus in Corduba (now Cordoba), Spain, 3 November AD 39. Grandson of Seneca the Elder and nephew of Seneca the Younger, q.v. Education: Studied in Rome and Athens. Career: Became a favourite of the emperor Nero, who made him financial administrator (quaestor) and augur; won the poetry contest in the Neronian games in AD 60, but fell out of favour and committed suicide under compulsion when his part in Piso’s conspiracy against Nero was discovered. Died: 30 April ad 65.
Publications
Works
Civilis libri decem, edited by Alfred E. Housman. 1926; as De bello civili, edited by D.R. Shackleton Bailey, 1988; Book I edited by R.J. Getty (with commentary), 1940, corrected edition, 1955; Book VII edited by J.P. Postgate, 1913, revised by O.A.W. Dilke, 1960; Book VIII edited by J.P. Postgate, 1917, and R. Mayer, as Civil War III, 1981; as Pharsalia, translated by Sir A. Gorges, 1614; also translated by Nicholas Rowe (verse), 1713; Edward Ridley (verse), 1896; J.D. Duff [Loeb Edition], 1928; Robert Graves, 1956; Douglas Little (verse), 1989; Jane Wilson Joyce, 1994; as Civil War, translated by P.F. Widdows (verse), 1988; also translated by S.H. Braund, 1992; as Pharsalia, translated with introduction by Jane Wilson Joyce, 1993.
Critical Studies:
NicholasRowe’s Translation of Lucan’sPharsalia, 1703-1718: A Study in Literary History by Alfred W. Hesse, 1950; The Poet Lucan by Mark P.O. Morford, 1967; Lucan: An Introduction by Frederick M. Ahl, 1976; Momentary Monsters: Lucan and His Heroes by W.R. Johnson, 1987; ”Lucan/The Word at War” by J. Henderson, in The Imperial Muse, edited by A.J. Boyle, 1988; Poetry and Civil War in Lucan’s Bellum Civile by Jamie Masters, 1992; M. Annaeus Lucanus Bellum Civile Book III: A Commentary by Vincent Hunink, 1992; Ideology in Cold Blood: A Reading of Lucan’s Civil War by Shadi Bartsch, 1997; Lucan: Spectacle and Engagement by Matthew Leigh, 1997.
Lucan’s poem De bello civili (popularly known as the Pharsalia) is an epic poem in hexameters, of which nine complete books and an incomplete tenth survive. Its subject is the civil war fought between Pompey and Caesar and it covers events from Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BC (Book I) through the battle of Pharsalus (Book VII) and Pompey’s death in Egypt in 49 bc (Book VIII). It was probably planned to end with the suicide of Cato at Utica after the battle of Thapsus in 46 bc. The poem has none of the glamour of mythological epic, such as Virgil’s Aeneid, but sets out to present a stark condemnation of civil war. It achieves this by subverting and inverting the conventions of mythological epic. Thus none of the three protagonists can be called ”the hero” in any meaningful sense. Caesar, the most prominent character, is presented as a terrifying, destructive, and irresistible force with superhuman powers. Pompey is presented much more sympathetically in human terms but as a man past his prime and weak, indecisive, and insecure. Cato, who in Book IX takes over the leadership of the Republican forces after Pompey’s murder, is the austere embodiment of Stoic principles with no softening human qualities.
Lucan abandons the traditional divine machinery of anthropomorphic deities in favour of the impersonal Stoic concepts of Fate and Fortune in order to focus attention on human responsibility and culpability for the horrors of the civil war. He nonetheless makes telling use of the supernatural in the form of dreams and visions, portents and prophecies which enhance the macabre atmosphere. Appius’ consultation of the Delphic oracle in Book V and the necromancy performed by the witch Erichtho in Book VI illustrate Lucan’s virtuoso powers. In this and many other respects he reflects the tastes and interests of his contemporaries. His own literary, moral, and rhetorical training emerges in his use of historical exempla (Hannibal in Book I, Marius and Sulla in Book 2), his incorporation of mythological episodes (Hercules in Book IV), and his scientific discussions of geography, astrology, astronomy, and natural phenomena (concentrated in Books IX and X). He is clearly an educated man writing for an educated audience.
Lucan’s treatment of warfare shows most clearly his condemnation of civil war. He incorporates many of the episodes that are ”standard” in martial epic but gives them paradoxical or extreme treatment. For example, in Book VI Caesar’s centurion Scaea makes an incredible single-handed stand (aristeia) against Pompey’s troops and prevents them from breaking out of the blockade, and in Book III the sea battle off Marseilles is said to resemble a land battle once Caesar’s ships have been rammed. Lucan takes every opportunity to describe bizarre forms of death, most of which are striking for their strangeness, suddenness, and lack of dignity and heroism. The horror of civil war—of Roman fighting Roman, brother fighting brother, father fighting son—is presented starkly with an unheroized spilling of blood and a strikingly large number of unburied bodies and headless corpses, of which the most memorable is that of Pompey himself.
On the basis of his novel treatment of many of the conventions of mythological epic poetry, Lucan’s poem may be regarded as an anti-Virgilian poem, although not in the sense of an antipathy towards Virgil. His essentially pessimistic poem reworks some of the stirring, patriotic episodes of the Aeneid into shocking, black scenes which seem to require contemplation of the crime of civil war. The most obvious example is Aeneas and the Sibyl in the Underworld in Book VI, evoked by the necromancy in Civil War Book VI.
The same anti-Virgilian strain is true of his style. His use of the hexameter is repetitive, even monotonous, in contrast with Virgil’s musical hexameter. Similarly, his diction is prosaic and unembellished. The poem has been called a ”predominantly monochrome epic” (Bramble) in which black, grey, and white are the predominant colours, followed by the red of the blood spilled. Key words and images which recur throughout the poem indicate disintegration and destruction, on the level of the individual, the state, and the cosmos— words like ruina (collapse), viscera (guts), tabes (decay), and sanguis (gore). Lucan characteristically dwells on an idea, reiterating it to make the audience stop and confront the issue. He often uses arresting maxims (sententiae), antitheses, and paradoxes for the same purpose, of which the most memorable is ”they abandon Rome and flee towards war.” This also explains the marked disproportion between narrative and speeches in the poem: narrative of the events of the war, with which his original audience was familiar, is kept to a minimum and often punctuated by exclamations or condemnatory outbursts from the poet. Instead, Lucan supplies emotive scenes that have no actual impact on the events of the war, such as Caesar’s battle with the storm in Book V and the necromancy in Book VI, together with many long speeches which set the emotional tone. Particularly striking is Lucan’s use of apostrophe, when he enters the poem as an unnamed character in order to address one of the actors. This technique, perhaps above all, invites us to pause and comprehend the horror of the events of civil warfare.
Some readers find Lucan’s stark portrayal of the suicide of a powerful nation not to their taste. This could be because the poem is too uncomfortable and too disconcerting. If so, it is salutary to remember that many poets and scholars of medieval, Renaissance, and modern times had a high regard for Lucan. In Dante’s view, Lucan ranked with Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Virgil as an exponent of elevated poetry.
