Pharsalia

by Lucan, Jane Wilson Joyce (Translator)

Lucan's great poem, Pharsalia , recounts events surrounding the decisive battle fought near Pharsalus in 48 B.C. during the civil war between the forces of Pompey and Julius Caesar. Though the subject of this unfinished masterpiece is historical, many of its features are characteristic of epic poetry: Rousing battle scenes; tales of witches, monsters, and miracle; detailed catalogues; intricate similes; and speeches with a high degree of rhetorical elegance. However, Lucan's deft mix of humor and horror, of political satire, literary parody, history, and epic is entirely his own. Jane Wilson Joyce's superb translation conveys the drama and poetry of the original. Her use of natural English rhythms in a loose six-beat line comes close to matching the original Latin hexameters, wile her language preserves Lucan's sequence of images. An enlightening introduction, notes, and a full glossary augment the translation.

Genres: Classics, Poetry, History, Nonfiction, Ancient, Roman, Epic

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 61

About the author

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, better known in English as Lucan, was a Roman poet, born in Corduba (modern-day Córdoba), in Hispania Baetica. Despite his short life, he is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of the Imperial Latin period. His youth and speed of composition set him apart from other poets.

A.k.a. Lucain.

Reviews

[David Sarkies · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Anti-Caeserian Account of the Civil War
24 August 2011 - Lausanne

Lucan was a contemporary of Nero, and in fact died at the age of 25 when he slit his own wrists after he was discovered involved in a plot to overthrow the emperor (it seems as if this was a dignified way to die in the early empire). As such Lucan's poem regarding the civil war between Caeser and Pompey remains unfinished. It is clear from the text that Lucan does not like Julius Caeser, and that the translator of the version I read (Robert Graves) does not particularly like Lucan. So, if the translator does not like the writer, why does he bother translating the book. Well, he answers that question himself: because of its historical value.

The Pharasalia does give a good outline of the civil war, right up to Caeser's arrival in Egypt and his seduction of Cleopatra, however it is questionable as to whether this is what would be termed revisionist history. Considering that the other source of the civil war is from Caeser's own hand (and further sources, such as Suetonius and Plutarch, were written a lot later), there can be an argument that Caeser's account could be somewhat biased. However, it is clear that Lucan is quite biased as well as he does not paint Caeser in a particularly appealing light.

Now, interspersed amongst the text are a lot of stories relating to mythology, as well as some pseudo-scientific theorising (and I say pseudo-scientific because it seems that Lucan attributes a lot of things to the gods). There are also some interesting accounts, such as Caeser rowing across the Adriatic Sea in a row boat (and it is interesting how Lucan says that it is when he makes landfall that he regained his empire, suggesting, and there is a lot of truth to it, that while he was in the middle of the Adriatic in a rowboat he was no longer master of his own destiny, nor was he master of Rome, but then considering that he was in the middle of a civil war, he wasn't master of Rome anyway). The other story was that of Cato's march through the desert to visit the oracle that Alexander of Macedon had visited. The story of how Cato refused water, and marched alongside his troops, gives a lot of credence to his character. However, since Cato was originally on the side of Pompey, and that Lucan is an admirer of Pompey (as well as a barracker for Caeser's assassins), it is not surprising that he paints him in a really attractive light.

After Pompey's defeat, and his assassination in Egypt, Lucan raves for quite a while about how undignified a death it was, how he was denied proper burial rights, and how such a great man deserves many more honours than what he received. However, it should be remembered that Caeser was just as horrified at Pompey's undignified murder as was Lucan. However Lucan is writing very much a 'what if' book, believing that all of Rome's current troubles are the result of this one civil war, and he lays all of the problems faced by Rome squarely on Caeser's shoulders. He does forget though that Ceaser did turn down the crown, and that he had also seen major flaws in the Republican system of government, yet even though his murderers, who were appalled at the idea of a single ruler, ended up moving Rome further to the Imperial State by killing Caeser. Further, they forget Sulla, who established himself as dictator, and then stepped down once his reforms had been completed. The other thing that is forgotten is that Caeser did not proscribe (that is mark for death) any of his enemies, and it is because of this that he ended up meeting his fate.

The time that Lucan wrote in was a much different time than the one that he writes about. It was about 100 years after the events in his poem, and Rome had changed. There was no freedom, and Nero ruled the empire with an iron fist. If you disagreed with Nero, you pretty much kept your mouth shut because there was no freedom of speech. It is in a sense why the Pharasalia was Lucan's way of criticising the current regime, however he ended up not simply keeping it in his poem, but attempted to act it out in his own life, which resulted in his suicide.

At the end of the poem (or at least what he wrote of it) he seems to describe it as lasting for as long as the story of Ceaser lasted, however why this particular piece of literature was kept in the absence of other works is beyond me. I can't read Latin so I cannot comment on it's poetical value, though it does provide us with an interesting, if somewhat biased, view of the ancient world.

[Eadweard · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The men, too, as they head for war and the opposing camps,
pour out just complaints against the cruel deities:

‘O how unfortunate that we were not born in the time
of the Punic war, to fight at Cannae and at Trebia!
It is not peace we ask for, gods: inspire with rage the foreign nations,
now rouse the fierce cities; let the world league together
for war: let lines of Medes swoop down from Achaemenid
Susa, let Scythian Danube not confine the Massagetae,

let the Elbe and Rhine’s unconquered head let loose
from furthest north the blond Suebi; make us again
the enemies of all the peoples, only ward off civil war.
From here let the Dacian strike, from there the Getan; let one leader face
Iberians, the other turn his standards to confront the eastern quivers;
let no hand of yours, Rome, be swordless. Or if it is your decision,
gods, to devastate the Hesperian name, then let the mighty ether
gather into fires and fall to earth in thunderbolts.
Cruel creator, strike both parties and both leaders together,
while they are still innocent. Must they contest
the rule of Rome with this great crop of crimes unprecedented?"
----



"Already the corpses, melting with decay and blurred with time’s
long passage, have lost their features; only now do miserable parents
gather and steal in fearful theft the parts they recognize.
I recall how I myself, keen to place my slain brother’s
disfigured face on the pyre’s forbidden flames,

examined all the corpses of Sulla’s peace
and searched through all the headless bodies for a neck
to match the severed head."
----



"Then every ship which attacked Brutus’ timbers
stuck captive to the one it hit, defeated by its own impact,
while others are held fast by grappling-irons and smooth chains
or tangled by their oars: the sea is hidden and war stands still.
Now no missiles are hurled or shot by arms,
no wounds from weapon thrown fall from afar,
but hand meets hand: in the naval battle the sword
achieves the most. Each stands leaning from his own boat’s

stronghold to meet the enemy’s blows and none when killed
fell in his own ship. Deep blood foams
in the water, the waves are choked by clotted gore
and the ships, when hauled by iron chains thrown on board,
are kept apart by crowds of corpses."
----




"The victorious Moors did not enjoy to the full the sight
which Fortune gave: they do not see the streams
of gore, collapsing limbs, and bodies hitting
the earth: every corpse stood erect, crushed in a mass.
Let Fortune call up grim Carthage’s hated ghosts
with these new offerings, let blood-stained Hannibal
and the Punic shades accept this grim expiation.

It is a crime, gods, that Roman ruin on the earth
of Libya helps Pompey and the Senate’s prayers!
Better that Africa should conquer us for herself."
----



"You collapse when battle is removed, because, although your blood
was shed, fighting gave you strength. As he falls, a crowd of comrades
catch him and, rejoicing, set him fainting on their shoulders;
and they worship the deity, so to speak, confined inside
his stabbed breast and the living semblance of mighty Heroism.
They vie to pluck the weapons from his transfixed limbs,
and they adorn the gods and naked-breasted Mars
with your armour, Scaeva, happy in this claim to fame
had robust Iberians or Cantabrians with tiny weapons
or Teutones with lengthy weapons fled from you.
But you cannot adorn the Thunderer’s temple
with spoils of war, you cannot yell in happy triumphs.
Unhappy man! with such enormous valour you bought a master!"
----



"But when dead bodies are preserved in stone, which draws the inmost
moisture off, and once the marrow’s fluid is absorbed and they grow hard,
then greedily she vents her rage on the entire corpse:

she sinks her hands into the eyes, she gleefully digs out
the cold eyeballs and gnaws the pallid nails
on withered hand. With her own mouth has she burst
the noose and knots of the criminal, mangled bodies as they hung,
scraped clean the crosses, torn at guts beaten
by the rains, at marrows exposed and baked by the sun.
She has stolen the iron driven into hands, the black and putrid
liquid trickling through the limbs and the congealed slime
and, if muscle resisted her bite, she has tugged with all her weight.
And if any corpse lies on the naked earth, she camps
before the beasts and birds come; she does not want to tear
the limbs with knife or her own hands, but awaits
the bites of wolves, to grab the bodies from their dry throats.
Nor do her hands refrain from murder, if she needs
some living blood which first bursts out when throat is slit
and if her funeral feast demands still-quivering organs.

So through a wound in the belly, not nature’s exit,
the foetus is extracted to be put on burning altars.
And whenever she has need of cruel, determined spirits,
herself she creates ghosts. Every human death is to her advantage.
She plucks from young men’s faces the bloom of cheek
and from a dying boy cuts off a lock of hair with her left hand."
----



"She ceased and, with night’s darkness doubled by her craft,
her dismal head concealed in a murky cloud, she wanders
through the corpses of the slain, thrown out, denied a grave.
Fast fled the wolves, fast fled the carrion birds, unfed,
tearing free their talons, while the witch of Thessaly
selects her prophet, and by examining innards chill
with death she finds a stiff lung’s lobes, entire,
without a wound, and in a corpse she seeks a voice."
----



"From this battle the peoples receive a mightier wound
than their own time could bear; more was lost than life
and safety: for all the world’s eternity we are prostrated.
640
Every age which will suffer slavery is conquered by these swords.
How did the next generation and the next deserve
to be born into tyranny? Did we wield weapons or shield
our throats in fear and trembling? The punishment of others’ fear
sits heavy on our necks. If, Fortune, you intended to give a master
to those born after battle, you should have also given us a chance to fight."

[Evan Leach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Civil War is the only surviving work of Lucan, a Roman writer from the 1st century. Written during the reign of Nero, Lucan’s Civil War was arguably the last great epic poem written in antiquity (at least in the West). The poem as we have it is unfinished (Nero ordered Lucan to commit suicide at the age of 25), but what’s left is a fairly complete story of the war between Julius Caesar and Sextus Pompey, all the way to its grisly end.


“They all bought, but he sold Rome.” IV. 824

The Oxford World’s Classics edition argues that Civil War “stands beside the poems of Virgil and Ovid in the first rank of Latin epic.” I would not go quite that far. Civil War is a bit of a controversial classic – the poem has a few quite glaring turnoffs, and has earned its share of detractors over the centuries. Even classical scholar Moses Hadas, who considered Lucan to be worth reading, described his vices as “shrieking and easy to find.” Two of his faults in particular may test the modern reader. The first is Lucan’s passion for the grotesque, which is almost absurd. The poem dwells on horrible, repulsive situations with a kind of morbid glee. Here are a few examples that I found to be particularly memorable:

[I]n the naval battle the sword achieves the most. Each stands leaning from his own boat’s stronghold to meet the enemy’s blows and none when killed fell in his own ship. Deep blood foams in the water, the waves are choked by clotted gore and the ships, when hauled by iron chains thrown on board, are kept apart by crowds of corpses. Some sank, half-dead, into the vast deep and drank the sea mixed with their own blood…”

Etc., etc. It gets worse:

Catus fights, boldly holding on to Greek post, at one moment he is pierced in his back and chest alike by weapons shot together: the steel meets in the middle of his body and the blood stood still, unsure from which wound to flow, until at one moment a flood of gore drove out both spears…”

One more for the road (not for the squeamish):

”That day a unique form of hideous death was seen, when a young man in the water by chance was transfixed by the beaks of converging vessels. The middle of his chest was split apart by such tremendous blows, the bronze of the beaks resounding; from his crushed belly the blood mixed with entrails spouted gore through his mouth. “

Gross. For what it’s worth, this obsession with the grotesque is simply a reflection of the taste of his day. Seneca the Younger (Lucan’s uncle) displays a similar lean towards the lurid in his tragedies. But that doesn’t make it incredibly fun to read. Fortunately, Lucan calms down a bit in the poem’s second half and largely spares us these horrors by the time we get to Pharsalus.

The other potential turnoff is the poem’s bombastic and rhetorical style. Lucan regularly imposes strained, artificial speeches on his protagonists, often at the most unlikely times. This is the nature of the genre, to some degree, but Lucan stretches it to the limit. Much more so than Virgil or Ovid’s epics, Lucan’s poem feels like it’s about 2,000 years old. This is not helped by Lucan’s frequent, enthusiastic, and unintelligible digressions into astronomy, geography, zoology or whatever other subject catches his fancy.

So the poem has its problems. But there are plenty of things working in its favor. Lucan writes with fire and conviction, and his fervor can be contagious when he’s at his best. Unlike the great epic poems before it, Civil War deals with actual human beings participating in a historical conflict. There’s no real hero of the poem: Caesar is presented as a bloodthirsty warmonger, Pompey as the lesser of two evils. The closest the poem comes to a moral hero is Cato, who’s very much off in the wings. The lack of an infallible, superhuman protagonist is refreshing and makes the poem more interesting. The relationship between Pompey and his wife Cornelia gives the poem an emotional hook, and the Battle of Pharsalus (which I was a bit nervous going into, given Lucan’s love of slaughter) is a suitably epic set piece. While Lucan has had plenty of critics, he’s had plenty of fans too; Dante ranked Lucan with Homer, Virgil, Horace and Ovid in his own epic over 1,000 years later.

Ultimately the best thing about Lucan may be that he didn’t try and simply copy Virgil. Civil War adopts some of the scenes and key themes of its genre, but it is very much an original work. That’s more than can be said for any of Lucan’s epic-writing contemporaries from the death of Augustus onward. While the poem has its faults, at least it is trying to do something a little different. Fans of the classics are encouraged to give this poem a go, but with reservations. 3 stars.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lucan's Civil War, written in his early 20s before he was compelled to kill himself by Nero, is an astonishingly exuberant poem that presents history as political theater – in this case, the clash between Julius Caesar and Pompey. Unlike the usual epic, he dispenses with the machinations of deities and stages instead the raw contest between two egomaniacs with armies criss-crossing the Mediterranean. The narrative is high-spirited, packed with the pornography of war, and races from scene to scene only to stop in mid-sentence.

In Book 7, immediately following the decisive battle of Pharsalus, he offers what may be the most nihilistic oration in all of ancient literature. Here is the heroic glory of battle, according to Lucan:

Your wrath does nothing. Whether the corpses rot
or a pyre undoes them makes no difference.
Nature welcomes everything back to her
peaceful bosom, and bodies owe their end
to themselves. All these peoples, Caesar,
if fire does not burn them now, it will
burn them with the earth, burn them with
the sea's abyss; a common pyre awaits
the world, it will mix their bones with stars.
Wherever Fortune calls your soul, these souls
are there too. You won't ascend any higher
into the breezes, or lie in a better place
beneath the night of Styx. Death is free
from Fortune. Earth takes all that she gives birth to,
and heaven covers whoever has no urn.

This punchy new translation by Matthew Fox is a pleasure throughout.

Perhaps such poetry could only be written by a brash young man, a privileged member of the Roman aristocracy, educated in Athens, a nephew of the Stoic philosopher Seneca. No wonder Nero, with his artistic pretensions, was jealous. Lucan wasn't content with being the superior poet; he had to rub coarse salt in the wound. James Romm, in his recent biography of Seneca, tells the tale:

Most likely it was now that Lucan uttered a bon mot that later became legendary. While using a public lavatory, he heard the sound of his own flatulence echoing through the hollow privy beneath him. His quick literary mind seized on an apt quotation – from the poetry of Nero. You might think it had thundered beneath the earth, Lucan intoned, gleefully spoofing the emperor's verse about an eruption of Mount Aetna. Those who heard him hastened to leave the latrine, fearing that their presence there put them in danger.

It's no surprise that Lucan, who lustily despises Caesar throughout the Civil War, came to see the assassination of Nero as a civic duty and joined the conspiracy to kill him. Unfortunately, the plot was discovered and everyone died. He was hardly a hero at the end, but as his terrific poem proves, heroes count for nothing.

[Jesús De la Jara · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Y vosotros, ancianos, chusma despreciable y sin gota de sangre, serán simples espectadores, ya como plebe romana, de nuestros triunfos. ¿O imaginan que la carrera de César puede acusar la mengua que supone su deserción? ... ¿O acaso piensan que me han prestado alguna ayuda decisiva? Jamás la providencia de los dioses se rebajará de forma que los destinos se preocupen de la muerte y de la vida de gentes como ustedes ... el género humano vive en función de unos pocos."

Lucano compuso su poema épico "Farsalia" para hablarnos de los conflictos de la Guerra Civil romana entre Julio César y (su yerno) Pompeyo. Obedeciendo éste los deseos del Senado, es encargado de defender Roma contra el ataque de César, quien luego de perder las esperanzas en lograr ser cónsul de la República y verse acorralado por la opinión de unos pocos decide atacar Roma, tras lo cual se dará la huida de Pompeyo para ofrecer una mejor resistencia. Es así que César atraviesa el Rubicón y se enfrasca en la guerra.
Hay una parcialidad del autor con Pompeyo, al cual aplica el sobrenombre de Magno, lo retrata como un héroe, leal y de gran corazón; mientras que a Julio César lo describe como caprichoso, astuto y por momentos cruel. No deja sin embargo de referirse a sus cualidades, el futuro dictador romano tiene una velocidad de un rayo para atacar y tomar posiciones, es el hijo predilecto de la diosa de la Fortuna, por momentos parece un semidiós al que nada le puede salir mal.
Las ideas de Lucano son confusas, aunque aceptando emperadores tiene grandes reparos en hablar una época de bienestar durante la guerra civil y llama tirano al que pretende quedarse en el poder prescindiendo del senado.
Las descripciones por momento saturaron, a veces eran muy nimias y otras veces ocasiones hubo donde al hablar de temas mitológicos se veían pasajes forzados (el mismo autor muestra un grado importante de escepticismo) en la obra que no me llegaron a convencer, parecían pasajes parchados a la nueva historia, no guardaban una armonía como he visto en otros épicos.
Lamentablemente por la cantidad de altibajos no me terminó de gustar mucho, pero hay datos interesantes como las proclamas de los generales, las acusaciones mutuas, los episodios de hambruna o pobreza de las tropas y de los valores de la virtud romana. Pero sin embargo a pesar de tocar temas muy interesantes siento que no le dio la fuerza necesaria a todos, algunos pasajes muy importantes parecen desdibujados, no bien explicados y uno duda su real importancia en la historia que quiso contar Lucano.

[Marcos Augusto · Rating 4 out of 5]

De Bello Civili, more commonly referred to as the Pharsalia, is a Roman epic poem written by the poet Lucan, detailing the civil war between Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate led by Pompey the Great. The poem's title is a reference to the Battle of Pharsalus, which occurred in 48 BC, near Pharsalus, Thessaly, in northern Greece. Caesar decisively defeated Pompey in this battle, which occupies all of the epic's seventh book.

Lucan is heavily influenced by Latin poetic tradition, most notably Ovid's Metamorphoses and of course Virgil's Aeneid, the work to which the Pharsalia is most naturally compared. Lucan frequently appropriates ideas from Virgil's epic and "inverts" them to undermine their original, heroic purpose.

Like all Silver Age poets, Lucan received the rhetorical training common to upper-class young men of the period. The suasoria – a school exercise where students wrote speeches advising an historical figure on a course of action – no doubt inspired Lucan to compose some of the speeches found in the text. Lucan also follows the Silver Age custom of punctuating his verse with short, pithy lines or slogans known as sententiae, a rhetorical tactic used to grab the attention of a crowd interested in oratory as a form of public entertainment.

[Lukas Sotola · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an intensely strange piece of literature. This is an epic poem about the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompeius Magnus, so compare it to earlier epic poems about semi-historical larger-than-life figures like Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses, and of course Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. . . but then, don't.

The heroes here aren't that heroic--Caesar is a megalomaniac and would-be tyrant, while Pompey is well-intentioned but weak and incompetent and also kind of a prick to his wife, while Cato, the only fully admirable character, will end up committing suicide, as we know from the historical documents of the events following the end of this poem. The gods, such an active and integral part in all previous epics, do not appear or speak to anyone once, and Lucan suggests several times that they are either powerless over or indifferent to human affairs: "it was clear to the unfortunate/that the gods above know too little." Especially the witch Erichtho emphasizes that it is Fortune, not the gods, that govern human affairs, which by the end of the poem leaves the reader wondering whether that's just a way of saying that there's no real governing force in the world.

Battle in the Civil War is just as brutal as it is in the Iliad but does not serve any higher purpose. Hardly any soldiers are named and honored as in Homer, and Lucan focuses on the horrifying pointlessness of the gruesome deaths most soldiers experience. Humans in this poem also suffer constantly at the hands of nature itself. In contrast to the gods' absence, the power--and hostility--of nature is on display in this poem. There are no less than four intense "storm scenes," where human characters are at the mercy of the forces of nature, and the most vivid and powerful of these, for me, is a sandstorm that pounds Cato and his small force in North Africa:

Hardly were the soldiers strong
enough to raise their limbs, embedded in the mighty mass of dust.
A great rampart of piled-up sand fettered even
those still standing, and they were held immobile as the ground rose.
It shattered walls, knocked down their stones, and carried them afar
and at a distance dropped them, in an amazing disaster:
those who saw no houses saw portions of them tumbling down.

Humans, rather than the subject of prophecies and the targets of gods' schemes and fancies, are mere animals caught in an indifferent universe swiping at them with tooth and claw.

Lucan even explicitly inverts or subverts iconic events from earlier epics. Instead of a hallowed progenitor of Rome descending to Hades to see the ghosts of the dead, as happens in the Aeneid, the spoiled son of Pompey goes to a witch to have her bring a corpse back to life to tell him his fortune. This is, in fact, an anti-epic epic poem, to alter somewhat Susan H. Braund's words in her wonderfully explanatory introduction.

The reader is confronted with a world devoid of gods and order, a war that leaves a tyrant in power and the one admirable leader Lucan presents dead at his own hand, and a world in which the old mythologies have passed away--or perhaps were never real. All of this makes this poem feel uncannily modern, and makes it endlessly fascinating.

I would be lying if I said that this was the most enjoyable epic to come out of the ancient world. Interesting as it is, it is dramatically inert. The characters, while well-drawn, are convincing but not compelling. The events are stilted--real dialogue and action are skewed in favor of long speeches and set pieces, and characters have a weird way of getting from one side of the Mediterranean to another in the space of one stanza (that is to say that few actions other than death are described in great detail here).

But I don't care about any of this because of how fascinating this is as a product of the ancient world. This almost put me in the mind of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland in its level of pessimism and in the way it seems to have been written from a time after an old, seemingly idyllic world had been shattered and a new, darker vision of the world had to be created. And for all its cynicism, that vision is conveyed in some gorgeous verse, if Susan Braund's lyrical free verse translation does Lucan's Latin any sort of justice. For these reasons, I think I will certainly reread this in new translations and try to read about it as much as I can.

That being said, this may not be for everyone. It's definitely not the place to start with the classics of Greece and Rome, and it's not the place to go for a wild ride like Ovid's Metamorphoses or a profound, moving experience like Homer's Iliad. However, if you're a classics geek who's exhausted the more well-known corridors of this area, this might be interesting for you.

3.5/5 stars.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lucan was the nephew of Seneca the Younger (one-time tutor to Nero and forced by him to commit suicide) and so he has a very personal response to hereditary monarchy which comes over very clearly in this text. Re-telling the story of the civil war waged between Julius Caesar and Pompey, he also explores the re-establishment of monarchy vs. the supposed independence of the republic.

This is a very literary text and relies on the reader's knowledge of other Roman epics especially Virgil's Aeneid, but also Ovid's Metamorphoses which itself challenged what the epic genre could and should encompass. But it's not strictly essential to have a knowledge of either Roman literature or even history to enjoy this book though it undoubtedly helps in terms of exploring the nuances.

Braund's translation (OUP Oxford World Classics 1992) of the Latin poetry is in free verse, and is flowing and powerful. Her notes and especially introduction are excellent contextualising the poem in many directions.

I have to admit that this isn't one of my favourite Latin texts but Lucan's sensational episodes are very gothic and almost worth reading in themselves, replete as they are with bloody portents, witches, and all manner of gore. Caesar's affair with Cleopatra is also extremely lurid but it's a shame that the text breaks off at that point as Lucan never finished the poem. So worth a read but not a good introduction to Latin literature.

[Samuel Valentino · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was both fascinating and boring. Not in turns - simultaneously. I've never read anything else like it - I would be falling asleep while wanting to turn the page. And it keeps on lumbering away, in it's enthrallingly tedious way, until chapter 6.

And suddenly it turns into Conan the Barbarian.

Or something very similar. Lucan goes from a grandiose if straightforward account of the end of the Republic right into the Thessalian Witches. These are magicians so powerful that it leads to a theological aside on the author's part, wondering whether the gods were compelled to obey them, or simply chose to do so; and if they chose to, why? They can stop Jupiter's chariot in its tracks, and even threaten Hades himself. It's one of the most amazing fantasy accounts I've ever read.

Lucan occasionally rises to this level - previously, he describes the prophetic ecstasy of the Oracle of Delphi, and later gives an incredible version of Medusa and her power. If only the whole work were dedicated to this sort of thing, it would probably rank as one of the best mythological epics written.

For what it is, however, the best part of the book are the individual epigrams - Lucan was an orator, and the introductory material says the book reads better as a rhetorical manual than an epic. And the lines are good - one example is spoken to Caesar about Pompey, prior to crossing the Rubicon: "Half the world you may not have, but you can have the whole world for yourself."

If you're not interested in Roman history, this book won't convince you. But if you are, you can get quite a lot out of this first century poetic account of the end of the Roman Republic.

[sologdin · Rating 3 out of 5]

silver age literate epic, taken from history rather than mythology. Caesar is almost a standard epic hero, to the extent that he is kinda a dick, similar to earlier Achilles (and later Lucifer). famous scene is the inverted katabasis in book VI, wherein pompey, instead of descending to the underworld, as is proper, has erichtho bring unfortunate decedent back to earth. great stuff.

[Catherine Woodman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been reading Roman poetry to my youngest son for the last several months, and I have to say that while I would not have guessed it, I have really enjoyed it, content wise. Most surprisingly, this is my favorite one. I had heard of the other three poets. They are big names from the ancient world--Catullus, Ovid, and Virgil--heavy hitters all three. But I had never heard about Lucan.

He was from Cordoba, a family with minimal Italian blood but his grandfather was Seneca the elder, and his uncle Seneca the younger--both big names in the ancient world. He grew up with Nero, and died because of his opposition to him, which is why this poem was never finished.

It is a poem about the Civil War, about Caesar crossing the Rubicon and Pompey daring Caesar to a fight and then hightailing it out of Rome when Caesar took the dare. Lucan didn't care for either of them all that much, and it is hard to disagree with the things he didn't like, but that's not what I liked about his epic. I liked the cadence of it, which is dactyl hexameter. Not that I would have recognized that, but I do know that is the poetic form that Homer wrote in. I also like the rawness of it, and the humor. It is hard boiled without being bitter. I am not what I would call a great fan of the war novel either, but somehow this really made me think. It also gave me a window into a time long gone by. Maybe I have reached the time in my life to pick up the Iliad.

[else fine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm actually reading the Robert Graves translation, which I was too lazy to import manually. I love his informal introductions. So far, it's very enjoyable.

[Markus · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Joseph Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Rome to every man but Caesar might suffice. But he with empire and vast desires To nothing less than all aspires” Ok and guess how long that’ll last you Caesar

[Lauren Hatcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This epic poem has everything: super gorey battles (on both land and sea!), witchcraft, necromancy, disgusting descriptions of snake bite deaths (somehow all involving pus), and more! The lack of an ending is unfortunate, but forgivable. 10/10, a very (literally) visceral account of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey.

I liked the translation, although it was a bit prosaic. I also would have preferred footnotes to endnotes, but the notes were pretty good on the whole.

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite some superficial flattery of emperors, Lucan’s historical epic is Stoic and republican.

[Edwin Wong · Rating 3 out of 5]

Has there ever been a better time to read Lucan’s Civil War? It’s the story of the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Principate. It’s the story of a world gone mad where a young and brash Caesar takes on Pompey the Great, the grizzled war hero. One leader takes too many risks, the other, too few. The world hangs in balance. No one knows who Fate and Fortune will favour. Though the outcome is uncertain, all the participants in this game of death wager all-in. This is Lucan’s Civil War, sometimes also called The Pharsalia, after the famous battle at Pharsalus where, under divided standards, Roman slew Roman.
The Good
The first century critic Quintilian hits the nail on the head when he writes: “Lucan is fiery and excited and most illustrious for his clever phrases [sententiae].” Lucan was Twitter before there was Twitter. Today, he would have broken the internet with his wit on fire.
The Bad
Lucan’s Civil War is full of gladiatorial spectacle. In this regard, it’s similar to other Silver Age Latin works. The tragedies of Lucan’s uncle, Seneca the Younger, are also full of macabre scenes befitting of B-movie horror films. Maybe in some future age these scenes will come back into vogue. Here’s one of many such passages from Civil War:
That day offered
many marvelous forms of death upon the sea.
An iron claw swings quickly up onto a ship
and hooks Lycidas. He would have sunk in the deep,
but his comrades grab and hold him by the shins.
He is ripped to pieces, and his blood does not flow slowly
as from a wound, but floods everywhere from open veins,
and his soul that circulated through his various limbs
is absorbed by water. Nobody’s life has ever fled
through so large a passageway. His bottom half
took to death the limbs that had no seat of life.
But where the heaving lungs lay and the guts glistened,
there his fate was stalled; this half of the man
struggled a long time, till finally death got him all.
The Ugly
The speeches by the leading characters all seem to be spoken by the same voice: Lucan’s. They are all manic caricatures of their character types. Erictho, in conjuring the nether powers, becomes, not a witch, but the caricature of evil. Or take the nihilistic Pompey. On the morning of the Battle of Pharsalus, he exhorts his troops thus:
“If all agree with this,” he said,
“and if the time needs Magnus as a soldier,
not as leader, I won’t transgress the Fates by stalling.
Let Fortune envelop the nations in one downfall,
let this day’s light be the last for a large portion
of humankind. But I call you to witness, Rome!
Magnus welcomes this day when all will perish.”
Who exhorts troops like that? Some say that Cato and Pompey are the heroes of Civil War. I’m not so sure. They have become such concentrated versions of themselves that it’s hard to take them seriously. Caesar too is a caricature, but he is a caricature of action. He is Goethe’s Faust before there was Faust and Nietzsche’s will to power before there was a will to power. For example, when under siege and about to perish, Lucan’s Caesar is still acting and planning as though he was the besieger going forth conquering, and a conqueror. There is something attractive in his never say die mentality. The same cannot be said about the cardboard cutout characters Pompey and Lucan.
Fate and Fortune
A primary consideration in epic poetry from Homer to Milton is the antinomy between fate and free will. I published an article on fate and free will in the journal Antichthon. If you’re interested, it’s available here. In the Iliad, Zeus hold the scales of fate. If he holds the scales of fate, it would seem that fate bends to Zeus’ will. But it’s not so clear: when the scales of fate doom his mortal son Sarpedon, all Zeus can do is watch. Even though he holds the scales, the scales seem to operate on a higher level of agency. So too the devils in Milton’s Paradise Lost can be seen continuing the discussion Homer began so long ago in the Iliad:
Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
Unsurprisingly, Lucan also explores the generic convention of fate and free will in Civil War. Instead of fate and free will, however, in Lucan it becomes the antinomy between fate and fortune.
In Lucan, certain events are fated. Roman civil war itself is fated. Rome had become too great. Civil war is the mechanism for nations to return to nature’s mean:
Great things rush to ruin: the powers that give bounty
have set this limit on increase. Not to any foreign
nations did Fortune lend her envy to use
against the people ruling on land and sea.
Made slaves of three masters, you caused the damage,
Rome, with fatal bonds of tyranny never before
loosed against the crowd. Foul concord! Blinded
by depths of greed! What use to unite your strength
to hold the world in common? As long as earth
shall light on sea and air on earth, and labors
keep the Sun revolving, night following day
through the same sum of signs, no pledge to reign
as peers will hold. All power is impatient of equals.
Unlike in Homer and Milton where fate is fate and free will is free will, Lucan’s fate is more like Virgil’s fate where–though it is true that certain events are fated to happen (such as founding Rome)–the actions of mortals and immortals can precipitate or delay fate. So, Virgil’s Juno says:
But I, great wife of Jove–who left no thing
undared, who tried all ways in wretchedness–
am beaten by Aeneas. If my power
is not enough, I shall not hesitate
to plead for more, from anywhere; if I
cannot bend High Ones, then I shall move hell.
I cannot keep him from the Latin kingdoms:
so be it, let Lavinia be his wife,
as fates have fixed. But I can still hold off
that moment and delay these great events.
There’s an echo of Juno in Lucan, through the mouth of Erictho:
The evil Thessalian, thrilled to hear her name
was famous and well known, responded, “If you’d asked
of lesser fates, young man, it would have been easy
to rouse unwilling gods and attain your wish.
My art can cause delay when the rays of stars
have marked one death, or even if all constellations
would grant one an old age, we can cut his years
in half with magic herbs. But once a series of causes
has descended from the world’s first origin
and all fates struggle if you want to change anything,
when the human race is subject to a single blow,
then Thessaly’s ilk admits it–Fortune is stronger.
Fate, in Lucan’s Civil War, is like fate in Virgil’s Aeneid: you can speed it up or put it off a few years, but the hour of doom comes sooner or later. But notice a strange tilt in Lucan. Whereas fate and free will are at odds in Homer, Virgil, and Milton, Lucan uses fate and fortune interchangeably: fortune is stronger than Erictho’s resources when fate decrees it must be so. This deserves attention.
Some of you may know about my theory of tragedy based on risk. I argue that risk is the dramatic fulcrum of the action. It is also profitable to analyze risk in Civil War. The world of Civil War is one that rewards risk takers. Two characters in Lucan’s epic get things done: Caesar becomes top dog and Cleopatra wrestles her kingdom back from her brother. What do they have in common?–both Caesar and Cleopatra throw risk to the winds. Lucan’s Caesar and Cleopatra are both daring, both reckless. They are risk takers, natural-born gamblers.
Cleopatra, for her part, sneaks into the palace to seduce Caesar:
Such a daring spirit she got from that first night
when our own generals lay wrapped up in bed
with Ptolemy’s incestuous daughter. Who
will not forgive your raving love for her, Antony,
when fire even consumed the hard heart of Caesar?
Caesar, for his part, also does what needs to be done, risk be damned:
But Caesar, reckless in everything,
thinks nothing is done if anything’s left to be done.
While the narrator in Civil War pays homage to Cato and Pompey, the gamblers come out ahead. In a way, Civil War says one thing, but does another. It keeps the reader guessing what the actual message is, if there is any message.
Skin in the Game
A few years ago, Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a fantastic book: Skin in the Game. Success, he argued, happens when you have skin in the game, when you have a stake in the outcome. Caesar and Pompey’s speech to the troops illustrates the importance of having skin in the game. Compare how they address their troops:
Pompey: If all agree with this
and the time needs Magnus as a soldier,
not as leader, I won’t transgress the Fates by stalling.
Let Fortune envelop the nations in one downfall,
let this day’s light be the last for a large portion
of humankind. But I call you to witness, Rome!
Magnus welcomes this day when all will perish.
Caesar: In your hands
you hold the greatness of Caesar! Today is the day
I remember was promised me at the Rubicon’s waves,
and looking forward to this we took up arms,
postponing our return for triumphs denied us
until today, which will prove, with Fate as witness,
who took up arms more justly. This engagement
will render the loser guilty. If for me you’ve assaulted
your fatherland with fire and iron, fight now
all the more savagely and with your sword
free yourselves from guilt. For if the other side
becomes the judge of war, no hand will be clean.
This struggle is not for me, but so that the lot of you
might be free, hold power over all nations,
that’s my prayer.
Pompey asks the senate troops to fight for God knows what. Caesar, on the other hand, gives his troops skin in the game. The troops, he tells them, fight for Caesar’s greatness. Not only that, they fight for the triumphs the senate denied them. And, on top of that, they fight for their freedom: if they lose, they will be punished as traitors. They fight for their lives and win. This is the power of skin in the game. Caesar knows the power of skin in the game. Pompey doesn’t. To me, this is one of the mysteries of Lucan’s Civil War: for all the narrator extols Pompey, Pompey is sure dense. With that sort of exhortation, of course he gets routed at Pharsalus.
A Note on the Translator’s Introduction
I was surprised to see this passage in the translator’s introduction:
Alexander was a notorious admirer of Homer and Achilles: Caesar, too, is possessed by the glorious myths of Troy. If history-as-narrative had derived from the deep stream of Homeric epic, history-as-action was also always driven by men who were avid readers of epic, fired by its prize of immortal glory for heroic exploits. But it is possible these great men are simply, but tragically, poor readers of epic, deriving from it the wrong lessons, deluded by false notions of the heroic. After all, Achilles’ rage was “destructive” and for himself it results only in grief and the noble gesture of pity for his fallen enemy, the fatherly king Priam. [emphasis added]
If Alexander and Caesar are poor readers of epic, then who is the good reader of epic, the one who can derive from epic the correct lesson?
In all likelihood, many readings of poetry, epic, and literature are possible. For those seeking immortal glory, the myths of Troy have their allure. And that is all. There is no lesson. I don’t think Homer was meaning to say: “Look, I said Achilles’ rage was “destructive,” look what it did to poor Priam. Please don’t be like Achilles. He’s not a good role model.” That’s what the translator’s introduction seems to say to me, that the translators are good readers of epic, and, as good readers, have correctly derived the lesson Homer was trying to teach readers, that attaining immortal glory for heroic exploits is wrong because of all the suffering it involves.
Epic is life transformed into immortal glory. Sure, there’s suffering and destruction, but that’s the price. Don’t believe me? Then take Helen’s words in Homer’s Iliad to heart (Helen to Hector):
But come now, come in and rest on this chair, my brother,
since it is on your heart beyond all that the hard work has fallen
for the sake of dishonoured me and the blind act of Alexandros,
us two, on whom Zeus has set a vile destiny so that hereafter
we shall be made into things of song for the men of the future.
Suffering is justified, says Helen, so that we can be remembered forever. So too the destructive civil war allows Lucan to make Caesar and Pompey into a song for the men of the future (narrator speaking):
O sacred mighty work of poet-seers,
you rescue everything from fate and grant
eternal life to mortal peoples. Caesar,
don’t be touched by envy of sacred glory.
For if Latin Muses have a right to make a promise,
as long as Smyrna’s singer endures in honor,
the future will read you and me: our Pharsalia
will live, not condemned to shadows in any age.
For so much destruction, we have Lucan’s Pharsalia, otherwise called Civil War. In future ages, those who seek eternal renown will add the name of Caesar to the roll-call of heroes who achieved immortality. And also in future ages, someone too will tell these glory seekers that they are poor readers of epic. But who will be remembered–the glory seekers or their critics? Would you rather be a good reader who is forgotten soon or a poor reader who is remembered forever?
I wanted to like Lucan’s Civil War more than I did. Lucan, if Fortune had vouchsafed you to write Civil War in your seventies, you would have outshone Virgil and rivalled Milton and Homer. But as it was, fate cut you down at age 25. Those whom the gods love die young.

[Gabriele Crescenzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Durum iter ad leges"  IX, 385

È duro il viaggio verso la legge, specialmente quando questa sembra essere priva di ogni valore. Mantenersi saldi nei propri ideali anche nel momento in cui tutto sembra degradato e perseguire la virtù in una storia degenerata, in cui il male ha il sopravvento e il bene è destinato ad una sciagurata sconfitta sono le battaglie più ardue da affrontare: è questo il fulcro del capolavoro di Lucano, la "Pharsalia" o "Bellum civile", un poema potente, corrosivo, crudo, che esprime tutta l'amarezza del poeta nel constatare la caducità e l'inanità dell'uomo, dei suoi ideali e della storia stessa.

Marco Anneo Lucano, nipote del grande filosofo Seneca, nacque a Cordoba, in Spagna, intorno al 39 d.C. Dopo aver studiato a Roma sotto la guida dello stoico Anneo Cornuto, grazie alla sua fervida intelligenza, venne ammesso alla corte imperiale di Nerone, di cui fu consigliere personale. Tale fu il prestigio di cui godeva che gli fu commissionata dal princeps una serie di laudes da recitare durante i giochi pubblici del 60. Purtroppo però, per motivi ancora incerti (forse per gelosia di Nerone verso le sue superiori doti compositive o per le sue tendenze filorepubblicane), i rapporti tra i due s'incrinarono al punto tale che l'imperatore gli impedì di comporre e declamare in pubblico, facendolo cadere in disgrazia. Nel 65 Lucano partecipò alla cosiddetta "congiura dei Pisoni", volta ad eliminare il sovrano inviso da gran parte dell'aristocrazia senatoria per la sua condotta assolutistica, ma fu scoperta e il poeta, come molti altri che vi presero parte, ricevette l'ordine di uccidersi, cosa che fece il 30 aprile dello stesso anno.

Nonostante la sua giovane età, Lucano compose molte opere poetiche che, purtroppo, sono andate irrimediabilmente perdute. L'unico suo scritto pervenutoci, il suo capolavoro, è la "Pharsalia" o "Bellum civile".
Si tratta di un poema epico-storico, suddiviso in 10 libri (incompiuto per la sua morte prematura, tanto che avrebbe dovuto contarne probabilmente 12, secondo la tradizione epica classica), che tratta il tema della guerra civile combattuta tra Cesare e Pompeo e culminata con la battaglia di Farsalo nel 48 a.C.
Già l'argomento affrontato, un fatto storico e abbastanza recente rispetto al tempo in cui ne scrive, costituisce un elemento di novità e di frattura con l'epica classica contemporanea, basata sulla narrazione storico-mitologica di avvenimenti remoti coperti da aloni di leggenda e tesi a esaltare la grandezza dell'Impero romano. In netto contrasto con il massimo rappresentante di questa corrente,  Virgilio, il quale con la sua "Eneide", anteponendo il piano del mito a quello della storia, concepita come sua conseguenza e realizzazione successiva nel tempo, presentava una visione trionfalistica di Roma e in particolar modo della figura di Augusto, reso discendente dell'eroe troiano Enea, Lucano si pone come un "anti-Virgilio" e compone un "anti-Eneide": attraverso l'analisi della guerra civile che avrebbe trasformato per sempre il volto istituzionale della Città eterna, il poeta esprime la sua visione cupamente pessimistica sulla storia e sull'uomo in generale. La guerra tra Cesare e Pompeo viene presentata sin dalle prime pagine come un abominio, un conflitto fratricida che porta solo morte e distruzione. Nel lungo proemio, in cui Lucano dichiara le finalità dell'opera ed enuncia le cause scatenanti delle vicende belliche, emerge un profilo sinistro e cruento di questo periodo, caratterizzato dallo scontro tra due uomini legati da vincoli di parentela (Pompeo aveva sposato la figlia di Cesare, Giulia, nel 59 a.C.) che travolge ogni aspetto della società ed è espressione del sovvertimento di ogni legge umana e divina.
Il tono dell'opera è cupo, fatale e questa atmosfera pregna di morte, leitmotiv dell'intera narrazione, viene accentuata sempre di più sia attraverso l'inserimento di un gran numero di presagi funesti, oracoli cupi e profezie nefande, primo fra tutti l'episodio di necromanzia di Erittone nel VI libro, sia attraverso una continua denuncia da parte dello stesso poeta per la degenerazione morale del tempo, che si esprime tramite i suoi continui, insistiti e spesso ossessivi interventi personali che infrangono l'oggettività epica e conferiscono un piglio moralistico ai versi.

La "Pharsalia" è un'opera corrosiva, amara, che segue una strada opposta rispetto ai poemi epici elogiativi per smascherare il vero volto della realtà e per porre in evidenza l'abiezione e l'empietà che hanno macchiato costantemente la storia dell'Urbe.
La guerra civile è totalmente condannata dal poeta, il quale ben sa che essa non comporta civilizzazione e prestigio, come induceva a pensare la storiografia giustificazionista praticata da molti politici romani del passato e del presente, ma anche sofferenza e devastazione. Il conflitto è sempre una tragedia, ma è ancor più terribile se condotto da concittadini contro altri concittadini, andando a infrangere la coesione che è parte fondamentale di uno stato. La guerra civile tra cesariani e pompeiani rappresenta nella lunga lista di eventi sanguinosi che hanno lordato la storia del popolo romano un evento epocale, tanto che a più riprese Lucano lo paragone alla conflagrazione universale, alla fine fatale dell'ordine universale. Se gli scontri armati spesso sono condotti in nome della gloria e del prestigio che se ne potrebbero ricavare, questi invece affondano le proprie radici nella corruzione morale di uno Stato che, di fronte al lusso e alla brama di potere sollecitate dalla sua svolta imperialista, si è lasciato ammorbare dai beni materiali e ciò, come conseguenza, ha portato allo svuotamento degli ideali repubblicani e di quei valori di integrità propri del mos maiorum, codice di comportamento perpetuato dagli antenati. La ricchezza, il potere, la lussuria gonfiano le ambizioni degli uomini, esseri deboli e corruttibili, e li conducono a gesti estremi e aberranti pur di soddisfare questa loro sfrenata e crescente degradazione.
Ne è emblema Cesare, il vero antagonista dell'opera, paragonato nel I libro ad un fulmine che si sprigiona nel cielo e che squarcia il giorno, similitudine tesa ad indicare il suo furor distruttivo che nessuno riesce a contrastare e che rappresenta lo sprigionarsi di forze irrazionali che sgretolano le istituzioni romane e l'etica su cui si fondavano. Anche Pompeo è visto con occhio critico dal poeta: nei primi libri appare anche lui spinto da una certa avidità di potere, sebbene appaia come un eroe ormai in declino, la cui gloria appartiene ormai ad imprese passate e non più attualizzabili; mano a mano che si prosegue nella narrazione, però, emerge l'apprezzamento di Lucano nei suoi confronti, in quanto, nonostante sia conscio del destino triste che lo attende, lotta coraggiosamente fino alla fine, fino alla morte, pur di non sottomettersi a colui che ha sovvertito qualsiasi norma umana e divina. Meglio morire in coerenza con i propri valori, che vivere piegandosi ad un vincitore empio.
Tra questi due protagonisti si staglia la grande figura di Catone, il quale costituisce il vero eroe del poema, metro di giudizio del bene e del male in un periodo storico pervaso di malvagità e depravazione. Catone l'Uticense è colui che ha sempre anteposto il bene collettivo a quello individuale, il cui unico obiettivo è il perseguimento dei propri ideali senza alcun cedimento. E lo dimostrerà fino alla fine, non cessando mai di lottare per la sua amata Repubblica, per tentare di opporsi alla violenza cieca del fato, pur se consapevole della futura sconfitta. Lui è la vera figura positiva del poema, in quanto si trova dalla parte del giusto e per questo viene travolto e ucciso da una storia degenerata, in cui sono coinvolti anche gli dei, i quali permettono simili atrocità.
Lucano scardina tutte le certezze e le visioni falsamente ottimistiche che sono state e vengono veicolate in letteratura: dimostra come nel corso della sua storia Roma non abbia esteso la giustizia ad altri popoli, non abbia  assunto quel compito civilizzatore affidatogli dalla volontà superiore degli dei, ma abbia portato solo morte, sofferenza e barbarie morale. La storia dell'Impero è pregna di sangue, di violenza, segnata da numerose guerre interne che mettono in luce come la peggior nemica di Roma sia Roma stessa. Del resto anche la nascita delle stesse mura cittadine è legata ad un fatto disumano: l'uccisione di Remo da parte del fratello Romolo.
Lucano fa emergere così il suo scetticismo totalizzante attraverso la constatazione amara di quanto il male prevalga spesso sul bene e quanta sia vana la speranza di una salvazione di carattere divino o ultraterreno, fatto di cui la guerra tra Cesare e Pompeo è chiara dimostrazione: l'eroe nero, animato da cupidigia, vince, aiutato dagli dei che non impediscono questa lunga catena di violenze e di morti atroci, mentre colui che si dimostra pio, che sacrifica se stesso, la propria vita e i propri progetti per tentare di salvare la Repubblica romana, espressione di giustizia ed equità sociale, è costretto ad una fine indegna. Il pessimismo lucaneo investe tutto, dalla storia, al mondo divino, all'uomo stesso, in quanto essere egoista e pronto ad ogni malvagità pur di affermare se stesso.
La "Pharsalia" è dunque il poema delle contraddizioni dell'esistenza, è emblema dello sfogo sentito di un poeta di fronte alla malvagità trionfante che pervade il mondo e, soprattutto, è espressione dell'amarezza di chi, nonostante ricerchi la virtù ed è convinto dell'importanza del bene comune e dell'impegno civile e morale, osserva che nella realtà questo suo ideale è totalmente irrealizzabile e meramente utopico.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twin brothers fought there, the pride of a fertile
mother ; but the same womb gave them birth for
different deaths. The cruel hand of death made
distinction between them ; and the wretched
parents, no longer puzzled by the likeness, recog-
nised the one survivor but found in him a source
of unending sorrow ; for he keeps their grief ever
present and recalls his lost brother to their mourn-
ing hearts. One of these twins dared to catch
hold of a Roman ship from his own deck, when
the oars were entangled and overlapped each other.
The hand was lopped off by a heavy downward
blow ; but still it clung with the effort of its first
grip and, holding on with strained muscles, stiffened
there in death. His valour rose with disaster ;
mutilated, he displays yet more heroic ardour.
Fiercely he renews the fight with his left hand
and leans forward over the water to rescue his
right hand ; the left hand also and the whole arm
were cut off. Then bereft both of shield and
sword, nut hiding away in the bottom of the ship
but full in view, he protects his brother's shield with
his own bare breast, standing firm, though pierced
with many a point, and, although he had amply
earned his death already, stopping missiles that
would in their fall have made an end of many.

Then the life that was departing through many
wounds he gathered together into his spent frame,
and bracing his limbs with all his remaining
strength, he sprang on board the Roman ship ; his
sinews had lost their power, and his only weapon
was his weight. She was piled high with the
carnage of her crew and ran with blood ; she
suffered blow after blow on her broadside ; and, when
her sides were shattered and let in the sea, she filled
up to the top of her decks and sank down into the
waves, sucking in the water round her with curling
eddy. As the ship sank, the sea parted asunder
and then fell back into the room she had occupied.
And many other strange forms of death were seen
that day upon the deep.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written more than a century after the civil war battles that it narrates, [Lucan's Bellum Civile] is an epic that transmutes history into myth, and historical actors into haunting literary characters.
from Introduction by Matthew Fox and Ethan Adams

What crime made little ones deserve to be slaughtered?
It was enough that they were able to die.
Furious passion impelled them, and whoever looked
for guilt was considered too slow. Many died
simply to round off a number. The bloodthirsty conqueror
picked up a head chopped off of who knows who,
ashamed to walk with empty hands. One's only hope
for safety was trembling kisses on that filthy hand.

Lucan's Civil War is a fascinating 10-book epic detailing events leading up to the battle at Pharsalus (Book 7) and a bit of the aftermath. Lucan, like Statius, loves to drop geography and mythological associations which are difficult to follow. This Penguin edition has a thorough annotation by Fox to help explain references and allusions. Without these annotations, this would be one difficult text to navigate.

Lucan provides many characters with spotlighted speeches which, if you're into dramatic monologues, are engaging. Lucan also cannot help inserting his opinions about these events in the text--and his hatred of Julius Caesar keeps the material from becoming too mundane.

The pacing is inconsistent, but Lucan's epic about the absurdity of civil war (doesn't Rome have enough foes to fight without fighting itself, People?) has moments and insights which reward a careful reading.

Insane nightmares harass them, fitful raging sleep
churns the battle of Thessaly in their wretched breasts.
In each a brutal crime is watching wakeful, weapons
utterly disturb their minds and hands shake
sword hilts that are not there. I would believe
the battlefields groaned and the wicked land
breathed into and inflamed their souls, as ghosts
fully infest the air, the night above is steeped
with Stygian dread. From deserving men
victory exacts stern penalties, and in sleep
hisses and flames assail them, shades of slain
fellow citizens appear, and each is haunted
by a specter of what frightens him the most.
One sees old men's faces, another the shapes
of boys, another's dreams are troubled by
corpses of his brothers, or his father
haunts another's heart.

[Sarah Morgan Sandquist · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to admit I gave up about 2/3 of the way through this one. A joyless translation of a bitter epic is enough to discourage one entirely to the purpose. At the heart, I admire Lucan's goal: to create a work, in the shadow of Virgil's Aeniad that defies the standard: pessimistic instead of optimistic, petty rather than epic: gruesome without a trace of the idyllic - a work built in the ugly early inforescence of Roman Empire, looking backwards to point, so to speak, where it all went wrong.

But Graves' translation, erring, in my opinion by replacing Lucas's smooth verse with clunky and over-labored prose errs still further in existing at all. Why publish a professional translation of a work when you feel the need to state your blatant hatred squarely (and repeatedly) throughout?

I'm tempted to attempt an alternate translation - possibly one of the ones trashed in the introduction to this piece, however, the gruesome nature of the original work, in the form of continuous pages-long death scenes is an additional deterrent to that path.

[Jan Peter van Kempen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In de oudheid waren er mensen die niet veel op hadden met Caesar, er waren er die hem haatten, en dan was er ook nog Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (39-65 n chr)… Deze geschiedschrijver was een neef van Seneca en kreeg -net zoals zijn oom- van keizer Nero de uitnodiging zelfmoord te plegen. In hoeverre dit boek, De Bello Civili, een mogelijke aanleiding is geweest is niet bekend. Lucanus trekt zeer fel van leer Caesar zonder zich kennelijk rekenschap te geven van het feit dat Nero, een wellicht nog grotere tiran dan Julius Caesar, een (min of meer) rechtstreekse afstammeling is van deze Caesar. De geschiedschrijving is dus tamelijk gekleurd, maar niet minder boeiend om te lezen. Met name boek VII, waarin de slag bij Pharsalus wordt beschreven, zou niet misstaan als het filmscript van een uiterst bloedige oorlogsfilm.
De Bello Civili is onvoltooid gebleven. Wie weet wat voor bloederige verhalen Lucanus nog in gedachten had voor ons: we mogen verwachten dat hij ons ook een mooi verslag van de moord op Julius Caesar (we komen Brutus ook in boek VII al tegen) had willen presenteren.

[Kent McCormick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucan’s Pharsalia is a powerful and tragic poem about Rome tearing itself apart in civil war. Instead of heroes and gods, Lucan gives us ambition, betrayal, and a deep sadness for the loss of freedom. At the center is Cato, a symbol of Stoic courage, choosing what is right, even when it means defeat. Lucan’s ideas about virtue, self-control, and inner freedom influenced both philosophy and Christianity, shaping how people think about standing firm in the face of power and suffering.

[Sherry Wang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for a class. Interesting and I thought the depiction of Erictho was intriguing.

[Steven]

Most interesting for me in its digressions. There're some morbidly fascinating passages on both necromancy and death by snakebite.

[Charles Hull · Rating 5 out of 5]

Badass.

[Arthur Sperry · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a Latin teacher for the last 37 years, I really enjoy re-reading a lot of the Classics.

[el ✯ ࣪ ˖ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Took longer than the river Rubicon.

[Isa · Rating 3 out of 5]

ate, was yawning a little by Book IX but enjoyed this more than the Aeneid I dare say

[Lulu]

c. 61-65 CE (The poem was begun around 61 AD and several books were in circulation before the Emperor Nero and Lucan had a bitter falling out. Lucan continued to work on the epic – despite Nero's prohibition against any publication of Lucan's poetry – and it was left unfinished when Lucan was compelled to suicide as part of the Pisonian conspiracy in 65 AD. A total of ten books were written and all survive; the tenth book breaks off abruptly with Caesar in Egypt.)


Lucan's great poem, Pharsalia, recounts events surrounding the decisive battle fought near Pharsalus in 48 B.C. during the civil war between the forces of Pompey and Julius Caesar. Though the subject of this unfinished masterpiece is historical, many of its features are characteristic of epic poetry: Rousing battle scenes; tales of witches, monsters, and miracle; detailed catalogues; intricate similes; and speeches with a high degree of rhetorical elegance. However, Lucan's deft mix of humor and horror, of political satire, literary parody, history, and epic is entirely his own.