The Civil War (Pharsalia)

by Lucan, J. D. Duff

Overview

Epic history.

Lucan (M. Annaeus Lucanus, AD 39–65), son of wealthy M. Annaeus Mela and nephew of Seneca, was born at Corduba (Cordova) in Spain and was brought as a baby to Rome. In AD 60 at a festival in Emperor Nero’s honor Lucan praised him in a panegyric and was promoted to one or two minor offices. But having defeated Nero in a poetry contest he was interdicted from further recitals or publication, so that three books of his epic The Civil War were probably not issued in 61 when they were finished. By 65 he was composing the tenth book but then became involved in the unsuccessful plot of Piso against Nero and, aged only twenty-six, by order took his own life.

Quintilian called Lucan a poet “full of fire and energy and a master of brilliant phrases.” His epic stood next after Virgil’s in the estimation of antiquity. Julius Caesar looms as a sinister hero in his stormy chronicle in verse of the war between Caesar and the Republic’s forces under Pompey, and later under Cato in Africa—a chronicle of dramatic events carrying us from Caesar’s fateful crossing of the Rubicon, through the Battle of Pharsalus and death of Pompey, to Caesar victorious in Egypt. The poem is also called Pharsalia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674992429
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	01/01/1928
Series:	Loeb Classical Library , #220
Edition description:	9th printing/1st pub.1928
Pages:	656
Sales rank:	890,845
Product dimensions:	4.25(w) x 6.38(h) x 1.25(d)
Language:	Latin

About the Author

James D. Duff (1860–1940) was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

The Civil War

Book I

Book II

Book III

Book IV

Book V

Book VI

Book VII

Book VIII

Book IX

Book X

Index