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Extract
Lucan, fine poet though he be, is yet one of the most faulty and incalculable of the whole recalcitrant tribe. At the very outset we are surprised by a monstrously fulsome dedication to Nero of a work apparently devoted to a vilification of the man on whose amazing career Nero's empire is founded. Satire being quite out of the question, we must suppose that, despite his republican sympathies, Lucan, recalled as Suetonius says from Athens and received with marked favours, felt some acknowledgement required. At the worst we may regard it as a prudent step to forestall any treacherous slave-copyist, or delator who might have heard a partial recitation; and after Seneca's disgrace in 62, in which year the separate publication of books i–iii indicated by Vacca may have occurred, caution would be still more needful. To the same precaution it may be due that, in the poem proper, anti-Caesarian bias is not immediately apparent. The initial attitude seems impartial: general causes are mentioned; we get the plain statement:
Quis iustius induit arma, Scire nefas; magno se iudice quisque tuetur: Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni;
and even some hesitation by Caesar himself, who, at the Rubicon, confronted by the Genius of Rome, exhibits terrors equal to any recorded of pious Aeneas; though after this he is consistently resolute, and is soon credited with a savage desire for bloodshed2 quite inconsistent with his reported actions and with history.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1932
References
page 166 note 1 i. 126–8.
page 166 note 2 ii. 439–46; iii. 82–3.
page 166 note 3 vii. 647–97.
page 167 note 1 viii. 1–14.
page 167 note 2 viii. 209–43.
page 167 note 3 viii. 331–453.
page 167 note 4 ii. 734–6.
page 167 note 5 vii. 1–44.
page 167 note 6 viii. 712–872.
page 167 note 7 vi. 791–809.
page 167 note 8 expensa superorum et Caesaris ira' (iii. 439).
page 167 note 9 v. 364–7.
page 167 note 10 i. 372; iv. 500–4; vi. 150–65; vii. 470–5.
page 168 note 1 ii 234–325.
page 169 note 1 i. 131–40.
page 169 note 2 iii. 432–7. We know no original for this episode: Caesar's De Bell. Civ. does not mention it, and it is therefore improbable that it appeared in Livy's lost book cx.
page 169 note 3 vii. 457–9.
page 169 note 4 ix. 190–211.
page 170 note 1 ii. 320–3.
page 170 note 2 ‘Admisit venerem curis, et miscuit armis’ &c. x. 75–6Google Scholar
page 170 note 3 v. 723–815.
page 170 note 4 v. 371–3. ‘Tam diri foederis ictu’ &c.
page 170 note 5 vii. 259–62.
page 170 note 6 Though Cicero was not actually at Pharsalia at all.
page 170 note 7 ix. 255–83.
page 171 note 1 ix. 884–6.
page 171 note 2 ix. 566–84.
page 171 note 3 viii. 127–9.
page 171 note 4 Ib. 165, 571–6.
page 171 note 5 We adhere to common usage, which applies to the battle a term properly applicable only to the poem, ‘the matter of Pharsalus’, the town near which it was fought.
page 171 note 6 iii. 88 sqq.
page 171 note 7 x. 172–92.
page 172 note 1 Compare with Lucan's hurricane (bk. v), Odyss. v. 295–6, Aen. i. 102–31.
page 172 note 2 Haskins's research unearths two, ‘chersydrus’ and ‘scytale’, from the Theriaca of Nicander, flor. 185–135 B.C.
page 172 note 3 iv. 589–653.
page 173 note 1 The attitude was admirably put, though not positively endorsed, in Dr. E. P. Barker's informing essay of 1915, ‘The Poet in the Forcing-House’ (Public, of the Classical Assoc, No. 2).
page 173 note 2 Instit. Orat. x. 1. 90.
page 174 note 1 De Sublim. i. 4.
page 174 note 2 In the latter part of the Satyricon.
page 174 note 3 Silvae, ii. 7.
