VII. LUCAN.
39-65 A.D.
Lucan, full of warmth and vehemence, eminently quotable, but, to speak frankly, one whom, orators rather than poets should imitate.— Quintilian, 10. 1. 90.
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.
In philosophy Lucan was a Stoic, in style a rhetorician. The Pharsalia, his only extant work, is an epic poem of about eight thousand lines in ten books on the civil war between Pompey and Caesar.
The Cato of Selections 2-5 is Cato the Younger, or 'the Stoic,' who in 46 B.C. was in Africa in command of a part of the Republican forces opposed to Julius Caesar. After the decisive defeat at Thapsus he refused to survive the Republic, taking his own life at Utica. His memory was revered throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. Vergil makes him the lawgiver of Elysium (Aeneid, 8. 670), and Dante represents him as the warden of Purgatory, 'venerable,' his countenance adorned with the 'rays of the four consecrated stars,' his form destined to shine brightly on the last day.
For her [i.e. Liberty] to thee not bitter
Was death in Utica, where thou didst leave
The vesture, that will shine so, the great day.
See Longfellow's translation of the Purgatorio, with notes, Canto I.
Haskins, Lucani Pharsalia, Introduction, pp. 59-60, examines all allusions to Cato in the Pharsalia, and concludes that the picture is in its main outlines truthful, though the failure to depict 'the cross-grained perversity that moved the complaints of Cicero' makes it somewhat one-sided. 'Of course the portrait is colored by a loving hand: but it is none the worse for that.'
For Reference: Teuffel, Schwabe, and Warr, History of Roman Literature, vol. 2, p. 78 ff. Haskins, Lucani Pharsalia (London, 1889).
Metre: Dactylic Hexameter, B. 368; A. & G. 616.
2. 4. deis placuit: that Caesar 'had the strongest battalions' proves that 'Heaven' was 'on his side.'
3. Cato, proceeding by land from the neighborhood of Cyrene toward Numidia, and coming to the temple of Jupiter Ammon,—geographically misplaced by Lucan,—is advised by Labienus to consult the god concerning the outcome of the war and the nature of virtue. The selection gives his reply. 1. mente gerebat: of. Seneca, Epistula 4. 12 (41). 1, 2. 'God is near you, is with you, is within you. I have this to say, Lucilius: a sacred spirit has his abode within us.' 3. Labiene: Caesar's former second-in-command, who went over to Pompey's side at the beginning of the Civil War and was finally slain at Munda. 5. et: even. 6, 7. Fortuna perdat minas: whether Fortune threatens vainly. 8. et…honestum: and whether the right never grows more, right by success. 10. Haeremus ff.: We are in constant intercourse with heaven.—Haskins. 11. Sponte dei: by the inspiration of God.—Haskins. 12, 13. dixit…licet: the inner light of conscience. auctor: the Creator. 15-17. These lines suggested the passage in Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey:
I have felt…a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
virtus: Grotius quotes Hierocles: 'God hath not upon earth a place more truly his than the pure heart,' and the Pythian oracle: 'I joy in reverent mortals even as in Olympus.' Superos…ultra: Why further do we seek the gods? Iuppiter…moveris: All that you see, and all your feelings, that is Jupiter.—Haskins. Cf. Seneca, De Beneftciis, 4. 8: Quocumque te flexeris, ibi ilium videbis occurrentem tibi: nihil ab illo vacat, opus suum ipse implet. 22. Servata fide: true to his word. 23. populis: dative, to the multitude, i.e. of Orientals waiting to consult the oracle.
4. 10. Fortuna fuit: i.e. was due to fortune rather than to virtue. Fortuna is predicate nominative. 14. quam…Iugurthae: i.e. than to win the victories of Marius.
5. This noble portrait is that of an ideal Stoic. Roman life had been deeply imbued with this philosophy, which had passed beyond the limits of the schools to become at once a religious creed and a practical code of morals for everyday use. See Mackail, Latin Literature, p. 171. 2. servare…tenere: to hold fast the mean, to observe the due limit. These and the following phrases are Stoic formulae. 4. Cf. Seneca, Epistula 95 (15.3). 52-53, where he says 'we are members of a great body.' 'Let this line be both in our hearts and on our lips:
"Human I am,
And every human interest is mine."'
See the entire passage. 12. sibi nata: selfish.