Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal

by Harold Edgeworth Butler

LUCAN

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus,[244] the poet who more than any other exhibits the typical excellences and defects of the Silver Age, was born at Cordova on November 3, in the year 39 A.D.[245] He came of a distinguished line. He was the son of M. Annaeus Mela, brother of Seneca the philosopher and dramatist, and son of Seneca the rhetorician. Mela was a wealthy man,[246] and in 40 A.D. removed with his family to Rome. His son (whose future as a great poet is said to have been portended by a swarm of bees that settled on the cradle and the lips of the bard that was to be[247]) received the best education that Rome could bestow. He showed extraordinary precocity in all the tricks of declamatory rhetoric, soon equalling his instructors in skill and far out-distancing his fellow pupils.[248] Among his preceptors was his kinsman, the famous Stoic, L. Annaeus Cornutus, well known as the friend and teacher of Persius.[249] His first appearance before the public was at the Neronia in 60 A.D., when he won the prize for Latin verse with a poem in praise of Nero.[250] Immediately afterwards he seems to have proceeded to Athens. But his talents had attracted the attention and patronage of Nero. He was recalled to Rome,[251] and at the nomination of the princeps became Quaestor, although he had not yet attained the requisite age of twenty-five.[252] He was also admitted to the College of Augurs, and for some time continued to enjoy Nero's friendship. But it was not to last. Lucan had been educated in Stoic surroundings. Though his own relatives managed to combine the service of the emperor with their Stoic principles, Lucan had not failed to imbibe the passionate regret for the lost liberty of the republic that was so prominent a feature in Stoic circles. It was not a mere pose that led him to select the civil war as the subject of his poem. His enthusiasm for liberty may have been literary rather than political in character. But when we are dealing with an artistic temperament we must bear in mind that the ideals which were primarily inspiration for art may on slight provocation become incentives to action. And in the case of Lucan that provocation was not lacking. As his fame increased, Nero's friendship was replaced by jealousy. The protégé had become too serious a rival to the patron.[253] Lucan's vanity was injured by Nero's sudden withdrawal from a recitation.[254] From servile flattery he turned to violent criticism: he spared his former patron neither in word nor deed. He turned the sharp edge of his satire against him in various pungent epigrams, and was forbidden to recite poetry or to plead in the law courts.[255] But it would be unjust to Lucan to attribute his changed attitude purely to wounded vanity. Seneca was at this very moment attempting to retire from public life. The court of Nero had become no place for him. Lucan cannot have been unaffected by the action of his uncle, and it is only just to him to admit the possibility that the change in his attitude may have been due, at any rate in part, to a change in character, an awakening to the needs of the State and the needs of his own soul. There is no need to question the genuineness of his political enthusiasm, even though it tended to be theatrical and may have been largely kindled by motives not wholly disinterested. The Pisonian conspiracy found in him a ready coadjutor. He became one of the ringleaders of the plot ('paene signifer coniurationis'), and in a bombastic vein would promise Nero's head to his fellow-conspirators.[256] On the detection of the plot, in 65 A. D., he, with the other chiefs of the conspiracy, was arrested. For long he denied his complicity; at last, perhaps on the threat or application of torture, his nerve failed him; he descended to grovelling entreaties, and to win himself a reprieve accused his innocent mother, Acilia, of complicity in the plot.[257] His conduct does not admit of excuse. But it is not for the plain, matter-of-fact man to pass judgement lightly on the weakness of a highly-strung, nervous, artistic temperament; the artist's imagination may transmute pain such as others might hope to bear, to anguish such as they cannot even imagine. There lies the palliation, if palliation it be, of Lucan's crime. But it availed him nothing: the reprieve was never won; he was condemned to die, the manner of his death being left to his free choice. He wrote a few instructions for his father as to the editing of his poems, partook of a sumptuous dinner, and then, adopting the fashionable form of suicide, cut the arteries of his arms and bled to death. He died declaiming a passage from his own poetry in which he had described the death of a soldier from loss of blood.[258] It was a theatrical end, and not out of keeping with his life.

He lived but a little over twenty-five years and five months, but he left behind him a vast amount of poetry and an extraordinary reputation. His earliest work[259] seems to have been the Iliacon, describing the death of Hector, his ransom and burial. Next came the Catachthonion, a short work on the underworld. This was followed by the laudes Neronis, to which reference has already been made, and the Orpheus, which was extemporized in a competition with other poets.[260] If we follow the order given by Statius, his next work was the prose declamation on the burning of the city (64 A.D.) and a poem addressed to his wife Polla (adlocutio ad Pollam). Then comes his chef d'oeuvre, the Pharsalia, to which we shall return. Of the other works mentioned by Vacca, the Silvae must have been, like the Silvae of Statius, trifles thrown off hurriedly for the gratification of friends or for the celebration of some great occasion.[261] The salticae fabulae were libretti written for the pantomimus,[262] while the Saturnalia were light verse sent as presents to friends on the festival of Saturn.[263] Of these works nothing has come down to us save a few scanty fragments, not in any way calculated to make us regret their loss.[264] Even Vacca can find no very high praise for them. Judging alike from the probabilities of the case and from the Pharsalia itself, they must have suffered from Lucan's fatal gift of fluency.

It was the Pharsalia that won Lucan undying fame. Three books of this ambitious historical epic were finished and given to the world during the poet's lifetime.[265] These the poet had, at any rate in part, recited in public, calling attention, with a vanity worthy of himself and of the age, to his extreme youth; he was younger than Vergil when he composed the Culex![266] The remaining seven books never had the benefit of revision, owing to the poet's untimely end,[267] though curiously enough they show no special signs of lack of finish, and contain some of the finest passages in the whole work. The composition of all ten books falls between 60 and 65 A.D. Lucan had chosen for his theme the death-struggle of the republic. It was a daring choice for more reasons than one. There were elements of danger in singing the praises of Pompey and Cato under the principate. To that the fate of Cremutius Cordus bore eloquent testimony.[268] But Nero was less sensitive about the past than Tiberius. The republic had never become officially extinct. Tyrannicide was a licensed and hackneyed theme of the schools of rhetoric; in skilful hands it might be a subtle instrument of flattery. Moreover, Nero was descended in direct line from Domitius Ahenobarbus, who had fought and died for Pompey on the field of Pharsalus. In the books published during Lucan's lifetime there is not a line that could have given personal offence to the princeps, while the fulsome dedication would have covered a multitude of indiscretions.[269] Far more serious were the difficulties presented by the nature of the story itself. Historical epic rarely admits of artistic treatment, and the nearer the date of the events described, the more insoluble is the problem.

Two courses were open to Lucan: he might treat the story with comparative fidelity to truth, avoiding all supernatural machinery, save such as was justified by historical tradition; on the other hand he might adopt the course subsequently pursued by Silius Italicus in his poem on the Punic War, and introduce all the hackneyed interventions of Olympus, sanctioned by Vergil and followed by many a poet since. The latter method is obviously only suited for a purely legendary epic, though even the legendary epic can well dispense with it, and it might have been supposed that an age so sceptical and careless of the orthodox theology, as that into which Lucan was born, would have felt the full absurdity of applying such a device to historical epic. Lucan was wise in his choice, and left Olympus severely alone. But his choice roused contemporary criticism. In the Satyricon of Petronius we find a defence of the old conventional mechanism placed in the mouth of a shabby and disreputable poet named Eumolpus (118). He complains 'that young men plunge headlong into epic verse thinking that it requires no more skill than a showy declamation at the school of rhetoric. They do not realize that to be a successful poet one must be steeped in the great ocean of literature. They do not recognize that there is such a thing as a special poetic vocabulary,[270] or that the commonplaces of rhetoric require to be interwoven with, not merely tacked on to, the fabric of their verse, and so it comes about that the writer who would turn the Civil War into an epic is apt to stumble beneath the burden he takes upon his shoulders, unless indeed he is permeated through and through with literature. You must not simply turn history into verse: historians do it better in prose. Rather the poet should sweep on his way borne by the breath of inspiration and untrammelled by hard fact, making use of cunning artifice and divine intervention, and interfusing his "commonplaces" with legendary lore; only so will his work seem to be the fine frenzy of an inspired bard rather than the exactitude of one who is giving sworn evidence before a judge'. He then proceeds in 295 verses to deal, after the manner he has prescribed, with the events contained in the first three books of the Pharsalia, the only books that had been made public at the time when Petronius' romance was composed. Pluto inspires Caesar to the crime of civil war. Peace, Fidelity, and Concord fly from the earth at his approach. The gods range themselves on this side and on that. Discord perched high on Apennine incites the peoples of Italy to war. The verse is uninspired, the method is impossible, the remedy is worse than the disease. The last hope of our taking the poem seriously has departed. Yet this passage of Petronius contains much sound criticism. Military and political history does not admit of being turned into genuine poetry; an epic on an historic war must depend largely on its purple patches of description and rhetoric: it almost demands that prominence of epigram and 'commonplace' that Eumolpus condemns.[27l] Petronius sees the weakness of Lucan's epic; he fails because, like Silius Italicus, he thinks he has discovered a remedy. The faults of Lucan's poem are largely inherent in the subject chosen; they will stand out clearly as we review the structure and style of the work.

In taking the whole of the Civil War for his subject Lucan was confronted with a somewhat similar problem to that which faced Shakespeare in his Julius Caesar. The problem that Shakespeare had to meet was how to prolong and sustain the interest of the play after the death of Caesar and the events that centre immediately round it. The difficulty was surmounted triumphantly. The obstacles in Lucan's path were greater. The poem is incomplete, and there must be some uncertainty as to its intended scope. That it was planned to include the death of Cato is clear from the importance assigned him in the existing books. But could the work have concluded on such a note of gloom as the death of the staunchest champion of the republic? The whole tone of the poem is republican in the extreme. If the republic must perish, it should not perish unavenged. There are, moreover, many prophetic allusions to the death of Caesar,[272] which point conclusively to Lucan's intention to have made the vengeance of Brutus and Cassius the climax of his poem. The problem which the poet had to resolve was how to prevent the interest from nagging, as his heroes were swept away before the triumphant advance of Caesar. He concentrates our attention at the outset on Pompey. Throughout the first eight books it is for him that he claims our sympathy. And then he is crushed by his rival and driven in flight to die an unheroic death. It is only at this point that Cato leaps into prominence. But though he has a firmness of purpose and a grandeur of character that Lucan could not give Pompey, he never has the chance to become the protagonist. Both Pompey and Cato, for all the fine rhetoric bestowed on them, fail to grip the reader, while from the very facts of history it is impossible for either of them to lend unity to the plot. Both are dwarfed by the character of Caesar. Caesar is the villain of the piece; he is a monster athirst for blood, he will not permit the corpses of his enemies (over which he is made to gloat) to be buried after the great battle, and when on his coming to Egypt the head of his rival is brought him, his grief and indignation are represented as being a mere blind to conceal his real joy. The successes are often merely the result of good fortune. Lucan is loth to admit even his greatness as a general. And yet, blacken his character as he may, he feels that greatness. From the moment of his brilliant characterization of Caesar in the first book[273] we feel we have a man who knows what he desires and will shrink from nothing to attain his ends; he 'thinks naught yet done while aught remains to do',[274] he 'strikes fear into men's hearts because he knows not the meaning of fear',[275] and through all the melodramatic rhetoric with which he addresses his soldiers, there shines clear the spirit of a great leader of men. Whoever was intended by the poet for his hero, the fact remains that Caesar dominates the poem as none save the hero should do. He is the hero of the Pharsalia as Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost.[276] It is through him above all that Lucan retains our interest. The result is fatal for the proper proportion of the plot. Lucan does not actually alienate our sympathies from the republic, but, whatever our moral judgement on the conflict may be, our interest centres on Caesar, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the true tragedy of the epic would have come with his death. The Pharsalia fails of its object as a republican epic; its success comes largely from an unintended quarter.

What the exact scale of the poem was meant to be it is hard to say. Vergil had set the precedent for an epic of twelve books, and it is not improbable that Lucan would have followed his example. On the other hand, if Cato and Caesar had both to be killed in the last two books, great compression would have been necessary. In view of the diffuseness of Lucan's rhetoric, and the rambling nature of his narrative, it is more than probable that the epic would have exceeded the limit of twelve books and been a formidable rival in bulk to the Punica of Silius Italicus. On the other hand, the last seven books of the existing poem are unrevised, and may have been destined for abridgement. There is so much that is irrelevant that the task would have been easy.

But it is not for the plot that Lucan's epic is read. It has won immortality by the brilliance of its rhetoric, its unsurpassed epigrams, its clear-cut summaries of character, its biting satire, and its outbursts of lofty political enthusiasm. These features stand out pre-eminent and atone for its astounding errors of taste, its strained hyperbole, its foolish digression. Lucan fails to make his actors live as they move through his pages; their actions and their speeches are alike theatrical; he has no dramatic power. But he can sum up their characters in burning lines that live through all time and have few parallels in literature. And these pictures are in all essentials surprisingly just and accurate. His affection for Pompey and the demands of his plot presented strong temptations to exalt his character at the expense of historical truth. Yet what can be more just than the famous lines of the first book, where his character is set against Caesar's? (129):

vergentibus annis in senium longoque togae tranquillior usu dedidicit iam pace ducem: famaeque petitor multa dare in volgus; totus popularibus auris inpelli plausuque sui gaudere theatri; nec reparare novas vires, multumque priori credere fortunae, stat magni nominis umbra: qualis frugifero querens sublimis in agro exuvias veteres populi sacrataque gestans dona ducum: nec iam validis radicibus haerens pondere fixa suo est, nudosque per aera ramos effundens trunco non frondibus efficit umbram.

One aged grown
Had long exchanged the corselet for the gown:
In peace forgotten the commander's art,
And learned to play the politician's part,—
To court the suffrage of the crowd, and hear
In his own theatre the venal cheer;
Idly he rested on his ancient fame,
And was the shadow of a mighty name.
Like the huge oak which towers above the fields
Decked with ancestral spoils and votive shields.
Its roots, once mighty, loosened by decay,
Hold it no more: weight is its only stay;
Its naked limbs bespeak its glories past,
And by its trunk, not leaves, a shade is cast.
PROF. GOLDWIN SMITH.

Even the panegyric pronounced on him by Cato on hearing the news of his death is as moderate as it is true and dignified (ix. 190):

civis obit, inquit, multum maioribus inpar nosse modum iuris, sed in hoc tamen en utilis aevo, cui non ulla fuit iusti reverentia; salva libertate potens, et solus plebe parata privatus servire sibi, rectorque senatus, sed regnantis, erat. … invasit ferrum, sed ponere, norat; praetulit arma togae, sed pacem armatus amavit: iuvit sumpta ducem iuvit dimissa potestas.

A man, he said, is gone, unequal far
To our good sires in reverence for the law,
Yet useful in an age that knew not right,
One who could power with liberty unite,
Uncrowned 'mid willing subjects could remain,
The Senate rule, yet let the Senate reign.
* * * * *
He drew the sword, but he could sheathe it too,
War was his trade, yet he to peace inclined,
Gladly command accepted-and resigned.—PROF. GOLDWIN SMITH.

Elsewhere he is as one of the 'strengthless dead', here he lives. Elsewhere he may be invested with the pathos that must cling to the shadow of a mighty name, but he is too weak and ineffective to be interesting. His wavering policy in his last campaign is unduly emphasized.[277] When he is face to face with Caesar at Pharsalus and exhorts his men, he can but boast, he cannot inspire.[278] When the battle turns against him he bids his men cease from the fight, and himself flies, that he may not involve them in his own disaster.[279] No less convincing portrait could be drawn. The material was unpromising, but Lucan emphasizes all his weaknesses and wholly fails to bring out his nobler elements. He is unworthy of the line

nec cinis exiguus tantam compescuit umbram.

So, too, in a lesser degree with Caesar. For a moment in the first book he flashes upon us in his full splendour (143):

sed non in Caesare tantum nomen erat nec fama ducis: sed nescia virtus stare loco, solusque pudor non vincere bello. acer et indomitus, quo spes quoque ira vocasset. ferre manum et numquam temerando parcere ferro, successus urgere suos, instare fauori numinis, inpellens quidquid sibi summa petenti obstaret, gaudensque viam fecisse ruina.

Not such the talisman of Caesar's name,
But Caesar had, in place of empty fame.
The unresting soul, the resolution high
That shuts out every thought but victory.
Whate'er his goal, nor mercy nor dismay
He owned, but drew the sword and cleft his way:
Pressed each advantage that his fortune gave;
Constrained the stars to combat for the brave;
Swept from his path whate'er his rise delayed,
And marched triumphant through the wreck he made.
PROF. GOLDWIN SMITH.

Here at any rate is Caesar the general: in such a poem there is no room for Caesar the statesman. But from this point onward we see no true Caesar. Henceforward, save for a few brief moments, he is a figure for the melodramatic stage alone, a 'brigand chief', a master hypocrite, the favourite of fortune. And yet, for all his unreality, Lucan has endowed him with such impetuous vigour and such a plenitude of power that he dwarfs the other puppets that throng his pages even more, if possible, than in real life he overtopped his contemporaries.

Cato, the third great figure of the Pharsalia, was easier to draw. Unconsciously stagey in life, he is little stagier in Lucan. And yet, in spite of his absurdity, he has a nobility and a sincerity of purpose which is without parallel in that corrupt age. He was the hero of the Stoic republicans[280] of the early principate, the man of principle, stern and unbending. He requires no fine touches of light and shade, for he is the perfect Stoic. But from the very rigidity of his principles he was no statesman and never played more than a secondary part in politics.

Lucan's task is to exalt him from the second rank to the first. But it is no easy undertaking, since it was not till after the disaster of Pharsalus that he played any conspicuous part in the Civil War. He first appears as warrant for the justice of the republican cause (i. 128). We next see him as the hope of all true patriots at Rome (ii. 238). Pompey has fled southward. Cato alone remains the representative of all that is noblest and best in Rome. He has no illusions as to Pompey's character. He is not the leader he would choose for so sacred a cause; but between Pompey and Caesar there can be no wavering. He follows Pompey. Not till the ninth book does he reappear in the action. Pompey is fallen, and all turn to Cato as their leader. The cause is lost, and Cato knows it well; but he obeys the call of duty and undertakes the hopeless enterprise undismayed. He is a stern leader, but he shares his men's hardships to the full, and fortifies them by his example. He is in every action what the real Cato only was at Utica. On him above all others Lucan has lavished all his powers; and he has succeeded in creating a character of such real moral grandeur that, in spite of its hardness and austerity, it almost succeeds in winning our affection (ii. 380):

hi mores, haec duri inmota Catonis secta fuit, servare modum finesque tenere naturamque sequi patriaeque inpendere vitam nec sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo.

'Twas his rule
Inflexible to keep the middle path
Marked out and bounded; to observe the laws
Of natural right; and for his country's sake
To risk his life, his all, as not for self
Brought into being, but for all the world.
SIR E. RIDLEY.

Here is a man indeed worthy to be the hero of a republican epic, did history permit it. Our chief reason—at moments there is a temptation to say 'our only reason'—for regretting the incompletion of the Pharsalia is that Lucan did not live to describe Cato's death. There was a subject which was worthy of his pen and would have been a labour of love. With what splendour of rhetoric he might have invested it can only be conjectured from the magnificent passage where Cato refuses to inquire into his fate at Ammon's oracle (ix. 566):

quid quaeri, Labiene, iubes? an liber in armis occubuisse velim potius quam regna videre? an sit vita nihil, sed longa? an differat aetas? an noceat vis ulla bono, fortunaque perdat opposita virtute minas, laudandaque velle sit satis, et numquam successu crescat honestum? scimus, et hoc nobis non altius inseret Hammon. haeremus cuncti superis, temploque tacente nil facimus non sponte dei; nec vocibus ultis numen eget, dixitque semel nascentibus auctor quidquid scire licet, steriles nec legit harenas, ut caneret paucis, mersitque hoc pulvere verum. estque dei sedes, nisi terra et pontus et aer et caelum et virtus? superos quid quaerimus ultra? Iuppiter est quodcumque vides quodcumque moveris. sortilegis egeant dubii semperque futuris casibus ancipites; me non oracula certum, sed mors certa facit. pavido fortique cadendum est; hoc satis est dixisse Iouem.

What should I ask? Whether to live a slave
Is better, or to fill a soldier's grave?
What life is worth drawn to its utmost span,
And whether length of days brings bliss to man?
Whether tyrannic force can hurt the good,
Or the brave heart need quail at Fortune's mood?
Whether the pure intent makes righteousness,
Or virtue needs the warrant of success?
All this I know: not Ammon can impart
Force to the truth engraven on my heart.
All men alike, though voiceless be the shrine,
Abide in God and act by will divine.
No revelation Deity requires,
But at our birth, all men may know, inspires.
Nor is truth buried in this desert sand
And doled to few, but speaks in every land.
What temple but the earth, the sea, the sky,
And heaven and virtuous hearts, hath deity?
As far as eye can range or feet can rove
Jove is in all things, all things are in Jove.
Let wavering souls to oracles attend,
The brave man's course is clear, since sure his end.
The valiant and the coward both must fall
This when Jove tells me, he has told me all.
PROF. GOLDWIN SMITH.

One Cato will not lend life to an epic, and history, to the great loss of art, forbids him to play a sufficiently important role. It is unnecessary to comment on the lesser personages of the epic; if the leading characters lack life, the minor characters lack individuality as well.[281] Lucan has nothing of the dramatic vitalising power that is so necessary for epic.

He is equally defective in narrative power. He can give us brilliant pictures as in the lines describing the vision of Caesar at the Rubicon[282] or Pompey's last sight of Italy.[283] But such passages are few and far between. Of longer passages there are not perhaps more than three in the whole work where we get any sustained beauty of narrative-the parting of Pompey and his wife,[284] Pompey's dream before Pharsalus,[285] and a description of a Druid grove in Southern Gaul.[286] The first of these is noticeable as being one of the few occasions on which Lucan shows any command of simple pathos unmarred by tricks of tawdry rhetoric. The whole episode is admirably treated. The speeches of both husband and wife are commendably and unusually simple and direct, but the climax comes after Cornelia's speech, where the poet describes the moment before they part. With the simplest words and the most severe economy of diction, he produces an effect such as Vergil rarely surpassed, and such as was never excelled or equalled again in the poetry of Southern Europe till Dante told the story of Paolo and Francesca (v. 790):

sic fata relictis exsiluit stratis amens tormentaque nulla vult differre mora. non maesti pectora Magni sustinet amplexu dulci, non colla tenere, extremusque perit tam longi fructus amoris, praecipitantque sues luctus, neuterque recedens sustinuit dixisse 'vale', vitamque per omnem nulla fuit tarn maesta dies; nam cetera damna durata iam mente malis firmaque tulerunt.

So spake she, and leaped frenzied from the couch, loth to put off the pangs of parting by the least delay. She cannot bear to cast her arms about sad Magnus' bosom, or clasp his neck in a last sweet embrace; and thus the last delight, such long love as theirs might know, is cast away: they hasten their own agony; neither as they parted had the heart to say farewell; and while they lived they knew no sadder day than this. All other losses they bore with hearts hardened and steeled by misery.

It is faulty and monotonous in rhythm, but one would gladly have more from Lucan of the same poetic quality, even at the expense of the same blemishes. The dream of Pompey is scarcely inferior (vii. 7):

at nox, felicis Magno pars ultima vitae, sollicitos vana decepit imagine somnos. nam Pompeiani visus sibi sede theatri innumeram effigiem Romanae cernere plebis attollique suum laetis ad sidera nomen vocibus et plausu cuneos certare sonantes; qualis erat populi facies clamorque faventis, olim cum iuvenis primique aetate triumphi * * * * * sedit adhuc Romanus eques; seu fine bonorum anxia venturis ad tempera laeta refugit, sive per ambages solitas contraria visis vaticinata quies magni tulit omina planctus. seu vetito patrias ultra tibi cernere sedes sic Romam fortuna dedit. ne rumpite somnos, castrorum vigiles, nullas tuba verberet aures. crastina dira quies et imagine maesta diurna undique funestas acies feret, undique bellum.

But night, the last glad hours that Magnus' life should know, beguiled his anxious slumbers with vain images of joy. He seemed to sit in the theatre himself had built, and to behold the semblance of the countless Roman multitude, and hear his name uplifted to the stars by joyous voices, and all the roaring benches vying in their applause. Even so he saw the people and heard their cheers in the days of old, when still a youth, in the hour of his first triumph … he sat no more as yet than a knight of Rome; whether it was that at thy fortune's close thy sleep, tormented with the fears of what should be, fled back to happier days, or riddling as 'tis wont, foretold the contrary of thy dreams and brought thee omens of mighty woe; or whether, since ne'er again thou mightest see thy father's home, thus even in dreams fortune gave it to thy sight. Break not his slumbers, guardians of the camp; let not the trumpet strike his ears at all. Dread shall to-morrow's slumbers be, and, haunted by the sad image of the disastrous day, shall bring before his eyes naught save war and armies doomed to die.

The scene is well and naturally conceived; there is no rant or false pathos; it is an oasis in a book which, though in many ways the finest in the Pharsalia, yet owes its impressiveness to a rhetoric which, for all its brilliance and power, will not always bear more than superficial examination. The last passage, with its description of the Druid's grove near Massilia,[287] is on a different plane. It gives less scope to the higher poetical imagination; it describes a scene such as the Silver Age delighted in,[288] a dark wood, whereto the sunlight scarce can penetrate; altars stand there stained with dark rites of human sacrifice; no bird or beast will approach it; no wind ever stirs its leaves; if they rustle, it is with a strange mysterious rustling all their own: there are dark pools and ancient trees, their trunks encircled by coiling snakes; strange sounds and sights are there, and when the sun rides high at noon, not even the priest will approach the sanctuary for fear lest unawares he come upon his lord and master. While similar descriptions may be found in other poets of the age, there is a strength and simplicity about this passage that rivets the attention, whereas others leave us cold and indifferent. But Lucan does not always exercise such restraint, and such passages are as rare as they are welcome. The reason for this is obvious: the narrative must necessarily consist in the main of military movements. In the words of Petronius,[289] that is better done by the historians. The adventures on the march are not likely as a rule to be peculiarly interesting; there are no heroic single combats to vary and glorify the fighting. Conscious of this inevitable difficulty, and with all the rhetorician's morbid fear of being commonplace, Lucan betakes himself to desperate remedies, hyperbole and padding. If he describes a battle, he must invent new and incredible horrors to enthral us; his sea-fight at Massilia is a notable instance;[290] death ceases to inspire horror and becomes grotesque. If a storm arises he must outdo all earlier epic storms. Vergil had attempted to outdo the storms of the Odyssey. Lucan must outdo Vergil. Consequently, in the storm that besets Caesar on his legendary voyage to Italy in the fisherman's boat[291] that 'carried Caesar and his fortunes', strange things happen. The boat rocks helplessly in mid-sea—

Its sails in clouds, its keel upon the ground,
For all the sea was piled into the waves
And drawn from depths between laid bare the sand.[292]

In the same tempest—

The sea had risen to the clouds
In mighty mass, had not Olympus' chief
Pressed down its waves with clouds,[293]

If he is concerned with a march through the African desert, he must introduce the reader to a whole host of apocryphal serpents, with details as to the nature of their bites.[294] So terrible are these reptiles that it is a positive relief to the army to enter the region of lions.[295] Before such specimens as this the hyperbole of Seneca seems tame and insignificant.

The introduction of irrelevant episodes would be less reprehensible were it not that such episodes are for the most part either dull or a fresh excuse for bombast or (worse still) a display of erudition.[296] He devotes no less than 170 lines in the first book to a description of the prodigies that took place at Rome on the outbreak of the Civil War, and of the rites performed to avert their omens.[297]

In the next book a hundred and sixty-six lines are given to a lurid picture of the Marian and Sullan proscriptions,[298] and forty-six to a compressed geography of Italy.[299] In the fifth book we are given the tedious story of how a certain obscure Appius consulted the Delphian oracle[300] and how he fared, merely, we suspect, that Lucan may have an opportunity for depicting the frenzies of the Pythian prophetess. Similarly, at the close of the sixth book, Pompey's son consults a necromancer as to the result of the war.[301] The scene is described with not a little skill and ingenuity, but it has little raison d'etre save the gratification of the taste for witchcraft which Lucan shared with his audience and his fellow poets.

Apart from these weaknesses of method and execution, Lucan's style is unsuited to epic whether historical or legendary. He has not sufficient command of a definitely poetical vocabulary to enable him to captivate the reader by pure sensuous charm. He is, as Quintilian says, 'magis oratoribus quam poetis imitandus.' He cannot shake himself free from the influence of his rhetorical training. It is a severe condemnation of an epic poet to deny him, as we have denied, the gifts of narrative and dramatic power. Yet much of Lucan is more than readable, to some it is even fascinating. He has other methods of meeting the difficulties presented by historical epic. The work is full of speeches, moralising, and apostrophes. He will not let the story tell itself; he is always harping on its moral and political significance. As a result, we get long passages that belong to the region of elevated political satire. They are not epic, but they are often magnificent. It is in them that Lucan's political feeling appears at its truest and strongest.[302] The actual fortunes of the republican armies, as recounted by Lucan, must fail to rouse the emotions of the most ardent anti-Caesarian, and it is doubtful whether they would have responded to more skilful treatment. But in the apostrophes grief and indignation can find a voice and stir the heart. They may reveal a monstrous lack of the sense of historical proportion. To attribute the depopulation of the rural districts of Italy to the slaughter at Pharsalus is absurd. That Lucan does this is undeniable, but his words have a deeper significance. It was at Pharsalus, above all other battles, that the republic fell to ruin, and the poet is justified in making it the symbol of that fall.[303] And even where the sentiment is at bottom false, there is such an impetuosity and vigour in the lines, and such a depth of scorn in each epigram, that the reader is swept off his balance and convinced against his will. We hardly pause to think whether Pharsalus, or even the whole series of civil wars, really prevented the frontiers of Rome being conterminous with the limits of the inhabited globe, when we read such lines as (vii. 419)—

quo latius orbem possedit, citius per prospera fata cucurrit. omne tibi bellum gentes dedit omnibus annis: te geminum Titan procedere vidit in axem; haud multum terrae spatium restabat Eoae, ut tibi nox, tibi tota dies, tibi curreret aether, omniaque errantes stellae Romana viderent. sed retro tua fata tulit par omnibus annis Emathiae funesta dies, hac luce cruenta effectum, ut Latios non horreat India fasces, nec vetitos errare Dahas in moenia ducat Sarmaticumque premat succinctus consul aratrum, quod semper saevas debet tibi Parthia poenas, quod fugiens civile nefas redituraque numquam libertas ultra Tigrim Rhenumque recessit ac totiens nobis iugulo quaesita vagatur, Germanum Scythicumque bonum, nec respicit ultra Ausoniam.

The wider she lorded it o'er the world, the swifter did she run through her fair fortunes. Each war, each year, gave thee new peoples to rule thee did the sun behold advancing towards either pole; little remained to conquer of the Eastern world; so that for thee, and thee alone, night and day and heaven should revolve, and the planets gaze on naught that was not Rome's. But Emathia's fatal day, a match for all the bygone years, has swept thy destiny backward. This day of slaughter was the cause that India trembles not before the lictor-rods of Rome, and that no consul, with toga girded high, leads the Dahae within some city's wall, forbidden to wander more, and in Sarmatia drives the founder's plough. This day was the cause that Parthia still owes thee a fierce revenge, that freedom flying from the crimes of citizens has withdrawn behind Tigris and the Rhine, ne'er to return, and, sought so oft by us with our life's blood, wanders the prize of German and of Scyth, and hath no further care for Ausonia.

But this famous apostrophe closes on a truer note with six lines of unsurpassed satire (454)—

mortalia nulli sunt curata deo. cladis tamen huius habemus vindictam, quantam terris dare numina fas est: bella pares superis facient civilia divos; fulminibus manes radiisque ornabit et astris, inque deum templis iurabit Roma per umbras.

No god has a thought for the doings of mortal men: yet for this overthrow this vengeance is ours, so far as gods may give satisfaction to the earth: civil wars shall raise dead Caesars to the level of the gods above; and Rome shall deck the spirits of the dead with rays and thunderbolts and stars, and in the temples of the gods shall swear by the name of shades.

Noblest of all are the lines that close another apostrophe on the same subject a little later in the same book (638)—

maius ab hac acie quam quod sua saecula ferrent volnus habent populi; plus est quam vita salusque quod perit; in totum mundi prosternimur aevum, vincitur his gladiis omnis quae serviet aetas. proxima quid suboles aut quid meruere nepotes in regnum nasci? pavide num gessimus arma teximus aut iugulos? alieni poena timoris in nostra cervice sedet. post proelia natis si dominum, Fortuna, dabas, et bella dedisses.

A deeper wound than their own age might bear was dealt the peoples of this earth in this battle: 'tis more than life and safety that is lost: for all future ages of the world are we laid low: these swords have vanquished generations yet unborn, and doomed them to eternal slavery. What had the sons and grandsons of those who fought that day deserved that they should be born into slavery? Did we bear our arms like cowards, or screen our throats from death? Upon our necks is riveted the doom that we should live in fear of another. Nay, Fortune, since thou gavest a tyrant to those born since the war, thou shouldst have given them also the chance to fight for freedom.

These are the finest of not a few[304] remarkable expressions of Lucan's hatred for the growing autocracy of the principate: it is noteworthy that almost all occur in the last seven books. They can hardly be regarded as mere abstract meditations; they have a force and bitterness which justify us in regarding them as evidence of his changed attitude towards Nero. The first three books were published while he yet basked in the sunshine of court favours. Then came the breach between himself and Nero. His wounded vanity assisted his principles to come to the surface.[305]

The speeches, with very few exceptions,[306] scarcely rank with the apostrophes. Like the speeches in the plays of Seneca, they are little more than glorified suasoriae. They are, for the most part, such speeches as—after making the most liberal allowance for rhetorical licence—no human being outside a school of rhetoric could have uttered. Caesar's soldiery would have stared aghast had they been addressed by their general in such language as Lucan makes him use to inspire them with courage before Pharsalus. They would have understood little, and cared less, had Caesar said (vii. 274)—

civilia paucae bella manus facient; pugnae pars magna levabit his orbem populis Romanumque obteret hostem;

Not in civil strife
Your blows shall fall—the battle of to-day
Sweeps from the earth the enemies of Rome.
SIR E. RIDLEY.

or (279)—

sitque palam, quas tot duxit Pompeius in urbem curribus, unius gentes non esse triumphi.

Make plain to all men that the crowds who decked
Pompeius' hundred pageants scarce were fit
For one poor triumph.
SIR E. RIDLEY.

They would have laughed at exaggerations such as (287)—

cuius non militis ensem agnoscam? caelumque tremens cum lancea transit, dicere non fallar quo sit vibrata lacerto.

Of each of you shall strike, I know the hand:
The javelin's flight to me betrays the arm
That launched it hurtling.
SIR E. RIDLEY.

And yet beneath all this fustian there is much that stirs the blood.
Lines such as (261)—

si pro me patriam ferro flammisque petistis, nunc pugnate truces gladiosque exsolvite culpa. nulla manus belli mutato iudice pura est. non mihi res agitur, sed vos ut libera sitis turba precor, gentes ut ius habeatis in omnes. ipse ego privatae cupidus me reddere vitae plebeiaque toga modicum compomere civem, omnia dum vobis liceant, nihil esse recuso. invidia regnate mea;

If for my sake you sought your fatherland with fire and sword, fight fierce to-day, and by victory clear your swords from guilt. No hand is guiltless judged by a new arbiter of war. The struggle of to-day does naught for me; but for you, so runs my prayer, it shall bring freedom and dominion o'er the world. Myself, I long to return to private life, and, even though my garb were that of the common people, to be a peaceful citizen once more. So be it all be made lawful for you, there is naught I would refuse to be: for me the hatred, so be yours the power.

or (290)—

quod si signa ducem numquam fallentia vestrum conspicio faciesque truces oculosque minaces, vicistis,

Nay, if I behold those signs that ne'er deceived your leader, fierce faces and threatening eyes, you are already conquerors.

though they are not the words of the historical Caesar, have a stirring sincerity and force. But the speeches fail because all speak the same artificial language. A mutineer can say of Caesar (v. 289)—

Rheni mihi Caesar in undis
dux erat, hic socius. facinus quos inquinat aequat;

Caesar was my leader by the waves of Rhine, here he is
my comrade. The stain of crime makes all men equal.

or threaten with the words (292)—

quidquid gerimus fortuna vocatur. nos fatum sciat esse suum.

As fortune's gift
He takes the victory which our arms have won:
But we his fortunes are, his fates are ours
To fashion as we will.
SIR E. RIDLEY.

The lines are brilliant and worthy of life: in their immediate context they are ridiculous. Epigrams have their value, however, even when they suit their context ill, and neither Juvenal nor Tacitus has surpassed Lucan in this respect, or been more often quoted. He is, says Quintilian, sententiis clarissimus. Nothing can surpass (iv. 519)—

victurosque dei celant, ut vivere durent, felix esse mori.

And the gods conceal from those who are doomed to live how
happy it is to die. Thus only may they endure to live.

or (viii. 631-2)—

mutantur prospera vitae, non fit morte miser;

Life may bring defeat,
But death no misery.
SIR E. RIDLEY.

or (i. 32)—

alta sedent civilis volnera dextrae;

Deep lie the wounds that civil war hath made.

or (ix. 211)—

scire mori sors prima viris, sed proxima cogi.

Best gift of all
The knowledge how to die: next, death compelled.
SIR E. RIDLEY.

Lines such as (i. 281)—

semper nocuit differre paratis,

To pause when ready is to court defeat.
SIR E. RIDLEY.

or (v. 260)—

quidquid multis peccatur, inultum est

The crime is free where thousands bear the guilt.
SIR E. RIDLEY.

are commonplace enough in thought but perfect in expression. Of a different character, but equally noteworthy, are sayings such as iv. 819—

momentumque fuit mutatus Curio rerum;

The change of Curio turned the scale of history.

or (iv. 185)—

usque adeone times, quem tu facis ipse timendum?

Dost fear him so
Who takes his title to be feared from thee?
SIR E. RIDLEY, slightly altered.

Lucan's gift for epigram is further enhanced by the nature of his metre. Ponderous in the extreme, it is ill-suited for epic, though in isolated lines its very weight gives added force. But he had a poor ear for rhythm: his hexameter is monotonous as the iambics of Seneca. There is a want of variety in pauses; he will not accommodate his rhythm to circumstances; line follows line with but the slightest rhythmical variation, and there is far too[307] sparing a use of elision. This failing is in part due to his desire to steer clear of the influence of Vergil and strike out on a line of his own. Faint echoes of Vergil, it is true, occur frequently throughout the poem, but to the untrained eye Lucan is emphatically un-Vergilian. His affinity to Ovid is greater. Both are rhetorical, and Lucan is indebted to Ovid for much mythological detail. And it is probable that he owes his smoothness and monotony of metre largely to the influence of the Metamorphoses. His ponderosity is all his own.[308]

Lucan is the child of his age, but he is almost an isolated figure in literature. He has almost every conceivable defect in every conceivable degree, from the smallest detail to the general conception of his poem. And yet he triumphs over himself. It is a hateful task to read the Pharsalia from cover to cover, and yet when it is done and the lapse of time has allowed the feeling of immediate repulsion to evaporate, the reader can still feel that Lucan is a great writer. The absurdities slip from the memory, the dreariness of the narrative is forgotten, and the great passages of lofty rhetoric, with their pungent epigram and their high political enthusiasm, remain deeply engraven on the mind. It is they that have given Lucan the immortality which he promised himself. The Pharsalia is dead, but Lucan lives.

It is useless to conjecture what might have been the fate of such remarkable gifts in a less corrupt age. This much, however, may be said, Lucan never had a fair chance. The circle in which he moved, the education which he received, suffered only his rhetorical talent to develop, and to this were sacrificed all his other gifts, his clearness of vision, his sense of proportion, his poetical imagination. He was spoilt by admiration and his own facility. Moreover, Seneca was his uncle: a comparison shows how profoundly the elder poet influenced the younger. There is the same self-conscious arrogance begotten of Stoicism, the same brilliance of wit and absence of humour. Their defects and merits alike reveal them as kindred, though Lucan stands worlds apart as a poet from Seneca, the ranting tragedian. He was but twenty-five when he died. Age might have brought a maturity and dignity of spirit which would have made rhetoric his servant and not his master, and refined away the baser alloys of his character. Even as it was he left much that, without being pure gold, yet possessed many elements and much of the brilliance of the true metal. Dante's judgement was true when he set him among the little company of true poets, of which Dante himself was proud to be made one.