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.