Lucan (39-65 A.D.), the nephew of Seneca, though born at Cordova, was brought up at Rome, and there became the fellow-pupil and favorite companion of Nero. But the superior genius of the Spanish youth provoked the jealousy of his royal master, who had rather too high an opinion of his own attainments, and was nettled by the public verdict that Lucan, then only twenty-three years of age, was the greatest of living poets. At length the awarding of the prize to Lucan in a literary contest between them so enraged the emperor that he forbade his former friend to recite any more pieces.
Lucan’s indiscretion sealed his fate. Not content with libellous attacks upon Nero, he became implicated in a conspiracy against the government, upon the detection of which he was condemned to death. Nero allowing him to choose the manner in which he should suffer, the poet had his veins opened in a hot bath. Becoming faint from loss of blood, he recited a passage from his own “Pharsalia,” descriptive of the death of a snake-bitten soldier:—
“So the warm blood at once from every part
Ran purple poison down, and drained the fainting heart.
Blood falls for tears, and o’er his mournful face
The ruddy drops their tainted passage trace.
Where’er the liquid juices find a way,
There streams of blood, there crimson rivers stray;
His mouth and gushing nostrils pour a flood,
And e’en the pores ooze out the trickling blood.