own life at the age of twenty-six; by this time he had already composed numerous works, all of which have
perished except for the ten books of his uncompleted epic on the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, known
as the Bellum civile or Pharsalia.
Conventionally, the epic poet announces the heroic character of his theme in the first line, and even with the first
word. Thus Virgil opens the Aeneid with the word 'arma' ('arms'), and Lucan, in apparently similar vein, begins
'bella', ('wars'). But then immediately he twists the theme in a new direction:
Bella per Emathios plus quam ciuilia campos
iusque datum sceleri canimus ...Of wars more than civil on the plains of Thessaly I sing, of legality granted to crime ...This will prove to be a heroic poem without a hero, for Caesar is portrayed as a villain, and though Pompey is
more sympathetic, he is, as Cato is made to say, far inferior to earlier Romans in his respect for the bounds of
law. (Cato himself, though the pattern of republican propriety, is of secondary importance only.) The staple of
epic warfare had been the aristeia, in which an individual hero showed his prowess in a series of duels, each
vividly described. Lucan allows none of his characters so much honour. There is not a single aristeia in his
account of the battle of Pharsalus, and only one individual death is described; the rest is a senseless welter of
mass slaughter. The gods, too, hitherto essential in epic, are given no place at all in the poem, but instead we see
a world plunging to disaster, and at the climax of the action Lucan shouts out (7.446f.), 'The world is swept
along by blind chance; we lie when we say that Jupiter reigns.'
In the same spirit, there is not the usual appeal to the Muse for aid and inspiration at the beginning of the work.
After announcing his theme, Lucan turns instead to address the citizens of Rome with sorrow and indignation
(1.8): 'Quis furor, o ciues, quae tanta licentia ferri?' ('What was this madness, citizens, what was this great orgy
of slaughter?') For this is to be not just a historical, but also a political, poem. Homer and Virgil had been
remarkable for the breadth of their sympathies: both Greeks and Trojans in the Iliad, both Trojans and Italians in
the Aeneid excite our admiration and compassion. Lucan deliberately does away with this, admitting that his
approach is partisan and his purpose to get his readers to favour one side against the other (7.207-13).
In keeping with this outlook is the poet's declamatory method. The epic poet had traditionally kept his own
personality out of his work, preserving an Olympian objectivity, but Lucan constantly involves himself with his
characters, haranguing and mocking them, For example, Book 7 begins with one of Lucan's most moving
passages: Pompey on the night before his defeat dreams of the triumphs of his earlier life. At first the scene is
described without the author intruding his presence, but at line 24 he addresses the guards of the camp, urging
them not to sound the reveille and disturb their general's slumbers. At line 29 he speaks to Pompey himself and
continues addressing him until line 42. In line 43 he addresses the whole Roman nation; in line 44 he is back
with Pompey again. He is like an advocate in court, turning to the gentlemen of the jury and then back to the
witness in the box. Constantly we are aware of the poet's personal voice, harsh, passionate, and sarcastic.
On every page of the Bellum civile we find epigram, paradox, and bitter wit. Lucan carried to its extreme the
fondness of the silver age for what Romans called the 'sententia', the pithy or pointed saying. The first line of the
poem, besides asserting the work's epic character, announces this other element also, for it contains the poem's
first epigram. The war is 'more than civil' because it is a conflict not just between fellow citizens but between
members of the same family, Pompey having previously been Caesar's son-in-law. Lucan remodels epic to give