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Lucan Biography

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LUCAN (M. Annæs Lucanus) (39-65 A.D.). The chief Roman poet of the Silver Age. He was born at Corduba (the modern Cordova), in Spain, 39 A.D.; and brought to Rome in his infancy by his father, who was a younger brother of the philosopher Seneca. He received an education of the best kind, was a schoolfellow of Persius, the satirist, and a friend of the Emperor Nero, and entered on life with the most brilliant prospects. He became questor and augur and declaimed and recited in public with the highest applause. But he soon lost the favor of Nero who was jealous of his poetry and his fame. Under the sting of this annoyance, he joined the conspiracy of Piso against Nero's life in 65 A.D. According to Tacitus, when arrested after the betrayal of the plot, he tried to save his life by accusing his mother of complicity. But the Emperor did not spare him for the sake of this additional crime; he was compelled to destroy himself by having his veins opened and he died in this way, with a certain ambitious composure, at 26 years of age. Lucan holds a conspicuous place among the poets of Rome. The only work of his that has come down to us is the Pharsalia, an epic, in 10 books, on the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey. As an epic, it is in parts disappointing, for it proceeds in the manner of annals, and lacks the comprehensiveness, unity, and learning of the greatest works of its class. Nor is its style, generally speaking, good, for it is often turgid and obscure. But when every deduction has been made, the Pharsalia affords ample proof that Lucan was a man of real and powerful genius. There is everywhere evidence that Lucan had an eye for the sublime, both in the moral and in the physical world there is all the vigor of poetic oratory in its declamations; and there are felicities of epigram which have secured to many a line a constant freshness of life as part of the familiarly remembered literature of the world. Lucan was very popular in the Middle Ages, and in modern times his poem has been a particular favorite among the lovers of political freedom.

The first book of the Pharsalia was translated into English verse by Christopher Marlowe in 1593; and the whole poem was set in English verse by Rowe (London, 1718, with several later editions)--a translation which Dr. Johnson thought one of the best in the language. There is a fine English prose translation by Ridley (London, 1905). The best editions of the Pharsalia are those of Haskins, with introduction and notes (London, 1887: the introduction, containing an elaborate discussion of Lucan's life, of the Pharsalia, its contents, its merits, and its weaknesses, is by Heitland), Francken, with notes (2 vols., Leyden, 1896-97), and, of the text only, Hosius (Leipzig, 1892, 1905). Book i was edited by Lejay (Paris, 1894), book vii by Postgate (Cambridge, 1896, 1913). Consult: H. E. Butler, Post-Augustan Poetry (Oxford, 1909), and Martin Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Litteratur, vol. ii, part ii (3d ed., Munich, 1913).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XIV (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920)   438-439.