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.