Complete Works of Lucan Read online

  The Complete Works of

  LUCAN

  (39 AD – 65 AD)

  Contents

  The Translations

  THE CIVIL WAR

  PROSE TRANSLATION by J. D. Duff

  VERSE TRANSLATION by Edward Ridley

  The Latin Text

  DE BELLO CIVILI

  The Dual Text

  DUAL LATIN AND ENGLISH TEXT

  The Biography

  INTRODUCTION TO LUCAN by J. D. Duff

  THE LIFE OF LUCAN by Suetonius

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2014

  Version 1

  The Complete Works of

  LUCAN

  By Delphi Classics, 2014

  COPYRIGHT

  Complete Works of Lucan

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2014.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

  The Translations

  Córdoba (Corduba), Andalusia, Spain — Lucan’s birthplace

  Roman ruins in Cordoba — archaeological site of Cercadilla including the remains of one of Maximian’s palaces

  THE CIVIL WAR

  Lucan’s sole surviving work, the epic poem De Bello Civili, recounts the civil war between Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate, led by Pompey the Great. One of the poem’s other titles, The Pharsalia, refers to the Battle of Pharsalus (48 BC), the climatic event of the seventh book, which occurred near Pharsalus, Thessaly, in northern Greece, when Caesar decisively defeated Pompey. The poem is widely considered to be among the most accomplished works of epic poetry from the Silver Age of Latin literature.

  It is believed that the epic was begun circa 61 AD and several books were in circulation before the Emperor Nero and Lucan had a bitter disagreement. In spite of Nero’s prohibition against any publication of his poetry, Lucan continued to work on De Bello Civili and it was left unfinished when he was compelled to commit suicide as part of the Pisonian conspiracy in 65 AD. A total of ten books were written and all survive, with the final book breaking off abruptly following a description of Caesar’s arrival in Egypt.

  The first book opens with a brief introduction that laments the fate of Romans fighting Romans in a civil war, with an ostensibly flattering dedication to Nero. The main narrative then begins, with Julius Caesar being introduced in northern Italy. Despite an urgent plea from the Roman Senate to lay down his arms, Caesar crosses the Rubicon, rallying his troops and marching south to Rome, joined by Curio on his way. The book culminates with panic in the city, foreboding portents and visions of the tragedies to come.

  Many of the real-life characters are portrayed throughout the poem in unflattering and often very flawed and unattractive guises. Caesar is depicted as a cruel despot with a vindictive streak, while Pompey appears weak and uninspiring. Far from glorious, the battle scenes are presented as realistic portrayals of bloody horror, where nature is ravaged to build terrible siege engines and wild animals tear mercilessly at the flesh of the dead. The only exception to the generally bleak portrayals is Cato, who stands alone, representing his Stoic ideal and the fallen Republic, in the face of a dangerous world seemingly turned insane.

  Nevertheless, after the Battle of Pharsalus, Pompey’s character transforms, becoming instead a stoic martyr-like figure, who is calm in the face of certain death, as he arrives in Egypt and in the ninth book he receives from the poet a virtual canonisation. Lucan’s favouring of Stoic and Republican principles is in sharp contrast to the ambitious and imperial Caesar, who becomes an even greater tyrant after the decisive battle, clearly serving as a parallel to Nero.

  Like most poets of the time, Lucan received the rhetorical training common to upper-class young Roman men. The suasoria – a school exercise where students wrote speeches advising an historical figure on a course of action – no doubt inspired Lucan to compose some of the speeches found in the text. Lucan’s poetic style is notably influenced by Ovid’s Metamorphoses — as he presents his narrative as a series of discrete episodes often without any transitional or scene-changing lines — and, of course, Virgil’s grand epic Aeneid. Lucan frequently appropriates ideas from Virgil’s poem, inverting them to undermine their original purpose. For example, the scene narrating Sextus’ visit to the Thracian witch Erichtho is influenced by Aeneas’ descent into the underworld, but where Virgil’s description highlights optimism toward the future glories of Rome under Augustan rule, Lucan utilises the scene to present bitter pessimism concerning the loss of liberty under the coming Empire (Nero’s rule).

  De Bello Civili was popular soon after its first publication and it remained a school text in late antiquity and during the Middle Ages. Today, over 400 manuscripts survive and its interest to the court of Charlemagne is demonstrated by the existence of five complete manuscripts from the ninth century. Interestingly, Dante includes Lucan among other classical poets in the first circle of the Inferno and the Renaissance poet draws on material from De Bello Civili in his Divine Comedy.

  Gaius Julius Caesar (100 BC–44 BC)

  Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (106 BC–48 BC), Pompey the Great, was a military and political leader of the late Roman Republic. Pompey’s immense success as a general while still young enabled him to advance directly to his first consulship without meeting the normal requirements for office.

  Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis (95 BC-46 BC), commonly known as Cato the Younger to distinguish him from his great-grandfather Cato the Elder, was a politician and statesman in the late Roman Republic and a follower of the Stoic philosophy. A noted orator, he is remembered for his stubbornness and tenacity when opposed to Julius Caesar, as well as his immunity to bribes, his moral integrity and his aversion for the corruption of the time.

  ‘Caesar Crossing the Rubicon’ by Tancredi Scarpelli — a key early event of the epic poem

  The plan of the Battle of Pharsalus

  The plain of Pharsalus today

  PROSE TRANSLATION by J. D. Duff

  CONTENTS

  BOOK I

  BOOK II

  BOOK III

  BOOK IV

  BOOK V

  BOOK VI

  BOOK VII

  BOOK VIII

  BOOK IX

  BOOK X

  BOOK I

  OF war I sing, war worse than civil, waged over the plains of Emathia, and of legality conferred on crime; I tell how an imperial people turned their victorious right hands against their own vitals; how kindred fought against kindred; how, when the compact of tyranny was shattered, all the forces of the shaken world contended to make mankind guilty; how standards confronted hostile standards, eagles were matched against each other, and pilum threatened pilum.

  What madness was this, my countrymen, what fierce orgy of slaughter? While the ghost of Crassus still wandered unavenged, and it was your duty to rob proud Babylon of her trophies over Italy, did you choose to give to hated nations the spectacle of Roman bloodshed, and to wage wars that could win no triumphs? Ah! with that blood shed by Roman hands how much of earth and sea might have been bought — where the sun rises and where night hides the stars, where the South is parched with burning airs, and where the rigour of winter that no spring can thaw binds the Scythia
n sea with icy cold! Ere this the Chinese might have passed under our yoke, and the savage Araxes, and any nation that knows the secret of Nile’s cradle. If Rome has such a lust for unlawful warfare, let her first subdue the whole earth to her sway and then commit self-slaughter; so far she has never lacked a foreign foe. But, if now in Italian cities the houses are half-demolished and the walls tottering, and the mighty stones of mouldering dwellings cumber the ground; if the houses are secured by the presence of no guard, and a mere handful of inhabitants wander over the site of ancient cities; if Italy bristles with thorn-brakes, and her soil lies unploughed year after year, and the fields call in vain for hands to till them, — these great disasters are not due to proud Pyrrhus or the Carthaginian; no other sword has been able to pierce so deep; the strokes of a kindred hand are driven home.

  Still, if Fate could find no other way for the advent of Nero; if an everlasting kingdom costs the gods dear and heaven could not be ruled by its sovran, the Thunderer, before the battle with the fierce Giants, — then we complain no more against the gods: even such crimes and such guilt are not too high a price to pay. Let Pharsalia heap her awful plains with dead; let the shade of the Carthaginian be glutted with carnage; let the last battle be joined at fatal Munda; and though to these be added the famine of Perusia and the horrors of Mutina, the ships overwhelmed near stormy Leucas and the war against slaves hard by the flames of Etna, yet Rome owes much to civil war, because what was done was done for you, Caesar. When your watch on earth is over and you seek the stars at last, the celestial palace you prefer will welcome you, and the sky will be glad. Whether you choose to wield Jove’s sceptre, or to mount the fiery chariot of Phoebus and circle earth with your moving flame — earth unterrified by the transference of the sun; every god will give place to you, and Nature will leave it to you to determine what deity you wish to be, and where to establish your universal throne. But choose not your seat either in the Northern region or where the sultry sky of the opposing South sinks down: from these quarters your light would look aslant at your city of Rome. If you lean on any one part of boundless space, the axle of the sphere will be weighed down; maintain therefore the equipoise of heaven by remaining at the centre of the system. May that region of the sky be bright and clear, and may no clouds obstruct our view of Caesar! In that day let mankind lay down their arms and seek their own welfare, and let all nations love one another; let Peace fly over the earth and shut fast the iron gates of warlike Janus. But to me you are divine already; and if my breast receives you to inspire my verse, I would not care to trouble the god who rules mysterious Delphi, or to summon Bacchus from Nysa: you alone are sufficient to give strength to a Roman bard.

  My mind moves me to set forth the causes of these great events. Huge is the task that opens before me — to show what cause drove peace from earth and forced a frenzied nation to take up arms. It was the chain of jealous fate, and the speedy fall which no eminence can escape; it was the grievous collapse of excessive weight, and Rome unable to support her own greatness. Even so, when the framework of the world is dissolved and the final hour, closing so many ages, reverts to primeval chaos, then [all the constellations will clash in confusion,] the fiery stars will drop into the sea, and earth, refusing to spread her shores out flat, will shake off the ocean; the moon will move in opposition to her brother, and claim to rule the day, disdaining to drive her chariot along her slanting orbit; and the whole distracted fabric of the shattered firmament will overthrow its laws. Great things come crashing down upon themselves — such is the limit of growth ordained by heaven for success. Nor did Fortune lend her grudge to any foreign nations, to use against the people that ruled earth and sea: the doom of Rome was due to Rome herself, when she became the joint property of three masters, and when despotism, which never before was shared among so many, struck its bloody bargain. Blinded by excess of ambition, the Three joined hands for mischief. What boots it to unite their strength and rule the world in common? As long as earth supports the sea and air the earth; as long as his unending task shall make the sun go round, and night shall follow day in the heavens, each passing through the same number of signs — so long will loyalty be impossible between sharers in tyranny, and great place will resent a partner. Search not the history of foreign nations for proof, nor look far for an instance of Fate’s decree: the rising walls of Rome were wetted with a brother’s blood. Nor was such madness rewarded then by lordship over land and sea: the narrow bounds of the Asylum pitted its owners one against the other.

  For a brief space the jarring harmony was maintained, and there was peace despite the will of the chiefs; for Crassus, who stood between, was the only check on imminent war. So the Isthmus of Corinth divides the main and parts two seas with its slender line, forbidding them to mingle their waters; but if its soil were withdrawn, it would dash the Ionian sea against the Aegean. Thus Crassus kept apart the eager combatants; but when he met his pitiable end and stained Syrian Carrhae with Roman blood, the loss inflicted by Parthia let loose the madness of Rome. By that battle the Parthians did more than they realise: they visited the vanquished with civil war. The tyrants’ power was divided by the sword; and the wealth of the imperial people, that possessed sea and land the whole world over, was not enough for two. For, when Julia was cut off by the cruel hand of Fate, she bore with her to the world below the bond of affinity and the marriage which the dread omen turned to mourning. She alone, had Fate granted her longer life, might have restrained the rage of her husband on one side and her father on the other; she might have struck down their swords and joined their armed hands, as the Sabine women stood between and reconciled their fathers to their husbands. But loyalty was shattered by the death of Julia, and leave was given to the chiefs to begin the conflict. Rivalry in worth spurred them on; for Magnus feared that fresher exploits might dim his past triumphs, and that his victory over the pirates might give place to the conquest of Gaul, while Caesar was urged on by continuous effort and familiarity with warfare, and by fortune that brooked no second place. Caesar could no longer endure a superior, nor Pompey an equal. Which had the fairer pretext for warfare, we may not know: each has high authority to support him; for, if the victor had the gods on his side, the vanquished had Cato. The two rivals were ill-matched. The one was somewhat tamed by declining years; for long he had worn the toga and forgotten in peace the leader’s part; courting reputation and lavish to the common people, he was swayed entirely by the breath of popularity and delighted in the applause that hailed him in the theatre he built; and trusting fondly to his former greatness, he did nothing to support it by fresh power. The mere shadow of a mighty name he stood. Thus an oak-tree, laden with the ancient trophies of a nation and the consecrated gifts of conquerors, towers in a fruitful field; but the roots it clings by have lost their toughness, and it stands by its weight alone, throwing out bare boughs into the sky and making a shade not with leaves but with its trunk; though it totters doomed to fall at the first gale, while many trees with sound timber rise beside it, yet it alone is worshipped. But Caesar had more than a mere name and military reputation: his energy could never rest, and his one disgrace was to conquer without war. He was alert and headstrong; his arms answered every summons of ambition or resentment; he never shrank from using the sword lightly; he followed up each success and snatched at the favour of Fortune, overthrowing every obstacle on his path to supreme power, and rejoicing to clear the way before him by destruction.

  Even so the lightning is driven forth by wind through the clouds: with noise of the smitten heaven and crashing of the firmament it flashes out and cracks the daylight sky, striking fear and terror into mankind and dazzling the eye with slanting flame. It rushes to its appointed quarter of the sky; nor can any solid matter forbid its free course, but both falling and returning it spreads destruction far and wide and gathers again its scattered fires.

  Such were the motives of the leaders. But among the people there were hidden causes of war — the causes which have ever b
rought down ruin upon imperial race. For when Rome had conquered the world and Fortune showered excess of wealth upon her, virtue was dethroned by prosperity, and the spoil taken from the enemy lured men to extravagance: they set no limit to their wealth or their dwellings; greed rejected the food that once sufficed; men seized for their use garments scarce decent for women to wear; poverty, the mother of manhood, became a bugbear; and from all the earth was brought the special bane of each nation. Next they stretched wide the boundaries of their lands, till those acres, which once were furrowed by the iron plough of Camillus and felt the spade of a Curius long ago, grew into vast estates tilled by foreign cultivators. Such a nation could find no pleasure in peace and quiet, nor leave the sword alone and grow fat on their own freedom. Hence they were quick to anger, and crime prompted by poverty was lightly regarded; to overawe the State was high distinction which justified recourse to the sword; and might became the standard of right. Hence came laws and decrees of the people passed by violence; and consuls and tribunes alike threw justice into confusion; hence office was snatched by bribery and the people put up its own support for auction, while corruption, repeating year by year the venal competition of the Campus, destroyed the State; hence came devouring usury and interest that looks greedily to the day of payment; credit was shattered, and many found their profit in war.

  And now Caesar had hastened across the frozen Alps and had conceived in his heart the great rebellion and the coming war. When he reached the little river Rubicon, the general saw a vision of his distressed country. Her mighty image was clearly seen in the darkness of night; her face expressed deep sorrow, and from her head, crowned with towers, the white hair streamed abroad; she stood beside him with tresses torn and arms bare, and her speech was broken by sobs: “Whither do ye inarch further? and whither do ye bear my standards, ye warriors? If ye come as law abiding citizens here must ye stop.” Then trembling smote the leader’s limbs, his hair stood on end, a faintness stopped his motion and fettered his feet on the edge of the river-bank. But soon he spoke: “O God of thunder, who from the Tarpeian rock lookest out over the walls of the great city; O ye Trojan gods of the house of lulus, and mysteries of Quirinus snatched from earth; O Jupiter of Latium, who dwellest on Alba’s height, and ye fires of Vesta; and thou, O Rome, as sacred a name as any, smile on my enterprise; I do not attack thee in frantic warfare; behold me here, me Caesar, a conqueror by land and sea and everywhere thy champion, as I would be now also, were it possible. His, his shall be the guilt, who has made me thine enemy.” Then he loosed war from its bonds and carried his standards in haste over the swollen stream. So on the untilled fields of sultry Libya, when the lion sees his foe at hand, he crouches down at first uncertain till he gathers all his rage; but soon, when he has maddened himself with the cruel lash of his tail, and made his mane stand up, and sent forth a roar from his cavernous jaws, then, if the brandished lance of the nimble Moor stick in his flesh or a spear pierce his great chest, he passes on along the length of the weapon, careless of so sore a wound.