The Pharsalia
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.40 (890 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B071HJ8HN7 |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 181 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-11-25 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Nero's ire is easy to understand. The poem abruptly breaks off in the middle of the 10th book. And one of the things which would have really angered Nero would have been the effort to write an epic poem about the struggle between Pompey and Caesar in which the noble hero (portrayed by Pompey) was the man who fought to preserve the Republic, and the selfish villain (portrayed by Caesar), the man who destroyed it. Yet Lucan wrote just such a poem, and Nero, naturally, hated both poem and poet. Lucan called it "De Bello Civili" ("On the Civil War"). But the brash young poet went right ahead and produced a minor masterpiece recounting the clash between Julius Caesar and the Republican aristocracy. Any discussion of the old Republic conjured up evil memories of earlier civil wars. Naturally, his epic work got him into trouble. To the educated Roman of the mid-first century AD, the young Lucan probably appeared amazingly foolhardy. Wit
The poem is actually funny in many places David R. Slavitt This is a rather dogged translation that misses out on Lucan's dry sense of humor. The poem is actually funny in many places. Or it is in the Latin.