Pharsalia

Lore & Background

The poem was begun around AD 61 and several books were in circulation before the Emperor Nero and Lucan had a bitter falling out. Lucan continued to work on the epic despite Nero's prohibition against any publication of Lucan's poetry, and it was left unfinished when Lucan was compelled to suicide as part of the Pisonian conspiracy in AD 65. In total, ten books were written and all survive; the tenth book breaks off abruptly with Caesar in Egypt.

Reader's Guide

The Pharsalia has undergone a thorough critical re-evaluation in recent decades, re-emerging as a major expression of Neronian politics and aesthetics. Scholarly estimation of Lucan's poem and poetry has changed significantly since the early twentieth century, when translator J. D. Duff argued that 'no reasonable judgment can rank Lucan among the world's great epic poets.' Commentator Philip Hardie noted in 2013 that the poem's studied artifice enacts a complex relationship between poetic fantasy and historical reality. The work's completeness is debated: some scholars argue it was unfinished at Lucan's death, while others suggest the final books were lost. Susanna Braund considers the best hypothesis that Lucan intended a twelve-book poem mirroring the Aeneid, ending with the death of Cato. Conversely, Jamie Masters argues that the open-ended finale of Book 10 is the intended ending, preserving 'civil war without end.'

Did You Know?

• The poem is popularly known as the Pharsalia due to lines 985–986 in Book 9, which read, 'Pharsalia nostra / Vivet'.
• The poem features a necromantic ritual in Book 6 that parallels and inverts motifs from Virgil's Aeneid Book 6.
• The work was left unfinished when Lucan was compelled to suicide as part of the Pisonian conspiracy in AD 65.
• The poem covers a total time of twenty months in its ten books.