“No, it will be the match we always have—

Liberty pitted against a Caesar“

I recently finished reading Pharsalia (written about 65 AD) by the Roman poet Lucan, translated by Jane Wilson Joyce. This is an epic in ten parts written in verse in the tradition of Homer and Virgil. Unlike those poems, however, Pharsalia chronicles not-too-distant historical events, namely the Roman civil war between Caesar and the forces of the Republic led by Pompey.

I had a wonderful reading experience with Pharsalia. The poetry is stunningly beautiful. Lucan’s use of imagery and mood make the poem a joy to read simply on the level of language. Additionally, the reader learns about the events of the civil war and the character of some of its major players.

Also of interest is Pharsalia’s place in the history of epic. One can compare and contrast Lucan’s work with its earlier predecessors and notice several interesting features. For example, while the earlier epics are each concerned with a single hero (Achilles, Odysseus, Aeneas), Pharsalia has no hero and focuses on three main personalities (Pompey, Caesar, and Cato). Also of interest is the difference in the poems’ depictions of the gods. In the earlier epics, the gods make appearances and directly act upon people and events. Not so in Pharsalia; the gods are referred to but they do not act as personal characters in the action of the story.

As the poem unfolds, Luncan’s sympathy and longing for the Republic and anger at Caesar and what the civil war brings to Rome become increasingly apparent. In fact, at times I was surprised at Lucan’s direct invocation of liberty, considering he was writing in a Rome defined by its autocratic rule.

Pharsalia is unfinished because Lucan was sentenced to death by the Roman emperor Nero. However, the ten parts that Lucan wrote cover much of the civil war, all the way up to Caesar’s entrance into Egypt and the battle that resulted in much of Alexandria burning. It strikes me now as I’m writing this that there is a certain congruency in the book ending as a fire spreads through the city, a fire that is believed to have contributed to the destruction of the great Library of Alexandria. Nero’s annihilation of a poet, and the abrupt termination of his epic, dovetails with a fire that razes the greatest library in the world. Fortunately, neither act of destruction kept Pharsalia from future readers…

“O sacred and mighty labor of poets!

You snatch

everything from fate,

and grant mortal generations life!

Caesar, be not stung with envy

of sacred fame; for, if it be meet

that Latin Muses promise aught,

so long as the honors

of Homer, poet of Smyrna, shall last,

posterity will read me and thee.

Our Pharsalia will live,

no generation will banish us to the shadows!”

Tldr: Pharsalia = maximum epicness. In se magna ruunt…Great things fall in upon themselves.