Ancient Greek & Roman
Lucan
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, known as Lucan, was a Roman poet born in Corduba (Córdoba, Spain) and raised in Rome, nephew of the philosopher Seneca the Younger.
His only surviving work, the Pharsalia (De Bello Civili), is an unfinished epic in ten books on the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey. Unusually for ancient epic, it dispenses with the gods entirely, focusing on human ambition and the collapse of the Roman Republic. Lucan fell out with the Emperor Nero, joined a conspiracy against him, and was forced to take his own life at twenty-five, reportedly reciting his own verses as he died.
This archive presents the Pharsalia in Sir Edward Ridley’s 1896 blank-verse translation.
Major Works (5)
- Pharsalia — translated by Sir Edward Ridley (1896)
- The Civil War (Pharsalia) — translated by J. D. Duff (Loeb, 1928)
- Pharsalia — translated by Sir Arthur Gorges (1614)
- Pharsalia (May) — translated by Thomas May (1627; this edition 1631)
- Pharsalia (Rowe) — translated by Nicholas Rowe (1718)