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Updated: May 12, 2025
Notwithstanding the failure of these negotiations and the imprisonment of his envoy Hirrus, when a few months later, having lost the battle of Pharsalia, the unhappy Roman was in need of a refuge from his great enemy, he is said to have proposed throwing himself on the friendship, or mercy, of Orodes.
He received them with great kindness, and, instead of visiting them with any penalties for having fought against him, he honored the fidelity and bravery they had evinced in the service of their own former master. Caesar had, in fact, shown the same generosity to the soldiers of Pompey's army that he had taken prisoners at the battle of Pharsalia.
Of Pharsalia we only learn from him that, in utter despair of heart, he allowed himself to be carried to the war.
When BREBOEUF, the French translator of the Pharsalia of Lucan, had completed the first book as it now appears, he at the same time composed a burlesque version, and sent both to the great arbiter of taste in that day, to decide which the poet should continue. The decision proved to be difficult.
He gave strict and express charge, the day of his great battle of Pharsalia, that, without the utmost necessity, no one should lay a hand upon the citizens of Rome.
We shall offer a few critical remarks on the Pharsalia, referring our readers for an exhaustive catalogue of its defects to M. Nisard's second volume of the Poetes de la Decadence, and confining ourselves principally to such points as he has not dwelt upon.
The accounting they gave of themselves at that battle is evidence enough of the spirit which pervaded Vergil's fellow provincials. Nor is it unlikely that Vergil himself took part, for one of the most poignant passages in all his work is the picture of the dead who lay strewn over the battlefield of Pharsalia. Ad Att.
Virgil had described the victory of Hercules over Cacus, Lucan must celebrate his conflict with Antaeus; Virgil had mentioned the portents that followed Caesar's death, Lucan must repeat them with added improbabilities in a fresh context; his sibyl is but a tasteless counterpart of Virgil's; his catalogues of forces have Virgil's constantly in view; his deification of Nero is an exaggeration of that of Augustus, and even the celebrated simile in which Virgil admits his obligations to the Greek stage has its parallel in the Pharsalia.
It would be fairer to ask, which is the more poetical? It was Lucan's misfortune that the ideal side was already occupied; he had no power to choose. Few who have read the Pharsalia would wish it unwritten. Some critics have denied that it is poetry at all.
The only one of his works which survives is the "Pharsalia," an epic poem on the subject of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey. It bears evident marks of having been left unfinished; it has great faults and at the same time great beauties. The sentiments contained in this poem breathe a love of freedom and an attachment to the old Roman republicanism.
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