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Updated: June 12, 2025
In the case of Hannibal it was the battle of Cannæ, in that of Alexander the battle of Arbela. Cæsar's great conflict was at Pharsalia, Napoleon's at Waterloo. Marathon was, in some respects, Darius's Waterloo. The place is a beautiful plain, about twelve miles north of the great city of Athens.
C. Asinius Pollio, who was with Cæsar at the Rubico and at the battle of Pharsalia, wrote a history of the Civil Wars. He was also a poet. The time of the dream is not unimportant, if the interpretation of it was that he was destined to have the dominion of the world. Cæsar has not recorded his dream. Sulla recorded his dreams. He was superstitious and cruel.
which would certainly explode any supernatural machinery that could be invented. The Pharsalia could not be anything more than an interesting but unsuccessful attempt; it was not on these lines that epic poetry was to develop.
In B.C. 34, four years after Pharsalia, having put down all his domestic enemies, and arranged matters, as he thought, satisfactorily at Rome, he let a decree be passed formally assigning to him "the Parthian War," and sent the legions across the Adriatic on their way to Asia.
After the battle of Pharsalia was over, at which he was not present for want of health, and Pompey was fled, Cato, having considerable forces and a great fleet at Dyrrachium, would have had Cicero commander-in-chief, according to law, and the precedence of his consular dignity.
When the art of government directed the feelings of a woman, we behold Aspasia, eloquent with the genius of Pericles, instructing the Archons; Portia, the wife of the republican Brutus, devouring burning coals; and the wife of Lucan, transcribing and correcting the Pharsalia, before the bust of the poet, which she had placed on her bed, that his very figure might never be absent.
Being appointed to govern Gaul for five years, Cæsar there developed his genius for war; but his brilliant success excited the fears of the senate and the envy even of Pompey. Civil war broke out. The conflict ended in the fall of Pompey, who was defeated in the fateful battle of Pharsalia, and was afterwards murdered in Egypt. Julius Cæsar now possessed supreme power.
In a letter to Atticus he speaks of "miros terrores Cæsarianos" "dreadful reports as to outrages by Cæsar;" that he would by no means dismiss his army; that he had with him the Prætors elect, one of the Tribunes, and even one of the Consuls; and that Pompey had resolved to leave the city. Such were the first tidings presaging Pharsalia. Then he adds a word about his triumph.
There is, however, a geniality about the old man which renders him, even when uninteresting, not altogether unpleasing. Little is known of his life, but he seems to have been of noble birth; his relative, C. Cornelius, took the auspices at Pharsalia, and the aristocratic tinge which pervades his work would lead to the same inference.
Of this story I have not found any tangible confirmation. Lucan, by his death approved. Lucan, the author of the Pharsalia, was condemned under Nero as being an accomplice in the conspiracy of Piso: he caused his veins to be opened, and died magnanimously, aged about twenty-six, A.D. 65. Shelley, in one instance, went so far as to pronounce Lucan superior to Vergil. +Stanza 46,+ 11. 1, 2.
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