LUCAN, POET OF FREEDOM

BY

O. A. W. DILKE

GRAHAMSTOWN

RHODES UNIVERSITY

1961 LUCAN, POET OF FREEDOM

INAUGURAL LECTURE DELIVERED AT

RHODES UNIVERSITY

BY

O. A. W. DILKE

PROFESSOR OF CLASSICS

M .A. (Cantab.)

GRAHAMSTOWN

RHODES UNIVERSITY

1961 LUCAN, POET OF FREEDOM

The Greek and Latin classics have been defended so often and so ably against the boisterous waves that have encroached upon them that to add one more apologia to the long list might result only in hackneyed platitudes. Within the last few years even the vestiges of compulsory Greek and Latin have dis­ appeared from the older seats of learning. However rigid a classical syllabus the Eton entrance scholarships may still demand, it can no longer be argued that an Arts Degree focused on non- classical subjects, let alone a degree in other Faculties, neces­ sitates a knowledge of prose composition in these languages. What our courses have lost in relative numbers since a genera­ tion ago we hope they have gained in interest, since they are no longer troubled with the student who is dragooned into Latin. And I do not consider it dragooning to insist that those who are study­ ing Roman-Dutch law shall be able to read a little Cicero in the original. But to exclude the classics except in Penguin translations from the University of York, for example, is an affront to Eboracum and to the shades of Alcuin, who in the eighth century was one of the greatest Latinists in the world. In the mid-twentieth century, the classicist can try to help the scientist to form his new compound words correctly, but let us hope he will not be relegated to this position. In recent years there has been some decline in the study of Latin in South African state schools. A bilingual country has to make both its official languages compulsory. But this should not lead to the odd result of European civilisation being propped up by a Latin course which in the initial stages is compulsory but which is taught for only two periods a week. Such treatment is likely to lead to much apathy, and to the feeling among some sections of the population that Latin deserved to be swept away

3 altogether with the Crown, the Commonwealth and the half- crown. Rather it should be optional, but taught for more periods a week, so that the interest of the pupils is sustained throughout.

As a subject at this University the classics are on the increase. The numbers enrolled in the introductory Greek course have increased enormously, and include three Bachelors of Science. There is also an increase in the ‘ Principles of Classical Culture ’ course, which tries to embody the latest ideas in educa­ tion—to contribute to our understanding of the way in which Western civilisation has developed, to impart, without the medium of the ancient languages but with visual aids, something of the spirit of Greek literature, art, religion and philosophy in their historical setting. We are even planning a modest expansion, since in 1962 a new second-year Greek course will be introduced, to enable those proceeding to theology to include in their curriculum some of the early Greek Fathers and (with the help of the Divinity Department) the New Testament. It is hoped that this course will be of practical value to their theological work; and indeed the modern classicist must aim at being more practical in various ways, at helping other subjects by the application of his own knowledge, though we hope that this will not thereby become any less pure. The study of Greek and Latin is also being pro­ moted by a newly-formed branch of the Classical Association of South Africa. In this way links are formed with classicists throughout the country and with scholars and associations over­ seas.

By way of apologia let this suffice. Rather than defend my subject, or even range through the whole of its literature, I should like to say a few words about one poet, part of whose work I have edited and published in the past year, the poet Lucan. Virgil so towers above other Latin epic poets that many an educated man would have to rack his brains for the name of a second. Yet no one can charge me with lurking in the cloister of an obscure topic when Lucan’s text has been edited by one English poet, A. E. Housman, and translated by another, Robert Graves—the one in my undergraduate days Professor of Latin in the University of Cambridge, the other recently elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Moreover a Roman poet who makes so

4 strong a plea for liberty and for republican ideals and who describes the long-lasting results of civil war provides much food for thought in our times. In addition to discussing his poetry, I intend to say a little about his philosophy, which, like many things Roman, though it is derived from Greece, has a greater practical application. His work, if it became better known, might well be appreciated not only by senior students but by others at universities and in the upper forms of schools.

May I sketch in briefly the world in which our poet lived, one in which philosopher-poets were politicians and emperors were poets? Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, whom we know as Lucan, was born in Spain in A.D. 39 of a distinctly literary family. His grandfather the elder Seneca, born under the Republic and long- lived, came from Corduba, which had been a Roman colony for about 100 years when he was born; of his writings, some reminis­ cences on rhetorical exercises, from which I shall be quoting, have survived. A second and more important literary relative was his uncle the younger Seneca, an unscrupulous and hypo­ critical but incredibly versatile man, a combination of self-made millionaire, Stoic philosopher who seldom practised what he preached, dabbler in scientific writings, composer of ‘ literary society ’ tragedies which have had a great Nachleben, virtual prime minister and tutor to the young Nero, two years Lucan’s senior. His maternal grandfather was also an orator, so it is no wonder if he was hailed as an infant prodigy.

Education at that time included a highly artificial rhetorical training and a course of lectures or seminars in philosophy. The former seems to have persisted in Italy, if we can believe that film scripts represent only a slight exaggeration of reality. In an Italian film, counsel in a modern child custody case embarked on a stirring declama­ tory parallel from the Hannibalic wars. Equally remote from reality are the controversiae and suasoriae that we encounter in the works of the elder Seneca: mock trials, mock debates, speeches in which rhetoricians advise Alexander the Great or the Spartans at Thermopylae or Agamemnon about to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia or Cicero begging Antony for his life or bar­ gaining it for the burning of his books. This is how Arellius

5 Fuscus exhorted Cicero in his rhetorical exercise on such a bar­ gain: ‘As long as the human race endures, as long as literature has its due honour or its memory survives, your genius will live in the admiration of posterity, and though yourself proscribed in one age you will proscribe Antony to all ages. Believe me, it is only the most worthless part in you that he can spare or take away: the true Cicero, as Antony well knows, only Cicero can proscribe. It is not you he is exempting from the proscription: he seeks to save himself from your condemnation. If Antony breaks faith you will die; if he keeps his word you will be a slave. For my part I prefer him to break his word. I beseech you earnestly, M. Tullius, by your own soul, by your noble life of 64 years, by your consulate that saved your country, by the memorials of your genius whose immortality none but you can destroy, by the free state which (that you may not think you are leaving to his mercy anything you love) is already dying before you, I implore you not to confess before your death such great unwillingness to die.’1. Lucan’s initiation into Stoic philosophy seems to have been at the hands of Cornutus, one of those uninspiring writers who interpret Greek mythology allegorically. Athens, politically dead but a magnet to men of intellect, rounded off the upbringing of the ‘ poet in the forcing-house ’, as one writer2 has described him. When Lucan was nearly fifteen years old, Nero at the riper age of nearly seventeen had succeeded to the principate. His education was not very different, one imagines, from Lucan’s, except that he did not have the advantage of attending the Athenian schools of philosophy and rhetoric which constituted the ancient equivalent of a university. While Burrus tried to instil a little soldierly discipline into the young Nero, Seneca taught him the elements of philosophy and the art of public speaking. At this early stage of Nero’s principate Romans felt a breath of freedom when they heard him promise to reverse all the worst defects of Claudius’ administration. ‘ I will not judge every kind of case myself ’, he promised, ‘ or let a few individuals run riot

(1) Sen. Suas. tr. W. A. Edward (1928), p. 80, adapted in the last sentence. (2) E. P. Barker, Occasional Publications of the Classical Association No. 2 (1915). 6 by having prosecutors and defendants behind my locked doors ’ (a hit at the hearing of cases in camera by Claudius). ‘Bribery and favouritism will be excluded from my house. I will keep personal and State affairs separate. The senate is to preserve its ancient functions. People from Italy and the senatorial provinces may have access to it by applying to the consuls.’3 Many of these promises were actually carried out, and the first five years of Nero’s reign were deservedly popular. The gruesome poisoning of his foster-brother Britannicus was probably not engineered by him at all. In the fifth year of his reign, when he had reached what should have been years of discretion, Nero (was it because he felt insecure in his position?) forgot his early promises. No amount of special pleading by Arthur Weigall can excuse the unsuccessful attempt, whoever suggested it, to drown his domineering mother, followed by her actual murder. Nero called it suicide after a plot against his life, and Seneca prepared a list of atrocities allegedly committed by Agrippina for Nero to send to the senate. Shortly after this face-saving effort the emperor gathered round him a clique of young poets, among them Lucan, who was given a quaestorship under the official age. Tacitus is distorting the picture when he implies that Nero’s poetic talents were so feeble that they had to be filled out by these young poets acting almost as ghost writers. The following year the Neronia, a new literary festival, was inaugurated, and Lucan eagerly competed. At that time he admired Nero and wrote a eulogy of him; later, whether he was disgusted at the number of prizes flatteringly bestowed on the emperor or whether the latter cheated him of what he deserved, the one or the other grew jealous and there was an estrangement. Once the breach came it grew apace (some sort of ban on Lucan’s publishing activities caused resentment), and eventually he joined the ill-fated conspiracy of Piso. On its detection he was forced to commit suicide, and did so dramati­ cally, reciting some lines from his epic. One could conjecture that they were the following, curiously enough applied to an ancestor of Nero’s:

(3) Tac. Ann. xiii.4, tr. Michael Grant. 7 Conquered so oft by Caesar, now he died His freedom unimpaired; a thousand wounds Caused him to fall, rejoicing not to need A second pardon.4 Lucan was only 25 years of age at his death, and his epic was far from finished. It was surely before, not after, his original breach with Nero that he started giving public recitations of this poem. Unless there happened to be a festival of the type of the Neronia, the most convenient way of introducing a new or forthcoming work was to recite it before an invited audience. The atmosphere at these gatherings, at which long sections of poems were read out, was even more precious than that of publication cocktail parties, and they often degenerated into mutual admiration societies. Also they encouraged versifiers to indulge in just the type of purple patch that Horace attacks in the Ars Poetica, making writers think more of the impact of one or more passages on the audience than of the connexion of the whole. At one of these recitations Lucan boasted: ‘ And think how much younger I am than Virgil was when he wrote his first poem, the Culex!' The first of such recitations would normally include the exordium, in this case the first 66 lines of the poem. Some ancient and modern commentators have regarded one paragraph of this introduction as a wicked skit on Nero’s personal appearance and behaviour. One story, admittedly, proves that Lucan thought of his rival’s verse in terms of vulgar parody: on hearing internal rumblings from a friend he trotted out Nero’s half-line sub tetris tonuisse putes. But for Lucan to imagine the emperor, when he has been deified, wielding a sceptre in the sky or taking over Apollo’s chariot from him (seu sceptra tenere/seu te flammi- geros Phoebi conscendere currus/telluremque nihil mutato sole timentem/igne vago lustrare iuvet) is no more absurd for the times than for Statius to imagine the deceased members of Domitian’s family, turned into constellations, paying that unplea­ sant emperor nightly visits and coming down from heaven to embrace him. Allusions to squinting (obliquo sidere) and prema­ ture baldness (‘ may no clouds obstruct our view of Caesar!’)

(4) vii.602-4. 8 can be extracted from the Latin only with the utmost difficulty. The idea of a hit at the emperor’s obesity arises from lines addressed to him which one might render: If you load one part of the boundless heavens, The axis of the sphere will feel the burden; Maintain its balance at the very centre.5 6 But gods in ancient mythology are regularly supposed to be large and heavy. Moreover the exordium concludes with a most sincere wish for world peace (pax missa per orbem/ferrea belligeri compescat limina lani) and with the recognition of Nero as himself the source of inspiration for a Roman epic, in other words an epic with a theme from Roman history. Earlier, Lucan has said that if the Fates (his substitute for gods) could find no other way to put Nero in power, even the horrors of the Civil War were worth while. Robert Graves comments ‘ the whole passage is heavily satirical is it not rather the expression of a naive assumption that, as soon as Uncle Seneca has turned the young man into a Stoic, Plato’s longing to equate the king and the philosopher will have come about? But here, alas, was no Marcus Aurelius. The subject of the poem, and the translation of its correct title, is The Civil War. It is unfortunate that Robert Graves’s translation should perpetuate the older title Pharsalia, since during this century it has been generally agreed that that was not the poet’s title. Pharsalia was only one battle (though the decisive one) in this civil war, a war which had taken place 110 years before Lucan was writing, yet which was almost as much of a reality to the Romans of his day as is the 60-year-old Anglo-Boer War to South Africans of today: Die Driejaar-kryg is halfeeu oud, Bloed wat gevloei het, word nie koud.6 The protagonists were the bold and restless Caesar on the one side, on the other the once adored Pompey, now but ‘ the shadow of a mighty name.’ Our main historical sources for this war are Caesar and Appian, whereas Lucan’s main source was a now

(5) i.56-8. (6) G. A. Watermeyer, Die republiek van duisend jaar (1957). 9 lost book of Livy, who like him was biased in favour of Pompey’s side. Lucan likes to use history for his own ends, and produces a work such as an outstandingly gifted journalist with a flair for poetry and rhetoric might conceivably write today on the Anglo- Boer War. He selects significant phases of the struggle, and couches them in such a rhetorical form that Quintilian recom­ mends the work for being read more profitably by budding orators than by budding poets.7 But this famous criticism of Quintilian’s does not mean that the Civil War is not a poem. Martial points to monetary success: he puts this epigram in the mouth of Lucan: Some say I write no poetry; My bookseller does not agree.8 The mere fact that it is in verse proves nothing, since a scientific treatise could be couched in verse. This is what Eratosthenes did, but no one could call such lines poetry: If, sir, you would produce a double cube From a small cube, or duly change the nature Of any solid figure, this you can, Measuring byre or corn-pit by this method Or the broad basin of a hollow well, If means converging with their utmost ends You take between two rulers. Do not try Archytas’ awkward method, cylinders, Nor cut a cone in triads like Menaechmus . . .9 Now Lucan’s Civil War is not only written in a far less prosaic vein than this type of verse, but does belong to a definite poetic genre, historical epic, to which, of Latin writers, Naevius in rough Saturnian verse and Ennius in hexameters had pointed the way. (The hexameter continued to be the vehicle of Latin epic, but Lucan tends purposely to avoid the smooth cadences and subtle effects so sought after by Virgil). Enough remains in fragments of Ennius’ work, apart from the verdicts of ancient critics, to make it beyond dispute that he was not only a poet but the father of Latin poetry. In returning to this type of composition

(7) x.1.90. (8) xiv.194. (9) Greek Mathematical Works i (Loeb), transl. I. Thomas (1939), pp. 296-7. IO Lucan is intentionally attempting something different from Virgil, whose recourse to divine interference in epic he also threw over- board, in a reaction comparable to that of twentieth-century poets to Victorian poetry. This is rightly pointed to by Robert Graves, who compares ‘ the modernist movement in Anglo- American poetry which Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, T. E. Hulme and others started over forty years ago, by way of revolt against the Virgilian tradition of Tennyson, Longfellow, William Morris and others.’10 Every critic both ancient and modern has his own interpretation of what constitutes true poetry, and surely those best qualified to judge in the case of Lucan are those who have at least a certain sympathy with him. Housman, who contributed so much to the understanding of the text, would never commit himself to criticism of ancient literature, and his lectures at Cambridge were as dry as dust. But in this essay The Name and Nature of Poetry he admits to a bristling of the skin and a shiver down the spine when some line of poetry strays into his memory; and why Bronowski11 should speak of these physical reactions as ‘ false seriousness ’ and ‘ a mood . . . in which he will shirk his meaning ’ I cannot understand. Many a line of Lucan’s must thus have strayed into the scholar-poet’s memory, for much of the Civil War contains what Housman deemed a necessary ingredient, 1 a tinge of emotion ’. This is how Pompey’s wife Cornelia waits for news of the battle: Each night is haunted by the battlefield; And as day breaks, she runs to a sheer cliff And scans the distant waves, always the first To see the sails of each approaching bark Swaying afar, yet never dares to ask Her husband’s fate.12 Despite Lucan’s modernity, I have ventured to put these and other lines into blank heroic verse, a traditional metre which deserves more use than it is accorded today. I have put them in verse because I feel that Robert Graves, himself an outstanding poet, who rightly, to quote him, expects verse to be verse13, has

(10) Preface to translation of Lucan, p. 23. (11) J. Bronowski, The Poet’s Defence (1935), p. 213. (12) viii.45-9. (13) Steps (1958), p. 84. 11 in his admitted dislike of Lucan, as of certain twentieth-century poets, done him less than justice by translating (or paraphrasing) him into a prose which at times goes out of its way to be prosaic. He has, and this must be stressed, deserved our gratitude for making the contents of the work known to a far wider circle. But take ‘historical background’ as a translation of causas: such a phrase can only be called prospectus language. Take this, which might come from a geographical essay, ' as I observe above, these straits [the straits of Messina] were once dry land, but either a sudden subsidence took place or else the sea gradually washed the isthmus away.’ This is not an easy piece to render in verse; the Latin has: qua mare tellurem subitus aut obruit undis aut scidit, et medias fecit sibi litora terras.14 But I would venture to suggest that the following is more poetical, or at least more rhythmical: Where the sea either overwhelmed the land With sudden waves, or severed it and made A shore of what was inland. Take the opening lines even, as presented by Graves, ‘ the theme of my poem is the Civil War which was decided on the plains of Thessaly; yet “ Civil War ” is an understatement, since Pompey and Caesar, the opposing leaders, were not only fellow-citizens but relatives: the whole struggle was indeed no more than one of licensed fratricide. I shall here describe how, after the breakdown of the First Triumvirate, Rome turned the imperial sword against her own breast ’, and so on. This is a clear exposition; it is not poetry. The original might be better rendered thus: Of wars I sing, fought on Thessalian plains, Not civil strife alone—but kin fought kin, And crime was sanctioned in the name of law, And lordly Rome turned her victorious hand Against her very breast. To exaggerate somewhat, it is as if we paraphrased ‘ Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once m ore’ by this order: ‘At

(14) Lucan iii.60f. 12 0900 hours “ A ” Coy. will advance in the same formation as at 0700 hours to the section of wall damaged by artillery fire.’ But our prosaic translator will not be shaken. ‘ Poets,’ he observes, ‘ neither compete with professional scholars nor do they solicit sympathy from them.’15 A truer estimate of Lucan’s worth is given by Shelley, in the passage of A Defence of Poetry where after referring to Homer and other highly inspiring poets he adds: ‘Those in whom the poetical faculty, though great, is less intense, as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, have frequently affected a moral aim, and the effect of their poetry is diminished in exact proportion to the degree in which they compel us to advert to their purpose.’ What, then, was the moral aim of this precocious poet? Lucan was the prototype of the modern ‘ angry young man ’. The generation of today feels that two world wars have robbed it of its birthright; he felt that the birthright of countless genera­ tions had been robbed by a civil war fought over 100 years before and by the imposition of a tyrannical Empire which followed it. If only Caesar and Pompey, who had actually married Caesar’s daughter, could have united and marched side by side to avenge Rome’s defeat by her traditional enemy, the Parthians! The rebel of today mostly expresses himself in the form of a novel or a play, sometimes with an eye to the possi­ bilities of television or the cinema. Lucan’s form is different, but one cannot avoid the feeling that his episodic arrangement and love of exaggeration and horror, as also his dramatic death for a cause, are just what suits Hollywood. We may yet see a film based either on his life and death or on his subject. In saying that he had a moral aim it is not implied that he aimed at the truth. To us, ideals of liberty are often bound up, in the words of the Chancellor of this University, with striv­ ing to seek and find and defend the truth. It is only at the beginning of Lucan’s work that there is some measure of impartiality, where he writes: Who had more justice in beginning strife And girding on his arms, we canot tell.16

(15) Steps, p. 89. (16) i.l26f. 13 Boissier was right in commenting: ‘ Ce qui excite la colere de Lucain au debut de son oeuvre, ce n’est pas la perte de la liberte.’17 Later in the poem the bias is tremendous. Caesar is depicted as so impious that he snatches an axe and is the first to fell a sacred grove; so desperate that he would not have pre­ vented his soldiers inflicting unspeakable outrage on the mothers and daughters of senators; so callous that he chooses for a feast the spot where he can watch piles of Pompeian corpses as high as hills and recognise their faces.18 Pompey, on the other hand, is excused at almost every turn, and indeed Lucan’s hope is that future generations of readers will be partial to the Pompeians.19 Such exaggeration and distortion are often seen in the modern world with its cold wars and rival ideologies. Apart from sections of high society in Rome, and certain writers, Stoic philosophers provided the main opposition under the Empire. Their watchword was libertas, a word of which this country has been proud ever since the days of Adam Tas, or libera res publica. ‘ Liberty ’ and ‘ republic ’, however, are words bandied about in various senses. Of the former, as Abraham Lincoln said, ‘ the world has never had a good definition.’ To republicans of this country ‘ freedom ’ means freedom from the British crown, and Watermeyer uses the word vryheid in each of the first four poems of his Republiek van duisend jaar. Repub­ licanism means to the modern politician abolition of the king- ship or of its power. The only example of this in British history was when Cromwell, having destroyed the king, set up his Commonwealth; and the Latin words res publica, usually trans­ lated ‘ republic ’, can equally well mean ‘ commonwealth ’. My great-uncle Sir Charles Dilke had a phase of political thought when he advocated the abolition of the monarchy simply on the grounds that it was an expensive, useless and unnecessary institution. Queen Victoria never quite forgave him, and said that when she patted him on the head as a child she must have rubbed his hair up the wrong way. South Africa has set up a republic because a small majority of such of its citizens as have the vote wish the country no longer to be associated with

(17) L’ opposition sous les Cesars (1909), p. 276. (18) vii.789-94. (19) vii.208-13. 14 the British crown. But the Roman Stoics did not mean abolition of the kingship, since this had been abolished 570 years before: they meant government by the senate and people of Rome, not by principes of the house of Caesar. In the Rome of this period there may have been nearly as many slaves as free men, and slaves had no political or legal rights whatever. Many young men felt themselves no better than slaves, where every Roman was at the beck and call of a dominus, which word could denote the owner of a slave. By Domitian’s time the emperor had even come to be addressed as dominus et deus. Boissier, in his study L’ opposition sous les Cesars, was so keen to refute those who said that the opposition to the emperors was political that he went too far in minimising its political importance. Admittedly the realisation that after Caligula’s death the Praetorian Guard had more say than the senate over the question of succession had made most practical members of the opposition treat a complete reversion to a Republic as too utopian. Nero as a person infuriated many who were not inexorably opposed to imperial rule as such. But Lucan, at least, may be said to have been more sincere in his longing for the Republic than many Stoics. It is not true, as has been alleged20, that republicanism was a spent force or that no one any longer venerated Cicero. The rhetorical schools did, as we have seen, and Lucan actually introduces Cicero, quite unhistorically, as present at Pharsalia, ‘ the great promoter of Rome’s eloquence ’, urging Pompey on to fight immediately, so that the war which the orator hated could be over more quickly. It may be justifiable to criticise the intrusion of propaganda into a historical epic, but surely we can only admire Lucan for his desire to express his love of liberty, and not call it ‘ rant ’ as does H. J. Rose.21 A juster estimate, in my opinion, was given by a scholar of the previous generation: ‘ It was not a mere pose that led him to select the civil war as the subject of his poem. His enthusiasm for liberty may have been literary rather than political in character. But when we are dealing with an artistic temperament we must bear in mind that

(20) C. Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome (1950), p. 128. (21) Handbook of Latin Literature (1954), p. 380. 15 the ideals which were primarily inspiration for art may on slight provocation become incentives for action.’22 It would, however, be more apt to say ‘ philosophical and literary ’, since this yearning for liberty is derived from Stoic philosophy and its antecedents; as a German authority on the Stoics says, ‘ Grundzug des hellenischen Wesens ist der Drang nach Freiheit und Selbstandigkeit . . . '23 in 366 B.C. Alcidamas wrote: ‘God has set all men free; Nature has made no man a slave.’ This, in its literal or applied sense, was echoed by the early Stoics and by the Stoics under the Empire. Sometimes, as in the case of Epictetus, who was himself a slave of one of Nero’s important freedmen, it took the negative form24 of advo­ cating indifference to things not of the mind. But in many Stoics under the Empire it took the positive form of wishing to be their own masters and often of planning to remove the tyrant and his impositions. As to their watchword libertas, it had had a long history .The Romans considered themselves free as soon as the kings were driven out, and libertas came to be associated with the republican constitution. The fact that it became also a slogan of the Emperors is typical of the fate of political labels today. Octavian, on coins issued after the battle of Actium, called him­ self ‘ champion of the liberty of the Roman people ’, and libertas re-appeared on coins minted after the murders of the tyrants Caligula, Nero and Domitian; while Marcus Aurelius wrote much on assuring the freedom of his subjects, and implemented this, though in our eyes his treatment of Christianity cannot be condoned. Let us return to the antecedents of Lucan’s enthusiasm for liberty. It was only after the time of Augustus that freedom of speech disappeared. In A.D. 25, under Tiberius, A. Cremutius Cordus, a senator and historian, was prosecuted for praising Brutus and for calling Cassius ‘ the last of the Romans ’. After defending himself he walked out of the senate and starved him-

(22) H. E. Butler, Post-Augustan Poetry (1909), p. 98. (23) Max Pohlenz, Die Stoa i (1948), p. 135. (24) The terms ‘ positive ’ and ‘ negative ’ are here used as by Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty (Oxford inaugural lecture, 1958). From the age of Nero he gives an. example of the negative ascetic sage but not of the positive intellectual fighter for freedom. 16 self to death. The senate ordered his books to be burnt, but they survived, first hidden and later copied—which, as Tacitus says in a shrewd comment on censorship, makes one realise how stupid people are who think that today’s authority can destroy tomorrow’s memories.25 Of the literary antecedents of Lucan’s enthusiasm for liberty Cremutius Cordus is certainly the finest representative. But the chief opposition to Nero and to the Flavian emperors came from Stoic philosophers, who drew much of their inspiration from the uncompromising Cato, who com­ mitted suicide after a heroic stand against Caesar in North Africa. Paetus Thrasea was the chief of these under Nero, and a year after Lucan’s death he was prosecuted. Here are some of the pro­ secutor’s charges26: ‘At the New Year, Thrasea evaded the regular oath. Though a member of the Board of Fifteen for Reli­ gious Ceremonies, he absented himself from the national vows. He has never sacrificed for the emperor’s welfare or for his divine voice. Once an indefatigable and invariable participator in the senate’s discussions—taking sides on even the most trivial pro­ posal—now, for three years, he has not entered the senate. Only a very short time ago, when there was universal competition to discipline L. Junius Silanus Torquatus and L. Antistius Vetus, he preferred to take time off helping his dependants. This is party warfare. It is secession. If many more have the same impudence, it is war.’ And later in the same speech: ‘ They acclaim liberty to destroy the imperial regime. If they do destroy it, they will strike at liberty too.’ Book VII, of which I have revised Postgate’s edition, covers the crucial battle of Pharsalia, the battle which, in Lucan’s words, was to settle the fate of mankind for generations and decide on Rome’s future existence. Caesar had chased Pompey out of Italy, crossed the Adriatic, besieged him in Epirus, and was now facing him in a valley in Thessaly. Pompey had twice as many men, but Caesar’s were veterans from the Gallic wars whereas Pompey’s included recruits and Eastern contingents. By threatening to cut off Pompey’s lines of communication Caesar was able to lure him

(25) Ann. iv.35.6. (26) Tac. Ann. xvi.22, transl. Michael Grant (adapted). 17 off the hill on which he was encamped, and beat him by superior tactics and greater zest; as Lucan rather quaintly puts it: If you had set upon this fatal field Fathers-in-law of Pompey every man, All aiming at the kingship of their city, Not with such headlong speed would they have dashed Into the fray.27 It is in this seventh book, which forms the climax to the ten books preserved, that references to liberty and to its enemy, tyranny, are most plentiful. The first three books, written as I believe before the rupture with Nero, contain, it is true, sarcastic refer­ ences like ‘ this was the first time that Rome became poorer than a Caesar’,28 but are mild by comparison with the poet’s reflexions in Book VII on this battle. Thanks to this day of blood India no longer dreads our consuls’ fasces, . . . And Parthia owes us still stern retribution, While Liberty, fleeing this civil sin And never to return, has now withdrawn Beyond the Rhine and Tigris. Though so oft We sought her with our lives, she strays, a boon To Germany or Russia. And a little later: Of all the nations suffering tyranny We suffer most: we blush that we are slaves.29 And again: No god looks after the affairs of mortals. Yet for this slaughter we have our revenge, So far as gods may give requital to us, For civil wars shall make dead Caesars gods, And Rome shall furbish ghosts with thunderbolts, Haloes and constellations, and in shrines Of Gods shall swear by shades of the departed.30

(27) vii.334-6. (28) iii.168. (29) vii.427-35, 444f. (30) vii.455-9. 18 Two hundred lines later we read: This battle crushes more than life and limb: It lays us low for everlasting time. These swords have conquered every age of slaves. What have the sons or what the grandsons done To merit being born to tyranny? Were we the cowards, did we shirk the fight? Ours is a punishment for others’ fears. If Fortune after wars gave us a despot, She should have let us fight.31 The next passage that I have attempted to versify might be thought to have a topical ring: ‘ Like Africa, that graveyard of our cause, Like guilty Munda’s fight or Nile’s destruction, So, after Pompey left, the greater part Is not a stand for Pompey’s cherished name Nor love of fighting, but the same old struggle Between our rivals, freedom and a Caesar.32 If Cordus’ works were treasonable under Tiberius, what of Lucan’s under the last of the genuine Caesars? It is true that we hear of no impeachments of authors in Nero’s time; but three were forced to commit suicide, Lucan, Seneca and Petronius. In the event, Lucan did not bargain for certain consequences of his propaganda. Youth is impetuous, and he was anxious to effect rapid changes. If he had lived longer, he might have had greater influence, but his poetry less fire. He failed to see that, when the ruling power is well entrenched, attempted assassination leads only to further repression. The plot in which he was involved was ruined because one of the conspirators held an elaborate rehearsal of the proposed murder, making his will and freeing slaves. The plot that did succeed, three years later, was organised from outside, from Gaul. Even that led only to civil war, Lucan’s first object of loathing, followed by emperors who were not related to Caesar but some of whom were equally obnoxious to lovers of liberty. But fundamentally he did appre­ ciate that the pen is mightier than the sword, as he boasts to the shades of Julius Caesar: Pharsalia, fought by you and sung by me, Shall live: no age shall doom us to oblivion.33 (31) vii.638-46. (32) vii.691-6, following Postgate’s punctuation. (33) ix.985f.