Jan 3, 2010

The Pharsalia | Author Biography

Of all the poetry Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, better known to English readers as Lucan, wrote during his short life, only his unfinished epic Pharsalia survives. The little known about Lucan comes from two biographies that circulated in some manuscripts of Pharsalia and from the historian Tacitus's Annals. Lucan was born in Cordova in Spain on November 3, A.D. 39. He committed suicide at the order of the emperor Nero on April 30, A.D. 65. The grandson of a famous rhetorician, Seneca the Elder, and the nephew of philosopher, writer, and financier Seneca the Younger, Lucan...