Dec 24, 2009

The Pharsalia | Critical Overview

Lucan wrote with his already claustrophobic world closing in on him. He wrote as if he could not possibly believe that the conspiracy against Nero would succeed; he was no longer rallying his time, but all time to the cause of libertas. Criticism of Pharsalia has regularly spilled over into criticism of the man who implicated his own mother in the plot against Nero. Political circumstances have set the critical agenda for the Pharsalia even more than changes in literary taste. But can this really be wrong when the Pharsalia is above all, political...