After ten years fighting to bring Gaul under Roman rule, Julius Caesar has been instructed to relinquish his command by the Senate: at Rome, his adversary, Pompey the Great, is in control. If Caesar obeys the Senate’s command, he will be defenceless, but defying it and remaining at the head of his army is likely to mean civil war. As he begins his epic, Lucan introduces us to the two protagonists. In a flattering and much-quoted line about the republican hero, Cato, at the beginning of the extract, Lucan gives us a strong indication of whose side he is on. We cannot know what sources or traditions he is drawing on in describing two great men who died around fifty years before he was born, and we certainly cannot rely on his impartiality, but his pen-pictures are certainly very striking.
See the illustrated blog post here.
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