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If you had been a courtroom poet through the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, irritating the megalomaniac ruler would not have been wise. And one of the items which would have really angered Nero would have been the effort to write an epic poem about the have difficulties between Pompey and Caesar in which the commendable hero (portrayed by Pompey) was the man who fought to maintain the Republic, and the selfish villain (portrayed by Caesar), the man who ruined it. Yet Lucan had written just such a poem, and Nero, in a natural way, hated both poem and poet. For the informed Roman of the mid-first hundred years Advertising, the young Lucan probably made an appearance amazingly foolhardy. Effortlessly, his epic work acquired him into trouble. The poem abruptly breaks off in the center of the 10th book. It was never completed because Lucan was purchased to commit suicide or face execution. He required poison. Nero's ire is simple to understand. Idle discuss repairing the Republic had been making the rounds for a long time, and the ruling Julio-Claudian dynasty didn't want such chat taken seriously. Besides, the common Roman resident was primarily considering economic and political stability. Any discussion of the old Republic conjured up evil memories of previous civil wars. However the brash young poet went right forward and produced a masterpiece recounting the clash between Julius Caesar and the Republican aristocracy. Lucan called it "De Bello Civili" ("Around the Civil Conflict"). Later, it had become called "The Pharsalia", the name of the battle where Pompey satisfied beat. With soaring rhetoric, thundering speeches, cataclysmic displays of war, and beautifully written passages filled with the pathos of life and love, Lucan has remaining us an unfinished jewel from Latin literature's Silver Age.
