Lucain

Lucain , in Latin Marcus Annaeus Lucanus , born the November 3rd 39 with Cordoue, in later Spain, and dead the April 30th 65, is a Roman poet , whose only work was preserved: the Pharsale , an epopee on the civil war having opposed César to Pumped in Ier century before J-C.

Its life

Resulting from an equestrian family men of letters, Lucain was the grandson of Sénèque the rhetor - author of works on the civil wars - and the nephew of Sénèque the philosopher, who had composed an anthology of parts oratories.

Lucain arrives any young person at Rome and receives a very good education there. It follows the courses of rhetoric of Cordunus and supplements then its studies in Athens. Thanks to the credit of his uncle and its early talent, it nimbly climbs the steps of the Cursus honorum and gains, a time, the favors of Néron: it thus obtains quaestorship and the forecast into 59. Néron gives him even the palm at the time of the plays néroniens of the Sixty. The same year, it launches out in the epopee and publishes, into 62, its Bellum ciuile , which one should translate by the Civil war , but that the tradition perennialized under the title of Pharsale .

The popularity and literary successes of Lucain irritate the jealousy of Néron, which prohibits Lucain from continuing to read its works as a public. The young man enters then, in 65, in the Conjuration of Rammer, to be avenged for Néron. When the plot is discovered, Lucain, like his/her uncle, receives the order to open the veins. It could not then finish its philosopher's stone, the Bellum Civile , which reported the civil war between Jules César and Pompée.

Its work

Modern criticism called Lucain “the André Chénier of the Latin literature”, so much are varied the literary kinds in which it was illustrated. But most of its work - letters, speech, poems - is lost. Only some titles of work remain:

a praise of Néron.
of the silves (improvisations frays)
of saturnales (dialogs at the time of the Roman festivals of the same name)
of the booklets of ballets: Salticae fabulae .
an unfinished tragedy on Médée: Medeia
a poem on the town of Ilion: Iliacon
a poem on Orphée.
a descent into Hell: Καταχθώνιον

Only the Bellum ciuile remains (generally called Pharsale ). It is an epopee in 10 songs, remained unfinished. This work was to undoubtedly comprise 12 songs originally and to be completed on the suicide of Caton or the assassination of César, constantly fustigated by Pompée. It is song IX v. 985, where figure the expression Pharsalia will nostra , that the tradition drew the title apocryphal book from Pharsale , city where César had overcome Pompée.

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