caitles_2022's review
adventurous
dark
informative
tense
medium-paced
4.0
An engaging depiction of the Civil war between Pompey and Caesar
lukas_sotola's review against another edition
3.0
What an intensely strange piece of literature. This is an epic poem about the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompeius Magnus, so compare it to earlier epic poems about semi-historical larger-than-life figures like Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses, and of course Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. . . but then, don't.
The heroes here aren't that heroic--Caesar is a megalomaniac and would-be tyrant, while Pompey is well-intentioned but weak and incompetent and also kind of a prick to his wife, while Cato, the only fully admirable character, will end up committing suicide, as we know from the historical documents of the events following the end of this poem. The gods, such an active and integral part in all previous epics, do not appear or speak to anyone once, and Lucan suggests several times that they are either powerless over or indifferent to human affairs: "it was clear to the unfortunate/that the gods above know too little." Especially the witch Erichtho emphasizes that it is Fortune, not the gods, that govern human affairs, which by the end of the poem leaves the reader wondering whether that's just a way of saying that there's no real governing force in the world.
Battle in the Civil War is just as brutal as it is in the Iliad but does not serve any higher purpose. Hardly any soldiers are named and honored as in Homer, and Lucan focuses on the horrifying pointlessness of the gruesome deaths most soldiers experience. Humans in this poem also suffer constantly at the hands of nature itself. In contrast to the gods' absence, the power--and hostility--of nature is on display in this poem. There are no less than four intense "storm scenes," where human characters are at the mercy of the forces of nature, and the most vivid and powerful of these, for me, is a sandstorm that pounds Cato and his small force in North Africa:
Hardly were the soldiers strong
enough to raise their limbs, embedded in the mighty mass of dust.
A great rampart of piled-up sand fettered even
those still standing, and they were held immobile as the ground rose.
It shattered walls, knocked down their stones, and carried them afar
and at a distance dropped them, in an amazing disaster:
those who saw no houses saw portions of them tumbling down.
Humans, rather than the subject of prophecies and the targets of gods' schemes and fancies, are mere animals caught in an indifferent universe swiping at them with tooth and claw.
Lucan even explicitly inverts or subverts iconic events from earlier epics. Instead of a hallowed progenitor of Rome descending to Hades to see the ghosts of the dead, as happens in the Aeneid, the spoiled son of Pompey goes to a witch to have her bring a corpse back to life to tell him his fortune. This is, in fact, an anti-epic epic poem, to alter somewhat Susan H. Braund's words in her wonderfully explanatory introduction.
The reader is confronted with a world devoid of gods and order, a war that leaves a tyrant in power and the one admirable leader Lucan presents dead at his own hand, and a world in which the old mythologies have passed away--or perhaps were never real. All of this makes this poem feel uncannily modern, and makes it endlessly fascinating.
I would be lying if I said that this was the most enjoyable epic to come out of the ancient world. Interesting as it is, it is dramatically inert. The characters, while well-drawn, are convincing but not compelling. The events are stilted--real dialogue and action are skewed in favor of long speeches and set pieces, and characters have a weird way of getting from one side of the Mediterranean to another in the space of one stanza (that is to say that few actions other than death are described in great detail here).
But I don't care about any of this because of how fascinating this is as a product of the ancient world. This almost put me in the mind of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland in its level of pessimism and in the way it seems to have been written from a time after an old, seemingly idyllic world had been shattered and a new, darker vision of the world had to be created. And for all its cynicism, that vision is conveyed in some gorgeous verse, if Susan Braund's lyrical free verse translation does Lucan's Latin any sort of justice. For these reasons, I think I will certainly reread this in new translations and try to read about it as much as I can.
That being said, this may not be for everyone. It's definitely not the place to start with the classics of Greece and Rome, and it's not the place to go for a wild ride like Ovid's Metamorphoses or a profound, moving experience like Homer's Iliad. However, if you're a classics geek who's exhausted the more well-known corridors of this area, this might be interesting for you.
3.5/5 stars.
The heroes here aren't that heroic--Caesar is a megalomaniac and would-be tyrant, while Pompey is well-intentioned but weak and incompetent and also kind of a prick to his wife, while Cato, the only fully admirable character, will end up committing suicide, as we know from the historical documents of the events following the end of this poem. The gods, such an active and integral part in all previous epics, do not appear or speak to anyone once, and Lucan suggests several times that they are either powerless over or indifferent to human affairs: "it was clear to the unfortunate/that the gods above know too little." Especially the witch Erichtho emphasizes that it is Fortune, not the gods, that govern human affairs, which by the end of the poem leaves the reader wondering whether that's just a way of saying that there's no real governing force in the world.
Battle in the Civil War is just as brutal as it is in the Iliad but does not serve any higher purpose. Hardly any soldiers are named and honored as in Homer, and Lucan focuses on the horrifying pointlessness of the gruesome deaths most soldiers experience. Humans in this poem also suffer constantly at the hands of nature itself. In contrast to the gods' absence, the power--and hostility--of nature is on display in this poem. There are no less than four intense "storm scenes," where human characters are at the mercy of the forces of nature, and the most vivid and powerful of these, for me, is a sandstorm that pounds Cato and his small force in North Africa:
Hardly were the soldiers strong
enough to raise their limbs, embedded in the mighty mass of dust.
A great rampart of piled-up sand fettered even
those still standing, and they were held immobile as the ground rose.
It shattered walls, knocked down their stones, and carried them afar
and at a distance dropped them, in an amazing disaster:
those who saw no houses saw portions of them tumbling down.
Humans, rather than the subject of prophecies and the targets of gods' schemes and fancies, are mere animals caught in an indifferent universe swiping at them with tooth and claw.
Lucan even explicitly inverts or subverts iconic events from earlier epics. Instead of a hallowed progenitor of Rome descending to Hades to see the ghosts of the dead, as happens in the Aeneid, the spoiled son of Pompey goes to a witch to have her bring a corpse back to life to tell him his fortune. This is, in fact, an anti-epic epic poem, to alter somewhat Susan H. Braund's words in her wonderfully explanatory introduction.
The reader is confronted with a world devoid of gods and order, a war that leaves a tyrant in power and the one admirable leader Lucan presents dead at his own hand, and a world in which the old mythologies have passed away--or perhaps were never real. All of this makes this poem feel uncannily modern, and makes it endlessly fascinating.
I would be lying if I said that this was the most enjoyable epic to come out of the ancient world. Interesting as it is, it is dramatically inert. The characters, while well-drawn, are convincing but not compelling. The events are stilted--real dialogue and action are skewed in favor of long speeches and set pieces, and characters have a weird way of getting from one side of the Mediterranean to another in the space of one stanza (that is to say that few actions other than death are described in great detail here).
But I don't care about any of this because of how fascinating this is as a product of the ancient world. This almost put me in the mind of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland in its level of pessimism and in the way it seems to have been written from a time after an old, seemingly idyllic world had been shattered and a new, darker vision of the world had to be created. And for all its cynicism, that vision is conveyed in some gorgeous verse, if Susan Braund's lyrical free verse translation does Lucan's Latin any sort of justice. For these reasons, I think I will certainly reread this in new translations and try to read about it as much as I can.
That being said, this may not be for everyone. It's definitely not the place to start with the classics of Greece and Rome, and it's not the place to go for a wild ride like Ovid's Metamorphoses or a profound, moving experience like Homer's Iliad. However, if you're a classics geek who's exhausted the more well-known corridors of this area, this might be interesting for you.
3.5/5 stars.
italo_carlvino's review against another edition
4.0
I really liked this epic poem, more than I thought I would. I liked all the over-the-top Roman gruesomeness. I liked the scene where Erichtho raises the dead. I liked Lucan's invectives, polemics and sarcasm. Also, this poem is quite quotable.
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