Member-only story
The Lucan trilogy: 1 — Lucan, Stoic poet
Next week I will be traveling to Marshall University in West Virginia, for my first work-related trip since the beginning of the pandemic. My last trip of this kind took place on March 4–8, 2020 in Boston, to present a paper at the Northeast Modern Language Association on Stoicism in Tom Wolfe’s novel, A Man in Full. This time I will facilitate a workshop on Stoicism for veterans and their families, followed by a public lecture later the same day.
In preparation for the workshop, I read a lot about Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, better known as Lucan, a first century Roman poet and the nephew of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the playwright, philosopher, and senator who is one of our most important ancient sources concerning Stoic philosophy.
The reason to talk to veterans about Lucan is that he wrote an incomplete poem, Pharsalia, or De Bello Civili, which tells the epic story of the the civil war between Julius Caesar and the Roman Senate, which ended in the defeat of the Republican forces and essentially represented the last step before Empire. (Caesar, as is well known, was then assassinated in 44 BCE, but his nephew, Octavian, took control of things and became the first emperor, Octavian Augustus.)
I intend to write three posts inspired by my visit to Marshall. In this one we will take a look at Lucan’s life and the general import of his poem from a Stoic perspective. In the other two we will examine the figure of Caesar as a “Stoic fool” and then go a bit deeper into the topic of Stoic politics, from Zeno to Seneca.
Lucan was born in Cordoba, Spain, in the year 39 CE. He grew up under the tutelage of his uncle, Seneca the Younger, and was therefore exposed to Stoic ideas early on. He was initially well regarded by Nero — of whom his uncle was the personal advisor — and in fact won a prize at the Laudes Neronis in 60 CE. The early books of De Bello Civili were circulated with the imprimatur of the emperor.
However, at some point things went south in the relationship between Nero and Lucan, though different sources disagree on the initial reasons for the conflict. Be that as it may, Lucan openly criticized Nero in a poem entitled De Incendio Urbis, on the fire of Rome (which took place in July 64 CE), where he wrote “unspeakable flames of the criminal tyrant roamed…
