SOURCE: "General Introduction" in Lucan: Pharsalia, translated by Jane Wilson Joyce, Cornell University Press, 1993, pp. ix-xxv.

In the following excerpt, Joyce provides an overview of Lucan's Pharsalia, his life, reception as a poet, and his influence.

Gi; poet =~ Spoet

Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) was born 3 November 39 C. E. at Cordoba, son of the Spanish financier Marcus Annaeus Mela and member of a remarkable family.¹ His grandfather Lucius Annaeus Seneca ("the Elder"), a successful businessman, wrote a history of Rome, now lost, beginning with the civil war that forms the subject of Lucan's Pharsalia; blessed with longevity (he lived to be nearly a hundred) and a phenomenal memory, a keen critic of Roman rhetoric, he could quote at length even from speeches heard in boyhood; some of his work on oratory is extant. One of Lucan's two uncles, Lucius Annaeus Gallio (later adopted and renamed Lucius Iunius Novatus Gallio...