Besides his principal performance, Lucan’s works included juvenile poems on the descent of Orpheus and the ransom of Hector, an unfinished tragedy on the subject of Medea, and numerous miscellaneous pieces. The Carmen ad Pisonem sometimes attributed to him is now more commonly ascribed to Saleius Bassus. His minor works have perished, but all that the author wrote of the Pharsalia has come down to us. It would probably have concluded with the battle of Philippi, but breaks off abruptly as Caesar, beset by foes, is about to plunge into the harbour of Alexandria. This incompleteness should not be left out of account in the estimate of its merits, for, with two capital exceptions, the faults of the Pharsalia are such as revision might have mitigated or removed. No such pains, certainly, could have amended the deficiency of unity of action, or supplied the want of a legitimate protagonist. The Pharsalia follows history with inevitable servility, and is rather a metrical chronicle than a true epic. If it had been completed according to the author’s design, Pompey, Cato, and Brutus must have successively enacted the part of nominal hero, while the real hero is the arch enemy of liberty and Lucan, Caesar. Yet these defects, though glaring, are not fatal or peculiar to Lucan. Thereat hero of Paradise Lost, it has been repeatedly observed, is no other than Satan; and Shakespeare himself succeeded no better than Lucan in preserving unity of action when he wrote his Julius Caesar. The false taste, the strained rhetoric, the ostentatious erudition, the tedious harangues and far-fetched or commonplace reflexions so-frequent in this singularly unequal poem, are faults much-more irritating, but they are also faults capable of amendment, and which the writer might not improbably have removed. As pointed out by Dean Merivale, the bombastic style of composition which prevailed under Nero yielded to a more sober taste under the Flavian dynasty; and the lapse of time would have contributed to mellow the poet’s immaturity and chasten the ardour of temperament which made him essay great themes “ante annos Culicis Maroniani.” Great allowance should also be made for the difficulties the highest genius must encounter when emulating predecessors who have already carried art to its-last perfection, and thus necessitated to choose between mere imitation and a conscious effort after originality. Lucan’s temper could never have brooked the former course; his versification, no less than his subject, is entirely his own; he avoids all resemblance to his great predecessor with a persistency which can only have resulted from deliberate purpose, while largely influenced by the declamatory school of his grandfather and uncle. Hence his partiality for finished antithesis, contrasting strongly with his generally breathless style and turbid diction. Quintilian sums up both aspects of his genius with pregnant brevity, “Ardens et concitatus et sententiis clarissimus,” adding with equal justice, “Magis oratoribus quam poetis annumerandus.” Lucan’s oratory, however, frequently rises into the region of poetry, especially where it sets forth ideas essentially sublime, and impressive in the mere statement. Such are the apotheosis of Pompey at the beginning of the ninth book, and the passage in the same book where Cato, in the truest spirit of the Stoic philosophy, refuses to consult the oracle of Jupiter Ammon. The exordium of the poem, and the portraits of Caesar and Pompey, are examples of oratory blazing up into poetry, as a wheel takes fire by friction. In some cases Lucan’s rhetoric is frigid, hyperbolical, and out of keeping with the character of the speaker, as in Caesar’s address to his legions before Pharsalia; in general, however, it may be said that the more he is of an orator or a moralist the more he is of a poet. If this denotes that his genius was not essentially and in the truest sense poetical, the same may be said of Dryden and Pope; and it at least proves him to have been in harmony with the living forces of his age, in which rhetoric was a note of culture and philosophical humanitarianism a growing idea, while poetry, though widely cultivated, was becoming more and. more a mere ornamental accomplishment. This is not the case with Lucan; his theme has a genuine hold upon him; in the age of Nero he celebrates the republic as a poet with the same energy with which in the age of Cicero he might have defended it as an orator. But for him it might almost have been said that the Roman republic never inspired a Roman poet.

Lucan never speaks of himself, but his epic speaks for him. The author of the Pharsalia must have been endowed with no common ambition, industry, and self-reliance, an enthusiastic though narrow and aristocratic patriotism, and a faculty for appreciating magnanimity in others which is at least some presumption that he possessed it himself. He probably bore a strong family resemblance to his uncle Seneca; but the only personal trait positively known to us is his conjugal affection, a characteristic of Seneca also.

Lucan, together with Statius, was preferred even to Virgil in the Middle Ages. So late as 1493 his commentator Sulpitius writes :—“Magnus profecto est Maro, magnus Lucanus; adeoque prope par, ut quis sit major possis ambigere.” Shelley and Southey, in the first transport of admiration, thought Lucan superior to Virgil; Pope, with more judgment, says that the fire which burns in Virgil with an equable glow breaks forth in Lucan with sudden, brief, and interrupted flashes. In general, notwithstanding the enthusiasm of isolated admirers, Lucan has been unduly neglected, but he has exercised an important influence upon one great department of modern literature by his effect upon Corneille, and through him upon the classical French drama.

The most celebrated editions of Lucan are those by Oudendorp (1728), Burmann (1740), and Weber (1829). Bentley’s emendations are brilliant, but unsafe. The most elaborate criticism is that in Nisard’s Études sur les Poêles Latins de la Décadence, stern to the poet’s defects and unkind to his deserts. Dean Merivale has some •excellent observations in his History of Imperial Rome, chaps, liv. and lxiv. Brebeuf’s French version is celebrated. Christopher Marlowe, a kindred spirit, translated the first book of the Pharsalia into English, and there are other old versions by Sir Ferdinand Gorges and Thomas May. The latter’s supplement is one of the best examples of modern Latin versification. Gorges’s translation is in octosyllabic verse, and very curious. The standard English version, by Rowe, is one of the most successful translations in our language. It is somewhat too diffuse, butas a whole reproduces the vehemence and animation of the original with a spirit that leaves little to be desired. (R. G. )

Almost the whole of the province thus limited is occupied by the rugged masses of the Apennines, which in this part of Italy can hardly be said to constitute a range of mountains so much as a group of lofty masses, huddled together in a very irregular manner. The main ridge, however (if it be taken as determined by the watershed), approaches much more nearly to the western sea than to the Gulf of Tarentum, and is continued from the lofty knot of mountains immediately on the frontiers of Samnium, nearly due south, till it approaches within a few miles of the Gulf of Policastro, and thenceforward is separated from the sea by only a narrow interval till it enters the province of Bruttium. Just within the frontier of Lucania rises the very lofty group of Monte Pυllino, the highest summit of which attains to an elevation of above 7000 feet, the greatest that is found in the southern Apennines. Towards the east the mountains descend by a much more gradual slope to the Gulf of Tarentum, constituting long ridges of hills which subside by degrees to the strip of plain that immediately adjoins the shores of the gulf. This narrow strip is somewhat wider from the mouth of the Bradanus to that of the Siris, and again expands to a considerable extent at the mouth of the Crathis, but between the two a group of rugged hills descends quite to the sea, and forms the headland of Roseto. The consequence of this constitution is that while the rivers which flow to the Tyrrhenian Sea are of comparatively little importance, those that descend towards the Gulf of Tarentum have much longer courses, and attain to a considerable magnitude. Of these the most important are—the Bradanus (still called Bradano), which rises near Potentia, and enters the gulf just to the north of the ruins of Metapontum; the Casuentus (Basiento), which has a course almost exactly parallel with the preceding; the Aciris or Agri; and the Siris or Sinno. The Crathis, which forms at its mouth the southern limit of the province, belongs almost wholly to Bruttium, but it receives a tributary, the Sybaris (Coscile), which flows from the mountains of Lucania. The only considerable stream on the western side of Lucania is the Silarus or Sele, which constitutes its northern boundary, and has two important tributaries in the Calor or Calore, and the Tanagrus, which joins it from the south, after flowing through one of those trough-like upland valleys so characteristic of the Apennines.

The province of Lucania was so called from the people of that name, by whom it was conquered about the middle of the 5th century b.c. Previous to that period it was included under the general name of Oenotria, which was applied by the Greeks to the whole of the southernmost portion of Italy. The mountainous regions of the interior were occupied by the tribes known as G⅛otrians and Chones, while the coasts on both sides were occupied by Greek colonies, which attained to great power and prosperity, and doubtless exercised a kind of protectorate over the interior also. (See Graecia Magna.) The Lucanians were a Sabellian race, an offshoot of the Samnites of Central Italy, who pressed downwards towards the south until they gradually conquered the whole country (with the exception of the Greek towns on the coast) from the borders of Samnium and Campania to the southern extremity of Italy. Subsequently, however, the inhabitants of the peninsula which forms the extreme south (now known as Calabria) broke out into insurrection, and under the name of Bruttians succeeded in establishing their independence, after which the Lucanians became confined within the limits already described. After this time we find them engaged in hostilities with the Tarentines, and with Alexander, king of Epirus, who was called in by that people to their assistance, 326 b.c. It was immediately after this that they first entered into relations with Rome, with which they were sometimes in alliance, but more frequently engaged in hostilities, during the long-continued wars of the Romans with the Samnites. On the landing of Pyrrhus in Italy (281 b.c. ) they were among the first to declare in his favour, and in consequence found themselves exposed to the full brunt of the resentment of Rome when the departure of Pyrrhus left his allies at the mercy of the victorious Romans. It was not, however, till after several campaigns that they were reduced to complete subjection (272 b.c. ). Notwithstanding this lesson, the Lucanians again espoused the cause of Hannibal during the Second Punic War (216 b.c. ), and their territory became the theatre of war during several successive campaigns, and was ravaged in turn by both contending armies. It is clear that the country never recovered the effects of these disasters, and under the Roman government Lucania fell into a state of complete decay, to which the Social War (90-88 b.c. ) appears to have given the finishing stroke. In the time of Strabo the Greek cities on the coast, once so rich and flourishing, had fallen into utter insignificance, and the few towns of the interior were poor places of no importance. A large part of the province was given up to pasture, and the mountains of the interior were covered with vast forests, which abounded in wild boars, bears, and wolves.

The towns on the east coast, adjoining the Gulf of Tarentum, were—Metapontum, a few miles south of the Bradanus: Heraclea, at the mouth of the Aciris; and Siris, on the river of the same name. Close to its southern frontier stood Sybaris, which was destroyed in 510 b.c., but subsequently replaced by Thurii, founded within a few miles of the same site. On the west coast stood Posidonia, known under the Roman government as Paestum, immediately south of the Silaras; below that came Elea or Yelia, Pyxus, called by the Romans Buxentum, and Laus, near the frontier of the province towards Bruttium. Of the towns of the interior, none of which ever attained to any importance, the most considerable was Potentia, still called Potenza, and now the capital of the Basilicata. To the north, near the frontier of Apulia, were Acheruntia and Bantia y while due south from Potentia was Gruuιentum, and still farther in that direction were Nerulum and Muranum. In the upland valley of the Tanagrus were Atina, Forum Popilii, and Consilinum; Eburi (Eboli) and Volceii (Buccino), though to the north of the Silarus, were also included in Lucania.

For administrative purposes under the Roman empire, Lucania was always united with Brattium. The two together constituted the third region of Augustus. (E. H. B. )