Lucan

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus was born in 39 AD in Corduba, the nephew of Seneca the philosopher. He was educated in Rome and Athens, entered Nero's inner circle as a young man, and published the first three books of his epic poem, the Bellum Civile (also called the Pharsalia), to enormous acclaim. Then Nero grew jealous of his talent and banned him from public recitation.

Lucan joined the Pisonian conspiracy against Nero and, when it was discovered, was forced to commit suicide in 65 AD. He was twenty-five years old.

The Bellum Civile, which survives in ten books (probably unfinished), tells the story of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey. It is the most radical epic poem in Latin: there are no gods intervening in the action, no hero to admire, no divine destiny to celebrate. Where the Aeneid offers Rome a founding myth, Lucan offers an anti-myth — the story of how the Republic destroyed itself through the ambition of great men and the complicity of a corrupt society. The verse is rhetorical, violent, and deliberately excessive. It is not everyone's taste, but at its best it is electrifying.