LUCAN (Roman, 39-65 CE)
The Spanish-born Roman poet Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) wrote an epic called De Bello Civili ("On the Civil War"), which has come to be known as the Pharsalia. The subject of the poem is the war between the upstart general Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate led by Pompey the Great; "Pharsalia" references the decisive Battle of Pharsalus (48 BCE), in northern Greece, in which Caesar defeated Pompey. That story occupies the seventh of the Pharsalia's ten books. After Lucan had a bitter falling out with the emperor Nero, he continued to work on the epic, despite Nero's ban on publishing the poet's work. Like Seneca the Younger (his uncle), Petronius, and others, he was forced to commit suicide after the exposure of a plot to kill Nero; the Pharsalia remained unfinished.
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