Lucan Civil War 3

ed. Edward Ridley

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Civil War. Lucan. ed. Edward Ridley. London. 1905.

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Current edition Perseus

Civil War (English) (Lucan. The Pharsalia of Lucan. Ridley, Edward, Sir, translator. New York: Longman, Green, and Company, 1905.)

Editions (1)
Pharsalia Perseus (Lucan. M.Annaei Lucani Pharsaliae Libri X. Weisse, Karl Hermann, editor. Leipzig: G. Bassus, 1835.) — 3 focus

Notes on the current edition

Civil War

1. Reading adscenso, as Francken ( Leyden , 1896).
2. So
The rugged Charon fainted,
And asked a navy, rather than a boat,
To ferry over the sad world that came.
(Ben Jonson, 'Catiline,' Act i., scene 1.)
3. I take tepido busto as the dative case; and as referring to Pompeius, doomed, like Cornelia's former husband, to defeat and death.
4. It may be remarked that, in B.C. 46, Caesar, after the battle of Thapsus , celebrated four triumphs: for his victories over the Gauls, Ptolemaeus, Pharnaces, and Juba .
5. Near Aricia . (See Book VI., 93.)
6. He held no office at the time.
7. The tribune Ateius met Crassus as he was setting out from Rome and denounced him with mysterious and ancient curses. (Plut. 'Crassus,' 16.)
8. That is, the liberty remaining to the people is destroyed by speaking freely to the tyrant.
9. Quoted by Dante and applied to the gates of Purgatory. 'Purg.,' ix., 129.
10. That is, the gold offered by Pyrrhus, and refused by Fabricius, which, after the final defeat of Pyrrhus, came into the possession of the victors.
11. See Plutarch, 'Cato,' 34, 39.
12. It was generally believed that the river Alpheus of the Peloponnesus passed under the sea and reappeared in the fountain of Arethusa at Syracuse . A goblet was said to have been thrown into the river in Greece , and to have reappeared in the Sicilian fountain. See the note in Grote's 'History of Greece ,' Edition 1862, vol. ii., p. 8.
13. As a serpent. ἔγχελυς is the Greek word for serpent.
14. Conf. Book VI., 472.
15. The Centaurs.
16. Probably the flute thrown away by Pallas, which Marsyas picked up when he challenged Apollo to a musical contest. For his presumption the god had him flayed alive.
17. That is, the Little Bear, by which the Phoenicians steered, while the Greeks steered by the Great Bear. (See Sir G. Lewis's 'Astronomy of the Ancients,' p, 447.) In Book VIII., line 198, the pilot declares that he steers by the pole star itself, which is much nearer to the Little than to the GreatBear, and is (I believe) reckoned as one of the stars forming the group known by that name. He may have been a Phoenician.
18. He did not in fact reach the Ganges, as is well known.
19. Perhaps in allusion to the embassy from India to Augustus in B.C. 19, when Zarmanochanus, an Indian sage, declaring that he had lived in happiness and would not risk the chance of a reverse, burnt himself publicly. (Merivale, chapter xxxiv.)
20. That is to say, looking towards the west; meaning that they came from the other side of the equator. (See Book IX., 620.)
21. See Book I., 120.
22. A race called Heniochi, said to be descended from the charioteer of Castor and Pollux.
23. Effusis telis. I have so taken this difficult expression. Herodotus (7, 60) says the men were numbered in ten thousands by being packed close together and having a circle drawn round them. After the first ten thousand had been so measured a fence was put where the circle had been, and the subsequent ten thousands were driven into the enclosure. It is not unlikely that they piled their weapons before being so measured, and Lucan's account would then be made to agree with that of Herodotus. Francken, on the other hand, quotes a Scholiast, who says that each hundredth man shot off an arrow. See Mr. J. A. R. Munro's paper in vol. xxii. of the Hellenic Society's publications, at p. 296.
24. Agamemnon.
25. Massilia ( Marseilles ) was founded from Phocaea in Asia Minor about B.C. Lucan (line 392) appears to think that the founders were fugitives from their city when it was stormed by the Persians sixty years later. See Thucydides I., 13; Grote, ' History of Greece ,' chapter xxii.
26. After the burning of Rome by the Celts a collection was made in Massilia in aid of those who suffered by the fire. Mommsen, vol. i., p. 430.
27. Murviedro of the present day. Its gallant defence against Hannibal has been compared to that of Saragossa against the French.
28. See note to Book I., 508.
29. This was Decimus Brutus, an able and trusted lieutenant of Caesar, who made him one of his heirs in the second degree. He, however, joined the conspiracy, and it was he who on the day of the murder induced Caesar to go to the Senate House. Less than two years later, after the siege of Perusia , he was deserted by his army, taken and put to death.
30. Near Toulon , and now called the Iles d' Hyeres .
31. According to some these were the lines which Lucan recited while bleeding to death; according to others, those at Book ix., line 948.
32. It was regarded as the greatest of misfortunes if a child died before his parent.
33. It was Brutus who gained the naval victory over the Veneti some seven years before; the first naval fight, that we know of, fought in the Atlantic Ocean .