LITCA'NITS, M. ANN/EUS, the chief Roman poet of the silver ag,e, was b. at Corduba (the modern Cordova), in Spain, 38 A.D., and brought to Rome in his infancy by his father, who was a younger brother of the philosopher Seneca. He received an education of the best kind, was a school-fellow of Persius, and a friend of the emperor Nero, and entered on life with the rnost brilliant prospects. He became qutestor and augur, and declaitned and recited in public with the highest applause. But his prosperity and him self were equally short-lived. He lost the favor of Nero, who was jealous of his poetry and his fame, and who desired to keep down both. tinder the stilt,* of this annoyance. he joined the conspiracy against Nero's life in 65 A.D. It is painful to read in Tacitus, that when arrested with others after the betrayal of the plot, he tried to save his life by accusing his mother of complicity. But the emperor did not spare him for the sake of this additional crime; he was compelled to destroy himself by having his veins opened, and he died in this way, and with a certain tunbitious composure. at 27 years of age. Whatever the faults of Lucanus's character—and in the brief notiees we have of him, both his vanity and levity are apparent—lie holds a conspicuous place among thc poets of Rome. The only work of his that has come down is the Pharsalia, an epic, in 10 books, on the civil war between Cxsar and Pompey. As an epic, it is, as Niebuhr some
what quaintly says, an "unfortunate" performance. for it proceeds in the manner of annals, and wants the comprehensiveness, imity, and learning of the greatest works of its class. Nor is its style, generally speaking, good, for it is often turgid and obscure, and marked with those defects of taste which belong to poems inspired by a rhetorical age and school of writing. But when every deduction has been made, the Pharsalia affords ample proof that Lueanus was a man of real and powerful genius. There is an eye for the subliine both in the tuoral and physical worlds, constantiv present in it ; there is all the vigor of poetic oratory in its declamations; and there are --felicities of epigram which have secured to many a line a constant freshness of life, as part of the familiarly remembered literature of the world. Lucanus was very popular in the middle ages; and in modern times, his poem has been a particular favorite among the lovers of political freedom—especially among that school of classical republicans now nearly extinct in Europe, after having played a most important part in it. There is a well-known English translation of Lucanus by Rowe, which Dr. Johnson thought one of the best translations in the language.