mail: Bill Thayer	Latine	Italiano	Help	Up	Home
This webpage reproduces a work of C. Suetonius Tranquillus published in the Loeb Classical Library, 1914 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know!

 p501  Suetonius
The Life of Lucan

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus of Corduba made his first appearance as a poet with a "Eulogy of Nero" at the emperor's Quinquennial Contests,​1 and then gave a public reading of his poem on the "Civil War" waged between Pompey and Caesar. In a kind of introduction to the latter, comparing his time of life and his first essays with those of Vergil, he had the audacity to ask:

In his early youth, learning that his father was living in the remote country districts because of an unhappy marriage . . . . He was recalled from Athens by Nero and made one of his intimate friends, besides being honoured with the quaestor­ship; but he could not keep the emperor's favour. For piqued because Nero had suddenly called a meeting of the senate and gone out when he was giving a reading, with no other motive than to throw cold water on the performance,​3 he afterwards did not refrain from words and acts of hostility to the prince, which are still notorious. Once for example in a public privy, when he relieved his bowels with  p503 an uncommonly loud noise, he shouted out this half line of the emperor's, while those who were there for the same purpose took to their heels:

He also tongue-lashed not only the emperor but also his most power­ful friends in a scurrilous poem. Finally he came out almost as the ringleader​4 in the conspiracy of Piso, publicly making great talk about the glory of tyrannicides, and full of threats, even going to the length of offering Caesar's head to all his friends. But when the conspiracy was detected, he showed by no means equal firmness of purpose; for he was easily forced to a confession, descended to the most abject entreaties, and even named his own mother among the guilty parties, although she was innocent, in hopes that this lack of filial devotion would win him favour with a parricidal prince. But when he was allowed free choice of the manner of his death, he wrote a letter to his father, containing corrections for some of his verses, and after eating heartily, offered his arms to a physician, to cut his veins. I recall that his poems were even read in public,​5 while they were published and offered for sale by editors lacking in taste, as well as by some who were painstaking and careful.

---

The Loeb Editor's Notes:

1 See Nero xii.3.

❦

2 Or perhaps, "How much younger am I than the author of the Culex?" Lucan compares his great epic, written at an earlier age, with Vergil's early work. Cf. Stat. Silv. 2.7.73, haec (= Pharsaliam) primo iuvenis canes sub aevo, Ante annos culicis Maroniani.

❦

3 Cf.  Claud. xli.1.

❦

4 Literally, standard-bearer.

❦

5 That is, lectured on by grammarians; see Gr. i.

Images with borders lead to more information. The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)
UP TO:	Suetonius	Latin & Greek Texts	LacusCurtius	Home
A page or image on this site is in the public domain ONLY if its URL has a total of one *asterisk. If the URL has two **asterisks, the item is copyright someone else, and used by permission or fair use. If the URL has none the item is © Bill Thayer. See my copyright page for details and contact information.

Accessibility