Part 9 (2/2)
Conscious of this inevitable difficulty, and with all the rhetorician's morbid fear of being commonplace, Lucan betakes himself to desperate remedies, hyperbole and padding. If he describes a battle, he must invent new and incredible horrors to enthral us; his sea-fight at Ma.s.silia is a notable instance;[290] death ceases to inspire horror and becomes grotesque. If a storm arises he must outdo all earlier epic storms. Vergil had attempted to outdo the storms of the Odyssey. Lucan must outdo Vergil. Consequently, in the storm that besets Caesar on his legendary voyage to Italy in the fisherman's boat[291] that 'carried Caesar and his fortunes', strange things happen. The boat rocks helplessly in mid-sea--
Its sails in clouds, its keel upon the ground, For all the sea was piled into the waves And drawn from depths between laid bare the sand.[292]
In the same tempest--
The sea had risen to the clouds In mighty ma.s.s, had not Olympus' chief Pressed down its waves with clouds,[293]
If he is concerned with a march through the African desert, he must introduce the reader to a whole host of apocryphal serpents, with details as to the nature of their bites.[294] So terrible are these reptiles that it is a positive relief to the army to enter the region of lions.[295] Before such specimens as this the hyperbole of Seneca seems tame and insignificant.
The introduction of irrelevant episodes would be less reprehensible were it not that such episodes are for the most part either dull or a fresh excuse for bombast or (worse still) a display of erudition.[296] He devotes no less than 170 lines in the first book to a description of the prodigies that took place at Rome on the outbreak of the Civil War, and of the rites performed to avert their omens.[297]
In the next book a hundred and sixty-six lines are given to a lurid picture of the Marian and Sullan proscriptions,[298] and forty-six to a compressed geography of Italy.[299] In the fifth book we are given the tedious story of how a certain obscure Appius consulted the Delphian oracle[300] and how he fared, merely, we suspect, that Lucan may have an opportunity for depicting the frenzies of the Pythian prophetess.
Similarly, at the close of the sixth book, Pompey's son consults a necromancer as to the result of the war.[301] The scene is described with not a little skill and ingenuity, but it has little _raison d'etre_ save the gratification of the taste for witchcraft which Lucan shared with his audience and his fellow poets.
Apart from these weaknesses of method and execution, Lucan's style is unsuited to epic whether historical or legendary. He has not sufficient command of a definitely poetical vocabulary to enable him to captivate the reader by pure sensuous charm. He is, as Quintilian says, 'magis oratoribus quam poetis imitandus.' He cannot shake himself free from the influence of his rhetorical training. It is a severe condemnation of an epic poet to deny him, as we have denied, the gifts of narrative and dramatic power. Yet much of Lucan is more than readable, to some it is even fascinating. He has other methods of meeting the difficulties presented by historical epic. The work is full of speeches, moralising, and apostrophes. He will not let the story tell itself; he is always harping on its moral and political significance. As a result, we get long pa.s.sages that belong to the region of elevated political satire.
They are not epic, but they are often magnificent. It is in them that Lucan's political feeling appears at its truest and strongest.[302] The actual fortunes of the republican armies, as recounted by Lucan, must fail to rouse the emotions of the most ardent anti-Caesarian, and it is doubtful whether they would have responded to more skilful treatment.
But in the apostrophes grief and indignation can find a voice and stir the heart. They may reveal a monstrous lack of the sense of historical proportion. To attribute the depopulation of the rural districts of Italy to the slaughter at Pharsalus is absurd. That Lucan does this is undeniable, but his words have a deeper significance. It was at Pharsalus, above all other battles, that the republic fell to ruin, and the poet is justified in making it the symbol of that fall.[303] And even where the sentiment is at bottom false, there is such an impetuosity and vigour in the lines, and such a depth of scorn in each epigram, that the reader is swept off his balance and convinced against his will. We hardly pause to think whether Pharsalus, or even the whole series of civil wars, really prevented the frontiers of Rome being conterminous with the limits of the inhabited globe, when we read such lines as (vii. 419)--
quo latius...o...b..m possedit, citius per prospera fata cucurrit.
omne tibi bellum gentes dedit omnibus annis: te geminum t.i.tan procedere vidit in axem; haud multum terrae spatium restabat Eoae, ut tibi nox, tibi tota dies, tibi curreret aether, omniaque errantes stellae Romana viderent.
sed retro tua fata tulit par omnibus annis Emathiae funesta dies, hac luce cruenta effectum, ut Latios non horreat India fasces, nec vet.i.tos errare Dahas in moenia ducat Sarmatic.u.mque premat succinctus consul aratrum, quod semper saevas debet tibi Parthia poenas, quod fugiens civile nefas redituraque numquam libertas ultra Tigrim Rhenumque recessit ac totiens n.o.bis iugulo quaesita vagatur, Germanum Scythic.u.mque bonum, nec respicit ultra Ausoniam.
The wider she lorded it o'er the world, the swifter did she run through her fair fortunes. Each war, each year, gave thee new peoples to rule thee did the sun behold advancing towards either pole; little remained to conquer of the Eastern world; so that for thee, and thee alone, night and day and heaven should revolve, and the planets gaze on naught that was not Rome's. But Emathia's fatal day, a match for all the bygone years, has swept thy destiny backward. This day of slaughter was the cause that India trembles not before the lictor-rods of Rome, and that no consul, with toga girded high, leads the Dahae within some city's wall, forbidden to wander more, and in Sarmatia drives the founder's plough. This day was the cause that Parthia still owes thee a fierce revenge, that freedom flying from the crimes of citizens has withdrawn behind Tigris and the Rhine, ne'er to return, and, sought so oft by us with our life's blood, wanders the prize of German and of Scyth, and hath no further care for Ausonia.
But this famous apostrophe closes on a truer note with six lines of unsurpa.s.sed satire (454)--
mortalia nulli sunt curata deo. cladis tamen huius habemus vindictam, quantam terris dare numina fas est: bella pares superis facient civilia divos; fulminibus manes radiisque ornabit et astris, inque deum templis iurabit Roma per umbras.
No G.o.d has a thought for the doings of mortal men: yet for this overthrow this vengeance is ours, so far as G.o.ds may give satisfaction to the earth: civil wars shall raise dead Caesars to the level of the G.o.ds above; and Rome shall deck the spirits of the dead with rays and thunderbolts and stars, and in the temples of the G.o.ds shall swear by the name of shades.
n.o.blest of all are the lines that close another apostrophe on the same subject a little later in the same book (638)--
maius ab hac acie quam quod sua saecula ferrent volnus habent populi; plus est quam vita salusque quod perit; in totum mundi prosternimur aevum, vincitur his gladiis omnis quae serviet aetas.
proxima quid suboles aut quid meruere nepotes in regnum nasci? pavide num gessimus arma teximus aut iugulos? alieni poena timoris in nostra cervice sedet. post proelia natis si dominum, Fortuna, dabas, et bella dedisses.
A deeper wound than their own age might bear was dealt the peoples of this earth in this battle: 'tis more than life and safety that is lost: for all future ages of the world are we laid low: these swords have vanquished generations yet unborn, and doomed them to eternal slavery. What had the sons and grandsons of those who fought that day deserved that they should be born into slavery? Did we bear our arms like cowards, or screen our throats from death? Upon our necks is riveted the doom that we should live in fear of another. Nay, Fortune, since thou gavest a tyrant to those born since the war, thou shouldst have given them also the chance to fight for freedom.
These are the finest of not a few[304] remarkable expressions of Lucan's hatred for the growing autocracy of the princ.i.p.ate: it is noteworthy that almost all occur in the last seven books. They can hardly be regarded as mere abstract meditations; they have a force and bitterness which justify us in regarding them as evidence of his changed att.i.tude towards Nero. The first three books were published while he yet basked in the suns.h.i.+ne of court favours. Then came the breach between himself and Nero. His wounded vanity a.s.sisted his principles to come to the surface.[305]
The speeches, with very few exceptions,[306] scarcely rank with the apostrophes. Like the speeches in the plays of Seneca, they are little more than glorified _suasoriae_. They are, for the most part, such speeches as--after making the most liberal allowance for rhetorical licence--no human being outside a school of rhetoric could have uttered.
Caesar's soldiery would have stared aghast had they been addressed by their general in such language as Lucan makes him use to inspire them with courage before Pharsalus. They would have understood little, and cared less, had Caesar said (vii. 274)--
civilia paucae bella ma.n.u.s facient; pugnae pars magna levabit his...o...b..m populis Romanumque obteret hostem;
Not in civil strife Your blows shall fall--the battle of to-day Sweeps from the earth the enemies of Rome.
SIR E. RIDLEY.
or (279)--
sitque palam, quas tot duxit Pompeius in urbem curribus, unius gentes non esse triumphi.
Make plain to all men that the crowds who decked Pompeius' hundred pageants scarce were fit For one poor triumph.
SIR E. RIDLEY.
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