our taking the poem seriously has departed. Yet this passage of Petronius contains much sound criticism. Military and political history does _not_ admit of being turned into genuine poetry; an epic on an historic war must depend largely on its purple patches of description and rhetoric: it almost demands that prominence of epigram and 'commonplace' that Eumolpus condemns.[27l] Petronius sees the weakness of Lucan's epic; he fails because, like Silius Italicus, he thinks he has discovered a remedy. The faults of Lucan's poem are largely inherent in the subject chosen; they will stand out clearly as we review the structure and style of the work. In taking the whole of the Civil War for his subject Lucan was confronted with a somewhat similar problem to that which faced Shakespeare in his _Julius Caesar_. The problem that Shakespeare had to meet was how to prolong and sustain the interest of the play after the death of Caesar and the events that centre immediately round it. The difficulty was surmounted triumphantly. The obstacles in Lucan's path were greater. The poem is incomplete, and there must be some uncertainty as to its intended scope. That it was planned to include the death of Cato is clear from the importance assigned him in the existing books. But could the work have concluded on such a note of gloom as the death of the staunchest champion of the republic? The whole tone of the poem is republican in the extreme. If the republic must perish, it should not perish unavenged. There are, moreover, many prophetic allusions to the death of Caesar,[272] which point conclusively to Lucan's intention to have made the vengeance of Brutus and Cassius the climax of his poem. The problem which the poet had to resolve was how to prevent the interest from nagging, as his heroes were swept away before the triumphant advance of Caesar. He concentrates our attention at the outset on Pompey. Throughout the first eight books it is for him that he claims our sympathy. And then he is crushed by his rival and driven in flight to die an unheroic death. It is only at this point that Cato leaps into prominence. But though he has a firmness of purpose and a grandeur of character that Lucan could not give Pompey, he never has the chance to become the protagonist. Both Pompey and Cato, for all the fine rhetoric bestowed on them, fail to grip the reader, while from the very facts of history it is impossible for either of them to lend unity to the plot. Both are dwarfed by the character of Caesar. Caesar is the villain of the piece; he is a monster athirst for blood, he will not permit the corpses of his enemies (over which he is made to gloat) to be buried after the great battle, and when on his coming to Egypt the head of his rival is brought him, his grief and indignation are represented as being a mere blind to conceal his real joy. The successes are often merely the result of good fortune. Lucan is loth to admit even his greatness as a general.