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.