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 passages 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)--