Lucan is the child of his age, but he is almost an isolated figure in literature. He has almost every conceivable defect in every conceivable degree, from the smallest detail to the general conception of his poem. And yet he triumphs over himself. It is a hateful task to read the _Pharsalia_ from cover to cover, and yet when it is done and the lapse of time has allowed the feeling of immediate repulsion to evaporate, the reader can still feel that Lucan is a great writer. The absurdities slip from the memory, the dreariness of the narrative is forgotten, and the great passages of lofty rhetoric, with their pungent epigram and their high political enthusiasm, remain deeply engraven on the mind. It is they that have given Lucan the immortality which he promised himself. The _Pharsalia_ is dead, but Lucan lives. It is useless to conjecture what might have been the fate of such remarkable gifts in a less corrupt age. This much, however, may be said, Lucan never had a fair chance. The circle in which he moved, the education which he received, suffered only his rhetorical talent to develop, and to this were sacrificed all his other gifts, his clearness of vision, his sense of proportion, his poetical imagination. He was spoilt by admiration and his own facility. Moreover, Seneca was his uncle: a comparison shows how profoundly the elder poet influenced the younger. There is the same self-conscious arrogance begotten of Stoicism, the same brilliance of wit and absence of humour. Their defects and merits alike reveal them as kindred, though Lucan stands worlds apart as a poet from Seneca, the ranting tragedian. He was but twenty-five when he died. Age might have brought a maturity and dignity of spirit which would have made rhetoric his servant and not his master, and refined away the baser alloys of his character. Even as it was he left much that, without being pure gold, yet possessed many elements and much of the brilliance of the true metal. Dante's judgement was true when he set him among the little company of true poets, of which Dante himself was proud to be made one. CHAPTER V PETRONIUS