In description Lucan is excellent, both in action and still life, but more in brilliancy of detail than in broad effects. His defect lies in the tone of exaggeration which he has acquired in the schools, and thinks it right to employ in order not to fall below his subject. He has a true opinion of the importance of the Civil War, which he judges to be the final crisis of Rome's history, and its issues fraught with superhuman grandeur. The innate materialism of his mind, however, leads him to attach _outward_ magnitude to all that is connected with it. Thus Nero, the offspring of its throes, is entreated by the poet to be careful, when he leaves earth to take his place among the immortals, not to seat himself in a quarter where his weight may disturb the just equilibrium of the globe! [54] And, similarly, all the incidents of the Civil War exceed the parallel incidents of every other war in terror and vastness. Do portents presage a combat? they are such as defy all power to conceive. Pindus mounts upon Olympus, [55] and others of a more ordinary but still amazing character follow. [56] Does a naval conflict take place? the horrors of all the elements combine to make it the most hideous that the mind can imagine. Fire and water vie with each other in devising new modes of death, and where these are inactive, it is only because a land-battle with all its carnage is being enacted on the closely-wedged ships. [57] Has the army to march across a desert? the entire race of venomous serpents conspires to torture and if possible extirpate the host! [58] This is a very inartistic mode of heightening effect, and, indeed, borders closely on that pursued in the modern _sensation_ novel. It is beyond question the worst defect of the _Pharsalia_, and the extraordinary ingenuity with which it is done only intensifies the misconduct of the poet.