Of all the poetry Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, better known to English readers as Lucan, wrote during his short life, only his unfinished epic Pharsalia survives. The little known about Lucan comes from two biographies that circulated in some manuscripts of Pharsalia and from the historian Tacitus's Annals. Lucan was born in Cordova in Spain on November 3, A.D. 39. He committed suicide at the order of the emperor Nero on April 30, A.D. 65. The grandson of a famous rhetorician, Seneca the Elder, and the nephew of philosopher, writer, and financier Seneca the Younger, Lucan was brought to Rome as a baby. There he received the usual upper class Roman education in literature and public speaking. He also studied Stoic philosophy. His talent for public speaking had already gained him fame in his teens. Nero, his uncle Seneca's student, encouraged him at first with political appointments, but later...