Civil War (Oxford World's Classics)

There are not many translations of Lucan's Civil War, sometimes titled Pharsalia.Susan H Braund's translation of Lucan's Civil War is a great translation. Lucan's Civil War is a work from the time of Nero and is incomplete due to the authors death. Nonetheless it is a great epic that is quite different from the others. It takes on a grotesque tone with descriptions of battles and descriptions of ghosts and witches. It takes place during the Civil War that saw Caesar rise to power and does not hide who Lucan supports. Some of the poetic use is lost in this translation due to its translation to Latin but it makes up for this with its explicit character. Braund captures the heterodox Stoicism that underlies the text and makes it appear not just in the overarching story but in the characters as they relate to each other. Passive Aggressive tones are captured just as well as the sense of foreboding and pessimism the text expresses.

Great translation, but having to guess where the footnotes are makes this an unfortunate read. There are no footnote indicators in the text itself, you have to go to the end of the book to see the notes but they are not integrated into the main text. Strange, since the other Oxford classical texts are done properly.

Braund is painfully literal, which may her translation great as an aid to my reading of the Latin text, but made the translation itself a bit unexciting. The trouble with Lucan, in my view, is that so many of his richest moments are also incredibly subtle. There's also no way to deny that it's difficult--very difficult--to render the geographical/astronomical/sophistic passages interesting to modern English readers.Braund had a great set of notes at the end, too. (I wish these were footnotes, but beggars can't be choosers. There aren't many editions of English Lucan in print.)

Love it.

Great book - a must read for any budding classicist

Turgid translation. It may be a faithful translation, but I think Latin and English syntax do not mix.

An underrated work of the Silver Age. There are some excellent epsiodes that could stand on their own as mini-epics: the suicides of Vulteius and comrades, Appius 'rape' of the Pythia, Caesar's journey by sea, Scaeva's aristeia, Erictho's necromancy, and Cato's journey through Africa to name just a few. The historical insights into the lives of Caesar, Pompey, and Cato are also especially enlightening. Absolutely worth a first and second look!

what's the use when the print is so tiny that a reader will go blind after a couple of pages?

Lucan was the nephew of Seneca the Younger (one-time tutor to Nero and forced by him to commit suicide) and so he has a very personal response to hereditary monarchy which comes over very clearly in this text. Re-telling the story of the civil war waged between Julius Caesar and Pompey, he also explores the re-establishment of monarchy vs. the supposed independence of the republic.This is a very literary text and relies on the reader's knowledge of other Roman epics especially Virgil's Aeneid, but also Ovid's Metamorphoses which itself challenged what the epic genre could and should encompass. But it's not strictly essential to have a knowledge of either Roman literature or even history to enjoy this book though it undoubtedly helps in terms of exploring the nuances.Braund's translation (OUP Oxford World Classics 1992) of the Latin poetry is in free verse, and is flowing and powerful. Her notes and especially introduction are excellent contextualising the poem in many directions.I have to admit that this isn't one of my favourite Latin texts but Lucan's sensational episodes are very gothic and almost worth reading in themselves, replete as they are with bloody portents, witches, and all manner of gore. Caesar's affair with Cleopatra is also extremely lurid but it's a shame that the text breaks off at that point as Lucan never finished the poem. So worth a read but not a good introduction to Latin literature.

The Explanatory Notes at the end of the book take you back to the relevant page of the text but the text itself contains no links to the Explanatory Notes. One * off for this.After reading the book, I am now reading the endnotes and following the links back to the text that I've already read. Hardly ideal. Oxford should correct this problem so that purchasers have a functional product.

Lucan is not easy to read but there is an excellent Introduction by the famous Roman scholar Susanne Braund which helps to clarify some parts of the poem.

An excellent translation of an old favourite

Susanna Braund's translation is a work of marvelous balance. While Widdows's is impressive for maintaining the Latin hexameter in English, Braund's achieves the best of all worlds: metrical regularity (with some variation), artful translation, and a very faithful rendering that preserves the Latin almost line-for-line---a great boon both to Latin students and to the Latinless who want to stay as close as possible to Lucan without the awkwardness of a verbatim translation. Some of her lines are strikingly beautiful:--- "...so when winter checks / the birds, the fields are hushed, and so mid-sea is mute / unmurmurring" (1.259–61). Few have conveyed the sense of silence more with more arresting clarity.The introductory material is suitable for the layman, and adequate even for a student of the Classics. Like the translation itself, a work of perfect balance.