ut him to
death on the charge of complicity in the conspiracy of Piso.

In philosophy Lucan was a Stoic, in style a rhetorician. The
_Pharsalia_, his only extant work, is an epic poem of about eight
thousand lines in ten books on the civil war between Pompey and Caesar.

The Cato of _Selections_ 2-5 is Cato the Younger, or 'the Stoic,' who in
46 B.C. was in Africa in command of a part of the Republican forces
opposed to Julius Caesar. After the decisive defeat at Thapsus he
refused to survive the Republic, taking his own life at Utica. His
memory was revered throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. Vergil
makes him the lawgiver of Elysium (_Aeneid_, 8. 670), and Dante
represents him as the warden of Purgatory, 'venerable,' his countenance
adorned with the 'rays of the four consecrated stars,' his form destined
to shine brightly on the last day.

For her [i.e. Liberty] to thee not bitter
Was death in Utica, where thou didst leave
The vesture, that will shine so, the great day.

See Longfellow's translation of the _Purgatorio_, with notes, Canto I.

Haskins, _Lucani Pharsalia_, Introduction, pp. 59-60, examines all
allusions to Cato in the _Pharsalia_, and concludes that the picture is
in its main outlines truthful, though the failure to depict 'the
cross-grained perversity that moved the complaints of Cicero' makes it
somewhat one-sided. 'Of course the portrait is colored by a loving hand:
but it is none the worse for that.'

For Reference: Teuffel, Schwabe, and Warr, _History of Roman
Literature_, vol. 2, p. 78 ff. Haskins, _Lucani Pharsalia_ (London,
1889).

Metre: Dactylic Hexameter, B. 368; A. & G. 616.

_2._ 4. deis placuit: that Caesar 'had the strongest battalions' proves
that 'Heaven' was 'on his side.'

_3._ Cato, proceeding by land from the neighborhood of Cyrene toward
Numidia, and coming to the temple of Jupiter Ammon,--geographically
misplaced by Lucan,--is advised by Labienus to consult the god
concerning the outcome of the war and the nature of virtue. The
selection gives his reply. 1. mente gerebat: of. Seneca, _Epistula_ 4.
12 (41). 1, 2. 'God is near you, is with you, is within you. I have this
to say, Lucilius: a sacred spirit has his abode within us.' 3. Labiene:
Caesar's former second-in-command, who went over to Pompey's side at the
beginning of the Civil War and was finally slain at Munda. 5. et: even.
6, 7. Fortuna perdat minas: whether Fortune threatens vainly. 8.
et...honestum