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THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF SENECA 501
publish anything further. The young poet, feeling within him
the true fire of genius, nursed his rage in secret, and changed
the tone of the ' Pharsalia ' from inflated Csesarism to savage
denunciation. He mocks at the sham liberty which it accorded
;
brands with satire its shameful flatteries ;
and treating
its apotheoses as a sacrilegious comedy, declares that the day
would come when '
a freer and truer Rome would make a god,
not of Caesar, but of Cato.' 1 Ten years earlier he had been
writing of Nero as a supreme divinity now in his ;
writing-desk
lay the fierce complaint that, as a consequence of the civil
wars, men had come to worship shadows in the temples of the
gods. 2 He consoled his seclusion by living in virtuous union
with the young wife whom he loved, and as he poured forth
the epic of a soul lacerated by indignation, conscious of his
future immortality, he wrote in secret
'
Pharsalia nostra
Vivet, et a nullo teuebris damnubitur aevo.'
When Piso's conspiracy began, Lucan became its passionate
supporter. Men might ask what was the use of substituting
one actor like Piso for another like Nero, but if a republic
was impossible, Lucan felt that no change of a Caesar could be
for the worse, and in his burning hatred promised that he
would slay the Emperor with his own hand.
Alas ! when detection came ;
when he saw knights and
senators and soldiers sinking all around him into treacherous
weakness ;
when the grim executioner stood at his elbow pointing
to the rack, Lucan had none of the inward strength or
ennobling convictions which might have enabled him to retain
his manhood. Sinking to an incredible depth of baseness, he
betrayed the name of his own mother as an accomplice in the
plot. His momentary infamy did not save his life, though it
must have cost him a pang worse than that of death. Bidden
to die, he opened his veins in four places, and went into a hot
bath. His last thoughts at the end of a life so brief, so full of
glory, so full of shame, are left unrecorded. Only as he watched
the blood flow, he was reminded of the fantastic lines of the
'Pharsalia' in which he had described the similar death of a
soldier on the field of battle. He recited them with a feeble
voice, and spoke no more. That he should, at such a moment,
1 Pharsal. ix. 601. Pharsal. vii. 455-459.