Though immensely popular in late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, Lucan’s Pharsalia has languished in semi-obscurity for centuries. With the availability of Fratantuono’s excellent commentary, this grand Silver Age epic, with its stories of witches, ghosts, a headless Pompey, wild animals feasting on fallen soldiers, and a Rome poised to lose its cherished libertas, stands a good chance of making a long overdue comeback. It is the third in a series of commentaries Fratantuono has written in the last five years, and it may well be his best, which is saying a lot, since his earlier commentaries on the Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses get more use than most other books in my personal Latin library. Lucan’s intent in the Pharsalia was clearly to fashion an epic that would elicit comparanda with the works of his predecessors, and Fratantuono is the perfect guide to help us understand these many points of comparison. As in his books on Vergil and Ovid, Fratantuono shows an amazingly comprehensive knowledge of his poem and comes up with insights that are born of many years of a productive engagement with it. Madness Triumphant is surely a victrix causa for both the young Neronian poet and his 21st century interpreter.
