1632 Lucans Pharsalia: or The Civill Warres of Rome... translator Thomas May. Printed in London, England

The second edition, printed in 1631, of Thomas May's English translation of Lucan's Pharsalia: or the Civill Warres of Rome.... This copy also includes the continuation May produced in 1633. In addition, the playwright Ben Jonson writes an introductory ode to Thomas May.

About Pharsalia -

A Roman epic poem written by the poet Lucan, detailing the civil war between Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate led by Pompey the Great. The poem's title is a reference to the Battle of Pharsalus, which occurred in 48 BC, near Pharsalus, Thessaly, in Northern Greece. Caesar decisively defeated Pompey in this battle, which occupies all of the epic's seventh book.

The poem was begun around AD 61 and several books were in circulation before the Emperor Nero and Lucan had a bitter falling out. Lucan continued to work on the epic – despite Nero's prohibition against any publication of Lucan's poetry – and it was left unfinished when Lucan was compelled to suicide as part of the Pisonian conspiracy in AD 65. In total, ten books were written and all survive; the tenth book breaks off abruptly with Caesar in Egypt.

About Lucan -

He found success under Nero, became one of the emperor's close friends and was rewarded with a quaestorship in advance of the legal age. In AD 60, he won a prize for extemporizing Orpheus and Laudes Neronis at the quinquennial Neronia, and was again rewarded when the emperor appointed him to the augurate. During this time he circulated the first three books of his epic poem Pharsalia (labelled De Bello civili in the manuscripts), which told the story of the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey.

At some point, a feud began between Nero and Lucan. The later books of Pharsalia are anti-Imperial and pro-Republic.

Lucan later joined the conspiracy of Gaius Calpurnius Piso against Nero. The conspiracy was discovered and he was obliged, at the age of 25, to commit suicide by opening a vein, but not before incriminating his mother, among others, in the hopes of a pardon. According to Tacitus, as Lucan bled to death, "(he) recalled some poetry he had composed in which he had told the story of a wounded soldier dying a similar kind of death and he recited the very lines. These were his last words.” An alternative interpretation of events is that his death was not by suicide, but was an execution carried out at Nero's command.

About Thomas May (the translator) -

Thomas May (1594/95 –1650) was an English poet, dramatist and historian of the Renaissance era. May's career-defining work was his translation of the Latin poet Lucan's Bellum Civile. Lucan's is a narrative of the downfall of the Roman republic in the civil wars between Pompey and Julius Caesar: it laments the loss of republican liberty and institutions and condemns Caesar's immoral ambition. The first three books of May's translation appeared in 1626 and the full ten a year later (with different printers); it was reprinted in 1631, 1635 and 1650, each time with minor corrections. The 1627 edition boasted dedications of Books II to IX to prominent English noblemen, many of whom were actual or suspected opponents of Charles I's ongoing attempts to tax without Parliament. May compares the fortitude and patriotism of these aristocrats to the patrician heroes of Lucan's doomed republic. These dedications disappear from later editions and there is some evidence they were defaced or removed, possibly by censors.

Bibliographic Details -

Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC) number 3015335, found in 32 of the world's best libraries.

English Short Title Catalogue number S108868.

Worldcat OCLC numbers 1156429413 and 972783956.

Possible provenance - the Louis Clarke, who gifted the book in 1944, may be the Fitzwilliam Museum Director of that period, a known bibliophile and collector.

Physical Attributes -

Measures approx. 14.5 x 9.5 x 2.5 cm. Leather binding, with decorative blind tooled hinges in the arts and crafts style. Spine with five raised bands; title in gilt in one compartment, year at the base of the spine, also in gilt. All edges red.

Two works in one volume. Both with a title page engraving. The first work also has a leaf describing the title page, and a second type title page.

Collation - A-S8, T2, A-J8, K7 (blank K8 missing).

Condition -

See pictures. Binding worn at edges, corners and joints; joints discolored. Nail marks in leather, some sunning to spine. 1 cm start at top of top joint, but it doesn't feel tender. Ex Libris plate on pastedown and pen "1986". 1944 gift inscription on flyleaf. Endpapers ghosted with image of turn-ins. A worm-track, near bottom of page, through leaf signed B8, sometimes repaired. Pages are toned, with some darkening near edges. Occasional fox spot, thumb, dog-eared page, page-edge chip, etc. Underlining and annotation on leaf A2. P6 with underlining and 1" tear from bottom edge. T1 and T2 trimmed tighter at bottom edge, possibly from a different copy (or that printed leaf was a little off). Second F gathering has a black stain at the upper corner. Second I7 has a repaired fore-edge., about 2". Last leaf, a blank, which would have been K8, missing.