A Commentary on Lucan, 'De bello civili' IV

Lucan s epic on the civil war that ended the Republic was written in the Early Empire, under Nero, a hundred years after the events it narrates. Book 4 focuses on two major campaigns out of Italy, first in Spain, then in Africa. Paolo Asso s commentary privileges aspects of poetics, rhetoric, language and literary genre, and speaks not only to readers of Latin poetry but also to all students and scholars in classical and modern languages and literatures, as well as the generally learned reader with little knowledge of Latin.