ENDNOTES:
(1) `The great Emathian conqueror' (Milton's sonnet). Emathia
was part of Macedonia, but the word is used loosely for
Thessaly or Macedonia.
(2) Crassus had been defeated and slain by the Parthians in B.C.
53, four years before this period.
(3) Mr. Froude in his essay entitled "Divus Caesar" hints that
these famous lines may have been written in mockery.
Probably the five years known as the Golden Era of Nero had
passed when they were written: yet the text itself does not
aid such a suggestion; and the view generally taken, namely
that Lucan was in earnest, appears preferable. There were
many who dreamed at the time that the disasters of the Civil
War were being compensated by the wealth and prosperity of
the empire under Nero; and the assurance of universal peace,
then almost realised, which is expressed in lines 69-81,
seems inconsistent with the idea that this passage was
written in irony. (See Lecky's "European Morals from
Augustus to Charlemagne", vol. i.p.240, who describes these
latter verses as Written with all the fervour of a Christian
poet. See also Merivale's "Roman Empire," chapter liv.)
(4) See a similar passage in the final scene of Ben Jonson's
"Catiline". The cutting of the Isthmus of Corinth was
proposed in Nero's reign, and actually commenced in his
presence; but abandoned because it was asserted that the
level of the water in the Corinthian Gulf was higher than
that in the Saronic Gulf, so that, if the canal were cut,
the island of Aegina would be submerged.
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