II. ch. 18, of the last days and death of Pompeius, and which is
followed by a most judicious summing-up of his history and position as a
Roman leader. The historian's mind appears to be strongly affected by
the fate of the Pompeian house, as much so as was the imagination of the
Romans, which it seems to have haunted. This is in part due, we presume,
to the free use which he has made of Lucan's "Pharsalia," a work of
great value to those who would understand how the grand contest for
supremacy was viewed by the beaten party in after times. That poem is
the funeral wail of the Roman aristocracy, and it embodies the ideas and
traditions of the vanquished as they existed far down into the Imperial
age. It testifies to the original vitality of the aristocratical
faction, when we find a youthful contemporary of Nero dedicating his
genius to its service more than a century after the contest had been
decided on the battlefield. Whether Lucan was a patriot, or a selfish,
but disappointed courtier, we may feel certain that he never could have
written in the Pompeian spirit, if that spirit was not still dominant
in the minds of a large number of those men and women who formed the
most cultivated portion of Roman society. To a critical historian, such
as Mr.
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