The Poet Who Told Nero the Truth

HE POET LUCAN lived in interesting times. Born during the mercifully short reign of Caligula and reared while Claudius ruled, Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, 39-65 C.E.) was almost of an age with Nero and was, for the second half of his short life, in a position to observe that last link in the Julio-Claudian dynastic chain. Lucan’s uncle was Seneca, the Stoic philosopher who served first as Nero’s tutor and then as his prime minister before becoming, like his two brothers and like Lucan himself, the emperor’s victim.