A Lucan Reader: Selections from Civil War (English and Latin Edition)

A Lucan Reader  contains several hundred lines of Lucan, chosen to reflect (some of) the major events covered in the poem. The introduction does a good job of placing the poem in its historical and literary context, and includes a summary of the whole work, which locates the chosen selections in the narrative. There is also a bibliography, covering current work on Lucan.The book is well laid-out and easy to use. The selections are well-chosen, and the notes cover most of what will baffle anyone new to Lucan. The included vocabulary appears to be complete.I would have appreciated more coverage in the introductory essay of how Lucan structures his periods to go with the general discussion of his style and use of words, but that's about all that's missing.Highly recommended.

This classroom tool is helpful only because it exists and is affordable. The introductory material is useful but nowadays one can read background information in an online reference work such as the Oxford Classical Dictionary or even Wikipedia. The Latin selections focus on the trite themes in the poem: Caesar, Pompey, and way too much from Book 7. Overall, they should be more useful than they are. Lucan's Latin is very difficult and the commentary shows how difficult it is without offering actual help. I used this volume in the classroom only once, accompanied by Braund's translation so that students could read though the whole text. Neither the Reader nor the translation satisfied the needs of my twenty college students. Now that I am about to teach Lucan this coming spring, I am torn between toiling over my own ad hoc selections or opt for the inadequate reader provided by Braund. This is the only Lucan Reader available on the market, so I might end up adopting it.

Lucan, although very errudite, is a dense, abstruse poet and Braund certainly helps to unwrap some of the more difficult passages within his work. I highly recommend it to any student who needs more clarification when reading Lucan - in fact I almost found it more enjoyable than Bellum Civile itself!