The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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From Lucan’s Pharsalia (1627), ‘To My Chosen Friend The Learned Translator of Lucan, Thomas May, Esquire’

[From Lucan’s Pharsalia, 1627]

  To My Chosen Friend
The Learned Translator of Lucan,
Thomas May, Esquire

When, Rome, I read thee in thy  mighty pair,

And see both climbing up the slippery stair

Of Fortune’s wheel by Lucan driv’n about,

And the world in it, I begin to doubt,

At every line some pin thereof should slack 5

At least, if not  the general engine crack.

But when again I view the parts so  peised,

And those in number so and measure raised,

As neither  Pompey’s popularity,

 Caesar’s ambition,  Cato’s liberty, 10

 Calm Brutus’ tenor  start, but all along

Keep due proportion in the ample song,

It makes me, ravished with just wonder, cry

 ‘What muse, or rather god of harmony,

Taught Lucan these true  moods?’ Replies my sense 15

 ‘What gods but those of arts, and eloquence,

 Phoebus and Hermes? they whose tongue or pen

Are still th’  interpreters ’twixt gods and men!’

But who hath them interpreted, and brought

Lucan’s whole frame unto us, and so wrought 20

As not the smallest joint or gentlest word

In the  great mass, or machine, there is stirred?

The self-same genius, so the work will say!

 The sun translated, or the son of May.


Your true friend in judgement and choice
Ben Jonson
To My Chosen Friend, Thomas May First printed in the 1627 edition (entered in the Stationers’ Register 12 Mar. 1627) of the translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia, sig. a7, by Thomas May (1596–1650), where it is followed by verses by ‘H. V.’ and ‘I. Vaughan’. Marvell described Jonson berating May in ‘Tom May’s Death’. May later translated Virgil’s Georgics and some of Martial’s epigrams. He received the patronage of Charles I, although May’s detractors claimed that the King’s meanness with material rewards goaded him to become the historian of the Long Parliament. Attempts have been made to see May’s early translations as anticipating his later republicanism, notably by Norbrook (1999), 43–50; C. Burrow (1993), 197–9 was (and remains) sceptical. [Editor: Colin Burrow]
1 mighty pair Caesar and Pompey the Great, whose struggle is the main subject of Lucan’s poem.
6 the general engine crack cause the primum mobile (the outer, driving sphere, added in the Middle Ages to the Ptolomaic cosmos) to break. The image recalls Lucan’s guarded praise of the cosmos-crushing weight of Nero: ‘If all thy weight on part of heaven should hold, / The honoured load would bow heaven’s axle-tree; / Hold thou the middle of the poisèd sky’ (May, Lucan’s Pharsalia, sig. A2).
7 peised carefully weighted.
9 Pompey’s popularity Pompeius Magnus (106–48 bc) is the closest approximation to a popular hero in Lucan’s poem. ‘Popularity’ can mean ‘popular or democratic government’ as well as ‘pursuit of admiration’.
10 Caesar’s ambition Julius Caesar is presented by Lucan as a wily enemy of republican liberty.
10 Cato’s liberty Cato Uticensis is represented by Lucan as the nobly failing hero of republican liberty.
11 Calm . . . tenor Brutus’s constancy. ‘Tenor’ puns on ‘stable disposition’ and the musical sense (which is picked up in ‘song’ in the next line).
11 start break (OED, v. 8) or startle. The idea is that May’s harmonious song is strong enough to contain all the differing qualities of Lucan’s heroes.
14–15 ‘What . . . moods?’] this edn; What . . . moodes! May (1627)
15 moods The unmodernized form, ‘moodes’, might be alternatively modernized as ‘modes’, registering a musical pun.
16–18 ‘What . . . men!’] this edn; What . . . men! May (1627)
17 Phoebus and Hermes Phoebus Apollo was god of poetry and music, Hermes god of eloquence. Cf. ‘Shakes. Beloved’ (5.638–42), lines 45–6.
18 interpreters . . . men Cf. Discoveries, 1334-5: ‘Therefore Mercury, who is the president of language, is called deorum hominumque interpres [the interpreter of gods and men].’ For further information, see Paleit (2011).
22 great . . . machine Lucan’s poem is presented as a balanced machine akin to the cosmos.
24 Phoebus was god of the sun; Hermes was the son of Maia, which gives a strained pun on ‘May’.