ABSTRACT
The History of the World and Sir Arthur Gorges’s translation of Lucan belong together, as part of a single ‘Neostoic’ project for Henry undermined – and ‘subversively’ pushed into the public domain – by his death. Seneca’s nephew and Nero’s favourite, Lucan was condemned to death for his participation in the Pisonian conspiracy. His account of the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey in the Pharsalia juxtaposes aggressive republicanism with the gaudy flattery of Nero. David Norbrook argues that Gorges’s translation has republican leanings and is thus oppositional: it made, he says, ‘a political statement’, registering ‘discontent with the current direction of royal policies’, and offering readers a teasingly ambiguous view of Roman politics. Both ‘oppositional’ and ‘Henrician’ elements in Gorges’s translation can be characterised as ‘Neostoic’. Several writers have highlighted the ‘Neostoic’ tinge of Prince Henry’s circle, though there has been a tendency to overstress its oppositional side.
