Lucan's Pharsalia

Ok, my next read is to be Lucan's Pharsalia - Only Lucan wasn't his name and Pharsalia wasn't the name of the poem. Lucan is the Anglicized version of Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (39-65 AD), Friend of Nero, state poet, some say Lucan was of the ranks of Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Virgil. Pharsalia is the common name given to a (probably) unfinished poem about the Roman Civil Wars surrounding Caesar and Pompey. Lucanus only ever referred to the poem as 'The Civil Wars.' The word Pharsalia is a reference to a battle at Pharsalus.

...Armies akin embattled, with the force of all the shaken earth bent on the fray; and burst asunder, to the common guilt, a kingdom's compact; eagle with eagle met, standard to standard, spear opposed to spear. Whence, citizens, this rage, this boundless lust to sate barbarians with the blood of Rome? ... Why wage campaigns that send no laurels home? What lands, what oceans might have been the prize of all the blood thus shed in civil strife!

Wow! and that's just an excerpt of the invocation!