Lucan and John Chrysostom: a parallel of imagination

At the end of his treatise “On the Priesthood” (De Sacerdotio) St. John Chrysostom describes the battle between Good and Evil in terms which irresistibly remind the reader of Lucan’s macabre humor in describing the battles of the Civil War. Chrysostom knew no Latin. The resemblance between him and Lucan springs from the fact that both men, who were in any case to die by violence, lived in liminal worlds. Under such pressures, and not because of any topical extravagance, their imaginations resorted to similar stylistic modes.