Emathia was part of Macedonia, but the word is used loosely for Thessaly or Macedonia.
(2) Crassus had been defeated and slain by the Parthians in B.C.
53, four years before this period.
(3) Mr.Froude in his essay entitled "Divus Caesar" hints that these famous lines may have been written in mockery.
Probably the five years known as the Golden Era of Nero had passed when they were written: yet the text itself does not aid such a suggestion; and the view generally taken, namely that Lucan was in earnest, appears preferable.

There were many who dreamed at the time that the disasters of the Civil War were being compensated by the wealth and prosperity of the empire under Nero; and the assurance of universal peace, then almost realised, which is expressed in lines 69-81, seems inconsistent with the idea that this passage was written in irony.

(See Lecky's "European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne", vol.i.p.240, who describes these latter verses as Written with all the fervour of a Christian poet.

See also Merivale's "Roman Empire," chapter liv.) (4) See a similar passage in the final scene of Ben Jonson's "Catiline".

The cutting of the Isthmus of Corinth was proposed in Nero's reign, and actually commenced in his presence; but abandoned because it was asserted that the level of the water in the Corinthian Gulf was higher than that in the Saronic Gulf, so that, if the canal were cut, the island of Aegina would be submerged.