Laughter in Lucan? Johnson takes the laughing matter of Lucan seriously, and with mordant wit and cynical humor presents an original and provocative reading of the Pharsalia as Lucan's black comedy-full of hilarity, farce, high camp, and cartoon-like caricature sardonic laughter at the dread seriousness of what Rome had become under Nero with its loss of freedom and pessimism unto despair.