Almost all scholars agree that the "Pharsalia" as we now have it is unfinished. (There is, however, some debate as to whether the poem was unfinished at the time of Lucan's death, or if the final few books of the work were lost at some point. Braund notes that there is little evidence one way or the other, and that this question must "remain a matter of speculation.") Some argue that Lucan intended to end his poem with the Battle of Philippi (42 BC) or the Battle of Actium (31 BC). However, both of these hypotheses seem unlikely, as they would have required Lucan to pen a work many times larger than what is extant (for instance, the ten-book poem we have today covers a total of 20 months time, so it seems unlikely that, were the poet to have continued his pace, that his work would cover a 6 to 17 year time-span). Another, "more attractive" argument (according to Susanna Braund), is that Lucan intended for his poem to be sixteen books long and to end with the assassination of Caesar. However, this too has its problems, namely that Lucan would have been required to introduce and rapidly develop characters to replace Pompey and Cato. It also might have given the work a "happy ending", which seems tonally inconsistent with the poem as a whole. Ultimately, Braund argues that the best hypothesis is that Lucan's original intent was a 12-book poem, mirroring the length of the "Aeneid". The biggest internal argument for this is that in his sixth book Lucan features a necromantic ritual that parallels and inverts many of the motifs found in Virgil's sixth book (which details Aeneas' consultation with the Sibyl and his subsequent descent into the underworld). And if the book were to be 12 books long, Braund contends that it would have ended with the death of Cato, and his subsequent apotheosis as a Stoic hero.