Clearly it was a matter of religion with Silius to repeat and adapt all the striking episodes of Homer and Virgil. Hannibal must have a shield of marvellous workmanship like Achilles and Aeneas; because Aeneas descended into Hades and had a vision of the future history of Rome, so must Scipio have his revelation from heaven; Trebia, choked with bodies, must rise in ire like Xanthus, and be put to flight by Vulcan; for Virgil's Camilla there must be an Asbyte, heroine of Saguntum ; the beautiful speech of Euryalus when Nisus seeks to leave him is too good to be thrown away—furbished up a little, it will serve as a parting address from Imilce to her husband Hannibal. The descriptions of the numerous battles are made up in the main, according to epic rule, of single combats—wearisome sometimes in Homer, weari some oftener in Virgil, painfully wearisome in Silius.
The different component parts of the poem are on the whole fairly well knit together, and the transitions are not often need lessly abrupt ; yet occasionally incidents and episodes are intro duced with all the irrelevancy of the modern novel. The inter position of the gods is, however, usually managed with dignity and appropriateness.
As to diction and detail, we miss, in general, power rather than taste. The metre runs on with correct smooth monotony, with something always of the Virgilian sweetness, though at tenuated, but nothing of the Virgilian variety and strength. The dead level of literary execution is seldom broken by a rise into the region of genuine pathos and beauty, or by a descent into the ludicrous or the repellent. There are few absurdities, but the restraining force is trained perception and not a native sense of humour, which, ever present in Homer, not entirely absent in Vir gil, and sometimes finding grim expression in Lucan, fails Silius entirely. The address of Anna, Dido's sister, to Juno compels a smile. Though deified on her sister's death, and for a good many centuries already an inhabitant of heaven, Anna meets Juno for the first time on the outbreak of the Second Punic War, and deprecates the anger of the queen of heaven for having deserted the Carthaginians and attached herself to the Roman cause. Han nibal's parting address to his child is also comical: he recognizes in the "heavy wailing" of the year-old babe "the seeds of rages like his own." But Silius might have been forgiven for a thousand
more weaknesses than he has if in but a few things he had shown strength.
The grandest scenes in the history before him fail to lift him up; his treatment, for example, of Hannibal's Alpine passage falls immensely below Lucan's vigorous delineation of Cato's far less stirring march across the African deserts.
But in the very weaknesses of Silius we may discern merit. He at least does not try to conceal defects of substance by con torted rhetorical conceits and feebly forcible exaggerations. In his ideal of what Latin expression should be he comes near to his contemporary Quintilian, and resolutely holds aloof from the tenor of his age.
Perhaps his want of success with the men of his time was not wholly due to his faults. His self-control rarely fails him ; it stands the test of the horrors of war, and of Venus working her will on Hannibal at Capua. Only a few passages here and there betray the true silver Latin extravagance. In the avoidance of rhetorical artifice and epigrammatic antithesis Silius stands in marked contrast to Lucan, yet at times he can write with point.
Regarded merely as a poet he may not deserve high praise ; but, as he is a unique specimen and probably the best of a once nu merous class, the preservation of his poem among the remains of Latin literature is a fortunate accident.
The poem was discovered in a ms., possibly at Constance by Poggio, in 1416 or 1417 ; from this now lost ms. all existing mss., which belong entirely to the 15th century, are derived. A valuable ms. of the 8th or 9th century, found at Cologne by L. Carrion in the latter part of the 16th century, disappeared soon after its discovery. Two editiones prin cipes appeared at Rome in 1471 ; the principal editions since have been those of Heinsius (r600), Drakenborch (17'7), Ernesti (Leipzig, 1791) and L. Bauer (189o). The Punica is included in the second edition of the Corpus poetarum Latinorum (1905). A useful variorum edition is that of Lemaire (Paris, 1823). Recent writing on Silius is generally in the form of separate articles or small pamphlets; but see H. E. But ler, Post-Augustan Poetry (1909), chap. x. For his life, the authorities are Pliny, III., 7; Tac., Hist. III. 65. Martial, passim.