Silius Italicus

abstraCt. Migdał Justyna, Old Women: divination and Magic or anus in Roman Literature. Word anus was used in a primarily negative sense to describe an old woman. Anus is usually presented as a libidinous and hideous hag who indulges in strong wine or practices black magic, mainly for erotic purposes. Though Latin literature brings as well examples of a different type of anus: goddesses assuming the shape of old women to guide or deceive the mortals and old prophetic women, inspired by the gods. Anus can be gifted with divine powers and secret knowledge. The paper traces the motif of anus as a witch or a divine woman on the basis of selected examples from the works of Horace, Ovid, Petronius, Apuleius and Silius Italicus.

The aim of this paper is to show that Silius Italicus uses both the historiographic and the epic tradition in order to connect his villain, Hannibal, with the late 1st century CE belief regarding the haunting personality of Nero, which was based on both hope and fear of the emperor’s return after his death, and the false Neros in Silius’ Rome. I argue that Silius seals his epic poem with a memory from the tyrannical Roman past that will always haunt the Romans’ memory in the years to come.

William Dominik’s chapter traces the development of modern scholarship on Silius Italicus’ Punica, especially in the twentieth century, stressing the shifts in critical attitudes to the poet, in great detail, an important tool for future students of the Punica. Because Silius Italicus arguably has received a more negative press than any other imperial epicist, Dominik examines how these attitudes to the poet began to change gradually, especially in the past ten years. This essay documents the reception of the Punica and the main trends in scholarship on the epic in the modern era.

This paper, through selected examples drawn from Dido’s story, studies some ways in which Silius reads and interprets, on a microscopic level, Virgil’Aeneid. (i) At Pun. 1.81-6 Silius says that Dido had killed herself in the same temple where Hannibal swears his oath; Silius’ interpreters find a contradiction here with Pun. 8.51, where Dido kills herself in her palace, as in Aen. 4. Actually, the fact that the temple of Pun. 1 is also modelled on Picus’ and Latinus’ temple/palace of Aen. 7.170-91 suggests that Silius wants to exploit the double function of that Virgilian building, at the same time both a temple and a royal palace. (ii) Pun. 2.418-19 subitoque exterrita nimbo | occultant alae uenantum corpora siluis gives the correct interpretation of the puzzling Aen. 4.121 dum trepidant alae saltusque indagine cingunt. (iii) While the narrator’s account of Dido’s last hours (Pun. 8.50-3) is coherent with the events of Aeneid 4 (though the difficult phrase festinat furibunda pyram (8.52) requires careful explanation), the two accounts given by Anna at 8.79-103 and at 114-43 contradict both the narrator’s account at 50-3 and the plot of Aeneid 4. Furthermore, they also contradict each other. Anna is addressing Aeneas, and her narrative is clearly aimed at pleasing her interlocutor.

General introduction to the epic genre in Rome after Vergil's and Lucan's experiences. Translation with stylistic and philological commentary of Valerius Flaccus’ 'Argonautica', 7, 1.25 and 101-152; Statius' 'Thebais' 10, 827-939; Silius' 'Punica' 9, 66-167.

Silius’s representation of dynasty, parricide, and the imagery of the ensis and sceptrum in the Punica comprises the focus of this chapter. Parricide emerges from Silius’s epic as the paradigmatic crime of civil war, revealing a particularly Flavian preoccupation with the role of discordia within familial and perhaps even dynastic systems. Within the Punica, the ensis and the sceptrum become interlocked images which foreground the violent potential embedded within Rome’s imperial structure. This image system is part of a wider, coherent, and yet still not often recognized strategy on Silius’s part to both distance the nefas of civil war from Flavian pax while simultaneously destabilizing that very distancing strategy.

Extracts from editors' introduction:

'The same discourse of domestic and foreign, Roman and Other, also animates
this volume’s readings of the Punica, which together identify an array of
Silian approaches to the familiar strategy of situating anxieties externally, a strategy
which William Dominik (ch. 13) labels “geographical distancing.” (p. 17)

'Dominik (ch. 13) argues that Silius situates multiple points of Roman civil war’s
genesis throughout the events of the Second Punic War, from the defeat at Cannae
to the eventual defeat of Hannibal, while also painting the portrait of a populus
Romanus that already possessed the necessary character to descend into—
and welcome—civil strife. (p. 19)

'Dominik (ch. 13) sees Silius as hinting at the apotheosized Vespasian in his closing
divinization of Scipio, with the result that Silius’s earlier destabilizations of
the positivity of apotheosis, particularly the apotheosis of the “key figure and
symbol of civil war,”42 Julius Caesar, also color the poet’s generally-positive images
of Vespasian and his dynasty.' (p. 20)

(There are 123 references to my name in this edited volume.)

This paper aims to compare the image of Spain and the Spaniards that Silius Italicus presents in his epic account of the Second Punic War with the one portrayed by his main source, Ab urbe condita. It will explore how and why Silius alters the role played by the Spaniards in the history of Livy beyond the well-studied case of the Saguntines, which will be examined as a reference point. The paper will focus particularly on Punica 1-3, in which the Flavian poet recounts the fall of Saguntum and introduces the rest of the Spaniards as Hannibal's allies in the war. It will argue that the poet overrides historical veracity in order to present an image of Spain recognizable to his contemporary audience. This image is a complex one that combines barbarism and civilization and ultimately shows that in the eyes of the Romans, Spain was part of the Empire, although preserving an alien and exotic identity.

Augustan poetry is perhaps the most classic of all European classics. Its literary
vision of gradual advance (back) to Golden-Age peace and prosperity has taken
center stage in the process of defining European humanism. Post-Augustan epic
poets like Lucan, however, also seem to doubt whether humanity can be taught
by letters. This has often been interpreted as anti-classicist and, hence, antihumanistic.
However, can the ideals of civilizing literature, in fact, be proven
wrong? Is there no other way to deal with the challenges of humanism than to give
in? A promising interpretive approach to this question is studying the specific
metapoetic potential of historical poetry. Literary characters of such poems can
‘realistically’ appear as readers; often, their success or failure may be directly
related to the literary education they show. This opens up a space for a particular
kind of intertextuality. In acutely reflecting the impact of their reference texts,
historical epic poems have made a distinctive contribution to the classification of
the classics, i.e., the defense of humanity.

1. Eurialo e Niso: lo scambio delle armi e la spada di Licaone.  2. Moralità del massacro notturno e vestizione appropriata in Stazio, Tebaide 10.  2.1. Le due spedizioni notturne di Tebaide 10.  2.2. L’arco di Odisseo e l’arco di Agilleo.  3. La Doloneia dei Punica di Silio Italico

El capítulo parte de la consideración de cómo la teo­ría griega relativa a los efectos morales que la música puede causar en el ánimo del oyente se presenta en la Roma del siglo I con la distinción entre un tipo de música que calma y otro que excita. Mientras Ovidio ve la música como un medio empleado por Quirón para sosegar al belicoso Aquiles, Séneca acusa al centauro de haberla utilizado para embravecerlo. La oposición en que, mediante una estili­zación literaria de las doctrinas sobre el ethos de la música, se sitúa el poeta nero­niano con respecto al augústeo, deja abierta una cuestión a la cual cada uno de los tres épicos flavios querrá procurar su propia respuesta. Se analiza detalladamente cada una de ellas.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a new perspective on Silius Italicus' alleged stoicism through an analysis of three episodes in his poem which deal with exemplary deaths: the execution of the so-called "smiling slave" (a Hispanic slave who bears his torments heroically, mocking his torturers, Sil.1.169-181), the death of Marcus Atilius Regulus at Carthage (Sil. 2.340-344; 2.435-436; 6.535-544), and the death of Lucius Aemilius Paullus at Cannae (Sil. 10.260-288). My argument is that in Silius' poem both Regulus' and the slave's deaths are modelled on similar passages in Seneca's oeuvre, while the description of Paullus' death, despite being modelled on Livy's account (Liv. 22.49.6-11), includes several philosophical (and especially Senecan) motifs, so that the consul of Cannae becomes a sort of stoic sapiens.

Im Jahre 216 v. Chr. wurde Fabius Pictor, der erste römische Historiker, nach der Niederlage von Cannae nach Delphi entsandt, während man in Rom selbst die sibyllinischen Bücher um Rat fragte. Eine detaillierte Untersuchung dieses bisher vergleichsweise wenig beachteten Ereignisses führt zu einem besseren Verständnis der Rolle griechischer Orakel für Rom. Ihre Ergebnisse unterstreichen zudem, dass besonders von der älteren Forschung unternommene Versuche, die römischen Sibyllenbücher auf altrömische bzw. etruskische Schriften zurückzuführen, nicht haltbar sind.

This paper focuses on some aspects of Lucan’s transformation of the epic genre, long employed by the Romans to celebrate the deeds of the Roman people and the triumphal rise of Rome and how Silius subverts Lucan’s new model. This literary genre is renewed by the Neronian poet’s narration of the irreparable catastrophe inflicted on Rome and the world by the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, and in particular by the battle of Pharsalus. The Bellum Civile is a forceful indictment not only of the nefas perpetrated by the Romans in fighting each other, but also of the consequent historical-political condition of Rome, namely the rule – tyrannical, in the eyes of Lucan – of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Unlike other scholars, I show how the poem does not envisage a historical outlook that is different from the eternal servitude to which Rome is condemned after Pharsalus.
This paper focuses above all on a singular fact within the epic tradition: the total passivity (ἀμηχανία) of Pompey and his men during the decisive battle. In the narration of the battle of Pharsalus, Pompey does not appear once. The absolute protagonist of the conflict is Caesar, and the narrator highlights his frenzied energy aimed at the massacre of the enemies and, indeed, at the destruction of the homeland itself. The absence of Pompey is particularly suited to removing the Great from any association with the nefas perpetrated in Pharsalus, so it is easy to present him now as having set out on the path of wisdom.
In its second part, this paper shows how Silius subverts Lucan’s desperate view through a celebratory rereading of Cannae, i.e. Rome’s most terrible defeat in the Second Punic War, which provides the setting for displaying a new paradigm of heroism (a typically Silian one): the defeated general, Aemilius Paulus. Like Lucan’s Pompey before Pharsalus, the consul before the battle of Cannae in Silius (Pun. 9) is also opposed to engaging in battle: in so doing he legitimates his own role as heir of Fabius Maximus’ clever and prudent war strategy. However, when Varro, his foolish colleague, decides to engage in battle, Paulus – unlike Lucan’s Pompey, who is completely passive and absent at Pharsalus – fights and dies gallantly. The way Paulus achieves glory fits well the moral system of Silius’ Punica, which – unlike that of Lucan – leaves room for positive examples of devotio and self-sacrifice.

Ironically some of the values traditionally regarded as defining constituents of romanitas are displayed in the first major episode of Punica not at the centre of Rome’s empire, but, as in Tacitus’ Annales and Agricola, at the empire’s periphery. William Dominik’s analysis  of the fall of Saguntum in Punica 1 and 2 exhibits Saguntum as a surrogate Rome and the citizens’ instantiation of the virtues of fides and pietas as futile and fatal. Dominik’s programmatic reading of the episode shows the seeds of Rome’s post-Cannae decline already evident, as the fides and pietas displayed by the surrogate Rome are rewarded with Roman betrayal and the city’s destruction. Punica’s ideological world is the melancholic verdict of one of the imperial world’s great survivors and unexplained suicides. Having experienced the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero (whose fall he had witnessed as consul in 68 CE), Silius had supported Vitellius in the bloody upheaval of 69 CE, and had not only survived but had prospered under the Flavians only to commit suicide through starvation under Trajan (101 CE). His poem’s implied commentary on Rome of the Flavian principate is not especially flattering.

In Latin epic poems, events with female protagonists are not exclusively
narrated through the poet’s own voice. Multiple examples exist in which the
author lends rhetorical weight to female voices, a narrative technique that can
be traced back to the Archaic period. Furthermore, women narrate events that
are beyond their concern or they have not experienced first hand, becoming
objective storytellers of others’ actions relevant for this poetic development.
Without distinguishing between historical, national or mythological epic poetry,
and including both gods and mortals, poets have created female storytellers
(Álvarez/Iglesias, 2014). They can be found in homodiegetic and also in heterodiegetic
narratives, from Ilia’s revelation of her dream in Ennius’ Annals to Anna’s
speech in Silius Italicus’ Punica, where she informed Aeneas of what happened
in Carthage after abandoning Dido.

The goal of this paper is to revisit a minor but interesting phenomenon of Latin phonology, the behaviour of what is traditionally called s impurum and what we call extrasyllabic s. Specifically, we will be looking at the occurrence of word-initial extrasyllabic s in the poetry of the Classical era. We will be discussing how the data (well known for some time now) relate to what we know about resyllabification that takes place at morpheme-and word-boundaries. The paper is thus structured in the following way. In 1 we recapitulate what the syllable structure of Classical Latin looks like. In 2 we summarise the general regularities observed in resyllabification, i.e. the reassignment of consonants in syntagmatic combinations as attested in poetry. In 3 we look at the data pertaining to s impurum specifically in a corpus of poetic texts; this poetic corpus includes the entire oeuvre of the poets Lucretius, Catullus, Vergil, Horace, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, Silius Italicus, Persius, Lucanus, Martialis, Statius, Valerius Flaccus, and Juvenal, and is a subset of the data in volume 1 of the Brepols Corpus (CLCLT-5 -Library of Latin Texts by Brepols Publishers, Release 2002). i We note that most of the data themselves to be presented can be found in a paper by H. M. Hoenigswald, ii though we thoroughly re-collected and reassessed these data on the basis of our own research; also the phonological and the quantitative analysis as well as the explanation of the phenomena are our own.

How do you draw a map of something that doesn’t even exist yet? That is one of the fundamental challenges Silius faced in composing his Punica, a poem about a time before claims to worldwide empire became believable. But the Punica is also a poem about Silius’ own day, about the contemporary expanse of Roman hegemony. My contribution focuses on how Silius met this challenge, how he found a way to map Rome’s future domination of the world before it happened; how, in a word, he went “back to the future.” My central thesis is that Silius presents Hannibal as a hybrid exile: an exile, like Aeneas, whose (failure at) belonging revolves around two places and, more importantly, whose exilic wandering traces out the future spaces of Roman imperium. I employ theories of postcolonialism and exile ranging from Ovid’s Tristia to the writings of Homi K. Bhabha to show that Hannibal’s future in exile is the clearest reification of Rome’s future worldwide empire.

This is the introduction to the edited volume on "Family in Flavian Epic". It discusses the importance of family to both ancient literature and Roman society, with a particular focus on epic poetry of the Flavian period (AD69-96). It also provides the reader with an overview of the family relationships, recurrent themes, literary models, and links to contemporary (Flavian) concerns examined by each of the eleven contributions.

In Sil. 7, 282-380 è raccontato lo stratagemma annibalico che permette all'esercito punico di forzare il blocco romano: una notte i Cartaginesi legano fascine infuocate alle corna di duemila buoi lasciati liberi di correre e le sentinelle romane fuggono impaurite. In questa sequenza narrativa Silio si confronta con la catena di risvegli dei capi achei nella Dolonia iliadica. Questi ultimi, però, sono sostituiti da perfidi comandanti punici, i quali, solo apparentemente iper-epici, fanno mostra di una virtus degradata, distruttiva e fraudolenta: la virtù notturna della Dolonia, diversa da quella convenzionale dell'aristia bellica, non disprezzata nell'Iliade ma già problematizzata in Virgilio, si presenta nella sua declinazione peggiore. Anche Scipione in terra africana, nel racconto degli storici, inganna e devasta, incendiando di notte gli accampamenti di Siface e Asdrubale Giscone; Silio, però, depura il suo eroe da ogni macchia di frode, trasferendo semmai alcuni elementi di questa vicenda nella scena del libro settimo in modo da porre enfasi sulla degradazione della virtus dei comandanti punici.

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*tutte le giornate di convegno si svolgeranno nella medesima aula PROGRAMMA SINTETICO Mercoledì, 1 dicembre Intersezioni tra generi: le letterature classiche e romanze Coordinano Fatima EL MATOUNI / Chiara CONCINA 14.30-14.45 Apertura dei lavori e saluti istituzionali 14.45-15.30 Keynote Speaker Prof. Alessandro BARCHIESI (New York University)

"In the well known apostrophe fortunati ambo (Aen. IX 446-449), Virgil ties literary durableness, which is a traditional aim of epic poetry, to the permanence of Roman empire. Nevertheless, this Virgilian analogy is put into question not only by Lucan, who overtly refutes it, but also by the epigones who, like Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus and Statius, look for their own way following in the great predecessor’s footsteps.

La analogía que, en el célebre apóstrofe fortunati ambo (Aen. IX 446-449), establece Virgilio entre la tradicional pretensión de perdurabilidad de la poesía épica y la vocación de eternidad del imperio romano deviene problemática no sólo para Lucano, que la refuta resueltamente, sino también para los epígonos que, como Valerio Flaco, Silio Itálico y Estacio, buscan su propio camino tras las huellas del precursor."

This book tantalizingly explores the plague narrative in Latin literature, pinpointing some distinctive Roman features of contagion that influenced later treatments of the plague in texts and figurative language. Drawing on intertextuality as well as on a wide range of theories stemming from modern thinkers (Antonin Artaud, Michel Foucault, Susan Sontag, René Girard), Gardner's analysis represents a milestone in our knowledge of pestilence as a metaphor for the discord within the body politic in Western culture.

Poetica, retorica e comunicazione nella tradizione classica V. Citti: Filologia computazionale e fìlo/ogiafon11a/e ..... C.O. Pavese: Gtadus de Panwsso, sive de ilio monte descensus ad pedestre planum, ovvuo le fasi della poesia discendenti verso il pedestre discorso, M. Naso: La comunicazione poeta-pubblico nella !iJ'ica arcaica e nelle commedie di Atistofane l'uso della seconda persona plm aie L Lomiento: Il canto di ingresso del coro nelle 'Supplici' di Eschilo (vv 40-175) Colometria antica e considerazioni sul rapporto tra composizione titmico-metrica e nuclei tematici L Battezzato: La colometria antica del terzo stasimo delle 'Coefore' di Eschi/o_,. P lavonatti: Le congetture di Franciscus POl'tus alle 'Ewnenidi' _ P Sandin: Two Fragments and 011 Epig,am (Pind fr 52a, Ew ji 898 R, AP 7 77)