SILIO ITALICO

Speranza

The introduction deals first with the life of Silio Italico, as it is described by Plinio and Marziale, and
then with his poem, the "Punica", which deserves, in the translator's opinion, more respectful treatment than  it has generally received in modern times.

 

A short account is added of the manuscripts, editions, and translations.

 The text follows, in the main, that of L. Bauer (Teubner, Leipzig, 1890).

 

But many of the emendations proposed by Bentley, Bothe, Heinsius, and others, which Bauer includes in his apparatus, are here promoted to the text.

 

The most important of these emendations are indicated in notes below the text.

 In the translation we have tried to be true to the original and, at the same time, merciful to the English reader.

 

The poem is so full of allusion that it seemed necessary to add a number of notes, elucidating points
of biography, geography, history, and mythology.

We have done our best to keep each note within compass.

It should be understood that these notes refer to the translation only and not to the Latin text.

 Silio is not, in general, an obscure writer.

 

But his poem, like all ancient poems, includes corrupt or difficult passages, on which I have often applied  for aid to two powerful allies, Professor A. E. Housman and Mr. W. T. Vesey, Fellow of Gonville and Caius  College.

 

It is a pleasure to record here my indebtedness to both these scholars.

 Silio Italico lived to the age of seventy-five and died A.D. 101.

 

He was therefore born a.d. 26.

 

At the time of his birth Tiberius was emperor.

 

And he lived to see Trajan succeed Nerva.

 

Silio's death did not come in the course of nature.

 

Silio was afflicted by a chronic ailment and put an end to his sufferings by abstaining from food — a manner of death which was not regarded by the Romans of that age as a crime, but as a brave and virtuous action.

Our knowledge of this fact and of his life in general is derived from a letter of Pliny's (iii. 7).

Pliny regarded his friend Silio as a fortunate man and happy down to the last day of his life.

Of his two sons Silius had lost one.

But the survivor was the more satisfactory son of the two and had even risen, in his father's life-time, to the dignity of the consulship.

Silius was not merely a poet.

 

His poem was the work of his old age when he had retired from public affairs and was living in studious seclusion near Naples.

 

He was consul himself a.d. 68 — the year of Nero's downfall and death ; and he gained a high
reputation when he governed the province of Asia as proconsul.

 

Pliny hints that his political conduct during Nero's reign had been open to censure, but says
that his later life atoned for any early indiscretions.

We learn also from Martial ^ that he was famous in his younger days as a pleader in the law-courts.

Silius was a rich man and was able to gratify expensive tastes.

 

He bought one fine country-house after another, and filled them with books, pictures, and
statues.

 

Upon his busts of Virgil he set special value.

 

He bought the site of Virgil's tomb at Naples,
which had fallen into neglect, and restored it.

 

He
made pilgrimages to the spot, and kept Virgil's
birthday, October 15, with more ceremony than his
own.

 

Another of his acquisitions was a house that
had belonged to Cicero, whom Silius revered as the greatest of Roman orators.

His life of retirement was not a solitary life.

 

He received many visitors, with whom he liked to converse on literary topics, generally lying on his sofa; and at times he entertained his guests by reading extracts from his poem, and asked for their criticism.

Pliny himself did not think highly of the poem : it was painstaking, he thought, but lacked genius.)

Thus Silius lived on, respected and courted, until
he put an end to his life by his own act.

 

The ailment
from which he suffered is described by the word
clavus ; the name that modern medical science would
give to this affliction is uncertain, but it was incurable ; and, like a guest who had eaten his fill, he
withdrew from the scene.

 

 

Tlie Punica of Silius Italicus is the longest Latin poem.

 

It contains upwards of 12,000 verses.

 

Its
subject is the Second Punic War, the most critical
period in the history of the Republic.

 

Hannibal is
the true hero of the story, though Silius evidently
intended to cast Scipio for that part.

 

The narrative
begins with Hannibal's oath and ends with the battle
of Zama.

 

There are two long digressions.

 

The first long digression (of 500 lines) fills most of the Sixth Book and contains
the story of Regulus which properly belongs to the
First Punic War.

 

The second digression (in the
Eighth Book) devotes 200 lines to the adventures of
Anna, the sister of Dido, who has become the Nymph
of an Italian river, so that her sympathies are, or
ought to be, divided between the combatants.

 

Otherwise, the narrative proceeds in orderly sequence from
beginning to end.

 

It was certainly based upon Livy's Third Decad.

 

But Silius owes much more to
Virgil's Aeneid than to any other source.

 

He had
soaked his mind in Virgil.

 

There are undoubtedly long stretches in the poem which no modern reader can enjoy.

 

Silius gives ample space, too ample, to the six great battles of the war — Ticinus, Trebia, Lake Trasimene, Cannae, the Metaurus, and Zama ; and the details of slaughter become in him, as they become in better poets, monotonous and repulsive. Then there are the catalogues.

 

The Catalogue was an indispensable
part of an ancient Epic, and Silius has many of them
— a catalogue of the Carthaginian forces, a catalogue
of the Italian contingents who fought at Cannae, a
catalogue of Sicilian towns and rivers, and others as
well ; and these long lists of names and places, many
of them quite obscure, are wearisome.

 

Few poets
have had the art to make catalogues interesting.

 

Milton could do it ; and a very different poet from
Milton wrote an excellent catalogue — the first part
of Macaulay's Horatius. " From lordly Volaterrae "
and so on is a catalogue of the Tuscan cities, which
the reader, especially the youthful reader, finds
delightful.

 But the Punica does not consist entirely of carnage and catalogues.

 

What of the poem as a whole ?

Does it deserve its deplorable reputation ?

Of some writers it is the custom to say that they are more praised than read ; but no one ever said
this of SiHus.

 

Of him it would be truer to say that
he is more blamed than read.

 

Even Madvig, who does not blame him, admits that he had only read the poem in parts and celerrime.

 

There is no doubt
about the verdict pronounced by modern critics and
historians of Roman literature.

 

They say very little
about Silius, but they are all of one opinion — that
he was a dull man who wrote a bad poem.

 

And this
is the view of the educated public.

 

 I believe myself
that this judgement is much too summary, and that scholars would think better of the poem if they would condescend to read it.

 We know that it was the work of an old man, and the fire and vigour of youth are not to be found in
it ; its merits are of another sort.

 

The versification is in general pleasing, and much less monotonous than that of Lucan.

 

Not that Silius had a really fine ear for the beautiful arrangement of vowels and
consonants : he is capable of beginning a line with
certatisfatis, and ending i mother with genitore PehreJ^

Then too many of his verses end with a trochee ; and
the Latin hexameter verse, unlike the Greek in this
respect, is shorn of its true majesty if the trochaic
ending is used too often.

The chief fault of style in the poem is tautology.

Silius evidently thought that a plain statement of fact was improved, if he repeated it over again in
different words.

 

Examples may be found on almost every page.

Then there is another peculiarity of expression
which is decidedly disconcerting to the reader.

 

I believe that Sihus did himself serious injury by what
might seem a trifling matter — his system of nomenclature.

 

The subject of his poem, the struggle
between Carthage and Rome, is stated in the first
two lines.

 

But the Romans are not there called
Romani : they are called Aeneadae ; and the
" supremacy of Italy " is expressed by "Oenotria iura",
though Oenotria is not Italy but a name given by Greeks in early times to a district or kingdom in the
southernmost part of Italy.

 Sihus evidently felt that Romani and Itali might

recur too often, and that aliases must be found
Variety is good ; but here it was carried to excess.
The following list of variants for Romani may not
be exhaustive, but is surely too long:

Aeneadae,
Aurunci, Ausonidae and Ausonii^ Dardanidae, Dardani
and Dardanii, Dauni and Daunii, Evandrei, Hectorei,
Hesperii, Idaei, Iliad, Itali, Laomedontiadae, Latii and
Latini, Laurentes, Martigenae, Oenotri, Phryges and
Phrygil, Priamidae, Rkoetei, Saturnii, Sigei, Teucri,
Troes, Troiugenae, and Tyrrheni.

The Carthaginians
also are called by nearly a dozen different names.
I have thought it best not always to follow Silius in
this particular.

 

The great Roman poets, Lucretius and Virgil,
Catullus and Horace, have their place apart ; and
Silius has no claim to be ranked with these or near
them.

 

Yet, when defects are admitted and due
qualifications made, the reader of the Punica, once
he has surmounted the obstacles, will find much
pleasant walking there.

 

If anyone doubts whether
Silius could write poetry, let him read the twenty-
three lines in which the aspect and habits of the god
Pan are described (xiii. 326-347).

 

If Ovid had written
these charming verses, every scholar would know
them and critics would be eloquent in their praise.

 

Silius is full of incidental narrative, and he tells
a short story well, though it must be admitted
that his main narrative is too apt to hang fire.

And one quality he has which is a constant comfort and satisfaction to some at least of his
readers.

 

Though inferior to Statius in brilliance
and far inferior to Lucan in intellectual force, he
is almost entirely free from that misplaced ingenuity
which pervades the whole of their works and makes

the reader feel too often as if he were solving
puzzles rather than reading poetry.

 

I shall end by referring to four passages (none of
which seems to have been noticed by the contemptuous critics) as proofs of Silius's narrative power.

 

Silius describes how Mago, Hanni-
bal's brother, was wounded ; how Hannibal flew to
the spot, conveyed the wounded man to the camp,
and summoned medical aid to dress the wound. For
Hannibal had a famous physician, a descendant of
Jupiter Ammon, in his train.

He had also a prophet,
whose name was not, to our ears, a recommendation :
he was called Bogus.

 

This is a night scene and recalls
the beginning of Matthew Arnold's " Sohrab and
Rustum."^

Hannibal has been caught in a trap
by Quintus Fabius, the famous Cunctator.

Unable to
sleep for anxiety, he rises and wakens his brother,
Mago ; they make a round of the camp together, and
visit the chief captains, to suggest a plan of escape.

 

Both these extracts are vivid and swift pieces of
narrative.

 

The third passage (xvi. 229 foil.) has even
higher merit.

The scene is dramatic and picturesque ;
it is even romantic. The place is the palace of
Syphax, king of Numidia, whose alliance Scipio was
anxious to secure against Carthage. Scipio had
crossed over from Spain to Africa for this purpose.''
We read how the Roman general, the conqueror of
Spain, rose from his bed before sunrise and went to

the palace, where he found the king playing with the
lion-cubs that he kept as pets.

 

Both were young
men, and the younger of the two had a young man's
generous hero-worship for his Roman visitor, and expresses it in the conversation that follows.

 

 This is a scene from the battle of
Cannae.

 

It describes the friendship between Marius
and Caper, two natives of Praeneste who fell side by
side in the battle.

 

There is no doubt that there were
really no such persons, and that the entire incident,
like many others, was invented by Silius.

 

But the
man who wrote these lines was certainly a poet ; and
I shall venture to say of them

 

fiiofJirjareTai ns fxaXXov i) /Ai/xrjcreTat.

 

In 1416 or 1417, during the Council of Constance, Poggio, the learned Florentine who unearthed
so many Latin authors, found, probably at St. Gall, a manuscript of Silius ; a copy of this was taken
by Poggio or one of his companions ; and from that
copy all the existing mss. are descended.

Neither
the original ms. nor the original copy of it is now
extant.

Editors use the letter S to denote this ms.,
and C to denote another ms. which was once in the
Cathedral library at Cologne.

This ms. also is lost,
and its readings are known only from notes made by
two scholars towards the end of the sixteenth century.

Of the extant mss. four, all written in the fifteenth
century, are thought to be better than the rest. Their
readings are cited in the critical editions mentioned
below.
The two earliest editions were printed at Rome
in 1471.

Many others followed, most of them printed
in Italy and others in France and Germany.

The
Aldine edition of 1523 is important in the history
of the text, because it offers 81 lines of the poem
(viii. 145-225) which are found in no manuscript and
in none of the previous editions, though some of the
editors had pointed out that there must be a lacuna
in the text. The source from which these verses are
derived is a matter of dispute : some critics believe
them to be the work of a forger ; others hold that
they were written by Silius and that the loss of them
was due to some mutilation of S, the original ms.
at St. Gall. It is certain that the verses fit in
perfectly with the context, and that they are such aa
Sihus might have written.**

 

Of later editions the most important are those
of G. A. Ruperti (Gottingen, 1795), F. H. Bothe
(Stuttgart, 1855), L. Bauer (Leipzig, 1890), and
W. C. Summers (London, 1905) in Postgate's Corpus
Poetarum Latinorum.

 

Ruperti 's edition (which was reprinted in a more
convenient form by N. E. Lemaire, Paris, 1823)
combines immense learning with a candour and
simplicity that are most attractive.

 

But he is not
an ideal editor : too often he explains at great
length what is perfectly clear already, and says
nothing where explanation is needed.

 

But his book
is indispensable.

 

Bothe did not publish a text. He translated the

whole poem into German hexameters, archaic both
in vocabulary and style, and added below his version
notes which deal both with text and interpretation.

He is too ready to meddle with the text ; but his
brief business-like notes are most valuable. His
translation is close and correct, and has fewer lines
than the original, which is surely a remarkable feat
of compression.

 

Bauer's text is the work of a competent and
careful scholar. The revision by Professor W. C.
Summers deserves the same praise and contains some
important corrections, by himself and Postgate, of
the text of SiUus ; and in punctuation it is much
superior to any other text.

 

Three translations of Silius are known to me.
The earhest is by Thomas Ross, " Keeper of His
Majesties' Libraries, and Groom of His most Hon-
ourable Privy-Chamber."

The king was Charles II.
The preface is dated at Bruges, November 18, 1657,
and the work was pubHshed in London in 1672,
twelve years after the Restoration. The translator
added a supplement of his own in three books,
carrying the story down to the death of Hannibal.
The first book is dedicated to the King, the second
to the Duke of York, afterwards James II., and the
third to the memory of the Duke of Gloucester,
the third son of Charles I. Ross was a fairly good
scholar, but his versification is unpleasing. The
rhyming heroic verse which he chose for his metre
was still in its infancy : Dryden had not yet
seriously taken it in hand. The second translation,
by F. H. Bothe, is spoken of above. The third,
printed below the Didot text, has little merit and
many mistakes,
xviii

 

 

 

SILIUS ITALICUS

 

 

 

The subject of the poem is the Second Punic War (1-20).
The cause of the war was Juno's hatred of Rome. She
chooses Hannibal as her instrument (21-55). HannibaVs
character, and the oath he swore in boyhood (56-139). Has-
drubal succeeds Hamilcar as commander in Spain : his
character, conquests, and death (140-181). Hannibal is
chosen to succeed Hasdrubal by all the army in Spain, both

 

Ordior arma, quibus caelo se gloria tollit
Aeneadum patiturque ferox Oenotria iura
Carthago, da, Musa, decus memorare laborum
antiquae Hesperiae, quantosque ad bella crearit
et quot Roma viros, sacri cum perfida pacti 5

gens Cadmea super regno certamina movit,
quaesitumque diu, qua tandem poneret arce
terrarum Fortuna caput, ter Marte sinistro
iuratumque lovi foedus conventaque patrum
Sidonii fregere duces, atque impius ensis 10

 

ter placitam suasit temerando rumpere pacemi.

 

* Oenotria, the Greek name of an ancient kingdom in
S. Italy, is one of the many synonyms for Italy which occur
in the poem : see p. xiii.

 

" Sidonians, Tyrians, Cadmeans, and other names are
used by Silius to denote the Carthaginians.

 

Carthaginians and Spaniards (182-238). Character of
Hannibal (239-267). He resolves to attack Saguntum : posi-
tion and history of the city (268-295). The siege of Saguntum
(296-ii. 695). The Saguntines send an embassy to Rome :
the speech of Sicoris (564-671). In the Senate Cn. Cornelius
Lentulus and Q. Fabius Maximus express different views :
envoys are sent to Hannibal (672-694).

 

Here I begin the war by which the fame of the
Aeneadae was raised to heaven and proud Carthage
submitted to the rule of Italy." Grant me, O Muse, to
record the splendid achievements of Italy in ancient
days, and to tell of all those heroes whom Rome
brought forth for the strife, when the people of
Cadmus ^ broke their solemn bond and began the
contest for sovereignty ; and for long it remained
uncertain, on which of the two citadels Fortune
would establish the capital of the world. Thrice over
with unholy warfare did the Carthaginian leaders
violate their compact with the Senate and the treaty
they had sworn by Jupiter to observe ; and thrice
over the lawless sword induced them wantonly to
break the peace they had approved. But in the

 

 

sed medio finem bello excidiumque vicissim
molitae gentes, propiusque fuere periclo,
quis superare datum : reseravit Dardanus arces
ductor Agenoreas, obsessa Palatia vallo 15