Complete Works of Silius Italicus

  LXVI

  TO AUGUSTUS bring, ye Camenae, pious incense and victims on behalf of your Silius. Lo! by a son’s consulship Caesar, our chief and only ward, bids the twice six axes return, and the door of the poet sire resound to the lictor’s noble staff. Yet this remains for his joy to wish for, the blessed purple of a third consul. Though to Pompeius the senate, to his son-in-law Caesar, gave sacred honours, and peaceful Janus thrice enrolled their names, yet this would Silius rather reckon repeated consulships.

  LXXXVI

  BECAUSE Silius, the twofold master of the Latin tongue, was lamenting the early death of his Severus, I complained sadly to the Pierian band and to Phoebus. “I, too,” said Apollo, “wept for my Linus.” And he looked back to Calliope his sister, who stood next her brother, and said: “You, too, have your wound. Mark the Thunderer of the Tarpeian and him of the Palatine: Lachesis, daring a crime, has hurt either Jove. Forasmuch as you see that deities are subject to the inflexible Fates, of jealousy you may acquit the gods.”

  XLVIII

  SILIUS, who possesses the land which was eloquent Cicero’s, honours this monument of great Maro. As heir and owner of his tomb or dwelling no other would either Mavo or Cicero choose.

  XLIX

  TO HONOUR the ashes, now well-nigh abandoned, and the sacred name of Maro was there but one, and he was poor. Silius resolved to rescue the regretted dead: and Silius — no less himself a poet — honours the bard.

  INTRODUCTION TO SILIUS ITALICUS by J. D. Duff

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  I. LIFE OF SILIUS ITALICUS

  II. THE POEM OF SILIUS ITALICUS

  III. MANUSCRIPTS, EDITIONS, TRANSLATIONS

  PREFACE

  THE introduction deals first with the life of Silius Italicus, as it is described by Pliny and Martial, 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 I 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. I have done my 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.

  Silius 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.

  J. D. DUFF.

  July, 1933.

  I. LIFE OF SILIUS ITALICUS

  SILIUS ITALICUS 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. His death did not come in the course of nature: he 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 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.

  II. THE POEM OF SILIUS ITALICUS

  The Tunica, 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 (of 500 lines) fills most of the Sixth Book and contains the story of Regulus which properly belongs to the First Punic War; and 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 Silius. 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 — tha
t 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 certatis fatis, and ending another with genitore Pelore. 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 Silius 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.

  Silius 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, Heciorei, Hesperii, Idaei, Iliad, Itali, Laomedontiadae, Latii and Latini, Laurentes, Martigenae, Oenotri, Phryges and Phrygii, Priamidae, Rhoetei, 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.

  (i.) v. 344 foil. Silius describes how Mago, Hannibal’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.)

  (ii.) vii. 282 foil. 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.

  (iii.) 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.

  (iv.) ix. 401 foil. 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

  III. MANUSCRIPTS, EDITIONS, TRANSLATIONS

  (a) 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.

  (b) 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 as Silius 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 Silius; and in punctuation it is much superior to any other text.

  (c) Three translations of Silius are known to me. The earliest is by Thomas Ross, “Keeper of His Majesties’ Libraries, and Groom of His most Honourable Privy-Chamber.” The king was Charles II. The preface is dated at Bruges, November 18, 1657, and the work was published 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.

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