SILIUS ITALICUS
Titus Catius Silius Italicus[590] is best known to us as the author of
the longest and worst of surviving Roman epics. But by a strange irony
of fate we have a fuller knowledge of his life and character than is
granted us in the case of any other poet of the Silver Age, with the
exception of Seneca and Persius. His social position, his personal
character, his cultured and artistic tastes, rather than any merit
possessed by his verse, have won him a place in the picture-gallery of
Pliny the younger.[591] We would gladly sacrifice the whole of the
'obituary notice' transmitted to us by the kindly garrulity of Pliny,
for a few more glimpses into the life of Juvenal, or even of Valerius
Flaccus, but the picture is interesting and even attractive, and awakens
feelings of a less unfriendly nature than are usually entertained for
the plodding poetaster who had the misfortune to write the seventeen
books of _Punica_.
Silius was born in the year 25 or 26 A.D.[592]; of his family and place
of birth we know nothing.[593] He first appears in the unpleasing guise
of a 'delator' in the reign of Nero, in the last year of whose
principate he filled the position of consul (68 A.D.).
In the 'year of the four emperors' (69 A.D.) he is found as the friend
and counsellor of Vitellius;[594] his conduct, we are told, was wise and
courteous. He subsequently won renown by his admirable administration of
the province of Asia, and then retired from the public gaze to the
seclusion of a life of study.[595] The amiability and virtue which
marked the leisure of his later years wiped out the dark stain that had
besmirched his youth. 'Men hastened to salute him and to do him honour.
When not engaged in writing, he would pass the day in learned converse
with the friends and acquaintances--no mere fortune-hunters--who
continually thronged the chambers where he would lie for long hours upon
his couch. His verses, which he would sometimes submit to the judgement
of the critics by giving recitations, show diligence rather than genius.
The increasing infirmities of age led him to forsake Rome for Campania;
not even the accession of a new princeps induced him to quit his
retirement. It is not less creditable to Caesar to have permitted than
to Silius to have ventured on such a freedom. He was a connoisseur even
to the verge of extravagance. He had several country houses in the same
district, and often abandoned those which he already possessed, if some
new house chanced to catch his fancy. He had a large library, and a fine
collection of portraits and statues, and was an enthusiastic admirer of
works of art which he was not fortunate enough to possess. He kept
Vergil's birthday with greater care than his own, especially when he was
at Naples, where he would visit the poet's tomb with all the veneration
due to the temple of a god.' He died[596] in his Neapolitan villa of
self-chosen starvation. His health had failed him. He was afflicted by
an incurable tumour, and ran to meet death with a fortitude that nothing
could shake. 'His life was happy and prosperous to his last hour; his
one sorrow was the death of his younger son; the elder (and better) of
his sons, who survives him, has had a distinguished career, and has even
reached the consulate.' From Epictetus[597] we gather, what we might
infer from the manner of his death, that he was a Stoic. From
Martial,[598] who addresses him in the interested language of flattery
as the leading orator of his day, and as the maker of immortal verse, we
learn that he was the proud possessor of the Tusculan villa of Cicero,
and that he actually owned the tomb of the poet whom he loved so well.
Silius' life is more interesting than his verse. Like Lucan, he elected
to write historical epic, and in his choice of a subject was undoubtedly
wiser than his younger contemporary. For instead of selecting a period
so dangerously recent as the civil strife in which the republic
perished, he went back to the Second Punic War, to a time sufficiently
remote to permit of greater freedom of treatment and to enable him to
avoid the peril of unduly republican ecstasies. In making this choice he
was in all probability influenced by his reverence for Vergil. He, too,
would sing of Rome's rise to greatness, would write a truly national
epic on the great theme which Vergil so inimitably foreshadowed in the
dying words of the Carthaginian queen, would link the most stirring
years of Rome's history with the past, just as Vergil had linked the
epic of Rome's founder to the greatness of the years that were to come.
Ennius had been before him, but he might well aspire to remodel and
develop the rude annalistic work of the earlier poet.[599] The brilliant
history of Livy, with its vivid battle-scenes and its sonorous speeches,
was a quarry that might provide him with the richest material.
Unhappily, less wise than Lucan, he made the fatal mistake of adopting
the principles set forth by Eumolpus, the dissolute poet in the novel of
Petronius.[600]
The intrusion of the mythological method into historical epic is
disastrous. It is barely tolerable in the pseudo-historical epic of
Tasso. In the military narrative of Silius it is monstrous and
insufferable. His reverence for Vergil led him to control, or attempt to
control, every action of the war by divine intervention.
Juno reappears in her old rôle as the implacable enemy of Rome. It is
she that kindles Hannibal's hatred for Rome, causes the outbreak of the
war,[601] and, disguised as the lake-god Trasimenus, spurs him on to
Rome.[602] It is at her instigation that Anna Perenna kindles him to
fresh effort by the news that Fabius Cunctator is no longer in command
against him,[603] that Somnus moderates his designs after Cannae.[604]
It is Juno that conceals the Carthaginian forces in a cloud at
Cannae,[605] and that rescues Hannibal from the fury of Scipio at
Zama.[606] Against Juno is arrayed Venus, the protector of the sons of
Aeneas. She persuades her husband Vulcan to dry up the Trebia, whose
flood threatens the Romans with yet greater disaster than they have
already suffered,[607] she unnerves and demoralizes the Punic army by
the luxury of Capua.[608] Minerva and Mars play minor parts, the former
favouring Carthage, the latter Rome.[609] Nothing is gained by this
dreary and superannuated mechanism, while the poem is yet further
hampered by the other encumbrances of epic commonplace.
The _Thebais_ of Statius is full of episodes that only find a place
because Vergil had borrowed similar episodes from Homer. But the
_Thebais_ is a professedly mythological epic, and Statius commands a
light touch and brilliant colours. The reader merely groans when the
heavy-handed Silius introduces his wondrously engraven shield,[610] his
funeral games,[611] his Amazon,[612] his dismal catalogues,[613] his
Nekuia.[614] In the latter episode, he even introduces the Vergilian
Sibyl of Cumae; it is a redeeming feature that Scipio does not make a
'personally conducted tour' through the nether world; such a direct
challenge to the Sixth Aeneid was perhaps impossible for so true a lover
of Vergil as Silius. The Homeric method of necromancy is wisely
preferred, and the Sibyl reveals the past and future of Rome as the
spirits pass before them. But there are no illuminating flashes of
imagination; the best feature of the episode is an uninspired and frigid
appropriateness. Nothing serves better than the failure of Silius to
show at once the daring and the genius of Vergil, when he ransacked the
wealth of Homer and
from a greater Greek
Borrowed as beautifully as the moon
The fire o' the sun.
Apart from these unintelligent plagiarisms and vexatious absurdities,
the actual form and composition of the work show some skill. The poet
passes from scene to scene, from battle to battle, with ease and
assurance in the earlier books. It is only with the widening of the
area of conflict that the work loses its connexion. The earlier and
less important exploits of the elder Scipios were wisely dismissed in
a few words.[615] The poet avoided the mistake of undue scrupulosity
in respect of chronology and makes no attempt to pose as a scientific
military historian. But it is a serious defect that he should fail to
show the significance of the successful 'peninsular campaign' of the
younger Scipio. Here, as in the descriptions of the siege of Syracuse,
the reader is haunted by the feeling that these great events are
regarded as merely episodic. Even the thrilling march of Hasdrubal,
ending in the dramatic catastrophe of the Metaurus, is hardly given
its full weight. There is more true historical and dramatic
appreciation in Horace's
Karthagini iam non ego nuntios
mittam superbos: occidit, occidit
spes omnis et fortuna nostri
nominis Hasdrubale interempto
than in all the ill-proportioned verbiage of Silius. The task of setting
forth the course of a conflict that flamed all over the Western
Mediterranean world was not easy, and Silius' failure was
proportionately great. Nay--if it be not merely the hallucination of a
weary reader--he seems to have tired of his task. The first twelve books
take us no further than Hannibal's appearance before the walls of Rome,
and the war is summarily brought to a close in the last five books,
although these, it should be noted, are by no means free from irrelevant
matter. The last three books above all are jejune and perfunctory, and
it has been suggested that they lack the final revision that the rest of
the work had received. Be this as it may, the result of the inadequate
treatment of the close of the war is that the reader lays down the poem
with no feeling of the greatness of Rome's triumph.
Yet even with these faults of composition, a genuine poet might have
wrought a great work from the rough ore of history. The scene is
thronged with figures as remarkable and inspiring as history affords.
There is the fierce irresistible Hannibal, the sagacious Fabius, the
elder Scipios, tragic victims of disaster, the younger Scipio, glorious
with the light of victory as the clouds of defeat are rolled away,
Hasdrubal hurled to ruin at the supreme crisis of the war, Marcellus the
victorious, beleaguered[616] and beleaguerer, the ill-starred Paulus,
the Senate of Rome that thanked the fugitive Varro because he had not
despaired of the republic,[617] and above all the gigantic figure of
Rome herself, unshaken, indomitable, triumphant. These are no dry bones
that the breath of the poet alone should make them live. They breathe
immortal in the prose of Livy, in the verse of Silius they are vain
'shadows of men foredone'. The Hannibal of Silius is not the dazzling
villain of Livy, the incarnation of military daring and 'Punic faith'.
Mistaken patriotism does not lead Silius to blacken the character of
Rome's great antagonist; he strives to do him justice; he is as true a
patriot, as chivalrous[618] a warrior, as any of the Roman leaders. But
he does not live; he is merely the stock warrior of epic, and his
exploits fail to compel belief.
Fabius, the least romantic, though not the least interesting figure in
the war, stands forth more clearly. The prosaic Silius is naturally most
successful with his most prosaic hero. The younger Scipio is the
embodiment of _pietas_, an historical Aeneas, without his prototype's
most distressing weaknesses, but with all his dullness, and lacking the
halo of legend and the splendour of the founder of the race to glorify
him. Paulus has the merit of true courage, and his consciousness of his
colleague's folly invests him with a certain pathos. He makes the best
death of any Silian warrior, and deserves the eulogy passed on him by
Hannibal. The rest are lay-figures, with even less individuality and
life. Silius failed to depict character. He fails, too, to show any true
sense of the political greatness of Rome. The genius of Rome and the
genius of Carthage are never confronted or contrasted; the greatness of
Rome in defeat, the scenes of Rome agonizing in the grip of unexpected
disaster, are never brought home to the reader with the least degree of
vividness. The great battles are described at tedious length[619] and
rendered ridiculous by the lavish introduction of Homeric single
combats. If Silius is rarely bombastic or rendered absurd by the
grossness of his exaggeration, he yet fails to see what Lucan saw
plainly--that for the author of a military historical epic, it is the
issues of the war, big with the fate of generations to come, the temper
of the combatants, the character of the chief actors, that are the
really interesting elements. Almost alone of Silver Latin poets he shows
no real gifts of rhetoric and epigram, no virtuosity of diction, no
brilliance of description. We lack the declamation of Lucan, the
apostrophes on the issues of the war, the vivid character-sketches of
the generals, the political enthusiasm, the thunder of the oratory of
general and statesman. The battle-speeches of Livy, whose glow and
vigour half atone for their theatricality, have been made use of by
Silius, but find only a feeble echo in his lifeless verse. Nothing
stands out sharply defined; the epic lacks impetus and has no salient
points; outlines are blurred in an unpoetic haze. The history of Tacitus
has been described as history 'seen by lightning flashes'. Such should
be the history of historical epic. In its stead Silius presents us with
a confused welter of archaistic battle, learned allusion, and epic
commonplace.
'Aequalis liber est, Cretice, qui malus est,' cries Martial[620] to a
friend. The epigram would apply to the __Punica_. There is scarcely a
passage in the whole work that reveals genuine poetic imagination.
Silius is free from many of the faults of his contemporaries, the faults
that spring from aspirations towards originality. He is content to be an
imitator. In his style, as in his composition, Vergil is an obsession.
But the echoes are muffled or unmusical. Gifted with ease and fluency
and--for his age--comparative lucidity of diction, Silius has no true
ear for music, nor true eye for beauty. His verse moves naturally but
heavily. He is the most spondaic poet[621] of his age, and the spondaic
rhythm is not alleviated by artistic variety of pause or judicious use
of elision. Lucan is heavy, but he hits hard and is weighty in the best
sense. Silius rolls on lumbering and unperturbed, never rising or
falling. He has all the faults of Ovid, and, in spite of his laboured
imitation, none of the merits of Vergil. Nothing can kindle him. The
most heroic and the most tragic of all the stories of the struggle for
the empire of the western world is that of Regulus, the famous captive
of Carthage in the first Punic War.[622] The episode is skilfully and
naturally introduced. The story is told by an aged veteran of the first
Punic War to a descendant of Regulus, who has fled wounded from the rout
of Trasimene. Silius succeeds in making one of the noblest stories in
history lifeless and dull. The narration opens with the description of a
melodramatic struggle between Regulus and a monstrous serpent in Africa,
scarcely an harmonious prelude for the simple and solemn climax of the
hero's life, his return to his home to fix 'the Senate's wavering will',
his departure unmoved to Carthaginian captivity, with the certainty of
death and torture before him. Silius treats this tragic episode simply
and severely; there is nothing to offend the taste, but there is equally
nothing to move the heart; the description is merely dull; it lacks the
fire of life and the finer imagination. Here, again, we turn for relief
to Horace with his brief but incomparable
atqui sciebat quae sibi barbarus
tortor pararet, non aliter tamen
dimovit obstantes propinquos
et populum reditus morantem
quam si clientum longa negotia
diiudicata lite relinqueret,
tendens Venefranos in agros
aut Lacedaemonium Tarentum (iii. 5. 49).
Take the corresponding passage in Silius. Regulus concludes his speech
to the Senate as follows (vi. 485):
exposcunt Libyes nobisque dedere
haec referenda, pari libeat si pendere bellum
foedere et ex aequo geminas conscribere leges.
sed mihi sit Stygios ante intravisse penates
talia quam videam ferientes pacta Latinos,
haec fatus Tyriae sese iam reddidit irae,
nec monitus spernente graves fidosque senatu
Poenorum dimissa cohors. quae maesta repulsa
ac minitans capto patrias properabat ad oras.
prosequitur volgus, patres, ac planctibus ingens
personat et luctu campus. revocare libebat
interdum et iusto raptum retinere dolore.
'The Libyans ask whether you will cease from war on equal
terms and draw up a treaty wherein each side keeps its own.
They bid me bring back your reply. But may I sooner enter the
gates of hell than see the Latins make such a compact!' He
spake, and yielded himself back once more to the mercies of
the Tyrian's hate: the Senate spurned not his words of weight,
his loyal warning. The Punic embassy was dismissed. Cast down
at their rebuff, and threatening their captive, they hastened
homeward to their native shores. The people, the fathers, follow
them: the whole vast plain resounds with weeping and beating of
breasts, and ever and again they strove to recall the hero and
with just grief to retain him as he was snatched away from them.
Criticism is needless. One passage is in the grand style, the other is
not; one is mere verse-making, the other the purest poetry. Silius has
nothing of _curiosa felicitas_ or even of the more common gift of vague
sensuous charm. Even on such hackneyed themes as the choice of Hercules,
with Scipio playing the part of Hercules, he fails to rise to the
conventional prettiness of which even a Calpurnius Siculus would have
been capable. Virtue and pleasure are rendered equally unattractive, and
we pity Scipio for having to make the choice. With the other poets of
the age it is easy to select passages to illustrate their characteristic
merits and defects. But from the dull monotony of Silius it is hard to
choose. He does not read well even in selections. Apart from the general
absurdity of the conception of the poem he is rarely grotesque. His
taste is chastened by his love of Vergil, and the absence of genuine
rhetorical power saves him from dangerous exuberance. The tricks of
rhetoric are there, but the edge of his wit is dull, and he has no speed
nor energy. For similar reasons he never attains sublimity. There are
faint traces of the _Romana gravitas_ in lines such as
iamque tibi veniet tempus quo maxima rerum
nobilior sit Roma mails (iii. 584).
And the time shall come when Rome, the greatest thing in
all the world, shall be yet more ennobled by her woes.
The idea that the trials of Rome shall be as a 'refiner's fire' has a
certain grandeur, but the expression of the idea is commonplace. The
same is true of the elaboration of the Vergilian _parcere subiectis_,
where the poet describes Marcellus' clemency to the vanquished
Syracusans, and makes brief allusion to the unhappy death of Archimedes
(xiv. 673):
sic parcere victis
pro praeda fuit et sese contenta nec ullo
sanguine pollutis plausit Victoria pennis.
tu quoque ductoris lacrimas, memorande, tulisti,
defensor patriae, meditantem in pulvere formas
nec turbatum animi tanta feriente ruina.
So mercy toward the conquered took the place of rapine,
and Victory was content with herself and clapped her wings
unstained by any blood. Thou, too, immortal sage, defender
of thy country, didst win the meed of the conqueror's tears,
thou whom ruin smote down, all unmoved, as thou broodedst
o'er figures traced in the dust.
To find Silius at his best--not a very exalted best--we must turn to the
passage where he depicts the feelings of Hannibal on finding the body of
Paulus on the field of Cannae (x. 513):
quae postquam aspexit, geminatus gaudia ductor
Sidonius 'Fuge, Varro,' inquit 'fuge, Varro, superstes,
dum iaceat Paulus. patribus Fabioque sedenti
et populo consul totas edissere Cannas.
concedam hanc iterum, si lucis tanta cupido est,
concedam tibi, Varro, fugam. at, cui fortia et hoste
me digna haud parvo caluerunt corda vigore,
funere supremo et tumuli decoretur honore.
quantus, Paule, iaces! qui tot mihi milibus unus
maior laetitiae causa est. cum fata vocabunt,
tale precor nobis salva Karthagine letum.'
* * * * *
'i decus Ausoniae, quo fas est ire superbas (572)
virtute et factis animas. tibi gloria leto
iam parta insigni. nostros Fortuna labores
versat adhuc casusque iubet nescire futuros.'
haec Libys, atque repens crepitantibus undique flammis
aetherias anima exultans evasit in auras.
When this he saw, the Sidonian chief was filled with double
joy and cried, 'Fly, Varro, fly and survive defeat; enough that
Paulus lieth low! Go, consul, tell all the tale of Cannae to the
fathers, to laggard Fabius, to the people. If so thou long'st to
live, I will grant thee, Varro, to flee once more as thou fleest
to-day. But let him, whose heart was bold and worthy to be my foe,
and all aflame with mighty valour, be honoured with the last rites
of burial and all the honour of the tomb. How great, Paulus, art
thou in the death! Thy fall alone gives greater cause for joy than
the fall of so many thousands. Such, when the fates shall summon me,
such I pray be my fate, so Carthage stand unshaken.' ... 'Go,
Ausonia's glory, where the souls of those whom valour and noble
deeds make proud may go. _Thou_ hast won great glory by thy death.
For _us_, Fortune still tosses us to and fro in weltering labour
and forbids us to see what chance the future hath in store.' So
spake the Libyan, and straightway from the crackling flame the
exulting spirit soared skyward through the air.
The picture of the soul of Paulus soaring heavenward from the funeral
pyre, exultant at the honour paid him by his great foe, is the nearest
approach to pure poetic imagination in the whole weary length of the
_Punica_.[623] But the pedestrian muse of Silius is more at home in the
ingenious description of the manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres of Fabius
and Hannibal in the seventh book; the similes with which the passage
closes are hackneyed, but their application is both new and clever:
(vii. 91)
iam Fabius tacito procedens agmine et arte
bellandi lento similis, praecluserat omnes
fortunaeque hostique vias. discedere signis
haud licitum summumquc decus, quo tollis ad astra
imperil, Romane, caput, parere docebat
* * * * *
(123)
cassarum sedet irarum spectator et alti
celsus colle iugi domat exultantia corda
infractasque minas dilato Marte fatigat
sollers cunctandi Fabius, ceu nocte sub atra
munitis pastor stabulis per ovilia clausum
impavidus somni servat pecus: effera saevit
atque impasta truces ululatus turba luporum
exercet morsuque quatit restantia claustra.
inritus incepti movet inde atque Apula tardo
arva Libys passu legit ac nunc valle residit
conditus occulta, si praecipitare sequentem
atque inopinata detur circumdare fraude;
nunc nocturna parat caecae celantibus umbris
furta viae retroque abitum fictosque timores
adsimulat, tum castra citus deserta relicta
ostentat praeda atque invitat prodigus hostem:
qualis Maeonia passim Maeandrus in ora,
cum sibi gurgitibus flexis revolutus oberrat.
nulla vacant incepta dolis: simul omnia versat
miscetque exacuens varia ad conamina mentem,
sicut aquae splendor radiatus lampade solis
dissultat per tecta vaga sub imagine vibrans
luminis et tremula laquearia verberat umbra.
Now Fabius advanced, leading his host in silence and--such was
his cunning--like to a laggard in war; so closed he all the
paths whereby fortune or the foe might fall on him. No soldier
might quit the standards, and he taught that the height of glory,
even that glory, Roman, that raises thine imperial head to the
stars, was obedience.... Fabius sits high on the mountain slopes
watching the foeman's rage and tames his impetuous ardour, humbles
his threats, and, with skilful delay, postpones the day of battle
and wears out his patience: as when through the darkness of the
night a shepherd, fearless and sleepless in his well-guarded byre,
keeps his flock penned within the fold: without, the wolf-pack,
fierce and famished, howls fiercely, and with its teeth shakes the
gates that bar its entrance. Baffled in his enterprise, the Libyan
departs thence and slowly marches across the Apulian fields and
pitches his camp deep in a hidden vale, if perchance he may hurl
the Roman to ruin as he follows in his track and surround him by
hidden guile. Now he prepares a midnight ambush in some dark pass
beneath the shelter of the gloom, and falsely feigns retreat and
fear; then, swiftly leaving his camp and booty, he displays them to
the foe, and lavishly invites a raid. Even as on Maeonian shores
Maeander with winding channel turns upon himself and wanders far
and wide, now here, now there. Naught he attempts, but has some
guile in it. He weighs every scheme, sharpens his mind for divers
exploits, and blends contrivance with contrivance, even as the
gleam of water lit by the sun's torch dances through a house
quivering, and the reflected beam goes wandering and lashes the
roof with tremulous reflection.
There is in this passage nothing approaching real excellence, but its
dexterity may reasonably command some respect. It is dexterity of which
Silius has little to show. He is well-read in history and its bastard
sister mythology. At his best he can string together his incidents with
some skill, and he makes use of his learning in the accepted fashion of
his day.[624] The poem is deluged with proper names and learned
aetiology, though he has no conception of that magical use of proper
names and legendary allusions which is the secret of the masters of
literary epic.[625]
But the absence of any true poetic genius makes him the most tedious of
Latin authors, and his unenviable reputation is well deserved. For the
poetry of the struggle with Carthage for the
plumed troops and the big wars
That make ambition virtue,
for 'all quality, pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war', we
must go to the inspired prose of Livy.
And yet it is well that the _Punica_ should have been preserved. It is
well to know that as France has its _Henriade_ and England its _Madoc_,
so Rome had its _Punica_. It is our one direct glimpse into the work of
that cultured society, devastated by the 'scribendi caccethes', as
Juvenal puts it, or, from the point of view of the facile Pliny, adorned
by the number of its poets.[626] The _Punica_ have won an immortality
far other than that prophesied for them by Martial,[627] but they show
us the work of a cultured Roman gentleman of his day, who, if he had
small capacity, had a high enthusiasm for letters, who had diligence if
he had not genius, and was possessed by a love for the supreme poet in
whose steps he followed, a passion so sincere that it may win from his
scanty readers at least a partial forgiveness for the inadequacy of his
imitation and for the suffering inflicted on all those who have essayed
the dreary adventure of reading the seventeen books that bear his name.