Silius' Rome: The Rewriting of Vergil's Vision

Abstract

A recent English-language textbook on Greek and Roman historical epic begins its account of Silius Italicus by describing the author of thePunicaas ‘not a literary person. Most of his long life was spent in the Roman civil service’. Then, after suggesting that the poet was seeking to make up for earlier missed opportunities by writing what is the longest surviving Latin epic, the potted biography concludes by declaring that his actual demise was in line with Stoic theory: ‘Silius met a bookish end…he starved himself to death.’While these remarks will not be left unchallenged, the very venom of the reaction to them is instructive. Scandalised, a reader of an earlier version of this paper thought that they should never be mentioned or at best buried in a footnote. After all, Wallace Stevens worked for a living too. No, show us that Silius is agoodpoet.