1. Life.
SILIUS.
A letter of Pliny (iii. 7) is the chief source of our knowledge of the life of Silius. Pliny tells us that Silius had risen by acting as a delator (informer) under Nero, who made him consul 68 A.D. He goes on to say ‘He had gained much credit by his proconsulship in Asia (under Vespasian, circ. 77 A.D.), and had since by an honourable leisure wiped out the blot which stained the activity of his former years.’ Martial also, who has the effrontery to speak of him as a combined Vergil and Cicero, tells us of his luxurious and learned retirement in Campania, and of his reverence for his master Vergil, ‘whose birthday he kept more religiously than his own.’ According to Martial (xi. 49) the tomb of Vergil had been practically forgotten, and was in the possession of some poor man when Silius bought the plot of ground on which it stood:
Iam prope desertos cineres et sancta Maronis
Nomina qui coleret, pauper et unus erat.
Silius optatae succurrere censuit umbrae,
Silius et vatem, non minor ipse, colit.
2. Works.
The Punica, an Epic poem in seventeen Books, on the Second Punic War, closes with Scipio’s triumph, after the Battle of Zama, 202 B.C.
Silius closely followed the history as told by Livy, and without any inventive or constructive power of his own copies, with tasteless pedantry, Homer and Vergil. ‘He cannot perceive that the divine interventions which are admissible in the quarrel of Aeneas and Turnus are ludicrous when imported into the struggle between Scipio and Hannibal. Who can help resenting the unreality when at Saguntum Jupiter guides an arrow into Hannibal’s body, which Juno immediately withdraws, or when, at Cannae, Aeolus yields to the prayer of Juno and blinds the Romans by a whirlwind of dust?’—Cruttwell.