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):