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.