And died, as when he lived and conquered, great.
C. Silius Italicus.
C. Silius Italicus was born in the reign of Tiberius, A. D. 25. The place of his birth is unknown. His surname, Italicus, has led some to suppose that he was a native of Italica, in Spain. But it is not probable that, if this were the case, his friend and fellow-courtier Martial, when he compared his eloquence to that of Cicero, and his poetry to that of Virgil,[[1107]] called him the glory of the Castalian sisters,[[1108]] and felicitated him on his political honours, would have forgotten to claim him as a countryman. Others, with somewhat more show of reason, have imagined that his birthplace was the city of Corfinium, in Pelignia, which was called Italica,[[1109]] because it was the head-quarters of the confederates in the social war; whilst Stephens mentions a little town in Sicily, of the same name, which might have been his native place.[[1110]]
Silius was celebrated as an advocate; but in that age of affected and rhetorical display, a high reputation does not prove that his eloquence, although it might have displayed a similar elegance of language, was more lively and stirring than his poetry. He was consul A. D. 68; an office which was also filled by his son,[[1111]] and by another member of his family.[[1112]] He was afterwards proconsul of Asia; the duties of which lucrative office he appears to have performed with credit to himself. He was very wealthy; and, as he grew old, retired from the perils of public life to enjoy his affluence, and the retirement of literary ease in his numerous villas. One cannot be surprised that an orator and a poet especially delighted in the house of Virgil, near Naples, and the Academy of Cicero, of both which he was the fortunate possessor. He lived to the age of seventy-five, and then starved himself to death, because he could not bear the pain of disease. “I have just been informed,” writes Pliny the Younger, to his friend Caninius,[[1113]] “that Silius Italicus has put an end to his existence by starvation, at his Neapolitan villa. He had an incurable carbuncle, from the annoyance of which he took refuge in death, with a firm and irrevocable constancy. He enjoyed happiness and prosperity to his dying day, if we except the loss of the younger of his two sons; but the elder and superior one survived him in the enjoyment of prosperity, and even of consular rank. The belief that he had voluntarily come forward as a public accuser injured his reputation in the reign of Nero; but, as a friend of Vitellius, his conduct was wise and his behaviour courteous. His career in the proconsulate of Asia was an honourable one, for he washed out the stain of his former activity by a praiseworthy abstinence from public affairs. He had no influence with the great; but then he was safe from envy. All courted him, and were assiduous in paying their respects to him; and as ill health confined him to his bed, his chamber was thronged with visitors, beyond what might have been expected from his rank and station. Whenever he could spare time for writing, he passed it in learned conversation. His poems display elaborate care rather than genius: sometimes he invited criticism by recitations. Yielding to the suggestion of advancing years, he at length retired from Rome, and resided in Campania; nor had the accession of a new emperor (Trajan) power to entice him from his retirement. High praise to the monarch under whose rule he was free to act so!—high praise to him who had courage to use that freedom! His love of virtù caused in him a reprehensible passion for buying: he was the possessor of more than one villa in the same localities; and he so delighted in the newest purchase as to neglect that which he inhabited before. He had a vast collection of books, besides statues and busts, which he not only possessed, but almost worshipped. He kept Virgil’s birthday more religiously than his own, and had more busts of him than any one else, especially at Naples, where he was in the habit of visiting his tomb, as if it were a temple. In this tranquil retirement he exceeded his seventy-fifth year, his constitution being delicate rather than weakly. As he was the last consul made by Nero, so he died the last of those whom he had made. It is also worthy of remark that the consul, in whose year of office Nero died, died the last of Nero’s consuls. When I call this to mind, I feel compassion for human frailty: for what is so brief as the longest span of human life!”
Little interest attaches to the biography of one who owed a life of uninterrupted prosperity to his being the favourite and intimate of two emperors; the one, a blood-thirsty tyrant—the other, a gross sensualist.[[1114]] His ponderous work survives—the dullest and most tedious poem in the Latin language. Its title is “Punica:” it consists of seventeen books, and contains a history in heroic verse of the second Punic war. The Æneid of Virgil was his model, and the narrative of Livy furnished his materials. Niebuhr states that he read through the whole of his works with great care, and that he was quite convinced that he had taken every thing from Livy, of whose work his is only a paraphrase.[[1115]] The criticism of Pliny the Younger is, upon the whole, just: “Scribebat carmina majori cura quam ingenio;” for, although it is impossible to read his poem with pleasure as a whole, his versification is harmonious, and will often, in point of smoothness, bear comparison with that of Virgil. The following passage is quoted by C. Barthius as one of the most favourable specimens of his sentiments and style; and Cellarius, whose praise is extravagantly fulsome, gives it the epithet of “Aurea:”—
Ipsa quidem virtus sibimet pulcherrima merces;
Dulce tamen venit ad manes quem gloria vitæ
Durat apud superos, nec edunt oblivia laudem.
Some of his episodes, if considered as separate pieces, will repay the trouble of perusal; and the following passage, which Addison thought worthy of translation, may be taken as a fair specimen of his descriptive powers:—
THE ALPS.