Chapter XXXV: Book XIII: , the longest book (895 lines), contains, besides digressions,

the recapture of Capua, and its rescue by Pan from burning though not from pillage. Sent to inspire mercy, Pan is minutely described—horned and horny-hoofed, peak-eared, bearded and tailed, nimble and sportive, carrying a shepherd’s staff, altogether a strangely incongruous figure in the midst of historical events. In Spain, the two Scipios—father and uncle to the younger Scipio, afterwards Africanus—meet their death; and this leads to a long passage founded on Aeneas’s visit to the Underworld in _Aeneid_ VI. Scipio, as the ultimate victor, is a kind of hero for Silius. As in the _Odyssey_, sacrifice and the blood-trench are indispensable preliminaries to holding converse with departed spirits; but the interview with the shade of Appius Claudius becomes ridiculous when Scipio lectures the ghost on different ways of disposing of the dead. The Sibyl is asked to unfold the mysteries of the Underworld and of the different souls admitted through the Ten Gates. The infernal rivers, the personified evils of human life, and the monsters of mythology burden the description, and thereafter the wraiths of Scipio’s father and mother appear. Not only do the shades of Aemilius Paulus and of others killed at Cannae drink of the blood and speak, but Romans of ancient times appear as well as Hamilcar, Alexander the Great, and the god-like ghost of Homer. Among souls of the great fancied to be not yet incarnate are those of Pompey and Julius Caesar. When the Sibyl has foretold the eclipse of Hannibal’s career, Scipio returns to his men rejoicing.

In Book XIV the Muses are invoked to turn to Sicily, where Marcellus captures Syracuse after a defence prolonged by the mechanical ingenuity of the famous Greek mathematician Archimedes (who is referred to,[1347] but, owing to hexametric exigencies, not named). In Book XV the Roman Senate anxiously consider the question of finding a general to succeed the two Scipios killed in Spain: and at this juncture Silius introduces the young Scipio confronted with the figures of Virtue and Pleasure after the model of the fabled Choice of Hercules. Gaily attired, Pleasure is one whose

frolic eyes
With wayward movement darted flame on flame.[1348]

Her alluring promises, coloured with an Epicurean idea of bliss,[1349] contrast with the appeal directed by Virtue to the celestial element ennobling man. Virtue’s offer is “not purple or scents but victory over the enemy”; and, on Scipio’s acceptance, Pleasure retires displeased, but satirically prophesying that one day her hour will come in Rome. So Scipio mounts the _rostra_ asking for control of the war. He afterwards justifies his selection by the capture of Nova Carthago in Spain. The book is crowded with other incidents such as the alliance of Philip of Macedon with Carthage, the funeral honours paid by Hannibal to Marcellus, and the defeat by Claudius Nero of Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal at the Metaurus on his way to join Hannibal. Book XVI recounts Scipio’s operations in Africa and Spain, and his games to honour the dead—chariot-race, foot-race, sword-fight, javelin competition, in which traditional epic elements are discernible. His request in Rome to be allowed to transfer the war to Africa, though hotly opposed by Fabius, is granted by the Senate: so in Book XVII he crosses to Africa and is thus the means of forcing Hannibal to quit Italy, to his poignant sorrow.[1350] After a display of Homeric prowess by Scipio and deceits practised by Juno on Hannibal, the decisive victory of Zama is won. Hannibal may be overwhelmed, he reflects, but Jupiter himself can never blot out the memory of Cannae, nor will the nations pass over his deeds in silence. He will live still to be a menace to Rome.[1351] Scipio recrosses the sea to hold his triumph, with Syphax and Hanno as notable captives, and the work closes with an apostrophe to him as the unvanquished sire, in merit comparable with Quirinus or Camillus, and truly claimed in Rome to be an offspring of the gods.

Even a summary betrays many of Silius’s weaknesses. His theme, the struggle of two peoples for world-supremacy, as derived from Livy, was a great one; and yet his quest after poetic embroidery divorced it from reality.[1352] He makes gods interfere where a historian would investigate causes and motives: he relates battles, not as matters of strategy, but as conglomerates of individual combats. Military history is, therefore, not to be demanded from him; but a more penetrating genius, even though he might in epic spirit, like Silius, have concentrated largely on occurrences affecting the heroic figure of Hannibal, would still have placed in true perspective the evolution of the conflict. As it is, one would never grasp from Silius the significance of events like the siege of Syracuse and the younger Scipio’s Spanish campaign; nor would one learn what the defeat of Carthage meant for the world. Traces there are, it is true, of the imperial note, but Silius does not convey through his poem a sense of the greatness of Rome as his master Virgil did. Author and reader are alike oppressed by the outworn conventions of invocations, apostrophes, similes,[1353] lineages and colloquies of antagonists who fight in the Homeric fashion, intervention of mythological deities, unilluminating geography, and lack-lustre catalogues of names, in using which Silius has no Virgilian or Miltonic gift of making beautiful music.[1354] All this goes to constitute the head and front of his offending—he is, taken altogether, dull and uninspiring. Hardly any of his characters live. Hannibal may be said to live at times, Scipio scarcely at any time: and interminable _longueurs_, verging on the dismal, force one in the end to wonder what imaginable constraint other than editorial necessity should ever drag one to a second perusal of these seventeen ponderous books.

Yet, even so, Silius has merit. He can be rhetorical, but he is not so insistently in search of striking points as the other epic-writers of his century. A curious nemesis overtakes him when he imitates; for some of his least natural effects arise from his enslavement to the example of Homer; Virgil and Lucan. It is particularly to the baleful influence of Lucan that one must ascribe his misdirected attempts at realism. One wishes that Silius, over his slain warriors, had felt a portion of the Virgilian pity; but instead he overdoes his descriptions. The last notes of a bugler, mortally hurt at the Ticinus, pass lingeringly through his instrument after his lips are already mute in death; the final breath of a gigantic soldier stirs the dust on the plain; a head is struck off, but the body runs on from its own impetus; or a victim’s murmured appeals continue after his head is severed.[1355] Lucanesque reminiscences overpaint the naval engagement off Syracuse in Book XIV—a man is cut in two by a prow; oars splash blood; hands grasping an enemy ship are hacked off and carried away still clinging; open wounds admit the sea.[1356] In similarly exaggerative manner he makes corpses bridge a river,[1357] and copies more than once Lucan’s idea of the wounded having no room to fall.[1358] Yet there are not nearly so many of these excesses as in Lucan; and there are comparatively few strained conceits, like the topsy-turvy one, which he approves sufficiently to repeat, of fighters avenging their deaths in advance by abundant slaughter.[1359] More often he is straightforward and non-rhetorical, with touches of natural description, as of the river Ticinus crystal-clear and gliding softly between shady banks to the notes of birds;[1360] with an occasional eye for colour, as where he marks the rosy dawn over the blue waters, the glint of the Roman arms at Cannae, or the Carthaginian priest’s robe of blue on which precious stones glitter;[1361] or, again, with a gleam of romance to light up the catalogue of Hannibal’s host, when from the far eastern gardens of the Hesperides came a leader,

Who in that faëry woodland by the sea
Beheld the golden fruitage mid the leaves.[1362]

Traces of Stoic thought in Silius may be in part prompted by the Stoicism recurrent in Lucan’s epic, but may conceivably be due to its contemporary prevalence. Among instances may be cited the unflinching constancy of the slave tortured by the Carthaginian whose “mind remains untouched, surmounting pain with smiles”; Decius’s claim that nature has granted no such boon to man as the open doorway out of life; the rivalry between Pleasure and Virtue for control over Scipio; and the fortitude with which Hannibal, when his brother’s head is exhibited on a spear,

checked his tears
And by endurance made disaster less.[1363]

His _sententiae_, because not too numerous to be tedious, are the more effective. Some of the most telling are “The test of manhood is adversity” (IV. 603); “Banish delay: short-lived is fortune’s smile” (IV. 732); “War must have craft: a leader’s stout arm wins less fame” (V. 100); the cynical observation “in happy days the altars seldom reek” (VII. 89); “Anger against one’s country is sin” (VII. 555 _succensere nefas patriae_); “never doth love abandon hope” (VIII. 95 _non unquam spem ponit amor_); “valour is her own most fair reward” (XIII. 663); and Alexander’s counsel on celerity in fighting:

Unhonoured is the craft of long-drawn war:
Boldness must end campaigns: faint hardihood
Ne’er raised itself above its jeopardy.[1364]

In spite of his debt to Virgil and Lucan, Silius gives signs of originality in his language. Occasionally he ventures on bold expressions: “a draught of Hannibal inflames” his soldiers (I. 345, _haustusque medullis Hannibal exagitat_); and, in reference to Capuan demoralization, “the yelps of vice (XI. 426 _uitia adlatrantia_)[1365] shake a character so far unsmirched by prosperity.” He employs a large number of compound adjectives, especially in _-fer_ and _-ger_. Some are Lucretian words transmitted through Virgil like _aestifer_, _saetiger_, _horrificus_. The adverb _regifice_ he shares with Ennius. Many of his compounds had been used by Ovid and Lucan. Others cannot easily, if at all, be discovered elsewhere; _uiticola_, _austrifer_, _nubiuagus_, _pharetriger_, _criniger_ (possibly in Lucan, unless he wrote _cirrigeros_ in _Phars._ I. 463). _Diffulminat_ seems to be Silius’s own invention. It is to be expected that he should share several compounds with his contemporaries, _e.g._ with Valerius Flaccus, _luctificus_ (also in Cicero and Virgil), _securiger_ (also in Ovid), _gemmifer_ (in Propertius and Pliny), and with Statius _uuifer_, _sceptriger_ and other words. Whether these last are instances of the influence of Silius on Statius cannot be determined, but Statius certainly borrowed the gold-digger of Dalmatia from Silius’s “greedy Asturian.”[1366] Silius’s use of _sonipes_, _quadrupes_ and _cornipes_ for _equus_ (which he does not however entirely renounce) becomes wearisome.

Apart from Virgilian influence on incidents like the cave of Proteus (VII. 419 _sqq._), tree-felling for funeral pyres (X. 527 _sqq._), the banquet at Capua (XI. 267 _sqq._), the Sibyl’s exposition of the lower world in Book XIII, and the funeral games of Book XVI (down to the detail of fouling transferred from the foot-race of the _Aeneid_ to a chariot-race), there are frequent reminiscences of Virgil’s language in such phrases as _quaerentia lumina caelum_ (VI. 11) or _ille quidem cruda mente et uiridissimus irae_ (V. 569). Still more old-fashioned echoes are his _ac tuba terrificis fregit stridoribus auras_ (V. 189);[1367] _ensis contunditur ense, pes pede uirque uiro teritur_ (IX. 325);[1368] and the ancient legal form _capital_ (XIII. 155). Silius did not write in a style so elaborate as that of Valerius Flaccus or Statius, and he did not try to be so clever as Lucan; but he is composite enough to be acquitted of bald simplicity. His hexameters are often highly alliterative, some lines having alliteration on three different consonants. There is much also which proves the metrical influence of Ovid, though Silius is less dactylic and moves less lightly than any of the epic poets of his time.