This study re-evaluates the notion of moral exemplarity in Silius Italicus’ Punica by looking at three specific values, virtus, fides and pietas, and the extent to which these values contribute to or, when lacking, undermine the moral ethos of the main Roman protagonists and their allies. This unrevised version of Burgeon's doctoral thesis appears to intersect mainly with two works: B. Tipping on the articulation and destabilisation of Republican exemplarity in the Punica (Exemplary Epic: Silius Italicus' Punica (2010)) and F. Ripoll's treatment of moral values (pietas and virtus prominently) in Flavian epic (La morale héroïque dans Les épopées latines d’époque flavienne: Tradition et innovation (1998)).
B.'s main argument is that true moral exemplarity, according to Silius, requires a balance in the exercise of virtus, fides and pietas. For the individual or the community, the over-prioritisation of one value over another, for instance, inevitably leads to failure or death. The notion of paradox is therefore paramount to B.'s analysis of Silius’ deployment of the values, which highlights cases where they appear to clash with one another. The whole study is based on the assumption that the entire epic is driven by a moral imperative to enable readers to derive valuable lessons from the past and participate in the moral rejuvenation of the Urbs initiated by Domitian.
The volume is divided in two parts. Part 1 offers a short biography of Silius as a politician turned poet and whose attachment to Stoicism may have influenced his manner of death, some insights into the contemporary perception of Silius and the Punica, as found primarily in Pliny the Younger and Martial, and the tensions surrounding the figure of Domitian in the poem either directly or by association with Hercules, Scipio Africanus and Romulus. Two further sections discuss the Punica's multifaceted relationship with its historiographical and literary models. While acknowledging Silius’ debt to Livy and Polybius, B. holds the first-century b.c. historian Valerius Antias as the most likely source whenever the Punica departs from Livy. As for literary influences, the usual suspects loom large, among which Homer, Ennius and unsurprisingly Virgil's Aeneid and Lucan's Bellum Civile for the greater part of the discussion. The sub-section on Silius’ intertextual engagement with Valerius Flaccus and Statius is rather brief; references to recent studies on the topic would have been helpful, e.g., G. Manuwald and A. Voigt (eds), Flavian Epic Interactions (2013); F. Ripoll in W. J. Dominik et al. (eds), Brill's Companion to Statius (2015), 425–43.
Part 2, the main bulk of the study, looks at how the values are deployed within specific episodes and characters of the Punica. In ch. 1, B. questions the moral stature of the Saguntines, whose steadfast fides to Rome during the siege of their city is undermined by their lack of pietas in the mass slaughter that ensues to avoid slavery at the hands of the Carthaginians. Likewise, the war prisoner Regulus, in ch. 2, proves his fides to Rome by advising the Senate to turn down the Punic conditions for peace during the first Punic war, and to Carthage by returning to captivity after his diplomatic mission, but fails to observe the basic requirements of pietas towards his family as he abandons wife and children. In ch. 3, Fabius Maximus Cunctator is seen as a less than straightforward moral exemplum: Silius’ lack of emphasis on Fabius’ command of all three values and inability to drive Hannibal out of Italy depict the Roman general as no more than a beacon of light in Rome's darkest hours. Ch. 4 focuses on the battle of Cannae, starting with its Ovidian prelude in the retelling of the metamorphosis of Dido's sister, Anna, into an Italic nymph who plays an ambiguous role as Juno's messenger to Hannibal, and its Lucanian vignette of civil war in Solimus’ accidental parricide on the eve of the battle, foreshadowing the dissension between Terentius Varro and Aemilius Paulus, the two Roman consul-generals at Cannae. B. then analyses these two figures in detail, but progressively reverses the traditional readings. Varro's flight to Rome proved decisive in allowing Rome to experience a military awakening and reorganise its army decisively in the aftermath of Cannae. Paulus’ devotio, however, proved ineffective, almost fatal to Rome, as Scipio laments to the ghost of Paulus in the nekyia (Pun. 13.712–13). Marcellus, in ch. 5, for all his virtus, fides and pietas, is paradoxically driven more by a desire for personal glory than collective interest. For B., the ultimate moral exemplum is found in Scipio Africanus, who strikes the perfect balance between virtus, fides and pietas and whose moral ascendancy is unambiguously linked to his military victory at Zama, signing off the end of the second Punic war. Ch. 7 rounds up the study by looking at the aftermath of the second and third Punic wars and how Silius hints at the end of the metus hostilis as the root cause of Rome's subsequent moral decline and civil wars.
Though some of the readings are less convincing than others (e.g. B. on Hannibal is rather binary), the study has the overall merit of showing how the Punica creatively engages both with the historiographical (especially Livy) and epic traditions. Allusions to Stoicism could have benefited from fuller referencing. To a large degree, the book's focus is on historiographical reception in epic, and as such it makes a brilliant contribution to the increasing body of critical discussions on the permeability between the historical and literary cultures in ancient Rome.
