1. Pun. 4.476 and 7.487 refer to his divine birth.

2. For example, when Scipio, at the sight of his wounded father, flees from the battlefield at Trebia (Pun. 4.454–97).

3. Fucecchi, M., ‘Lo spettacolo delle virtù nel giovane eroe predestinato: analisi della figura di Scipione in Silio Italico’, Maia 45 (1993), 17–48Google Scholar, looks closely at the character of Scipio, and Marks, R., Scipio Africanus in the Punica of Silius Italicus (Diss. Brown 1999 Google Scholar), carefully analyses the role of Scipio throughout the Punica.

4. Ahl, F., Davis, M.A. and Pomeroy, A., ‘Silius Italicus’, ANRW 11.32.4 (1986), 2492–2561Google Scholar, at 2543–55.

5. Bassett, E.L., ‘Hercules and the Hero of the Punka ’, in L. Wallach (ed.), The Classical Tradition: Studies in Honor of Harry Caplan (Ithaca 1966), 258–73Google Scholar, at 259, identifies the two episodes characterising Scipio as the hero of the Punica as the choice at the crossroads and the entire Capuan episode in Punica 13.

6. Delarue, F., ‘Sur l’architecture des Punica de Silius Italicus’, REL 70 (1992), 149–65Google Scholar, suggests a hexad structure; on structure see also Wallace, M.V.T., ‘The Architecture of the Punica: A Hypothesis,’ CP 53 (1958), 99–102Google Scholar.

7. For Cannae as the centre of the poem, see Ahl, Davis and Pomeroy (n.4 above), 2505–11.

8. Spaltenstein, F., Commentaire des Punica de Silius Italicus (livres 1 à 8) (Geneva 1986), 166 Google Scholar, and Vessey, D.W.T., ‘Silius Italicus on the Fall of Saguntum’, CP 69 (1974), 28–36Google Scholar, at 33.

9. Cf. Vessey (n.8 above), 33: ‘…his abandonment of the tumulus reveals that the destruction of Saguntum is close at hand.’ There are many parallels with the snake at Anchises’ tomb in Aeneid 5, which does seem to be a good sign for the Trojans.

10. turn uero capere arma iubent genibusque salutant/summissi augurium: hac iret, qua ducere diuos/perspicuum, et patrio monstraret semita signo (‘then indeed, lowered on their knees, they greeted the omen and ordered him to take up arms and to go there where it was clear that the gods led and where the path was marked out by the paternal portent,’ Pun. 15.146–48)

11. Cf. Marks (n.3 above), 201: ‘Given the context of the omen, Scipio’s campaign, and Jupiter’s participation, we are therefore invited to think of the snake not as a symbol of Libyan hostility, but as a symbol of Jupiter’s intimate support for his son, the snake-bom Scipio.’ Silius may be referring to Livy (AUC 26.19.7) which introduces the idea of the ‘snake-born’ Scipio.

12. sed quamquam instinctis tacitus tamen aegra periclilpectora subrepit terror, molemque pauentes/expendunt belli, et numerat fauor anxius annos (‘but although a silent terror crept under their breasts sick with the danger, fearful they pondered the great burden of war and nervous support counted up his years’, Pun. 15.135–37)

13. A hawk attacks sixteen doves; it kills fifteen, but is prevented from killing the sixteenth, which flies to Scipio (Pun. 4.101–119). Spaltenstein, F., Commentaire des Punica de Silius Italicus (livres 9 à 17) (Geneva 1990), 349 Google Scholar, connects the snake omen in Book 15 with the bird omen in Book 4 as part of the mystique surrounding Scipio.

14. Pun. 4.120–30.

15. Pun. 4.131–33.

16. Cf. Ahl, Davis and Pomeroy (n.4 above), 2544.

17. In the omen in Book 4 Silius refers to Scipio’s ‘boyish arms’ (puerilibus lacertis).

18. ad quern ut ueni conplexus me senex conlacrimauit (‘as I came to him, the old man, having embraced me, cried bitterly’, De Re Publica 6.9).

19. quern ut uidi, equidem uim lacrimarum profudi, ille autem me complexus atque osculans flere prohibebat (‘when I saw him, truly I shed a copious amount of tears; he, however, embracing and kissing me, made me stop crying’, De Re Publica 6.14). The philosophical treatment of life and rebirth in Cicero is an important intertext for Silius’ account of the underworld, but it is not the focus of this paper.

20. The contrast between Cicero and Silius is that in Cicero, Scipio the Elder forbids the tears of his son, but in Silius the force of Scipio’s grief is unstoppable.

21. Ahl, Davis and Pomeroy (n.4 above), 2547: ‘Such uncontrolled grief seems un-Roman (and definitely un-Stoic), particularly after Silius’ condemnation of the Capuans for their inability to endure either prosperity or misfortune: et laeta et tristia ferre/indociles (13.309–310).’ See also Bassett, E.L., ‘Scipio and the Ghost of Appius’, CP 58 (1963), 73–90Google Scholar, at 77, and Fucecchi (n.3 above), 38.

22. Cf. lacerabat amictus (Pun. 6.405) and lacerat amictus (Pun. 13.389).

23. squalentem crinem (Pun. 6.405)

24. disiectaque crinem (Pun. 2.558) and squalentemque…comam (Pun. 2.668).

25. Cf. liuentia planctu/pectora (Pun. 2.668f.) and pulsato pectore (Pun. 13.389).

26. Cf. lacerata genas (Pun. 2.560) and lacerat (Pun. 13.389).

27. foedata genas (Pun. 4.774).

28. lacerataque crines (Pun. 4.114).

29. There is a strong parallel between Punica 13 and Punica 4. In the earlier scene Scipio thinks his father, who has merely been wounded, is dead, whereas in the later episode, Scipio responds to the actual death of his father.

30. Spaltenstein (n.8 above), 162, suggests that Tiburna’s signs of lamentation conform to literary tradition.

31. cui uultus induta pares disiectaque crinem/Eumenis in medios irrumpit turbida coetus/et maestas lacerata genas (‘the Fury put on a face equal to hers, and with torn hair and scratched sad cheeks, she burst wildly into the middle of the crowd’, Pun. 2.558–60) and squalentemque erecta comam ac liuentia planctu/pectora nudatis ostendens saeua lacertis (‘her dishevelled hair was sticking straight up, with her shoulders uncovered, exposing her breasts bruised with cruel blows’, Pun. 2.668f.). Tiburna is in mourning for her husband Murrus, a Saguntine noble, who was killed by Hannibal in an episode narrated by Silius in Book 1. See Pun. 1.376–429 for Murrus’ aristeia and 1.456–517 for his death at the hands of Hannibal.

32. Juno’s actions in Punica 2 are in response to Hercules, who sends the goddess Fides to Saguntum (Pun. 2.475–525).

33. Aen. 5.617–20. Both Virgil’s description of Beroe and Silius’ of Tiburna make reference to husband and family. Cf. Tmarii coniunx longaeua Dorycli/cui genus et quondam natique fuissent (‘aged wife of Tmarian Doryclus for whom there were high birth and children once’, Aen. 5. 620f.) and Murro spoliata marito/clara genus Daunique trahens a sanguine nomen (‘deprived of her husband Murrus, noble in birth and taking her name from the blood of Daunus’, Pun. 2.556f.).

34. Just as Iris/Beroe enters the crowd of women so Tisiphone/Tiburna breaks into the midst of the gathered citizens. Cf. mediam se matribus refert (Aen. 5.622) and medios irrumpit (Pun. 2.559). Both Iris/Beroe and Tisiphone/Tiburna claim to have had a vision. In the Aeneid, Iris/ Beroe claims that Cassandra appeared to her in a dream to encourage the Trojan women to alleviate their toil by refusing to continue the journey and to make their home in Sicily (Aen. 5.636–38), and in the Punica it is Tiburna’s dead husband Murrus who tells her that Saguntum is lost to the Carthaginians.

35. Cf. ipsa inter medias flagrantem feruida pinum/sustinet (‘She herself in her passion raises a burning pine-brand in the midst of them’, Aen. 7.397f.) and ecce inter medios caedum Tiburna furores,/fulgenti dextram mucrone armata mariti/et laeua infelix ardentem lampada quassans (‘See, in the midst of rage and slaughter, her right hand armed with her husband’s flashing sword and in her left, unhappy woman, brandishing a blazing torch…’, Pun. 2.665–67). Spaltenstein (n.8 above), 172, distinguishes Tiburna’s torch here from Tisiphone’s earlier in the episode, but the presence of a torch must certainly connect Tiburna to Tisiphone’s appearance with a torch at Pun. 2.610.

36. Hoist-Warhaft, G., Dangerous Voices: Women’s Laments and Greek Literature (Ithaca 1992), 101f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, connects lamentation to the worship of Dionysus in the Greek tradition.

37. qualis, ubi inferni dirum tonat aula parentis/iraque turbatos exercet regia manes/Allecto solium ante dei sedemque tremendam/Tartareo est operata loui poenasque ministrat (‘just as when the palace of the infernal parent thunders doom and royal anger harasses the disturbed shades, so Allecto before the throne of the god and the terrible seat works for Tartarean Jove and serves up punishments,’ Pun. 2.671–74).

38. Aen. 6.570–75.

39. The connection to the Aeneid is made explicit here through an echo of the opening line of Virgil’s epic.

40. Dido builds a pyre with Aeneas’ weapons (Aen. 4.507) and prays to the spirits (Aen. 4.520f.).

41. Cf. Aen. 4.663–65 and Pun. 2.679f.

42. See Keith, A.M., Engendering Rome: Women in Latin Epic (Cambridge 2000), 68 CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘Another warmongering regina is Dido, whose deathbed curse calling for unceasing enmity between her people and the descendants of Aeneas affords a myth of origin for the historical Punic wars (4.632–9).’ Cf. also 91f.

43. Keith (n.42 above), 73.

44. Wiltshire, S.F., Public and Private in Vergil’s Aeneid (Amherst 1989 Google Scholar) reads Virgil’s emphasis on grieving mothers as an expression of the personal attachments of those outside the world of history. Dido, then, is primarily a sympathetic figure because she mourns the children she will not have. The women in Aeneid 5 lamenting for Anchises look ahead to Book 9 and the lamenting figure of Euryalus’ mother, who gives full expression to the pain and loss of war. Virgil’s concentration on these lamenting female voices thus emphasises the cost of war, and in this reading, Virgil follows an Iliadic model in his representation of female grief, one purpose of which is to question male heroic behaviour.

45. There is a great deal of scholarship on female lamentation in the Greek world and its connection to social or political protest. See especially Hoist-Warhaft (n.36 above).

46. Nugent, S.G., ‘Vergil’s “Voice of the Women” in Aeneid V’, Arethusa 25 (1992), 255–92Google Scholar, at 272: ‘Through their violent expression of discontent and its subsequent discrediting, the women serve in the text as a lightning rod for the volatile problem of dissent.’

47. For example, Horace Odes 3.5.41 where she is not named, but called pudica.

48. BC 2.333–37.

49. ecce trahens geminum natorum Marcia pignus,/infelix nimia magni uirtute mariti,/squalentem crinem et tristis lacerabat amictus (‘look, Marcia, dragging the twin pledge of her sons; unhappy in the exceeding virtue of her great husband, she was tearing her filthy hair and her sad clothes’, Pun. 6.403–05).

50. BC 2.338–45. Marcia had previously been given by Cato to Hortensius in order that she might bear the latter children.

51. Pun. 6.437–49.

52. Pun. 6.501–03.

53. BC 2.346–49.

54. BC 5.768f. Silius continues to evoke Lucan’s portrayal of Cornelia by neatly reversing a scene in the Bellum Ciuile in which Cornelia sails away from Pompey with the scene in which Regulus is carried off by a ship. In Bellum Ciuile 5 Cornelia is carried to the shore to be placed on the ship (BC 5.799–801) but in the Punka, Marcia stands on the shore as the ship begins to carry away her husband (Pun. 6.512–15).

55. During the Republic, wives were generally expected to stay at home while their husbands were on military campaigns, but, as is well known from Tacitus’ account of Agrippina in the camp of Germanicus, there were certainly (prominent) exceptions during the principate (Tac. Ann. 1.40).

56. Silius may be building off Livy’s reference to Hannibal’s wife (AUC 24.41.7), but Silius goes much further in naming her and inventing a son.

57. Both Imilce and Cornelia are sent away by their husbands (cf. Pun. 3.61ff. and BC 5.722ff.). Both Imilce and Cornelia deliver speeches begging to remain (cf. Pun. 3.109–27 and BC 5.762–79) and both are removed by ship (cf. Pun. 3.152–57 and BC 5.799–801). Other models for this scene include Iliad 6 as well as Livy and Seneca’s tragedies. Cf. Bruère, R.T., ‘Silius Italicus Punica 3.62–162 and 4.763–822’, CP 47 (1952), 219–27Google Scholar, at 219–21; Spaltenstein (n.8 above), 185; von Albrecht, M., Silius Italicus: Freiheit und Gebundenheit Romischer Epik (Amsterdam 1964), 146f.Google Scholar; Ahl, Davis and Pomeroy (n.4 above), 2513f.; La Penna, A., ‘Tipi e modelli femminili nella poesia dell’ epoca dei flavi (Stazio, Silio Italico, Valerio Flacco)’, in Atti del convegno internazionale di studi Vespasianei in Rieti settembre 1979 (Rieti 1981), 223–51Google Scholar, at 235f.; Steele, R.B., ‘The Method of Silius Italicus’, CP 17 (1922), 319–33Google Scholar, at 325f.

58. Bruère (n.57 above) argues that the only point of the scene in Punica 3 is to set the stage for the scene at Carthage in Punica 4.

59. Edonis ut Pangaea super trieteride mota/it iuga et inclusum suspirat pectore Bacchum (‘as a Bacchant, moved by the festival, goes above the Thracian peaks and breathes out Bacchus enclosed in her breast’, Pun. 4.776f.).

60. Cf. Bruère (n.57 above), 223: ‘Silius describes her conduct in a manner that recalls various distraught females in the Aeneid, notably Dido, Juturna and Amata. The influence of Amata is particularly marked.’ However, Spaltenstein (n.8 above), 328, sees a closer connection to Dido.

61. In her speech Imilce protests against human sacrifice as nefas and uses Roman philosophical discourse to support her point. Cf. Spaltenstein (n.8 above), 329, for references to Cicero and Ovid, and Bruere (n.57 above), 227, for Pythagoras’ speech in Met. 15.

62. BC 1.186–90.

63. Ahl, F., Lucan: An Introduction (Ithaca 1976), 249 Google Scholar: ‘The Roman state, like Marcia, had been entrusted to other less worthy men; now it returns to the ideal, in a marriage that is really a preparation for death.’

64. Ahl (n.63 above), 178.

65. Dominik, WJ., ‘Hannibal at the Gates: Programmatising Rome and Romanitas in Silius Italicus’ Punica 1 and 2’, in A.J. Boyle and W.J. Dominik (eds.), Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text (Leiden 2002), 469–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that Saguntum is a second or alternative Rome.

66. This is a prominent episode in Livy (AUC 22.55–6).

67. Cf. Spaltenstein (n.8 above), 161.

68. Luctus edax Maciesque, malis comes addita morbis,/et Maeror pastus fletu et sine sanguine Pallor (‘Gnawing Mourning and Emaciation, close companion of vile diseases, and Grief that grows fat on tears, and bloodless Pallor’, Pun. 13.581f.).

69. Cf. McGuire, D.T., ‘Textual Strategies and Political Suicide in Flavian Epic’, in A.J. Boyle (ed.) The Imperial Muse: Flavian Epicist to Claudian (Bendigo 1990), 21–45Google Scholar, at 37: ‘Throughout this scene of Saguntine suicide, Silius repeatedly recalls the topoi of Roman civil strife.’

70. In Cicero‘s Somnium Scipionis Scipio is advised of the upheaval under Tiberius Gracchus (De Re Publica 6.11).

71. Pun. 13.874–93.

72. The Sibyl tells Scipio his future, including not only his victories but also his trial and exile (Pun. 13.507–15).

73. Garson, R.W., ‘Some Critical Observations on Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica I ’, CQ 14 (1964), 267–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 276: ‘It is the mark of a skilful writer to arouse feelings of sympathy for his more odious creations. In this Valerius succeeds, and the spectacle of Pelias’ desolation at his son’s departure on the expedition is one of the most memorable sections of the epic.’

74. Arg. 1,728f. Lycurgus was driven mad by Bacchus.

75. Arg. 1.827–51.

76. For example, as in Books 3 and 6, in Thebaid 12 the great number of funeral pyres needed has denuded the neighbouring areas of lumber (et iam montibus orbatis, Theb. 12.50f.).

77. Statius previously narrated lamentation for Menoeceus in which both parents participated: hic uicta genitor lacrimabilis ira/congemit, et tandem matri data flere potestas (‘Here, his anger overcome, the tearful father mutually mourns and at last the power to weep is given to the mother’, Theb 10.791f). Williams, R.D., P. Papini Stati Thebaidos Liber Decimus (Leiden 1972 Google Scholar), ad loc., reads congemit as ‘groans deeply’, but there must be a sense of togetherness here (see Mozley’s translation ‘joins in the lament’). Statius also uses the word at Theb. 2.569 to describe four men, which also suggests that it is a shared activity, as well as at 6.42 to describe the group lamentation for Opheltes. Statius’ contemporary Valerius Flaccus uses it for the communal mourning of the Argives for Idmon at Arg. 5.12. This, then, may be a Flavian use of the word which earlier had no sense of multiple participants (e.g. Aeneid 2.631, where it is used to describe the sound of an ash tree falling). Statius records Eurydice’s lament (Theb. 10.790–814), but at the end of her lament, Eurydice is removed from the scene: diceret infelix etiamnum et cuncta repleret/questibus: abducunt comites famulaeque perosam/solantes thalamoque tenent (‘the unhappy woman spoke and filled everything with her complaints: her companions and maidservants led her away hating those who comforted her and they held her to her room’, Theb. 10.815–17). This passage also emphasises the physical aspects of Eurydice’s lamentation: sedet eruta multo/ungue genas (‘she sits with her cheeks gouged by many a fingernail’, Theb. 10.815f.).

78. simul haec dicens crinemque manumque/destruit, accensaque iterat uiolentius ira (‘at the same time he was saying these things, he ruins his hair and his hand, and his anger having been enflamed, he renews more violently’, Theb. 12.92f.)

79. W.J. Dominik, ‘Monarchal Power and Imperial Politics in Statius’ Thebaid’, in Boyle (n.69 above), 74–97, at 83: ‘The new monarch is like Oedipus not only in his sorrow but in his vindictiveness.’

80. Theb. 12.165f.

81. Theb. 12.779–81.

82. See Braund, S.M., ‘Ending Epic: Statius, Theseus and a Merciful Release’, PCPS 42 (1992), 1–23Google Scholar, esp.12–16, on the quality of Theseus’ mercy in Thebaid 12.