IN SILIUS ITALICUS BY LOURA BAYNE WOODRUFF New York 1910 All rights reserved REMINISCENCES OF ENNIUS IN SILIUS ITALICUS I. PREVIOUS THEORIES CONCERNING THE PUNICA C. Silius Italicus and his description of the Second Punic War have received comparatively little recognition either in ancient or in modern times. He was praised by Martial' and was mentioned by Pliny' and a few of his other contemporaries; then, with but one or two exceptions, no further reference to his name and no allusion to his poem can be found until the fifteenth century, when the discovery of a manuscript of the Punica awakened a slight interest, but led to very few systematic and critical investigations. Another manuscript, discovered in the following century, brought no greater results. In the latter part of the nineteenth century sufficient interest was shown to question the sources and the historical credibility of the poem, but since then little more has been said concerning it, and the text of the latest edition is still far from well established. 4 5 1 Epigr. 4, 14; 6, 64; 7, 63; 8, 66; 9, 86; 11, 48; 11, 49. 2 Epis. 3, 7. Tac. Hist. 3, 65; Epictet. Diss. 3, 8, 7; cf. also Charisius, Instit. gram. (Keil, Gram. Lat. 1, 125, 16). 4 * Cf. H. Blass, Die Textesquellen des Silius Italicus, Jahr. class. Phil., sup. 8 (1875-1876), pp. 161-250. 5 From this edition by L. Bauer (Leipsic, 1890-92) all quotations in the following pages are taken. 207450 With regard to the sources of the Punica, two general theories were promulgated. One was that Livy was the writer from whom Silius had gained most of his information and that such variations as appeared were traceable either to another account or to the poet's own imagination; the other was that the predecessor to whom Silius was indebted was not Livy, but one of the early annalists, possibly Fabius Pictor, transmitted through the Annals of Ennius. 3 2 His The latter theory, proposed and vigorously maintained by Max Heynacher,' has met with but little favor. position was approved, according to the testimony of Ludwig Bauer, by Sieglin and Vollmer, and when his second treatise appeared in 1877, it received the following commendation from E. Baehrens:* "in welcher ebenso umsichtigen wie fleissigen Arbeit der genaue Beweis geführt wird, dass Livius nicht die Hauptquelle des Silius war, sondern dass auch ein älterer Annalist, vielleicht Fabius Pictor, von ihm benutzt ist, somit also den Punica des Silius eine höhere Bedeutung als Geschichtsquelle zukommt, als bisher angenommen wurde.” But with the exception of these three scholars, no others appear to have sanctioned this view. 5 On the other hand, Joannes Schlichteisen, Ludwig Bauer, J. S. van Veen,' and Anton Arendt strongly op 1 Ueber die Quellen des Silius Italicus, Ilfeld, 1874. 2 Das Verhältnis der Punica des C. Silius Italicus zur dritten Dekade des T. Livius, Erlangen, 1883, p. 4, n. 2; p. 59. 3 Ueber die Stellung des Silius Italicus unter den Quellen zum zweiten punischen Kriege, Nordhausen, 1877. 4 Jahresbericht über die römischen Epiker, Bursian's, Jahresber. 10 (1877), p. 52. 5 'De fide historica Silii Italici quaestiones historicae et philologicae, Königsberg, 1881, p. 128. 6 Op. cit. 7 Quaestiones Silianae, Leyden, 1884, pp. 60, 78. Syrakus im zweiten punischen Kriege, Königsberg, 1899, pp. 110, 113, 114. |