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INTRODUCTION
during Nero's reign had been open to censure, but says
that his later hfe atoned for any early indiscretions.
We learn also from Martial ^ that he was famous in
his younger days as a pleader in the law-courts.
Silius was a rich man and was able to gratify expensive
tastes. He bought one fine country-house after
another, and filled them with books, pictures, and
statues. Upon his busts of Virgil he set special
value. He bought the site of Virgil's tomb at Naples,
which had fallen into neglect, and restored it. He
made pilgrimages to the spot, and kept Virgil's
birthday, October 15, with more ceremony than his
own. Another of his acquisitions was a house that
had belonged to Cicero,^ whom Silius revered as the
greatest of Roman orators.*'
His life of retirement was not a solitary life : he
received many visitors, with whom he liked to converse
on literary topics, generally lying on his sofa ;
and at times he entertained his guests by reading
extracts from his poem, and asked for their criticism.
(Pliny himself did not think highly of the poem : it was
painstaking, he thought, but lacked genius.)
Thus Silius lived on, respected and courted, until
he put an end to his life by his own act. The ailment
from which he suffered is described by the word
the name that modern medical science would
clavus ;
give to this affliction is uncertain, but it was incurable
; and, like a guest who had eaten his fill, he
withdrew from the scene.
« vii. 63.
* Mart. xi. 48. 9.
"His reverence for both Virgil and Cicero is recorded in
his poem : see viii. 593, 594, and viii. 408-413.
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