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SILIUS
the recipient of a divine benison. Silius portrays him with warmth and humour:
he bustles about in his eagerness to please his guest (176—8); the drunkenness
which follows his introduction to wine is described with a mischievous realism
(199-205).
This aition exhibits a deftness and dexterity of touch not generally attributed
to Silius. For a moment he introduces into the sombre atmosphere of the Punica
a shaft of Ovidian brightness. Nor is it totally without relevance to the wider
content of the epic. Hannibal's devastation of Campania, the land blessed by
Bacchus, presages his eventual defeat. In Book 11, Silius tells how the Carthaginian
army and its leader are enervated and corrupted (through the scheming of
Venus) by the luxury of Capua — not least by the gifts of Bacchus put to the
service of vice and excess (11.285—6, 299—302, 307—8, 406—7, 414). This demoralization
of Hannibal's forces was the turning-point in the Punic War. Furthermore,
the younger Scipio, the ' divine man' and figure ofpietas, who is ultimately
to humble Carthaginian might at Zama, is depicted as a new Hercules, Bacchus
and Quirinus. In Book 15, when Scipio, like Hercules at the crossroads, is
confronted by a choice between Virtue and Pleasure (18—128), he is reminded
by the personification Virtue of those celestial beings who had passed through
the portal of heaven (77—8) and whom Scipio should emulate. Bacchus appears
in his role as global triumphator at 79—81. Because Scipio chose the path of
uirtus (spurning the blandishments of uoluptas to which Hannibal and his
army had fallen victim at Capua), he too achieves apotheosis. The epic ends
with his triumphant procession to the Capitol, where Silius compares him first
to Bacchus and then to Hercules (17.646—50). Hannibal had paid the full price
of his impiety. His destruction of the vineyards, miraculously established by
Bacchus himself, did not go unpunished. In the myth told by Silius in Book 7,
occurring at a time when Hannibal was at the height of his power, we can see
a prefiguration of his final fall from glory into wretchedness, overcome by the
superior might and virtue of Scipio, a Bacchus reborn to bring salvation to
Rome.
Nor was it beyond Silius' reach to attain flashes of true poetic grace. In
Book 13, the god Pan intervenes to preclude the burning of Capua. The poet
gives the following account of his appearance and character:
Pan Ioue missus erat, seruari tecta uolente
Troia, pendenti similis Pan semper et imo
uix ulla inscribens terrae uestigia cornu.
dextera lasciuit caesa Tegeatide capra
uerbera laeta mouens festo per compita coetu. 330
cingit acuta comas et opacat tempora pinus,
ac parua erumpunt rubicunda cornua fronte;
stant aures, imoque cadit barba hispida memo.
pastorale deo baculum, pellisque sinistrum
593
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