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contains allusions to Ennius‟ Annales, 264 but quantity of Books is not one of them.
Thematically Punica 12 and Aeneid 12 have similarities in terms of impact 265 but the
Punica is not, as noted by Wilson, in any danger of coming to a sudden end with Punica
12. 266
If, however, the seventeen-book composition of the Punica reflects the seventeen
year length of fighting referred to by Hannibal in his harangue to his men before Zama
as given by Polybius, (Hist. 15.11.6), its structure may be considered as a poetic
acknowledgement of an annalistic tradition without being written in annalistic form (but
not Livy‟s text because his Hannibal refers to sixteen years of fighting Livy, 30.32.6). It
is also open to conjecture that there is a poetic allusion to the structure of the Histories
because a fragment describing Scipio‟s triumph after Zama is only placed by editors in
Histories 16 through comparison with Livy. 267 If the fragment was originally from
Histories 17 the result would be a very interesting correlation of seventeen Books
between the Histories and the Punica for the story of the Second Punic War.
The centrality of Cannae to the Punica distorts time if the Punica is read as a poetic
narration of the Second Punic War and Silius Italicus‟ application of time 268 generally
has been much discussed: Feeney, for example, reads the historical events as radically
dislocated to make the „nadir of Roman fortunes the high point of the poem,‟ and
Dominik notes that the „narrative strategy… includes the elastic use of time.‟ 269 In a
related vein, Wilson 270 says that Silius Italicus „goes much further than Livy in allowing
thematic relevance rather than temporal duration determine the amount of narrative
allocated to particular incidents.‟ He calculates that events ending with Cannae occupy
about one-fifth of Livy‟s narrative, whereas the same time period occupies over half of
the Punica, and the remaining 15 years of the Second Punic War are compressed into
the second half of the epic.
264 Beard, 2007, 43 suggests that the triumph of Scipio as the culmination of the Punica is modelled on
Ennius‟ Annales of which she believes the final book featured the triumph of Ennius‟ patron, Marcus
Fulvius Nobilior, 187BCE.
265 von Albrecht, 1999, 294.
266 Hardie, 1993, 60. Cf Wilson, 2004, n22 „Hardie‟s attempt to see the end of the Punica as related
primarily to the end of the Aeneid… is a particularly Virgiliocentric reading…‟
267 Walbank, 1967, 25.
268 Aristotle, Poetics 1449b13f. For modern summary of timing of historical events in Livy compared to
the Punica see table in Wallace, 1968, 84.
269 Feeney, 1986, 141; Dominik, 2006, 115.
270 Wilson, 1993, 230.
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