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interdum proiectus humi turbaeque Libyssae
insignis sagulo duris certare maniplis;
celsus et in magno praecedens agmine ductor
imperium praeferre suum; tum vertice nudo
excipere insanos imbres caelique ruinam.
215
Pun. 1.242-251.
He was ever the first to undertake hardship, first to march on foot, and
first to bear a hand when the rampart was reared in haste. In all other
things that spur a man onto glory he was untiring: denying sleep to
nature, he would pass the whole night armed, and awake, lying
sometimes upon the ground; distinguished by the general‟s cloak, he
vied with the hardy soldiers of the Libyan army; or mounted high he
rode as leader of the long line; again he endured bare-headed fury of
the rains and the crashing of the sky.
Duff, 1996, 23.
Here Silius Italicus depicts Hannibal as a commander continuing his soldier‟s habit of
sleeping on the ground from time to time wrapped in a cloak. The difference being that
Hannibal now wraps himself in a general‟s cloak, not the soldier‟s cloak he used to wear
under Hasdrubal‟s command (Livy, 21.4.8; also Frontinus, Strat. 4.3.7-8). The nuanced
differences, such as this one, between Silius Italicus and Livy, have been interpreted
both negatively, as a poor versification of Livy and positively, „Silius shows great
ingenuity in his adaptations of the historical material.‟ 441
Virgil‟s Jupiter tells Venus that Rome will be granted eternal power (Virgil, Aeneid,
1.79) and this can be related to the requirement for an eternal enemy. Plutarch describes
a philosophical thought in which there is a need for balance between dark and light,
positive and negative forces. His example is the Egyptian god Osiris who embodied the
nature of light, while Typhon, eternal enemy of Osiris, embodied the nature of darkness.
The analogy may be applied to Rome and Hannibal, thus where Rome was granted
eternal power, an eternal enemy was required to provide balance. Plutarch explains the
concept in terms that one cannot have friends without enemies (Plutarch, Moralia, 2.1).
Carthage in the collective sense could not be an eternal enmity because the city
surrendered and paid tribute. Hamilcar may have been a strong candidate but,
irrespective of his involvement in the surrender negotiations in the First Punic War, he
died before being able to embark on further warfare. Of all Rome‟s enemies, only
Hannibal continually escaped capture and continued to fight against Rome even though
it meant exile from his homeland.
441 Campbell, 1936, 57 poor versification; Matier, 1990, 7 great ingenuity in his adaptations.