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implication, therefore, Silius Italicus parallels Hannibal and Caesar, but it is not a direct
analogy.
Metus Punicus was, no doubt, real enough at the time when Rome was facing an
enemy whose victories came at the price of so many of her men. Once Carthage was
defeated of course, metus Punicus diminished, but its use as a political weapon
remained invaluable. Its expression through Cato‟s oft-repeated phrase delenda est
Carthago eventually led to the destruction of Carthage itself in 146. Fear and hatred of
Hannibal reappears in the Augustan period, in the poetry of Horace: parentibusque
abominatus Hannibal (Horace, Epode, 16.8). Readers are reminded that Hannibal was
the most feared of all Rome‟s enemies. 81 Perhaps Horace felt it necessary to remind
contemporary readers that at one time Rome had external enemies very close to home.
Hannibal‟s reputation remained secure as Plutarch, too, describes him as one of
Rome‟s most formidable enemies, and until Marcellus defeated Hannibal, the Romans
did not dare face Hannibal in the field (Plutarch, Comparison of Marcellus and
Pelopidas, 1.4; 2.2). The image of Hannibal as „worthy enemy‟ also appears in satire
when Juvenal bewails the disappearance of enemies like Hannibal who kept the
republican Romans honest in comparison to the Romans of his own day (Juvenal, Sat.,
6.290). There are other representations of Hannibal which indicate that various light-
hearted traditions were in circulation. The ghost of Hannibal (almost) loses an argument
over status firstly with the ghost of Alexander and then against the ghost of Scipio
Africanus in Lucian‟s representation of a „Judgement of Hannibal‟ scene in Dialogues
of the Dead (71.14). 82 Silius Italicus includes amusing representations of Hannibal not
found elsewhere: Hannibal leaves or is removed from every field of battle at critical
moments on one pretext or another in the Punica, such as tending his sick brother at
Trasimene or being lured from the field by Juno at both Cannae and Zama.
On another topic which is relevant to this thesis, the sequence in which named
figures first appear in a text seems to signal the priorities of the author; Hannibal, for
example, and the Roman people are the first named figures in Livy‟s third decad, quoted
81 Mankin, 1995, 248 and Watson, 2003, 494 comment on the various interpretations of this phrase,
whether parentibus refers to the parents of the soldiers killed by Hannibal (as in Gow, 1896, 387), or
whether it carries a more general sense of the ancestors of Horace‟s Roman audience (preferred by
Watson). The overall sense of Hannibal as Rome‟s greatest enemy remains the same, hence Watson‟s
preference for the second interpretation.
82 Levy, 1976, 227 notes similar comparisons made elsewhere: Appian, Syr. 10; Plutarch, Flamin., 21;
Livy, 35.14.
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