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at the opening of this Introduction. Diana Spencer noted that „names matter‟ 83 and
names mattered very much indeed in the upper echelons of the ancient Roman world.
Appendix 2 briefly discusses the use of names in each of Polybius, Livy and Silius
Italicus as an important general feature which impacts on Hannibal and Romans alike.
Last, but not least, the texts are given titles. Polybius comments on the titles used by
other authors claiming that „most historians‟ describe the Second Punic War as the
„Hannibalic War‟ thereby locating the conflict in the personality of Hannibal (Hist. 1.3).
On the face of it, Polybius tries to distance himself from these predecessors with his
own, more neutral, title, but Hannibal is the dominant figure in his text and is said to be
the cause of everything that happened between the two sides (Hist. 9.22.1). 84 Both forms
are used for the subtitles in Appian‟s Roman History, which is divided geographically in
the sense that book 7, titled the Hannibalic War, covers Hannibal‟s campaign in Italy
and book 8, The Punic Wars, covers the actions in Africa from the earliest period. Titles
along the lines of „Punic Wars‟ or Punica may have conveyed more negative
connotations to a Roman audience than works with more generalised titles if Franko, 85
who argues for the use of poenus as a derogatory name for the Carthaginians in early
Latin literature, is right. If this is the case, then the word punica may be taken as a
pointed archaism when employed by Silius Italicus for the title of his epic.
83 Spencer, 2002, 4.
84 Walbank, 1957, 3.2, 42 suggests a qualification to Polybius‟ opening statement as „most except Roman
historians, who generally refer to the war as the Second Punic War.‟ Also Scott-Kilvert, 1979, 43, n3.
85 Franko, 1994, 154.
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