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Rome, perhaps cautiously leaves to the wit of his audience. Indeed, Cornelius Nepos 96
explicitly connects the story to Hannibal maintaining fides to his oath and emphasises
the point by giving Hannibal direct speech:
Id ego iusiurandum patri datum usque ad hanc aetatem ita conservavi,
ut nemini dubium esse debeat quin reliquo tempore eadem mente sim
futurus.
Cornelius Nepos, Hann. 3.2.5
For my part, up to my present time of life I have kept the oath which I
swore to my father so faithfully, that no-one ought to doubt that in the
future I shall be of the same mind.
Rolf, 1984, 261.
Where Polybius‟ presentation of the anecdote may be read as ambivalent in respect
of its treatment of Hannibal‟s fides, the oath scene in the Punica is also ambivalent in
respect of personal fides, but not Hannibal‟s. As with Livy‟s text, fides, and other
Roman virtues such as pietas, are recognised as major moral themes in the Punica. 97 In
the oath scene that Silius Italicus creates, his audience is reminded of Aeneas‟ treatment
of Dido, and superficially the scene seems sympathetic to the Carthaginians. The subtext
that Aeneas‟ fides to the future Rome took precedence over his personal fides to Dido is
left to the reader to understand.
Silius Italicus places the anecdote early in the Punica and creates a dramatic scene
centred on the child Hannibal 98 (Pun. 1.70-121). Hannibal is not an experienced general
justifying himself to an Eastern king nor is the story the subject of a colourful rumour,
but cast in a scene of poetic surrealism as a 9-year-old child stands in the shrine at
Carthage dedicated to Dido/Elissa on the spot where she threw herself onto her husband
Sychaeus‟ funerary pyre. Aeneas‟ sword lies at the foot of her statue, a poignant
reminder that his lack of personal fides and breach of foedus led to the current situation.
For added emphasis Dido and Aeneas were more than lovers in the Punica, they were
married (Pun. 8.53; 8.109-11). Thus the child Hannibal is being explicitly prepared to
avenge Dido and there are close correspondences to Dido‟s death scene in Aeneid 4 with
96 Dionisotti, 1988, 35-49 briefly discusses moral aspects in Nepos‟ biographies of Greek generals.
97 Pomeroy, 1989a, 123 argues that their importance in the Punica may correlate with a Flavian revival of
old values – but such revivals were regular parts of the Roman political landscape. See Marks, 2005, for
Silius treatment of Roman virtues in respect of Scipio; 245-252 summarises scholarship on contemporary
Flavian socio-political allusions in the Punica. Klaassen, 2006, 3 for a correlation with similar scholarship
on the ambivalence in the Aeneid towards Augustus‟ regime.
98 Wilson, 1993, 218; Spaltenstein, 1986, 14. Cf. Vergil Aeneid 1.569.
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