Christophe Burgeon attempts to study the meaning of three difficult terms for our modern understanding of Roman culture, virtus, fides, and pietas, in Silius Italicus’ Flavian poem, the Punica. After a short introduction, the book is divided in two parts, the first comprising five chapters and the second seven, followed by conclusion, bibliography, and indices.
The first part opens with a biography of the poet and his choice of life and death as well as the poet’s interaction with contemporaries such as Pliny the Elder and Martial and the role of the emperor Domitian for the epic’s background. The final section of this first part discusses in great detail the epic and historiographical predecessors for Silius’ poem from Homer, Ennius, Virgil and Lucan to Polybius and Livy. Though there are occasional insightful remarks in these sections, the readers will find themselves wanting a more compressed version of these aspects of the poem, which have already been covered in Silian scholarship extensively in the last two decades.
As the author explains in the preface to the second part of the book, the main question is whether Silius believed the Romans and their allies were moral exempla after the siege of Saguntum until the Battle of Zama (116). Leaders like Varro lack virtus and pave the way for Fabius to become an exemplum to forge a path forward and make the Romans rethink of a way to return to the much-needed mos maiorum. But even Fabius or heroes like Regulus and Marcellus, Burgeon submits, are imperfect exempla, until Scipio emerges as the real, supreme moral hero of the poem in the later books. The author’s proposition is attractive, but it is not one that has not been studied before (e.g., in R. Marks’ 2005 monograph on Scipio, From Republic to Empire); the innovation rather lies on focusing the discussion on the concepts of virtus, fides, and pietas.
The first chapter focuses on Saguntum. The author correctly shows how the Saguntines maintain their fides but at the expense of pietas. In their defeat, the Saguntines showcase the moral gap that exists in contemporary politics, starting the poem on a note of pessimism, since ultimately Hannibal prevails. The opposition between fides and pietas is also explored in the following chapter on Regulus, whose fides towards Rome defies and cancels any kind of fides/pietas towards his wife and family. In a similar line of approach, the author then looks at Fabius Maximus as a moral exemplum, which nevertheless does not rise to the occasion of combining both fides and pietas; he is not the successful model the Romans need to defeat Hannibal (234).
With the fourth chapter, we move towards a discussion of the Battle at Cannae and the various models of moral exempla or the opposite: Anna Perenna (the author would have benefitted from more recent discussions of the episode), Solymus, Varro, Aemilius Paulus. This is a good chapter that offers informative discussions of how Silius reads the Second Punic War as a ground of opportunities lost: good intentions that never help an effective policy against the enemy materialize. Not all readers will be persuaded by the reading of Paulus or Varro here, namely that Varro is redeemed or that Paulus’ devotio is without merit. But Burgeon offers a good discussion of these scenes in the context of his topic of virtus, pietas, and fides.
Similarly, in the fifth chapter the author offers a sympathetic reading of the character of Marcellus (among others from Books 11–15), an “almost complete hero,” a sort of preparation for the morally superior Scipio Africanus, a character examined in the sixth chapter. Moral superiority is what ultimately drives the Romans to the conquest of the Carthaginians at Zama and the triumph of virtus, pietas, and fides over luxus, otium sine dignitate, and the lack of humanitas and concordia. We ought not to forget, however, that the end of the Second Punic War does not bring about peace in the Mediterranean; there is a Third War to be fought, as Silius knows well. Burgeon examines this briefly in the final chapter 7, before the conclusions.
I noted significant gaps in the bibliography, especially of the last decade, when scholarship on Silius has flourished, and such bibliography would have helped the author formulate a more nuanced approach to the poem.[1] I understand of course that the pandemic has interrupted access to libraries and print materials (the book was published in 2020). It remains, nevertheless, a book that students and scholars of Silius will consult and benefit from the insights offered in the various chapters and some of the readings and interpretations proposed.
Notes
[1] E.g., Augoustakis 2010, Manuwald and Voigt’s Flavian Interactions 2013, Bernstein’s 2017 commentary on Punica 2, Bessone and Fucecchi’s The Literary Genres 2017, Ginsberg and Krasne 2018, Roller 2018.