1 Introduction
Dido’s sister Anna, a minor character in Book 4 of the Aeneid, becomes pivotal in Silius’ representation of the Second Punic War. On the eve of the Battle of Cannae, the subject of Book 9 and 10, the goddess Juno incites Anna, now a river deity in Italy, to remind an anxious Hannibal of his mission to defeat the Romans. At this point, the primary narrator inserts a long secondary narrative (8.44–201), designed to explain the double nature of this goddess, who is both Carthaginian and Roman. In this aetiologically motivated narrative, a sequel to Aeneid 4 and modelled upon an episode in Ovid’s Fasti, we are told how Anna fled from Carthage to Italy after the suicide of her sister, found shelter in Aeneas’ palace, and finally became an Italian deity.1 This makes her role in the Punica complicated: a Roman goddess with Carthaginian roots encourages Hannibal to take up his arms against the Romans in what would become his greatest victory and their greatest defeat. How should we understand this narrative and Anna’s role in it?
In this chapter I will explore the central role of the Anna episode in the Punica. From the prooemium of the epic onwards, it is clear that Dido’s curse is one of the major causes of the Second Punic War. Anna’s role in encouraging Hannibal to achieve his greatest victory is therefore a reminder that the actions of the Carthaginians in the Punica cannot be dissociated from this Virgilian past. At the same time, this embedded narrative is in some respects a rewriting of that Virgilian heritage. The four narrators of this episode (the primary narrator, the secondary narrators Anna and Aeneas, and Dido, who narrates both on the secondary and tertiary level) give different ‘readings’ of the Aeneid, by accentuating, adding or skipping certain aspects from that epic.2 At the same time, the embedded narrative is a sequel to Aeneid 4, based upon the Ovidian story of Anna in Book 3 of the elegiac Fasti. Again, we will see that the Silian narrators sometimes follow, but often deviate from this literary past. On a generic level, the embedded narrative plays with genres of epic and elegy, as is for example shown in Anna’s portrayal of Dido as abandoned heroine. In the end, the epic narrative ‘takes back control’, preparing for the epic Battle of Cannae in the ensuing books.
Recent scholarship has evaluated Anna’s double role in different ways. Chiu, for example, argues that Ovid’s Romanized Anna has been changed back into a Carthaginian goddess that encourages Hannibal to take up arms against the Romans that worship her. As such, she becomes an example of Punica fides and of shifting loyalties that occur elsewhere in the Punica (e.g. in the case of Capua).3 Manuwald sees Anna in a somewhat more favourable light. She suggests that Anna has a “potential of mediation”, but is prevented from fulfilling this role by her sister Dido, who reminds of the enmity between the Trojans and Carthaginians.4 Anna is for Manuwald an example of an ambiguous character that has a special relationship with both sides: “The presentation of these complex figures enables the poet to look at all possible nuances and aspects of the conflict and to suggest that on a pure human level there is no essential difference between the two sides, while there is no question about Rome being superior to Carthage and her eventual victory.”5
There are actually two moments in this episode in which Anna and the Trojans/Romans almost achieve reconciliation. In the end, the mediation of Anna only suggests an alternative history: what if the Romans and Carthaginians would have made peace? The mytho-historical reality prevents this. Anna becomes an Italian goddess but gives aid in bringing about the greatest defeat of Roman history. She is therefore not so much a symbol of reconciliation, but rather of civil war. That her festival is celebrated on the Ides of March is already an ominous sign.
2 Juno’s Intervention in the War
At the beginning of Book 8 the war has come to a standstill. Fabius Cunctator has been successful in avoiding confrontations with Hannibal.6 The Carthaginian general cannot stand this inactivity (impatiensque morae, 8.4), as he knows that this is a great threat to his position. His army has run out of supplies, his Gallic allies are about to return home, and his rival Hannon prevents the senate from sending reinforcements.7 Paradoxically, Fabius has defeated Hannibal without fighting him: quamquam finis pugnaque manuque | hauddum partus erat, iam bello uicerat hostem (‘although an end of fighting and battles was not yet gained, he had already defeated the enemy in the war’, 8.14–15). At this moment Juno steps in to keep Hannibal and the war going:
quis lacerum curis et rerum extrema pauentemad spes armorum et furialia uota reducitpraescia Cannarum Iuno atque elatafuturis . (8.25–27)
Though he was broken by these anxieties and fearing the worst, Juno brought back his hope for arms and recalled his frenzied vows,8 having foreknowledge of Cannae and being exalted by the future.
Juno’s intervention is a replay of her role as instigator in Hannibal’s youth:9
iamque deae cunctas sibi belliger induit irasHannibal (hunc audet solum componere fatis),sanguineo cum laeta uiro atque in regna Latiniturbine mox saeuouenientum haud inscia cladum (1.38–41)
Now warlike Hannibal clothed himself with all the anger of the goddess (she dared to match him alone against fate), because she was rejoicing in this bloodthirsty man and was by no means unaware of the fierce storm of upcoming disasters for Latinus’ kingdom.
In this programmatic scene, Hannibal becomes Juno’s tool for bringing disaster upon the Romans; he almost becomes identical with the goddess by putting on her anger as if it were a cloak. Rejoicing at the idea of the Roman defeats, which are about to take place, she needs to stir up Hannibal, as he is an essential means for her to achieve these goals.
After this start, she appears to the sleeping general in Book 4 to spur him on after the battle at the river Trebia and reminds him of his earlier vows.10 She does so without delay11 and takes on the guise of the lake god Thrasymennus.12 After her speech, Hannibal immediately breaks up his camp and marches over the Apennines to Lake Trasimene for his next confrontation with the Romans.13
In Book 8, Juno uses Anna as an intermediary for conveying her message to Hannibal, instead of taking on another god’s guise:14
namque hac accitam stagnis Laurentibus Annamaffatur uoce et blandis hortatibus implet:‘sanguine cognato iuuenis tibi, diua, laboratHannibal, a uestro nomen memorabile Belo.perge age et insanos curarum comprime fluctus.’ (8.28–32)15
Summoning Anna from the waters of Laurentum she [i.e. Juno] addresses her with the following words and fills her with flattering exhortations: ‘A young man, of kindred blood, goddess, is suffering, Hannibal, a memorable name descended from your Belus. Go on, hurry, and suppress the raging flood of his anxieties.’
The narrator does not immediately identify the goddess as Dido’s sister, but Juno’s words leave no doubt: she stresses the blood relationship (sanguine cognato) between Anna and Hannibal through their common ancestor Belus.16 At the same time, it is clear that this Anna is now a goddess (diua) residing in ‘waters of Laurentum’ (stagnis Laurentibus), i.e. the Numicius (as becomes clear in 8.179). Since Laurentum and its inhabitants are synonyms for Rome and the Romans in the Punica, the juxtaposition Laurentibus Annam stresses right from the start that the Carthaginian Anna has become a goddess in Roman territory.17
Anna’s new status as Roman goddess does not prevent Juno from persuading her to help her old fatherland: tendat iamdudum in Iapyga campum. | huc Trebiae rursum et Thrasymenni fata sequentur (‘let [Hannibal] move instantly to the Iapygian plain; there the fate of the Trebia and Trasimene will be repeated’, 8.37–38). The marked conjunction Iapyx campus for Cannae has appeared earlier in Juno’s speech to Hannibal in Book 1: Cannas … campumque … | … Iapyga cernam (‘I discern Cannae and the Iapygian plain’, 1.50–51).18 At that time, too, she had predicted the battles at the Trebia and Lake Trasimene. Another scene where the phrase occurs is the oracle of Hammon, in an exhortation to Hannibal: inuade … Iapyga campum (‘invade the Iapygian plain’, 3.707).19 The repetition of these words in Book 8 underline that Cannae is the climactic battle that Hannibal should strive for, in accordance with Juno’s plan; the battles of Trebia and Trasimene have already been successful, and will be repeated at Cannae (
Anna reacts immediately to Juno’s words and declares that she is willing to help the goddess. Although she is aware of her double nature, she wants nothing more than to help Carthage. Anna is thus the opposite of inertia and therefore of the Roman army; while Juno calls Fabius ‘the only delay’ (sola … mora, 8.33–34) in subduing the Romans, Anna states that she will come into action right away (haud … morari):
tum diua Indigetis castis contermina lucis‘haud’ inquit ‘tua iusnobis praecepta morari.sit fas, sit tantum, quaeso, retinere fauoremantiquae patriae mandataque magna sororis,quamquam inter Latios Annae stet numen honores.’ (8.39–43)
Then, the goddess, who dwells near the chaste groves of Indiges, said: ‘It is my duty not to delay your orders. I only beg you that it may be rightful to keep the goodwill of my former fatherland and carry out the important instructions of my sister, although the deity Anna receives Latin honours.’
This recalls Aeolus’ answer to Juno in the Aeneid: tuus, o regina, quid optes | explorare labor;
The introductory line to Anna’s response (8.39) makes her problematic status even clearer. The goddess (diua) resides next to a grove sacred to the god Indiges. As scholars have noted, we should identify this ‘native god’ with Aeneas.23 This means that Anna and Aeneas are worshipped at almost the same location. This is emphasized by the juxtaposition diua Indigetis and the iconic word order, by which the grove of Aeneas (castis … lucis) envelopes the word that indicates Anna’s domain (contermina). This proximity suggests an intimate relation, and might even evoke the tradition according to which not Dido, but Anna was Aeneas’ lover.24 Although the adjective castis indicates by enallage that the two did not engage in illicit sexual relationships,25 the spatial vicinity suggests a close connection between Aeneas and Anna, which also becomes clear from the ensuing narrative.
The area where the deified Aeneas and Anna are residing is also the place where the Trojans landed in Latium; the Numicius is the first location that is identified by Aeneas’ explorers.26 This highly symbolic and sacred place, almost where Rome came into being, now becomes a source of Roman destruction.
3 Anna and Juturna
The episode of Anna is also reminiscent of the role of Juturna in Aeneid 12.134–160, as has been widely acknowledged.27 Juno uses the mediation of that nymph for encouraging her brother Turnus on the eve of his final battle with Aeneas, just as that same goddess encourages Anna to exhort her relative Hannibal before Cannae. Verbal reminiscences to this Virgilian episode (stagnis Laurentibus, 8.28; affatur, 8.29; diua, 8.30) confirm the thematic parallel:
prospiciens tumulo campum aspectabat et ambasLaurentum Troumque acies urbemque Latini.extemplo Turni sic est adfata sororemdiua deam, stagnis quae fluminibusque sonorispraesidet (Virg. A.12.136–140)
From the [Alban] hill [Juno] looked upon the field, the double battle lines of Laurentines and Trojans and the city of Latinus. Immediately, as goddess to a goddess, she spoke to Turnus’ sister, who controls the waters and sounding rivers.
Juturna is a goddess that rules over waters somewhere near Laurentum, so in the same region as Anna’s dwelling place.28 The topographical name has, however, an opposite significance in both epics: in the Aeneid Laurentum is the enemy of the Trojans, while in the Punica the Laurentians are synonymous to the Romans. Another difference is that the young man Hannibal (iuuenis, 8.30) is about to win his greatest victory over the Romans, while Turnus is about to be defeated.29 The Virgilian Juno is very much aware of his inescapable fate: nunc iuuenem imparibus uideo concurrere fatis (‘now I see the young man meeting an unequal fate’, A. 12.149). Since she does not wish to watch the upcoming fight, she urges Juturna to assist her doomed brother instead:
tu pro germano si quid praesentius audes,perge; decet. forsan miseros meliora sequentur. (Virg. A. 12.152–153)
Go on, if you dare to do something more efficacious for your brother. It is proper for you. Perhaps a better future will follow for these miserable men.
How different is Juno’s attitude in the Punica. She foresees the victory of Cannae and is excited about the future (elata futuris, 8.27). The goddess exhorts Anna to assist Hannibal (perge, 8.32), as she exhorted Juturna to help Turnus. But instead of delegating the whole enterprise to a lesser deity, the goddess stresses that she herself will be present at the battlefield: nec desit fatis ad signa mouenda. | ipsa adero (‘and may [Hannibal] not abandon his fate and fail to move his standards; I myself shall be there’, 8.36–37).30 She has no doubt that Cannae will be a success: huc Trebiae rursum et Thrasymenni fata sequentur (‘there the fate of the Trebia and Trasimene will be repeated’, 8.38). In the Aeneid, Juno was (rightly so) uncertain (forsan) whether the future for the Latins would be better (meliora sequentur); in the Punica she knows that the Carthaginians will be victorious again. Juno ignores, however, the future after Cannae—at least she remains silent to Anna about it, as she did in her speech to the young Hannibal (1.38–55).31 The reminiscences to Aeneid 12 in general, and Turnus in particular, are, however, ominous forebodings of the eventual downfall of the Carthaginian leader.
4 The Prooemium to the Narrative
When Anna is about to execute the orders of Juno, the narrator interrupts the main narrative, at the same time imitating and prolonging the delaying tactics of Fabius.32 The device of a secondary narrative puts the epic main narrative on hold and delays the Roman defeat for the time being.33
That the narrator is embarking on an embedded narrative is clearly marked with an internal prooemium in which he states its purpose:
multa retro rerum iacet atque ambagibus aeuiobtegitur densa caligine mersa uetustas,cur Sarrana dicent Oenotri numina temploregnisque Aeneadum germana colatur Elissae.sed pressis stringam reuocatam ab origine famamnarrandi metis breuiterque antiqua reuoluam. (8.44–49)
A long antiquity of past events lies in between, and it is hidden by the obscurity of time, immersed in a thick mist, why the Oenotrians should consecrate a temple to a deity of Sarra, and why Elissa’s sister should be worshipped in the country of the Aeneadae. But I will keep the story, recalled from its beginning, within retrained limits of narration, and I will briefly unwind the past.
The narrator thematizes Anna’s ambiguous status and announces that he is going to uncover the origin of her cult. Why do Romans worship a Carthaginian goddess in the first place and especially one that is about to support Rome’s greatest foe? I will show that in doing so, the narrator explores accounts of Anna’s life by other poets, foremost Virgil in Aeneid 4 and Ovid in Fasti 3. That Ovid is an important model for the upcoming narrative was only to be expected. In his Fasti the poet narrates three alternative stories on Anna Perenna, whose festival was celebrated on the Ides of March. The first (and longest) of these identifies Anna with Dido’s sister, and Silius is clearly following this variant.34 The words retro,
Silius’ prooemium to his embedded narrative subtly alludes to the opening distich of Ovid’s Anna episode:
quae tamen haec dea sit quoniam rumoribus errat,fabula proposito nulla tegenda meo. (Ov. Fast. 3.543–544)
Which goddess is this, though? Since that varies in common talk, no story must be concealed in my exposition.
Ovid states that several rumours exist concerning the origin of this goddess, and therefore expresses his wish not to hide any story related to her. Ironically, Ovid is actually contributing to the confusion by providing, in addition to her Carthaginian identification, five alternative versions.
Like Ovid, Silius, too, uses an indirect question (cur), to which the ensuing narrative is the answer. He also points to the obscurity of the tradition (8.44–45), which is hidden (obtegitur) in the mist of time.36 At the same time, Silius states that his story will be short (breuiter) and that he will keep his tale within restrained limits (pressis … metis). This seems to be a metapoetical comment on the narrator’s relation to the Ovid of the Fasti: he, for a moment, becomes an Ovidian narrator. The metaphor he uses is that of a charioteer, skimming (stringam) along the turning posts of the Circus (metis); the junction of these two words, albeit in a literal sense, can be traced back to Ovid, in a poem where he imagines being a charioteer: nunc stringam metas (‘now I will skim the turning posts’, Ov. Am. 3.2.12).37 The metaphor of the poet as a charioteer has a long pedigree, going back to Pindar.38 Ovid, too, uses the trope, when in the opening lines of the last poem of the Amores he asks Venus to find another poet for writing love poetry: quaere nouum uatem, tenerorum mater Amorum! |
The narrator also connects himself with Virgilian narrators through the words ab origine. The juxtaposition with famam first calls to mind the narrator of the Georgics. When the poet is about to embark on the Aristaeus episode, he states: altius omnem | expediam prima repetens ab origine famam (‘more profoundly I will unfold the whole story, tracing it back to its first beginning’, Virg. G. 4.285–286).39 The combination ab origine “indicates that what follows is aetiological”.40 The words are therefore fitting in the introduction to another ‘epyllion’ with an aetiological tendency.41 A difference with the Georgics is that Silius promises to stay within restrained limits (pressis … metis), while Virgil emphasizes that he will tell the whole story (
Aeneas actually echoes the narrator of the Georgics when he shows reluctance to tell Venus his story from the start: o dea, si prima repetens ab origine pergam … (‘o goddess, if I would go on to tell, tracing back from the first beginning …’, Virg. A. 1.372). At the end of Book 1, Dido urges him to tell the fall of Troy from its very origins: immo age et a prima dic, hospes, origine nobis, | insidias … Danaum (‘go on and tell us, guest, from its first beginning the treachery of the Greeks’, A. 1.753–754). Again, Aeneas is reluctant to do so, and instead promises to give the queen a short version: sed si tantus amor … | … breuiter Troiae supremum audire laborem, | … incipiam (‘but if your desire is so great … to hear briefly the final suffering of Troy, … I will begin’, A. 2.11–13).42 The use of breuiter in A. 2.11 has been seen as a nod to the Alexandrian or neoteric poetic principal of breuitas.43 Aeneas refuses to tell his voyage from beginning to end, but indicates that his story will be a short version of the events. However, his story will cover two entire books, in which he narrates events of the past at leisure, such as the fall of Troy.44
When the narrator of the Punica uses ab origine and breuiter in close connection, he draws attentions to this same paradox: he claims that he will start from the beginning which implies length (anti-Alexandrian), and that he will be brief (Alexandrian). We can find a similar paradox in the prooemium of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where the narrator calls his work a carmen perpetuum, suggesting epic length, but uses a Callimachean metaphor for his poetical praxis (deducite).45 Likewise, Silius seems to suggest that he is starting his narrative from the beginning, but will combine it with the Alexandrian principle of breuitas that Aeneas had opted for. Of course, this brevity is relative: both Aeneas and the narrator of the Punica are about to begin lengthy embedded narratives—respectively the longest and second longest of the entire epic.46 But length does matter here: Aeneas’ narrative fills almost two books, while the tale on Anna only takes 151 lines. Breuiter can therefore be read as a metapoetical comment on Aeneas’ story: the Silian narrator will, unlike Aeneas, stick to the Alexandrian principles of brevity, even if he is telling a story ab origine.47
Finally, the prooemium of the Anna narrative ties in with the larger themes of the Punica. The names that the narrator uses for the Romans in 8.46–47 are echoing the prooemium of the Punica:
ordior arma, quibus caelo se gloria tollitAeneadum patiturque ferox Oenotria iuraCarthago. (1.1–3)
I begin the war, by which the fame of the Aeneadae was raised to heaven and fierce Carthage submitted to Oenotrian laws.
The Punica aims to explain the hegemony of the descendants of Aeneas (Aeneadum) over Carthage. It is therefore a paradox why a Carthaginian goddess (Sarrana … numina),48 in fact Dido’s sister (germana Elissae), is honoured by the Romans (Oenotri)49 with a temple. By repeating the same names for the Romans (Aeneadae and Oenotri), the narrator makes clear that his ‘Callimachean’ aetiological story on Anna touches upon the main topic of the Punica, the epic strife between Romans and Carthaginians, and its origins, the love affair of Aeneas and Dido.
5 Dido’s Death
The Anna narrative itself begins with the suicide of Dido, like Ovid’s account (Fast. 3.545–550). In the four lines in which the demise of the queen is told, the narrator summarizes the final part of Aeneid 4:
Iliaco postquam deserta est hospite Didoet spes abruptae, medio in penetralibus atramfestinat furibunda pyram. tum corripit ensemcertanecis , profugi donum exitialemariti . (8.50–53)
After Dido was abandoned by her Trojan guest and hope was destroyed, she hurries in her frenzy to the dark pyre in the middle of the palace. Then, resolved on death, she grasped the sword, a lethal gift of her runaway husband.
The stress on Aeneas’ role in Dido’s suicide recalls her epitaph, as cited at the beginning of Anna’s narrative in Ovid’s Fasti:
PRAEBVIT AENEAS ET CAVSAM MORTIS ET ENSEMIPSA SVA DIDO CONCIDIT VSA MANV. (Ov. Fast. 3.549–550)
Aeneas gave both reason for death and a sword,Dido herself fell using her own hand.
Although there is minimal verbal correspondence, both texts stress that Dido killed herself with a sword given by Aeneas.50 While in Ovid these lines are attributed to Dido (they are a quotation from Dido’s letter to Aeneas),51 in the Punica it is the primary narrator who confirms them.52
As was to be expected, many words from 8.50–53 can be traced back to Aeneid 4.53 The opening words Iliaco postquam recall Dido looking to Aeneas’ clothes on the pyre: postquam Iliacas uestes … | conspexit (‘after she looked at the Trojan clothes …’, A. 4.648–649); the pyre is also located in the centre of the palace (pyra penetrali in sede, A. 4.504); and Dido’s determination (certa
A striking difference is that the narrator of the Punica uses words to describe Dido’s situation which in the Aeneid are only used in Dido’s and Anna’s direct speech. The narrator, for example, calls Dido ‘abandoned’ (deserta, 8.50). This is also the case in the description of Aeneas as ‘guest’ (hospes, 8.50). This is how Dido calls him twice; first to Anna in A. 4.10, and later with much bitterness in an address to Aeneas himself: cui me moribundum deseris hospes | (hoc solum nomen quoniam de
Dido’s qualification as furibunda is then Anna’s focalization too, echoing the narrator of the Aeneid: et altos | conscendit furibunda
Aeneas is also put in a less positive perspective by allusions to Catullus’ Carmen 64, casting him as a Theseus. The first two words, Iliaco postquam (8.50), are in sound, rhythm, and lexical category reminiscent of the opening that poem: Peliaco quondam (Cat. 64.1).61 This is strengthened by the ensuing deserta, which recalls Ariadne being left behind by Theseus on the beach of Naxos: desertam in sola miseram se cernat harena (‘she sees herself abandoned on the lonely sand’, Cat. 64.57).62 Like Dido, Ariadne had no hope left when she was abandoned (nulla spes Cat. 64.186 ~ spes abruptae 8.51). The idea that Aeneas reflects the behaviour of Theseus is enforced by the echo of hospes: the Athenian hero, too, has been called such, both by the primary narrator in Cat. 64.98 and by Ariadne herself: nec malus … | … in nostris requiesset sedibus hospes! (‘nor [I would] that this wicked man had reposed in our dwellings as a guest!’, Cat. 64.175–176).
One can argue that many of these verbal echoes of Catullus’ Carmen 64 are reminiscent of Aeneid 4, too. In fact, this ‘epyllion’ was an important model for Aeneid 4.63 So what does this mean for the image of Aeneas in Punica 8? Does Silius simply copy Virgil’s depiction of Aeneas as Theseus? My suggestion is that he goes one step further and frames Aeneas as an actual second Theseus, while the Virgilian Aeneas in the Aeneid is not; Dido accuses Aeneas of the same “self-centred forgetfulness”,64 but the Virgilian primary narrator makes clear that the hero is actually different from Theseus—he leaves Dido for a higher purpose, whereas the Athenian abandons Ariadne without good reason.65 The Silian Aeneas is more similar to Theseus. Both are called ‘husband’ by the primary narrator, when he refers to their departure: liquerit immemori discedens pectore
The contrast with the Virgilian Aeneas is heightened by the use of profugus. It is an echo of the prooemium of the Aeneid, where Aeneas is called ‘an exile of fate’ (fato profugus, A. 1.2). The Trojans as a group are also referred to as ‘exiles’ (profugi) on several occasions in the Aeneid.67 Following this line of thought, profugus in 8.53 can be read as ‘exiled’—Aeneas is after all a Trojan fugitive. The unique collocation with maritus, however, changes the meaning: he is not a fugitive because he is driven from Troy or because a god wants him to go to Italy, but because he flees from Carthage of his own accord.68 The Silian narrator confirms Dido’s repeated accusations of Dido in the Aeneid that Aeneas flees from her, instead of obeying a divine order.69
On an intratextual level, Aeneas foreshadows the fate of Hannibal, who, as the Sibyl prophesies to Scipio in Book 13, will be a profugus, leaving his wife and child behind:
damnatusque doli, desertisconiuge fidaet dulci nato linquet Carthaginis arcesatque una profugus lustrabit caerula puppe. (13.879–881)
Damned for treachery, he will leave the citadel of Carthage, abandoning his faithful wife and sweet son, and as an exile he will sail the seas with only one ship.
Like Aeneas in 8.53, he will abandon Carthage and his wife. The difference is of course that Hannibal is forced to do so, as he is found guilty of treachery.70 Still, there is a strong contrast between desertis and fida: “the faith-breaker flees, his faithful wife stays behind.”71 Similarly, Aeneas can be seen as the faith-breaker, leaving Dido behind.72
6 Anna’s Stay at Cyrene
In the next scene, the narrator describes Anna’s flight from Carthage to Latium, which is inspired by Ovid’s account in the Fasti (3.551–600). These wanderings cast Anna both as a second Dido and a second Aeneas. It starts with the threat of Iarbas, who puts himself on the throne of Carthage now the queen is dead:
despectus taedae regnis se imponit Iarbas,et tepido fugit Anna rogo. quis rebus egenisferret opem Nomadum late terrente tyranno? (8.54–56)
Iarbas, scorned for marriage, imposes himself on the kingdom and Anna flees from the smouldering pyre. Who would bring her help in her need, while the tyrant of the Nomads spread terror far and wide?
Fears that Iarbas would take over the city without a male protector, as voiced by Anna (despectus Iarbas, A. 4.36) and Dido (A. 4.320–326) in the Aeneid, have now become reality. The question in 8.55–56 is, again, an example of embedded focalization of Anna. Silius thus confirms the version of Ovid and underlines this with verbal allusions:73
protinus inuadunt Numidae sine uindice regnumet potitur capta Maurus Iarba domoseque memorspretum … (Ov. Fast. 3.551–553)
Numidians immediately invade the kingdom which has no defender, and Iarbas the Moor takes possession of the captured house, and remembering that he has been rejected …
A difference with Ovid, as commentators have noted, is that the Silian Anna immediately flees the scene; her sister’s pyre is still warm.74 In the Fasti, the Carthaginian population takes the flight (diffugiunt Tyri, Fast. 3.555), while Anna stays for unknown reasons for another three years, until she is expelled (pellitur Anna domo, Fast. 3.559).75 The Silian Anna is fleeing of her own accord from Carthage (fugit as opposed to pellitur), which also recalls Aeneas as a profugi mariti (8.53).76
Like Aeneas, Anna does not reach a final destination at once. Her first stop is Cyrene, where the friendly king Battus gives her shelter:
Battus Cyrenen molli tum forte fouebatimperio, mitis Battus lacrimasque dedissecasibus humanis facilis. qui supplice uisaintremuit regum euentus dextramque tetendit. (8.57–60)
Then by chance Battus fostered Cyrene with a mild reign, Battus who was gentle and inclined to give tears to human suffering. After he saw the suppliant, he trembled at the fate of kings and stretched forth his hand.
The king is the absolute opposite of the terror-spreading tyrant Iarbas: his rule is mild (molli … imperio) and benefits the city (fouebat), and he has a sensitive character (mitis; lacrimas dedisse … facilis).77 When he sees Anna as a suppliant, he feels sorry for her, perhaps imagining himself in a similar situation (intremuit regum euentus). The scene recalls Dido’s request to Anna to approach Aeneas in the Aeneid: hostem supplex adfare superbum (‘speak as a suppliant to the arrogant enemy’, A. 4.424). Dido attributes to her sister the unique ability to make contact with Aeneas: sola uiri mollis aditus … noras (‘you alone know how to get easy access to the man’, A. 4.423). Anna does not succeed in convincing Aeneas, but Battus is a man who does understand her.
Scholars have drawn attention to Silius’ location of Battus’ kingdom in Cyrene. In Ovid, he is the king of Malta, perhaps to avoid the anachronism of Cyrene not being founded yet.78 Silius’ choice for Cyrene can be viewed as a correction of Ovid’s version, as Battus was the legendary founder of both the city and the dynasty of the Battiads, in power for eight generations.79 More importantly, it stresses the link between Battus and Callimachus, who was also an inhabitant of Cyrene and is often called ‘descendant of Battus’ (Battiades).80 The words molli and mitis can therefore also be read as generic markers, invoking a non-epic world without fighting. Barchiesi cites this passage as an example of the recurring antagonism to ‘pure epic’ in the Punica.81
For two years Anna is safe in Cyrene (the same period as her stay with Battus in Fast. 3.575–576), but no longer, as the narrator remarks: nec longius uti | his opibus Battoque fuit (‘no longer could she make use of Battus and his resources’, 8.62–63). The reason is that her brother Pygmalion is on his way to kill her.82 She is forced to resume her odyssey: ergo agitur pelago (‘so she is driven to the sea’, 8.65). The peaceful Battus is apparently no match for Pygmalion; in Ovid this clash between the softness of Battus and the warlike spirit of Pygmalion is made explicit: ‘Her brother comes and seeks war. The king detests weapons: “We are unwarlike”, he says, “flee and be safe” ’ (frater adest belloque petit. rex arma perosus | ‘nos sumus imbelles, tu fuge sospes’ ait, Ov. Fast. 3.577–578). This also signifies a clash on the generic level, between epic Pygmalion (belloque petit) and non-epic Battus (rex arma perosus and imbelles).83 In the Punica, too, the Callimachean interlude cannot last for long, as the pace of the narrative suggests: Anna’s actual stay with Battus takes up eight lines (8.57–64), even shorter than Ovid’s ten lines (Fast. 3.569–578). Anna’s epic quest has to continue.84
7 Sea Storm and Arrival in Latium
After her departure from Cyrene, Anna has to deal with two hostile forces: she is ‘hated by the gods and herself’ (diuis inimica
… donec iactatam laceris, miserabile, uelisfatalis turbo in Laurentes expulit oras.non caeli, non illa soli, non gnara colentumSidonis in Latia trepidabat naufraga terra. (8.67–70)
… until she was tossed around, her sails torn apart (a miserable sight!) and a fatal whirlwind cast her on the Laurentian coast. Not knowing the sky, not the land, not the inhabitants, the shipwrecked Sidonian stood trembling on the Latin land.
Again, she is cast as Aeneas, who also found himself in a sea storm (A.1.94–97).88 Echoes of the Aeneid’s prooemium confirm this situational similarity: iactatam (8.67) corresponds to iactatus et alto (‘tossed on the sea’, A. 1.3); the ‘fatal whirlwind’ (fatalis turbo, 8.68) parallels the role of fate in Aeneas’ journey in A. 1.2: fato profugus (‘an exile of fate’); moreover, Anna’s destination is virtually the same as that of Aeneas: Laurentes … oras (8.68) ~ Lauiniaque … | litora (A. 1.2–3).
Although Silius is very concise, he manages to highlight the personal drama of Anna (inimica sibi; non gnara; trepidat) and arouses pathos with the interjection miserabile, the anaphora of non, and the iconic hyperbaton of the torn sails (laceris … uelis). This pathos can be traced back to Ovid’s storm scene in the Anna episode. He focuses on the personal drama of the human sufferers and the storm is not described “with the impersonal magnificence of an epic clash of warring elements”.89 This becomes clear from the instructions of the captain to use the oars that cannot be carried out by the crew, the prayer of the helmsman to the gods, and Anna’s envy of Dido’s death: tum primum Dido felix est dicta sorori (‘then for the first time Dido was called fortunate by her sister’, Fast. 3.597). Anna’s wish to have died with Dido (8.66) corresponds with Anna’s envy of Dido and other dead women in Ovid (Fast. 3.597–598),90 which can be traced back to Aeneas’ envy of Trojan war victims (A. 1.94–97).91 Silius follows Ovid both in focussing on the personal suffering of Anna and in likening her to Aeneas.
Anna is also cast as her sister Dido; she, too, has fled her country and made a sea journey from Tyre to Carthage, as was narrated right after the prooemium of the Punica:
Pygmalioneis quondam per caerula terrispollutum fugiens fraterno crimine regnumfatali Dido Libyes appellitur orae. (1.21–23)
Once from the land of Pygmalion over the sea, Dido fled thekingdom polluted by the crime of her brother and was caston the fated shore of Libya.
These verbal reminiscences show that we should read Anna’s journey also in the light of her famous sister. History repeats itself: again, Pygmalion forms a threat (Pygmaliona, 8.64), again a Carthaginian woman lands on the coast of a foreign country as ordained by fate.92 The antonomasia Sidonis (8.70 = Fast. 3.649) for Anna also evokes Dido, who was called thus by Ovid (Met. 14.80) and Sidonia by Virgil (A. 1.446 and 9.266).93 Anna’s situation is perhaps even worse: the recasting of the juxtaposition Dido Libyes into Sidonis in Latia underlines that Anna arrives not only in foreign, but also in hostile territory.94 Also the change of ap-pellitur orae into ex-pulit oras is significant. Whereas appello is the usual verb for ships landing on a shore, expello is stronger, implying shipwreck: the sea ‘expels’ the ship from the sea and drives it to the shore.95 The verb expello therefore also underlines Anna’s status as an exile:96 she has been forced to leave both Carthage and Cyrene and is now forced to continue her life in Italy, the realm of the archenemy.
The narrator of the Punica usually reserves the interjection miserabile for pitiful situations of the Romans or their allies.97 His sympathy for Anna recalls especially his emotional description of the Roman troops at the Trebia, who were driven to the banks of the river by Hannibal:
palantes agitad ripas , miserabile, Poenusimpellens trepidos fluuioque immergere certat. (4.571–572)
The Punic leader drives the wandering troops to the riverbanks (a miserable sight!), pushing them as they trembled, and he strives to drown them in the river.
Juno summons the river to attack the Roman troops, after which the Roman soldiers drown—almost as if it were an epic sea storm.98 Like the Roman soldiers, Anna is pushed (agit ~ agitur, 8.65; impellens ~ expulit, 8.68) in the direction of a waterfront (ad ripas ~ in … oras, 8.68) and is trembling with fear (trepidos ~ trepidabat, 8.70).
The only other time that the narrator uses the interjection miserabile for a Carthaginian is at the end of the Punica, for Hannibal. Once the general had watched the Roman troops being slaughtered at the Trebia, Po, Lake Trasimene and Cannae, but now he sees his own soldiers die under the hands of the Romans at Zama: miserabile uisu (17.602). Soon after this pitiful sight, he leaves the battle-field as a fugitive: sic rapitur paucis fugientum mixtus (‘then he hurries away, joining a few fugitives’, 17.616). As a bridge passage between Book 4 and 17, Anna’s flight foreshadows that Hannibal and his troops will have to suffer the same fate as the Romans did before at Trebia.
8 Anna Meets Aeneas
On the beach of Latium, Anna suddenly (ecce autem)99 sees Aeneas and his son Ascanius walking in her direction. She gets frightened when she recognizes the Trojan and holds the knees of his son as a suppliant. Aeneas manages to comfort her and brings her to his palace:
ecce autem Aeneas sacro comitatusIulo ,iam regni compos, noto sese ore ferebat.qui terrae defixam oculos et multa timentemac deinde allapsam genibus lacrimantis Iuliattollit mitique manu intra limina ducit. (8.71–75)
But look, Aeneas, accompanied by sacred Iulus, already master of the kingdom, was approaching, whose face she knew. In great fear she keeps her eyes to the ground and then falls down at the knees of Iulus who was crying. He raises her up and brings her with gentle hand inside the palace.
We are looking at the scene through the eyes of Anna, who recognizes Aeneas’ face (noto … ore). So in an environment that she does not know at all (non gnara) she suddenly notices a familiar face. Instead of comforting her, however, this sight frightens her, precisely because she knows what he is capable of. For the narratees, the arrival of Aeneas is not so surprising, as Ovid had included it in his version, too. The word noto can therefore also be read as a metapoetical signpost: the narratees already know Aeneas is arriving.
There are, again, some divergences from the version in the Fasti, in which Aeneas was ‘accompanied by Achates alone’ (solo comitatus Achate, Fast. 3.603).100 The recognition happened the other way round. Aeneas recognizes Anna first, but cannot believe his eyes; Achates affirms what he thinks: ‘while Aeneas thinks this to himself, Achates cries out: “It’s Anna!” ’ (dum secum Aeneas, ‘Anna est!’ exclamat Achates, Fast. 3.607).101 The change from the war companion Achates to the son Iulus in Punica 8 offers opportunity for an emotional scene: Anna grasps his knees as a gesture of supplication and he himself starts crying.102
The first two lines of this scene stress the royal status of Aeneas. He has already become ruler of a new kingdom (iam regni compos), only two years after he had left Carthage; in Ovid, at least five years have passed when Aeneas and Anna meet. Moreover, Ovid explains Aeneas’ rise to power by his marriage with Lavinia: iam pius Aeneas regno nataque Latini | auctus erat, populos miscueratque duos (‘by now dutiful Aeneas had been enriched with the kingdom and the daughter of Latinus, and had blended the two peoples’, Fast. 3.601–602). The coast they are standing on is labelled with the adjective dotali (‘as a dowry’, Fast. 3.603). In Silius, regni compos is vague and neither Lavinia nor the mingling of Trojans and Latins are mentioned, as if the war between Trojans and Latins had not taken place. In addition, the presence of Ascanius also stresses “the continuation of Aeneas’ family and leadership”.103 By making Iulus his father’s companion, his role as successor is alluded to, as Jupiter promised to Venus in Aeneid 1 and as was actualized in Metamorphoses 14.104 The epithet sacer (as substitute of the Ovidian solus) stresses his status as future ruler.105
From line 75 it is clear that Aeneas is benevolent to Anna. He helps her up (attollit) and leads her right away into his palace (intra limina). The collocation mitique manu marks the kindness of Aeneas towards Anna, but is also reminiscent of her former host Battus (mitis Battus, 8.58). Once again, Anna meets a king that receives her with his hospitality:
At the same time, Anna is reminiscent of Virgil’s Aeneas. When the Trojan leaves the cave of the Sibyl, after having consulted her with Achates, he walks out with a similar posture: Aeneas maesto defixus
In his palace, Aeneas asks Anna to tell about the fate of her sister: tum discere maesta | exposcit cura letum infelicis Elissae (‘then with sorrowful anxiety he asks to learn the death of unhappy Elissa’, 8.77–78). Scholars have noted the contrast with the explicit prohibition of Ovid’s Aeneas to narrate Dido’s fate: ne refer (‘do not tell!’, Fast. 3.619).112 The Silian Aeneas, however, sees an opportunity to hear the story from an eyewitness. In the underworld, he had already asked the ghost of Dido (infelix Dido, A. 6.456)113 similar questions (A. 6.456–458). There, as we already observed, Aeneas got no answer from Dido. This is his second chance to hear the story. Unlike her sister, Anna is willing to do so, although she has difficulties controlling her emotions:
cui sic verba trahens largis cum fletibus Annaincipit et blandas addit pro tempore uoces: … (8.79–80)
And so Anna, dragging out words with abundant tears, begins and adds flattering words for the occasion: …
Her introduction as narrator is designed along the same lines as Aeneas in Dido’s palace. When the queen asked him who he was, he also had difficulties controlling his emotions: ille | suspirans imoque trahens a pectore uocem (‘he sighed and draw out his voice from the depth of his breast’, A. 1.370–371).114 In Ovid’s Fasti, Aeneas starts crying when speaking to Anna, because she reminds him of Dido: flet tamen admonitu motus, Elissa, tui (‘but he weeps, moved, Elissa, by being reminded of you’, Fast. 3.612).115 The verb that indicates she is beginning to narrate (incipit) echoes the introduction of Aeneas’ narrative in Carthage (incipiam, A. 2.13).116 Whereas Ovid attributes only one line of direct speech to Anna, in the Punica she becomes a full-fledged epic narrator, following in the footsteps of the Virgilian Aeneas.
As a narrator Anna is cast as Aeneas, but at the same time Dido lurks in the background. The Carthaginian exile is using “an appropriately non-aggressive style”, as she is seeking asylum from Aeneas.117 Walter sees in pro tempore an echo of Dido’s request to Anna to mitigate Aeneas: sola uiri mollis aditus et tempora noras (‘you alone know the right time for getting easy access to the man’, A. 4.423).118 Whereas she failed to convince the Trojan guest in the Aeneid, she now has a second chance to fulfil her role of mediator. The flattering words (blandas … uoces) that Anna is using echo Juno’s address of Anna in the main narrative: affatur uoce et blandis hortatibus implet (‘she addresses her with the following words and fills her with flattering exhortations’, 8.29). At the same time, they call to mind Dido. Venus in her complaint to Jupiter claimed that the queen kept Aeneas hostage by using seductive language: nunc Phoenissa tenet Dido blandisque moratur | uocibus (‘now Phoenician Dido keeps and retains him with her flattering words’, A. 1.670–671).119 Anna seems to have learned the trick of talking seductively from her sister. The same phrase might yet also allude to a scene from the second book of Naevius’ Bellum Poenicum, where someone asks Aeneas to tell his story:
blande et docte percontat, Aenea quo pactoTroiam urbem liquerit (Blänsdorf fr. 20 = Morel fr. 23)
She inquires flatteringly and skilfully, under which
circumstances Aeneas had left the city of Troy.
The subject of the main sentence might well have been Dido, but some have suggested that it also could be Anna.120 Either way, the Silian narrator seems to hint at the possibility of an amorous relation between Aeneas and Anna. Blandus is a word that is a generic marker of elegy.121 It prepares the narratees for the elegiac nature of Anna’s ensuing narrative and the mirroring between Anna in Punica 8 and Dido in Aeneid 1 and 4.
9 First Narrative of Anna: Dido’s Demise
From here onwards, Anna takes on the role of epic narrator, like Aeneas did in Aeneid 2–3. As we have seen above, this is a departure from the Fasti, in which Aeneas explicitly discouraged her to tell her sister’s story once again. In the Aeneid, Anna’s role as narrator is confined as well. Her speech to Aeneas, for example, is only mentioned by the primary narrator, but not actually quoted in direct speech (A. 4.437–440).
The primary narratees of the Punica of course know the story of Dido’s suicide from Aeneid 4. Earlier scholars have therefore judged this narrative as a needless rehearsal of a Virgilian narrative, which Ovid wisely avoided. Silius could simply not resist to handle this episode at length due to his excessive veneration for the Great Master.122 From a narratological (and metapoetical) point of view, however, the story fits in well. Anna’s secondary narratee Aeneas may know already the outcome of the story (he has seen the ghost of Dido in the underworld), but he does not yet know how it all came about, as Dido had refused to answer his questions:
infelix Dido, uerus mihi nuntius ergouenerat exstinctam ferroque extrema secutam?funeris heu tibi causa fui? (Virg. A. 6.456–458)
Unhappy Dido, did I then receive a true message that you died and that you sought death by the sword? Ah, was I the cause of your funeral?
So finally, Anna provides him here with an answer. The story is also interesting for the primary narratees of the Punica, as they might expect Anna to shed her own light on this famous story: as an eyewitness she will narrate what happened back in Carthage, a story that has been touched upon only very briefly by the primary narrator (8.50–53). The narrative leaves the primary narratees in suspense as to how exactly it happened and what the differences may be with other accounts of Dido’s death, primarily Aeneid 4.123
Anna starts her narrative with a captatio benevolentiae, acknowledging the divine parentage of Aeneas and stressing his importance for Dido’s reign and life. This turns out to be a dubious honour, as she calls upon Dido’s death and pyre as witnesses:
nate dea, solus regni lucisque fuistigermanae tu causa meae.mors testis et ille(heu cur non idem mihi tum!) rogus. (8.81–83)
Son of a god, you alone were the cause of my sister’s reign and life. Her death is my witness, as is that pyre. (Ah, why not the same pyre for me at that time!)
The form of address nate dea is epic in tone, as commentators have noted. In the Aeneid, Aeneas is addressed in this way eleven times.124 Dido calls him thus in A. 1.615, but when it is clear that he will sail off to Italy, she denies his divine parentage: nec tibi diua parens (‘you have no divine parent’, A. 4.365). Anna seems to ‘repair’ this insult by properly addressing Aeneas. The rest of the sentence is, however, an accusation in disguise: by stating that Aeneas was the reason for Dido to live, it also means that he was responsible for her death and so it positively answers Aeneas’ last question in the underworld:
The question of causation also evokes the get-together of Aeneas and Dido in the cave: ille dies primus
Anna’s words recall another Callimachean-Ovidian narrative in the Punica on the aetiology of the Pyrenees.129 When Hercules had raped the princess Pyrene, she fled to the mountains and was torn to pieces by wild animals. The primary narrator accuses Hercules of being responsible for her miserable death: sine uirginitate reliquit | Pyrenen,
In the ensuing lines, Anna casts her sister Dido as an elegiac heroine, as the primary narrator of the Punica had done before (see section 5 above). Already in the Aeneid, the Carthaginian queen shows similarities with Ariadne and Medea. In general, Book 4 is considered as the most elegiac part of Virgil’s epic.130 Anna’s narrative in the Punica highlights these elegiac elements already present in the Virgilian story:131
ora uiderepostquam est ereptum miserae tua, litore seditinterdum, stetit interdum, uentosque secutainfelix oculismagno clamore uocabatAenean comitemque tuae se imponere solamorabat paterere rati. (8.83–88)
After the possibility was taken away from the miserable woman to see your face, she sat on the shore sometimes, she stood there sometimes and following the winds with her eyes the unhappy one called with a loud cry “Aeneas!” and begged that you would allow her alone to be taken aboard of your ship as a companion.
The conjunction postquam picks up the same word that the primary narrator used for the time after Aeneas’ departure (postquam, 8.50); the moment she lost sight of Aeneas (ora uidere … est ereptum) coincides with the loss of her hope (spes abruptae, 8.51).132 Whereas the primary narrator cut the story short and immediately jumped to Dido’s death on the pyre (8.51–53), Anna keeps on narrating what happened after Aeneas’ departure. Her sister repeatedly (interdum … interdum)133 paid visits to the beach (litore). There she would in vain scream his name to the empty sea, wishing that he had taken her with him.
The beach is the stereotypical space where abandoned heroines follow their betraying lovers with their eyes.134 In the Aeneid, Dido was also said to be looking towards the sea, but from a watchtower (e speculis, A. 4.586), and she did not visit the beach itself, which she observed to be abandoned: litoraque et uacuos sensit … portus (‘she noticed that the coasts and ports were empty’, A. 4.587). Another difference is that she could still see the sails of the Trojan ships: uidit et aequatis classem procedere uelis (‘and she saw the fleet move on with even sails’, A. 4.588). In Anna’s account Dido did not catch sight of Aeneas: she could only stare in the direction in which he sailed off (uentos secuta | … oculis).
Anna’s Dido recalls Ariadne specifically, the “elegiac heroine par excellence”,135 which is marked by a combinatorial allusion to Catullus’ Carmen 64 and Ovid’s Heroides 10. Ariadne, too, looked towards the sea from the beach where she was left behind:
The shouting of the absent lover’s name is another topos of elegiac farewell scenes.138 Dido’s calling of Aeneas’ name is, again, reminiscent of Ariadne shouting to Theseus on the beach (e.g. Catullus 64.132–133).139 Anna’s words echo Heroides 10:
Dido’s wish to be taken aboard is yet another reminiscence of Ariadne. In the Heroides she says that Theseus’ crew is not complete (Ov. Ep. 10.36); and in Catullus the Minoan princess even went so far as wishing that she could be Theseus’ slave (Cat. 64.160–163). Verbally, Dido’s wish in Anna’s narrative rather recalls a similar impossible suggestion she made in the Aeneid: sola fuga nautas comitabor ouantis? (‘shall I alone accompany the exultant sailors in their flight?’, A. 4.543).140 In Virgil this question is part of Dido’s monologue intérieur when she is alone at night, while Anna’s Dido is begging Aeneas in public to join him (although he is already out of sight). The words infelix and orabat foreshadow the alternative of accompanying Aeneas: death. The combination of these words is reminiscent of Dido’s wish when she found out that Aeneas would leave her: infelix … Dido | mortem orat (‘unhappy Dido wishes death’, A. 4.450–451).
Anna stresses Dido’s obsession by repeating a similar scene at the beach somewhat later in her narrative: iam tecta domumque | deserit et
This elegiac Dido mirrors two other abandoned women in the Punica: Hannibal’s Spanish wife Imilce and Regulus’ wife Marcia. The former is expelled from her native country to Carthage, when Hannibal is about to begin his march on Italy. The farewell scene takes place on the coast, where she is put on a ship: steterant in litore (‘they stood on the coast’, 3.128). She asks why Hannibal does not want to have her as a member of his army: mene,
Marcia was standing on the coast when her husband Regulus was voluntarily taken back to Carthage, where he would receive the death penalty. Her behaviour is very much like Dido’s: tum uero infelix mentem furiata dolore | exclamat fessas tendens ad litora palmas (‘then the unhappy one cried in her frantic state of mind, while stretching her tired hands towards the coast’, 6.514–515). She, too, wants to be his ‘companion in punishment and death’ (comitem poenaeque necisque, 6.500) and join him in his misery: ‘this alone, husband, this alone I beg: may you allow me to suffer with you all the toils’ (hoc
In the next scene Anna takes us to Dido’s bedroom, where the queen went after her visits to the beach. She refrained from touching the spousal bed, but obsessively fondled images of Iulus and Aeneas.
mox turbida anhelumre ttulit in thalamos cursumsubitoque tremoresubstititet sacrum timuit tetigisse cubile.inde amensnunc sideream fulgentis Iulieffigiem fouet amplexu,nunc totare pentead uultus conuersa tuos ab imagine pendetconqueriturque tibi et speratre sponsare mitti. (8.88–94)
She hurried back to her room, gasping in her confusion, and with a sudden quivering, she stood still and feared to touch the sacred bed. Now she frantically fondles with her embrace the starry image of shiny Iulus, the next moment she turned completely to your face and hangs upon your image, making complaints to you and wishing that answers would be returned.
Like her visits to the beach, this was a repetitive action, as the iteration of the suffix re-, the polysyndeton (-que, et, -que), and the gemination of nunc underline. The whole scene breathes Dido’s restlessness and indecisiveness.149
At the same time, the suffix re- is (again) a marker of intertextuality.150 The embracing of Aeneas’ image recalls the beginning of Aeneid 4, where Dido listens in adoration to Aeneas’ stories all over again: Iliacosque
The spousal bed and the image of Aeneas also occur at the end of Aeneid 4, but in a totally different context: they are tokens of Aeneas that end up on the pyre: notumque cubile | conspexit (‘and she looked upon the familiar bed’, A. 4.648–649); effigiemque toro locat (‘and she places his image on the bed’, A. 4.508).152 In Anna’s account, Dido will also gather memorials of Aeneas on the pyre: congessit in atram | cuncta tui monumenta pyram et non prospera dona (‘she piled up all memorials and ill-starred gifts of you on the black pyre’, 8.102–103). In 8.88–94, however, she still shows almost religious awe for the bed they shared: she does not even dare to touch it, as if it were a sacred object (sacrum timuit tetigisse cubile). Iulus is cast as a god-like figure: his effigy is called sidereus, an adjective with divine connotations. In the Punica only the souls of the loyal Saguntines that committed suicide (2.696) and the son of emperor Domitian (3.629) receive this epithet.153 The boy himself is called fulgentis, which is an allusion to the ominous flame that appeared on his head back in Troy (A. 2.682–686).154 Dido’s embrace of Iulus’ image is paralleled with Anna’s supplication at the knees of ‘sacred Iulus’ (sacro … Iulo, 8.71) at the beach of Latium (8.74), which forges again a link between the two sisters.155
Dido embracing the images of Iulus and Aeneas also calls to mind the last night together of Pompey and his wife Cornelia, right before she is sent off to Lesbos, as Lucan narrates in Bellum Civile 5. The intratextual parallels with Imilce and Marcia, who are also modelled after Lucan’s Cornelia, have already prepared for this intertextual allusion. Dido’s fondling of the images recalls Cornelia embracing her husband: fouet amplexu grauidum Cornelia curis | pectus (‘Cornelia hugs in her embrace his breast weighed down with troubles’, Luc. 5.735–736). Pompey remains resolved to send her away in safety, after which she decides no longer to postpone their separation: exiluit stratis amens tormentaque nulla | uult differre mora.
The last part of Anna’s first narrative (8.98–103) deals with the magic ritual that Dido performed with the help of Massylian priests. Again, her words correspond with a passage from Aeneid 4, in which Dido announces her plans for these magic rites to Anna (A. 4.478–498).159 In the Punica, we see this scene through the eyes of Anna, who was a witness of the actual event, as she states explicitly (uidi, 8.102). Therefore, it also draws attention to the fact that both Aeneas and the primary narratees have no direct knowledge of these events.160 Anna gives her own assessment of the magical rites we already know from the Aeneid and describes them in very negative terms:
ad magicas etiam fallax atque improba gentisMassylae leuitas descendere compulit artes.heu sacri uatum errores! dum numinanoctis eliciunt spondentque nouis medicamina curis,quod uidi decepta nefas! congessit in atramcuncta tui monumenta pyram etnon prospera dona. (8.98–103)
The deceitful and wicked shallowness of the Massylian people compelled her to descend to magic arts. Ah, these accursed delusions of priests! While they called up the deities of the night and promise a medicine for her recent pains, what an impiety did I, who was deceived, see! She piled up all memorials and ill-starred gifts of yours on the black pyre.
The Massylian priests promise a cure for Dido’s state of mind, but their words are deceitful and have no real value (fallax atque improba … leuitas).161 In fact, they are abject from both a moral (improba) and divine (nefas) point of view. The paradoxical exclamation heu sacri uatum errores brings this to the fore: the priests are prophets (uates) that should have knowledge of the future, but in reality they stray from the right path (errores).162 Anna’s negative judgement of the seers is a specific interpretation of a much-disputed clause in the Aeneid. When the Virgilian Dido had the entrails of a victim inspected, the Virgilian narrator inserts an apostrophe: heu, uatum ignarae mentes (A. 4.65). This can be taken as a critique either of human ignorance of the future and specifically that of Dido (‘ah, minds who are ignorant of seers’), or of the seers themselves (‘ah, ignorant minds of seers’).163 The rituals she performs do not give her peace of mind, just as the Massylian priests in Anna’s narrative are unable to cure her pangs of love. Anna follows the second line of interpretation and accuses the seers for having misled her sister.164
While accusing the priests, Anna tries to downplay the role of both her sister and herself. They pushed her to perform these rites (compulit), which was in fact misleading, as fallax and errores indicate.165 In the Aeneid, Dido claimed that she turned to magic unwillingly, not because any priest has forced her, but because Aeneas has rejected her: magicas
Anna admits that she was fooled (decepta) too, and in addition states that she was only a bystander watching the rites to be performed (uidi), while her sister actually acted upon the advice of the priests to build a pyre for burning all gifts of Aeneas (congessit). These words, again, echo Dido’s plans in the Aeneid: abolere nefandi | cuncta uiri monimenta iuuat (‘it pleases to destroy all memorials of that impious man’, A. 4.497–498). But whereas Dido thought it would be helpful to burn all memories of Aeneas, whom she calls impious, Anna calls the ritual itself impious (nefas). Where Dido was relying on northern African magic, Anna distances herself from these rites, voicing a much more Roman point of view.166 Again we can understand these changes when we realize that she is talking to Aeneas.
Anna’s account of these dark rituals also recalls the ceremony that a young Hannibal attended in Punica 1, right before his father made him swear his famous oath of eternal hatred of the Romans. There, too, a priestess from the same Massylian tribe was involved: euhantis Massylae (‘the Massylian priestess raving in her frenzy’, 1.101). She had invoked the gods of the underworld:
The two scenes are interconnected on a thematic level, too. The ritual in Book 1 marks Hannibal’s transition from a boy to the avenger of Dido. He takes over Dido’s lust for revenge, which results in his ‘wicked virtue’ (improba uirtus, 1.58), mirroring the wickedness (improba … leuitas, 8.98–99) of the Massylian priests in Anna’s account.167 He also inherits her destructive nature. When Hannibal sees depictions of the First Punic War on a temple in Liternum at the end of Punica 6, he orders his soldiers to set the temple on fire: in cineres monumenta date atque inuoluite flammas (‘give this monument to ashes and envelop it in flames’, 6.716). This final line of Book 6 mirrors Dido’s destruction of Aeneas’ memorials, which she had gathered on a pyre (monumenta, 8.103; same metrical sedes). The parallel also marks the uselessness of their destructive acts: just as Dido’s pyre could not blot out the memory of Aeneas, Hannibal, too, was unable to abolish the Roman victory of the First Punic War or prevent a second one.168
By mentioning Dido’s pyre and Aeneas’ gifts, Anna rounds off her narrative at exactly the same point where the primary narrator ended his short account of Dido’s death. Anna repeats his ‘black pyre’ (atram | … pyram, 8.51–52 = 8.102–103) in exactly the same metrical position. She also refers to the sword as a lethal gift: donum
10 Aeneas’ Narrative
Silius’ Aeneas, too, is cast as an elegiac lover in his speech to Anna, as has been observed.170 The primary narrator, introducing his speech, states that he is ‘struck again with sweet love’ (Aene
On a microlevel there are, however, differences. In the Aeneid, his oath had a grander register, as he swore upon the stars, gods and faithfulness. In the Punica, he swears upon his new land and Iulus:
tellurem hanc iuro, uota inter nostrafrequenter auditam uobis, iuro caput, Anna, tibiquegermanaeque tuae dilectum mitis Iuli (8.105–107)
I swear upon this land, which you have heard often when I made vows, I swear upon this head, Anna, of gentle Iulus, beloved by you and your sister.
The wording of his oath rather recalls the oath he made to Anna in the Fasti, where he swore upon Italy and the Penates:175
Anna, per hanc iuro, quam quondam audiresolebas tellurem fato prosperiore dari,perque deos comites, hac nuper sede locatos … (Ov. Fast. 3.613–615)
Anna, I swear by this land, which you once used to hear was given by a more favourable destiny, and by the gods who came with me, newly settled in this place …
The close resemblance also highlights the change Aeneas makes. In Ovid, Aeneas’ narratees might first expect he is swearing upon Dido (per hanc), only to be corrected by tellurem in the next line. In Silius, it is immediately clear that he swears upon Italy, but he surprisingly includes Iulus in the second part of his oath.176 The gods in Ovid are substituted by ‘gentle Iulus’ (mitis Iuli), who was loved by both Anna and Dido.177 This gives Aeneas’ oath a distinctly more elegiac touch than the one in the Fasti.178
Aeneas diminishes his own responsibility in leaving Carthage even more than in the Aeneid. According to Silius’ Aeneas, Mercury had threatened him and forcefully put him aboard his vessel. The god is even made responsible for an offshore wind: magna minatus | meque sua ratibus dextra imposuisset et alt
While the Silian Aeneas denies any responsibility, he emphasizes his distress over leaving Dido: respiciens aegerque animi tum regna reliqui | uestra (‘looking back and sorrowful in my soul I then left your kingdom’, 8.108–109).180 His feelings are similar to those of Dido after his departure. According to Anna she had a ‘sorrowful heart’ (aegram mentem, 8.118). Another example of the “emotionally charged atmosphere”181 in this scene is Aeneas’ suggestion that his relation with Dido was a marriage: he had left their bedroom (abscessem thalamo, 8.109), because Mercury forced him to; thalamus is a common metonym of marriage, which also features in Dido’s complaints after she was abandoned by Aeneas in Aeneid 4.182 By saying that he left their thalamus, Aeneas seems to acknowledge the marriage. At the same time, he claims that Mercury has forcefully taken him out of their relationship and frames his departure as a “personal tragedy”,183 much in line with Dido’s perspective in Aeneid 4.
Aeneas, however, rounds off his speech with a question that contains an accusation of both sisters:
sed cur (heu seri monitus!), cur tempore taliincustodito saeuire dedistis amori? (8.112–113)
But why (ah, too late are these warnings!), why did you both allow unguarded love to rage in such a time?
The second plural of dedistis means that Aeneas is not only talking here to Anna, but that he is also apostrophizing Dido.184 He imagines that both sisters were in great distress because of his departure (tempore tali).185 At the same time he blames Dido for not having curbed her fatal passion for him.186 The word incustoditus (‘unguarded’) seems to be an accusation primarily addressed to Anna: she should not have left her sister alone in her grief, because in that moment of inattention Dido took the opportunity to kill herself.187
Silius’ Aeneas shows more of his feelings than the hero of the Aeneid. But despite his gentler tone and use of words that suggest a marriage (thalamus), he in fact denies any responsibility for what happened. He accuses Mercury of having forcefully taken him away to Italy and suggests that both sisters let things get out of control.
11 Anna’s Second Narrative
Anna’s emotions are stirred up, probably by the accusations of Aeneas. She was already crying when she started speaking for the first time (uerba trahens largis cum fletibus Anna, 8.79), but now she can hardly speak anymore: uoluens uix murmur anhelum | inter singultus labrisque trementibus Anna (‘Anna [responds] hardly producing a panting murmuring between her sobs and quivering with her lips’, 8.114–115).188 She then continues to narrate Dido’s actual suicide. Her narrative is also an apology for her own role in it, as Aeneas has just accused her of not keeping an eye on Dido (incustodito … amori). Her narrative differs at several points from the canonical version of the event in Aeneid 4. Anna makes her own role greater and more rational, while continuing to cast Dido in the role of an elegiac heroine.
Anna opens her narrative with a description of an expiatory sacrifice she was performing to appease Pluto and Proserpina:
nigro forte Ioui, cui tertia regna laborant,atque atri sociae thalami noua sacra parabam,quis aegrammentem et trepidantia corda leuaretinfelix germana tori, furuasque trahebamipsa manu properans ad uisa pianda bidentes. (8.116–120)
I happened to be preparing strange sacrifices for the dark Jupiter, for whom the third realm labours, and for the companion of his dark bedroom; these had to mitigate the sorrowful and trembling heart of my sister, unhappy in love. I was hastily bringing black sheep with my own hand to avert my visions.
The ritual recalls Dido’s ‘strange sacrifices’ that were meant to ease her sorrows: sacra Ioui
In the Punica, Anna stresses that she is the only one performing this ritual (parabam, 8.117; trahebam, 8.119; ipsa manu properans, 8.120; oro … ac … purgor, 8.125), without any mention of Dido’s involvement.189 In fact, the sacrifices are an appeasement for the apparition of Sychaeus that Anna had in her sleep (ad uisa pianda, 8.120). She had heard him call Dido’s name three times and had seen his joyful appearance:
namque et per somnum dirus me impleuerat horrorterque suam Dido, ter cum clamore uocaratet laeta exsultans ostenderat ora Sychaeus. (8.121–123)
For a horrible fear had filled me in my sleep. Three times, three times Sychaeus had with a loud cry called Dido his own and had shown a joyful face while rejoicing.
Sychaeus claims Dido ‘as his own’ (suam) and is filled with joy, because he knows that his wife will join him soon. Sychaeus’ voice also appears in the Aeneid, where it comes out of the shrine dedicated to him in Dido’s palace: hinc exaudiri uoces et uerba uocantis | uisa uiri (‘from within [Dido] heard, it seemed, the voice and words of her husband calling’, A. 4.460–461).190 In the Punica, Anna, not Dido, hears Sychaeus’ voice and even sees him. Note the change in meaning of uisa from ‘it seemed’ to ‘visions’. Anna understands the words and expression of Sychaeus as being ominous and tries to prevent her sister’s death. In doing so, she—ironically—loses sight of her sister and thereby gives her the opportunity to kill herself.
Anna’s claim to have performed strange sacrifices (noua sacra) to dark gods (nigro Ioui; atri sociae thalami) seems paradoxical. In her previous narrative she had explicitly distanced herself from the magical rites that Dido and the Massylian priests had performed (8.98–102), which elicited similar deities (numina noctis, 8.100).191 The confession that she was also involved in such rituals makes sense for the question of responsibility: the sacrifice was an ultimate attempt to save Dido. Anna bounces back the responsibility to Aeneas, albeit implicitly. She does so by repeating words from his claim that he left Dido with a sorrowful mind (aegerque
Whereas the Virgilian Dido carefully plans her suicide, Anna portrays her sister’s actions as irrational. Again, the queen descended to the shore (ad litora, 8.126 ~ litore, 8.84)193 and even gave kisses to the sand where Aeneas’ had walked before:
illa cito passu peruecta ad litora mutaeoscula, qua steteras, bis terque infixit harenaedeinde amplexa sinu late uestigia fouit,ceu cinerem orbatae pressant ad pectora matres. (8.126–129)
She went with swift pace to the shore and gave two or three times kisses to the silent sand where you had been standing. Then she caringly embraced your footsteps, pressing it to her breasts, like mothers bereft of their children press their ashes to their chests.
The scene recalls Ariadne touching the traces that Theseus had left on their bed (tua … uestigia tango, Ov. Ep. 10.53). Anna has told before that Dido was embracing the images of Iulus and Aeneas (effigiem fouet amplexu, 8.92), but here she acts even more strikingly in that she presses sand to her breast. Dido acts as if a loved one has died, as she is compared with mothers caressing the ashes of their deceased children.194 Verbal echoes evoke a sinister comparison with Meleager’s family in the Metamorphoses. After the hero’s demise his mother commits suicide when she hears the news of her son’s death (Met. 8.531–532). Dido’s actions on the beach particularly recall the reaction of Meleager’s sisters:
dumque manet corpus, corpus refouentque fouentque.oscula dant ipsi, posito dant oscula lecto;post cinerem cineres haustos ad pectora pressant(Ov. Met. 8.537–539)195
While his corpse remains, they caress the corpse over and over again. They give him kisses and give kisses to the bier as it stands there; when he is ashes, they gather his ashes and press them to their chests.
The repetitive nature of their acts, in Ovid iconically evoked by verbal repetition (corpus, corpus; refouentque fouentque; oscula dant … dant oscula; cinerem cineres), returns in Anna’s account of Dido’s grief with the phrase bis terque (‘two or three times’, 8.127).
This collocation also has ominous connotations, as it recalls the aid of Tisiphone in the suicide of Saguntum’s nobles. After the Fury had set fire to the pyre and had helped a father kill his child with a sword, Tisiphone cracks her whip several times: impulit ensem | et dirum insonuit Stygio bis terque flagello (‘she pushes the sword and made two or three times a dire sound with her Stygian whip’, 2.615–616).196 The sword and pyre feature prominently in Dido’s death as well. The same word ensis is used twice in Anna’s narrative (8.148–149). Dido’s elevated pyre recalls that of Saguntum: euasit propere in
Dido’s caressing of the sand on the beach of Carthage also recalls Ovid’s Anna. In the Fasti, Anna presses the ashes of her sister (probably in an urn) to her mouth: cineres ter ad ora relatos | pressit (‘three times she took up the ashes and pressed it to her mouth’, Fast. 3.563–564).198 In the Aeneid, Anna finds her sister still alive and embraces her: semianimemque sinu germanam amplexa fouebat (‘[Anna] caresses her half-living sister, pressing her to her breast’, A. 4.686). In Anna’s narrative, Dido’s actions on the beach are therefore via an intertextual hint foreshadowing her imminent suicide.
In the next scene Dido sits on top of the pyre. She is wearing the dress that Aeneas had given her: hic Phrygiam uestem et bacatum induta monile (‘wearing a Phrygian dress and a pearl necklace’, 8.134).199 Although Anna was not present, she gives this report as if she were there, even expressing what her sister was thinking at that moment. Dido’s thoughts, according to Anna, go back to the day that she had received those gifts from Aeneas (8.135–136). In her mind she replays the festive meal and long night in which the Trojan hero told her his fortunes (8.136–138).200 With the same obsessiveness with which she had caressed the image of Iulus (amens, 8.91), she now looks at the harbour where Aeneas had left: in portus amens rorantia lumina flexit (‘frantically she turned her dewy eyes to the harbour’, 8.139). The last two words echo Dido’s accusatory question to Aeneas in the Aeneid: num lumina flexit? (‘did he ever turn his eyes [to me]?’, A. 4.369).201 While Aeneas did forsake Dido, she kept looking back to the place where he left her, even in the last moments of her life.202
12 Dido’s Final Words
At this point, Anna reports in direct speech Dido’s last words, presumably reported to her by others; Anna was not present herself. Only after the servants in the palace start lamenting does Anna learn what has happened to her sister: magnis resonant ululatibus aedes. | accepi infelix (‘the palace resounds with loud shrieks. I, unhappy, heard the news’, 8.151–152).203 The primary narratees of the Punica know Dido’s last words from the Aeneid (A. 4.651–662). Anna’s version partly overlaps with that account, but she also adapts her sister’s words for her secondary narratee Aeneas.
In the Aeneid, Dido starts her last monologue with an address to Aeneas’ sword: dulces exuuiae, dum fata deusque sinebat, |
‘di longae noctis, quorum iam numina nobismors instans maiora facit, precor,’ inquit ‘adesteet placidi uictos ardoreadmittite manes .Aeneae coniunx, Veneris nurus, ultamaritum ,uidi constructasnostrae Carthaginis arces.
‘Gods of the long night,’ she said, ‘whose divine powers seem greater for me now that death is approaching, help me, I pray, and kindly give access to a soul conquered by love. I, the wife of Aeneas, the daughter-in-law of Venus, avenging my husband, saw the citadel of my Carthage constructed. Now the shadow of my great body shall descend to you.’
On a microlevel there are notable differences, however. Instead of addressing Aeneas’ sword (dulces exuuiae), Dido calls upon the infernal gods (di longae noctis). This picks up Anna’s earlier description of the Massylian priests invoking similar chthonic gods: dum numina noctis | eliciunt (‘while they called up the deities of the night’, 8.100–101).205
In Anna’s version, Dido calls herself explicitly Aeneas’ wife (Aeneae coniunx). This echoes the words of the primary narrator, who called Aeneas her husband before (mariti, 8.53).206 By calling herself Venus’ daughter-in-law, Dido repeats a similar self-reference in her Ovidian letter to Aeneas (Heroides 7), in which she called upon the goddess as her mother-in-law for help: parce, Venus, nurui (‘spare, Venus, your daughter-in-law’, Ep. 7.31). Later in the same letter she refers to herself as his wife (coniugis, Ep. 7.69).207 At the same time, Dido positions herself as successor to Aeneas’ first wife Creusa, who called herself Veneris nurus in A. 2.787 (same metrical sedes). The same title pops up again in Book 13, where the Sibyl accompanies Scipio in the underworld and calls the ghost of Aeneas’ Italic wife Lavinia ‘the happy daughter-in-law of Venus’ (felix … Veneris nurus, 13.809). The epithet felix marks the stark contrast with Dido, who is almost by definition infelix (e.g. 8.86, 8.119).208
The last two words of 8.143 (ulta
Conspicuously absent in Anna’s version are Dido’s final words from the Aeneid (A. 4.659–662).212 In these lines, the queen utters her wish for revenge for Aeneas’ betrayal, as she could not take it herself: moriemur inultae (‘we shall die unavenged’, A. 4.659). She hopes that her death will be a bad omen for Aeneas. It seems as if the secondary narrator Anna deliberately silences her sister Dido in leaving this message out.213 She does so because of her own purposes with her speech. By giving a milder, less vindictive version of Dido’s last words Anna allows for a reconciliation with Aeneas, which actually takes place right after she has finished her narration (8.160–161).214 On a higher level, too, Anna’s omission is striking, as Dido’s curse is the central motive of the Second Punic War. In Anna’s version, Hannibal’s war is not foreshadowed by Dido’s final words.
13 Anna Tries to Become Dido (but Fails)
Anna cuts her sister’s words short and continues to describe the actual suicide, focusing again on the emotional role of the sword.215 Originally meant as a guarantee for their love, it actually became the murder weapon: ensem Dardanii quaesitum in pignus amoris (‘the sword, sought as a pledge of Dardanian love’, 8.149). Anna affirms the earlier references to the sword by the primary narrator (tum corripit ensem | certa necis, profugi donum exitiale mariti, 8.52–53) and her own qualification of the sword as part of ‘all memorials and ill-starred gifts of yours’ (cuncta tui monumenta … et non prospera dona, 8.103). Together, these references to the sword recall two scenes in Aeneid 5. In the first, Aeneas seeks friendship with Acestes by giving a bowl that once was given to Anchises: in magno
In the final lines of her second narrative, Anna focuses on how she herself dealt with the news of her sister’s suicide. In this section, she casts herself as her sister, starting with Dido’s epithet infelix:
accepi infelix dirisque exterrita fatis,ora manu lacerans, lymphato regia cursutecta peto celsosque gradus euadere nitor. (8.152–154)
I, unhappy, heard the news; terror-stricken by this dreadful fate I scratched my face with my hand and rushed with frenzied haste to the palace and struggled to climb the steep steps.
The haste with which Anna ascends the citadel of Carthage corresponds with the headlong return of Dido from the beach to the palace: tum rapido praeceps cursu resolutaque crinem | euasit propere in celsam … | … pyram (‘then headlong with rapid pace and loose hair she climbed hastily the high pyre’, 8.130–131).218 Both have the appearance of a mourner: Dido has loose hair, Anna a torn face. That Anna cannot match her sister is clear from her failed attempts at suicide.219 Three times she wants to fall upon the sword, but is unable to do so. Instead, she falls, alive, on the corpse of her sister:
ter diro fueram conata incumbere ferro,ter cecidiexanimae membris reuoluta sororis. (8.155–156)
Three times I had tried to fall on the dreadful sword,three times I fell rolling back on the body of my lifeless sister.
The gemination of ter echoes the three times that Anna heard Sychaeus call the name of Dido (dirus me impleuerat horror | terque suam Dido, ter cum clamore uocarat, 8.121–122). It was also three times that Dido embraced the sand on the beach of Carthage where Aeneas had sailed off (8.127). The farewell scene between Dido—still alive—and Anna in the Aeneid also resonates. Anna’s failed suicide recalls Dido ‘trying to lift her heavy eyes’ (grauis oculos conata attolere, A. 4.688) and her attempt to prop her body when Anna found her: ter sese attolens cubitoque adnixa leuauit, | ter reuoluta toro est (‘three times rising she struggled to prop herself on her elbow, three times she rolled back on the bed’, A. 4.690–691).220 The similarity in wording marks the contrast between the two sisters: while Dido could not lift herself (attolens, leuauit) as she was dying, Anna cannot throw herself on the sword (incumbere) because she apparently wants to live. That Anna fails to follow her sister’s example is also underlined by an echo of Ovid’s ‘Little Aeneid’: the phrase incumbere ferro recalls Dido’s suicide: incumbuit ferro (‘she fell upon the sword’, Met. 14.81).221
The failed suicide of Anna recalls two earlier scenes in the Punica that involved (the thought of) suicide. The first is the Saguntine Mopsus, who lost his two sons, both killed by Hannibal. The parallel is triggered by the repetition of the same numeral ter: he tries three times to use his bow to take revenge on Hannibal, but misses strength to carry out his plan: correptos arcus ter maesta mouit ab ira, | ter cecidit dextra (‘he grabbed his bow and bent it three times in his sad anger, three times his hand fell down’, 2.139–140). When he realizes that his attempts are in vain, he commits suicide by throwing himself from the tower of the city on top of his already fallen son: delapsus pondere prono | membra super nati
In this respect, Anna echoes the Roman general Scipio, who also had attempted suicide multiple times, in his case because of his fatally wounded father. When the elder Scipio had received a lethal blow in the Battle of the Ticinus, the son expressed the wish to die before him:
ter Marte sinistroiuratumque Ioui foedus conuentaque patrumSidonii fregere duces, atqueimpius ensis ter placitam suasit temerando rumpere pacem. (1.8–11)
Three times the Sidonian leaders break the treaty they had sworn by Jupiter and the agreements with the senators and three times the unholy sword incited them to break the peace they had approved by violating it.
The ‘dreadful sword’ (diro … ferro, 8.155), with which Dido committed suicide, results in three wars. While Anna was unable to fall on the sword, the ‘unholy sword’ (of Aeneas?) drove the Carthaginians to warfare.223 The Punic Wars are a retribution for Aeneas’ betrayal and Dido’s death, symbolized by the ‘the Phrygian sword’ (ensis Phrygius, 1.91) that lies at the feet of her statue—the very sword with which she committed suicide.224
Anna winds up her narrative by summarizing her flight from Carthage (8.157–159), repeating in brief what the primary narratees have already heard from the primary narrator in a slightly more extended version (8.54–68): the threat of Iarbas (8.54–56 ~ 8.157a), the stay at Cyrene (8.57–64 ~ 8.158), and the sea-storm that brought her to the coast of Latium (8.65–68 ~ 8.159):225
iamque ferebatur uicina per oppida rumor:arma parant Nomadum proceres et saeuus Iarbas. [157a]tum Cyrenaeam fatis agitantibus urbemdeuenio; hinc uestris pelagi uis appulit oris. (8.157–159)226
The rumour was already brought to neighbouring cities: the leaders of the Nomads and savage Iarbas prepare weapons. Then I came to the city of Cyrene, driven by Fate; thence the violence of the sea drove me to your shores.
Just like in the final lines of her first narrative, Anna echoes here several words from the primary narrator’s account, resulting again in a ring composition.227 On the primary level, the verbal repetition shows that Anna is giving a faithful eyewitness report of the events that happened.228
This ‘double’ presentation of events is also not redundant on the secondary level of narration: Anna wants to inform Aeneas about her fortunes, as she hopes that he will receive her as a guest in his palace. She confines herself to the basic outlines of her wanderings: it is important that Aeneas knows that she is a shipwrecked person, like he was before. She stresses their similarity. Importantly, the last words of her narration are almost identical to the last words of Aeneas’ narrative in the Aeneid: hinc me digressum uestris deus appulit oris (‘departing thence, a god drove me to your shores’ Verg. A. 3.715).229
14 Reconciliation Prevented
The less aggressive approach of Anna pays off: Aeneas is touched by her words and accepts her in his palace (8.160–161), just as Dido once received the Trojans.230 Anna lets go of her sorrows almost immediately: iamque omnes luctus omnesque e pectore curas | dispulerat (‘already she had driven away all her sorrows and all her cares from her heart’, 8.162–163). The repetition of omnes stresses the total evaporation of all of her troubles, something that her deceased sister had hoped Sychaeus would give her: curas cupiens aequare priores (‘willing to love me equally like before’, 8.147). Anna feels totally at ease in Aeneas’ palace and in no time (iam, again a gemination) feels herself part of her new home: Phrygiis nec iam amplius aduena tectis | illa uidebatur (‘and already she seems no longer a stranger under these Phrygian roofs’, 8.163–164). It almost seems as if Trojans and Carthaginians can live in peaceful coexistence. For a short moment, the primary narratees of the Punica can imagine an alternative course of history in which the Romans and Carthaginians will not become enemies.231 This idea finds its origin of course in Aeneid 1–4: Aeneas’ whole stay at Carthage toys with the idea of a different course of history.
As an example of pathetic fallacy, nature copies the peacefulness of the situation: tacito nox atra sopore | cuncta per et terras et lati stagna profundi | condiderat (‘the dark night had hidden everything on earth and the waters of the wide sea in a silent sleep’, 8.164–166). Narratees of the Aeneid, however, feel that something is wrong in these lines, when they recall a similar night at Carthage: nox erat et placidum carpebant fessa soporem | corpora per terras (‘it was night and tired bodies enjoyed a placid sleep on the earth’, A. 4.522–523).232 That peaceful night contrasted starkly with Dido’s anguished feelings; the queen was incapable of sleep and could not stop thinking of Aeneas’ betrayal.233
Night is also the time when Dido appears to Anna in Ovid’s version of the story: nox erat (Fast. 3.639). As expected, Dido steps in before things get too close between Anna and Aeneas. The difference between the two sisters can hardly be greater: Dido appears visibly affected in her dream: tristi … Dido
In warning Anna, Dido resembles several supernatural apparitions that Aeneas has experienced.238 The Trojan hero told Dido how a deeply mournful Hector visited him in his sleep, warning him to flee from Troy: in somnis ecce ante oculos
his, soror, in tectis longae indulgerequieti ,heu nimium secura, potes? nec, quaetibi fraudestendantur, quae circumstentdiscrimina cernis? (8.168–170)
Can you, sister, enjoy a long rest under these roofs, ah, all too comfortable? Do you not see the plots that are laid for you, the dangers that surround you?
The words with which Dido describes the crime that Lavinia is devising for Anna (dirumque nefas, 8.177) are also an echo of Mercury’s speech to Aeneas: illa
After these portentous words, Dido vanishes into the air—like Mercury in the Aeneid.241 Dido, who had been cast as an elegiac heroine in her sister’s narrative, has prevented with her Aeneid-style apparition and exit a possible reconciliation (or even elegiac romance) between her sister and Aeneas, bringing the story back on to its epic track. Like Mercury on behalf of Jupiter puts an end to the elegiac mora of Aeneas in Carthage, Dido makes now exactly the same epic move with regard to Anna in Italy—ironically with the opposite goal of harming the Trojan cause.242
15 Anna Decides to Flee
Anna’s perception of the situation changes drastically because of her sister’s intervention. This is signaled by the use of uideor: first she seemed to have become a Trojan (uidebatur, 8.164), but now she realizes that this was only daydreaming. After the lifelike apparition and speech of her sister in her dreams (uisa, 8.167), she wakes up, horrified by the vision of her sister (nouis … uisis, 8.185); her peaceful state of mind has changed to pure fear: Anna nouis somno excutitur perterrita uisis, | itque timor totos gelido sudore per artus (‘Anna is jolted awake, horrified by these unseen visions and a fear flows through all her limbs, together with a cold sweat’, 8.185–186).243 Anna’s physical reaction recalls Aeneas receiving warnings from the Penates: tum gelidus toto manabat corpore sudor (‘then a cold sweat flowed all over his body’, A. 3.173).244 Here, Anna fears to stay near the exact same Penates.
Anna decides to follow the advice of Dido and runs out into the open fields. Close verbal repetition recalls the same scene in Ovid’s account (8.185–189 ~ Fast. 3.643–646), but also highlights deviations from Ovid: Anna is put in a less elegiac and more epic light.245 Ovidian Anna is compared with a deer flying from wolves (Fast. 3.646), an allusion to the love-stricken Dido in A. 4.39. Silius’ Anna, however, runs through the fields ‘with swift feet’ (plantis pernicibus, 8.189), a clear echo of the warrior princess Camilla, who outran a horse on the battlefield (pernicibus … plantis, A. 11.718)—in turn a reminiscence of Achilles’ swiftness in Homer.246 As Lee rightly argues, this mirroring foreshadows the role of Anna as instigator of Hannibal in the epic main narrative (8.214–224).247
Anna’s subsequent immersion in the Numicius is described in less sexually aggressive terms than in Ovid. In Fasti 3.647, the Numicius is said to have ‘snatched her away with his swollen waves’ (hanc tumidis rapuisse … undis).248 In the Punica, the reception of Anna in the slow flowing water of the river seems to be more peaceful: harenoso … Numicius illam | suscepit gremio uitreisque abscondidit antris (‘the Numicius took her on his sandy lap and hid her in his vitreous caves’, 8.190–191).249 The hiding in a watery cave is—once again—reminiscent of the nymph Juturna; when she realizes that she cannot help her brother Turnus, she plunges into the water: se fluuio dea condidit alto (‘the goddess hides herself in her deep stream’, A. 12.886).250 But whereas Juturna hides herself in the water right before her brother is killed, Anna hides herself only to be summoned by Juno to incite her relative Hannibal. When Anna appears to him, her role as a second Juturna is confirmed: Hannibal addresses her just like Juno had addressed Juturna in the Aeneid: ‘nympha, decus generis, quo non sacratius ullum | numen’ ait ‘
When Aeneas’ men find out that Anna is no longer in her bedroom, they start looking for her:
… cum nullam Aeneadae thalamis Sidonida nactiet Rutulum magno errantes clamore per agrum … (8.193–194)
… when the men of Aeneas did not find the Sidonian in her bedroom. With loud shouting they wandered through the Rutulian country …
Again, verbal parallels echo the Ovidian version: Sidonis interea magno clamore per agros | quaeritur (‘meanwhile the Sidonian is sought for with loud shouting through the fields’, Fast. 3.649). The Silian narrator, however, makes several alterations that recall the flight of Aeneas himself. The word thalamus recalls Aeneas’ flight from Dido’s bedroom (abscessem thalamo, 8.109). The antithesis of Aeneadae and Sidonis reflects the irreconcilability between the two peoples that Anna has been reminded of by her sister: pax nulla Aeneadas inter
When the Trojans find Anna in the river Numicius, there is again the suggestion of reconciliation. The now divine Anna appears to the Trojans in a way that recalls the earlier apparition of Dido:
inter caeruleas uisa est residere sororesSidonis et placido Teucros affarier ore. (8.198–199)
The Sidonian seemed to be sitting amidst her cerulean sisters and to speak to the Teucrians with peaceful countenance.
Dido, too, seemed (uisa, 8.167) to speak to Anna (effundere uoces, 8.167), as Anna now in turn speaks to the Trojans. While Dido had a visibly vexed expression (tristi … Dido aegerrima uultu, 8.166), Anna looks upon Aeneas’ men with a ‘peaceful countenance’ (placido … ore), echoing the earlier conciliatory attitude of Aeneas towards Anna (placidumque animum, 8.160).252 She addresses Aeneas’ men “as if she has already forgotten her sister’s injunction”.253 Dido seems to be forgotten: the other nymphs of the Numicius are her new family (inter caeruleas … sorores). Thereupon the Trojans establish Anna’s cult:
ex illo primis anni celebrata diebusper totam Ausoniam uenerando numine culta est. (8.200–201)
From that day onwards her cult is celebrated on the first days of the year, when her divine power is venerated all over Ausonia.
These are the concluding lines of the digression that the narrator embarked upon in 8.43. He has given an answer to the question why a Carthaginian goddess is honoured in Roman temples.254 All’s well that ends well—but also this second reconciliation between Anna and the Trojans will not last forever, as we will learn soon in the main narrative.
In addition, the reference to Anna Perenna’s festival contains an implicit reference to civil war. The goddess ‘shares’ the Ides of March with the commemoration of Caesar’s assassination. Ovid’s final lines on this day in the Fasti mention Octavian’s revenge, referring to the Battle of Philippi: hoc opus, haec pietas, haec prima elementa fuerunt | Caesaris, ulcisci iusta per arma patrem (‘this was the task, this the duty, this the first lesson of Caesar [i.e. Octavian], to avenge his father through just warfare’, Fast. 3.709–710). Although the Silian text shows no obvious verbal reminiscences to these specific lines, the memory of civil war is closely connected to this day.255
16 Anna’s Incitation of Hannibal
The main narrative continues right from where the narrator left his narratees in 8.43:
hanc postquam in tristes Italum Saturnia pugnashortata est, celeri superum petit aethera curruoptatum Latii tandem potura cruorem. (8.202–204)
After the daughter of Saturn had urged her [i.e. Anna] to miserable battles against the Italians, she went back on her swift car to the heaven of the gods; finally, she was about to drink the blood of Latium that she had hoped for.
The connection between the main narrative and the preceding embedded narrative is stressed by the emphatic position of hanc, referring to the latter’s main character Anna, who is going to play the role of Juno’s messenger and Hannibal’s instigator of the war in the ensuing lines.256 The position of postquam recalls the opening line of the Anna episode: Iliaco postquam deserta est hospite Dido (‘after Dido had been abandoned by her Trojan guest’, 8.53). The repetition of this conjunction forges a causal link between Aeneas’ deeds in the past and the upcoming Battle of Cannae.
Juno goes back to heaven, knowing that she will have her way. Her wish for blood recalls Hannibal’s thirst of blood: penitusque medullis | sanguinis humani flagrat sitis (‘deep in his marrow he burns with thirst for human blood’, 1.59–60).257 Anna acts immediately upon the orders of Juno and goes to her fellow Carthaginian Hannibal: diua deae parere parat magnumque Libyssae | ductorem … petebat (‘the deity prepares to obey the goddess and goes to the great leader of Libya’, 8.205). Her reaction again recalls Juturna getting instructions from Juno (Saturnia Iuno, A. 12.156) to help her brother Turnus before his final battle with Aeneas; the opening words of 8.205 (diua deae) are a clear echo of A. 12.139, where we find the same collocation (diua deam).258 Juno leaves Juturna in great distress: sic exhortata reliquit | incertam et tristi turbatam uulnere mentis (‘after having urged her thus, [Juno] leaves her behind uncertain and troubled with a sad wound in her mind’, A. 12.159–160).259 Anna, however, does not show any signs of misery or uncertainty; the battles that she will stir will be miserable for the Italians (in tristes Italum … pugnas)—the focalization of the primary narrator. Rather, her hands-on mentality recalls Aeneas after having received orders from Mercury to leave Carthage: ille patris magni parere parabat | imperio (‘he prepared to obey the command of the great father [i.e. Jupiter]’, A. 4.238–239).260
Her kinsman Hannibal is, by contrast, anxious and is worrying about the vicissitudes of war: incertos rerum euentus bellique uolutans | anxia ducebat uigili suspiria mente (‘he was pondering the uncertain outcomes of events and war and drew anxious breath while his mind was awake’, 8.208–209).261 Anna addresses Hannibal in a friendly way in order to relieve his mind: cui dea sic dictis curas solatur
In her speech to Hannibal (8.211–224), the nymph ticks all the boxes that Juno has ordered her to do. First, she tells him to let go of his cares, as Juno had instructed her: insanos curarum comprime fluctus (‘suppress the raging flood of his anxieties’, 8.32):
quid tantum ulterius, rex o fortissime gentisSidoniae, ducis cura aegrescente dolorem? (8.211–212)
Why are you prolonging your sadness any longer and let your cares grow, bravest king of the Sidonian people?
Anna addresses Hannibal as king (which he is not) by way of flattering. At the same time, she reminds him of Carthage’s Sidonian origins; in the preceding narrative Anna herself has been called Sidonis by the primary narrator (8.70; 8.193; 8.199), in turn recalling Dido in the Aeneid.263 The enjambment of Sidoniae stresses Carthage’s origin as a Phoenician colony and therefore Hannibal’s blood relation with both Sidonian women. Shortly later, Anna stresses these ties more explicitly: ego
Anna starts her speech with a rhetorical question, which recalls the similar opening of Dido’s speech to Anna (8.168–172); whereas Anna was too comfortable in Aeneas’ palace, Hannibal is too anxious to confront the Romans; a similarity is that both have to be reminded of Carthage’s enmity with the Trojans/Romans. Like Dido has assured her sister that her message was not a vain dream (ne falsa putes haec fingere somnum, 8.178), Anna emphasizes to Hannibal that she is truly sent by the Olympian gods: me tibi, ne dubites, summi matrona Tonantis | misit (‘lest you are in doubt, the wife of the highest Thunderer has sent me to you’, 8.219–220). Anna even implies that Jupiter is supporting her mission by stressing the matrimonial link between Juno and the supreme god.265 The reference to these gods has to convince Hannibal of the value and truth of her words.266
Anna assures Hannibal that he should not fear Fabius anymore, as he is no longer consul (8.216–217 ~ 8.33–34) and has to engage battle with Varro, who is called ‘another Flaminius’: cumque alio tibi Flaminio sunt bella gerenda (‘you have to fight wars with another Flaminius’, 8.218).267 She suggests that the upcoming battle will be a repetition of Hannibal’s victory at Lake Trasimene, as Juno had predicted to the nymph in 8.38. At the same time, Anna makes clear that the claim of the Roman officer Minucius that Hannibal had to fight with Fabius holds no truth. Minucius had apostrophized Hannibal in his speech to Fabius, in the presence of the Roman army: cum solo tibi iam Fabio sunt bella gerenda (‘you have to fight wars now with Fabius and him alone’, 7.745). Anna makes clear that Hannibal does not have to fear Fabius’ tactics anymore.
Her address of Hannibal as ‘bravest king of the Sidonian people’ echoes Aeneas’ apostrophe of Diomedes: o Danaum fortissime gentis | Tydide (‘son of Tydeus, bravest of the Greek people’, A. 1.96–97). This reference to Diomedes subtly foreshadows the Battle of Cannae, a place where the Greek hero allegedly settled after the Trojan war.268 In her final words Anna orders him explicitly to move his army to Apulia:
haud mora sit; rapido belli rape fulmina cursu,celsus Iapygios ubi se Garganus inagros explicat. haud longe tellus; huc dirige signa.haec, ut Roma cadat, sat erit uictoria Poenis. (8.222–224a)269
Let there be no delay; take up the thunderbolts of war with great haste where the high Garganus unfolds itself into the Iapygian fields; that land is not far, lead your standards there. This victory will be enough for the Carthaginians, resulting in Rome’s fall.
The upcoming battle is a revenge for Aeneas’ betrayal of Dido. Words that recall her suicide are echoed in Anna’s words to Hannibal: Dido climbed ‘with great haste’ (rapido … cursu, 8.130) ‘the high pyre’ (in celsam … pyram, 8.131–132), as Anna had earlier told Aeneas; Hannibal should now move his army with a similar speed to a highrising area.
Anna’s command of course also echoes Juno’s words:
ne desit fatis ad signa mouenda.ipsa adero. tendat iamdudum in Iapyga campum.huc Trebiae rursum et Thrasymenni fata sequentur. (8.36–38)
Let him not fall short of his fate in moving his standards. I myself will be present. Let him immediately march to the Iapygian field. There the fate of Trebia and Trasimene will follow him again.
Like in her prophecy in Book 1 (campumque … | … Iapyga, 1.50–51), Juno does not predict the future beyond the Battle of Cannae.270 If line 224a is authentic, Anna, however, adds the (false) prediction that the Battle of Cannae will cause the downfall of Rome and result in the final victory for the Carthaginians. Anna uses similar words as Fabius did when he stressed the perilous situation of the Romans to his soldiers: una, ut debellet, satis erit uictoria Poeno (‘one more battle will be enough for the Carthaginian to finish the war’, 7.233).271 Once more, Anna uses hyperbolic language to persuade Hannibal.
The haste that Hannibal should make corresponds with Juno’s wishes and contrasts with the delaying tactics of Fabius. Anna’s stress on haste is an indication that the war is about to take its course again, just like the main narrative is resumed after the long aetiological story of Anna.
Earlier in her speech, Anna had already ordered Hannibal to make haste: eia, age, segnes | rumpe moras, rape Marmaricas in proelia uires (‘come on, end these sluggish delays, take your Marmaricans to battle’, 8.214–215). The words recall Mercury’s admonition to Aeneas (heia age rumpe moras, A. 4.569). Anna’s address of Hannibal urges him to stop his elegiac mora and continue his epic quest against the Roman people. The same words also echo Iris’ admonition of Turnus: rumpe moras omnis et turbata arripe castra (‘end your delay and seize the bewildered [Trojan] camp [of Aeneas]’, A. 9.13).272 Hannibal will become a second Turnus for the Romans, which frames the Second Punic War as a succession to the battles in the second half of the Aeneid.273
The references to Turnus and Dido are not only a positive mirror for Hannibal, but also have ominous undercurrents; just as Turnus cannot defeat Aeneas in the final battle of the Aeneid, Hannibal will also be unable to win the war against the Romans. And by making a parallel between Cannae and Dido’s pyre, Anna unwittingly foreshadows that Cannae will cause the eventual downfall of Hannibal.274
17 Hannibal’s Response
The repetition of Juno’s and Dido’s words indicates that Anna is ventriloquizing their message and has returned to her origins as a Carthaginian. Although she was and is still honoured as a goddess on Italian soil, she helps Hannibal. The Carthaginian general is cheered up by Anna’s message and promises to honour her with a cult in Carthage, where she will be worshipped together with Dido:
ast ego te compos pugnae Carthaginis arcemarmoreis sistam templis iuxtaque dicaboaequatam gemino simulacri munere Dido. (8.229–231)
I, having been granted this fight, will put you in a marble temple in the citadel of Carthage and I will honour Dido in an equal way with the identical gift of a statue.
Hannibal acknowledges the bond between the two sisters and will treat them as equals. The marble temple recalls the sanctuary of Dido in the middle of Carthage (urbe … media (…) templum, 1.81 and 84), where Hannibal has sworn eternal hatred to the Romans. That temple was adorned with marble statues of his ancestors (1.86–89), including one of Dido (1.98). Acknowledging Anna’s importance, he wants to honour her in the same place.275 Of course, Hannibal cannot make this promise come true, as he will never be able to erect a temple or statue for Anna in Carthage.276 The phrase compos pugnae (8.229) recalls Aeneas, who received Anna when he already held sway over Latium (iam regni compos, 8.72). Hannibal will be granted the victory at Cannae, but will never be able to achieve the status of Aeneas as ruler of his country. Aeneas had made a similar promise to Apollo if he could settle in Latium: tum Phoebo et Triuiae solido de marmore templum |
The institution of a temple cult in Carthage can also be read on a metapoetical level, as it recalls the famous promise of Virgil to erect a marble temple: templum de marmore
18 Conclusion
After her encouragement of Hannibal, we do not hear of Anna anymore. What we do know is that she remains an Italian goddess, in the same river where Aeneas was deified, and that she was honoured with a festival on the Ides of March on which the consuls took office. Her loyalty to Carthage is therefore striking. Her double identity and collaboration with the Carthaginians mirror the paradoxes of the Battle of Cannae. Hannibal defeats the Romans, but this will simultaneously turn out to be a prelude of his downfall. The Romans, on the other hand, having lost their archenemy, will almost destroy themselves in successive civil wars. Anna, as a goddess honoured on the Ides of March, is a reminder of this everlasting destructive tendency in Roman history.283
See section 4 with n.41 below. For aetiology in the Punica, see Introduction, section 6 with n.83.
Cf. Ovid’s alternative versions of the Aeneid: Dido’s letter (Ep. 7) and the ‘Ovidian Aeneid’ in Met. 13.623–14.582. On the latter, see Hinds 1998: 104–122
Chiu 2011. Cf. also Santini 1991: 60–61 and Dominik 2006: 117–119.
Manuwald 2011: 62.
Manuwald 2011: 67–68. Other scholars who stress the ambiguity of Anna are Ahl, Davis, and Pomeroy 1986: 2498, Marks 2013: 298–300, and Stocks 2014: 91–96
This is repeatedly stressed: lentando feruida bella (‘by prolonging furious wars’, 8.11); arte sedendi (‘by his skilfull inactivity’, 8.13); caede sine ulla | … bella geri (‘wars that were waged without any slaughter’, 8.18–19); siccasque cruore | … dextras (‘hands dry with blood’, 8.19–20). For embedded narratives and mora, see Introduction, section 3.
This results in even more stress: maioribus aegrum | angebant curis (‘[this situation] vexed him, distressed by even greater anxieties’, 8.10–11).
His father Hamilcar made him swear this oath in Dido’s temple (1.114–119).
Gärtner 2010: 88 n.30.
There, too, a pause of warfare triggered Juno: pelle moras (‘repel your delay’, 4.732). She reminded him of his oath: quantum uouisti, cum Dardana bella parenti | iurares, fluet Ausonio tibi corpore tantum | sanguinis (‘as much blood as once you have vowed, when you swore Dardanian wars to your father, will flow from Ausonian bodies for you’, 4.733–735).
Nec … moratur (4.722). Although the subject of moratur is deus, in the general meaning ‘the divine’ (perhaps with Stoic implications), it is Juno who comes into action. See Kißel 1979: 23 n.43, Spaltenstein 1986: 324, and TLL 5.1.890.16 s.v. deus.
Her appearance mimics the anthropomorphic Tiber in Virg. A. 8.31–35. See Spaltenstein 1986: 324 and Haselmann 2018: 218–225. For the idea of a river in human form in Roman literature and art, see Campbell 2012: 145–159. Silius is as far as I can see the first to stage a divinity of a lake in this way.
A difference with Book 8 is that Hannibal right before this divine apparition had temporarily forgotten his sorrows by sleeping: omnia somni | condiderant aegrisque dabant obliuia curis (‘sleep had buried everything and gave oblivion to vexed anxieties’, 4.723–724). Instead, the words of the goddess cause anxiety and distress: stimulat subitis praecordia curis | ac rumpit ducis haud spernanda uoce quietem (‘[she] stirred the general’s heart with sudden anxieties and broke his rest with a voice that he could not ignore’ 4.727–728).
A similarity with Thrasymennus is Anna’s status as a water deity, as is shown from the repetition of stagnum (4.725 ~ 8.28). They also share a common background: both used to be humans and both have a non-Italian background. Thrasymennus’ father Tyrrhenus was a Lydian king. See 5.7–23 with Cowan 2009.
Ironically, the narrator echoes with the words hortatibus implet (8.29) the same phrase in 5.150, where Flaminius incites his soldiers to attack Hannibal at Lake Trasimene. Whereas Flaminius’ exhortation led to the slaughter of his army, Juno’s exhortation of Anna will lead to the greatest victory of Hannibal.
Chiu 2011: 8–9 and Lee 2017: 44 discuss the phrase as part of Juno’s rhetoric for helping her relative. The juxtaposition is reminiscent of the suicide of the Saguntines in Book 2 of the Punica, after Juno has send Tisiphone. When the men, possessed by the Fury, kill their own relatives, the narrator states: inuitas maculant cognato sanguine dextras (‘against their will they stain their hands with kindred blood’, 2.617). For this intratextual echo, see Bernstein 2017: 252 and Dominik 2006: 118–119, who compares Anna’s role with that of Tisiphone in Book 2.
For Laurentines as synonym of the Romans, see e.g. Hamilcar inciting Hannibal in Book 1: age, concipe bella | latura exitium Laurentibus (‘go on, start wars that will bring doom upon the Laurentines’, 1.109–110).
The combination Iapyx campus is only attested in Silius. Iapyx was a son of Daedalus, who settled in southern Italy (see e.g. Plin. Nat. 3.102.4). The area was named after him Iapygia. Comparable are Virg. A. 11.247 (Iapygis agris) and Ov. Met. 15.52 (Iapygis arua).
See Chapter 1, section 5.
The allusion was already signalled by Ruperti 1795: 540. See also Ariemma 2000b: 42–43. The intertextual technique of Silius is quite ingenious: the impersonal expression mihi … fas est + inf. becomes ius nobis (est) + inf., while fas returns in the next line. At the same time ius echoes the sound of iussa from the original (which is ‘translated’ with praecepta). Note, too, that the personal pronoun nobis is juxtaposed to ius as mihi is to iussa.
Mandata does not only refer to Dido’s curse in A. 4.621–629, as Duff 1934: 396 and Santini 1991: 36 note, but also to Dido’s admonishment when Anna was staying at Aeneas’ palace, as narrated in 8.168–182. Dido assures her sister that the Romans and Carthaginians can never be friends. In addition, Walter 2014: 278 notes a link with the prooemium (mandata nepotibus arma, 1.18), connecting Anna’s words with the poetic programme of the Punica.
Chiu 2011: 9–10 observes that Anna is aware of her ties to both the Romans and the Carthaginians: “Juno’s direct command to Anna opens the Pandora’s box of the Punic past.” See also Santini 1991: 35–36 on the use of ius and fas in this passage. Fucecchi 2013: 25 thinks that Anna “is ready to pay a last homage to her origins, but not at the cost of losing the benefits of Roman citizenship.” It is rather the other way round: she hopes that her Roman worship is no obstacle for carrying out her sister’s behests.
For this identification, see especially Jupiter’s speech to Juno in the last book of the Aeneid: indigetem Aenean scis ipsa et scire fateris | deberi caelo fatisque ad sidera tolli (‘you yourself know, and admit that you know, that Aeneas, as native god, is claimed by heaven, and by fate is raised to the stars’, Virg. A. 12.794–795). Other references are e.g. Liv. 1.2.6 Iovem indigetem appellant (‘people call him Jupiter the native god’), Tib. 2.5.44, and Ov. Met. 14.608. For the origin of the story, see Porte 1985: 148 and Santini 1991: 32–33. The latter also quotes epigraphic evidence for the cult of Aeneas in the neighbourhood of the Numicius.
Varro followed this tradition according to Servius Dan. ad A. 4.782: Varro ait non Didonem, sed Annam amore Aeneae impulsam se supra rogum interemisse (‘Varro says that not Dido, but Anna, driven by love for Aeneas, killed herself on the pyre’), and ad A. 5.4: sane sciendum Varronem dicere Aenean ab Anna amatum (‘it should be known that Varro says that Dido was loved by Anna’). See D’Anna 1975, Santini 1991: 34, Chiu 2011: 5. Perhaps we can understand the repetition of Varro’s name in Juno’s speech as a metapoetical pun: cum
So Ariemma 2000b: 42–43. The words castus and lucus reappear in close combination in 13.546: umentes ubi casta fouet Proserpina lucos (‘where chaste Proserpina tends the moist groves’). Here, casta indicates that Proserpina is uniuira; she presides over the area in the underworld where all the sons of married and chaste women go to. See Van der Keur 2015: 299.
Virg. A. 7.149–150: urbem et finis et litora gentis | diuersi explorant: haec fontis stagna Numici, | hunc Thybrim fluuium, hic fortis habitare Latinos (‘by separate ways they explore the city, boundaries and the coasts of the people: these are the waters of Numicius’ fountain, this the river Tiber, here live the brave Latins’).
See Bruère 1959: 228, Santini 1991: 27, Ariemma 2000b: 40, Manuwald 2011: 57, Chiu 2011: 7 n.5, and Lee 2017: 43–44.
Servius notes ad A. 12.139 that Juturna’s spring was located ‘next to the river Numicius’ (iuxta Numicium fluuium). Its waters, he says, were taken to Rome for sacrifices. In Rome itself, a fountain of Juturna from around 117 BC is located next to the temple of Castor and Pollux at the Forum Romanum.
In the opening lines of Book 8, Hannibal has already been reminiscent of Turnus. When Hannibal ‘roars impatient of delay’ (impatiensque morae fremit, 8.4) this evokes the famous comparison of Turnus with a wounded Punic lion at the beginning of Aeneid 12, who ‘roars with blood-stained mouth’ (fremit ore cruento, A. 12.8). Their fury may be similar, their situation, however, is quite different. Whereas Hannibal is incapable of satisfying his rage, almost as a caged lion, Turnus gives a clear field for his wrath: ultro implacabilis ardet | attollitque animos (‘he blazes with unappeasable wrath and raises his courage’, A. 12.3–4). A few lines later he makes clear to king Latinus that nothing will stop him: nulla mora in Turno (‘no delay lies in Turnus’, A. 12.11).
Lee 2017: 50.
The words
Walter 2014: 277.
See Introduction, section 3 for the theme of delay in the Punica. Mora is also a motif in elegy, especially in farewell scenes, for which see Tränkle 1963: 474, Hübner 1968: 70–71, and Jöne 2017: 355–357. Silius here pauses the epic main narrative by inserting an embedded narrative with clear elegiac tendencies, as I will show.
Ovid is to our knowledge the first to elaborate on this connection between the Roman nymph and Dido’s sister. Before him, Virgil has already shown awareness of this tradition, as Wright 2019 points out. This is most apparent in Virg. A. 4.634–647, where Dido orders her nurse to call Anna. The lines read as an acrostic, ades (‘be present’), a standard invocation of a deity in a Roman prayer (cf. Green 2004: 59–60 on Ov. Fast. 1.67). Anna should cleanse Dido with river water (fluuiali … lympha), a foreshadowing of her future metamorphosis into a river goddess.
At the same time, the narrator counters Hannibal’s replay of the Trojan war: Rhoeteaque fata reuoluam (‘I will repeat the Rhoetean fate’, 1.115): the embedded narrative of Book 8 postpones the Battle of Cannae. The narrator is, however, unable to ‘reverse’ the course of fate. Retro and reuoluam are also prooemial markers, echoing both the prooemium of Proteus’ narrative in Book 7 and that of Statius’ Thebaid. See Introduction, section 4.
The verbal stem teg- is an allusion of Ovid’s tegenda; cf. Ariemma 2000b: 44. I would suggest that ambagibus is an echo of Ovid’s errat. Both words hint at Anna’s wandering journey from Carthage to Italy, as Heyworth 2019: 193 argues for Fast. 3.543–544 and Ariemma 2000b: 43 for 8.44–47. Lee 2017: 53 observes that “the labyrinth of words” of 8.44–45 reflects “the windings of time and the fog of antiquity in which the sources of myth must be sought.”
Silius was fond of this Ovidian junction, as stringere metas can also be found at 5.25, 13.299, and 16.361. See Ariemma 2000b: 44 for a discussion on this phrase in the Punica; he does not cite Am. 3.2.12.
Nünlist 1998: 255–264. Cf. also Virg. G. 3.17–22, a literary statement on Callimachean poetry. See Thomas 1988b: 42–43.
See Spaltenstein 1986: 502.
Thomas 1988b: 197.
The phrase also recalls he prooemium of Ovid’s Metamorphoses: prima ab origine mundi (Met. 1.3), where the beginning of the narrative coincides with the creation of the world. Ovid, in turn, alludes to Lucretius 5.548: prima … ab origine mundi. In the Punica, the phrase is often used in aetiological explanations of names, e.g. 4.719, 9.202, 12.334, 12.393, 14.462–463, 16.369.
Servius already notices that breuiter is a refusal of Dido’s request to start from the beginning, i.e. the abduction of Helen (Serv. ad A. 1.753). Horsfall 2008: 54 suggests that Aeneas’ words recall those of Odysseus to queen Arete, before starting his flashback:
Especially Deremetz 2000: 86–87; see Horsfall 2008: 54 for other references.
See on this passage also De Jong 2017: 146.
Ov. Met. 1.3. For weaving as a poetological metaphor, see Deremetz 1995: 289–293, Heerink 2009: 310–313, and Heerink 2015: 18 and 30 with n.35.
Walter 2014: 286.
The use of breuiter is therefore not just “conventional”, as Spaltenstein 1986: 502 states. Another allusion to Aeneas as narrator is reuoluam; it recalls Aeneas’ rhetorical question in Virg. A. 2.101: sed quid ego haec autem nequiquam ingrata reuoluo? (‘but why do I vainly unwind this unwelcome tale?’). For the use of reuoluo in the sense ‘to go back over (past events, etc.) in thought or speech’ (OLD s.v. 2c), see Horsfall 2008: 124. Yet another epic parallel of 1.115 and 8.48–49 is Stat. Theb. 8.227–228: nunc fata reuoluunt | maiorum ueteresque canunt ab origine Thebas (‘now [the Thebans] go back over the fates of their ancestors and they sing of ancient Thebes from its beginning’). The Thebans actually sing of the Tyrian origin stories that the primary narrator explicitly had refused to tell (Theb. 1.7 and 1.16–17). See Augoustakis 2016: 158.
Sarranus is used as an adjective for the Carthaginians throughout the Punica. It first appears in 1.72 (Sarrana prisci Barcae de gente), referring to Hamilcar’s ancestry.
Oenotri is a name that refers to the original inhabitants of Italy. Cf. D.H. 1.23 and Virg. A. 1.532 (= A. 3.165), with Feeney 1982: 10.
See Santini 1991: 41. In both texts, the word ensem is the last word of the penultimate line of the prooemium. Ariemma 2000b: 45 notes that the sword already appears in Book 1, where it is said to be lying before the statue of Dido in Carthage: ante pedes ensis Phrygius iacet (‘the Phrygian sword lies before her feet’, 1.91).
Ov. Ep. 7.195–196.
Ariemma 2000b: 45.
See Spaltenstein 1986, Ariemma 2000b, and Dietrich 2004: 5–6 on these lines.
Which in itself echoes the narrator’s statement that Dido has decided to die (decreuitque mori, A. 4.475). Ariemma 2000b: 45 connects the phrase with Aeneas’ resolve to leave Carthage in 4.554: certus eundi.
The lost hope of Dido (spes abruptae, 8.51) might recall Dido’s insincere facial expression, pretending hope while there was none left, when she meets with her sister Anna: spem fronte serenat (‘her face beamed with hope’, A. 4.477).
Ganiban 2010: 93
Stocks 2014: 92 calls the account “distinctly pro-Carthaginian in perspective”. Dietrich 2004: 16 attributes the description maritus to Anna. For other examples of Anna’s embedded focalization, see section 6 and 8 below.
Stocks 2014: 92 also notes a parallel with Imilce’s frenzy in 4.774–777.
Earlier, the Virgilian narrator referred to the sword as ‘the sword that had been left behind’ (ensemque relictum, A. 4.507), suggesting that it was left behind accidentally. The phrase corripit ensem (8.52) recalls uaginaque eripit ensem (‘she pulled the sword out of the sheath’, A. 4.579).
Note the antithesis between Aeneas as a married man (mariti) and Minerva as being an unmarried virgin (innuptae).
Fernandelli 2009: 156. The anastrophe of postquam is also inspired by Carmen 64, where the conjunction occurs four more times, always in second position (Cat. 64.202, 267, 303, and 397). For the formal features of allusion here at work, see Wills 1996: 18–24.
In Carmen 64, the beach of Naxos is also called ‘abandoned’, but by enallage this applies to Ariadne as well: deserto liquisti in litore, Theseu? (‘have you left me on this abandoned beach, Theseus?’, Cat. 64.133); omnia sunt deserta (‘all is abandoned’, Cat. 64.187).
See Wills 1996: 26–30 and Libby 2016: 67–70. Some clear examples of Virgil’s debt to Catullus are A. 4.10 (~ Cat. 64.176) and A. 4.316 (~ Cat. 64.141).
Libby 2016: 70.
For the conflict in Aeneid 4 between personal emotions and divine mission, see G. Williams 1968: 383–386 and Feeney 1998: 117–119. Theseus’ heroism in Catullus has been viewed in varying ways. For a negative evaluation, especially compared to Aeneas, see Perutelli 1997; for Theseus as a positive foreshadowing of Roman heroism, see Harmon 1973: 330; for a more nuanced position, see Nuzzo 2003: 49–51.
In the Aeneid, only Dido herself views her union with Aeneas as a marriage (A. 4.172, 4.192, 4.431), while Aeneas denies this explicitly (A. 4.338–339); the primary narrator makes clear that their relation was illicit and certainly no marriage (A. 4.172 and 4.193–195).
By Juno in A. 7.300, by Aeneas in A. 8.119, and by the primary narrator in A. 10.158.
Originally profugus seems to have implied a voluntary departure, as opposed to exul; see TLL 10.2.1736.24–32 s.v. profugus.
Cf. e.g. mene fugis? (‘are you fleeing from me?’, A. 4.314). Dido repeats this accusation in her letter to Aeneas: dum me … fugis (Ov. Ep. 7.46), with Piazzi 2007: 168–169.
Van der Keur 2015: 469 notes that Hannibal here is again cast as an (anti-)Aeneas, who performs the deeds of the Virgilian hero, but is doomed to failure.
Van der Keur 2015: 470.
Profugus also forges an intratextual connection between Aeneas and Dido. In 2.391 Carthage is described as ‘the kingdom of exiled Elissa’ (profugae regnis … Elissae). Bernstein 2017: 186 states that “[t]he epithet pairs her conceptually with the refugee Aeneas”. It also recalls Juno’s love for the Carthaginians: optauit profugis aeternam condere gentem (‘she wishes to found an eternal race for the fugitives’, 1.28).
Spaltenstein 1986: 502.
The image of the warm pyre (tepido … rogo) comes from elegy and has connotations of black magic. Tibullus got a charm from a witch, who ‘calls down bones from a smouldering pyre’ (tepido deuocat ossa rogo, Tib. 1.2.48). Hypsipyle accuses Medea of an even more gruesome practice in her letter to Jason: certaque de tepidis colligit ossa rogis (‘she gathers from the smouldering pyre the appointed bones’, Ov. Ep. 6.90). Anna has performed magical rituals herself by order of Dido, so she tells Aeneas in 8.116–117. See section 11 below.
See Ariemma 2000b: 46. Another possibility is to transpose lines 3.557–558 after 3.574, as Murgia proposed, followed by Heyworth 2019. In that case, the three years refer to Anna’s stay at Battus. See Heyworth 2019: 197.
Santini 1991: 42 explains Silius’ change (a flight of Anna instead of the entire population) as part of his programmatic idea that the Carthaginians that fight against Rome are the descendants of Dido.
His name is often interpreted as ‘Stammerer’ (see e.g. Hdt. 4.155 and cf. the verb
Cyrene was only founded around 630 BC; see DNP s.v. Kyrene. Ovid is unique in his connection between Battus and Malta; Bömer 1958: 186 notes that Malta has switched sides in the Punic Wars and proposes that this was the reason for Ovid to connect it with the Anna episode. Santini 1991: 43–44 suggests that the stay of Anna on Malta hints at the historical cult of the deity
DNP s.v. Battus and Battiaden. Bruère 1959: 229 and Spaltenstein 1986: 503 take the unlikely view that Silius unwittingly confuses the Maltese king with the Cyrenean.
Barchiesi 1995: 9–12. Callimachus calls himself
Barchiesi 2001b: 334–335.
See Ov. Fast. 3.574 and 577–578. Littlewood 1980: 309–310 draws attention to the epicizing style of Silius. Battus’ direct speech in Ovid is replaced by a more grandiloquent indirect statement and the rather flat frater has been replaced by grander Pygmaliona. In the Aeneid, the threat of Pygmalion is felt by both sisters (A. 4.43–44, 325; cf. also Ov. Ep. 7.127–128).
The juxtaposition of rex and arma is salient: these two words are strong markers of epic, but perosus denies them. See Heyworth 2019: 200. Barchiesi 1995: 9–10 adduces two examples from Ovid: nos
The Battiads play a double role in the Punica. On the one hand, they are the allies of Carthage. They are listed in the catalogue of Hannibal’s troops (3.252–253) and repeat the hospitality of Battus when providing shelter for Carthaginians after the Battle of Zama: pars Batti petiere domos (‘some go to the dwellings of Battus’, 17.591). On the other hand, the Roman Decius could escape from the hands of Hannibal after a sea-storm had driven him to Cyrene: Iuppiter antiquam Batti uertisset ad urbem (‘Jupiter had driven him to the ancient city of Battus’, 11.380). He could escape from there, as the city fell apparently under the sway of the Ptolemean empire, as Silius explains in 11.381 (cf. Liv. Per. 14). This tendency of switching to both sides explains perhaps the designation of the Cyreneans in 3.253 as ‘faithless’ (prauos fidei). In our passage, too, Anna cannot count on the protection of Battus; as soon as Pygmalion arrives on the scene, she is told to leave. In 2.61, the Battiads are listed as subjects of Iarbas, for which see Bernstein 2017: 70–71.
Keith 2016: 269 translates ‘hating the gods and hating herself’, taking the datives diuis and sibi as patients of inimicus, as is often the case (TLL 7.1.1632.23–39 s.v. inimicus and OLD s.v. 1). Duff and the Budé also follow this line. The datives in 8.65, however, indicate the agents of the hate, not the patients: see TLL 7.1.1632.39–49 s.v., listing both A. 1.67 and Pun. 8.65 as examples.
Note also that the roles have been reversed: in the Aeneid the Trojans were the gens inimica of Juno, now the Carthaginian Anna is the enemy of unspecified gods.
Ariemma 2000b: 49 notes an echo of Virgil’s Anna accusing the dying Dido: comitemne sororem | spreuisti moriens? (‘did you scorn your companion and sister in your death?’, A. 4.677–678). In Silius, Anna accuses herself of not having joined her sister in committing suicide. This recalls the wish of Ismene to die with her sister in S. Ant. 544–545. See Hardie 1998: 62–63 for the idea of Aeneid 4 as a tragedy.
See e.g. Santini 1991: 45 and Ariemma 2000b: 48.
Littlewood 1980: 310. The topos can already be found in Hom. Od. 5.306–312.
Note the repetition of sorori at the end of both lines, although in Silius it refers to Dido, in Ovid to Anna.
Littlewood 1980: 310.
Spaltenstein 1986: 503 notes the correspondence between fatalis and fatali, without interpretation.
Sidon was the mother-city of Tyre, see Heyworth 2019: 215. The rare feminine adjective Sidonis is also used by Ovid for Europa, another Tyrian princess travelling across the sea (Ov. Ars 3.252, Fast. 5.610; cf. also Stat. Theb. 9.334).
Santini 1991: 45 and Ariemma 2000b: 49.
See TLL 5.2.1637.69–88 s.v. expello. Cf. the wish of Styrus, who rather wants to have a shipwreck than give up the pursuit of his runaway fiancée Medea: uos modo uel solum hoc, fluctus, expellite corpus (‘rather cast this body, you waves, on the land’, V. Fl. 8.349); little later his ship sinks to the bottom of the sea in a storm.
For the common meaning of expello ‘to drive into exile, banish’, see TLL 5.2.1632.57–1633.44 s.v. and OLD s.v. 5c. Cf. e.g. finibus expulsum patriis (‘[Teucer] expelled from his fatherland’, A. 1.620).
For the Saguntines (1.672), the Romans at the Trebia (4.571), the magister equitum Minucius (7.706), a sinking Roman ship (14.329), and an equestrian crash in the Scipionic games (16.412).
Compare Juno’s incitation of Aeolus and the subsequent sea storm. Commentators have drawn attention to Silius’ Homeric model, the battle between the river Scamander and Achilles in Il. 21.205–327. See Juhnke 1972: 11–24 and Santini 1991: 80–91.
Ecce autem marks a sudden development or unexpected arrival; see Kroon 1995: 261–262, Horsfall 2000: 203, and Dionisotti 2007. Silius uses the juxtaposition ecce autem five times. Littlewood 2011: 168 states that it is most commonly found in Roman comedy, but a search in the PHI database shows that there are actually more attestations in epic: 25, as compared to 20 in comic texts.
Achates had also joined Aeneas on the beach of Carthage, to which Ovid clearly alludes: ipse
This, in turn, echoes Achates’ cry when he spotted Italy: Italiam primus conclamat Achates (A. 3.523). See Heyworth 2019: 206. Ahl 1985: 313 and Porte 1985: 149 draw independently attention to the similarity in sound between Aeneas and the elided Anna (e)st; their names almost sound identical.
Spaltenstein 1986: 503. Anna’s act of supplication has a somewhat disturbing undertone, as the collocation allapsam genibus is only paralleled by allapsa genibus (Sen. Phaed. 667). There, it refers to Phaedra who grasps the knees of her stepson Hippolytus and confesses her love for him. Lacrimantis Iuli repeats the same phrase from A. 9.501, when Ascanius cried over the death of Euryalus. Spaltenstein 1986: 503 cites these parallels without further comment. Bruère 1959: 229 calls the change from Achates into Iulus “probably involuntary”, suggesting that Silius was not paying attention when reworking the Ovidian scene.
Manuwald 2011: 58.
Met. 14.583–584. See Brugnoli 1991: 155–156.
When we accept the focalization to be that of the primary narrator. Poets sometimes apply sacer to members or attributes of the imperial house (OLD s.v. 7). The most important parallel is Jupiter’s prophecy in Book 3: sacris … Iulis (3.595). Ovid apostrophizes Augustus’ mother Atia with ‘o glory, o woman worthy of the sacred house’ (o decus, o sacra femina digna domo, Fast. 6.810). Statius uses the word three times in connection with Domitian; the clearest example is sacer … Germanicus in Silv. 5.2.177. See Gibson 2006: 145. The repetition of the name Iulus, instead of Ascanius, reinforces these imperial associations, as he is the ancestor of the gens Iulia. Alternatively, we can understand sacro as the focalization of Anna—following the example of her sister Dido, she considers Iulus to be divine. See section 9 below.
Walter 2014: 279.
Note also the change in tense: lenibat is an imperfect, leniuit a perfect.
For this parallel, see Dietrich 2004: 5 and Walter 2014: 278–279.
The words intra limina ducit (8.75) recall Dido taking Aeneas into her palace: Aenean in regia ducit | tecta (‘she brings Aeneas into her royal house’, A. 1.631–632). Note the same sedes of ducit.
Spaltenstein 1986: 503.
See Ahl 1985: 314 for this idea.
See e.g. Ariemma 2000b: 51.
There are six other instances of infelix Dido in the Aeneid; see Horsfall 2013: 343. See also 6.529, where Marus calls himself infelix, discussed in Chapter 2, section 3.2.
Spaltenstein 1986: 504. Cf. especially the meaning of traho ‘to draw out (sighs, sounds, etc., from within the body)’ in OLD s.v. traho 11c, where this specific locus, however, is not listed.
Aeneas also wept when he saw Dido in the underworld (A. 6.455, 476). See Heyworth 2019: 207. Anna’s tears (largibus cum fletibus) also recall Aeneas’ meeting with Anchises in the underworld: sic memorans largo fletu simul ora rigebat (‘so he spoke, his face wet with abundant tears’, A. 6.699). This, in turn, is an intratextual allusion to Hector’s tears in Aeneas’ dream: largosque … fletus (A. 2.271).
Fernandelli 2009: 152. In Fast. 3.628, the verb incipit (same metrical sedes) prepares for the short speech of Aeneas in which he introduces Anna to his wife Lavinia.
Manuwald 2011: 59. See also Ahl, Davis, and Pomeroy 1986: 2497.
Walter 2014: 279.
Ariemma 2000b: 51. The word blandus also has the connotation of ‘beguiling’. Venus casts Dido as another Calypso, as Austin 1971: 204 notes, quoting Pallas’ words to Zeus in the first book of the Odyssey:
Scarsi Garbugino 1987: 197–200 discusses three possible candidates for the subject: Dido, an unknown male host or Anna. She prefers the last option.
E.g. Propertius refers to his own poetry as blandi carminis (1.8.40). Fedeli 1980: 227 compares this phrase with mollem … uersum (Prop. 1.7.19); blandus is therefore a marker of elegy, opposed to durus uersus designating epic. Ovid calls Propertius blandus twice (Tr. 2.465; 5.1.17). See also Fernandelli 2009: 152.
E.g. Bruère 1959: 228: “Ovid had avoided this subject (his Aeneas begs Anna not to speak of her sister’s death), but the temptation to retell the fourth Aeneid was too much for so devout a Virgilian as Silius, and as a result the Ovidian portions of his Anna story are separated by a long Virgilian enclave.”
Fernandelli 2009: 150.
See e.g. Ariemma 2000b: 51–52.
Ariemma 2000b: 52.
Blaming one’s death on the one you love is an elegiac topos. Piazzi 2007: 184 lists Ov. Ep. 2.147–148 and Am. 2.10.30 as other examples. For the epitaph, see also section 5 above.
The topos of the origin of misery has a long pedigree in epic and historical texts. Cf. e.g. Hom. Il. 11.604, Hdt. 5.97.3, Th. 2.12, Virg. A. 7.481–482, V. Fl. 7.37–38.
She stresses her own involvement with germanae …
On this embedded narrative, see e.g. Augoustakis 2003, Ripoll 2006, and Augoustakis 2014c: 351–354.
For the question of genre in such elegiac parts of epic, see e.g. Jöne 2017: 23–25. Hübner 1968 and Cairns 1989: 129–150 discuss the influence of elegy on Virgilian epic. Hardie 1998: 57 shows that the Aeneid incorporates many genres, resulting in a “generic polyphony”.
Fernandelli 2009: 152–153, 157, 159; see also Ariemma 2000b: 51–52, Rosati 2005: 148, Walter 2014: 280.
Fernandelli 2009: 153 and 160. These lines also echo Ariadne’s letter to Theseus: quid potius facerent, quam me mea lumina flerent, | postquam desieram uela uidere tua? (‘What better could my eyes do than cry, after I had ceased to see your sails?’, Ov. Ep. 10.45–46).
The gemination of interdum is iconic of her repetitive acts; see Ariemma 2000b: 53. It can be compared to the repetition of iterum, for which see Wills 1996: 116–117. His extensive lists do not include interdum. For the gemination of that word in the same line only 2.227 seems to be a parallel, where it underlines a repetitive act of launching weapons.
See Jöne 2017: 243, who states that Anna’s Dido shows the typical behaviour of an abandoned woman in Roman epic. For the beach as marker of elegy, see Sharrock 1990: 571, Santini 1991: 49, Heerink 2015: 196 n.111, and Jöne 2017: 345–346.
Newlands 1996: 336.
Bruère 1959: 245 n.5. Cf. also the abandoned Phyllis, who watched for Demophon, Theseus’ son, on the coast (Ov. Ep. 2.121–130).
Lee 2017: 66.
Jöne 2017: 402.
Fernandelli 2009: 155 with n.39.
See Spaltenstein 1986: 504, who hesitates to read it as an actual allusion: “cette idée est aussi très naturelle.” In A. 4.540–541, she expressed doubt whether the Trojans would be willing to take her aboard.
Cf. deserta (8.50) and section 5 above.
See section 5 above.
In Cat. 64.61, Ariadne is compared to the statue of a Bacchante and in Ov. Ep. 10.47–48 her ceaseless roaming is put on a par with that of a Bacchante.
Anna’s sententia ‘love does never put down hope’ (non umquam spem ponit
For re- and rursus as a metapoetical signposts, see Introduction, section 5.2.
A difference is that Imilce, unlike Dido, finally accepts her fate, as she realizes that she cannot alter the situation: cedo equidem nec fata moror (‘I yield indeed and do not delay my fate’, 3.115). Imilce is in this respect reminiscent of Cornelia, Pompey’s wife, who is also forced to leave her husband and put on a ship (Luc. 5.799–801).
Marcia repeats this idea a few lines later: adest comes ultima fati (‘here is a last companion of your fate’, 6.511). For this scene, see also Chapter 2, section 3.1.
Fröhlich 2000: 296 notes for example that tum uero infelix in 6.514 echoes Virg. A. 4.450.
Other examples are the iteration of dentals and sibilants in 8.88–94 and words that denote suddenness (mox, 8.88; turbida, 8.88; subitoque, 8.89; repente, 8.92). See also Ariemma 2000b: 53 on the repetition of sounds in this passage.
A comparable repetition of re- can be found in the scene of Creusa in Virg. A. 2.739–753: resedit (2.739); reddita (2.740); respexi, reflexi (2.741); repeto (2.749); renouare, reuerti (2.750); repeto, retro (2.753). Here, too, one can read re- on a metapoetical level. See Introduction, section 5.2.
Note the gemination of -que, which recurs in Anna’s narrative.
Dido uses the effigies of Aeneas in this magic ritual as a kind of voodoo doll. See Austin 1955: 151.
Lee 2017: 68–69.
Ariemma 2000b: 53. Spaltenstein 1986: 505 remarks that the word indicates either the shining marble of a statue or the beauty of the boy himself. He is called pulcher Iulus in the Aeneid (e.g. A. 5.570). Sidereus, too, can have connotations of beauty. For this use of sidereus in Statius’ Thebaid, see Van den Broek 2016: 59.
On this scene, see section 8 above.
Embracing is often a way of postponing someone’s departure. See Jöne 2017: 367–372. Cornelia could have done so, but chooses not to. Dido embraces the image of Ascanius when he and his father are long gone. This stresses that Dido’s action is purposeless.
There might be a pun here on the similarity in sound between amens and amans. Cf. the proverbial amens amans in e.g. Pl. Mer. 82 and Ter. An. 218. See Otto 1890: 18 s.v. amare 6.
The triple repetition of -que of the Ovidian line might be echoed with the triple -que in the Silian passage, albeit not in the same line (8.88, 8.89, 8.94).
See Spaltenstein 1986: 505–506 and Ariemma 2000b: 55 for parallels.
See Chapter 3, section 3.2, on uidi, marking Marus as an eyewitness. Achaemenides uses uidi twice in his narrative on the Cyclops (A. 3.623–627), for which see Papanghelis 1999: 281 and Heerink 2017: 69–71. Aeneas, too, stresses his status of eyewitness at the beginning of his narrative: quaeque ipse misserrima uidi (‘the most piteous sights that I saw myself’, A. 2.5). The stress on seeing also recalls tragic messengers, who frequently refer to what they have seen (and their narratees did not). See Horsfall 2008: 49–50, Casali 2017: 99, and De Jong 2017: 145 on A. 2.5, and De Jong 1991: 9–10 on Euripidean messengers as eyewitnesses.
In the Aeneid, Dido was advised by only one Massylian priestess (Massylae gentis … sacerdos, A. 4.483), who also promised a cure for her problems: haec se carminibus
Paradoxically, Anna calls these fallacies ‘sacred’. The word sacer has both positive and negative connotations, see Forcellini s.v. and Lee 2017: 71. I follow in my translation Spaltenstein 1986: 505, who opts for the negative meaning. Ariemma 2000b: 56 follows Ruperti in understanding sacri as an enallage with uatum (‘delusions of sacred men’). Perhaps the ambiguity of the phrase is a nod towards the ambiguity of A. 4.65, on which see below.
Gildenhard 2012: 101–103 gives an overview of the different interpretations, himself opting for uatum as an objective genitive.
Lee 2017: 71 argues that Anna “sententiously misquotes” A. 4.65. That is not the case: she gives her own view on the events.
See also Lee 2017: 70–71.
Servius ad A. 4.493 compares Dido’s reluctance to fall back upon magic with the Roman attitude towards these rites: cum multa sacra Romani susciperent, semper magica damnarunt (‘while the Romans were suspicious of many sacred rituals, they always condemned magic’). In the Punica, Dido is made the founder of the Carthaginian practice of child sacrifice (4.765–767). See Littlewood 2013: 205, who notes the stress on nocturnal darkness and chthonic rituals in Silius’ Anna episode. This turns it into “a sinister version (…) from Ovid’s lively aetiological narrative”.
Stocks 2014: 93 with n.39.
See also Chapter 2, section 3.1.
Fernandelli 2009: 151–152.
Ariemma 2000b: 57, Rosati 2005: 145–147, and Walter 2014: 280.
The collocation dulci … amore recalls Ariadne’s unconditional love for Theseus: omnibus his Thesei dulcem praeoptarit amorem (‘she chose before all the sweet love of Theseus’, Cat. 64.120).
Fernandelli 2009: 149.
Brugnoli and Santini 1995: 25 note the parallel. For other instances of re-words which function as metapoetical signposts in this narrative, see section 9 above. See also Introduction section 5.2.
Brugnoli and Santini 1995: 26 provide an extensive comparison of both passages.
Brugnoli 1991: 160–161.
Heyworth 2019: 207 draws attention to the changed position of tellurem in Silius.
Iulus’ inclusion in an oath hints, again, at his supernatural status, as predecessor of the Roman emperors. See section 8 above. Aeneas swearing by his son’s head ‘confirms’ Iulus’ words in Aeneid 9: per caput hoc iuro, per quod pater ante solebat (‘by this head, by which my father was wont to swear before’, A. 9.300). Spaltenstein 1986: 506 and Ariemma 2000b: 57–58 both note the intertextual connection.
For mitis as a generic marker of elegy, see section 6 above.
So Ahl, Davis, and Pomeroy 1986: 2499, Ganiban 2010: 95, Stocks 2014: 92 n.38, and Lee 2017: 75, but pace Dietrich 2004: 12. The unfavourable portrayal of Mercury here contrasts with two other scenes in the Punica, in which the god functions as a helper. In Book 3, the god appears in a portentous dream to Hannibal (3.168), which reignited his fighting spirit. Unlike Aeneas, Hannibal is happy with Mercury’s intervention and offers a bull to him: niueoque ante omnia taur
Looking back is a topos in farewell scenes, as Jöne 2017: 385–394 explains. Usually, it is the woman who looks back. Aeneas turns his eyes to Carthage in A. 5.3 (moenia respiciens), but there he shows no emotions, as Rosati 2005: 146–147 notes. Aeneas in 8.108 rather seems to recall the elegiac Anna in Ov. Fast. 3.566: moenia respiciens, dulce sororis opus (‘looking back at the walls, her sister’s sweet work’). See also Porte 1985: 146 n.1, Brugnoli and Santini 1995: 26, and Fernandelli 2009: 150–151. The motif of looking back returns in Punica 12 when the Romans look back to their loved ones as they march out of their besieged city: respectantque suos (‘they look back repeatedly to their family’, 12.594). See Telg genannt Kortmann 2018: 195.
Manuwald 2011: 59.
When Dido is constructing the pyre, Anna has to fetch the weapons that Aeneas left in her chamber: arma uiri thalamo quae fixa reliquit | impius (‘the weapons of the man, which the impious one left hanging in my bedroom’, A. 4.495–496). Dido uses the same word in two other instances as a synonym of marriage (A. 4.18, 4.550). See also Lee 2017: 75 and OLD s.v. thalamus 2b.
Manuwald 2011: 59.
Aeneas has consistently coupled Dido and Anna in his speech: auditam
The phrase suggests great calamity as it echoes Fabius’ words in 7.227; there, the Roman general refers with tempore tali to the war with Hannibal.
Line 8.113 recalls A. 4.532: saeuit amor. Or does Aeneas suggest that Anna, too, was in love with him? See for this idea Brugnoli and Santini 1995: 27; cf. also section 8 above and Lee 2017: 73–74.
Aeneas’ question recalls Anna’s counterfactual wish to have joined Dido’s suicide in 8.83: heu cur non idem mihi tum!
I follow Spaltenstein 1986: 506 and Brugnoli and Santini 1995: 27 in retaining the manuscript reading uoluens over Håkanson’s emendation soluens, which is taken over by Delz. A parallel with Stat. Theb. 10.440 renders a change of the text unnecessary: supremaque murmura uoluens (‘producing his final murmurings’).
In A. 4.635–636, it is Dido who asks Anna via the wet nurse to purify her body with water (8.125) and bring sheep for a sacrifice (8.119–120).
Spaltenstein 1986: 507. Anna’s version also recalls Dido from the Heroides, as Ariemma 2000b: 60 notes: hinc ego me sensi noto quater ore citari; | ipse sono tenui dixit: ‘Elissa, ueni!’ (‘from within it four times have I heard myself called by a voice well known; he himself said in faintly sounding tone: “Elissa, come!” ’, Ov. Ep. 7.101–102). In the Punica, too, it is clear that it is Sychaeus who is calling and that he invites Dido to join him; similar is also the multiple calling (quater ~ ter). A difference is of course that Dido heard his voice, not Anna.
The repetition of the adjective nouus reinforces the connection of the two scenes. Dido’s ‘recent/strange sorrows’ (nouis … curis, 8.101) drive her in the hands of the Massylian priests, while Anna uses noua sacra to quell her sister’s distress.
Like Aeneas, Anna refers to Dido by the word germana (8.107 ~ 8.119). The repetition of thalamus is also conspicuous: because Aeneas had left the bedroom of Dido (abscessem thalamo, 8.109), Anna now has to make sacrifices to the infernal couple of Pluto and Proserpina (atri sociae thalami, 8.117). Lee 2017: 81 suggests that Dido’s unhappy relationship with Aeneas is contrasted here with the marriage of Proserpina and Pluto “which (after its violent beginning) seems to have been a partnership of equals”.
Again, Catullus’ Ariadne is evoked; verbal resonances recall her arrival at Dia: aut ut uecta rati spumosa ad litora Diae (‘or how the ship was brought to the foaming shores of Dia’, Cat. 64.121). This reference to Carmen 64 is not listed by Fernandelli 2009: 156 n.46.
The ‘silent sand’ prepares for this simile, as the ashes of the deceased are often called mutus. Cf. Cat. 101.4 (mutam … cinerem) and Prop. 2.1.77 (mutae … fauillae), both cited by Spaltenstein 1986: 507. In the Aeneid, Dido complaints that she does not even have a child of Aeneas, which would have made his departure more bearable (A. 4.327–330).
In addition to the verbal correspondences the Silian text also preserves the metrical position of oscula, cinerem and ad pectora of the model. Several commentators have noted the similarity between the two scenes, e.g. Spaltenstein 1986: 507 and Ariemma 2000b: 62. The latter also cites other examples of similar scenes.
The collocation bis terque can be found in yet two other places in the Punica, also in portentous contexts. In 4.118, the dove that landed on young Scipio’s helmet cooed ‘two or three times’ before it flew towards heaven, predicting the boy’s future command; when the senate is debating whether to give Scipio the command over the troops that are to be sent to Carthage, Jupiter thunders bis terque (15.143), so asserting his divine assent.
Magna mole can also be understood as ‘with great difficulty’, perhaps an ironic echo of
Heyworth 2019: 198 mentions the parallel. The scene in Ovid presumably takes place on the beach as well, for Anna is said to have left the city walls (Fast. 3.559–560) and ascends a ship immediately afterwards (Fast. 3.565).
Cf. A. 1.648–655 with Santini 1991: 53–54. Marks 2013: 295 suggests that Dido longs to be a Trojan, but fails to achieve this, while Anna actually becomes Trojan/Roman.
These lines are a summary of Aeneid 1–3; see also Spaltenstein 1986: 508 and Ariemma 2000b: 63–64. Anna refers to Aeneas’ role as narrator: narrantem longos se peruigilante labores (‘you were telling your long labours while she kept awake’, 8.138). See also Chapter 2, section 3.2 n.59. The sound of this line recalls Iopas, another Virgilian narrator, as Brugnoli and Santini 1995: 31 point out: hic canit errantem lunam solisque labores (‘he sings about the labours of the wandering moon and sun’, A. 1.742).
Ariemma 2000b: 64–65.
The act of looking back also recalls Hannibal’s dream in Book 3. Mercury had explicitly forbidden him to do so, but the general forgot this divine order when he heard the sound of a snake: turbatus lumina flectit (‘in dismay he turned his eyes’, 3.188).
Once again, the suffix re- is a marker of intertextuality. Anna recalls here Andromache, who does not know of Hector’s death in Il. 22.437–446. Upon hearing the screams of cries of others in the palace (Il. 22.447 ~ 8.151), she goes out of her room to check what happened. When she sees her husband being dragged behind Achilles’ chariot, Andromache calls herself unhappy:
Lines 8.144–223 are part of the so-called Additamentum Aldinum, whose authenticity is heavily debated; Poggio’s copy of the Sangallensis did not contain them, but both the Medieval manuscripts and Poggio’s transcript are lost. The lines are first quoted in a collection by Iacobius Constantius in 1508 and then pop up in the edition of Asulanus published by Aldus Manutius in 1523. Asulanus does not name his source and his reading deviates on seven points from that of Constantius; see Sabbadini 1905: 182 for a comparison. Scholars are divided between those who take the lines as authentic (e.g. Heitland 1896: 210 and Brugnoli and Santini 1995), those who remain indecisive (e.g. Spaltenstein 1986: 508), and those who view them as a humanistic interpolation (e.g. Sabbadini 1905: 182 and Delz 1987: LXVIII). Lee 2017: 20–33 and 144 provides a convenient overview of the status quaestionis. It is beyond the scope of this study to give a full analysis of the question. In a future paper, I will explore this matter in depth. In the meantime, I am inclined to accept the authenticity of these lines, together with most modern Silian scholars. A strong argument for its authenticity is the metrical similarity of the Additamentum to other parts of the Punica. For this argument, see Duckworth 1969: 110; Lee 2017: 26–28 is more careful.
The ‘long night’ might also echo the night in which Aeneas told of his ‘long labours’ (longos … labores, 8.138) a few lines earlier.
In the Aeneid, Juno hopes that Aeneas will be her husband: liceat Phrygio seruire marito (‘may she serve a Phrygian husband’, A. 4.103); cf. also Dido’s complaint: cui me moribundam deseris hospes | (hoc solum nomen quoniam de coniuge restat)? (‘for whom do you desert me on the point of death as a guest (since that alone is left from the name of a husband)?’, A. 4.323–324).
Ariemma 2000b: 67.
See Spaltenstein 1986: 508 and Van der Keur 2015: 435.
Heitland 1896: 202 and Brugnoli and Santini 1995: 33.
The adjective dulcis also recalls the dulces exuuiae of Aeneas in A. 4.651, which are conspicuously absent in Dido’s words here.
Cf. also the description of Dido’s statue in her temple in Carthage: ipsa sedet tandem aeternum coniuncta Sychaeo. | ante pedes ensis Phrygius iacet (‘There she herself was seated, at last for eternity united with Sychaeus. The Phrygian sword lies before her feet’, 1.90–91).
Walter 2014: 281.
Anna’s version of Dido’s last words has exactly the same length (8 lines) as the first part of her speech in the Aeneid (4.651–658).
This is in line with the primary narrator’s statement that Anna uses ‘flattering words for the occasion’ (blandas … pro tempore uoces, 8.80).
Note the repetition of ensem … ensem (8.148–149), on which see Wills 1996: 125 and 172. As Lee 2017: 96–97 observes, this is a clear allusion to Turnus’ sword. In A. 12.89–90, we find the same rhetorical figure (ensemque … ensem), also marking the emotional significance of the sword. The allusion perhaps stresses the fact that Dido has become a victim of Aeneas, just like Turnus in Aeneid 12.
As already in the Aeneid: ensemque … | Dardanium, non hos quaesitum munus in usus (‘and the Dardanian sword, a gift not sought for this use’, A. 4.657). For this intertext, see Ariemma 2000b: 69 and Lee 2017: 97.
The death of Dido contrasts with the survival of Hannibal at the end of the Punica. Whereas Dido killed herself with a ‘pledge of love’, Hannibal is saved by one. Juno begs her husband and brother Jupiter to keep Hannibal alive ‘by the mutual pledge of double love’ (gemini per mutua pignora amoris, 17.364). Jupiter grants his sister-wife this request.
Heitland 1896: 202 discusses the intertextual echoes with the Aeneid, where Anna also rushed to the palace ‘terror-stricken with trembling haste’ to the palace (trepidoque exterrita cursu, A. 4.672), ‘tore her face with her nails’ (unguibus ora … foedans, A. 4.673), and ‘climbed the high steps’ of the pyre (gradus euaserat
Anna loosely recalls Ismene, the most famous example of a woman who failed to join her sister in committing suicide. In Sophocles’ Antigone 544–545, Ismene voices her wish to die together with Antigone, but the latter forbids her to do so.
Heitland 1896: 202, Spaltenstein 1986: 509, and Brugnoli and Santini 1995: 35. ‘Three times X, three times Y’ is an epic motif as old as Homer. See De Jong 2001: 511 on Hom. Od. 21.125–128.
An intertext brought to my attention by Ruurd Nauta.
Anna’s self-inflicted wounds on her face may be echoed in the mutilation of the Roman consul Paulus by an anonymous Carthaginian at Cannae: saxum ingens … caeca | uenit in ora manu (‘a huge rock struck him in the face [thrown] by unseen hand’, 10.235–236); this resulted in the laceration of his face as we learn later: lacero manantem ex ore cruorem (‘blood flowing from his torn face’, 10.276). The similar wounding of the consul and his ultimate death at Cannae can be seen as a retribution for Anna’s grief over her sister’s death.
The phrase impius ensis has connotations of parricide, suggesting that the Punic Wars are a kind of civil war. The juncture originates from Ovid, as Feeney 1982: 19 notes. In Met. 7.396, it denotes the sword with which Medea killed her children and in Met. 14.802, it is used for the war between the co-related Romans and Sabines.
See also sections 5 and 12 above.
See Spaltenstein 1986: 509 and Ariemma 2000b: 71. Line 8.157, however, gives a new snippet of information. The rumour of Dido’s death (and Aeneas’ departure) reaches the surrounding Numidians, who prepare for war against Carthage. This recalls Iarbas praying to Jupiter for revenge in the Aeneid, when he heard the rumour of Dido having embarked upon a relation with Aeneas: rumore accensus amaro (‘incited by the bitter rumour’, A. 4.203). This is the only occurrence of the word rumor in the first half of the Aeneid.
We know line 8.157a only from Constantius; the Aldine edition leaves it out. Although Ariemma 2000b: 71 deems the content of this line not strictly necessary, I agree with Heitland 1896: 203 that it makes the transition to 8.158 less abrupt.
Cf. Iarbas (8.54); Nomadum … tyranno (8.56); Cyrenen (8.57); ergo agitur pelago (8.65); fatalis turbo in Laurentes expulit oras (8.68). Bandiera 1993: 198 signals the metrical repetition of the opening words of 8.56 (ferret opem Nomadum) and 8.157a (arma parant Nomadum). Anna’s final words also recall Aeneas’ words in Ovid’s account: seu ratio te nostris adpulit oris | siue deus (‘whether purpose or some god has driven you to our shores’, Ov. Fast. 3.621–622). See Heitland 1896: 203 and Walter 2014: 285.
See De Jong 1987: 219–220 on the functions of characters repeating narrator-text in Homer.
An intertext that Ruurd Nauta brought to my attention. The words pelagi uis (8.159) may also echo Aeneas’ words shortly before the end of his narrative: pelagi tot tempestatibus actus (‘I, who have been driven by so many storms of the sea’, Verg. A. 3.708).
Heitland 1896: 203 notes this similarity. Cf. the reaction of Aeneas towards Anna with the reception of the Trojans in Carthage: motus erat
See Walter 2014: 283 for this idea of side-shadowing; cf. also Manuwald 2011: 60–61 and Marks 2013: 287–288. For other examples of side-shadowing in the Punica, see Nesselrath 1992: 107–122.
Brugnoli and Santini 1995: 37, Ariemma 2000b: 73.
Line 8.165 is an exact copy of 7.282. There, sleeping nature contrasts with Hannibal’s incapability to sleep due to the difficulties on the battlefield. While Anna does have peace of mind, Hannibal mirrors the insomnia of Dido in Aeneid 4, for which see Littlewood 2011: 132. This self-repetition, already signalled by Ruperti 1795: 551, has frequently been used as an argument for a non-Silian origin of the Additamentum Aldinum. Courtney 1989: 327, for example, argues that the repetition of complete lines is a phenomenon not found in post-Ovidian authors. But I would suggest that the self-repetition of 8.165 is as a metapoetical nod to the fact that we are dealing here with an Ovidian story: Ovid, too, copied a line within his own epic (Met. 4.795 = 9.10). Note, too, Ovid’s self-citation in Anna’s episode: Fast. 3.549–550 is identical to the Abschlußepigramm of Dido’s letter in Ep. 7.195–196. On this last example of Ovidian repetition, see Bömer 1958: 182 and Heyworth 2019: 195–196. For metapoetical implications of the repetition of 8.165, see Ariemma 2000b: 73.
Still, this is a mild version compared to Dido’s horror-look in Ovid: ante torum uisa est adstare
Bruère 1959: 245 n.7, Santini 1991: 58, and Walter 2014: 283. Note the iconic position of inter, separating the Romans and Carthaginians. Dido’s words also foreshadow Hannibal’s oath, especially non Martem cohibentia pacta (‘no treaties will bar warfare’, 1.116).
Heitland 1896: 204, Brugnoli and Santini 1995: 38, and Walter 2014: 283. The assonance of the Virgilian source is preserved in the Silian adaptation, although with a change from mainly e to o.
See also Bruère 1959: 229, Kißel 1979: 195, and Spaltenstein 1986: 510.
Brugnoli and Santini 1995: 37–39.
Her assurance to Anna echoes almost literally another divine apparition to Aeneas, namely Tiberinus predicting the omen of the sow: ne falsa putes haec fingere somnum (‘lest you thing that sleep invents these things falsely’, 8.178) ~ ne uana putes haec fingere somnum (‘lest you think that sleep invents these things in vain’, A. 8.42). See Brugnoli and Santini 1995: 40.
Cf. Anna’s own explanation in the Ovid: amne
Cf. sic fata in tenuem Phoenissa euanuit auram (‘having spoken in such way, the Phoenician vanished into thin air’, 8.184) with Mercury’s disappearance after his first apparition to Aeneas: et procul in tenuem ex oculis euanuit auram (‘and from a distance he vanished from sight into thin air’, A. 4.278); this line is literally repeated in A. 9.658, right before Apollo delivers a message to Ascanius.
Santini 1991: 57, Dietrich 2004: 28. Marks 2013: 294 sees irony in the fact that Anna by becoming a nymph settles permanently in Italy. This was, however, exactly Dido’s objective, as she makes clear in 8.183.
The vision of Dido is ‘new’ (nouis) in the sense that Anna has not seen such a dreadful apparition of her sister; the word also has the connotation of ‘coming as the repetition of an action’ (OLD s.v. 7); she has already had a similar apparition in her sleep of Sychaeus before (8.121–123), what also had caused her great fear. On a metapoetical level, the nouis … uisis indicates that the Silian narrator is giving here his own, new version of Dido’s apparition, as previously narrated by Ovid in Fasti 3. Cf. Wills 1996: 31 on this use of nouus.
Ariemma 2000b: 79–80. Anna’s sweating also recalls the same physical reaction that Hannibal showed when he had visions about the future wars with Rome, both in 1.66–69 and 3.214–216. See Diaz de Bustamante 1985: 31–32.
A first example, noted by Bruère 1959: 229, is that Anna simply ‘exits through a low window’ (humilique egressa fenestra, 8.188) instead of that she ‘quickly flings herself through a low window’ (uelox humili … fenestra | se iacit, Fast. 3.643–644). The second, noted by Lee 2017: 113, is that Anna goes into the fields ‘just as she was, covered by one thin garment’ (ut erat tenui corpus uelamine tecta, 8.187), whereas in the Fasti 3.645 her gown was unbelted: tunica uelata recincta (‘veiled in an ungirt shift’). The latter phrase recalls Ariadne in Ov. Ars 1.529: utque erat e somno tunica uelata recincta (‘just as she was from sleep, veiled in an ungirt shift’). The Silian narrator, by alluding to both Ovidian intertexts, makes Anna’s appearance somewhat less compromising.
Cf. his epithet
Lee 2017: 113.
Rapio is a verb that often denotes rape; see OLD s.v. 4. I deviate from the Teubner text, which gives preference to the reading cupidis … undis (‘with his desiring waters’); both cupidus and tumidus have sexual connotations, as Heyworth 2019: 215 points out.
On this contrast, see Haselmann 2018: 247 and Ariemma 2000b: 80, who takes harenoso as opposite of tumidis. Anna’s friendly reception into the river also contrasts with the abduction of the boy Thrasymennus by the nymph Agylle in 5.15–21; the boy is seized on the shore (litore correptum, 5.17) and is clearly uncomfortable when the nymphs try to embrace him (trementem, 5.21).
This is in itself an echo of the disappearance of the river god Tiberinus in his own water: lacu fluuius se condidit alto (‘the river hides himself in the deep water’, A. 8.66).
Cf. e.g. A. 1.31–32: multos per annos | errabant (‘they were wandering during many years’). The wandering may also recall Ovid’s description of the festivities on the Ides of March, as Wezel 1873: 89 observes: protinus erratis laeti uescuntur in agris | et celebrant largo seque diemque mero (‘at once they feast, joyful, in the fields through which they wandered, and celebrate themselves and the day with plentiful wine’, Fast. 3.655–656).
In Ovid, Anna describes the Numicius as peaceful: placidi sum nympha Numici (‘I am a nymph of the placid Numicius’, Fast. 3.653). See Fernandelli 2009: 167–168.
Lee 2017: 119.
This final sentence of the narrative confirms Anna’s important place in the Roman calendar. The Ides of March was associated with the first full moon of that month, which formed traditionally the beginning of the Roman year. For Anna’s place in the Roman calendar, see Bailey 1921: 28 and 121 and Magini 2001: 46–59. The aetiology surrounding the narrative is also a marker of the importance the Fasti for this narrative; see Barchiesi 2001b: 335. Anni is again a gloss on Anna Perenna’s name; see Marks 2013: 290.
See also Marks 2013: 296.
See Bolkestein 2000: 122–123 on the use of the anaphoric pronoun hic “in a clause with which the speaker is returning to his original storyline or line of reasoning after some digression.”
Ganiban 2010: 95.
Fucecchi 2013: 24 n.25; the order of goddess and nymph is, however, reversed: diua deae in the Punica refers to Anna and Juno respectively, whereas diua deam in the Aeneid refers to Juno and Juturna.
Another difference is that Juno will be present at Cannae, as she had announced in 8.37 (ipsa adero), while she declares to Juturna that she is unable to even watch the upcoming battle between Turnus and Aeneas (non pugnam aspicere hanc oculis … possum, A. 12.151).
Heitland 1896: 206.
The last word of 8.209 is heavily disputed. Constantius and the Aldine edition read both uoce, also printed by Delz; together with uigili this might mean ‘awake and talking aloud to himself’, as Heitland 1896: 206 suggests. Other suggestions are nocte, corde and uoto. I take over Heitland’s emendation mente (1896: 207), as the meaning fits the context and it recalls the stress of Juturna in A. 12.160: tristi turbatam uulnere mentis. For an overview of the debate, see Brugnoli and Santini 1995: 44. The reflective attitude of Hannibal is reminiscent of Aeneas, e.g. in A. 10.159–160: hic magnus sedet Aeneas secumque uolutat | euentus belli uarios (‘here the great Aeneas sat down and ponders the various outcomes of war’); Brugnoli and Santini 1995: 45, who cite some other examples, too.
The words also recall the introduction to Tiberinus’ prophecy to Aeneas: tum sic adfari et curas his demere dictis (‘then [Tiberinus] spoke thus and took away his cares with the following words’, A. 8.35). This line is a repetition of A. 2.775 and 3.135.
See section 7 above.
See Dominik 2006: 119 and Chiu 2011: 6–15. I do not believe, as Lee 2017: 133–134 suggests, that Anna distances herself from Hannibal by using uester instead of noster.
Jupiter actually supports Hannibal at this point, but abandons him after Cannae. Marks 2013: 298–299 sees a parallel between Anna and Jupiter in the fact that both help the Carthaginians on the short term, but are beneficial for the Romans in the long run. But whereas Jupiter oversees all his actions and carefully plans them, it is never made clear that Anna, a minor goddess, oversees all consequences of her actions.
Fucecchi 2013: 25, on the other hand, reads the reference to Juno as “a sign of rejection of any personal responsibility: she looks as if she were restraining her emotions, if not even dissimulating the knowledge of Hannibal’s ultimate future”. There are, however, no clear indications that Anna knows what will happen with Hannibal in the future or that she rejects her own responsibility. Rather she exaggerates Juno’s words, for example in stating that all gods are supporting Hannibal’s case: omnis iam placata tibi manet ira deorum, | omnis Agenoridis rediit fauor (‘all anger of the gods has now been appeased for you, all favour has come back to the descendants of Agenor’, 8.213–214). This recalls the prophecy of Tiberinus to Aeneas: tumor omnis et irae | concessere deum (‘all wrath and anger of the gods has abated’, A. 8.40–41). Servius notes that this is not true, as the anger of the gods will only subside in Book 12. R.D. Williams 1973: 232 adds that it may be regarded “a rhetorical exaggeration to encourage Aeneas, prophetic rather than actual in meaning.” In Anna’s case, the first part of this observation still holds: it is a rhetorical way of encouraging Hannibal; the prophetic meaning, however, falls short, as not all gods will support Hannibal.
This is an echo of Juno’s words in 8.35–36: cum Varrone manus et cum Varrone serenda | proelia (‘you should join a fight with Varro, battles with Varro’). See also section 2.
Hannibal picks this up in his speech to his troops: diua ducente petamus | infaustum Phrygiis Diomedis nomine campum (‘let the goddess lead us to the field, ominous to the Trojan because of Diomedes’ name’, 8.240–241). See Fernandelli 2009: 163 and Fucecchi 2013: 25 with n.27. Marks 2013: 301 sees dramatic irony in this reference: Diomedes had made peace with the Trojans by returning the Palladium to Aeneas.
The Additamentum Aldinum ends at 8.223. Line 224a is debated, as it is printed in the texts of Constantius and Asulanus, the same editions that introduced the Additamentum. Heinsius deemed it spurious and subsequently most editors have either bracketed it or omitted it altogether. See Ariemma 2000b: 90.
Cf. the prophecy of Hammon, which also does not go beyond Cannae (Iapyga campum, 3.707). See Chapter 1, section 5.1.
Ariemma 2000b: 90.
Fucecchi 2013: 23. The way that Anna leaves Hannibal also recalls Iris’ depature: dixit et in nubes umentia sustulit ora (‘so she spoke and she rose her wet face into the clouds’, 8.225) ~ dixit et in caelum paribus se sustulit alis (‘so she spoke and she rose into the sky on poised wings’, A. 9.14). Fucecchi 2013: 26 and Marks 2013: 298 n.34 infer from this parallel that Anna returns to heaven, but Anna is unlike Iris not a celestial goddess.
It also recalls Virgil’s self-address in the Georgics: en age segnes | rumpe moras (G. 3.42–43). Virgil urges himself to continue his work on that poem, a task entrusted to him by Maecenas, while only later he will start writing an epic on Octavian’s battles (pugnas | Caesaris, G. 3.46–47). The same collocation is also used by Medea as self-address, urging herself to start her revenge on Jason: rumpe iam segnes moras (‘now end your sluggish delays’, Sen. Med. 54). This intertext may also ring through in Anna’s address of Hannibal, as his warfare with the Romans is a revenge for what Aeneas did to Dido. The collocation eia age echoes similar exhortations in the speeches of Juno and Dido to Anna (perge age, 8.32; surge, age, 8.176).
The only implicit indication that Anna might know Hannibal’s future might be hidden in the phrase umentia … ora (‘her wet face’, 8.225). Fucecchi 2013: 26 cautiously suggests that means Anna is weeping when leaving Hannibal; in 9.30, the collocation ora umentia refers to tear-stained faces. I do not follow this interpretation, as Anna’s face is umentia because she is a river nymph.
The pleonastic phrase aequatam gemino simulacri munere stresses the close similarity between the two sisters; they are almost identical. Geminus is an adjective originally meaning ‘twin-born’; Dido had used the verb aequo earlier for describing the mutual feelings of Sychaeus (8.147).
In 6.700–713, Hannibal envisioned another temple to be built in Carthage after the war. See Chapter 2, section 3.1.
Spaltenstein 1986: 514.
Austin 1977: 64 and Horsfall 2013: 113–114.
Fucecchi 2013: 23–27 compares Hannibal’s attempt at transferring Anna with the ancient ritual of translatio. According to him, the Anna episode “indirectly points out the impossibility of transferring gods to the Carthaginian side, no matter whence they originate.”
Ariemma 2000b: 91 and Lee 2017: 138 cite the parallel without explanation.
See e.g. Thomas 1988b: 36. The interpretation is, however, complicated as for example Hardie 1998: 39–43 shows. See also Heerink 2015: 4–5, with n.10 for a bibliography on the matter.
Hannibal obeys to Anna’s command (8.214–215), which also contained an echo of the beginning of Georgics 3. See n. 273 above.
Pace Marks 2013: 300, who understands the episode as a message “that differences between Carthaginian and Italian/Roman or friend and foe can be reconciled.”