The Battle of Cannae represents a conflict of mighty powers and a crushing defeat, notoriously the worst in Rome's history. Dawn on August 2, 216 BC, saw the armies of Rome and Carthage clash in what the participants hoped would be the decisive engagement for supremacy in Mediterranean trade and empire. Punica 10 opens with the final phase of the battle, when there lingered no hope of victory in the Roman ranks. The military narrative moves mercilessly through the aristeia and death of the heroic consul, Paulus, to the ghastly tableau of Roman defeat. But the mystique of Cannae lies in a paradox: that the army ignominiously vanquished emerges the ultimate victor. Although night falls on a battlefield littered with the wreckage of Rome's military might and a triumphant victor still unsated with Roman blood, the second half of the book unfolds a sequence of unexpected twists in the action which destabilize Hannibal's confidence and initiate acts of heroism inspiring fresh resolution in the traumatized Romans. In one of Silius' finest books, the climactic sweep of his epic is enriched by intertextual allusions to Virgil's great narrative of epic closure: Aeneid 12. In contrast to her earlier commentary on Punica 7, which explores intertexts associated with Hannibal's desecration of rural Italy, R. Joy Littlewood's new commentary focuses on Silius' military narrative; the poetics of defeat with its imagery of shipwreck and the spectacle of death in the Roman amphitheatre. It aims to show how a poet with long experience in politics as a senior senator in the first century CE interpreted Rome's historic disaster and eventual triumph in the light of his own experiences of civil war and a swift succession of Roman emperors. Presented here alongside the Latin text and translation, and supplemented with plans of the battlefield, this commentary offers both philological and stylistic exegesis alongside historical analysis and up to date literary criticism. It is accompanied by an extended introduction including analyses of Silius' adaptation of Livy's Cannae narrative, of the contrasting moral strengths of his three Roman heroes, and of the ideas contained in the intertextually rich, exemplary epigram which closes Book 10.

A Commentary on Silius Italicus' Punica 10

History

Littlewood, R. Joy

Ancient Civilizations

Oxford University Press

Hannibal's crossing of the Alps represents a momentous event in the beginning of the Second Punic War (218-202 BCE). The third book of Silius Italicus' Punica reimagines this courageous feat, retracing the journey of Hannibal and his army from the temple of Hercules/Melqart in Gades, across the Pyrenees, the Rhone, and the Alpine peaks into northern Italy. Significant stages in the journey are marked by prophecies: the gods reveal to Hannibal in a dream his future destruction of Italy through a dream with a giant snake; Jupiter unveils to his daughter Venus the future of the Roman empire through the Flavians and Domitian himself; the oracle of Hammon in the African desert prophesies the Roman defeat at Cannae.\nThe Flavian poet builds his narrative around several key episodes that programmatically set the tone for the whole poem: separation from family, a futuristic distinction between African and Iberian troops in the catalogue, the transgressive nature of Hannibal's struggle with nature and the divine.\nThe commentary explores each scene in the context of the poetic, philosophical, and historiographic background, with reference also to material culture. The philological and stylistic exegeses aim to reveal the linguistic complexities which colour this fascinating Flavian reconstruction of the topos of 'the epic hero's journey'. The Latin text is presented alongside an English translation and supplemented with maps and images to support understanding the broad historical context of Silius' poem.

Silius Italicus: Punica, Book 3: Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford Commentaries on Flavian Poetry)

Literature & Fiction

Augoustakis, Antony

History & Criticism

After a period of neglect, Ovid's elegiac poem on the Roman calendar has been the focus of much recent scholarship. In her comprehensive and scholarly study of the final book, Joy Littlewood analyzes Ovid's account of the origins of the festivals of June, demonstrating that Book 6 is effectively a commemoration of Roman War, and elegantly provides a framing bracket to balance the opening celebration of Peace in Book 1. She explores the subtle interweaving of pietas and virtus in Roman religion and its relationship to Augustan ideology, the depth and accuracy of Ovid's antiquarianism, and his audacious expansion of generic boundaries.

A Commentary on Ovid's Fasti, Book 6

Once stigmatized as 'the worst epic ever written', Silius Italicus' Punica is now the focus of a resurgence of critical interest and wide-ranging positive reappraisal. In a climate of flourishing interest in Flavian literary culture, Punica  7 now joins the rising number of commentaries on Flavian epic. While offering an insightful analysis of Silius' complex intertextuality, Littlewood demonstrates how his republican theme bears the imprint of Rome's more recent experience of civil conflict and the military and civic ethos of the Flavians, and illuminates the poet's engagement with luxuria, exploring tensions within the literary and political culture of the Age of Domitian. The narrative of Punica 7 is a tale of treachery and perseverance, of a battle of wills and the desecration of the Italian land, which is poetically interpreted through intertextual allusion to Virgil's Georgics. In the centre of the book Hannibal commits the anti-pastoral atrocity of igniting 2000 Roman ploughing oxen to simulate a nocturnal raid based on Homer's Doloneia. The burning flesh of this subverted sacrifice, interwoven with imagery evoking bacchanal madness and the rising smoke of the sack of Troy, sets the stage for a dramatic finale in which Rome's traditional virtues triumph over oriental guile and internal discord. This penetrating study explores how the historical narrative coalesces with mythology, the proto-history of Rome, and the genealogy of its protagonists.Littlewood's volume is the first full English commentary on a book of Silius Italicus' Punica and is supported by an extended introduction covering Silius' life, his literary models, the characterization of his protagonists, Fabius and Hannibal, his epic style, and the transmission of the text.

Commentary on Silius Italicus, Punica 7

The third and final book of Ovid's love elegies is a complex farewell to the genre. It begins, programmatically, with Ovid, torn between Tragedy and Elegy, persuading Tragedy to give him a little more time for his love poetry and love affairs. As the book progresses, familiar obstructions to the pursuit of illicit love in urban Rome, beyond the easily circumvented Leges Iuliae, are interspersed with conclusive impediments, such as impotence or even Death. Other elegies manifest Ovid's developing interest in alternative poetic modes and subjects. The last poem, 3.15, bids Elegy a final farewell, while asserting the magnitude of Ovid's achievement as a love-poet. The present volume, a Commentary on Poems 1 to 8, goes halfway on Ovid's journey towards this final renunciation, up to the point where Ovid is resoundingly defeated in love by his wealthy military rival. As volume IV.i of the four-volume Prolegomena, Text, and Commentary on the Amores begun in 1987, it is jointly authored by J.C. McKeown and R. Joy Littlewood.

Ovid: Amores. Text, Prolegomena and Commentary in four volumes: Volume IV.i. A Commentary on Book Three, Elegies 1 to 8 (Arca, Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs, 57)

McKeown, James C.

Francis Cairns (Publications) Ltd