Silius Italicus, >Punica< 15/16

The last three books of Silius Italicus' Punica have received less attention in classical philology; none of them has yet been analysed in a modern individual commentary. The volume presented here fills this research gap for the fifteenth and sixteenth books. Unlike usual, two books of an epic are united in a joint commentary. The two books, which are mainly devoted to Scipio's victories in Spain, are considered here as a unit: they prepare for Scipio's triumph over Hannibal in the last book. In an introduction and a passage commentary, this publication provides all the information essential for understanding these books, considers their political and poetic context, examines their relationship to historiographical and poetic pretexts and to the rest of the work, analyses their content using narratological categories and discusses language, style, metre and textual criticism. A specially compiled critical text provides a new insight into the tradition. This provides philologists with an essential basis for further academic study of the Punica.

Christoph Schwameis, University of Vienna, Austria.