The Roman Hannibal Remembering The Enemy In Silius Italicus Punica Stocks by Stocks, Claire 9781781380284, 1781380287 instant download after payment.

Silius Italicus’ Punica, the longest surviving epic in Latin literature, has seen a resurgence of interest among scholars in recent years. A celebration of Rome's triumph over Hannibal and Carthage during the second Punic war, Silius’ poem presents a plethora of familiar names to its readers: Fabius Maximus, Claudius Marcellus, Scipio Africanus and, of course, Rome's ‘ultimate enemy’ – Hannibal. Where most recent scholarship on the Punicahas focused its attention on the problematic portrayal of Scipio Africanus as a hero for Rome, this book shifts the focus to Carthage and offers a new reading of Hannibal's place inSilius’ epic, and in Rome's literary culture at large. Celebrated and demonised in equal measure, Hannibal became something of an anti-hero for Rome; a man who acquired mythic status, and was condemned by Rome's authors for his supposed greed and cruelty, yet admired for his military acumen. For the first time this book provides a comprehensive overview of this multi-faceted Hannibal as he appears in the Punica and suggests that Silius’ portrayal of him can be read as the culmination to Rome's centuries-long engagement with the Carthaginian in its literature. The works of Polybius, Livy, Virgil, and the post Virgilianepicists all have a bit-part in this book, which aims to show that SiliusItalicus’ Punicais as much an example of how Rome remembered its past, as it is a text striving to join Rome's epic canon.