Only recently have scholars turned their attention to Silius Italicus' Punica, a poem the reputation of which was eclipsed by the emergence of Virgil’s Aeneid as the canonical Latin epos of Augustan Rome. This collection of essays aims at examining the importance of Silius' historical epic in Flavian, Domitianic Rome by offering a detailed overview of the poem's context and intertext, its themes and images, and its reception from antiquity through Renaissance and modern philological criticism. This pioneering volume is the first comprehensive, collaborative study on the longest epic poem in Latin literature.

The epics of ancient Greece and Rome are unique in that many went unfinished, or if they were finished, remained open to further narration that was beyond the power, interest, or sometimes the life-span of the poet. Such incompleteness inaugurated a tradition of continuance and closure in their reception. Brill’s Companion to Prequels, Sequels, and Retellings of Classical Epic explores this long tradition of continuing epics through sequels, prequels, retellings and spin-offs. This collection of essays brings together several noted scholars working in a variety of fields to trace the persistence of this literary effort from their earliest instantiations in the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer to the contemporary novels of Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Atwood.

Although it was labeled an anti-epic for trumping the celebratory scope of the Roman national epos, Lucan’s Bellum Civile is a hymn to lost republican liberty composed under Nero’s tyrannical empire. Lucan lost his life in a foiled conspiracy to replace the emperor, but his poem survived the wreckage of antiquity and enjoyed uninterrupted readership. The present collection samples the most current approaches to Lucan’s poem, its themes, its dialogue with other texts, its reception in medieval and early modern literature, and its relevance to audiences of all times.

The present volume provides a comprehensive guide to one of the most difficult authors of classical antiquity. All the major aspects of Propertius' work, its themes, the poetical technique, its sources and models, as well as the history of Propertian scholarship and the vexed problems of textual criticism, are dealt with in contributions by Joan Booth, James Butrica, Francis Cairns, Elaine Fantham, Paolo Fedeli, Adrian Hollis, Peter Knox, Robert Maltby, Tobias Reinhardt and Richard Tarrant; due space is also given to the reception of the author from antiquity and the renaissance (Simona Gavinelli) up to the modern age (Bernhard Zimmermann). At the centre stands an interpretation of the four transmitted books by Gesine Manuwaldt, Hans-Peter Syndikus, John Kevin Newman and Hans-Christian Günther.

Brill’s Companion to Valerius Flaccus is the first English-language survey on all key aspects of this Flavian poet and his epic Argonautica (1st century CE). A team of international specialists offers both an account of the state of the art and new insights. Topics covered include textual transmission, language, poetic techniques, main themes, characters, relationship to intertexts and reception. This will be a standard point of departure for anyone interested in Valerius Flaccus or Flavian epic more generally. Contributors are: Antony Augoustakis, Michael Barich, Neil Bernstein, Emma Buckley, Cristiano Castelletti, James Clauss, Robert Cowan, Peter Davis, Alain Deremetz, Attila Ferenczi, Marco Fucecchi, Randall Ganiban, Mark Heerink, Alison Keith, Helen Lovatt, Gesine Manuwald, Ruth Parkes, Tim Stover, Ruth Taylor-Briggs, and Andrew Zissos.

Book 13 of Silius Italicus' Punica marks an important turning point in this Latin epic poem on the Second Punic War. After twelve books of Carthaginian dominance, Rome begins to gain the upper hand. Following his failed attempt to attack Rome, Hannibal is devastated to learn that his role model Diomedes had provided Aeneas' heirs with the protective talisman of the Palladium, and leaves for southern Italy. This allows the Romans to finish their siege of Capua, Hannibal's rich ally in Italy, in punishment for its treachery; Capua's fall marks the beginning of the end for Carthage. The book's central theme of the anticipation of Rome's destined victory is continued in the third and longest part of the book, where young Scipio, the future Africanus, ventures into the underworld, and into the depths of the rich poetic past, to be inspired by the shades he encounters and to define his own position as an epic hero. This volume presents the first full-scale literary and linguistic analysis of the entirety of Punica 13, including the famous Nekyia episode. The notes, which cover matters of syntax, textual criticism, style, a selection of realia, and important verbal and conceptual parallels, are complemented with extended introductory paragraphs for each scene focusing on poetic models, themes, intertextual interpretation, and narrative structure. C. M. van der Keur's General Introduction discusses the book against its Flavian background, its position within the epic and within the literary tradition, and Silius' use of metre and verse composition. The Latin text is presented alongside an English translation.

Book 13 of Silius Italicus' Punica marks an important turning point in this Latin epic poem on the Second Punic War. After twelve books of Carthaginian dominance, Rome begins to gain the upper hand. Following his failed attempt to attack Rome, Hannibal is devastated to learn that his role model Diomedes had provided Aeneas' heirs with the protective talisman of the Palladium, and leaves for southern Italy. This allows the Romans to finish their siege of Capua, Hannibal's rich ally in Italy, in punishment for its treachery; Capua's fall marks the beginning of the end for Carthage. The book's central theme of the anticipation of Rome's destined victory is continued in the third and longest part of the book, where young Scipio, the future Africanus, ventures into the underworld, and into the depths of the rich poetic past, to be inspired by the shades he encounters and to define his own position as an epic hero. This volume presents the first full-scale literary and linguistic analysis of the entirety of Punica 13, including the famous Nekyia episode. The notes, which cover matters of syntax, textual criticism, style, a selection of realia, and important verbal and conceptual parallels, are complemented with extended introductory paragraphs for each scene focusing on poetic models, themes, intertextual interpretation, and narrative structure. C. M. van der Keur's General Introduction discusses the book against its Flavian background, its position within the epic and within the literary tradition, and Silius' use of metre and verse composition. The Latin text is presented alongside an English translation.

The book lays bare the narrative form of Silius’ text. It focuses on the phenomenon of ambiguity due to the epic’s constant oscillation between fact and fiction, highlighting Roman triumph in defeat and defeat through triumph.

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.

This study investigates the role of embedded narratives in Silius Italicus’ Punica, an epic from the late first century AD on the Second Punic War (218–202 BC). At first sight, these narratives seem to be loosely ‘embedded’ in the epic, having their own plot and being situated in a different time or place than the main narrative. A closer look reveals, however, that they foreshadow or recall elements that are found elsewhere in the epic. In this way, they serve as ‘mirrors’ of the main narrative. The larger part of this book consists of four detailed case studies.