A Commentary on Silius Italicus' Punica 10

A Commentary on Silius Italicus' Punica 10
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 0
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0198713819
ISBN-13 : 9780198713814
Rating : 4/5 (814 Downloads)

Book Synopsis A Commentary on Silius Italicus' Punica 10 by : R. Joy Littlewood

Download or read book A Commentary on Silius Italicus' Punica 10 written by R. Joy Littlewood and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 Related Books

A Commentary on Silius Italicus' Punica 10
Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors: R. Joy Littlewood
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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 ar
A Commentary on Silius Italicus' Punica 7
Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors: R. Joy Littlewood
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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 reapp
Commentary on Silius Italicus' Punica 10
Language: en
Pages:
Authors: R. Joy Littlewood
Categories:
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Littlewood's volume is the first full English commentary, supported by a comprehensive introduction and Latin text with full apparatus criticus, on Silius Itali
Ritual and Religion in Flavian Epic
Language: en
Pages: 425
Authors: Antony Augoustakis
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-04-18 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This collection addresses the role of ritual representations and religion in the epic poems of the Flavian period. Drawing on various studies on religion and ri
Flavian Epic
Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors: Antony Augoustakis
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2016 - Publisher: Oxford Readings in Classical S

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The epics of the three Flavian poets--Silius Italicus, Statius, and Valerius Flaccus--have, in recent times, attracted the attention of scholars, who have re-ev