following books. The unreal device of Juno’s despatch of the nymph Anna to encourage Hannibal leads us back to the Dido story for a time.[1338] Then the narrative is resumed. The consuls have been changed, and Aemilius Paulus dreads the abyss to which the arrogance of his colleague Varro may lead. His arguments are stated in the debating manner of the schools,[1339] making brief ironical points one after another—“the impetuous consul fears that he might leave Rome’s ruin for another man’s consulate; it might be well to summon a consul from Carthage, for even a Carthaginian would not be so dangerous!” The catalogue of Italian warriors, extending to over 260 lines, gives a chance of introducing famous names. There is, for example, a Tullius, descended from King Tullus, and destined, as ancestor of Cicero, to give in later days a noble citizen to Ausonia: next follows a eulogy on the orator:

Beyond the Ganges heard and furthest Ind, His voice will fill the earth, and frenzied war Will bow before his lightning tongue, nor can Descendants hope for equal fame in speech.[1340]

So too there is a Scaevola, a Sulla, Nero the Sabine, a Piso, a Galba, a Brutus and others. Among the men of North Italy those are not forgotten who come from Virgil’s birthplace,

The home of Muses, Mantua, upraised By song Aonian to the stars, and peer Of Homer’s minstrelsy.[1341]

In the description of the battle of Cannae, Silius’s aim is not historical accuracy, but epic embellishment. His true model, therefore, is not such brief narratives as those in Polybius (III. 115-116) or Livy (XXII. 47-49), but the manner of the _Iliad_ and the _Aeneid_, so that the account is expanded to fill nearly two books, IX and X; and is diversified by similes, divine interferences, Homeric slaughter, and episodes like the unwitting slaying of a father by a son. Though it be mythological, there is a grim suggestiveness in Charon’s rejoicing in the expectation of receiving the dead:

Glad on the pallid mere the Ferryman Now cleared the thwarts for ghosts that were to come;[1342]

and the poet has a conception of Roman greatness in adversity:

Would that hereafter, Roman, thou mayst face Fair fortune nobly as thou didst defeat. Be this thy last disaster! May Heaven consent Never to try if Trojan progeny Can bear a war so dread! I pray thee, Rome, That tremblest for thy destiny, to dry Thy tears and to adore thy wounds that must Bring thee renown unto eternity. Greater at no time shalt thou ever be: For soon the slippery pathway of success Shall make thee hold misfortune but a name.[1343]

There is nobility in Hannibal’s character as drawn by Silius, when he decrees funeral honours to the fallen consul, Paulus, and muses over his body:

How great thou liest in death! For me thou art More cause of triumph than those thousands slain. When fate shall call, such death be Hannibal’s, If Carthage be but safe;[1344]

and, later, in his address of almost envious farewell:

Go, glory of Ausonia, where needs Must go the souls for valiant action crowned. Thy fame is won by death illustrious. For me, my toils are yet in Fortune’s hands: I may not know the hazards that shall be.[1345]

The sorrow-stricken capital is again saved by Fabius, who wins a nation’s gratitude because he did not despair of the republic, though Silius unhappily uses the stilted expression, “he did not despair for the city of Laomedon’s descendants.”[1346] Indeed some twenty lines towards the close of the tenth book are full of indirect and far-fetched expressions.