Includes bibliographical references (p. 449-472) and indexes.

Preliminary material / Augoustakis Antony -- Silius Italicus, A Flavian Poet / Antony Augoustakis -- To Silius Through Livy and his Predecessors / Arthur Pomeroy -- Silius Italicus: A Consular Historian? / Bruce Gibson -- Virgil’s Dido and the Heroism of Hannibal in Silius’ Pvnica / Randall T. Ganiban -- Imitation and the Hero / Elizabeth Kennedy Klaassen -- Silius and Lucan / Raymond Marks -- Interplay: Silius and Statius in the Games of Pvnica 16 / Helen Lovatt -- Hercules as a Paradigm of Roman Heroism / Paolo Asso -- Virtue and Narrative in Silius Italicus’ Pvnica / Ben Tipping -- The Shield and the Sword: Q. Fabius Maximus and M. Claudius Marcellus as Models of Heroism in Silius’ Pvnica / Marco Fucecchi -- Fons Cuncti Varro Mali: The Demagogue Varro in Pvnica 8–10 / Enrico M. Ariemma -- Picturing the Future Again: Proleptic Ekphrasis in Silius’ Pvnica / Stephen J. Harrison -- Silius’ Natural History: Tides in the Pvnica / Eleni Manolaraki -- Virtual Epic: Counterfactuals, Sideshadowing, and the Poetics of Contingency in the Pvnica / Robert Cowan -- Engendering Orientalism in Silius’ Pvnica / Alison M. Keith -- Family and State in the Pvnica / Neil W. Bernstein -- Silius Italicus in the Italian Renaissance / Frances Muecke -- The Reception of Silius Italicus in Modern Scholarship / William J. Dominik -- Bibliography / Augoustakis Antony -- General Index / Augoustakis Antony -- Index Locorum I / Augoustakis Antony -- Index Locorum II / Augoustakis Antony.

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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.