Ovidian Silius

In the Punica, Silius takes advantage of the fact that "Ovid himself had already problematized the epic status of his Metamorphoses," as Hinds puts it. An epic poem that parades its paradoxical character was authorized in the Roman tradition by Ovid. Compared with other writers of Latin epic, Silius avoids the technique of "quotation." He prefers alternative means, in particular, the coincidence of situation and detail rather than wording. Most of the time he has multiple intertexts in mind, prose as well as verse. Paradoxically, this avoidance of direct quotation is itself evidence of the author's close attention to the words of those poets who inspired him, like Virgil and Ovid. Silius is writing in a genre over-determined by tradition and hemmed in by conventions. He treads a careful line between fidelity to the tradition and innovation within it. Silius is post-Ovidian in his aesthetics. His engagement with Virgil is not direct and uncontaminated. The complexity enhances the interest of this, the most intertextual of poems.