incomplete; but whether the remainder of the poem is lost or was never written can not be determined. [Sidenote: Silius Italicus.] Silius Italicus, whose whole name was Tiberius Cattius Silius Italicus, chose for the subject of his epic a Roman theme, the second Punic War. He was born in 25 A. D. and starved himself to death on account of an incurable disease in 101 A. D. He is said to have been an informer (_delator_) under Nero, but rose to the consulship in 68 A. D., and was afterwards governor of Asia under Vespasian. The latter part of his life was spent in honorable retirement in Campania. Here he devoted himself to literature and wrote the seventeen books of the _Punica_, in which he tells the story of the second Punic War to the decisive battle of Zama, in 202 B. C. His historical information is derived from Livy, and is therefore correct in all essential matters. The events of the war are described in chronological order. The style is an imitation of Homer and Virgil, and the imitation extends to more than mere style, for the traditional epic machinery of gods, prophecies, heroes, and the like, is employed as freely as if the second Punic War were as mythical as the adventures of Æneas. So Juno strives to give Hannibal the victory, while Venus aids the Romans. The sea-god Proteus foretells the course of the war to a Carthaginian fleet, and Hannibal, with his crested helmet, his sword, and his spear “fatal to thousands,” rages about the walls of Saguntum like Achilles at the siege of Troy. In short, Silius, having no poetic inspiration or imagination of his own, uses in his account of the Punic War the methods which had been appropriately applied to the myths of earlier days by Homer and Virgil. As a result, the _Punica_, though written in good hexameters, is hopelessly dull and uninteresting. The so-called _Homerus Latinus_, or _Ilias Latina_, an epitome of the _Iliad_ in one thousand and seventy hexameters, is attributed to the earlier years of Silius Italicus. It attained considerable popularity, but is a work of little merit.