Silius' life is more interesting than his verse. Like Lucan, he elected to write historical epic, and in his choice of a subject was undoubtedly wiser than his younger contemporary. For instead of selecting a period so dangerously recent as the civil strife in which the republic perished, he went back to the Second Punic War, to a time sufficiently remote to permit of greater freedom of treatment and to enable him to avoid the peril of unduly republican ecstasies. In making this choice he was in all probability influenced by his reverence for Vergil. He, too, would sing of Rome's rise to greatness, would write a truly national epic on the great theme which Vergil so inimitably foreshadowed in the dying words of the Carthaginian queen, would link the most stirring years of Rome's history with the past, just as Vergil had linked the epic of Rome's founder to the greatness of the years that were to come. Ennius had been before him, but he might well aspire to remodel and develop the rude annalistic work of the earlier poet.[599] The brilliant history of Livy, with its vivid battle-scenes and its sonorous speeches, was a quarry that might provide him with the richest material. Unhappily, less wise than Lucan, he made the fatal mistake of adopting the principles set forth by Eumolpus, the dissolute poet in the novel of Petronius.[600] The intrusion of the mythological method into historical epic is disastrous. It is barely tolerable in the pseudo-historical epic of Tasso. In the military narrative of Silius it is monstrous and insufferable. His reverence for Vergil led him to control, or attempt to control, every action of the war by divine intervention. Juno reappears in her old rôle as the implacable enemy of Rome. It is she that kindles Hannibal's hatred for Rome, causes the outbreak of the war,[601] and, disguised as the lake-god Trasimenus, spurs him on to Rome.[602] It is at her instigation that Anna Perenna kindles him to fresh effort by the news that Fabius Cunctator is no longer in command against him,[603] that Somnus moderates his designs after Cannae.[604] It is Juno that conceals the Carthaginian forces in a cloud at Cannae,[605] and that rescues Hannibal from the fury of Scipio at Zama.[606] Against Juno is arrayed Venus, the protector of the sons of Aeneas. She persuades her husband Vulcan to dry up the Trebia, whose flood threatens the Romans with yet greater disaster than they have already suffered,[607] she unnerves and demoralizes the Punic army by the luxury of Capua.[608] Minerva and Mars play minor parts, the former favouring Carthage, the latter Rome.[609] Nothing is gained by this dreary and superannuated mechanism, while the poem is yet further hampered by the other encumbrances of epic commonplace.