Sergio CASALI The poet at war: Ennius on the field in Silius’ Punica
This paper focuses on a very special moment in the reception of Ennius. In Silius Italicus, Pun. 12.387-419, Ennius is introduced as a centurion fighting in the Sardinian campaign. The enemy Hostus is about to kill him, but Apollo intervenes and saves the poet, killing Hostus. In this paper I shall discute Silian dense intertextuality, and especially Silius’ reading of Virgil’s Messapus in Aeneid 7 as a figure for Ennius, and the intertextuality with the Numanus Remulus episode in Aeneid 9.(i) Ennius/Messapus/Orpheus. The Ennian episode in Silius is a shrewd reading of the Virgilian passage on Messapus in Aen. 7.691-705. Silius’ interpretation of this passage matches that found in Servius: according to him, Messapus was claimed by Ennius as an ancestor, and Virgil praises Ennius’ poetry through the simile of the swans in 7.699-702. The fated invulnerabilty of Messapus (Aen. 7.692), that in Virgil is connected both to Messapus’ divine ancestry and to his association with the figure of Cycnus, is re-interpreted by Silius as a prefiguration of Ennius’ invulnerability as a divinely protected poet.
Furthermore, Silius’ reading of Virgil’s Messapus passage points out the encomiastic nature of Ennian poetry: the followers of Messapus, who are compared to singing swans, are said ‘to sing the praises of their king’ (regem… canebant, 7.698), and this encomiastic character of Ennian poetry is underlined by Apollo in Sil. 12.411 attollet… duces caelo. Interestingly, Messapus in Virgil’s Aeneid is both a figure of the poet Ennius and the subject of his ‘fellow-poets’ praises: it is just the same situation of Silius’ episode, where Ennius is a warrior praised for his ability as a poet praising warriors.
Virgil’s association of Messapus/Ennius with the swan is to be connected with Ennius’ claim memini me fiere pauom (Ann. 11). Virgil wants to ‘correct’ Ennius, choosing the swan, an orphic symbol, as a more appropriate bird to be associated with a poet.
(ii) Ennius and Ascanius. The main Virgilian model for the Ennius episode in Silius is the killing of Numanus Remulus by Ascanius in Aeneid 9.590-663. This model is already recalled by the opening of Silius’ narrative: the invocation to the Muse Calliope alludes to Virgil’s invocation to the same Muse in Aen. 9.525-9. So, Silius reads the introduction of Calliope in Aen. 9 as connected to the epiphany of Apollo in the Numanus episode, for his more concentrated narrative clearly suggests that Calliope is invoked as the mother of Orpheus(-Ennius) from Apollo himself. Apollo’s intervention as the god of poetry and ‘father’ of Ennius/Orpheus in Silius 12.405-14, preventing Hostus from daring ‘too much’ (‘nimium… hausisti’), cleverly reworks Apollo’s epiphany in Aen. 9 and underlines the metapoetic and Callimachean elements in that very epiphany. In the Aeneid Ascanius is prohibited to go on in his epic career, in the Punica Apollo appropriately talks not to the epic-poet-to-be Ennius but to his ‘Enemy’ (Hostus).
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