He used his wealth to acquire properties, many a fine domus in Rome including one that had belonged to Cicero whom he revered. His many country houses were turned into show-cases for marvellous collections of books, sculpture and paintings. Besides Cicero, he revered the poet Virgil. The latter’s tomb in Naples being neglected, Italicus purchased the property it was on, restored it and celebrated the poet’s memory with pilgrimages ; 15 October, Virgil’s birthday, became the most important day of his own life. (2)

In his retirement in Naples, he kept up a heavy schedule of society life. Mostly he read excerpts of his poem Punica to his visitors and asked for their criticism (Pliny the Younger thought it lacked genius). An incurable disease called clavus but otherwise unidentifiable eventually drove him to suicide by starving himself. He was survived by one son, his other son Severus Silius having predeceased him. (Mart., IX, 86)

Silius Italicus is most remembered for his epic poem on the Second Punic War - Punica - despite Pliny’s evaluation and that of practically every critic since, the great majority of whom agree with Pliny. The poem is mostly inspired by Virgil’s Aeneid, followed by Livy’s Third Decad. It is the longest Latin work : 12000 verses. The main hero is Hannibal, with Scipio Africanus in the second role. Italicus observed the rules of his day to a fault. Thus the poem contains hundreds of verses of catalogue - of weapons, peoples, towns, rivers - and describes in lurid detail the carnage of the different battles. If Virgil, Lucretius, Catullus and Horace tower above him as far as artistic merit is concerned, certain passages in his unique oeuvre are more than equal in beauty and charm. Browse here for an example.

The oldest known copy of the Punica, the one from which all existing copies today are made (called ms. S), no longer exists. It was found in an underground cell at Saint-Gall Monastery in present-day Switzerland, in 1416 or 1417 by the Florentine scholar Poggio. The two earliest printed editions appeared in Rome in 1471. The Aldine edition of 1523 contains 81 verses found in no other ms. (VIII, 145-225) - one of the literary world’s mysteries. Perhaps the first English translation of the poem is the one by Thomas Ross, «Keeper of his Majesty's Libraries» to King Charles II of Britain. His translation is dated Bruges, Nov. 18, 1657 ; it was printed in London in 1672. It includes three books not of Italicus, the translator’s own continuation of the story down to Hannibal’s death.

1. Pliny the Younger, Epist. III, 7.
2. "None other than a solitary pauper kept watch over the abandoned dust of Virgil, honouring his blessed name. Silius devoted himself to the beloved shade. A great poet was thus avenged by another no less great." (Mart., XI, 49)

Source
Silius Italicus, Punica, VII, 285-317. Transl. by J.D. Duff, Loeb Classical Library, London/Cambridge MA, 1961.

Mauricius Fabius