El combate de los trillizos y la imagen de la guerra civil en las Púnicas de Silio Itálico

The goal of this paper is to study the episode of the fight between two sets of triplet brothers that Silius Italicus inserts in the account of the battle of Ticinus (Sil. IV 355-400). Taking Livy’s intertext (Liv. I 25) as a starting point, the changes the Flavian epicist introduces with respect to his model are analized. Silius emphasizes some of the characteristics of civil war already apparent in Livy’s narrative; however, the episode is closed by the praise to the fighters in a clear allusion to the famous apostrophe to Euryalus and Nisus ( Aen . IX 446-449). This strategy, apparently contradictory but totally deliberate, contributes to define the concept of epic in relation to his predecessors Virgil and Lucan, and his contemporaries, especially Statius. The texts of the Thebaid with which these of the Punica are compared seem to prove it.