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Summary In the Aeneid, the recurrent themes of ‘construction’ and ‘destruction’ (the topic of the Latin final exam of 2020) can be connected to generic roles. Dido, founder of Carthage, is presented progressively in elegiac terms, as is suggested by a number of echoes of Sapphic love poetry; as a character, she is guided primarily by personal motives. Dido’s ‘elegiac role’ forebodes her own destruction and that of her city. Aeneas, on the other hand, needs to adhere to his epic role as founder of the new Trojan/Roman nation, in order to avert destruction and the repetition of Troy’s fate. When during his stay in Carthage he starts to show signs of transforming into an elegiac lover, the gods intervene and put him back onto the epic track: the public interest should take precedence over personal feelings. This opposition between elegiac Dido and epic Aeneas may grant insight into Vergil’s message for his contemporaries.

This chapter focuses on the complex identity of Capua through its past and present associations with Troy, Rome, and Carthage. Whilst Capua’s defection to Hannibal provides the conqueror with the comforts and loyalty of home, the definition altera Carthago speaks primarily of perfidy but also of luxuria to his Roman enemies. This dichotomy is explored through a multiplicity of images and intertexts designed to evoke the banquets of Dido and Virrius. Capua’s past, her Trojan inheritance, raises the ambiguity of altera Troia, evoking the fall of Troy and, through Virgilian allusion, its renascence as Rome, whereas Capua’s perfidia sets her in contrast with another Trojan foundation, the city of Saguntum, which fell rather than betray her loyalty to Rome. Silius’ description of Capua’s decadent luxury is an admonition, grimly associating Rome’s imperial grandeur with the undercurrents of civil war, which are underlined by the kinship of Rome and Capua.

Silius Italicus' Punica is a very Roman epic. From the outset, the poet presents his work as the "sequel" of Virgil's Aeneid , the national epic, when he declares his intention to sing the gloria Aeneadum . This essentially Roman quality of the Punica , as opposed to the contemporary epics with Greek subjects, Valerius' Argonautica and Statius' Thebaid and Achilleid , raises the question how the Flavian poet positions himself in the wider epic tradition with its rich Greek past. A promising starting point for any discussion of the way in which Silius engages with his literary predecessors is a passage in Punica 13, which features the father of epic poetry, Homer himself, as a character. In his inspection of the shades of the Underworld, guided by the umbra of the ancient Sibyl of Cumae, the protagonist Scipio views the ghost of Homer, which elicits a eulogy of the latter's poetic merits. Keywords: Devs Esse; Greek; Homer; Punica 13; Roman epic; Silius Italicus

International audience; We present a novel all optical aggregation technology based on MB OFDM and evaluate its economical interest in a typical backhaul network configuration.

This section contains index of passages discussed in the book The Poetry of Statius. The book, the outcome of an international symposium on Statius held in Amsterdam in 2005, contains original contributions to the study of Statius' epics (Thebaid and Achilleid) and occasional poetry (Silvae), as well as the reception of both in European literature and scholarship.Keywords: Achilleid; European literature; European scholarship; poetry; Silvae; Statius; Thebaid

Theoretical results are presented on the coupling efficiency of highly diverging Gaussian beams into a microlensed fibre through hyperbolic and spherical lenses.