Gewalt und soziale Bindung in Silius Italicus' "Punica"

This study demonstrates that the representation of violence in the Punica served as a means of reflecting [in]stable social orders and social identity. An analysis of recent research on violence resulted in a model of violence including direct, institutional, structural, and ritualised force as well as violence in the figurative sense. This is followed by an appraisal of the significance of violence in antique society and literature. After this, the narrative technique of epical violence is investigated as to its functions in the text. The author analyses how narrator and characters judge individual types of force and to what extent parallels from Livy, Virgil, Lucan, and Statius indicate the acceptance of certain kinds of violence. Social bonds such as friendship, cooperation, competition, and the relationship between citizen and state are further topics of research. Symbolic parenthood [parens concept of military leaders] and family ties such as marriage are studied with regard to elegy and gender theory. The book ends with the question of the relationship between representations of violence and their contemporaneous context under the rule of the tyrannic emperor Domitian.