Silius Italicus was a first century AD Roman orator and poet. Only one of his works has survived to the present, his 17-book history of the Second Punic War, Punica. It is the longest poem to survive from Antiquity and describes Rome’s third century BC war with Carthage and the invasion of Italy by the Carthaginian leader Hannibal. Punica was rediscovered at the beginning of the fifteenth century by the Italian scholar Poggio Bracciolini. It was first printed in 1471. This English edition, translated by Thomas Ross, was printed in London in 1661.