 Indeed, Virgil is considered Silius' most pervasive influence.His contemporaries Pliny and Martial discuss his almost crazed devotion to the spirit of Virgil (whom Silius is known to have worshipped as a god and whose tomb he bought and repaired) and often compare his poetry to the works of Virgil.Silius employs constantly Virgilian images, similes, tropes, and elements (such as his "nekyia" or the historically-themed shield of Hannibal) in the "Punica", and hardly a page goes by without some significant allusion to the "Aeneid".