Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples 9781472540171, 9781780932132

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Editor’s Foreword The aim of this series is to consider Greek and Roman literature primarily in relation to genre and theme. Its authors hope to break new ground in doing so but with no intention of dismissing current interpretation where this is sound; they will be more concerned to engage closely with text, subtext and context. The series therefore adopts a homologous approach in looking at classical writers, one of whose major achievements was the fashioning of distinct modes of thought and utterance in poetry and prose. This led them to create a number of literary genres evolving their own particular forms, conventions and rules – genres which live on today in contemporary culture. Although studied within a literary tradition, these writers are also considered within their social and historical context, and the themes they explore are often both highly specific to that context and yet universal and everlasting. The ideas they conceive and formulate and the issues they debate find expression in a particular language, Latin or Greek, and belong to their particular era in the classical past. But they are also fully translatable into a form that is accessible as well as intelligible to those living in later centuries, in their own vernacular. Hence all quoted passages are rendered into clear, modern English. These are books, then, which are equally for readers with or without knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages and with or without an acquaintance with the civilisation of the ancient world. They have plenty to offer the classical scholar, and are ideally suited to students reading for a degree in classical subjects. Yet they will interest too those studying European and contemporary literature, history and culture who wish to discover the roots and springs of our classical inheritance. The series owes a special indebtedness and thanks to Pat Easterling, who from the start was a constant source of advice and encouragement. Others whose help has been invaluable are Robin Osborne who, if ever we were at a loss to think of an author for a particular topic, almost always came up with a suitable name or two and was never stinting of his time or opinion, and Tony Woodman, now at Virginia. The unfailing assistance of the late John W. Roberts, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World, is also gratefully acknowledged. Deborah Blake, Editorial Director at Duckworth and later Bloomsbury, has throughout offered full support, boundless enthusiasm and wise advice. Finally, I pay tribute to the inspirational genius which Michael Gun-

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Editor’s Foreword ningham, fons et origo of the series and an editor of consummate skill and phenomenal energy, brought to the enterprise. His imprint is everywhere: sine quo, non. David Taylor

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Acknowledgements I owe thanks to many people and institutions for their support in writing this book – the University of Wisconsin Madison; the University of Richmond; the University of Colorado Boulder; Clare Hall, Cambridge; the Cambridge Classics Faculty; the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; and the Loeb Foundation. Harald Anderson, Christopher Chinn, Bill Dominik, Alex Hardie, Gianpiero Rosati, and Elizabeth Tyler, among others, were generous in sharing their work. Reina Caillier was an indispensable bibliographer and research assistant. Thanks too to my patient editors. Finally thanks to Maya Feile Tomes for taking me the final mile and beyond. Carole E. Newlands

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Introduction In 1417 a revolution occurred in the perception of Statius, in the Middle Ages one of the most famous poets of antiquity. With the discovery of a manuscript containing the Siluae, occasional poems celebrating important events in the social lives of Statius and his contemporaries, the poet, who had been assumed to be a teacher of rhetoric from Toulouse in France, was revealed to be from Naples in Southern Italy. As if to emphasise the point, an unnamed hand wrote in the margin of M, our sole copy of that manuscript (which is again lost), at 3.5.78 the annotation Neapolitanus fuit Statius (Statius was a Neapolitan).1 As a result of that discovery, the literary and scholarly community received not only a new body of work from Statius; they also received a new perception of him as a Neapolitan, closely tied therefore to the Epicurean and Greek traditions of that region of Italy. In addition to five books of short poems entitled Siluae, Statius wrote an early poem on Domitian’s wars, De Bello Germanico, of which only four lines survive,2 and the epic poems Thebaid and Achilleid, the latter incomplete. Juvenal, perhaps spuriously, suggests that Statius also wrote a pantomime script Agaue.3 Fitzgerald has recently proposed that Martial, Statius’ contemporary, is our Roman poet of the moment; he appeals to early 21st-century metaphorical tastes for ‘browsing, grazing, surfing, and cruising’ with his scurrilous, witty, ‘sound-bite’ poetry.4 Statius in his short poems, the Siluae, and Martial in the epigrams sometimes write on the same topic, and seem to have cultivated some of the same literary patrons. But where Martial is brief and witty, Statius tends to be expansive in his Siluae as well as in his epics; his leisurely style, replete with mythological allusions, is currently not much in favour. Indeed, Martial rejected myth as too old-fashioned for his short, urbane poems. Perhaps targeting Statius in particular, he writes with epic sarcasm (10.4.1-2): qui Oedipoden caligantemque Thyesten, / Colchidas et Scyllas, quid nisi monstra legis? (you who read of Oedipus and of Thyestes during the eclipse, and of the Colchians and Scyllas, aren’t you just reading about monstrosities?).5 Statius’ poetry is mostly written in hexameter and generally aims for a high style, eschewing the obscenity and materiality of Roman urban life as depicted by Martial. When he writes of love, for instance, he often refers to marriage rather than to illicit passion.6 His hendecasyllabic poems are festive (Silu. 1.6; 2.7; 4.3; 4.9), in accord with the proprieties of that metre, but they are not lascivious. 7

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples Yet in important ways Statius is very much a poet of our times. He lived through the greatest environmental disaster of the ancient Roman world, the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Who today has not heard of Pompeii and Herculaneum? Who has not been haunted and enchanted by the wealth of art from that region, buried for almost 2,000 years under volcanic ash? Statius lived through these cataclysmic events. Born and raised in Naples by a father who was a Greek professional poet and highly esteemed grammaticus,8 Statius returned to the area in the aftermath of the eruption, there to witness the volcanic aftershocks along with the ‘regreening’ of the landscapes.9 Roman traditional confidence in human ability to dominate nature was drastically challenged by the volcano’s eruption. Part of the agenda of Statius’ Siluae is the promotion in the early 90s of the regeneration of his home region, famous for its philhellenic culture.10 Statius provides a vital literary link with the aesthetic principles and social and cultural values expressed most vividly for us today in the ruins of the houses of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae. The concern of Campanian art with the articulation of space, and with myth as a powerful visual language for articulating social and emotional experience, is reflected in Statius’ poetics. He put art and literature at the centre of a definition of Roman identity that was shaped by close contact with separate regional identities, specifically that of Naples. He stands out in Flavian literature as the poet who resisted the centripetal pull of the capital; he also stands out for his empathy in giving significant voice to the victims of war and others’ destructive ambitions. In addition to experiencing the physical and cultural devastation of his home region, Statius also lived through politically turbulent times in a writing career that basically spanned the reign of Domitian (AD 81-96). The Thebaid was probably begun in Titus’ reign (AD 79-81), the year before Domitian’s accession; it was published late in AD 92, four years before the emperor’s assassination and at the start of the so-called ‘reign of terror’. The Achilleid seems to have been started directly afterwards. The Siluae were composed and published in the latter years of Domitian’s reign. Books 1-3 were most likely published as a set shortly after the Thebaid, in early 93; the poems reflect events known to have occurred from around AD 89 on. Book 4 was published in AD 94; Book 5 was posthumously produced.11 In his Histories and Annals Tacitus views the course of the first century AD as a descent into tyranny, marked by the murderous power struggles among the Julio-Claudians, then by the four emperors who competed brutally against one another in AD 68/69; the Flavians, especially Domitian, propelled the Romans further into slavery. Recently, however, historians have appraised Domitian in a more balanced light, commending for instance his major architectural contributions to the urban landscape of Rome, and his generosity to the Roman army.12 Flower’s epigraphical study of this period has revealed more varied and nuanced perceptions of

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1. Introduction Domitian than are found in Pliny’s Panegyricus where Domitian is a horrendous monster, immanissima belua (Pan. 48.3), not a ruler.13 However, it is generally agreed that Domitian began to lose his grip on governance in the early 90s, with AD 89, the year of mutiny on the Rhine and Saturninus’ challenge to Domitian’s power, forming a kind of watershed. The expulsion of philosophers and the execution of leading political and literary figures, including Domitian’s own cousin, exacerbated the emperor’s failure to address a mounting dynastic crisis.14 Domitian had no children and failed, with one botched exception in AD 95, to secure an heir;15 the dangers of a potentially vacant throne, Suetonius comments, precipitated his assassination.16 This period of anxiety between AD 89 and AD 96, when the stability hard won by Vespasian seemed in danger of collapse, was precisely the period in which Statius published his major works. Contemporary politics are however barely mentioned in his poetry; after the exile of Ovid under Augustus and the enforced suicide of Lucan under Nero, imperial poets generally turned away from the political present as too dangerous a theme, or else they adopted various strategies of indirection or deferral. All the same, as I shall argue in this book, all Statius’ work to varying degrees, the Thebaid in particular, reflects Rome’s troubled dynastic history of the past hundred years and the rupture with Augustan optimism; the future of the Flavian line was uncertain when Statius wrote and published his poetry.17 Unlike Lucan, the Flavian poets had lived through civil war (the conflict of AD 68-9) and had possibly experienced its effects first hand.18 Although they distanced themselves from contemporary events by their choice of epic theme – the Punic wars three centuries earlier for Silius, Greek myth for Valerius Flaccus and Statius – they appealed to a Roman readership used to typological thinking. In Roman culture narratives drawn from myth or the distant past provided an important means of analysing contemporary events. In Tacitus’ Dialogus the poet Maternus has just recited a Cato and is about to recite a Thyestes; both the historical and the mythological texts are regarded as equally provocative (Dial. 3.3).19 ‘Thebes’ in particular was a politically charged mythological theme. It was the archetypal myth of civil war, and arguably the first Greek city (Var. RR 3.1.2), other claimants being Athens or Argos (Plin. Nat. 7. 194). In an influential article Zeitlin argued that in Athenian drama Thebes played an important role as a mirror on which problems affecting the polis could be displaced; Hardie, drawing on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, showed how profitably this tragic model was transferred to Rome. But whereas for the Athenians Thebes represented the negative opposite of a well-governed city, Rome was founded on fraternal strife; the threat of civil war, of becoming another Thebes, haunted the Roman historical imagination.20 Indeed, Hardie comments that ‘by the time of Lucan the analogy between the fratricides and civil wars of Thebes and Rome is well established’.21

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples Unlike Valerius Flaccus’ mythological Argonautica, Statius’ two epics are not permeated with direct references to Roman affairs and institutions.22 However, the well-established literary connections between Thebes and Rome would have prompted political awareness in a contemporary audience that had been recently tested by civil war. The visceral mythological narrative of fratricide evoked Rome’s own founding legend of Romulus and Remus. The Thebaid thus shares Tacitus’ bleak view of the dangers of unbridled power, the horrors of civil war, and the problems of dynastic succession. Like Senecan tragedy which, as Schiesaro has shown, is locked into the repetition of nefas, the Thebaid questioned the validity of Virgilian epic’s teleological plot. Indeed, the Thebaid furthers epic’s dramatic turn towards tragedy engineered by Lucan in his significant reshaping of the Roman epic tradition (though unlike Lucan Statius retains epic’s divine and supernatural machinery). 23 The importance of the tragic tradition to the plot of the Thebaid is marked by the prominence of Athens at the epic’s end; Heslin has argued that here Athens too, the cradle of the tragic genre, provides both a positive and a negative paradigm for imperial Rome.24 Both Statius’ epics, despite their return to myth, negotiate and question the conventions of heroic poetry under the pressure of contemporary and recent social and political history. The Siluae in turn faced the challenge of developing a language of praise adequate to Domitian’s inflated, godlike public image. Yet it is important to keep in mind that Statius’ poetic corpus offers an expansive view of Flavian society that is not limited to the woes of a failing ruler but also reveals its social and cultural prosperity, its vitality, and its openness to change. The Achilleid as it stands is keyed to a different register from contemporary martial epic. It draws on the popularity of the theme of the Scyrian Achilles in Roman art, and its major concerns are with education, gender and youth. Although a few of Statius’ Siluae address the emperor, they are social poems which construct a world from which major political events and tensions are largely absent; friendship and literature are elevated both as marks of social and cultural distinction and as moral goods in their own right. Political concerns are not absent from the Siluae, but they are by no means their only narrative. They provide in particular a counterbalance to Tacitus’ bleak narrative of Flavian history, for they reflect the material prosperity and cultured pursuits made possible under Flavian rule. As Mellor argues, despite Domitian’s troubled last years the Flavians set the stage for a remarkable period of political stability in the empire that lasted until the death of Commodus in AD 193.25 Apart from the fourth book of Horace’s Odes and Ovid’s Epistulae ex Ponto, the Siluae are the first poetry books in Latin literature with individual, different addressees for each poem, and the first, with Martial’s Epigrams, with a dedicatee for each book. As a strategy of Statius’ self-representation, the variety of addressees – some in politics, most in retirement – shows that he had a broad

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1. Introduction range of artistic and personal support both in Rome and in Naples; he and his patrons participated in a system of exchange in which literature, not politics, was the chief currency, levelling out social inequalities and cementing ties of friendship. In the Siluae Statius offers an important, non-senatorial viewpoint on social and cultural life in a period when, according to Tacitus’ fiercely anti-Domitianic account, freedom of speech was muzzled (Agr. 2.3); Tacitus comments that his history is necessarily ‘savage’ even when writing of times of so-called peace (ipsa etiam pace saeuum, Hist. 1.2.1). Statius’ Siluae offer a view of a society in which members were adept at creating their own peace, often in withdrawal from Rome. Indeed, despite the political tensions of Domitian’s last years, Rome under the Flavians had become a vibrant, cosmopolitan imperial capital, where what Woolf has called ‘the bicultural ethic’ now prevailed.26 The avenue for success for ambitious provincials and Roman nobility alike was education in both Greek and Latin language and literature.27 Statius’ father was a Greek professional poet who was highly successful on the competition circuit, earning an honorary statue in Athens for his poetry.28 In his obituary tribute to his father, Silu. 5.3, Statius describes how his father also made a successful career as a grammaticus, first teaching Neapolitan youth, and then moving to Rome to teach the aristocracy and the imperial family; as well as Greek language and literature he taught Roman religion (5.3.146-94). Statius’ father clearly moved easily between two cultural worlds, and with this type of bicultural education equipped his pupils for leading positions in Roman imperial administration at home and abroad (5.3.185-90). Statius senior thus exemplifies the centrality of knowledge of both Greek and Latin literature in the formation and maintenance of the Roman elite. Like Horace, Statius elevates his father as the formative influence on his career. Raised in Naples, which had long been part of the Roman state but remained culturally Greek, he too would have been taught his father’s demanding curriculum of Greek literature (5.3.146-58).29 But whereas Horace emphasised his father’s inculcation of morals, Statius praises his father for the literary education that made him a poet.30 Statius’ Neapolitan origins, his education by a grammaticus and successful professional poet who composed in Greek, make him a unique representative in Latin literature of a poet whose formation lay as much in Greek literary practices as in Roman.31 Nowhere perhaps is Statius’ poetry more clearly the product of a common Greco-Roman imperial culture than in its intensely visual aspects, including its fascination with description. As Zeitlin comments, ‘the great common denominator of Greco-Roman culture was precisely the availability of spectacle and every sort of visual ostentation for the delectation (and enlightenment) of an entire public as a shared code of communication across economic, linguistic and regional boundaries’.32 In Flavian Rome the

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples emperor’s new Capitoline games and the events in the Colosseum put spectacle at the heart of imperial propaganda; Statius describes two events in the Colosseum in his Siluae (1.6 and 2.5). The love of spectacle permeated every aspect of imperial Roman culture, from the public monuments of the emperor to the interior decoration of houses. In Campanian wall painting the sophisticated interplay of art and nature, of illusion and realism, seems to have been particularly valued as a source of prestige as well as of pleasure.33 Statius responded to this intensely visual culture with his pioneering experiments in vivid, formal description (ecphrasis), in particular his architectural descriptions in the Siluae and the Thebaid.34 In an era when literary commemoration of the emperor’s buildings was particularly important, Statius in the Siluae took the innovative step of devoting entire, lengthy poems to the description of contemporary villas (1.3 and 2.2) and estates (3.1) owned by private individuals.35 (Martial too praised friends’ villas, but in short epigrams; e.g. 4.64; 12.57). Statius’ villa poems influenced Pliny’s prose descriptions of his own houses, Ep. 2.17 and 5.6, and validated the private house, with its culture of leisure, as a significant literary theme.36 But Statius’ response to the visual tradition was also shaped by the Greek tradition of the descriptive epigram as well as, perhaps most importantly, by Catullus 64, a pioneering poem which thematised the interrelated concepts of viewing, wonder and desire, in particular with its description of the embroidered bedspread (50-264).37 But there was cultural anxiety as well as excitement about Rome’s new cosmopolitanism.38 Such anxieties focused particularly upon Statius’ home region of Campania, the place of civilised withdrawal from the late republic on, but also the stereotypical site of luxury and decadence.39 Statius challenged this stereotype by promoting in his poetry an idea of Hellenism that had proved acceptable to Roman society, one founded on education, paideia, and encompassing excellence in athletics, art, music, and above all literature.40 Statius’ poetry closely associates Naples with these positive qualities: it had international games established by Augustus on the Olympian model (Silu. 2.2.6-8; 3.5.92), a long association with Epicurean philosophy (Silu. 2.2.121-42), and a first-rate educator in Statius’ father (Silu. 5.3).41 Moreover, the standard bilingual education in the schools of the grammaticus and rhetor made the distinction between ‘Greek’ and ‘Roman’ in this period of the late first century AD somewhat fluid.42 Statius’ poetry reflects an interest in forging a cultural identity that rests on ‘Roman’ as well as ‘Greek’ ideologies. The Siluae are indebted to the Greek tradition of improvisational verse, while being intimately bound up with presentday Roman and Neapolitan society. His two epics take Greek myth as their themes and are Homeric in many of their type-scenes; the Thebaid is also indebted to Greek as well as Senecan tragedy.43 And yet the preoccupations of Statius’ poetry are essentially germane to contemporary imperial society – civil war, the problems of dynastic succession, the relationship

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1. Introduction between parents, foster parents and children, questions of true nobility and of gender identity, the definition of leisure and the proper use of wealth. Notable instances of the kind of cultural mediation to which Statius’ poetry aspires appear at the start of the Thebaid and of the Siluae. The epic on a Greek myth is sung on a Greek lyre (chelys, Theb. 1.33) but in Latin. Book 1 of the Siluae is dedicated to a man who, like Statius, straddled two worlds: Arruntius Stella was a well-regarded love poet and had been also one of the quindecimuiri involved in the mounting of the Secular games of AD 88; in AD 93 he was praetor.44 Yet Stella was married to a Neapolitan woman, Violentilla, formerly a wealthy and powerful widow; their wedding is the theme of Silu. 1.2. Statius’ choice of dedicatee for the first book of Siluae reflects the importance of his own bicultural identity to the presentation of his poetic self and his own poetry. Statius looks firmly both to Rome and to Naples for the success of his first publication of Siluae. His poetry invites the reader to look outside the capital as well and appreciate the attractions of another culturally important region of Italy. The Siluae in particular suggest a new definition of what it meant to be ‘Roman’ in an age where, despite the long reach of the capital and the imperial administration, local loyalties remained strong; where leisure, closely implicated with Greek philosophical ideas, had become an attractive alternative to a standard political career. We should see these epideictic praise poems as experimental, as Horace’s Odes 4 is experimental – poetry for a new age of imperial prosperity and dynastic instability. From this brief excursus into Flavian society, we can see that significant challenges faced the Flavian poets when dealing in particular with the socially and culturally inflected genre of epic. Virgil’s Aeneid, an epic of national, imperial aspirations, had become the canonical ‘code model’ for most post-Augustan poets; indeed, by the Neronian period the Augustan poets had become regarded as classics.45 But Ovid and Lucan were also significant epic influences. A pertinent question for the Flavian poets was how, in a period of significant social and cultural change, epic could retain its pre-eminence and remain meaningful to its readers. The world had moved on since the time of Augustus; a series of good and bad emperors, and another civil war, had intervened between the Aeneid and the Thebaid, and the principate had hardened into autocracy. Although the Flavians looked to Virgil and his poetic successors as foundational texts for how epic could be shaped into a vehicle of Roman ideology, the hope embodied in Virgil’s epic, of a stable new political order, had imploded with the spectacular demise of the Julio-Claudians. Certainly the Flavians had renewed the Augustan peace, but without a dynastic successor its durability remained a question. What it meant to be Roman and male had also changed in a multicultural society that was far more Hellenised than at the end of the first century BC.

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples Statius’ poems, the two epics and the Siluae, are bold experiments in adaptation to a new era. They chart their difference from the socio-political world represented by the Neronians as well as by the Augustans. For instance, unlike Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile, Statius’ epic is concerned not with republican ideals but with the nature of monarchy. This shift in preoccupation may reflect the fact that under the Flavians the principate had, through restructuring, become so well established that when Domitian was assassinated in AD 96 Nerva succeeded on the same day; Domitian’s murder was not dramatised by images of senatorial independence or of debates about the restoration of the republic.46 Nerva’s brief rule was not without initial turmoil; but the adoption of Trajan in AD 97 brought stability. The material prosperity of the empire too was reflected in a shift in systems of social and moral value. As Bernstein has argued, both the epics and the Siluae examine the nature of aristocracy; they privilege a nobility of virtue over one of inherited title and wealth.47 Such examination reflects not only the status of Statius as social outsider in Rome but also the new fluidity of Flavian society, owing to the expansion of the ranks of the senatorial and equestrian orders under Vespasian and the opening of new avenues for social and political advancement other than noble descent.48 Moreover, as I have argued, in his Siluae Statius boldly inverts a central moral theme of Augustan poetry, particularly of Horace, and also of much of Seneca’s writings, namely the condemnation of luxury, particularly as displayed in architecture.49 Statius is a modernist who endorses human technology and artistic invention; wealth, he understood, confers social power, and is acceptable if used wisely. Statius’ poetry stands independent of the Roman moralising tradition that located virtue always firmly in the past.50 The central thesis of my book is that the poetry of Statius, an author whose identity mediated between the two significant cultural centres in Italy, Rome and Naples, brings an important bicultural vision to Flavian society and literature. Given the scarcity of contemporary literary witnesses to the reign of the last of the Flavians, Statius’ poetry should be regarded as a serious engagement with contemporary culture – and with the poet’s role within it. With an outsider’s perspective Statius submitted Roman imperial power and the city itself to scrutiny; at the same time his poetry expresses his ambitions for recognition within the Roman epic canon even as he changes its direction from within. My thesis rests on several assumptions. First, that Statius identified himself as both Roman and Neapolitan. He maintained close ties to his local region; in the Siluae he voices a song of hope, defiance, and recovery for this shattered region. Imperial epic was written by aristocrats, with the exception of Statius, who was probably not even of equestrian rank.51 He stands alone as an outsider by geography and birth.52 His Siluae vigorously contest the Roman stereotype of his native region as a land of effete luxury. At the same time, Statius was a poet of empire, his identity defined by

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1. Introduction travel and translation, metaphorical and actual, between Naples and Rome. His poetry offers vivid and relatively rare testimony to the social and intellectual culture of late first century Italy, a period of material prosperity and imperial expansiveness, of central, mainstream accommodation between two high cultures – and also of political uncertainty. Hence in part the importance of Naples as an alternative source of cultural values. A second major assumption of this book is that Statius is not a derivative poet but an innovative one who boldly experiments with Latin literary conventions and genres and re-evaluates their major themes. There is nothing quite like the Siluae extant in ancient poetry.53 They draw both upon the Greek tradition of improvisational poetry and, somewhat paradoxically, upon a Callimachean aesthetic of refinement; they acknowledge in their title the importance of Virgilian pastoral, and also perhaps Lucan’s ten lost books of Siluae.54 But pastoral themes of poetic composition and urban withdrawal are adapted in the Siluae to the material, domestic context of the Roman villa;55 they thus owe a significant debt also to Horace.56 Ovid too is important,57 and metrically, as Morgan has shown, Catullus.58 Their sexual politics are provocative. A Hellenising lament for the death of a handsome young slave (2.6) is juxtaposed with a lament for the virile epic poet Lucan (2.7); a poem on Domitian’s passion for a young slave boy castrated to preserve his looks, another Hellenising turn (3.4), is juxtaposed with a poem praising the poet’s own loyal wife (3.5). Although the Siluae are peppered with mythological comparisons, these often adopt a new or unusual perspective on a character or story that can undermine its original heroic ethos; Ascanius’ foundation of Alba, for instance, is motivated by a desire to get away from an ‘inauspicious stepmother’, Lavinia (Silu. 5.3.37-40). In short, the Siluae in their generic complexity and innovative themes constitute a new literary genre of ambitious, experimental occasional poetry. As our first major collection of poetry books with named addressees since Ovid’s Epistulae ex Ponto, they open a window onto a literary and civic world that was changing in its attitudes to norms of gender, virtue and class. Both Statius’ epics are likewise experimental in that they test the boundaries of genre, and re-evaluate ideas of war and of heroism. The Achilleid, fragmentary though it is, engages in delightful interplay with epic and elegiac themes, at the same time as it scrutinises Roman social values involving parenthood, gender, and education.59 A related focus of this study therefore will be the reception of Statius’ poetry, particularly in the Middle Ages, the apogee of his fame. Here several of Statius’ innovations in the epics bear particular fruit in the development of allegory (as C.S. Lewis pointed out), in freedom with narrative structure, and in prominent use of the female voice.60 A third, related assumption is that Statius is a deeply eclectic, intertextual poet. The Siluae, as I noted above, were shaped by a variety of Greek and Latin literary influences. But for a long time Virgil dominated critical

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples discussion of Statius’ Thebaid. This intense engagement with Virgil, however, was, as Braund has argued, ‘not derivative or constraining’ but rather, both deferential and corrective. 61 For example, the epilogue to the Thebaid, where Statius commands his epic, uiue, precor, nec tu diuinam Aeneida tempta, / sed longe sequere et uestigia semper adora (live on, I pray, do not attempt the divine Aeneid, but follow at a distance and always adore her steps, Theb. 12.816-17), has often been taken as definitive of the importance of Virgil’s work for the Thebaid and thus of Statius’ inferiority to Virgil.62 Yet the metaphor of ‘following in the tracks of a master’ derives from Lucretius, who applied it to his relationship with Epicurus (Lucr. 3.1-4). As Fowler points out, this is a pedagogical, didactic metaphor that suggests the student’s independence as well as deference; the pupil poet has to use his own judgment to interpret the tracks of his predecessor.63 Thus this particular metaphor gives Statius leeway to acknowledge Virgil’s canonical status but simultaneously to indicate his independence from him. Indeed line 816 also programmatically acknowledges the importance of Ovid to this martial epic. Viue alludes to the final word of the famous epilogue of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, uiuam (I shall live, Met. 15.879), a proud declaration of immortality that is itself inspired by Horatian intertexts. Thus, as Parkes concludes from her discussion of the elegiac and epic influences upon the figure of Statius’ Parthenopaeus, in the Thebaid Statius has not a single ‘poetic father’ but rather draws from a variety of texts and even from different genres.64 The Thebaid is framed by Ovidian allusion, for Statius’ summary of Theban history in the introduction to the poem acknowledges Cadmus’ foundation of Thebes (Met. 3.1-130) and the subsequent sweep of Theban history to Oedipus, though in pointedly few lines (Theb. 1.14-17).65 The introduction also programmatically acknowledges the influence of Lucan, thus emphasising the importance of Neronian literature for Flavian epic. The first two words of the Thebaid, fraternas acies (strife between brothers) echo Lucan’s cognatas acies (strife between kin, 1.4), an acknowledgment of a profound debt to Lucan that also suggests an escalation of his epic theme. As McNelis comments, Statius here announces a ‘post-Lucanian exploration of a conflict that is worse than a civil war’, for the protagonists are brothers, not simply relatives.66 Again, the opening words suggest Statius’ departure too from the Virgilian teleological model of epic. Fraternas acies could refer both to Oedipus’ sons, and to the Spartoi, the earth-born brothers of dragon seed sown by Cadmus who killed one another at the foundation of Thebes in the first civil war (Met. 3.95-130; Theb. 10.806-10). Fraternas acies thus indicates from the start the theme of Thebes’ recursive history; unlike in the Aeneid, the protagonists cannot leave their accursed city and are doomed to repeat similar destructive crimes. The influence of Neronian literature is also important in the Achilleid. Its proem acknowledges the importance of Homer – acta uiri multum

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1. Introduction inclita cantu / Maeonio (the deeds of a man much celebrated in Homeric song, Ach. 1.3-4) – but Homer told only a small part of Achilles’ story; the rest, as told by Statius, is heavily shaped by Ovid and also, as Fantham showed, by Senecan tragedy.67 As I shall argue in this book, Lucan’s uncle Seneca was an important influence upon Statius not only because of his tragedies such as the Troades, which brings to the fore the female voice of lament, but also because of his letters.68 Statius had ties to the Annaei circle through the patronage of Lucan’s widow Polla, who is honoured in Silu. 2.7.69 Seneca opens a window on social and cultural identity and literary value in the later age of Domitian. He provides an important foil for Statius, since in his letters he grapples with themes central to Statius’ poetry, in particular death and consolation, norms of masculinity, wealth, and the contradictions of Campania. And as Ganiban shows, Seneca’s ideas about the imperial virtue of clementia inform the final books of the Thebaid.70 A fourth assumption of this book is that all three of Statius’ works constitute in important ways a unified body of work. Critical reactions to the epics and to the Siluae are often so different that it sometimes seems as if two different poets are being discussed. Yet the poems in the first collection of Siluae (Books 1-3) were written as the Thebaid was nearing completion; the Achilleid was under way by the time of the publication of Book 4 of the Siluae. Vessey commented that ‘the Thebaid cannot be discussed without reference to the Siluae’, and I would add here the unfinished Achilleid.71 Moreover, the Siluae often refer to the epics; and it is as a published epic poet that Statius presents himself in the Siluae.72 The epics and the Siluae constitute a highly interactive poetic corpus. In many ways, the Siluae form an important counterpart to the Thebaid in that they are often playful and humorous, and their themes include the signs of an ordered society – dedications and evaluations of works of art and architecture, the celebration of birthdays and dinner parties, and consolations for premature death that function importantly as sympathetic expressions of friendship.73 The Siluae often offer the reverse mirror side of epic; tragic young deaths inform this poetry too, but consolation is found through friendship, and prosperous families with grandchildren are celebrated too. Instead of smouldering Thebes we have resplendent imperial Rome and vibrant Naples; instead of feuding families we have a culture of friendship and mutual support. And yet the relationship between the Thebaid and the Siluae is complex, not simply one of reversal. To take one example here: one of the most striking episodes in the Thebaid is the sudden descent of Amphiaraus in his chariot into the Underworld through a chasm that rends the battlefield (Theb. 7.794-823; 8.1-126). Amphiaraus’ unceremonious arrival in the Underworld is a parody of the Roman deuotio, whereby a hero commits to death in order to save his troops. Amphiaraus’ end, the first death of the Seven in the poem, dramatises the epic’s themes of family hatred and

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples betrayal, his life bartered by his wife for Argia’s accursed necklace (Theb. 2.299-305; 7.787-8). His dramatic manner of death also displays the permeable boundaries between earth and the Underworld, a symptom and cause of civil strife on earth. In the first poem of the Siluae, by contrast, the Roman hero M. Curtius, who consecrated his life through deuotio (Livy 7. 6), emerges from a chasm in the Roman forum (the Lacus Curtius) to announce hopes of a new age of peace and prosperity (1.1.66-83).74 These contrasting images of descent and ascent might be said to symbolise the differences between the worlds constructed by the two poems. All the same, Silu. 1.1 and the Thebaid also have significant points of contact here. The chasm in the Roman forum links the Siluae to the Thebaid in its reminder of the city’s recent sacrilegious history; on this spot for instance, the emperor Galba was ambushed by the troops of the usurper Vitellius and beheaded (Suet. Galba 20; Tac. Hist. 1.41).75 While the Thebaid explores the politics of Rome through myth, the Siluae does so through contemporary cultural events, here the dedication of the emperor’s equestrian statue. But for both poems the permeable boundaries of the earth provide to different degrees a metaphor for political instability. Thus, although their approaches may be radically distinct, all three works share significant common themes and preoccupations and a common aesthetic informed by a deeply sympathetic imagination. Dualism too is central to Statius’ modes of thought in his poetry. Although Martial came from much further away in Spain, his poetry lacks the tension which Statius articulates in the dynamic between Rome and Naples, the twin poles of his literary career; this spatial dualism is replicated negatively in his epics with the dialectic between Thebes and Argos, Scyros and Mount Pelion, and Scyros and Troy and is translated into social and literary terms; a dialectic involving genres and genders, as well as art and nature, politics and withdrawal, peace and war, is common to all Statius’ works. My study then will be partly intratextual, and I shall use the Siluae as an interpretive guide not only to the civic life of the Flavian period but also to the epics. My book overall involves an interplay between literary considerations, especially intratextuality, intertextuality and genre, and social and cultural history. Statius’ poetry looks aggressively forward as well as back in literary history. Much excellent work has been done on Statius’ relationship to Virgil.76 But as post-Augustan poetry Statius’ works demand also to be read in terms of his readings of his own texts as well as those of his predecessors, including importantly the Neronians; they also demand to be read in the context of the work of his Flavian contemporaries. His poetry thus possesses an allusiveness underwritten by a bold, self-conscious literary historical positioning. Obviously a book of this sort has to be selective and cannot cover the wide range of issues that Statius’ poetry raises. Thus I have chosen to focus on issues that were controversial or matters for serious discussion in Statius’ own day and that play a prominent role in his poetry: a concern

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1. Introduction with visuality and boundaries, with education, with the proprieties of grief, and finally, with the importance of Naples and local identity. Chapter 2, ‘Misconceptions about Statius’, expands on points raised in this introduction. I address the fairly common assumption that Statius was an elitist poet remote from contemporary concerns, a toady of the rich and of the emperor who, as Juvenal’s seventh Satire suggests, was spurned by his contemporaries as a meretricious poet. My chapter revolves around three main themes: Statius’ association with Flavian luxury and leisure, his relationship with Domitian, and his creative relationship with his contemporaries and successors. As a Roman poet raised in a Greek cultural milieu, Statius is best regarded as an experimental, yet also self-reflexive poet who took both ‘minor’ poetry and epic in creative new directions. Chapter 3, ‘Boundaries’, argues that the notion of both expansion and limits, which was central to Roman imperial thought, is also an important theme of Statius’ poetry. Boundaries – topographical, metaphysical and textual – are represented in Statius’ two epics as a crucial mechanism of social and cultural order. The Thebaid opens with the concern that the poet cannot limit the horrors of his Theban theme; the notion of limes (boundary) is recurrent in the poem. The frequent violation of topographical boundaries in the poem dramatises the destructiveness of civil war and the poet’s inability to contain his theme of nefas (absolute wickedness). The Achilleid is likewise concerned with boundaries, in particular between childhood and adulthood, and between masculine and feminine genders. The symbolic geography of Scyros, a remote island in the centre of the sea, plays out the narrative tensions in the poem. The concept of boundaries occurs also in Statius’ Siluae, particularly in the panegyrical poems which confront within a carefully ordered poetry book the ambivalent rhetoric of limitless power and space in imperial self-representation. The chapter concludes with a brief look at the prominence of descriptive passages in Statius’ poetry; description functions as a strategy of poetic control, for it frames and bounds a work of art or architecture within a text. An examination of the first set description of the Thebaid, the libation bowl of Adrastus, will reveal what Harrison calls the ‘proleptic’ function of ecphrasis – that is, it troublingly foreshadows major events and themes of the poem.77 But, through its connection to the first ecphrasis in the Siluae, it also has a larger ideological significance within Statius’ work. The fourth chapter, ‘Statius Auctor’, concerns education, an important topic in imperial society. Education in Greek as well as Latin literature was a mark of elite male status; the concept of gender was thus firmly implicated with education, as school texts taught proper masculine behaviour. Quintilian published his treatise on educating an orator from childhood to manhood, Institutio Oratoria, in the early 90s AD, the same period in which Statius published his Thebaid and Siluae. The Siluae and the Achilleid in particular explore and test the strict norms of gender and

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples rhetoric associated with imperial education. The Aeneid was a core school text for teaching Roman male values; both Statius’ epics offer a more flexible view of masculinity. The second half of the chapter looks at the important role that both the Thebaid and the Achilleid played in the medieval classroom. Modern approaches to the Thebaid often emphasise the negativity of the poem. Yet Statius’ hope at the end of his epic that the poem will be read and learned by the young is fulfilled in the Middle Ages, when school commentaries emphasised the instructional value of both epics. In the 13th century the Achilleid was added to the Dicta Catonis for its moral and mythological content, and the story of Achilles’ education became one of the most popular medieval school texts. The Thebaid too was understood to offer examples of virtue and vice, and to teach coded lessons in correct masculine behaviour, political leadership and even, in some instances, Christian ethics. Medieval readers approached Statius as auctor, a major authority in moral and political matters. Chapter 5, ‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’, takes its title from Dante, who interpreted the Thebaid as antiquity’s great poem of lament. Despite the horror of much of its subject matter, Statius’ epic is infused with his deeply sympathetic imagination. This chapter examines the role of mourning in Statius’ poetry, in particular its concern with premature death. The plot of the Achilleid is underwritten by Thetis’ tears for the short life of her son. The Thebaid is distinguished by the prominent role given to female lament, which offers a critique of the male action that tragically destroys the lives of sons and husbands. The Siluae on the other hand explore masculine grief and reflect changing attitudes in imperial society towards bereavement by their flexible attitude towards mourning. Traditionally Roman males were expected to show restraint in grief, but Statius’ poetry endorses the therapeutic value of open expressions of sorrow. Statius’ poetry is driven by a deep empathy, not by Lucanian anger. In the second part of the chapter I turn again to reception. Whereas in the commentary tradition discussed in Chapter 4 Statius was known chiefly as a moral and political guide, outside the classroom he was celebrated as a poet with particular insight into grief and into women’s emotions. This chapter will look at an early stage of the reception of the Thebaid in England from the 11th to the 14th century, a period of crossfertilisation between Latin and vernacular literature. Although Statius in the epilogue to the Thebaid referred only to male readers, in the Middle Ages female patronage and readership were important in the poem’s creative transformation. Outside the medieval classroom, female lament was seen as a distinguishing feature of the Thebaid. In the Latin tradition from at least the 11th century onwards the female laments of the Thebaid were excerpted and set to music, to be sung by young males impersonating female voices; this practice recognised the psychological expressiveness of Statius’ female laments and finds its most significant flowering in the

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1. Introduction Cambridge Songs. The Vita Ædwardi (Life of Edward), written around 1068 in both prose and verse, demonstrates the appeal of Statius’ poem and the power of lament to provide a critical perspective on times of war and political instability. In the vernacular, the Thebaid was transformed under female patronage, probably that of Eleanor of Aquitaine, into prose romance. Chaucer’s romantic epic Troilus and Criseyde puts side by side the two parallel traditions of the reception of the Thebaid: on the one hand the Latin, scholarly tradition of heroic deeds, on the other the vernacular tradition that privileged personal emotion and suffering. The Theban narrative, whether in the form of Statius’ own poem or in the more widely available form of romance, provided the Middle Ages with a mythological, authoritative language for thinking about politics, war, and the tragic experience of women as war’s chief victims. The final chapter, ‘Between Rome and Naples’, looks closely at one poem, Silu. 3.5, which perhaps best conveys the poet’s sense of his mediated identity. In this last poem of Book 3 and of the first published collection, Statius expresses to his wife his desire to return to Naples. The poem concludes with an encomium of his native city in which Rome acts as a negative foil (3.5.78-109). In this proud assertion of his local identity, Statius challenges the negative reputation of Naples that persisted in Roman literature. He boldly remakes the city and its famous Bay as a region not only of tranquillity and leisure but also of virtue. Statius’ imperial, Greco-Roman poetics thus map out an alternative cultural geography in which Naples competes with Rome as a cultural capital. The organisation of the first collection (Books 1-3) represents a move away from the court and Rome towards Epicurean tranquillity. Whereas the first poem of the Siluae honours Domitian through his massive equestrian statue in the Roman forum, this imperial version of pax Romana, both godlike and threatening, is displaced by the ‘safe, carefree peace’ (pax secura, 3.5.85) which is located away from the capital in Naples, Statius’ home region and long a centre of Epicureanism.78 The organisation of the poetry book thus makes an implicit statement about the importance of withdrawal. This poem is densely intertextual, drawing for instance on Ovid’s exile poetry, Virgil’s rural poetry, Horace’s Odes, Silius’ Punica, and possibly Seneca’s letters from Campania. In particular, the poem looks back to the composition of the Thebaid and, it seems, forward to that of the Achilleid. The suspension of the poet between Rome and Naples, and between two epics, seems a fitting place to draw a boundary for this book.

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2

Misconceptions about Statius Poet of leisure Statius’ Siluae have been described as the ‘literature of leisure’.1 Traditionally in Roman culture, the idea of leisure (otium) attracted moral opprobrium. Even today, the consumers of Flavian poetry have been seen as a luxurious, leisured class, with too much time on their hands and without direct experience of war.2 In the first section of this chapter I shall argue that ‘leisure’ is represented in the Siluae as a complex idea that is closely tied to politics, to social status, and to the system of literary patronage that enabled Statius, a poet of non-elite status, to thrive.3 ‘Leisure’ (otium) became of broad appeal in the first century AD when social and political factors accelerated the trend to withdrawal, whether occasional or permanent, from career politics. For Cicero in the late republic, forced into retirement, otium, even when occupied with intellectual pursuits, was poor compensation for a full political life.4 Even pleasure-loving Catullus famously wrote (51.14-15) otium et reges prius et beatas / perdidit urbes (otium has in the past destroyed both kings and prosperous cities). But as satisfaction derived from serving the state weakened under autocratic emperors who wielded enormous, often arbitrary power, the first century AD saw a renewed interest in withdrawal from political life, and a renewed interest in the therapeutic goals of both Stoicism and Epicureanism, self-care of the mind.5 In De Otio and De Breuitate Vitae (Dial. 8, 10) Seneca, writing under Nero’s increasingly authoritarian and erratic rule, re-evaluated the traditional Stoic commitment to public life.6 Virtue could be actively pursued even in voluntary retirement from service to the state, particularly if the state was corrupt. But otium could be seen as a threat to the active mind as well as to traditional concepts of public service and duty. Thus Seneca draws a distinction between leisure and indolence. Otium should be dedicated to self-examination and to the eradication of vice, and was the goal of the sapiens, the wise man. It was to be distinguished from ignauia, sloth, which connoted effeminacy and weakness of will.7 Above all, otium meant a state of internal peace that allowed one through self-improvement to be of benefit to others, if not to the state (Sen. Dial. 8.5-6).8 For the Stoics, therefore, otium was a necessary condition for survival in the imperial era; in this regard they were close to the Epicureans who sought pleasure in freedom from care and anxiety, that is, ataraxia; this meant living not

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2. Misconceptions about Statius hedonistically but prudently and moderately.9 Seneca makes a passionate case for the centrality of literature in withdrawal (Ep. 82.3): otium sine litteris mors est et hominis uiui sepultura (leisure without literature is death and burial alive). Senecan tragedy repeatedly offers a view of public life as subject to Fortune, or to an arbitrary ruler, the embodiment of Fortune. The sentiment at Ag. 101-2, quidquid in altum Fortuna tulit / ruitura leuat (whatever Fortune has brought to the heights, she raises only to send it plummeting down), expresses the mood of this age of prosperity yet anxiety in which philosophy provided an important form of therapy to which people could look for relief and guidance.10 One striking example of the arbitrariness of a political career is found in Silu. 3.3, a poem mourning the death of the father of Claudius Etruscus; Martial in 7.40 also briefly covers his dramatic rise and fall. This man (unnamed in the poem) was an imperial freedman who was felled by the sudden winds of change in court. He served in administration from the reign of Tiberius, rising to the top position of minister of finances under Domitian. However, at an advanced age he was suddenly dismissed from his position for obscure reasons and banished temporarily from Rome to Campania, the region of Italy most closely associated with compulsory political withdrawal (3.3.154-64).11 Although he was recalled, he died shortly thereafter (3.3.164-87). As Acton comments, the career of the father of Claudius Etruscus ‘illustrates the potential for stability and continuity in the imperial administration and in the court. But his career also illustrates the potential for meteoric rise and catastrophic fall inherent in the system of favor and friendship that held the court together – even for freedmen.’12 Significantly his son, whose private baths are celebrated in Silu. 1.5, preferred a life of leisure to a political career. In Silu. 3.3 the emperor emerges as a powerful but inscrutable, arbitrary figure, assimilated as in Senecan tragedy to uncertain Fortune; in general in the Siluae he is the source too of uncertain patronage for the poet. As Myers comments, ‘the practice of leisure was safer than a political career’.13 Social factors also influenced the turn to leisure and political withdrawal. Leisure provided ‘a powerful mode of aristocratic self-definition’14 in an age in which the expansion of the senatorial and equestrian ranks under the Flavians was creating ‘an aristocracy of status rather than of office’.15 Factors other than a noble family line, such as education, literature and the arts, became important in creating cultural supremacy for the newly rich, including, importantly, the freedman class. Leisure in Statius’ Siluae is closely associated with the possession of great wealth, in particular in the form of expensive villas and works of art, the most prestigious and visible symbols of otium.16 In Statius’ poetry wealth provides the basis not for a Petronian lifestyle but for the study of philosophy and literature and for acts of generous patronage. In the late first century BC the philosopher Philodemus, whose writings have been preserved in the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, attempted to provide

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples philosophical justification for great wealth by arguing that Epicureanism could tolerate material riches, provided they were used wisely.17 In Statius’ poetry otium is represented not as a selfish concept but as ennobling. Wealth is both an actual and a metaphorical good, a symbol of moral riches; the villa is both a splendid building to be admired, and a representation of the owner’s inner self.18 Quies, Statius’ preferred term for otium, assumes a double political and philosophical meaning as both withdrawal from public life and the condition of Epicurean ataraxia, freedom from the passions and pains of human ambition – and thus freedom to make productive use of wealth and leisure.19 Statius’ Siluae and Pliny’s Epistles demonstrate that leisure could be productive if, supported by wealth, it was devoted to the cultivation of one’s estate, to the inner calm made possible by philosophy, to the honing of literary skills, and to generosity and hospitality to friends. Such an idea of productive, learned leisure (docta  / otia, Silu. 1.3.108-9; studiosumque otium, Plin. Ep. 1.22.11)20 ultimately derived, perhaps, from Plato’s idea in the Phaedrus of the wise man’s otium (scolˇ) which readies an official for his duties or a poet for higher literary forms. The villa descriptions of Statius and Pliny the Younger function both as powerful displays of material wealth and as symbols of an acceptable form of intellectual and literary otium redefined to fit the new times. As part of his self-fashioning as a gentleman scholar, Pliny produces in his letters the picture of a thriving literary culture based on the exchange among friends who would gather, often at a villa, to recite their own poetic compositions – well before publication. Pliny himself claims that he wrote both Greek and Latin extemporaneous verse; Ep. 2.3 describes his excitement at the arrival in Rome of the improvisational Greek rhetor Isaeus. Writing poetry in particular is represented as a mark of distinction amongst the elite, and fluency in both Greek and Latin conferred cultural prestige. But Pliny, unlike Statius, makes clear that poetry is not the sine qua non of his existence. He is diplomatic about the role of leisure in his life as a career lawyer when he writes (Ep. 1.9.6) o dulce otium honestumque ac paene omni negotio pulchrius! (o sweet and honourable leisure, fairer than almost all public business!). Pliny departs from Seneca’s desire for a private contemplative life, in that otium has to be both productive and part of a balanced life.21 For Statius, poetry is his business, and spells of leisure come as gifts from friends (Silu. 2.2.6-13). Like Pliny’s friends, Statius’ were linked by shared literary interests and values;22 they are not shown as engaged with the kind of sensitive, politically charged critical issues we find in Tacitus’ Dialogus. In part this may have been a political choice; Atedius Melior, to whom Book 2 of the Siluae is dedicated, may have been involved with the anti-Flavians in the civil war and forced into early retirement.23 For others, engagement with literature and leisure was the reward of a well-lived life, such as the business career of Statius’ patron on the Bay of Naples, Pollius Felix, who

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2. Misconceptions about Statius was publicly honoured in the region for his civic benefactions (Silu. 2.2.133-6; 3.1.91-3). For the most part Statius’ friends are the new elite; they came from a variety of social backgrounds, and few held politically important positions.24 Most were not rich in ancestors; the other emblems of leisure, wealth, villas, works of art, literary patronage and accomplishments, feature prominently in Statius’ poems as a means of his friends’ self-definition and self-presentation.25 Statius, unlike Pliny, was not an aristocrat with several villas at his disposal for cultured withdrawal from a busy lawyer’s life in Rome. He describes the life of ‘learned leisure’ as a guest at the villas of his patrons; in the absence of steady patronage from Domitian, he depended on his circle of friends and supporters for the evaluation and promotion of his work.26 Otium thus enabled the important system of literary exchange, evaluation, and patronage from which Statius benefited. Recurrent themes of the Siluae are the generosity of Statius’ patrons and their responsible and productive use of wealth. Atedius Melior, for instance, who owned a villa on the Caelian hill in Rome, is defined through his open-door hospitality (Silu. 2.3.15-16) and his prudence, yet generosity, with his wealth (2.3.70-1); Manilius Vopiscus, erudite owner of a luxurious villa at Tibur, allegedly almost singlehandedly rescued the arts from decay (Silu. 1 pr. 23-5). Leisure therefore is not part of the self-definition of Statius as hard-working poet;27 but it is presented in his poetry as an important social and moral value, and the chief cultural mechanism by which his poetry was circulated and promoted. A further factor probably influenced the impulse of Statius’ generation towards leisure, namely their recent first-hand experience of civil war. The wars of AD 68-9 that brought the Flavian dynasty to power were fought in the streets of Rome, not in far-off provinces as before, confronting citizens with unimagined atrocities.28 Behind the cultivation of otium in the Flavian age lay a strong cultural imperative to promote a concept of Roman identity based on new social, political and moral values that were centred on the arts of peace. Statius ends the Thebaid by addressing Domitian and the ‘Italian youth’ who already are learning to commit his epic poem to memory (Theb. 12.814-15).29 In talking of his epic in didactic terms, Statius indicates that in its extreme depiction of the horrors of civil war, it has important social and political value for a new generation, who represent what Hirsch calls ‘the generation of postmemory, that is young people not old enough to have experienced their parents’ wars but who will direct what they have learned of their traumatic history to new positive artistic forms and social purposes’.30 André ends his classic work on otium by claiming that in the first century AD, otium in its popular form was tied to public spectacle and thus sounded the death knell for traditional Roman mores; at the same time however, otium in its contemplative aspect developed into a spiritual and philosophical ideal and, as such, signalled the death of the city.31 The

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples geopolitics of the first century suggest, on the contrary, the importance of cities in creating the necessary conditions for otium. The Siluae bring new value and meaning to the concept of otium. Leisure is cultivated on a clifftop on the Bay of Naples (Pollius Felix) or in the heart of Rome (Atedius Melior); it is represented both as the reward for a life well lived, including civic service, and also as an honourable alternative to the perilous engagement in a political career; it is an emblem of social and cultural status that encompassed public-spirited acts such as patronage.32 Statius’ Siluae give the concept of otium heightened significance as an ethical and philosophical goal, and as a key aspect of a cultural system that fostered the talent of the non-elite like himself. The celebration of leisure in the Siluae thus is underpinned by the reality of social and cultural obligations, and inflected by philosophical beliefs.33 Siluae (‘Woods’) is a complex metaphor for Statius’ short poems, signifying the lack of cultivation associated with improvisational poetry, but also the idea of quies (peace and quiet) as a condition in which a communal literary culture could flourish. Statius and Domitian Statius has often been labelled a court poet, a protégé of Domitian, implicated in a corrupt system of patronage that was dominated by a tyrannical emperor; he is ‘the prime example of a patronised poet’.34 His political poetry has been seen as lavish flattery that was symptomatic of the moral degradation of the times.35 In this section I will argue that, on the contrary, Statius did not enjoy Domitian’s special favour; indeed, he had very little direct relationship with an emperor who cultivated a self-image of remote sanctity. Moreover, there is little evidence to suggest that he wrote poetry on commission. Not only has Statius been the victim of prejudice against Domitian, he has also been the victim of a persistent elite bias against a poet of lower social ranking. As Coleman observes, ‘Statius nowhere boasts of familiarity with the emperor’.36 At the same time, Domitian was everywhere in Rome through his massive building projects and statues. As we shall continue to see in subsequent chapters, the emperor provided the opportunity for poetic meditation on the nature and limits of imperial power, and also the impetus for Statius’ experimental, richly nuanced language of praise. Since Statius’ reputation has been so closely connected with Domitian’s, a brief discussion of this emperor, and in particular his contribution to the arts, seems necessary here. The Flavians – Vespasian (70-9), Titus (79-81), and Domitian (81-96) – were a new dynasty lacking the aristocratic connections of the JulioClaudians. It was a particular concern of this upstart dynasty to establish and then sustain its right to rule. Military success was bolstered by the visual expression of power. The Flavians put their stamp on Rome most visibly through architecture, through the building and rebuilding of the

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2. Misconceptions about Statius capital city. They had inherited a city ravaged by Nero’s fire of AD 64, then by civil war. At Vespasian’s accession, the Capitoline and its great temple lay in ruins, a visible, symbolic marker of Rome’s devastation. Flavian Rome was built on these ruins initially, as Flower comments, ‘to mark a new beginning and to try to cope with the bitter memories of civil war’.37 Coins were minted that proclaimed Roma Resurgens (Rome Resurgent) and showed Vespasian raising the personified city from her knees.38 Under Vespasian and his sons, a monumental new city arose with major architectural structures, several of which still define the contours of the city of Rome today: the Colosseum, the Arch of Titus, the new imperial palace whose massive structures dominate central Rome from the Palatine. In addition, the Flavians added two new imperial fora: Vespasian’s Forum of Peace and Domitian’s Forum Transitorium.39 Domitian’s architectural ambitions went well beyond those of his father, rivalling those of Augustus in the shaping of Rome as an imperial capital. The new monumental buildings and spaces inscribed Flavian authority and the new Flavian order upon the physical face of Rome. The Flavians, particularly Domitian, have been criticised for the ostentatious grandeur of their buildings.40 Yet they provided the model for their successors of an architecture expressive of Rome’s hegemonic status over all other cities in power and splendour. The Colosseum, the first permanent amphitheatre in the city, testified too to the Flavians’ desire to court popular favour and build a broad base of support. Their authority was supported by Vespasian’s creation of what Mellor has aptly called ‘a new aristocracy of power’, namely the expansion of the senatorial and equestrian orders, which had been ravaged by the civil wars; Vespasian included in the senate provincials and even some easterners, cannily selecting from a wide range of supporters.41 The Lex de Imperio, passed in AD 70, strengthened Vespasian’s control over the election to magistracies and, in general, gave him increased powers over the senate. Office was the gift of the emperor. As Levick comments, ‘a senate composed of largely new men accepted what was offered with gratitude’.42 In addition, the Flavians developed the notion of ruler cult far beyond that of their predecessors.43 Unlike Augustus, who traced his family back to Venus, Vespasian, being of relatively obscure municipal origins, could not claim divine descent (Suet. Vesp. 1-3). He therefore created a mythology of personal semi-divinity that bolstered his authority.44 Most significantly, as Fishwick has argued, although by the time of Vespasian, if not earlier, the cult of the living emperor was already established in a number of eastern provinces, Vespasian boldly instituted official worship of the living emperor, along with the deified dead, in three highly Romanised provinces in the west.45 The development of the imperial ruler cult was a strategic move on the part of the son of a Sabine tax collector. While Flavian ruler cult was supported by the traditional imperial infrastructure

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples of temples and priesthoods, Vespasian created for his dynasty a new aura of present divinity in Rome that his son Domitian was to exploit fully; after the deification of Vespasian and Titus, Domitian could claim to be both the son and the brother of a god. Domitian’s divine aspirations were expressed most visibly and dramatically in monumental architecture. He transformed the house where he was born on the Quirinal into a temple to the deified members of the Flavian dynasty.46 At his palace in the dining hall described by Statius in Silu. 4.2, he presided over his subjects in an apse, thus cultivating an aura of sacred majesty. On the late Domitianic Cancellaria reliefs, as well as on the fragments of the Templum Gentis Flauiae, Vespasian and Domitian are represented consorting with gods and personifications; the living emperor is thus adroitly shown as belonging on the same divine plane as his deified father.47 A striking sesterius minted in AD 85 provides a bold public statement of his blurring of the boundaries between emperor and god, for Domitian is shown wielding the thunderbolt, the divine attribute of Jupiter. Whereas emperors before Domitian had been associated with Jupiter and his thunderbolt, the public association of a living emperor with Jupiter was strikingly new.48 Indeed, Haeckl has suggested that by using precious Greek Pentelic marble for four monuments, the Temple of the Deified Vespasian, the Arch of Titus (showing Titus’ apotheosis), the Templum Gentis Flauiae, and the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter, Domitian dared to assert visually and topographically the close association between the Flavian dynasty and the supreme deity of the Roman pantheon.49 Jupiter however was not Domitian’s official patron. For this office Domitian chose Minerva, and from early in his reign coins are issued showing him wearing the goddess’s aegis. Zanker emphasises that, by claiming to rule as Minerva’s state agent, Domitian takes a new step in identification with a divinity.50 But the result of this sacred distancing, as he points out, was Domitian’s perceived isolation from his people.51 This brief portrait of the Flavians and of Domitian gives some idea of the challenges involved for Statius in the poetic representation of the emperor in his poetry (Silu. 1.1, 1.6, 2.5, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3; Theb. 1.17-33, 12.814; Ach. 1.14-19). Statius came into direct contact with Domitian not through individual patronage but through the emperor’s ‘display’ patronage of the arts.52 His major artistic initiative was the successful establishment of international games on the Greek model. He thus inserted Rome into the prestigious circuit of Mediterranean cities that hosted such events, including Naples, where Augustus had established the Sebasta.53 These games – the Capitoline, which were penteric games held every five years, and the Alban, held probably every year – were important venues for poetic and oratorical competitions in Greek and Latin as well as for athletic events. They offered a version of Hellenism adapted to Roman interests. Their bilingual and bicultural focus must have appealed to a city where the prevailing ideology of the imperial elite was now defined by competence in

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2. Misconceptions about Statius two languages and literatures. While Nero’s games, the Neronea, did not outlast his reign, the Capitoline games were enormously successful despite Domitian’s damnatio memoriae (obliteration from the public record), and lasted until the fifth century.54 The Alban games were held at Domitian’s villa just outside Rome, the Capitoline in Rome itself. The latter were Greek as regards prizes, competition, costumes and architecture, and Roman in their dedication to the ancient Capitoline Triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva.55 Domitian rebuilt the Campus Martius to create a grand, imposing venue in the centre of Rome. The present-day Piazza Navona was a stadium for athletic events; the adjoining Odeum hosted poetic, oratorical and musical events. It was a grandly designed, roofed auditorium, with a capacity of about 5,0007,000, and was widely admired through antiquity as one of Rome’s most spectacular buildings.56 Domitian presided over the Capitoline games in a spectacular fashion, appearing before his public as a quasi-divine figure, wearing a Greek-style purple dress and a golden crown decorated with images of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva; he was flanked by priests of the Roman cults of Jupiter and the Flavians (Suet. Dom. 4.4). This imperial spectacle shows how well the Flavians, including even the generally reclusive Domitian, understood the power of spectacle as an instrument of crowd-pleasing and control. With these games Domitian also demonstrated the importance of Greek culture to his vision of Flavian Rome. The bicultural milieu fostered by the games is suggested by the grave-marker of a young poetic competitor at the Capitoline games of AD 94, the 11-year-old Q. Sulpicius Maximus, whose verses from the Greek extemporaneous poetry competition are inscribed above his Latin epitaph.57 Statius himself of course is proof of that bicultural milieu. The Siluae fall within the Greek tradition of improvisational poetry. And Statius competed in the Capitoline and Alban games, the only major Flavian poet known to have done so; his participation in these competitions reveals him as the son of a Greek professional poet.58 What then was Statius’ relationship to Domitian? He was not, as is often thought, a ‘court poet’ or ‘imperial lackey’, for he was not close to the court.59 He won once at the Alban games but failed to secure first prize at the Capitoline games, a source of great grievance to him.60 He refers to Domitian as saeuum ingratumque  / Iouem (‘a cruel and ungrateful Jove’, Silu. 3.5.32-3), gratia being a crucial element of Roman patronage that Domitian, despite his divine status, ignored in the case of Statius.61 Statius’ only mention of an invitation to the emperor’s palace on the Palatine occurs in Silu. 4.2, where he describes being one of over a thousand guests (32-3). Was he a flatterer, trying to get closer to the court? Or was he a disaffected, disappointed poet intent on subverting Domitian’s majesty? How do we approach his praise of Domitian? The publication of his major works late in Domitian’s reign brought Statius success as a poet but does not imply that he was particularly in the emperor’s favour. Indeed, despite their generic and thematic differences,

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples both the Thebaid and the Siluae can be seen as protreptic, that is, instructive or hortatory in related ways: through Greek myth the Thebaid portrays the dire consequences of autocratic government and dynastic collapse, whereas the Siluae on the whole emphasise the moral and aesthetic benefits derived from withdrawal. In the Siluae the poems addressed to Domitian or associated with the court are significant but in the minority. Out of the 27 Siluae published in Statius’ lifetime they number only seven: 1.1 and 1.6; 2.5; 3.4; 4.1; 4.2; 4.3. In the first collection of Siluae (Books 1-3) only four of the 18 refer to the emperor; none of the four books of Siluae published in Statius’ lifetime was dedicated to him.62 There is also no evidence that Domitian commissioned any of the Siluae. While the mythological epics address Domitian in their proems (Theb. 1.17-33, Ach. 1.14-19), and, in the case of the Thebaid, briefly at the epic’s end (12.814), the space that imperial panegyric – or Domitian – occupies in Statius’ work is therefore small, particularly when compared to the amount of critical attention it has received. The idea that Domitian commissioned Statius to write praise poetry, or indeed that the poet sold his talent for money, is also without foundation. As Rosati argues, the idea of the commissioned poet is contrary to the professed tenets of the Siluae, improvisational, spontaneous poetry written at moments of intense emotion such as wonder and awe.63 The satirical sketch of Juvenal’s seventh Satire, the sole reference to Statius by name in classical Latin literature, has however provided a persistent image of Statius as the literary hack who prostitutes his talent for money. But this, we should remember, is satire, not social realism (7.82-7): 64 curritur ad uocem iucundam et carmen amicae Thebaidos, laetam cum fecit Statius urbem promisitque diem: tanta dulcedine captos afficit ille animos tantaque libidine uolgi auditor. sed cum fregit subsellia uersu, esurit, intactam Paridi nisi uendit Agauen. People run to hear the lovely voice and poem of Statius’ girl, the Thebaid, when he has made the city happy and set a date: he fills and captures their minds with such sweetness and is listened to with such ecstasy by the people; but although he has broken the benches with his verse, he goes hungry, unless he sells his virgin Agaue to Paris.

A fairly common line of interpretation sees Statius with his charming voice and eagerness to please represented here as effeminate; likewise his epic, that most masculine of genres, is portrayed as his girlfriend (amicae, 82) in a witty exploitation of its grammatical gender.65 Acting the pimp, he markets her to the Roman people through public recitation, bringing his audience to such a state of ecstasy that they break the benches. Despite this popular reception, he is reduced to selling a new work, impudently

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2. Misconceptions about Statius represented as the ‘virgin’ (intactam) Agaue, to a pantomime actor in order to make money.66 Gold argues that Statius is the first Latin poet shown to write for money.67 Juvenal’s passage influenced Dante in his characterisation of Statius in the Purgatorio as once guilty of prodigality (Purg. 22.37-42). Yet, according to Juvenal, Statius did not sell the Thebaid, only a pantomime script; in this satirical sketch he is represented as a starving poet, down on his luck, not greedy and certainly not, in this portrait at least, in Domitian’s pocket or the pockets of other patrons.68 Another line of approach assumes that Juvenal’s portrayal of Statius is ironic because the poet in fact had a comfortable fortune, thanks to patronage.69 But nowhere does Statius say that he wrote for money or received money from his patrons; Martial on the other hand requests money directly from Domitian, though this was probably unusual (5.19.5).70 It is thus not clear whether the focus of the satire is Statius, as a poet who (allegedly) prostitutes his talents, his unsophisticated audience, or the dire situation of patronage that drives a poet to writing a pantomime sketch. Certainly the audience seems to be satirised here; they show their vulgarity and lack of taste by their exuberant reaction to Statius’ epic. Medieval accessus, the interpretive biographies of poets that often preceded their works in manuscripts, provide a different way of reading Juvenal’s lines, as complimentary of Statius. Iucundam was understood as a type of gloss on the common etymology of the poet’s medieval name, Statius Surculus, or ‘Statius the sweet-sounding’ (from sursum, ‘sweetly’).71 A pleasant voice (iucundam), as Courtney points out, was important for recitation; and though Juvenal in his first satire attacks epic recitals, recitation was an established institution for the circulation and promotion of poetry.72 Juvenal’s lines thus uphold Statius’ medieval reputation as one of antiquity’s finest poets; the problem is the failure of the system of patronage that takes Statius away from writing epic to pantomime. In any event, since satire works by inversion, there would be point only in mocking generally well-regarded work. We should be wary of drawing from satire definitive value judgements about Statius’ works.73 At the very least, the provocative use of Statius in Juvenal’s poetry suggests his importance as an epic poet.74 Moreover, Statius’ own poetry creates an image of his poetic self and of his literary culture that is very different from the scene of public performance represented in Satire 7. In the preface to Book 1 of the Siluae, the Thebaid is mentioned in the context of a prestigious literary moment, the dedication of the first of the Siluae to Arruntius Stella, a distinguished poet and politician.75 The epic is mentioned in the second sentence, a gesture to ensure that Stella and the wider readership of Siluae do not forget that Statius is the author of the Thebaid (Silu.1 pr. 5-7): quid enim [ ] quoque auctoritate editionis onerari, quo adhuc pro Thebaide mea, quamuis me reliquerit, timeo? (For why be burdened with the responsibility of publication at a time when I still fear for my

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples Thebaid, even though she has left me?). The language is playful, given the feminine gender of the poem (mea). But the imagery suggests that the epic is his proud offspring, not his whore; editio is a word that plays upon the idea of giving birth as well as literary publication (OLD 1 and 4). Moreover, instead of the instant gratification of the rowdy audience’s approval in Juvenal’s satiric sketch, Statius is still waiting in fear (timeo) for the reviews of the epic. The Thebaid represents work dear to Statius’ heart – the ‘child’ which has finally been sent on its way.76 The preface thus situates the production and publication of his poetry within a culture of peer review and literary discrimination, an elite culture of friendship and intellectual exchange. Public recitation was certainly an important means by which Statius publicised and refined his work.77 His one account of a public performance, however, records his recitations before an elite gathering of senators (Silu. 5.3.215-19). Yet another passage, this time by Statius himself, has been taken as proof that Statius was Domitian’s protégé. In Silu. 3.1 Statius expresses his gratitude to Domitian for supplying his Alban property with running water (61-5): ast ego, Dardaniae quamuis sub collibus Albae rus proprium magnique ducis mihi munere currens unda domi curas mulcere aestusque leuare sufficerent, notas Sirenum nomine rupes facundique larem Polli non hospes habebam But although I have my own country property on the Alban hills and enough running water at home, thanks to the great emperor’s gift, to soothe care and alleviate the heat, I was staying at the home of the eloquent Pollius by the familiar cliffs named after the Sirens,78 no stranger there.

The Alban property has Horatian credentials. Like the Sabine ‘farm’, it is Statius’ own property, a country retreat nestled in the hills with cool running water;79 elsewhere it is described as small and modest (Silu. 4.5.1-2). The reference to the water’s soothing properties (63) is also associated with Epicurean tranquillity; here Statius can be free from care and the ‘heat’ of passions.80 Statius’ property however was probably near Domitian’s summer palace, which was also in the Alban hills. Does the closeness of his house to the imperial residence and the grant of running water to his property mean that Statius thus enjoyed the emperor’s special favour? Our major authority on Rome’s ancient water-supply, Frontinus, water commissioner (curator aquarum) at Rome from AD 97 to AD 103/4, was virtually contemporary with Statius.81 His treatise on Rome’s water supply demonstrates that from the time of Augustus, water concessions were given by the emperor (Fron. Aq. 99.3, 105.1).82 A grant (beneficium) from the emperor was thus prestigious but seems to have been fairly common.83

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2. Misconceptions about Statius Martial asks Domitian for a steady supply of water for the townhouse he owned on the Quirinal (9.18), a request that Henriksén suggests may have been prompted by Statius’ poem, mentioning the grant of water to his Alban estate; it was, so Henriksén puts it, ‘a comparatively small favour’ since Martial’s house was near a main aqueduct, the Aqua Marcia (Mart. 9.18.6).84 Like Martial, Statius perhaps did not need to go far for good, plentiful water for his Alban property but could draw it from the lines that fed Domitian’s summer palace.85 Thus the grant of water in itself does not prove that Statius enjoyed Domitian’s special favour. As Henriksén suggests, ‘as the imperial villa comprised aqueducts, reservoirs and baths  it would have been natural for Statius to turn to Domitian for water, and a small thing for the emperor to grant his request’.86 Silu. 3.1.61-5 has also, however, been taken to mean that Domitian gave Statius a villa, playing Maecenas to Statius’ Horace.87 However, the syntax seems to make it clear that the emperor provided only the water, not the rus proprium (the property itself). Hardie has suggested that the Alban property was a gift of Vespasian to Statius’ father. Since the father was buried on the estate (5.3.35-40) and not in his home region of Naples, the estate probably was originally his.88 Statius’ father seems to have been close to the Flavian court. In an era when education was both a channel of social mobility and an instrument of elite socialisation, talented Greek grammarians could command high prices ‘as the high priests of this culture’.89 Statius senior taught for the imperial family, which was eager to burnish its upstart credentials, and probably had Domitian as a pupil. 90 He recited in the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter, before the imperial family, his poem on the civil wars that had brought the Flavians to power, and earned their acclamation (Silu. 5.3.195-204).91 The ‘Roman’ life of Statius the elder, Greek professional poet and grammaticus, thus seems to have been a success. It would make sense then that Statius’ father received the rural property as an imperial gift; and, since water rights granted by the emperor were not inherited, the son would have requested them anew from the emperor when he inherited the Alban estate from his father, a request that was fairly routine.92 Thus Statius’ possession of a modest property (parui  ruris, Silu. 4.5.1) near Domitian’s summer palace, and Domitian’s granting him water rights, do not justify the assumption that Statius was a special protégé of the emperor. Compared to Martial, who was of equestrian rank, Statius’ material circumstances were probably quite modest.93 Domitian’s Alban estate was not a purely private retreat but was ambiguously situated on the interface between public and private life, for this was the site of the Alban games in honour of Minerva (Suet. Dom. 4.11). But despite the amenities of Statius’ Alban property and its Horatian inflection, he mentions it in Silu. 3.1.61-5 only to reject it as a site of poetic inspiration. Instead, he prefers to stay with his friend Pollius Felix in Campania, there ‘assiduously learning his peaceful ways, new flower-

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples ings of the Muses, and original poems’ (assidue moresque uiri pacemque nouosque / Pieridum flores intactaque carmina discens, 66-7). It is the Bay of Naples, with its Siren songs, that is associated with poetry and philosophy, not the Alban property; in this it is unlike Horace’s musical, echoic home in the Sabine hills described in Carm. 1.17. Indeed, in Silu. 4.5.20 Statius refers to the field of his Alban home as mutus, silent, except when his own voice is heard. This passage on Statius’ Alban home thus does not support the idea of his dependence on the emperor but rather its opposite; Statius detaches himself from the Horatian model of the country property that inspires poetry but is dependent on the beneficium of the emperor or a Maecenas close to the emperor. Yet both Statius’ epics open with praise of Domitian; the Siluae too begin with a poem praising Domitian’s equestrian statue. Like otium, encomium, or how to write encomium, was a vexed issue in the drastically changed political realities of the first century AD. Praise and blame, features of epideictic, were enormously important in all types of genres at this time.94 How to interpret such praise has also long vexed modern critics, and, in the case of Statius, the critical pendulum has swung from charges of flattery of a reviled emperor to admiration for the coded ambiguities of the poet’s words. The difficulty in talking about panegyric is exemplified by the comments of two distinguished critics of Latin literature: Fowler cautioned that it is difficult to keep the aesthetic preference for panegyric separate from the political endorsement of a particular ruler, whereas Hinds has argued that in early imperial Rome ‘unsolicited dialogue with a Caesar, or perhaps any dialogue with a Caesar, will always expose the interlocutor to charges of insubordination’.95 Statius has been caught in this critical impasse, suspected of either imperial partisanship or subversion. One approach to praise poetry is to accept that it employs a richly figurative language that is not necessarily subversive or adulatory but invites multiple levels of reception. The idea that praise employs ‘safe speech’ as a central figure has been well discussed by Ahl, Bartsch, Roche and others.96 Quintilian, Statius’ contemporary (AD c. 35-c. 95), calls this figure ‘emphasis’ and defines it as a form of ‘figured speech’ popular in his day in which words, often of praise, encode a latent, different meaning that is to be uncovered by the listener (Inst. 9.2.65-8). Quintilian claims that ‘safe speech’ on political themes was practised particularly in declamation schools (Inst. 9.2.67), even as he stresses its popularity and practicality as a figure of imperial rhetoric in a society of powerful, dangerous people. However, as Roche cannily points out, Quintilian’s claim that ‘safe speech’ thrives particularly in school exercises is itself a type of figured speech; to assert openly the practicality of the figure in Domitianic Rome would not only be dangerous but would violate the principle of figured speech.97 The figure of ‘emphasis’ seems to have been a literary, diplomatic tool of elite survival, allowing the writer a degree of autonomous control over, for instance, imperial representation, with the

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2. Misconceptions about Statius bonus that, as Quintilian emphasises, the onus of interpretation shifts to the reader (or listener). A Roman audience, even in the age before the principate, was clearly alert to multivalent, ‘safe speech’.98 For instance, at the ludi Apollinares of 59 BC, when Accius’ Brutus was performed, the tragic actor Diphilus said with especial point: nostra miseria / tu es magnus (to our wretched misfortune, you are g/Great), a line taken to attack the ambitions of Pompey Magnus (Cic. Att. 2.193).99 Another, related, approach is to understand praise poetry as often protreptic in purpose; the idea that praise should guide the recipient to an honourable course of action goes back at least to Aristotle (Rhet. 1.9.36).100 Praise tends to flourish in times of crisis, at the beginning and end of reigns when diplomacy and stock-taking are particularly necessary.101 Pliny’s Panegyricus, written at the start of Trajan’s reign, promotes an ideal of imperial virtue designed to guide and inspire the new emperor in proper leadership. Thus a central strategy of Pliny’s work is the representation of Domitian in savagely negative terms as a tyrant, the polar opposite of the ideal emperor; he functions as a cautionary example for Trajan to avoid.102 The Siluae represent Statius’ bold experimentation with praise poetry. He developed its range to include, provocatively, both friends and patrons, some of whom had nothing to do with politics. Coleman has shown how Statius’ creation of ‘mythological spokesmen’ to voice part of an encomium adds vitality and a range of perspectives to his praise poetry.103 Another central strategy of his aesthetics of encomium is ecphrasis, a literary form that is both vivid and, like the works of art it describes, invites multiple responses. A long established trope in antiquity associated a person’s worth and character with his or her property. The size and design of a house, for instance, testified to the owner’s importance in the community and to qualities such as his good taste and even moral standing; thus Statius praises his friends Manilius Vopiscus and Pollius Felix through their splendid villas (1.3, 2.2, and 3.1). Description of a house or statue makes its owner more vivid and complex, but also more distant. Ecphrasis redresses the asymmetrical relationship between the emperor or patron and the praise poet, for it is the latter who has control over the verbal and enduring representation of the work of art or architecture and its owner. Ecphrasis is a particularly useful strategy in the negotiation of the poet with his ruler; as Rosati argues, Statius’ poetry of praise always keeps in view his popular success as a poet and its potential importance, therefore, to the cultural policies of the realm.104 Domitian is praised through three of his great works, the equestrian statue in Silu. 1.1, his palace in 4.2, and his new road in 4.3. A new idiom was needed that could adequately express the idea of this emperor’s self-fashioning as quasi-divine, and Statius brilliantly found this through ecphrasis. How better to honour the emperor than through his monuments, which vividly convey his majesty? And through ecphrasis,

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples which displays the poet’s virtuosity and his complex play with levels of reception? Silu. 1.1 offers a special opportunity to discuss the relationship between the poem’s description and the monument, for between AD 95 and 96 Domitian minted a sestertius with an image of the equestrian statue on the reverse. Statius’ poem is hyperbolic in its description of the statue’s height and girth and weight (1.1.32-3, 1.1.56-60), and the excavations have shown that the statue was indeed a colossus – possibly, if its base is included, as much as 18 metres high and well in excess of the dimensions of the well-known equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, which is about 4.24 metres high.105 The extraordinary size of Domitian’s statue would have dominated the forum, conveying the emperor’s majesty and divine ambitions, but equally, perhaps, his divine aloofness from its people.106 At the same time, it also, perhaps, suggested oppressiveness; the gaze of this statue is described as far-reaching over Rome (1.1.32-6).107 The coin on the other hand offers an official representation of the statue as rather sedate, without seemingly exaggerated proportions. Statius’ horse is terrifying in an energy that seems to defy the constraints of the bronze (1.1.46-55). Moreover, on the coin the aegis (shield) of Minerva, which was adorned with Medusa’s head, is on the ground beside the horse’s front hoof, by the figure of the vanquished Rhine; in Statius’ poem the emperor holds out in his left hand a statue of Minerva, his patron deity, who is described explicitly as displaying the severed head of the Gorgon (1.1.37-9).108 In contrast with the coin, Statius’ poem conveys, from the point of view of the spectator, the sheer, threatening terror of this gigantic horse and its emperor, who seem to blur the boundaries between stone and flesh, death and life. In 1.1 the emperor’s colossal equestrian statue is represented as a magnificent yet troubling embodiment of Domitian’s authority. The poem invites an emotional and intellectual as well as an aesthetic response on the part of spectator and reader. In particular it alerts the reader to the literary challenge posed by this gigantic expression of imperial ambitions, a challenge for which Horace’s elusive, ironic encomia of Augustus were no longer adequate models. Rather, clearly needed was the forging of a new language of imperial praise. Topography plays a similarly important role in evoking the protreptic element in Statius’ panegyric, for crucial are not only the appearance of the statue but also its location, in the heart of the Roman forum. Under the Flavians the Roman forum was substantially changed. The new imperial fora of Vespasian and Domitian, along with those of Julius Caesar and Augustus, were enclosed spaces that diminished in political importance the old Roman forum with its open design.109 Under Domitian the Roman forum acquired a new symbolic shape, for it was bounded by Flavian monuments: facing one another from either end of the forum were the Temple of the Deified Vespasian and Titus and the Arch of Titus, which commemorated the victory over the Jews in AD 70-71 and was dedicated

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2. Misconceptions about Statius by Domitian; behind the Arch was the gigantic mass of the Colosseum. The lateral sides of the forum were flanked by the Palatine, with the towering palace of Domitian dominating its summit, and by the juxtaposed imperial fora of Vespasian and his younger son. This new monumental architecture also changed the historical meanings of the city’s central spaces. The Roman forum was essentially transformed into an imperial forum, its often violent republican history subordinated to a new image of imperial splendour that articulated the authority of the Flavian dynasty, while also clamping down on freedom of expression.110 The colossal equestrian statue visibly set the seal on the Flavian transformation of the Roman forum into a monument destined to exalt the new dynasty.111 Not surprisingly, it did not survive Domitian’s damnatio memoriae. Domitian chose to erect the statue close to the senate house, at the Lacus Curtius. The statue turns its head toward the Palatine, home of the emperor and now the exclusive seat of power, and turns its back on the traditional places of republican and senatorial power, such as the Capitol (1.1.29-31). Thus, as Coarelli notes, the statue was erected in the heart of traditional Roman politics. Coarelli argues that the colossus had a disruptive effect on the forum’s Augustan harmony that had preserved, at least on the face of it, a balance between republican tradition and new imperial power.112 Moreover, as we saw in the previous chapter, the Lacus Curtius was in recent Roman memory associated with the sacrilege of the emperor Galba’s murder and decapitation there in January AD 69.113 And indeed decapitation is a leitmotif of the poem. The statue holds out to view the severed head of Medusa (1.1.37-9);114 the nearby statue of Julius Caesar, which Domitian’s new statue surpasses, bears the visible marks of change in the replacement of the head of Alexander the Great for Julius Caesar’s (86-7); Statius pinpoints the ‘neck’ of Domitian’s statue, the weak part of a statue, as the part that attracts the attention of the deified spirits of his family (97-8). The symbolically sudden (mox, 86) ‘decapitation’ of Alexander suggests that not even the greatest rulers or their works of art are immune to neglect and desecration. The neck is therefore the symbol of ruler change, the physical point of vulnerability. Statius’ poem is underwritten by the contradiction between the soaring size and aspirations of the statue, and the physical testaments to the instability of fame that surround it. On the other hand, the encomiastic description of a statue was a well-recognised theme of Hellenistic epigram. In Silu. 1.1 Statius acknowledges his debt to the small-scale, descriptive poem; but he responds to the massive size of the statue by expanding his description beyond epigrammatic bounds to just over 100 lines, and by employing an expansive, epic style. Statius alludes directly to the epigrammatic tradition when he compares the equestrian statue of Domitian to the equestrian statue of Julius Caesar in the latter’s forum (1.1.84-8):

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples cedat equus Latiae qui contra templa Diones Caesarei stat sede fori, quem traderis ausus Pellaeo, Lysippe, duci (mox Caesaris ora mirata ceruice tulit); vix lumine fesso explores quam longus in hunc despectus ab illo. Let the horse yield which stands opposite the temple of Roman Venus115 in Julius Caesar’s forum, the horse which you, Lysippus, are said to have dared to sculpt for the Pellaean leader (soon it bore Caesar’s head on its wondering neck); you could scarcely see with your wearied eye from what a distant height he (Domitian) looks down at this (other) statue.

According to common practice in the ancient sculptural world, the equestrian statue of Julius Caesar was a partly ‘recycled’ work; 116 that is, as we have seen, Caesar’s statue originally bore the head of Alexander the Great, the one part of the statue that individuated the ruler. The original statue was sculpted by Lysippus (1.1.85-6), the only artist allowed to make Alexander’s portrait (Plut. Mor. 335b). Statius probably refers here to a series of Greek epigrams commemorating Lysippus’ sculptures of Alexander. The third-century BC Hellenistic poet Posidippus of Pella in particular seems to have been an active advocate of Lysippus’ art.117 Of the nine epigrams that deal exclusively with bronze sculptures in the Milan papyrus,118 three exalt Lysippus’ art (62, 65, 70), and the first and last frame the collection; as Sens points out, moreover, the epigrams have a self-referential character, using the sculptures to talk about poetry.119 In a compliment to Domitian that simultaneously exalts his own art, Statius here sets his introductory poem in a tradition of Hellenistic epigrams in honour of famous rulers. But the reference also points to a difference in the artistic styles of public portraiture between the Hellenistic and Flavian periods. Lysippus was praised for his bold art which captured the daring of Alexander in an innovative style that departed from the static heroic modes of representation used by his predecessors; ausus (dared, 1.1.85) refers to this feature of his art.120 At the same time Lysippus was praised for his realism and sense of symmetry, for his ability to produce a complimentary likeness that conveyed the essence of the subject. In his discussion of Lysippus at Nat. 34.61-5 Pliny claims that he made bodies ‘more graceful and less fleshy’ (graciliora siccioraque) through a new, subtle art of symmetry (65).121 The equestrian statue of Domitian by contrast far exceeds human symmetry and representational ‘truth’. The daring innovation of the Flavian aesthetic thus is highlighted by its situation within an art-historical and literary context; Domitian’s statue stakes a claim to surpass the famous works of the past. This is art for the divine, and Statius’ challenge was to craft within the confines of the short poem a new style to represent the towering colossus in the Roman forum. The transgressive art of the statue is emphasised by comparison with the art of another powerful autocrat,

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2. Misconceptions about Statius Alexander. But cedat equus refers also to the poet’s ambitions – his statue poem is to surpass all others.122 This first poem of the Siluae attempts a new encomiastic language for an emperor whose divine aspirations soared well beyond those of his predecessors. The poem offers at least two ways of seeing the statue, as a divine manifestation of the immortality of the emperor and his empire and, more troublingly, as a historical object bounded by space and time, in particular in relation to other monuments past and present. The poet’s iconic vision skilfully mediates between the finite and infinite realms, thus giving expression to the dual identity of the statue as temporal and sacred object. Statius also mediates between his Callimachean principles and his epicising tendencies. Silu. 1.1 celebrates but also strategically assesses the Flavian aesthetic of limitless grandeur, expanding the theme well beyond the brief limits of Hellenistic epigram, yet containing it within the bounds of the poetry book. Thus, through description of the massive equestrian statue, both its form and its location, Statius’ first poem of the Siluae articulates a new imperial poetics of elevated, effusive, yet also richly figured praise.123 Praise of Domitian, moreover, has to be considered within the context of other forms of praise in Statius’ works. The coexistence of imperial praise poems with praise of a foster child who died young (Silu. 2.1) or of a quiet, elderly person who has retired from the public fray (1.3, 2.2, 2.3 and 3.1) has a certain levelling effect in counterpoint to the launching of the first collection with the emperor (1.1); as a whole the poetry book is structured towards the poet’s own withdrawal from Rome to Naples.124 Indeed at the level of placement as well as of language, the Siluae invite complex responses; they enact a kind of structural ‘emphasis’. For example, Silu. 1.4, a poem of thanksgiving for the recovery from illness of Domitian’s urban prefect, Rutilius Gallicus, is flanked by two poems that praise men, one old, one young, who have turned their backs on a political career, Manilius Vopiscus and Claudius Etruscus; the latter’s father had spent his career in imperial administration, falling foul of Domitian towards the end.125 Since Gallicus’ illness was caused by overwork in the service of Domitian (1.4.52-7), such a placement was perhaps not coincidental; it certainly permits an interplay of different systems of value and career choices in life. The poem was written shortly after Domitian’s celebration of the Secular Games in AD 88 (1.4.96-7) and Statius closely links Gallicus’ recovery with hopes for the new era (15-18): quippe manet longumque aeuo reduente manebit quem penes intrepidae mitis custodia Romae, nec tantum induerint fatis noua saecula crimen aut instaurati peccauerit ara Tarenti.

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples For he lives on and will live for a long time as his life returns, the man in charge of the gentle guardianship of fear-free Rome; our new era will not invest the Fates with such a crime [sc. of Gallicus’ early death], nor will the Tarentine altar, site of the restored Secular Games, commit such a sin.

For Hardie, the poem is more than a thanks offering for Gallicus’ recovery; it functions as ‘living proof’ that the aspirations for peace, health and stability expressed in the Secular Games have now become a joyous reality.126 And yet, as Statius announces in the preface to Book 1, Gallicus had in fact died by the time the book was published (1 pr. 27-8); the poem then assumes new meaning as an elegy for a brilliant career. Why then did Statius decide to include it? Did he merely wish to honour a distinguished servant of the state? Or did he subtly wish to suggest that promise of a new order expressed by the Secular Games was now under threat or even blighted? He hints that Gallicus was overworked. Ultimately we cannot confirm Statius’ political allegiances. His poetry however has an open-ended quality and frequently a provocative ambivalence. The effect of the poem’s inclusion and placement at the very least invites the reader’s engagement with competing systems of value from the start of the collection. Indeed, as Rosati has concluded, ultimately the question of whether an encomium is true or false is a zero-sum game. In Seneca’s Thyestes, Atreus claims (211-12), laus uera et humili saepe contingit uiro, / non nisi potenti falsa (a man, though humble, often receives true praise, the ruler only falsehood). That is, the extent of a ruler’s power corresponds to the degree of falsity in his encomium! Atreus of course speaks from his own cynical viewpoint. But he suggests that for the ruler encomium can never be sincere; paradoxically, the very falsity is a flattering recognition of his power.127 Statius’ praise poetry was not commissioned by the emperor, and it speaks to a larger audience than Domitian. The value of Statius’ political praise poetry rests not on its truth claims but on its descriptive and emotive powers and its ‘swift’ art (1 pr. 1-5) offering shifting perspectives on his objects of praise. In sum, there is little substance in the claim that Statius was a hypocritical flatterer of Domitian.128 Domitian was probably never Statius’ individual patron. Moreover, Statius never produced the epic Domitian wanted on his military campaigns. Roman epic was a politically charged form, associated with national and imperial aspirations. Each of Statius’ epics, as he acknowledges at the start of both the Thebaid and the Achilleid, constitutes a deferral of the emperor’s request for an epic of his achievements.129 One of Statius’ most prominent patrons was Polla Argentaria, the widow of Lucan. Ferri has argued that the author of the pseudo-Senecan Octavia, our sole surviving Roman historical tragedy, was perhaps a member of the circle round Polla, where ‘members of the exterminated clan of the Annaei gathered’.130 Delarue has argued that Statius’ father was part

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2. Misconceptions about Statius of that circle too, in which case there would have been a family connection too for Statius.131 Ferri’s idea that Polla headed an oppositional literary clique is speculation. However, Statius seems to allude to the Octauia in a couple of instances in the Siluae. His knowledge of the Octauia as well as Senecan tragedy, and his tribute to Lucan and his widow Polla at the end of Book 2 of the Siluae, suggest that he can hardly be regarded as a thoughtless flatterer of the emperor; his poetry is informed by a historical consciousness of the dangers of autocracy. To assume that his poetry flatters Domitian therefore does not do justice to the complexity of Statius’ various social and poetic allegiances. Statius’ Siluae convey a strong sense of a culture of reciprocity among like-minded friends, of different social status perhaps, but connected through a passion for literature. The gift to Stella by way of dedication of the first poetry book of Siluae enacted a mutually beneficial cultural exchange between the poet and a man who was close to the centre of both literary and political power as both a well-regarded poet and career politician.132 Stella’s seal of approval on Statius’ work helped promote it, while Statius’ tributes to Stella added lustre to the latter’s reputation; both men in other word benefited from an exchange of prestige and publicity, not of money. Domitian is absent from this culture of literary reciprocity. As the recipient of the first poem of the Siluae he conveys a certain prestige to the collection, but he is not presented as an active benefactor of the poet in that he is not seen to ‘pay back’. Coffee has recently commented on the threat to social cohesion offered by the emperor, the supreme patron to whom everyone else in Roman society was necessarily a client.133 Statius’ Siluae however reveal a lively if not necessarily adequate culture of support from patron/friends, safely mediated through a shared love of literature, not through the emperor and his court. The issues I have discussed in this section concerning Domitian’s reputation, his relationship with Hellenism, and the challenges of praise poetry, come strikingly together in a short poem of late Antiquity. Probably in the late fourth or early fifth century AD, a poet, writing under the name of the Flavian poet Sulpicia, composed 70 hexameters attacking Domitian as a corrupt emperor hostile to the arts.134 The poem ends with the Muse Calliope promising an end to tyranny; she herself will join forces with the nymph Egeria at her fountains at the foot of the Caelian in Rome. Sulpicia here turns to Statius who in Silu. 2.7 employs Calliope as the champion of Lucan and makes a forceful complaint against imperial tyranny, in this case Nero’s; Sulpicia perhaps also recognised the female voice as a definitive characteristic of Statius’ Thebaid. She counters Juvenal’s complaint that the fountains of the Camenae have been paved over with marble and the native Muses have been ejected by the Jews (Sat. 3.10-20); at the end of this so-called ‘Satire of Sulpicia’ the Greek Muse Calliope takes up residence in the home of the Roman Camenae and joins in unison with their chief representative, Egeria, in mocking imperial

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples endeavours as vanities (67-8): nam laureta Numae fontisque habitamus eosdem / et comite Egeria ridemus inania coepta (for we inhabit the laurel groves and springs of Numa and with Egeria as our companion we laugh at the futile undertakings [of Domitian]). Although this is very likely a late work hostile to Domitian, the author understood that the Flavian age, and Statius, to whom among others she is indebted, represented an important period of cultural fusion between Greece and Rome; along with Domitian himself, Statius was its chief representative. Statius and his contemporaries None of Statius’ contemporaries, or near-contemporaries, mentions Statius, except for Juvenal (7.82-7). Pliny the Younger pays tribute to Silius Italicus and to Martial on their deaths (Ep. 3.7; 3.21) but he is silent about Statius, even although he was clearly influenced by him; in his collected books of prose epistles he follows the example of the Siluae by elevating ‘occasional’ literature to a serious art-form.135 Statius also does not make Quintilian’s roll of honour of Roman poets (Inst. 10.85-100). This is not necessarily to be interpreted as condemnation by silence; Roman authors generally did not refer to their contemporaries while alive, and Statius is silent about his poetic contemporaries, Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus and Martial. Moreover, despite Quintilian’s influential list of 14 distinguished Roman epic writers, culminating with Domitian (Inst. 10.1.85-92), there was undoubtedly dispute about the canon, as there is today.136 For instance, Statius in Silu. 2.7.75-80 offers a more select list of six Roman epic poets, with Varro of Atax in place of Valerius Flaccus; he implicitly positions himself in this poem as the seventh, as epic successor to Lucan.137 Statius’ outsider status in Roman society may also explain the silence of Statius’ contemporaries about him. The epic poets of the first century AD from Ovid onwards were of aristocratic background. Statius was the exception, son of a parvenu grammaticus and poet. In this final section of the chapter I shall suggest that, nonetheless, Statius was creatively engaged with his fellow poets and they, as far as we can tell (given the problem of relative dating), with him. Martial was Statius’ exact contemporary. Their poetry offers a fascinating opportunity for a study of allusion between two contemporaries, for they both wrote occasional poetry, yet employed different styles, epigrammatic brevity versus the epicising expansiveness of Siluae. Nonetheless, Martial’s epigrams and Statius Siluae share several of the same topics and address several of the same patrons;138 they use similar terms of definition for their occasional poetry. For instance, both employ the Catullan terms ludere and iocus to position their ‘light’ poetry somewhat disingenuously at the opposite end of the literary spectrum from epic.139 Both too are innovative in their use of the prose preface to introduce their individual poetry books, with Statius probably following Martial’s example in this regard.140

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2. Misconceptions about Statius Yet surprisingly Martial and Statius do not refer to one another by name. This silence has been interpreted as a sign of mutual hostility, though without external basis.141 True, Martial may be targeting Statius specifically in 10.4 when he derides mythological themes, singling out Thebes.142 On the other hand such derision of myth is a common enough trope in non-epic poetry; Mart. 4.49, which likewise scorns mythological epic as an inflated genre, but without reference to Thebes, takes a typical epigrammatic stance. Juvenal’s scorn in his first Satire (1-18) of epic poets who spout on well-known myths suggests there may be no need to single out a particular author. The topic of the relationship between these two poets is obviously a complex one, and I shall give just one example of their handling of the same theme, Lucan’s posthumous birthday celebration. Statius wrote Silu. 2.7, a hendecasyllabic poem of 135 lines, for this occasion; in the same year Martial wrote three epigrams for the same occasion (7.21, 22, 23).143 Both Martial and Statius structure their poems around similar tropes: they make the same etymological pun several times on ‘Lucan’ and the words for ‘day’ and ‘light’, dies and lux.144 Both moreover introduce Nero as a hateful ‘shade’ (2.7.116-19; 7.21.3); both mention the pride of Lucan’s homeland in its poet (2.7.24-35; 7.22.3-4); and both acknowledge Lucan’s widow Polla (2.7.81-8; 7.21.2) and her interest in a poetic cult of Lucan (2.7.120-31; 7.23.3-4). But Martial’s poems are epitaphic in metre – the elegiac couplet – and in length – four lines each.145 They are elegantly commemorative. Statius’ poem on the other hand is expansive and polemical; outside the birthday frame it confronts the question of the status of Lucan as epic poet.146 Statius and Martial wrote for the same occasion and for the same patron, but generic differences between epigram and Siluae to some extent, at least, dictate the differences between the two poems. Martial writes his epigrams as an occasional poet; Statius writes his occasional poetry as an epic poet. But their poems, at least in this instance and several others, complement one another. Their relationship could well have been one involving creative artistic exchange within different but related genres. As for the two other Flavian epic poets, Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus, Statius was clearly cognizant of their work. Silius’ Punica was written over a long time-span, between AD 83 and 97, or possibly as late as the date of Silius’ suicide, AD 101 or 102, thus some ten years later than the publication of the Thebaid.147 Silius had retired to the Bay of Naples where he had several villas, so we can speculate that there would easily have been opportunity for the two poets to familiarise themselves with one another’s ongoing work. On the other hand there was a huge social divide between Statius and Silius who, according to Pliny’s informative obituary (Ep. 3.7), had been consul under Nero and proconsul under Vespasian. Much as Statius loved Naples, there is no evidence that he owned villas there, whereas Silius had several. But despite their different historical and mythological themes, there are clear cross-references between the two

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples poets, although owing to the problem of dating the books of the Punica, it is often difficult to determine when Silius alludes to Statius or vice versa. As Lovatt and Littlewood have recently argued, however, the poets seem to have engaged sometimes in concurrent exchange, since the Punica would probably have been available at least in draft form, circulating among friends and fellow poets.148 For the present study, more important perhaps than the often tenuous question of who exactly influenced whom are the different perspectives on similar themes that this possibly creative poetic exchange offered, especially on such topics as the nature of heroism and effective leadership. Again I shall take here only one example, the similarities between Silius’ Scipio and Statius’ Achilles. In the Achilleid, Achilles is described through a series of oxymora that suggest he is at the age of transition between boyhood and manhood. In particular his eyes are both tranquil and fiery (Ach. 1.164): tranquillaeque faces oculis (tranquil torches are in his eyes). The youthful Scipio, who like Achilles is fleet of foot (Sil. 8.555), is described with similar contrasts; his eyes too are both mild and fiery (Sil. 8.560-1): flagrabant lumina miti / adspectu, gratusque inerat uisentibus horror (his eyes burned with gentle glance, and created a pleasing shiver in those looking at him). The striking oxymora describing the hero’s gaze suggest youth, beauty, and the potential both to harm and to shield.149 At the end of the Punica Scipio is represented in triumph and his divine ancestry is emphasised; comparisons with Hercules and Quirinus also suggest that he is bound heavenwards (Sil. 17.645-54). Achilles, however, as the start of his epic emphasises, is also of divine ancestry, but barred from heaven (Ach. 1.1-3). Whereas Silius’ Scipio foreshadows the path to divinity taken by the Roman emperors, Statius’ Achilles is a very different kind of hero who does not, and cannot, seek the skies; Statius programmatically announces at the poem’s start that this hero is not on the ‘Roman track’. As Tipping has suggested, such recollections between the two poets extend the definition of the two heroes in their works. Set beside Silius’ politically ambitious Scipio, who is often specifically compared to Achilles in the Punica, Statius’ Achilles stands out as an unusual hero, particularly for the readership of imperial Rome accustomed to the idea of their leaders’ ambitions for deification.150 In the proem Statius addresses Domitian with the promise that ‘great Achilles is a warm-up act to you’ (magnusque tibi praeludit Achilles, Ach. 1.19). As synecdoche for the new epic poem Statius is beginning, this may be true; but as a hero Achilles is a poor model for an emperor bent on deification. He is also a poor model for Silius’ heavenbent Scipio. The similarities between the two descriptions illuminate different poetic and political agendas. As Feeney comments, the Thebaid consistently exhibits anxiety about human attempts to leave the earthly realm for heaven.151 To conclude this chapter I shall look at Statius’ creative engagement with the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus. Here the problem of chronology

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2. Misconceptions about Statius is less acute, for Valerius’ epic, or most of it, probably preceded the Thebaid in date.152 Although Statius does not mention Valerius by name, he refers to his poem in Silu. 2.7 when he dismisses the Argonautic expedition as an overused epic theme (50-1).153 Nonetheless, Valerius’ poem provided him with fertile material to delineate his own idea of epic and its uneasy relationship with the heroic code.154 Valerius was probably a high-ranking politician, one of Vespasian’s quindecimuiri; his social status as much as his literary achievement possibly merited his mention by Quintilian, who laments the literary loss caused by his death (Inst. 10.1.90). The introduction to the Argonautica (1-21), which was almost certainly written early in Vespasian’s reign, seems to reflect the optimism of the new dynasty with its praise of travel and exploration (1.1-9).155 It also incorporates a recusatio, that is, a formal refusal to write epic, in this case historical epic on Flavian deeds, but Valerius manages to state his preference for a mythological theme in a way that puts Vespasian and the new dynasty in a positive global and historical perspective (11-14): ueterumque faue, uenerande, canenti facta uirum. uersam proles tua pandit Idumen sancte pater, Solymo nigrantem puluere fratrem spargentemque faces et in omni turre furentem. Look kindly on me as I sing the deeds of ancient heroes. Your son reveals the story of the sack of Jerusalem and of his brother black with Jerusalem’s dust, hurling torches and raging against every turret.

In the stakes of historical epic, Valerius defers to Domitian, who has the literary talent to write of the glorious deeds accomplished by his father and his brother Titus. Valerius’ mythological theme, ueterum  facta uirum (the deeds of men of old) (11-12), is a conventional articulation of largescale epic that nonetheless has political resonance.156 It suggests that the glorious deeds of the heroes of the past are in important ways equivalent to the present-day deeds of the imperial family. Furthermore, in handing over to Domitian the task of writing of his family’s deeds, Valerius uses the recusatio to assert the harmony of the new dynasty and the significant fact that the emperor was supported by two grown sons.157 As Feeney comments, Valerius Flaccus ‘appears to be celebrating right family relations after the chaos of Nero’ and thus the promise of stability and ordered succession.158 Statius’ introduction to the Thebaid announces its deferral of a poem on Domitian’s deeds not because Domitian is the best person to write it, but because it is too challenging for Statius’ present poetic abilities (Theb. 1.17-33). As Zissos points out, both Valerius and Statius depart from the Augustan recusatio, which stated a preference for minor genres over epic; instead of ‘the conventional generic opposition (tenuis versus grande) of the Augustan recusatio’, the Flavian poets opted for ‘an implicit gradation

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples of subject matter, privileging contemporary historical – which is to say imperial – epic over its mythological counterpart’.159 But, unlike Valerius’ introduction, Statius’ opening to his epic portrays Domitian here exclusively as a warrior, not a poet, presumably too absorbed in martial exploits to write poetry. Statius’ recusatio likewise sounds a dynastic note in that Domitian is portrayed as following in his father’s footsteps (Theb. 1.22-4): tuque, o Latiae decus addite famae, quem noua maturi subeuntem exorsa parentis aeternum sibi Roma cupit. And you, o glory added to Latian fame, whom Rome desires for herself for ever as you take over your mature parent’s enterprises afresh.

But the dynasty is mentioned in terms of a family of two, not three. Unlike Valerius, Statius omits mention of the reign of Domitian’s brother Titus. This portrayal of Domitian as Vespasian’s direct, immediate successor, rather than his older brother, hints at strains in the dynasty. And instead of Valerius’ glorious deeds of heroes, Statius’ theme will be lawless, sacrilegious wars (32-45). Nor does Statius emphasise, as Valerius does, that there is an equivalence between mythological and contemporary themes, though this may be a covert implication.160 Statius’ proem instead reflects the deterioration of dynastic hopes and stability from the start of the Flavian regime celebrated by Valerius. If we resort to Quintilian’s figure of ‘emphasis’, we can perhaps interpret Statius’ statement to Domitian that ‘Rome desires him for ever’ (24) as suggesting not only that he is a great emperor but that there are fears that there is no known future beyond him, for, unlike Vespasian, he is not supported by even one adult heir. Valerius’ backward glance to the mythological past complements the present, forward-looking time of imperial expansion; Statius’ backward glance to the mythological past, in as much as it may relate to his Flavian present, is admonitory and anxiety-laden. But the most notable way in which Statius exploited Valerius’ epic was by taking the Lemnian episode from Book 2 of the Argonautica (242-432), where it was simply one of the Argonauts’ many adventures, and daringly placing it in the middle of his epic as essentially an epyllion (Theb. 5.48-498), a ‘story within a story’ told by the queen of Lemnos to the Argive army when she encounters them in Nemea.161 The Argive arrival in search of water, Hypsipyle’s narrative of the massacre on Lemnos, and then the subsequent events at Nemea delay the Argive army over the course of four books (Theb. 4.646-7.104). This episode of the Thebaid is often described as a digression, a bold but diversionary borrowing.162 Centrally placed, however, it provides a key example of Statius’ creative engagement with his Greek and Roman predecessors.163 Here, through the first-person voice

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2. Misconceptions about Statius of its narrator, Hypsipyle, a character imported originally from Greek tragedy and given an elegiac voice in the sixth of Ovid’s Heroides, are played out the central tensions and innovations of the Thebaid. The complex play with genre, gender, and space in her episode dramatises the poem’s aesthetics of suffering. Indeed, as Augoustakis claims, this ‘digression’ is central in its function of reviewing ‘the future tragedy and female lament in Thebes’.164 In classical literature before Valerius and Statius, Hypsipyle, queen of Lemnos, played a prominent role in Euripides’ play Hypsipyle; in Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica (1.609-910); and in Ovid’s sixth Heroides; the Argonautica of Varro of Atax, probably also an influence on Statius’ poem, is lost to us.165 But it is her reappearance as an epic heroine in Valerius’ Argonautica that provided the most prominent, recent challenge to Statius.166 Although in Valerius’ Argonautica Hypsipyle plays a small part in the overall narrative, she stands out in the epic through the poet’s praise of her as a shining exemplar of filial piety, a Roman ideal (V.Fl. 2.242-6): 167 Sed tibi nunc quae digna tuis ingentibus ausis orsa feram, decus et patriae laus una ruentis, Hypsipyle? non ulla meo te carmine dictam abstulerint, durent Latii modo, saecula, fasti Iliacique lares tantique palatia regni. But now what words worthy of your bold deeds shall I conjure, Hypsipyle, unique glory and praise of a country rushing to ruin? Nothing will remove your story from my poem, as long as the Roman calendar, o ages, endures, and the Trojan Lares and the palace of such a great kingdom as ours.

Hershkowitz has argued that Valerius made his Hypsipyle a moderate character, in contradistinction to Virgil’s Dido, who is one of her models. She is pious and reasonable, ‘the Sense to Dido’s Sensibility  a Romanised daughter and wife’.168 In his notable apostrophe, Valerius exalts the figure of Hypsipyle for precisely these quiet, but Roman virtues. He here echoes Virgil’s endorsement of perpetual Roman fame for Euryalus and Nisus (A. 9.446-9). As with Hypsipyle, the endurance of their memory is coterminous with the Roman empire; thus too the poet claims immortality for himself.169 Indeed, Valerius’ heroine surpasses Virgil’s young heroes, for she survives.170 Valerius’ praise of Hypsipyle thus has a metapoetic reference; he throws down the gauntlet for any poet following him. As we shall see, Hypsipyle’s role and characterisation are very different in the Thebaid. Dietrich has suggested that the metaphor of weaving with which Statius’ Hypsipyle introduces her narrative (Theb. 5.36) – quid longa malis exordia necto? (why do I weave a long introduction to my woes?) – is a specific allusion to Valerius’ Hypsipyle, who wove the story of her trials into a cloak which she gave the faithless Jason as a parting gift (V.Fl.

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples 2.408-17).171 The allusion also goes further back, to Hypsipyle’s Euripidean monody, where she presents herself as a singer and a weaver (fr. 1.ii.1116).172 On Lemnos she sang in self-consolation as she wove ‘Lemnian assuagements of the bobbin’, and the text draws an analogy between the loom and the cithara, weaving and song.173 With the metaphor of weaving deployed by Hypsipyle, Statius acknowledges his debt to his tragic model as well as to Valerius. Euripides’ play provided Statius with Hypsipyle’s tragic heritage as the eloquent voice of suffering. Her ‘weaving’ of a tale of sorrow that halts and mesmerises the Argive army is connected to Bacchus’ ‘weaving of delays’ (nectam  moras, Theb. 4.677), a Senecan expression.174 One striking departure from Valerius therefore is the first-person voice of Statius’ Hypsipyle. In Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica she gives Jason only a brief first-person account of what happened on Lemnos, cunningly constructed on half-truths (A.R. 1.793-833). The Lemnian episode in Valerius’ Argonautica is told in the third person; only the cloak, depicting the escape of Hypsipyle’s father Thoas, suggests Hypsipyle’s point of view (2.408-17). Ovid gives Hypsipyle a voice in Heroides 6, but she writes about her fears of Medea, not about the Lemnian massacre. Only in the Thebaid does Hypsipyle finally tell the full story in her own voice and from her own point of view, as epic heroine and former queen of Lemnos. She is not isolated, like Ovid’s letter-writing heroine; her narrative mesmerises a whole army, with its seven regal heroes (Theb. 5.499-500): talia Lernaeis iterat dum regibus exsul / Lemnias et longa solatur damna querela (while the Lemnian exile tells this story again to the Lernaean kings and finds consolation for her losses in her long complaint). As Gibson argues, iterat emphasises that Hypsipyle is a narrator repeating a well-known tale whose literary origins go back at least to Euripides’ play of that name.175 Statius’ Hypsipyle is self-consciously aware of her identity as a repetitive narrator; the narrative of events on Lemnos that she recounts to the Argive army has already been told on various occasions – to her father on Lemnos, to king Lycurgus and his queen Eurydice on Nemea, and to their infant Opheltes, to lull him to sleep.176 Hypsipyle is thus a complex figure who signifies the intertextual dynamics of Statius’ Thebaid. Nugent and Casali have argued that Statius’ Hypsipyle is an unreliable, even mendacious narrator.177 She strikingly departs from tradition when, unlike in Statius’ predecessors, she represents herself as not star-struck at the arrival of Jason on Lemnos. Sex with Jason was under compulsion, not desire (Theb. 5.454-7, 461-5); her twins were the ‘reminders of a forced coupling’ (thalami monimenta coacti, Theb. 5.463). Yet surely Hypsipyle does here what all good epic male narrators do, particularly when in a tight spot, like Odysseus on Phaeacia – adjust their story to their audience. Confronted with a huge, unpredictable army, Hypsipyle in the Thebaid reveals the adroit rhetorical skills of a queen and epic heroine.178 She thus shows the astuteness and instincts for self-preservation that she demon-

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2. Misconceptions about Statius strated on Lemnos, as well as her traditional skill as a narrator; Valerius’ Hypsipyle cannot stop Jason, but Statius’ heroine can bring an entire army to a halt. Her departures from her models can be attributed both to the new context in which she speaks, and to her status as an intertextual heroine who makes a bid to set her record straight. She opens up to question the tradition of Jason’s sexual allure. Her feminine voice is infused with dramatic irony from the reader’s knowledge of her literary history and the new authoritative spin she puts on events in a text that finally allows her own full voice and version of events.179 Indeed, she has an advantage over her earlier incarnations. Twenty years have passed since she fled Lemnos (Theb. 5.465-7); Jason has long ago completed his quest and returned home. In Statius’ predecessors the tale of the Lemnian massacre was tied to the immediate arrival of Jason and the Argonauts. That event has now diminished in importance; the Lemnian massacre stands out instead as the defining experience of Statius’ tragic Hypsipyle. Statius is in Valerius’ debt for a major innovation to the traditional story of the massacre, for Valerius had paired the Lemnian conflict between the women and their men folk with civil war. Statius follows Valerius in this regard, but he goes further by bringing Lemnos within the specific orbit of the Theban conflict, for he carries Hypsipyle’s story through to her exile in the borderland of Nemea.180 Statius’ Hypsipyle is a compelling narrator. For Gibson, she surpasses all her previous instantiations as narrator in Euripides, Apollonius, Ovid and Valerius Flaccus; she ‘is closest to the power of an epic narrator’.181 As such, she also reveals the tragic confusion caused by civil war. As a good daughter wishing to protect her father, she assumes the rulership of Lemnos under false pretences; as a mother she leaves her sons in another’s charge when she herself seems to have no choice but to go into exile; as foster mother she forgets her infant charge and provides the war’s first victim. Her narrative creates a generic diversion and delay, yet it also causes violent death; moreover, her account of the Lemnian massacre, which includes the killing of innocent children, grimly foreshadows the horrors of internecine strife in Thebes.182 As evil in the Theban family is passed down from generation to generation, so Hypsipyle, an exile like Polynices, brings with her the taint of perverse evil, tragic death, and dysfunctional family relationships; moreover, no place, not even the most sheltered, is safe from the random violence associated with the fraternal conflict. Statius’ poem suggests that the piety of Hypsipyle, as mother and daughter, was necessarily but terribly compromised by events largely outside her control. She does not instigate violence, but she is involved in it on Lemnos and is its hapless cause in Nemea. She thus is far from the ideal of womanhood lauded by Valerius as decus et patriae laus (the honour and glory of your country, V.Fl. 2.243). But she is a much fuller, more sympathetic female character who exemplifies courage as well as terrible grief and suffering.183

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples Statius’ version of the ‘Hypsipyle episode’ also differs markedly from Valerius’ in relocating Hypsipyle from Lemnos, her fixed abode in the poem, to Nemea, the site of Euripides’ drama. The tragic tale of Hypsipyle’s exile and the death of Opheltes is thus absent from Valerius’ poem. In the Thebaid Nemea, the site of tragic, premature death, links Lemnos and Thebes. At the beginning of the episode the poet reminds his readers that Nemea was famous for its games held in honour of the infant Opheltes (Theb. 4.725-9);184 thus the child’s tragic death is already predicted and colours the entire narrative with pathos and foreboding. Moreover, Nemea is the geographical borderland between Argos and Thebes, and its doublesidedness is manifested in several other ways; generically affiliated with both pastoral and epic, it provides rest and death, loss and reunion – Hypsipyle loses her foster son Opheltes but is reunited here with her two sons by Jason (5.710-30). Nemea’s intermediate, ambiguous status makes it a testing ground for civil war. Not only for instance is Opheltes’ death emblematic of the tragic, unpredictable horrors to come, but the funeral games (Theb. 6.249-946) provide a test run for the conflict itself.185 The tragic figure of Hypsipyle, whose authoritative voice keeps the Argive army from their onward march, is far from Valerius’ ideal of Roman womanhood. Yet as Statius makes his bid for the ultimate authority of his Hypsipyle who speaks propria persona, he robs Valerius of his claim that her glory will be immortalised through his Roman song as an exemplum of pietas (V.Fl. 2.242-6). As Gibson comments, Statius seems to be ‘writing Valerius Flaccus’ version of Hypsipyle out of literary history’.186 And more than that, he is writing out Valerius’ claims to poetic immortality. Statius’ Hypsipyle is a significant, defining figure of Statius’ competitive aesthetics. Her courageous voice, honed in suffering, calls into question the stability of gender and genre, and the possibility of order in a world largely abandoned by the gods. As a figure of the epic storyteller and the voice of lament, she articulates at the centre of the Thebaid the human cost of civil war. In the following book Statius describes the temple that forms Opheltes’ tomb; it is decorated with carvings that depict Hypsipyle and the story of Opheltes’ death (Theb. 6.242-8). As a storyteller Hypsipyle is immortalised in the temple’s art, and in the poet’s art of description. By closely identifying Hypsipyle with the epic narrator’s voice, Statius also makes a bid to make her the voice of post-Augustan epic.

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3

Boundaries The spatial aesthetics of empire The Augustan age saw an important transformation of the Roman conceptualisation of space and political authority. As Nicolet demonstrated, when abstract conceptions of power became defined in spatial terms, geography came to play an unprecedented role in articulating the actual and symbolic limits of empire.1 The Roman claim to have conquered the known inhabited world transferred easily enough to a claim to have conquered the entire world, achieving imperium sine fine (Virg. A. 1.279), empire without end in space or time; urbs and orbis, city and world, had become identical (Ov. Fast. 2.684). The Flavians inherited this aspect of Augustan ideology; both history and geography were interdependent instruments of an ideology of global conquest and dominion.2 For instance, under Domitian Britain was circumnavigated; his general Agricola penetrated as far as the Shetland Isles, reaching, in essence, the limits of the North.3 Rome’s new authority as world capital was expressed by the greatest period of building in Rome after Augustus. Although Flavian architecture has often been criticised as grandiose and decadent,4 it provided a new visual language of world power that influenced Trajan and his successors. As Packer comments, Flavian architecture, centrally located, enormous in size and extent, expensively produced from precious imported materials, offered ‘impressive visualisations of imperial pomp and majesty’.5 This expression of power through territorial expansion and control extended to the appropriation of the heavens through the deification of the emperor. This in itself was not new; Julius Caesar set the precedent for his successors. But as we saw in Chapter 2, Vespasian introduced the notion of the emperor’s present divinity to the Western provinces; and Domitian developed the idea of his own divine nature far more than his predecessors. In Martial the Flavians found their imperial poet, the author who in De Spectaculis celebrated the compass of Rome’s imperial conquests through its most visually impressive and massive monument, the Colosseum, an architectural symbol of the world under Roman control. Yet in Martial’s poetry there is also a tension between the limitless and wonderful expanse of empire and the brief epigrams in which it is celebrated.6 For Statius, too, the conception of space is central to his vision of empire and of imperial poetics, including the poet’s contemporary role in society.7 In his three major works Statius shows an experimental spirit, exploring the bounda-

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples ries of genre and developing a hyperbolic language of praise. He interrogates too the canon of epic poets, making for instance in Silu. 2.7 an impassioned case for its expansion to include Lucan. He develops not only the new genre of Siluae but also new narrative and stylistic possibilities for post-Augustan epic poetry. But he also writes under the double constraints of political autocracy and a long Latin literary tradition. All his works are characterised by a generic tension between epic and Callimachean principles, between expansiveness and restraint; paradox and antithesis, moreover, are fundamental stylistic tropes for Statius’ poetics, not simply superficial features of a ‘mannerist’ style but a necessary part of a richly figurative, imperial rhetoric of survival.8 These generic and stylistic tensions find thematic expression in his poetry’s concern with oppositions and boundaries: geographical, topographical and literary. Dualism is central to Statius’ modes of thought; in his poetry, boundaries can protect and maintain order but can also imprison. And when they are crossed, they can open up fruitful new possibilities for development, or lead to confusion and destruction. Notably, by mapping contrasting ideologies onto Argos and Thebes, Chiron’s cave and Scyros, and Rome and Naples, Statius uses boundaries as a way of exploring political, social and cultural differences, thus tapping into some of the key issues of his day. His fascination with spatial divisions and boundaries is always to some extent, however, underwritten by an awareness of the dangers of transgression and over-expansion, and this sets him apart from prevailing imperial ideology. Contrary to the common portrait of Statius as the mannerist poet of excess, to a significant degree his is the poetry of limits and oppositions as well as bold innovation and experimentation, especially in the Thebaid. Undoubtedly he was concerned to establish a clear distance from the 24-book Thebaid of Antimachus of Colophon, a poet described by Catullus as tumidus (Catul. 95.10).9 But Statius’ spatial aesthetics of civil war were also shaped by recent history, not the Flavian cultural remaking of Rome but the civil wars of AD 68-9 and the mutiny of Saturninus in AD 89, traumatic events which suggested that Roman history, instead of enacting constant progress, had proved instead to be recursive in the deadliest ways.10 Vespasian may have remade the city into a glorious image of indomitable power, but literature reveals continuing fears and scepticism about the new Flavian order. Ash for instance has argued that Tacitus’ Agricola, in its scrutiny of Flavian rule, addresses the issue of imperial expansion as problematic, the virtues needed to bring peace and order being too easily perverted into a deformation of the imperial ideal, thereby unleashing chaos and anarchy.11 The Agricola is a text that specifically reflects on the anarchy of civil war, and Roman failure (yet again) in AD 68-9 to maintain proper distinctions between internal and external war, fellow citizen and enemy. Statius’ concern with boundaries and oppositions, therefore, reflects the complex, divided spirit of the age.

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3. Boundaries The space of civil war Like Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile, the Thebaid tells of civil war through a pervasive concern with the violation of the boundaries, social, cultural and geographical, that preserve civic order.12 The Thebaid thus offers a different view of the cosmos from that found in a contemporary text such as Pliny’s Natural History where the marvels of the earth are celebrated as the by-products of the expansion of empire. Rather, the violation of kinship boundaries through incest and fratricide, and the drive for power and land by morally bankrupt leaders, are dramatised in the poem through the collapse of geographical boundaries, so necessary for containing and limiting violence between rival states and yet so liable to transgression. Although Argos and Thebes are opposed to one another as models of the well-governed and the tyrannical city respectively, in the course of the epic their differences progressively collapse, a process dramatised by the physical convergence of the Argive army on Theban territory. Such elision of differences is a particular feature of civil war narratives.13 The word limes, which in its territorial sense means both ‘boundary’ and ‘the area enclosed by boundaries’ (OLD 2), emerges as a key word that runs through Book 1 like a scarlet thread. The territorial scale of this civil war is small (Theb. 1.150-1): nuda potestas / armauit fratres; pugna est de paupere regno (naked power armed the brothers; the fight was over a poor kingdom).Yet what if, the poet continues, drawing on imperial rhetoric, the boundary (limes, 157) of a ruler’s territorial ambition extended to the edge of the earth itself (156-61)?14 The brothers’ ambition for power seems all the more monstrous, given the small stakes for which they fight. As Hardie comments, the sole motive for the Theban civil war is power without the wealth that imperial Rome possessed, but devastating enough in its cosmic implications: ‘Statius strips bare the moving cause of the imperial epic, fuelled by the basic epic emotion anger  It is an emotion that obliterates the more orderly perpetuation and extension of power through bloodlines.’15 Polynices’ march back to Thebes is temporally as well as spatially recursive, a turning of his back on a new future as heir to the Argive throne, a narrowing of his options for a narrow tract of land. As in a Greek tragedy, the claustrophobic spaces of the Thebaid make human actions and passions all the more powerful and terrible.16 Ovid boasted that the concept of limes applied to other peoples, not to Romans (Fast. 2.683-4): gentibus est aliis tellus data limite certo: / Romanae spatium est Urbis et orbis idem (to other nations has been given land marked by definite boundaries: / the extent of the City of Rome is identical to that of the world). But in Statius’ Thebaid limes suggests the importance, indeed necessity, of the boundary as a curb to monarchical ambition; Thebes and Rome are intimately connected through the vocabulary of limes. The concern with boundaries is also a feature of the poetics of the Thebaid. The proem (Theb. 1.1-45) reveals the challenges involved in the

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples poet’s desire to limit and contain the nefas of his civil war theme. As Rosati points out, Statius draws attention to the problem of where he should choose his starting point.17 Statius thus sets out in the proem a double programme of limitations. First, he briefly refers to all the Theban stories he will not narrate, thus using the negative terms of a praeteritio (4-16). He specifically rejects an expansive view of Theban history from its origins, beginning with Europa’s and Cadmus’ varied fortunes. Instead of a totalising narrative of Thebes,18 Statius announces his wish to establish tight aesthetic limits on his Theban material and sets a much narrower limit for his epic (1.16-17): limes mihi carminis esto / Oedipodae confusa domus (let the boundary of my poem be the dysfunctional house of Oedipus). Yet Thebes is the sum of its terrible past, and the poet’s theme of the ‘Oedipean house’ is shaped by memories that cannot be erased and indeed spill over from earlier events; the very geography of Thebes, to which Statius frequently alludes, is a perpetual reminder of past horrors. At the end of the proem Statius again asserts the importance of textual boundaries when he announces a further limitation of his epic’s theme to the fatal hostilities between Oedipus’ sons, Polynices and Eteocles, that is, after the downfall of their father (1.33-4): nunc  satis arma referre / Aonia et geminis sceptrum exitiale tyrannis (now it is sufficient to tell of Theban arms and the sceptre deadly to the twin tyrants). Statius has opened his epic with the neo-Callimachean gesture of announcing a (comparatively) narrow topic.19 But satis (sufficient) suggests that the poet will operate dangerously at the limits of tolerability. Although the word declares the poet’s attempt to impose some control upon his material, it also introduces a litany of the horrors of the Theban civil war (33-45) that draws attention to the basic intractability of Statius’ theme. Moreover, as Bessone has pointed out, satis programmatically recalls Oedipus’ curse at Seneca’s Phoenissae (354-5), defining the strife between Polynices and Eteocles as a terrible escalation of civil war: non satis est adhuc / ciuile bellum: frater in fratrem ruat (civil war is still not enough: let brother fight against brother).20 This Senecan allusion points again to the subversive power of Statius’ theme and the constant threat to its informing principles of limitations. Ahl argues that the limit that Statius sets to his epic is purely arbitrary,21 yet the focus on the end of the Theban dynasty with the two brothers was, of all the possible narratives, the one most calculated to have resonance with the Roman reader, whose city had been founded on the blood of fratricide; the history of Thebes spills over into the future of Rome. The proem also incorporates a second limitation which is dramatically inserted into the middle of the catalogue of Theban atrocities, namely the deferral of the writing of a contemporary epic on Domitian’s military campaigns against the Germans and the Dacians. This takes the form of a recusatio, normally a polite refusal to write epic but here directed to contemporary historical epic, a project for which Statius claims he is not

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3. Boundaries yet ready (Theb. 1.17-33).22 He describes this projected imperial epic in terms of an expansive spatial aesthetic (Theb. 1.17-22): quando Itala nondum signa nec Arctoos ausim spirare triumphos bisque iugo Rhenum, bis adactum legibus Histrum et coniurato deiectos uertice Dacos aut defensa prius uix pubescentibus annis bella Iouis. Since I would not yet dare to find inspiration for Italian standards and triumphs over the North and the Rhine twice subjugated, the Hister twice subjected to laws, the Dacians thrown from their perjured heights, and the wars of Jupiter fought in defence when you were scarcely an adolescent.

Statius here claims he still lacks the courage to move his poetry into the wider spaces of empire, the North (18), Germany (19-20), Rome itself (21-2), and even heaven, the apogee of imperial spatial ambitions, where Domitian will eventually take up residence (22-31). Domitian wishes for a type of epic that would place his achievement in Germany within the context of Flavian imperial ideology; but Statius’ present theme is a small, confined kingdom of the mythical past (1.151). Political astuteness and restraint are also necessary qualities for the imperial poet; and Statius here shows both in sidestepping Domitian’s wish.23 This refusal to write contemporary historical epic conveys a characteristic tension between limits and limitlessness and differentiates Statius’ epic poetics from mainstream imperial ideology. For instance, the projected Domitianic epic celebrating global expansionism is oddly presented in a parenthetical subordinate clause (quando  Iouis, 17-22). Domitian’s wars are effectively sidelined as distant and foreign in comparison to Thebes, whose history was so much more resonant with that of Rome. Moreover, the key word limes occurs again when Statius alludes to that topic of ultimate imperial expansionism, apotheosis. Domitian’s predicted residence in the heavens will have the consequence of making the planets follow a narrower trajectory to create room for the emperor (1.247): licet artior omnes / limes agat stellas et te plaga lucida caeli  / sollicet (though the stars have to move along a narrower boundary track and a shining tract of sky tempts you). New space for Domitian in the heavens ironically means cosmic disruption – change in an already crowded sky and the disregard of established limits. With the emperors Augustus and Vespasian along with Julius Caesar already installed, how many more emperors could the skies safely contain? Limes here recalls the ‘boundary’ that Statius has attempted to set to his epic theme (16); through the connection of literary and physical boundaries, limes hints at the dangers of imperial and divine ambitions. In his own epic, the transgression, or collapse, of territorial boundaries, so crucial for maintaining orderly socie-

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples ties, will be complemented by the fragility of cosmic boundaries above and below earth. Apollo, the ‘brightest’ of the Olympian deities, breaches the limits of the Underworld by rousing a monster from its depths (1.596-668); the lack of firm cosmic boundaries is a sign of the moral corruption of civil war which respects no divisions or limits.24 In the proem to the Thebaid Statius too offers the prospect that Domitian might accept Phoebus’ crown and drive the chariot of the Sun (28-30), a dubious honour in that it conjures up the spectre of Phaethon and the chaos resulting from his failure to handle the reins. This perhaps at least explains Statius’ comment (1.30), maneas hominum contentus habenis (please stay content with human reins), an encomiastic cliché since at least Horace’s serus in caelum redeas (Carm. 1.2.45). The specific theme of the new divinity’s usurpation of the chariot of the Sun alludes to Lucan’s address to Nero in the proem to the Bellum Ciuile (1.45-66), a passage which has sometimes been taken to be hostile to the emperor.25 Rosati however has proposed an alternative reading of Statius’ Phaethon as a validation of apotheosis, particularly in the image of the Sun crowning Phaethon (1.28-9).26 But comparisons between the living and the divine are notoriously slippery. Moreover, Statius adds to the idea of the usurpation of the Sun’s chariot the notion that Jupiter yield to Domitian an equal portion of the sky (1.29-31), which puts the emperor dangerously in competition with the chief divinity himself. As Feeney comments here, in Statius’ poem human characters move in all three realms, heaven, Underworld and earth, piercing the boundaries between them in a way that provokes catastrophe or divine retaliation; thus the topic of apotheosis is ‘cast in markedly guarded terms’.27 The recurrence of the word limes in the introduction to the Thebaid suggests, at the very least, a cautionary fear of an imperial disregard for setting and acknowledging boundaries to power. Moreover, the statement of aesthetic limitations that directly follows the praeteritio, satis arma referre / Aonia (it is sufficient to tell of Theban warfare, 1.33-4), has a particularly ironic inflection, for it introduces a litany of the horrors of the Theban civil war (33-45) which suggests that the poet (and his readers) are already ‘at their limit’; what kind of theme or poetic talents are therefore to be ‘sufficient’ for an epic on Domitian’s achievements? Statius’ practice in the proem contrasts with that of the other Flavian epicists who emphasise the expansion of Rome’s cognitive horizons through conquest of the known world. As we saw in Chapter 2, in the proem to Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica the poet departs from the common theme that the voyage of the Argo represented a fall from the Golden Age;28 instead, the Flavians are presented as the successful continuers of the heroic policy that drove the first ship to venture on exploration of uncharted seas (V.Fl. 1.1-12).29 The proem culminates with a cosmic vision (15-21) in which the deified Vespasian is imagined not as restricted to one part of the heavens, like Domitian, but as shining from every part (V.Fl.

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3. Boundaries 1.16-17): iam, genitor, lucebis ab omni / parte poli (now, father, you will shine from every part of the heavens), a guiding star for all parts of the globe over which seafarers might wander (17-20).30 Vespasian’s predicted apotheosis is thus imagined to be beneficial to humankind, and, since it ties in with the transformation of the Argo into a constellation (catasterism), it also suggests a return to a noble, heroic age (V.Fl. 1.1-4).31 Imperial ambitions and the poet’s theme here work harmoniously together. In the proem to his Punica (1.1-20), Silius Italicus takes an expansive view of Roman history with the announcement that he will cover the entire history of Rome’s rivalry with Carthage; not until the second half of the proem does the reader learn that the poem’s specific limits are the second Punic war (1.12-20). The opening words of the proem (1.1-2), ordior arma, quibus caelo se gloria tollit / Aeneadum (I begin with the arms by which the glory of the descendants of Aeneas is raised to the sky), are broadly inclusive, setting the poem within the tradition of martial epic and of the Aeneid with its teleological vision;32 they represent a distinct departure from Lucan’s pessimistic opening words pronouncing civil war.33 Gloria refers not simply to the glory earned in the Punic war but to imperial glory, the end result of the Roman conquest of Carthage, when in present time the possibilities for fame are boundless, reaching heavenwards (caelo). Unlike the proem to the Thebaid, the proem to the Punica looks to the future by beginning with the endpoint of the epic’s theme, victory and indeed imperial glory (1.1-2), and concludes with its beginnings, the origins of the rivalry with Carthage (17-20). The Flavians are absent from Silius’ proem, but they have a major place in Jupiter’s speech and prophecy of their greatness (3.571-629), which bridges the gap between the past and the future. Here Domitian is not sidelined but provides a teleological goal and climax for the poem (3.607-29). However we may wish to interpret the panegyric, the current emperor is given significant space in Silius’ poem.34 Writing of Thebes, Statius by contrast sets limits to a complex, extensive narrative, thereby attempting to bring order to his poem as well as symbolically contain the excesses of the house of Oedipus. The strain upon such limitations is evident also at the end of the proem when the poet sets out the structure of the epic. Evoking Horace Carm. 1.12 with its carefully segmented thematic structure of ‘man, hero, god’ (1-3), he asks the Muse Clio in which order he should celebrate each hero (1.41): quem prius heroum, Clio, dabis? (which of the heroes will you deal with first, Clio?).35 Statius then lists the five main heroes out of order of the episodes in which they meet their deaths, after deeds of extraordinary prowess, in the poem.36 First is Tydeus (1.41-2), immodicum irae / Tydea (Tydeus, unrestrained in anger). He spills over into a second line by enjambment, demonstrating his explosive, immoderate character that will lead him to be the one finally to unleash war (7.611-15) and in death to violate the ultimate taboo by cannibalism (8.733-66), a culminating act of rabies, mad

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples anger (Theb. 9.1).37 Gods, who are included in Horace’s opening question, are absent from the structured plan of Statius’ epic. In referring only to the heroes, Statius omits the possibility of divine transcendence for his warriors. In any event, as the epic unfolds, the gods will be seen to display a dangerous mix of cruelty, violence and ultimate ineffectiveness.38 Statius’ double set of limitations in the proem to Book 1 thus displays a carefully controlled aesthetic that attempts to counter the unravelling of the boundaries between Argos and Thebes, and yet reveals the contamination of its structure and theme by the nefas of civil war. This breakdown in order apparent in the proem’s ending is reflected in the battle narratives of the poem which, as Gibson has pointed out, are characterised by an emphasis on the confusion of war; thus the first impromptu fighting of the actual conflict between the Argives and the Thebans is conducted in un-Homeric fashion by a melée of lead fighters and foot soldiers (Theb. 7.616): nullo uenit ordine bellum (war comes with no order).39 The aesthetic and territorial importance of limes in the proem is an attempt to counter the elision of all distinctions in civil war. Fluid boundaries Waters form natural boundaries and thus often take on metapoetic meaning as textual or narrative devices, bringing about transitions or closure, for instance.40 In the Thebaid water appears as a prime site of violation of sacred or protected space. The transgression of two particular geographical boundaries, the Nemean spring (4.804-5.16) and the river Asopus (7.424-40), are key junctures in the poem that mark the approach of the Argive army to Thebes in symbolically dramatic terms. Water, a fluid, changeable element, thematically and geographically significant in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and also a familiar symbol of Callimachean aesthetics, acts here as a textual and ideological marker of moral confusion and aesthetic contradictions. The pollution of the pure spring of Nemea, close to the border of Argos, is followed by the death of the infant Opheltes (4.725-9, 5.499-753), two events that portray in emotional terms the destructive effects of civil strife, whether intentional or not. Hypsipyle leaves her infant charge on the soft grass while she shows the army the spring; in her absence he is killed by the accidental flick of a giant serpent’s tail. The Nemean spring and grove represent a pastoral order that is sullied by the advent of war. The Nemean spring is modelled on the idyllic fountains of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, for its waters are clear, pure and gentle (Theb. 4.824-6).41 But when the Argive army, afflicted by terrible thirst, reaches the site, the soldiers cannot wait to drink; rather they jump in en masse and churn up the water with filth (4.816-30). They destroy the pristine purity of the spring (4.824-5): modo lene uirens et gurgite puro perspicuus, / nunc sordet (once gently green, pure flowing, it now is filth). As Ash points out, the

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3. Boundaries men’s shout of ‘aquae!  / aquae!’ (‘water!  water!’, 4.811-12) alludes to a famous passage in Xenophon’s Anabasis when the Greek mercenaries, the army of the Ten Thousand, shout out, ‘thalatta, thalatta’ (‘the sea! the sea!’, Xen. Anab. 4.7.24) upon finally glimpsing the Black Sea after their long march back from Persia.42 Yet, by contrast, the Argive army is leaving home, not returning; the evil consequences of its perverse war are suggested by this temporal dislocation, and by the army’s state of fatigue and deprivation already at the outset. The pollution of the spring also carries connotations of rape (4.823-4): longusque a fontibus amnis / diripitur (the long river is ripped from its sources), and of capturing a city (direptio), another typical occasion for violation of people and property and a further instance of temporal dislocation, for the sack of a city generally occurs at the end of the war, not its beginning.43 In the grove of Nemea, close to Theban territory, the Argives lose the moral high ground when they muddy the spring’s pure waters, a pollution that also has metapoetic significance. As McNelis comments, pure water is frequently a metaphor for Callimachean affiliations, for a style that cultivates refinement and avoids heroic themes; different poetic approaches come here into conflict at a point in the poem when the poet has not yet engaged in the traditional subject of epic, battle, and indeed will further delay the fighting with the lengthy narrative of Hypsipyle (5.28-500) and then of the infant Opheltes’ funeral games (6.1-7.104).44 The divisions between styles, between the pastoral and the heroic, are here confused in the muddying of the clear Nemean waters. Literary, moral and physical contamination are conjoined; the pollution of Nemea’s pure, beautiful spring foreshadows the eventual, but much delayed, capitulation of the narrative to the theme of full-blown war. The theme of violation is reinforced when the grove, ancient and sacred to pastoral deities, is cut down by the Argive army for the child’s funeral pyre (Theb. 6.84-117). ‘Tree-cutting’ scenes were an epic topos stemming from Homer (Il. 23.114-20) in which each successive Roman epic poet increased the number of trees; Statius greatly exceeds his epic models in the number of trees cut down, and thus he has been seen as representative of a decadent imperial style.45 But tree-cutting in Roman poetry is not a topos devoid of either moral or literary significance. In Roman culture sacred groves were protected by religious law; to cut down such a grove was sacrilege.46 As Thomas has shown, in epic poetry, even when the grove being cut down is not specifically called ‘sacred’, there is always a sense of violation as well as of awe. For instance, in Virgil’s scene of tree-cutting for Misenus’ funeral pyre at A. 6.179-82, the men enter ‘an ancient wood, the home of wild beasts’ (antiquam siluam, stabula alta ferarum, 6.179), which suggests ‘a disruption of an old order’.47 Hinds too has shown the metapoetic implications of the cutting down of trees for a funeral pyre, which in Roman epic with Virgil becomes emblematic of literary competition. Virgil’s passage pinpoints the degree of moral complexity involved in

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples building new works upon the ashes of venerated, yet outmoded predecessors in a society where worship of the maiores was central.48 As an epic topos, tree-cutting scenes in Roman epic poetry were therefore a node of creative differentiation.49 Statius’ grove is unusual not only in the number and variety of trees cut down – an act of martial excess – but also in the fact that it is sacred to Italian deities, nymphs and fauns (95-6); Pales, goddess of flocks and Silvanus, god of woods inhabit this Greek grove (6.111)! Statius responds here to Lucan’s Gallic grove, ruthlessly cut down by Julius Caesar in an ambiguous act of violence, for although the grove is sacred, it is dark with superstition (Luc. 3.399-452).50 Lucan emphasises that no Italian rustic deities, Pan, Silvani, or nymphs, inhabit the grove (Luc. 3.402-3): hunc non ruricolae Panes nemorumque potentes / Siluani nymphaeque tenent (no country-dwelling Pans, Silvanus, kings of the wood, or nymphs dwell there). These however are precisely the deities that inhabit the Nemean grove. Statius thus provides a particularly Roman religious context for the tree-felling which, despite its funerary purpose, is represented as a violation, expressed in the emotional reaction of the grove itself and its sylvan inhabitants, including its sacred deities, who groan and flee in grief (Theb. 6.110-13). Moreover, the cutting down of the grove, like the pollution of the Nemean spring (4.830), is compared to the sack of a city, for Roman readers a familiar topos of their military history (6.114-17): ut cum possessas auidis uictoribus arces dux raptare dedit, uix signa audita, nec urbem inuenias; ducunt sternuntque abiguntque feruntque immodici, minor ille fragor quo bella gerebant. As when a general has given a captured citadel to the greedy victors to pillage, scarcely has the signal been heard and the town disappears; they drag and lay low, drive off and carry, without restraint; less was the din with which they waged war.

Quintilian discusses the ‘capturing of a city’ under the topic of enargeia, the rhetorical means of bringing a scene vividly in front of the listener’s eyes; he regards it as a particularly emotive theme, capable of moving an audience to tears (Quint. Inst. 8.7.67-70). While his own vivid treatment of the sacking of the city focuses on the victims and emphasises the pathos of the scene – collapsing buildings, weeping women and children – in Statius’ simile the focus falls on the plundering soldiers, and the note of moral condemnation is very strong. They are ‘greedy’ (auidis); immodici suggests the uncontrolled excess of their actions; even the sound of their pillaging exceeds that of battle. The comparison with the grove is apt, for a city too was a sacred space sanctified by its special deities and ancestors. Laurence has argued that the Roman ethics of war advocated clemency when accepting the surrender of an enemy city, for to indulge in direptio,

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3. Boundaries plundering and rape was a violation of that sanctity which could bring divine retribution on the victors.51 Silius’ Scipio is exemplary in the distribution of the spoils after the capture of New Carthage (Sil. 15.26373). But, according to Livy, the Romans’ failure to adopt an ethical policy about plunder in the sack of Veii led eventually to the exile of the dictator Camillus and to the sack of Rome itself by the Gauls (Livy 5.21.16-17). Statius’ simile suggests that for the Argives too there will be serious retribution for the destruction of a peaceful community and pastoral order. Given the presence of Roman pastoral and woodland deities, there probably lies behind Statius’ emotional tree-cutting episode a passage from Virgil’s Georgics describing the eviction of birds when a ploughman violently converts a wood to arable land (G. 2.207-11). As Thomas points out, Virgil’s language is militaristic and evokes the sacking of cities in morally and generically problematic terms.52 The ploughman’s destruction of the birds’ homes for arable land suggests the destruction of the pastoral order and lays the ground, as in the Thebaid, for epic warfare. Statius’ tree-cutting episode thus also has metapoetic significance. It marks the approaching end of the delay of the war; indeed, as we have seen with the concluding simile (6.114-17), the tree-cutting mirrors the actions of war, and the funeral games that follow are a preparation for military combat. Statius’ entry into the landscape of the sacred grove, well penetrated by his epic predecessors, positions the genre of epic, particularly civil war epic, as morally and generically problematic. But it also highlights his own particular contributions to the genre, a tragic but sympathetic vision that is deeply vested in Roman political as well as literary culture. The simile that concludes the tree-cutting scene invites a larger, historical frame of reference. For Gibson, who has discussed the anachronisms in the battle scenes of Statius’ Thebaid, the evocation of Roman warfare amplifies the portrayal of epic combat beyond the scope of an early, pre-Homeric myth, and gives the Thebaid grandeur.53 I think we can go further. Along with the simile, the eviction of the specifically Roman deities Pales and Silvanus from the sacred grove draws the readers’ attention to the emotional cost of civil war and to the suffering it inflicts on the innocent; it also suggests that the consequences of destroying sacred spaces goes well beyond individual trauma to affect the health and stability of the state. As the poem with the grove’s destruction looks towards the resumption of its epic course, readers are invited at its very centre to reflect on the cost of civil strife in real as opposed to mythic time. The Nemean episode is thus framed by the violation of the spring and of the grove. Both the water of a pure spring and the shade of a mature tree are key features of the locus amoenus. But more than a landscape has been destroyed by the advent of the Argive warriors. Rather, the safety, protection and sacred order that it embodied have been violated. Here Nemea has ominously become an Italian landscape, ravaged by violence,

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples a sign of the significance of Statius’ mythical poem to Roman historical memory and imagination. Water also marks the definitive end of delay, of narrative digressions. The last natural barrier to the Argive army is a river in spate, a familiar metapoetic symbol of epic poetics.54 Forming a boundary with Argos, the river Asopus offers final geographical resistance to the Argive army’s advance into Theban territory. Indeed, Dante noticed the importance of this final textual and physical barrier to war; Statius, it seems, was baptised just before this point in the Thebaid (‘before I had led the Greeks to the rivers of Thebes in my verse’, Purg. 22.88-91).55 The Asopus is first mentioned when his son, the Theban warrior Hypseus, is described in Antigone’s viewing of the Theban heroes (Theb. 7.309-29). The river is perpetually turbulent in anger at Jupiter’s rape of his daughter Aegina; as a result, it still smokes with the thunderbolts that Jupiter used, ‘with great difficulty’ (uix, 324), to quell Asopus’ angry resistance (7.315-27);56 uix makes the river a formidable opponent. The river god Asopus is an unusual model in this poem of a conscientious father who attempts to avenge his daughter’s rape. Indeed, a rare authorial comment seems to condemn Jupiter’s sexual behaviour (7.321-2): nondum ista licebant / nec superis (the gods were not yet allowed such goings-on).57 The Asopus is also a worthy father of Hypseus (7.315-16).58 The river god thus defies the Argive army for pious motives, because his son fights on the Theban side (7.30929).59 Asopus’ defeat by the Argive army thus has moral implications in that piety, as well as physical force, is here brutally swept aside. For although Asopus put up an impressive fight against almighty Jupiter, the river god’s epic torrent cannot prevent the crossing of the Argive army and thus halt or delay the civil war (7.424-40). All the more humiliating, moreover, is the ease with which Hippomedon, followed by his men, crosses this raging river, an ease that suggests the power of civil war, nefas, to sweep away all boundaries. Underpinning this episode is Lucan’s narrative of Caesar’s crossing of the river Rubicon (1.183-227), another act of physical and religious transgression, like the cutting down of the grove. Like the Asopus it is described as tumidus (swollen, Theb. 7.317; Luc. 1.204).60 The Rubicon too is swiftly crossed, despite a deity’s protest, in this case the goddess Roma. The sacrilegious implications of Caesar’s defiant action are reinforced by his own declaration (Luc. 1.225): hic pacem temerataque iura relinquo (here I abandon peace and the laws that have been scorned). The essence of these words is repeated in Gaul just before he swings his axe against the trees (Luc. 3.437): credite me fecisse nefas (believe that I have committed sacrilege). Caesar’s words at the Rubicon, and in Gaul, offer a programmatic definition of civil war that propels the sacrilegious epic narrative forwards. The natural boundary of the river in both poems is thus also a textual boundary, a failed attempt to defer the civil war narrative.61 As in Virgil’s Aeneid, where the Iliadic portion of the epic begins in Book 7, in Thebaid

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3. Boundaries 7 the epic tale of battle is finally unstoppable.62 Within 200 lines of the crossing of the Asopus, after the poet’s brief invocation of the Muses for inspiration to write of war (7.628-31), the two armies finally engage in their first battle (7.632-823). The Asopus is yet another natural feature of the land that visually bears the marks of its past, specifically the scars of its former struggle with Jupiter in defence of his daughter’s honour (Theb. 7.325-7): adhuc ripis animosus gurges anhelis fulmineum cinerem magnaeque insignia poenae gaudet et Aetnaeos in caelum efflare uapores. Still the spirited river with its panting banks rejoices in breathing forth the thunderbolt’s ash and volcanic vapours to the heavens, the insignia of his great punishment.

The introductory adhuc marks out the river as another landscape of memory, not a passive storehouse of nostalgia but actively displaying its wounds and its continuing anger. When war ravages the land, it often leaves an indelible imprint of the suffering caused and the passions aroused; Asopus’ loss of his daughter is still not forgotten or forgiven. The river, irrevocably changed like the Nemean spring and grove, is a constant reminder of the violence and injustice endemic to this Theban universe, of the defeat of virtue and piety; what is more, the contagious influence of war continues in the pleasure (gaudet) the river takes in sending back smoke and ash to Jupiter’s heaven, again blurring the bounds between earth and sky, and continuing the cycle of violence. By contrast, in Silu. 1.3 a river boundary creates harmony and suggests a model of an ordered society. This poem, which celebrates the villa of Manilius Vopiscus at Tibur, plays upon the ideas of boundary violation and civil conflict, only to deny them. Here nature and humankind are in harmony. The Anio, which tumbles over rocks above and below Vopiscus’ estate, was a notoriously turbulent river (praeceps Anio, Hor. Carm. 1.7.13), but it voluntarily becomes calm as it flows through Vopiscus’ estate in deference to the owner’s need for leisure and peace to write poetry (Silu. 1.3.20-6). The parenthetic comment miranda fides (believe me, it is a miracle, 20), normally applies to the sublime or destructive marvels of nature, but here the Anio is humorously commended for calming its normal spate. A cooperative, not a divisive, dualism is one of the key themes of the poem. The villa is divided into two main blocks, with the river threaded in between (Silu. 1.3.2-4): inserto geminos Aniene penates /  sociae commercia  ripae / certantesque sibi dominum defendere uillas (twin penates [household gods] with the Anio threaded between, the exchange between the allied banks, and the mansions competing to protect their owner for

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples themselves). Geminos, sociae, certantesque, defendere are familiar terms of civil war epic. But there is no strife here, only friendly rivalry between the buildings on either bank. The economic term commercia, along with sociae, evoke notions of friendly reciprocal exchange. A similar expression occurs in the Thebaid (5.668), but in a context of the grief of a ruined home and prospective violence: Amphiaraus and Adrastus, confronted by the bereaved Lycurgus and his angry people, invoke sociae  commercia uittae (the commerce of the shared fillet), to calm the anger (but they cannot alleviate the grief). In Silu. 1.3 the river, though it cuts through two blocks of buildings, does not divide the home or cause obstruction (1.3.25-6): alternas seruant praetoria ripas / non externa sibi fluuiumue obstare queruntur (the villas protect opposite banks, not foreigners to one another, and they do not complain that the river blocks them). A following set of similes (27-33), humorously comparing the Anio in fame to the turbulent Hellespont, the Euripus and the straits of Messina, evokes the larger geographical world, the sphere of military conflict, and, above all, a wild and destructive nature from which Vopiscus is protected by his choice of withdrawal.63 The Anio by contrast is a boundary that is mitissimus (most gentle, 1.3.24), like the landscape itself (1.3.15), ingenium quam mite solo (how gentle the character of the land). Moreover, like the Asopus (ripis  anhelis, Theb. 7.325), the river Anio rejoices at its panting waters, but not in a spirit of rebellion or anger, rather of pleasure at the techonological advances that can heat the water for the bathhouses (1.3.45-6): quaque uaporiferis iunctus fornacibus amnis / ridet anhelantes uicino flumine Nymphas (where the river is harnessed to the steaming furnaces, it laughs at the nymphs panting in the nearby stream). The river here happily serves human needs; anhelantes humorously suggests the nymphs’ admiration as well as unaccustomed heat. The Anio is also a poetic river. It flows through Tibur, a site that Horace loved (Carm. 1.7, 2.6, 4.3), and its waters inspire him as a poet (Carm. 4.2.29-32; 4.3.1-12). In the preface to Book 1 of the Siluae Statius praises Vopiscus as an almost single-handed rescuer of the arts (1 pr. 24-5): uir eruditissimus et qui praecipue uindicat a situ litteras iam paene fugientes (a most learned man who stands out for rescuing from neglect our now almost vanishing literature). Since the Anio becomes calm to encourage the writing of poetry on Vopiscus’ estate (Silu. 1.3.20-3), it is not only a source of poetic inspiration; it also wittily provides a model of ideal, productive literary patronage.64 The cultural context of Silu. 1.3 illustrates the sharp divide between the private world of the Siluae and the public, epic world of the Thebaid. Silu. 1.3 plays on the notion of duality as a positive feature of the estate that brings about union and reciprocity, not division; technology and nature are engaged in productive cooperation, a mirror of a social world woven together by reciprocal ties of friendship and a common love of literature. In the Thebaid the charged metaphorical role of water in the violation

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3. Boundaries of boundaries is programmatically indicated at the poem’s start when Statius describes his poetic inspiration in terms of a ‘Pierian heat’ which ‘has fallen on his mind’ (Theb. 1.3), Pierius menti calor incidit. ‘Pierian’ refers to the Muses, who typically inspire a poet by inviting him to drink from a poetic spring. One of the primary uses of incidere is of rivers (OLD 1c); here incidit expresses poetic inspiration in terms of the violence of the epic genre, as the influx of an unexpected physical and mental blow.65 Calor appears in the preface to the Siluae as a literary critical term for improvisational poetry (1 pr. 3-4): subito calore et quadam festinandi uoluptate fluxerunt (which flowed in the heat of the moment with a sort of pleasurable haste). There ‘heat’ is associated with pleasure, and fluxerunt, unlike the harsh incidit, suggests ease. In the Thebaid calor connotes frenzy – Tydeus is prone to calor, anger (2.391) – or an over-heated mind, for Statius suggests that the Muses’ water is warm, an unnatural quality in water designed to inspire, which should be pure and fresh. In the final book of the Aeneid Latinus refers to the effect war has had on the pristine landscape of Italy in terms of the warmth of the river Tiber (Virg. A. 12.35-6): recalent nostro Thybrina fluenta /sanguine adhuc campique ingentes ossibus albent (the Tiber’s waters are still warm with our blood and the vast fields are white with bones). The reference to the Tiber and the recapitulation of the second line by Ovid in reference to Philippi66 suggests the universal tragedy of civil war: the fields are white with bones rather than green with crops, while the Tiber stays warm with the blood of Italy’s slain. ‘Pierian heat’ then seems to refer to water that has been warmed by blood, a symbol therefore of the theme not only of epic conflict but of unnatural epic conflict, which violates the boundaries of family and kinship and of nature herself. Thus, after the Argive army has drunk from the Nemean spring, their revitalisation and readiness for war are expressed in a similar paradox matching fire and water, ‘as if they had drunk the fire of war mingled in bloody waters’ (sanguineis mixtum ceu fontibus ignem / hausissent belli, Theb. 5.5-6); fire of course is a symbol of the Furies. After Lucan’s exclusion of divine powers, Statius returns the Muses to epic poetry. But the warm water of the Muses is a potent symbol in Statius’ poem of the transgression of boundaries physical, social, moral, and generic. It also directs our attention to the problems of literary authority and of the poet’s complicated relationship with the external powers who impinge upon his rational faculty (menti), frenzied Muses or the emperor himself.67 Water however finally helps bring closure, if not harmony, to the poem. The funeral pyre of the Theban brothers did not bring closure; the glowing embers (12.424-5) and the divided flame (431-2) suggest that their unnatural anger survives beyond the grave: ecce iterum fratres (12.429).68 Towards the end of Book 12 Statius, admitting that neither he nor Apollo can do justice to the theme of female mourning (797-809), abruptly draws his own arbitrary boundary to the poem with the announcement that his Thebaid

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples has reached harbour (12.809): et mea iam longo meruit ratis aequore portum (and my ship has reached its deserved harbour after a long voyage). The image of the poem as a ship is particularly Ovidian, and there may be a reference here to the Argo and Valerius’ unfinished epic;69 Statius uses the same image of his Thebaid at Silu. 4.4.88-9, iam Sidonios emensa labores / Thebais optato collegit carbasa portu (now my Thebaid has completed her measure of Sidonian labours, and has furled her sails in the desired port). The use of the verb emensa refers to the poem as a work whose narrative follows a carefully demarcated space with a terminus, here the enclosing harbour, which offers safe return from the open seas. But ships in the ancient world almost inevitably encountered delays and storms; in the pre-technological age arrival at port could not be planned with precision. Thus the image of the ship that has reached harbour ends the time of the voyage and of the poem in an arbitrary fashion. All the same, by drawing his own textual boundary here, the poet assumes narrative control over his violent theme; not even with the aid of nouus  furor (new madness, 12.808) and Apollo could he have done justice to the aftermath.70 But the poet’s art can still bring some order by putting an end, even if arbitrary, to the seemingly unending cycle of destruction and grief. There may also be a political dimension to the metaphor of the epic’s having reached harbour. The image of shipwreck is a powerful Ovidian metaphor that the poet used in exile both of his career and of his work. Thus in Tristia 2 Ovid remarks that he did not foresee the ‘shipwreck’ of his poetry, given the success of his predecessors’ ‘vessels’ (469-70): non timui, fateor, ne, qua tot iere carinae, / naufraga seruatis omnibus una foret (I confess I did not fear that, where so many ships had gone, one would have been shipwrecked where all the others had been saved). For the post-Ovidian author, the fate of Ovid and his works definitively signalled the start of a new age of literature that had to reckon with the emperor’s power of censorship. In such a context, Statius’ relief that the Thebaid has reached harbour suggests that his poem has escaped the emperor’s active disapproval, despite his failure to write about Domitian’s wars. Indeed, the political context in which the poem is designed to be read is indicated by the reference to the emperor in the epilogue; Domitian ‘deigns’ to read the poem (Theb. 12.814). The acknowledgement of the poem’s worth – it has deserved (meruit, 809) to reach port – is echoed in the epic’s final words (12.819): et meriti post me referentur honores (and after me the honours you deserve will be granted). After the horror of his disintegrating world, Statius returns to the normative language of Roman civic discourse. Like a distinguished citizen, his poem will enjoy present and posthumous honours, for unlike its heroes, the poem has successfully completed an epic task and has returned from the open seas to a safe harbour. The image of the harbour, a safe, bounded space, also marks a retreat from the conventional concluding language of imperial ambition of Horace Carm. 2.20 and Ovid Met. 15. Instead of casting his ambitions for his epic

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3. Boundaries over the wide spaces of empire, Statius claims Italy alone as the range of his epic (12.814-15): iam te magnanimus dignatur noscere Caesar, / Itala iam studio discit memoratque iuuentus (now great-hearted Caesar deigns to get to know you, now the youth of Italy eagerly learns and memorises you). Statius’ language here echoes that of Horace at the end of Carm. 2.20 (18-20): Dacus et ultimi / noscent Geloni, me peritus / discet Hiber Rhodanique potor (the Dacian and the Scythians at the edge of the world will get to know me, the educated Spaniard and the drinker of the Rhine will learn me). But where the Augustan poet sought immortality in the publication and memorisation of his book throughout the empire, Statius reins in the geographical range of his epic audience. (By contrast his contemporary Martial boasts of being known throughout the entire world (toto notus in orbe, Mart. 1.1.2)). Statius’ narrowing of his focus to Italy may have been prompted partly by recognition of changed cultural circumstances – what matters is the emperor’s recognition – and also partly by the desire to indicate that, despite its mythical subject, the poem offers lessons important for the new generation of Italian youth.71 Above all, perhaps, Statius’ emphasis on geographical limits at the end of his epic is a reflection on its theme; the nefas of his poem has to be contained and ended, even if by the arbitrary assertion of literary control. The importance of the theme of boundaries in his epic is reflected in his concluding gesture of spatial containment and order within the boundaries of Italy. All the same, the image of the ship that has reached harbour of course is one that leaves open the possibility of another voyage at another time – or of a second epic. The cave, the island, and the open sea The Achilleid represents Statius’ most thorough interrogation of the boundaries of genre and of literary tradition. This is expressed and reinforced not only by poetic self-reflexivity, particularly in the proem (Ach. 1.1-19), but also in the choice of a hero whose known ambiguity is here developed and explored;72 in particular, the central play with gender in Book 1 is also a play with genre. The Achilleid is a different style of epic from the Thebaid. It has one major hero, not two; it incorporates elegiac themes and modes of thought, for we see Achilles here as an adolescent – in love, moreover – before he goes to Troy; and it offers an often ludic approach to the Thebaid’s preoccupation with boundaries and their violation. Dualism is not so much external as internal to the hero who, throughout most of the fragment, occupies a liminal status between childhood and manhood, female and male genders, and the epic and elegiac genres. Boundaries are transgressed in ordered stages in accordance with the hero’s maturation; Achilles grows into manhood by testing and overriding the social and cultural limitations imposed on him. The poem thus moves forward in time

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples and to new places, rather than backwards as in Polynices’ fatal march home, a further instance of the recursive history of Thebes. In the Achilleid the key word limen represents the regulated thresholds that Achilles crosses into new stages of his development. Geography and topography play an important role in dramatising the theme of boundary exploration as a necessary part of the hero’s growth into adulthood. In this section of the chapter I shall look at the three distinct places in which the drama of Achilles’ maturation unfolds: the cave, the island, and the open seas. Chiron’s cave is the site of his boyhood training; the island of Scyros is the site of his sexual maturation; the open seas are overshadowed by the looming prospect of Troy which will be the site of his heroic manhood. Each space has its own distinct geography and ethos. But first I will begin with the proem, which, as in the Thebaid, forms a programmatic introduction to the poem’s spatial aesthetics. The Achilleid is Statius’ second epic, a rare achievement in the classical tradition. Yet Statius was in competition not only with a long poetic tradition about Achilles but also with his own previous epic, the Thebaid. Moreover, the themes of the education of Achilles by Chiron, and of the revelation of the cross-dressed Achilles on Scyros, were in Statius’ day the most popular iconographical representations of Achilles’ story in Roman art.73 How could Statius make his Achilles fresh and new?74 The proem begins with the poet’s confident self-assertion: he does not defer with angst to the Muse as he did in the proem to the Thebaid but dictates to her his theme (diua, refer (Goddess, tall), Ach. 1.3).75 And this theme is ambitious and expansive. Instead of restricting himself to a single aspect or period of Achilles’ life, like Homer in the Iliad, Statius boldly aims to tell the hero’s whole story (Ach. 1.4-5,7): nos ire per omnem / (sic amor est) heroa uelis  / tota iuuenem deducere Troia (allow me, o Muse, since this is my desire, to cover the hero’s entire history  and to spin out his complete Trojan story). Omnem and tota reflect the totalising, spatial language of empire. In a witty self-annotation on his poem’s place in literary tradition, Statius boldly claims that there is plenty of room for a new treatment of the Achilles myth (1.4), sed plura uacant (but there is space for more).76 Horace in the Ars Poetica had counselled against cyclical epics with comprehensive narrative aims (136-52); the desire to narrate all of Achilles’ life boldly expresses the aim of pushing beyond the bounds set by Horace – and by Homer. Statius also overrides the restrictions of Ovid who in the Ars Amatoria told the story of Achilles and Deidamia as a fabula, a short comic tale, though ‘not unworthy’ to be told (Ars 1.681); in the Achilleid this episode is also folded into the epic narrative. Yet the term deducere (to spin out), a catchword of Callimachean but also Ovidian epic poetics, suggests a sophisticated, refined aesthetic;77 at the same time, the surprising intrusion of amor into the epic proem points to the poem’s cross-generic interest in the sexual, erotic and elegiac.78 These shifts in linguistic valence within the proem foreshadow the poem’s individual

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3. Boundaries inflection of the Ovidian idea of metamorphosis, here directed to the crossing of both gender and genre. However, in the proem Statius, as in the Thebaid, also draws certain limits to his choice of theme. The Achilleid is not the expected poem about Domitian’s military achievements, despite the earlier promise in the introduction to the Thebaid that Statius would tackle such a work later. The proem ends with another deferral of Domitianic epic (1.14-19). Although Domitian is represented here as a good reader for Statius’ mythological epic, for he is praised for his twin competencies in the martial and liberal arts (Ach. 1.15-16) – his education, in other words, reflects what we learn of Achilles’ education by Chiron – nonetheless he does not inspire the poem.79 Achilles is introduced in the poem as a hero who, unlike Domitian and his family, has been forbidden deification (Ach. 1.2): patrio uetitam succedere caelo (a child forbidden to succeed to his father’s heaven). The opening patronymic by which Achilles is named (Ach. 1.1), Aeaciden (grandson of Aeacus), emphasises his mortality through the male line.80 Not only has Statius again deferred writing about Domitian’s deeds, he has also focused on a hero who in a key aspect was very different from the emperor who energetically cultivated the idea of his own divinity, and closely associated himself with Jupiter.81 Achilles is also a different type of hero from Polynices and Eteocles, who overrode the temporal and territorial restrictions of power-sharing. Counterbalancing his own literary imperial ambitions, Statius puts spatial bounds around a hero who will never seek the sky. The tension in the poetics of the Achilleid between the transgression of epic bounds and the respect for tradition is thus underwritten by the nature of Statius’ new hero. Statius also sets spatial bounds around himself in the process of poetic composition, drawing on the imagery of the racecourse (Ach. 1.17-18): trepidum patere hoc sudare parumper / puluere (allow me to sweat in trepidation for a while in this dust). Achilles is first introduced in the poem covered in sweat and dust (Ach. 1.159): ille aderat multo sudore et puluere maior (he was at hand, looking bigger from much sweat and dust). The poet is doing what his hero is doing; epic composition here is described as athletic training, strict, controlled, yet also playful, for there is surely humour in the comparison of the ageing poet to a young athlete.82 So too when he mentions that progress on his Achilleid has stalled, he uses a metaphor from chariot racing (Silu. 4.7.23-4). He thus sets bounds around this second epic by a metaphor drawn from the sports arena, which suggests a paradoxically playful but controlled approach to the genre of heroic epic. The metaphor also suggests Statius’ fiercely competitive bent. This second epic is thus represented as occupying a provocative space within Roman literary history, an afterthought to Homer and Virgil and yet surpassing the Aeneid as a ‘second’ epic, and also a precursor to the imperial epic that no poet has yet written – and never will, for contemporary epic, dependent on the reputation of an emperor, was possibly the most ephemeral of genres.

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples In the Achilleid the poet’s concern to create his own literary space, to write a new epic in a heavily travelled poetic tradition, is implicated with the poem’s manipulation of an epic geography that is coordinated with the different stages of Achilles’ physical and social education. That education is framed at the start and the end of the extant poem by the image of the sea, a metaphor of transition. The first geographical boundary in the poem, and the most well-travelled of all, is the Hellespont. This narrow strait marked the territorial boundary between Asia and Europe and was celebrated in literature by Apollonius of Rhodes, Catullus, Ovid, Valerius Flaccus and presumably Varro of Atax who wrote an Argonautica, now lost.83 In particular Statius’ opening scene of Thetis and her nymphs rising from the waves at the approach of ships (1.25-9) recalls the famous opening of Catullus 64.84 Statius uses this ‘talismanic boundary of transgression’ to express in geographical terms the poetic challenges of taking on this overcrowded literary tradition.85 Drawing on the metaphor of the poem as a ship, the epic thus begins with a voyage through, as Feeney puts it, ‘the choked claustrophobia of their seascapes’ that is also a comment on the overcrowding of literary tradition through which Statius has to navigate, since his ‘ship’ has once again left harbour.86 The ambiguity that is a hallmark of this poem is demonstrated in the detailed account of Chiron’s cave on Mount Pelion (1.98-197), where Achilles receives his early education. Here even literary tradition is up for question: what happened in the cave between Peleus and Thetis is left open. The cave is aptly described from the point of view of Thetis who takes no pleasure in seeing the cave again (nihil gauisa locis, 1.104), for she is not only visiting her son, she is revisiting the site of her ‘union’ with the boy’s father Peleus (1.106-15): domus ardua montem perforat et longo suspendit Pelion arcu; pars exhausta manu, partem sua ruperat aetas. signa tamen diuumque tori et quem quisque sacrarit accubitu genioque locum monstrantur; at intra Centauri stabula alta patent, non aequa nefandis fratribus: hic hominum nullos experta cruores spicula nec truncae bellis genialibus orni aut consanguineos fracti crateres in hostes, sed pharetrae insontes et inania terga ferarum. His lofty home bores into the mountain and supports mount Pelion with its lengthy vault. Part had been excavated by hand, age had eroded part. However, statues of the gods and their couches are on display, showing what place each deity honoured with his genius as he reclined; the lofty stalls of the Centaur spread out within, a contrast to his brutish brothers; here are no darts that have tasted human blood, no ash trees cut down in marriage wars, no mixing bowls broken on enemy kin but innocent quivers and animal skins only.

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3. Boundaries As Heslin points out, Statius’ description plays on the dual tradition about the cave: here Thetis was either brutally raped by Peleus (Ov. Met. 11.217-65), or married to him in a Golden Age wedding (Catul. 64).87 The cave thus evokes complex memories for Thetis, for it is decorated with mementos of the wedding in the form of the statues and couches of the gods who were in attendance (109-10); at the same time, the language in which the cave is initially described has overtones of sexual violence with images of penetration (perforat, 107) and rupture (ruperat, 108).88 Statius capitalises on both traditions concerning Thetis and Peleus to underline how an experience, however lived at the time, changes through memory. Seen through the eyes of an anxious mother, the cave, the site of her sexual initiation and what she regards as an inferior marriage (thalamos minores, 1.90), is now the home of her young son. We are invited to see the cave through her remembering eyes as affected by subsequent experience – her separation from Peleus and the handing over of her beloved son to Chiron. The cave itself is ambiguous in form, hovering between nature and art (Ov. Met. 11.235-6, natura factus an arte/ambiguum). Its rough-hewn exterior and elegant interior reflect Chiron’s duality, part human, part beast. As Du Bois argues, Centaurs ‘are hybrid monsters whose existence in myth permitted speculation about boundaries’. Indeed the positive blend of nature and culture in Chiron accentuates the liminality of the Centaur.89 His famous pupil too reflects, in character and physiognomy, the dualism of his teacher; for instance, he is old enough to go hunting, even for lions (1.168-70), but he is ‘sweet to look upon’ for he is smoothfaced, and has not yet grown a beard (1.161, 1.163).90 He is on the cusp of adolescence, and only partly socialised. Thetis meets her son literally on the threshold of the cave (Ach. 1.171): fido genetrix in limine uisa est (his mother was seen on the trusted threshold), that is, as Heslin suggests, ‘on the threshold of great changes in his life’.91 And Thetis, herself on the threshold, is the one who will be instrumental in setting in motion these changes. Her love for her son and her desire to prevent his early death drive the plot of Book 1 and, from the start, pit her woman’s voice and emotions against the impulse to war.92 The cave itself is a site where the boundaries between nature and savagery seem finely drawn. High up on a mountain (106-7), it offers security for the young Achilles but it is far from civilisation; the commemorative images of the gods in its interior (109-10) reassuringly confirm Chiron’s piety, but also serve as a reminder of the other myth surrounding Achilles’ birth, the shotgun wedding. Centaurs were traditionally known for their violence, brutality and hostility to marriage, as many examples from ancient art demonstrate, for instance the metopes on the south side of the Parthenon; Chiron is an exception. Through a series of negatives (111-14), the cave recalls not only the wedding of Peleus and Thetis but also the notorious wedding brawl and battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs told by Nestor in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (12.210-535); the word

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples crateres (Ach. 1.114) probably alludes to the drunkenness that catapulted the Centaurs into fighting (Met. 12.242-4),93 as well as, perhaps, to the first fatal blow of the fight, struck by an antique mixing bowl (antiquus crater, Met. 12.236). The description emphasises that such emblems of the other Centaurs have no place in Chiron’s cave; but they nonetheless are a reminder of the violent Ovidian traditions about both Peleus and Thetis and the Centaurs. The phrase Centauri stabula alta patent (111) alludes to Virg. A. 6. 179, stabula alta ferarum (the lofty stalls of wild beasts), a reminder that the line between Centaur and fera is a fine one. Moreover, since the Virgilian passage alludes to the cutting of trees, a key topos, as we have seen, of poetic definition and succession, the fact that these ‘dens’ ‘lie open’ implicitly invites the hero, the poet and their poem to head in new directions.94 Unlike the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, and the education of Achilles by Chiron, the Scyrian episode, outside its popularity in art of this period, was far less known.95 The cave thus also conveys a strong sense of the past, and the need for Achilles to move on to another stage of his life. Chiron is old (longaeuum Chirona, Ach. 1.106); so too is the cave, which has been partly formed from the erosion of the rock through time (ruperat aetas, 108), partly excavated (exhausta), a word that carries also the sense it has for us today, of exhaustion, of the draining of vital physical resources. The description concludes with the observation that in Chiron’s youth he had been a hunter, but now he confines himself to herbal medicine and to teaching Achilles heroic poetry (Ach. 1.116-18). Admirable though the Centaur is, clearly there are limits to his role as Achilles’ surrogate father. Indeed, Chiron himself confesses to Thetis that the boy has become almost ungovernable for him (1.147-58). The epic moves thus from the nurturing yet wild mountainous environment of Achilles’ boyhood with the Centaur Chiron to the island of Scyros, another isolated location set apart from human commerce in the middle of the sea. It is an appropriate site therefore for Achilles, who retains a liminal status but, instead of hovering between nature and culture, he adopts on the island a ‘middle’ placement between man and woman, peacelover and warrior. The island is a bounded space, encircled by the sea, and with a city girded by walls (1.287, 2.27). Its ruler, king Lycomedes, is dedicated to peace and leisure (1.207, 286); at his court Achilles, disguised as a young woman, is introduced to urban culture and civilising arts. The reminiscence of Homer’s Phaeacia emphasises that Scyros is not a permanent destination, but rather an intermediate stage in the hero’s education. The transitional place that Achilles occupies on Scyros is well illustrated by the significance the text gives to two key episodes on the island’s shore. A beach is an obviously liminal place that marks the boundary between rough sea and cultivated land, between wilderness and civilisation, and between arrival and departure. This liminal status is guarded on

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3. Boundaries Scyros by a temple to Pallas litorea, ‘Pallas of the shore’ (1.285). Minerva was Domitian’s special patron deity, but as Pallas litorea she is detached here from both an urban and an imperial context.96 Litoreus is a Virgilian coinage (A. 3.390) that occurs here for the first time of a goddess, and it draws attention to the shore of Scyros as a key boundary in the poem’s narrative that will both protect and be transgressed. The epithet also suggests the essential ambiguity of this goddess who dressed as a male warrior yet presided over women’s lives and the peaceful arts.97 The goddess’s cult provides the occasion for Deidamia and her sisters to leave the protection of the walled city for the temple on the sea shore (1.287-8): patriis, quae rara licentia, muris / exierant (they had left their father’s walls, a rare liberty). But in so doing, Deidamia herself crosses into the uncharted territory of human sexuality in honour of a goddess of ambiguous gender and divided allegiances. The encounter between Achilles and Deidamia thus takes place in a site that emphasises the transitional, transformative nature of Scyros for the Greek hero; here, under feminine disguise, he will learn the arts of peace without foreclosing a return to the arts of war. In particular the shore, the rim between arrival and departure, between social life and savagery, between the walled city and the sea with their respective virginal and Aphroditean associations, is a highly charged erotic meeting-ground for Deidamia and Achilles. Achilles’ refusal of manhood, here in the form of cross-dressing, is a threat to the hierarchy of gender. Normative sexual desire drives Achilles to confound stable categories of gender, for, although he reveals his male sex to Deidamia through rape and impregnation (1.560-674), he continues his disguise as a young woman. The plot is engaged in Ovidian erotic, transgendered play,98 and only the breaching of the sea shore by the Greeks will move it towards martial epic and heroic masculinity. As Frantzen comments, ‘the turmoil that cross-dressing produces ultimately underscores the necessity of restoring social order, including gender hierarchy’.99 The claiming of the weapons brought by the Greeks not only moves Achilles to his destined masculine position as a heterosexual lover, husband and father but also shifts him further along the male spectrum and away from the female, to full manhood as a warrior. The Scyrian shore thus marks the reverse transition of Achilles from the feminine sphere to full manhood and war. It is again specially set off in the text as the site where the Greeks arrive to lure Achilles to Troy. In fear of this very event, Thetis had urged king Lycomedes to keep the disguised Achilles away from the island’s shores (1.360): litore praecipueque portuque arcere memento (especially make sure to keep ‘her’ away from the shore and the harbour). But the island failed to provide effective barriers; the Greek warriors arrive at the very site where Achilles first met Deidamia, before the temple of Pallas litorea. The Greek warriors’ first view of Scyros, as they approach from the sea at sunset, is focused on this shore (1.689-92; 695-8):

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples frangebat radios humili iam pronus Olympo Phoebus et Oceani penetrabile litus anhelis promittebat equis, cum se scopulosa leuauit Scyros  accedunt iuxta, et magis indubitata magisque Scyros erat placidique super Tritonia custos litoris. egressi numen uenerantur amicae Aetolusque Ithacusque deae. Now Phoebus slanting down was breaking up his rays on the lower slopes of Olympus and was promising his panting horses that the shore was accessible, when rocky Scyros rose up from the sea  they come close, and more and more clearly it was definitely Scyros, crowned by the Tritonian guardian of the peaceful shore. The Aetolian and Ithacan disembark and venerate the divinity of the friendly goddess.

The dynamic movement of the Greeks’ ship to shore is preceded by the sun’s, which seeks land for its weary horses. The description, while visually appealing, foreshadows the events that are about to be played out on Scyros. The time is sunset, which suggests both closure and change. The first word of the description, frangebat, anticipates the breaking of the tranquillity and isolation of Scyros with its note of violent disruption; moreover, the sun, a common symbol of erotic heat and general passion, seeks ‘an accessible shore’ (penetrabile litus), a phrase suggestive of sexual as well as territorial penetration. It was on this shore that Achilles first fell in love with Deidamia; in the scene preceding the Greeks’ arrival he has raped her, not in the girl’s bedroom, as Ovid would have it (Ars 1.697), but again outside the city walls, in a forest (1.560-674) – a dangerous area, particularly for women, but familiar territory for Achilles from his education by Chiron on Mount Pelion.100 The Greeks too are about to do to Achilles what he has done to Deidamia, rob him of his (metaphorical) girlhood. Their predatory purpose is suggested by their following description as ‘hungry wolves, on the prowl in a winter night’ (1.704-8). Yet unlike the hostile, contested boundaries in the Thebaid, the Scyrian shore is no barrier to the Greeks. It is described as ‘peaceful’ (placidi); Pallas too is ‘friendly’ (amicae), a word that also means ‘girlfriend’, an odd noun to use of a goddess known for her virginity. In this epic of generic and gendered flexibility, even Pallas’ sexuality seems in a state of flux. The word amicae suggests the goddess’s sympathy to love interests, and perhaps also her ‘seduction’ by the two great heroes who ‘venerate her’, especially Odysseus, who was particularly known for his divine island girlfriends, Calypso and Circe. Amicae suggests that the Greek warriors will succeed in their trickery where Thetis, who prayed to the shore to protect her son with flattering prayers, will fail (1.383-96). The arrival of the Greek warriors and their weapons is thus specially marked by the text as a second breaching of the physical shore which violates the boundary

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3. Boundaries between categories of gender and genre as well as between peace and war, youth and manhood.101 But while Achilles’ exposure on Scyros does involve a sudden powerful change in his expression and gesture as he lunges for the weapons Ulysses cunningly displayed as gifts, he does not immediately embrace a martial way of life. He is no longer the young boy under the direct control of either Chiron or Thetis but has learned to act and think for himself. In Roman art, the revealing of Achilles on Scyros was a particularly popular theme from the first century AD; over 12 examples have been found from Pompeii, in Statius’ home region.102 Typically the hero is shown half-clad in woman’s dress, reaching for the shield or spear but looking back at Deidamia. The paintings, like Statius’ poem, show the hero confronted with a choice between two ways of existence; in the Achilleid he is also poised between two genres, elegy and epic.103 This liminal state is captured in the Achilleid by the repeated use of the verb haerere (‘to hesitate’). After Achilles has picked up the shield, it acts as a mirror, a feminine artifact, that reflects back his image. His sexually ambiguous response – he bristled and blushed at the same time (horruit erubuitque simul, Ach. 1.866) – causes Ulysses to ask (Ach. 1.867) quid haeres? (why aren’t you moving?) King has pointed out that of the six main epithets used only of Achilles in ancient texts, three refer to his speed.104 Smooth-tongued Ulysses plays here on the comic paradox that ‘swift-footed’ Achilles is riveted to the spot. Again, when Achilles hears Deidamia weep at his exposure, he hesitates, his new-found martial zeal assaulted by erotic love (1.888): haesit et occulto uirtus infracta calore est (he stopped moving and his manliness was broken by his hidden passion).105 In other words, he is not yet ready to cross over into the Homeric world. His next actions are to put down the shield and turn to the threshold (limina) of the king (Ach. 1.889), there to confess his identity and fatherhood of Deidamia’s child. His rape of Deidamia is thus resolved in the manner of a comic plot, with marriage.106 The revelation of Achilles’ manhood thus not only propels Achilles to war, it also propels him to marriage. The plot, like Achilles, hesitates between elegy and epic, comedy and tragedy. That Achilles’ hesitation is a new feature of his character, perhaps invented by Statius to describe the inner conflict suggested in the visual arts, may be indicated by the poet in Silu. 4.7, when he mentions that his new epic, personified as Achilles driving a chariot, is stuck at the first turning post (4.7.23-4): et primis meus ecce metis / haeret Achilles. In the Achilleid the exploitation of this comic paradox reshapes the impetuous Homeric hero into a more thoughtful hero who recognises that change comes with a cost. For Cameron, the Scyrian episode shows how even the most successful man can make a major mistake but still recover.107 Rather, in emphasising the Scyrian episode as a separate, crucial stage in Achilles’ maturation, Statius develops the multidimensionality of his hero’s character. He is indeed a peerless warrior, known for his anger, as King

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples emphasises in her study of his tradition, but in Statius he is shown to reach maturity as a warrior through experiencing the important roles of lover, husband and father as well as dutiful son.108 Statius develops here into a coherent narrative the contradictory fragments of Achilles’ characterisations in earlier myth, among them his claim from the Underworld that he would rather have led a quiet life as a farmer than a famous one as a warrior (Od. 11.488-91). Statius’ Achilles does not embrace the life of a warrior without thought and angst. The manner in which he crosses boundaries reveals his humanity. The poem ends as it began, with the voyage of warrior ships away from the island; unlike the overcrowded waters of the poem’s start, the seas lie open in a long expanse (Ach. 2.22). In their very origins from trees and forests, ships confuse the boundary between land and sea, nature and culture, as the witty oxymoron iam natat omne nemus (now every grove is afloat, Ach. 1.428) suggests. Thetis, trying to delay her child’s initiation into war and premature death, avoids ships; Achilles arrives on Scyros in Thetis’ lap as she rides a pair of dolphins (Ach. 1.221-36). But by contrast to his gentle arrival on Scyros, Achilles leaves for Troy on the warrior ships of strangers, symbols of human transgression. The whistling wind that snatches the ship bearing Achilles away (penitusque Noto stridente propinquis / abripitur terris, 2.20-1) presages the violence of war, as well as a new tumultuous stage in Achilles’ life and development. It also tantalisingly suggests a new stage for the poem which, in the familiar ship metaphor (Theb. 12.809), is now perhaps finally entering on the conventional matter of heroic epic. I say perhaps, for Achilles’ identity is still not fixed; even as he enters the heroic world, he remains tied to a comic and elegiac plot. As he watches Scyros recede, he is consumed with longing for Deidamia (Ach. 2.27-30); mingling marital and erotic terms, he thinks of his home as ‘widowed’ (uiduam) and Deidamia as the ‘abandoned mistress’ (relictae, Ach. 2.28), thus emphasising the contradictory, and finally incompatible, roles of husband and lover. The last line of Book 1 makes pointed allusion again to Catullus 64, as it had at the start with the nymphs at the Hellespont (Ach. 1.960): irrita uentosae rapiebant uerba procellae (the storm winds snatched away his fruitless words).109 Achilles’ departure from his beloved Deidamia with oaths of fidelity and a promise to return (Ach. 1.956-9) is undermined by these words, for they allude to Theseus’ notorious abandonment of Ariadne (irrita uentosae linquens promissa procellae, Catul. 64.59), a scene memorialised on the wedding bedspread of Achilles’ parents Peleus and Thetis.110 The allusion to Catullus’ famous, innovative ecphrasis of the textile underlines at the book’s end the virtuosic, innovative weaving of Statius’ own text from the many parts of literary tradition, giving us here a new Achilles. Although readers know that the endpoint of Achilles’ voyage is Troy and early death, at this moment of conventional martial elevation, when the hero leaves for war, the conclusion of the extant poem leaves open the generic direction in

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3. Boundaries which the narrative, and Statius’ most trangressive hero, will next go.111 The poem that began in the choked straits of the Hellespont leaves the hero in limbo on the open seas. Silvan poetics In their experimentation with the short, occasional praise poem, the Siluae boldly extend generic boundaries. They develop a new aesthetic, a dynamic combination of epic grandeur, Callimachean tenets of refinement, learning and containment, and ‘un-Callimachean’ qualities of improvisation and virtuosic speed of composition. They generally maintain a high stylistic register characterised by epic diction, mythological comparisons, and extensive use of hyperbaton; addressed to friends and patrons, they are enlivened, however, by occasional colloquial expressions that convey personal intimacy.112 They expand on epigrammatic themes, such as descriptions of works of art, while adapting to contemporary, intimate occasions epic themes such as lament for a premature death.113 They demonstrate the poet’s willingness to play with literary forms and expectations and to explore difficult emotions. At the same time, the small-scale poem is in itself a retraction from the imperial vision of epic expansiveness, and, though contemporary poetry, constitutes a deferral of contemporary epic. While stylistically and thematically Statius experiments here with the boundaries of both epigrammatic and epic convention, he contains his improvisational, free-flowing and often hyperbolic verse not only through his attention to stylistic sophistication, but also importantly through the closely structured format of the poetry book. The consequent creative tension in Statius’ ‘Silvan’ poetics between experimentation and restraint is articulated most openly in the epistolary prose prefaces attached to each book of Siluae. These prefaces seem to have been a Flavian innovation, probably of either Statius himself or Martial;114 they offer crucial insight into Statius’ new aesthetic practices in the Siluae for they provide a significant forum not only for praising the patron to whom the poetry book is dedicated, but also for laying out the poetic principles of the collection.115 Importantly too the prefaces introduce the individual poems as part of a collection; poems can assume new or fuller meaning when carefully arranged in the poetry book. For example, Silu.1.1 should be considered not as a stand-alone poem but as part of two tightly organised units, Book 1 of the Siluae, and the collected, published set of Books 1-3. Book 4, which consists of nine poems, begins with a series of three imperial poems; the third celebrates the Via Domitiana, the road built by Domitian to provide a shortcut to the Bay of Naples. Written in hendecasyllables, 4.3 forms a narrower column of text on the page, forming a visual representation of the road that is also a symbol of Statius’ swift and fluent poetics.116 But as the last of the imperial poems, 4.3 also visually and metaphorically forms

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples a textual and ideological boundary in Book 4, drawing a line on imperial panegyric in the collection.117 The prefaces are a crucial part of the packaging of the poetry book as a tightly controlled artistic form. The poems should certainly be read along with the prefaces that introduce them. In the preface to Book 1 of the Siluae, Statius introduces Silu. 1.1 in a way that highlights the challenge of writing a poem in the long-established tradition of epideictic epigram and in the new, evolving tradition of imperial panegyric. He announces a generic shift from epigram to a heightened theme and style with the statement (1 pr. 16-17), sumendum enim erat ‘a Ioue principium’ (for I must take my ‘start from Jupiter’), an acknowledgement of Domitian’s close identification with the chief deity of the classical pantheon. At the same time with ‘a Ioue principium’ he is quoting from Virgil Eclogues 3.60; the phrase goes back to the opening of Aratus’ Phaenomena and thus indicates the Hellenistic literary refinement found in the short poem.118 Statius simultaneously suggests the overreaching grandeur of the equestrian statue and its perfect artistry, features that will be expressed in his elevated but polished style. Yet, despite the weighty opening with ‘Jupiter’, the preface also claims that Statius wrote this poem quickly as if it were a mere few epigrammatic lines, handing it to the emperor the day after the statue’s dedication (1 pr. 16-19). As Rosati suggests, Statius may be wittily engaging here with Horace, who criticised Lucilius in Satires 1.4 for his hasty, improvisational verse, using terms of speed and ‘flowing’ (9-11): in hora saepe ducentos / ut magnum, uersus dictabat stans pede in uno / cum flueret lutulentus, erat quod tollere uelles (often he would speak two hundred words an hour standing on one foot, as if this were a great thing. When he flowed like a mudslide, there was always something you would wish removed). Statius circumvents Horace’s criticism of unbounded, improvisational verse by witty modification that displays his virtuosity – in taking one day, not one hour to write his imperial poem, and writing only 100, not 200 verses, he takes more care, in fact limiting the flow of improvisational verse; he can thus tackle the most sublime of themes with epicising grandeur and neoteric sophistication.119 Through its play with ideas of literary expansion and restraint, the preface to Silu. 1 hints that the poet will boldly submit to artistic control the Flavian ambitions expressed in their monumental works of art and architecture; he will both embrace and withdraw from the imperial aesthetic of boundless grandeur through, in particular, a polished art, and the tight controlling structure of the poetry book that presents the poem to the world. The poem after 1.1, an epithalamium for Stella and his Neapolitan bride Violentilla, was written in two days, not one, and takes up 300 hexameters (1 pr. 20-3). Friends occupy more space in the Siluae. In an age before copyright, Statius’ epistolary prefaces had a further important function, to guard against misuse of his work. By listing the poems in each book in order, they attempt to ensure that the poetry books

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3. Boundaries are transmitted complete, with their original arrangement preserved. Early in his publishing career Martial, for instance, complains of plagiarism of his work; rival poets have published or recited his (Martial’s) work as their own (Mart. 1 pr. 6-9; 1.29; 1.38; 1.52; 1.66; 1.72), or a leaf of the plagiarist’s work with false authorial attribution has been slipped into Martial’s collected poems (1.53).120 Prefaces therefore are a form of boundary control; they preserve the original shape of the book. Statius employs various strategies in his prefaces to guard against misuse in present and future time; sometimes by identifying himself as the author (for example in the preface to Book 1 (5-7) he describes himself as the poet who wrote the Thebaid); by presenting the poetry book to a patron as a prestigious, valuable gift which he, the patron/friend, must protect and help launch in the world; by providing a table of contents of the poems in the collection; and by laying out the order in which they should be read. With the careful crafting of the poetry book through selection, collection and arrangement, Statius exerts tight artistic control over his new, experimental poems. The prefaces are both an introduction to the poetry book and a barrier against violation. Statius built his poetry book collection to endure. The boundaries of ecphrasis Since antiquity Statius has been admired as a vividly descriptive poet. Thus Sidonius Apollinaris (Carm. 9.229) praised Statius in metaliterary terms as a poet who ‘paints the bejewelled meadows of the Siluae’ (pingit gemmea prata syluularum), and singles him out for his descriptive passages and poems (Carm. 22.6). In his university lectures on the Siluae, the Renaissance critic Poliziano particularly praised Statius’ power of bringing people and events directly before the reader’s eyes; for him Silu. 2.1, the consolatory poem on the death of Melior’s foster son Glaucias, is a masterpiece of emotional description. This vivid descriptiveness relating to people, places and events characterises all Statius’ works;121 the poet’s powers of observation are often channelled through the experience of the participants in his narrative. The storm at the opening of the Thebaid is full of emotional and dramatic power, seen through the eyes of the lonely exile Polynices (Theb. 1.312-89); Achilles’ appearance to Thetis after their long separation is vividly focalised through the mother’s eyes (Ach. 1.158-70). In this final section of the chapter I will examine the role of ecphrasis, that is, vivid, extended description, in Statius’ poetry, a topos subject to charges of poetic self-indulgence and excessive ornament; Lessing’s opposition to ecphrasis, for instance, was based on the fear that the prioritisation of description over narration could mean the debasement of sublime epic to the blandishments of epideictic rhetoric.122 Recently, however, theorists of ancient and modern culture have seen ecphrasis as a fruitful topos for literary and political inquiry.123 Ecphrasis today is often

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples used to mean the poetic description of a work of art. But in ancient times the term was broadly conceived to apply to literary descriptions of persons and places as well.124 Statius showed particular originality, however, in the formal description of works of art and buildings. Exceptional works of art have a lineage, originating from the craftsman or first owner, through a line of descendants; narrative decoration of works of art and buildings brings together topography, history and myth. Ecphrasis thus involves special control and management of space and also time on the part of a poet especially admired for his visual, descriptive acuity. Ecphrasis is a relatively benign form of boundary crossing, in that it challenges the demarcation of the visual from the literary arts. Such a challenge has often been regarded as agonistic. But, as Squire has recently argued, at least in the ancient world the relationship between the visual and the verbal was often playful and complementary, not hostile.125 Ecphrasis also crosses genres. It was an important feature of epic since Homer,126 but was also the province of epigram, particularly in the description of works of art which are attractively enclosed within the genre’s brief compass. In its engagement with a visual work of art and artist, ecphrasis is a highly self-conscious rhetorical form that draws attention to the poet’s own artistry;127 it is thus also inflected by his viewing practices and cultural identity.128 As I argued in Chapter 2, ecphrasis is a key element of Statius’ encomiastic aesthetics. As a strategy of imperial representation, it contains images of transgressive size and grandeur in a controlled, sophisticated form. Contemporary Roman interest in vivid description is reflected in the attention Quintilian gives this topic in his educational treatise (Inst. 8.3.61-90; 9.2.40-4). Verisimilitude was an important goal of ancient ecphrasis. Quintilian emphasises also the importance of enargeia, the strategy of describing a scene or character or event so vividly that the audience or reader seems to see it with his own eyes.129 Indeed, he adds that it does not matter if elements of the description are fictitious, provided they are made to seem real (Inst. 8.3.70).130 In Statius’ poetry, however, ecphrasis performs more than the function of bringing a scene or person vividly before the eyes; it also provides a focal point for reflection on larger narrative or literary issues. Statius’ Siluae were unique for their time in devoting to ecphrasis entire poems which are considerably longer than epigrams. He made the topos more dynamic by anchoring it to a particular occasion and to actual, not fictional, works of art and archictecture, by involving shifting points of view, and by skilfully correlating the work of art or building with his poetics.131 Ecphrasis in Statius’ poetry is a particularly self-reflexive form. The poems of the Siluae that describe works of art and villas have recently been well discussed.132 I wish to end this chapter therefore by looking at the function in the Thebaid of its first ecphrasis.133 I will suggest that Statius’ use of ecphrasis offers not simply a moment of aesthetic

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3. Boundaries appreciation but rather serves as a lens which can refract, complicate and even distort the poem’s central themes; it also acts as a focal point for poetic intertextuality, and in this regard the first ecphrasis is of programmatic importance. Ecphrasis has often been thought of as a narrative digression or pause, and thus a marginalised type of discourse.134 As Scott comments, ‘ekphrasis frustrates linear progression and offers an alternative poetics of space and plenitude’.135 At the same time, critics have argued that while epic ecphrasis may interrupt the narrative, it is not thematically separated from the narrative but often serves within the larger work as a mise en abyme, a compressed replication of the central narrative.136 In the Thebaid Statius locates himself through ecphrasis within the continuum of epic tradition; he also uses ecphrasis to indicate his own special inflection of the tradition. In an epic whose theme of nefas threatens from the start to overwhelm the limits the poet has established, ecphrasis provides a rare, but fragile moment of containment, circumscription and contemplation. The first ecphrasis in the Thebaid involves a libation bowl (patera, Theb. 1.541) that Adrastus uses to make offerings to Apollo at the welcome feast for Polynices and Tydeus. The prototype is Nestor’s golden bowl (Il. 11.632-7), used for drinking, however, not libations. Statius’ first ecphrasis is somewhat unusual in that the patera is not a monumental or martial object; the first ecphrasis of Virgil’s Aeneid for instance depicts the frieze of the Trojan War in the Temple of Juno at Carthage (A. 1.441-93) and is occasioned by Aeneas’ need for orientation to the new city in which he finds himself. The occasion on which Adrastus’ libation bowl is produced recalls the hospitality offered Aeneas by Evander in Aeneid 8.137 The libation bowl itself however also recalls Dido’s welcome feast for Aeneas, where she raises to Jupiter, Bacchus and Juno a golden libation bowl heavily encrusted with jewels and gold (grauem gemmis auroque  / pateram, A. 1.728-9). Like Statius, she too uses the anachronistic Roman word patera. Dido’s bowl is not further described, but the reminiscence provides a chilling undercurrent to Adrastus’ sacrificial offering to Apollo, which suggests that the placation of the god will not in the long run be efficacious. There are further parallels between the scene of Dido’s libation and Adrastus’. Both dining halls are described as shining with luxury (A. 1.637-42; Theb. 1.515-21). Dido’s tables are heaped with silverware embossed in gold with ancestral deeds (A. 1.640-2): ingens argentum mensis, caelataque in auro fortia facta patrum, series longissima rerum per tot ducta uiros antiqua ab origine gentis. On the tables was a great mass of silverware embossed in gold with the brave deeds of their ancestors, and with a very long series of events drawn down through so many great men from the ancient origin of the race.

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples The images on Dido’s bowl emphasise continuity of achievements and values through generations. Virgil’s phrase series longissima is echoed in the opening of the Thebaid, longa retro series (Theb. 1.7), where, in place of ancestral pride, it refers to ancestral disgrace. Statius’ slight alteration of the phrase signals the recursive nature of the history of Thebes, the backward, repetitive movement of dynastic failure and acts of nefas. Adrastus’ bowl, like Dido’s silverware, honours his ancestors, but in its use, not in its images. From the time of his earliest ancestors the bowl was used in the libations to the gods (Theb. 1.542), but it is decorated with mythological scenes of pathos and horror, rather than ancestral glory. With his choice of mythological themes Statius follows the ecphrastic tradition established by Catullus 64. Indeed, the combination of luxurious hospitality and ancestral commemoration that precedes Statius’ ecphrasis occurs also in Catullus’ poem, where the famous ecphrasis of Ariadne’s abandonment on the embroidered bedspread is preceded by a description of the interior of Peleus’ house as it is being prepared for his wedding with Thetis (64.42-52).138 As on the coverlet, the narrative images on Adrastus’ bowl have no obvious connection to the history of its outside viewers, Polynices and Tydeus; in this regard Statius departs from the first ecphrasis of the Aeneid, the frieze of the Trojan War on the Temple of Juno, which has obviously a deep personal connection with Aeneas. In both Catullus 64 and Thebaid 1, by contrast, the decoration invites a look into the future as well as the past; myth is ominously prescient of the events to come. Adrastus’ bowl is embossed in gold (540) and depicts two mythological scenes, Perseus holding the severed head of Medusa and the abduction of Ganymede (544-51): aureus anguicomam praesecto Gorgona collo ales habet, iamiamque uagas – ita uisus – in auras exsilit; illa graues oculos languentiaque ora paene mouet uiuoque etiam pallescit in auro. hinc Phrygius fuluis uenator tollitur alis, Gargara desidunt surgenti et Troia recedit, stant maesti comites, frustraque sonantia lassant ora canes umbramque petunt et nubila latrant. The golden flyer holds the snake-haired Gorgon by her severed neck, and he is at any moment, just about, so it seemed, to jump into the wandering air; she barely moves her heavy eyes and languid face and is even growing pale in the living gold. In the other part the Phrygian hunter is being taken away by tawny wings; to his eyes as he rises Gargara sinks down and Troy recedes, his companions stand there downcast, and in vain his dogs weary their echoing mouths and pursue a shadow and bark at clouds.

The ecphrasis demonstrates the poet’s interest in contrast and duality. While the first scene (544-7) is partly static though full of tension (thus

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3. Boundaries iamiamque, 545), the second scene (548-51) is portrayed as a brief narrative full of action and also of pathos. The two male figures are very different; Perseus is the man of action, the monster slayer; Ganymede the youthful victim of Jupiter’s desires. The presence of Perseus on the bowl is understandable, since, as the son of Zeus and Danaë, he was a scion of Argos. Ganymede, a Trojan prince and son of Priam, had on the other hand no connection with Argos. His presence on the bowl seems in the first instance to be attributable to Virgil who, on the beautiful embroidered cloak awarded to Cloanthus for winning the ship race (A. 5.249-57), depicts the abduction of Ganymede (A. 5.252-7). This scene was particularly influential for Flavian epic poets; all three include Ganymede’s abduction in an ecphrasis, although, in Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus, the material object on which the scene appears is, as in Virgil, an embroidered cloak, not an engraved bowl (Sil. 15.425-32; V.Fl. 2.408-17). Ripoll, who has analysed the three Flavian passages, argues that all three epicists use the Ganymede episode to demonstrate their individual aesthetics, and that Statius demonstrates particular closeness to Virgil here.139 The three Flavian poets are alike also in their use of a bipartite scheme of decoration in their ecphrasis. In Valerius Flaccus the myth of Ganymede is matched by another myth, Hypsipyle’s rescue of Thoas, and in Silius Odysseus and the Cyclops. In Virgil’s ecphrasis the cloak has only one narrative scene, the abduction of Ganymede, although that is divided into two spheres of action (A. 5.252-7): intextusque puer frondosa regius Ida uelocis iaculo ceruos cursuque fatigat acer, anhelanti similis, quem praepes ab Ida sublimem pedibus rapuit Iouis armiger uncis: longaeui palmas nequiquam ad sidera tendunt custodes, saeuitque canum latratus in auras. The princely boy was embroidered there, wearying on leafy Ida the swift deer with his javelin and quick pace, a keen hunter, looking out of breath; Jupiter’s armbearer, the eagle, snatched him on high from Ida with its hooked talons; his elderly guardians stretch their hands to the stars in vain, and the dogs’ mad barking echoes into the air.

There are close similarities here with Statius’ later tripartite description of the episode: first the depiction of the boy as hunter (concisely alluded to in Statius’ Phrygius  uenator, 548); then the reaction of Ganymede’s companions, including the hunting dogs; with their barking, both Virgil and Statius introduce the notion of sound into the description. Hardie, reacting to Putnam’s pessimistic interpretation of Virgil’s scene as anticipating the series of youths dead before their time in the following books, has argued that Virgil’s scene is celebratory.140 Like Ripoll, he interprets

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples Ganymede’s elevation to the heavens as an anticipation of the future apotheosis of the Trojan’s descendants and a connection to an important theme of the Aeneid, the translation from man to god. Sublimem (255) is the same adjective Jupiter uses when he promises Venus that Aeneas will be elevated to the stars (A. 1.259-60). Thus the youth’s guardians look upwards to the stars, their hands uplifted in a gesture of prayer; even the mad barking of the dogs ascends to the upper air. The effect of the description in the Thebaid is very different. The scene is viewed from a powerful double perspective, that of Ganymede, who sees the familiar landmarks of his home sink from view, and that of those he leaves behind, his companions and his dogs, who ‘pursue his shadow and bark at the clouds’. There is a powerful sense of loss here. Virgil’s point of view is oriented upwards, towards the notion of heavenly reward. The upturned hands of the guardians, a sign of prayer, suggest that the boy’s abduction can be seen as a divine miracle, which the dogs in their mad barking do not properly comprehend. In the Thebaid there is no mention of Ganymede’s celestial destination, no mention of Jupiter; the eagle is referred to only through its golden wings (548), which are conflated with the colour of the bowl; the receding landscape seems to convey the boy’s sinking feeling. The boy’s companions stand in sorrow (stant maesti, 550), while the dogs weary their voices in their search for Ganymede (550-1); unlike Virgil’s dogs, they are not simply barking at an eagle but are sympathetically engaged in hunting for their master. The word umbram (‘shadow’, or ‘shade of the dead’, 551) plays with the idea that the dogs chase an illusion, even as the engraved scene itself plays with reality and illusion; the word also suggests that his abduction is viewed as a form of death. Nubila (clouds), with their associations of storm, darkness and obscurity, have replaced the Virgilian locus of divinity, sidera (stars, 256). In Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, the story of Ganymede’s abduction also appears as one of two narratives on a work of art, namely the cloak that Hypsipyle gives Jason as he leaves her (V.Fl. 2.414-17):141 pars et frondosae raptus expresserat Idae inlustremque fugam pueri. mox aethere laetus adstabat mensis, quin et Iouis armiger ipse accipit a Phrygio iam pocula blanda ministro. One section had depicted the seizure from leafy Ida and the boy’s illustrious flight. Soon he served at table, happy in his heavenly elevation. Indeed even Jupiter’s armbearer (the eagle) now accepts delightful drinks from the Trojan cupbearer.

The presence of the Trojan Ganymede on the Virgilian cloak is not surprising. But commentators have been generally puzzled by his appearance on the cloak that Hypsipyle gives Jason, for neither has a connection to Troy, and the story does not cohere with the other narrative depicted on the

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3. Boundaries cloak, Thoas’ nocturnal escape from Lemnos (V.Fl. 2.410-13). Certainly the type scene and similar vocabulary (frondosae  Idae, armiger) indicate Valerius’ debt to Virgil here.142 In Valerius’ version Ganymede is laetus (happy), and his flight from earth is illustrious. The unique detail that the eagle itself is served by Ganymede makes this version somewhat anodyne. If the ecphrasis was written early in Vespasian’s reign, then its positive view of the abduction as divine elevation would fit with the glorification of apotheosis in the poem’s opening. Silius’ description is perfunctory; he seems to use his two lines on Ganymede as a marker of Virgilian allusion and an acknowledgment of his debt in ecphrasis (Sil. 15.425-6): aurata puerum rapiebat ad aethera penna per nubes aquila, intexto librata uolatu. A golden-winged eagle was snatching the boy through the clouds to heaven, balanced in embroidered flight.

The phrase intexto librata uolatu seems to be unique, and makes sophisticated allusion to Virgil’s intextusque puer (A. 1.252) with its interplay between the inert materiality of the cloak and the vividness of its artistic and literary representation.143 But as Ripoll points out, Silius gives a condensed version of Virgil’s scene that emphasises flight; he does not attempt to rival his predecessor. The poet’s imagination is exercised instead on new material, and the following six lines are devoted to Odysseus in the Cyclops’ cave (Sil. 15.427-32), a counterpart perhaps to Statius’ monster-slaying Perseus.144 In contrast to his Flavian contemporaries, Statius infuses the tale of Ganymede with great pathos, focusing on the dramatic moment of seizure. The idea of apotheosis which, for good or for ill, is present in his Virgilian model, is completely absent. Harrison has discussed the ‘proleptic’ ecphrasis as a particular feature of epic from Homer on; it is frequently a source of dramatic irony and pathos for there is generally a gap between the knowledge of the participants in the narrative and the poet and his readers.145 In Statius’ ecphrasis the figure of Ganymede surely does introduce to the poem its tragic theme of premature death, a theme that in the poem, as in this ecphrasis, is often handled from the point of view of the survivors – though here too we also have a glimpse of Ganymede’s perspective as he leaves his familiar territory and beloved companions behind. Moreover, the Trojan identity of Ganymede does matter here, making him an ill-omened figure for Adrastus’ libation bowl. The patron deity of Argos was Juno, whose hatred for Ganymede was a major cause of the Trojan War (Virg. A. 1.28). In perhaps another intertext here, Ovid’s tale of Ganymede (Met. 10.155-61), the poet stresses Juno’s continuing hostility to the cupbearer when he reaches the heavens (inuitaque  Iunone, Met.

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples 10.161). Ganymede’s prominent appearance on an Argive bowl designed to propitiate the gods is not a good sign. It suggests furthermore this poem’s theme of the tragic human ignorance or misunderstanding of the gods; despite evidence to the contrary, Adrastus worships Apollo as a beneficent deity for Argos, though the god of light has already allied himself with Underworld powers (Theb. 1.596-668).146 Unlike Ganymede, Perseus, the first figure depicted on the patera, is a heroic figure closely tied to epic ecphrasis. He appears first on the pseudoHesiodic shield of Heracles after slaying Medusa ([Sc.] 216-37), and he is represented as a hero associated with the ordering of the universe.147 Statius’ depiction of Perseus on Adrastus’ bowl is more disturbing and is indebted not to Virgil but to Ovid and particularly to Lucan. As Fantham has shown, Lucan in turn is indebted to Ovid’s account of Perseus’ decapitation of Medusa (Met. 4.610-803) when, in Book 9 of the Bellum Ciuile, he punctuates Cato’s march across the desert with a long excursus on the slaying of the Gorgon and its terrifying powers (Luc. 9.604-99).148 Lucan’s focus is not on Perseus the heroic monster-slayer, but on the destabilising monster. The episode assumes major symbolic importance in Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile. Statius’ compressed description of Perseus and Medusa seems to describe the moment when Perseus has just cut off the head (Theb. 1.544-6). The description of Perseus matches that of Ganymede in its rapid upward movement (Theb. 1.545-6) as the winged hero – ales at line 545 conjures up a bird – launches himself into the air. Yet the following depiction of Medusa’s severed head dominates the description with a sense of the uncanny. A striking feature of this first ecphrasis in the Thebaid is the blurring of the boundaries between art and reality. In the Ganymede scene we do not only see the static figures of the bereft spectators, we also are made to visualise the hunting dogs running around and to hear the sound of their frantic barking. The wings of the eagle which snatches Ganymede away are a tawny gold, thus confusing the colour of the bowl and that of the bird. The parenthetical comment that Perseus was just on the point – so it seemed – of leaping up high into the wandering airs (iamiamque uagas (ita uisus) in auras, Theb. 1.545) draws attention to the artifice involved in creating a vivid scene of high dramatic action. More uncannily, Medusa’s severed head seems still alive (Theb. 1.546-7): illa graues oculos languentiaque ora / paene mouet uiuoque etiam pallescit in auro (she almost moves her heavy eyes and languid face and even grows pale in the living gold). Despite the qualifier of paene (almost), the sentence disturbs the artistic illusion; we seem to see the colour begin to drain from her face. Indeed, Statius plays here not only with the familiar artistic dialogue between illusion and material reality, but with the ambiguity of Medusa’s head, severed from the body but still with deadly power. Statius follows the accounts of Ovid and Lucan that Perseus beheaded Medusa while she was partly asleep (Met. 4.784-5; Luc. 9.659-84); according to Hesiod, Perseus and the Gorgons challenge one another in open combat ([Sc.] 230-4). Both

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3. Boundaries Ovid and Lucan, moreover, emphasise that the Gorgon head preserves its petrifying power even in death (Ov. Met. 4.740-53; 5.176-235; Luc. 9.67899), and they dispense with the Hesiodic satchel in which the hero cannily stored the head out of sight ([Sc.] 223-6). Thus the powers of the severed head are all the more terrifying, arbitrary and wide-ranging when freely detached from the confines of the body. In Lucan’s poem, the head, taken across the far reaches of Libya, turns the land into a desert, and its blood creates deadly poisonous snakes (Luc. 9.689-733). Statius’ play with the ambiguity between the lifelike and the living seems to draw particularly from Lucan’s description of the partly sleeping Medusa – partly because her snakes are on guard and awake (quam sopor aeternam tracturus morte quietem / obruit haud totam: the sleep destined to bring eternal rest with death did not overwhelm her entirely, Luc. 9.671-2); haud totam, emphatically postponed, strictly speaking means ‘her entire person’, for her snaky hair remains vigilant.149 Statius’ paene (mouet) seems to pick up on haud totam and on Lucan’s emphasis on the head’s powers of transcendence over death. On Adrastus’ bowl Medusa’s head seems to have been permanently preserved in this menacing state. The gold furthermore is called uiuus ‘living’, an adjective used of works of art to mean ‘lifelike’ (OLD 3a); at the same time, the adjective, which commonly means ‘alive’ (OLD 1), hints that the gold itself has an animate quality. As the severed head grows pale to match the colour of gold, so too it takes on the metal’s properties and paradoxically becomes ‘living’. With pallescit the poet also plays on the light colour of gold and the paleness of sickness and death. The verb is always active in sense (‘grows’ pale rather than ‘is pale’) and suggests again that the head is merely half-asleep, ready at any moment to raise up its petrifying stare. Through the figures of Perseus and the Medusa head Statius acknowledges his debt to both Ovid and Lucan. The adjective anguicomam is an Ovidian coinage for Medusa (Gorgonis anguicomae Perseus superator, Ov. Met. 4.699). Lucan’s account of Medusa is much longer and more detailed than Ovid’s; as Fantham comments, Lucan outdoes his poetic predecessors in the horror of his Medusa.150 Moreover, as both Fantham and Malamud have argued, it is Lucan who develops the concrete and metaphorical potential of Medusa’s severed head.151 Lucan makes her, even before her decapitation, a figure more powerful than the Furies. Feared by her parents and sister Gorgon, she poses a major threat to the stable order of the cosmos (Luc. 9.642-58). In Lucan’s epic Medusa is thus closely associated with the nefarious themes of civil war, the rupture of both familial and cosmic ties; her severed head moreover is associated with that shocking Roman emblem of civil war depravity, the severed head of Pompey which plays a major role in the final books of the Bellum Ciuile.152 Though appearing late in Lucan’s epic, Medusa’s head is a powerful symbol ‘of the unnatural evil of human overreach and the impiety of slaughter among kin – that is of civil war itself ’.153

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples Malamud takes Fantham’s argument one stage further. Medusa is also a symbol of Lucan’s civil war poetics which wrestle with the ethics of his epic project.154 So too, I suggest, on Adrastus’ bowl she is a figure of Statius’ civil war poetics. Significantly, Statius’ ecphrasis of the patera conveys the sense that art can barely contain the figures that the artist’s skill has made so animate, too animate perhaps in the case of the Gorgon’s drooping head and eyes. And this effect Statius owes particularly to Lucan. Even more disturbing is the fact that while Lucan’s Perseus can look at Medusa only in the reflecting surface of a splendid bronze shield (clipeum  fuluo  aere nitentem, Luc. 9.669), her horrific image on Adrastus’ bowl is for anyone to see. With typical ambiguity, Statius’ Medusa is neither alive nor dead, neither asleep nor fully awake. Moreover, the oddity that her grisly, snake-coiled head appears on a beautiful, sacred bowl instead of on her traditional place, the shield of Minerva, suggests the deviant nature of Statius’ civil war poetics. The presence of the severed head of Medusa on Adrastus’ bowl is therefore proleptic, evoking the prominent civil war themes of the Thebaid, in particular the power of the monstrous when unleashed from hell, the evil generated by acts of violence, and presumably also the ultimate sacrilege and the debasement of the hero Tydeus’ fascination with the severed head of his enemy Melanippus (8.745-66), and his act of cannibalism that horrifies even the Gorgon on Minerva’s breastplate (8.762-4). For it is after all in the presence of Tydeus that Adrastus displays the bowl with its severed head, an instance of dramatic, proleptic irony. But the head of Medusa, balefully dormant, is also a present, active sign of the evil that Adrastus initiates unwittingly by inviting Polynices and Tydeus into his home and family. In a poem where the boundary between the dead and living is repeatedly crossed, the Medusa head, ready it seems to stir into life, makes the libation vessel baleful and ill-omened, a signature object of transgressive power for the poem. But the good-hearted, ageing Adrastus seems unaware of its sinister implications. The bowl is not part of a gift exchange, an occasion that involves the active participation of donor and recipient in viewing. Rather it is a treasured heirloom that testifies to the king’s deeply pious worship of Apollo and his Argive ancestors. Precious objects in epic always carry a pedigree of ownership, and here the poet reminds us of the king’s genealogy; Danaus too made libations with this bowl (Theb. 1.542-3), yet Danaus is best known in mythology as the instigator of his daughters’ murder of their bridegrooms, a scene notably depicted in Virgil’s Aeneid on Pallas’ belt, Turnus’ fatal war booty (A. 10.495505). Directly before he makes the libation, Adrastus brings his two nubile daughters into the hall to meet their future husbands (Theb. 1. 533-9); the reference to Danaus is prescient with the evil these marriages will bring. The beautiful, precious patera is paradoxically implicated in the nexus of evil and tragic pathos that constitutes the Thebaid; Adrastus and his family, future and present, look at the bowl and Medusa’s head at their peril.

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3. Boundaries The initial Virgilian paradigm of a cheerful scene of kindly hospitality from a benevolent, ageing king is made sombre and foreboding with the appearance of the bowl. Indeed, while Adrastus uses the patera as a sacred object and status-item, appropriate to display to his new guests and to make offering to Argos’ patron deity, we are not invited to see the reactions of Adrastus’ guests to this precious work of art; rather, the poet describes the bowl for us his readers who, knowing the Theban myth, can see the tragic irony of its decoration in the poet’s sombre rewritings of familiar mythological scenes. The bowl symbolises Statius, pessimistic inflection of heroic myth, for it is marked with a figure whom Lucan had made a symbol of civil war. Overall, therefore, the first ecphrasis has a proleptic function, while the bowl itself is emblematic of Statius’ oxymoronic epic poetics: it is a beautiful, sacred and precious object inscribed with scenes of both horror and tragedy; it carries a long lineage but foreshadows early death; it is inscribed with a terrifying figure of deathly power, a figure which is barely contained by the bounds of art. The scenes on the patera are seemingly unrelated to one another; but they relate at a deeper level to the narrative strategies and preoccupations of the poem. They demonstrate Statius’ debt to his epic predecessors, Virgil, Ovid and Lucan, but also his innovative approach to his inherited genre. There is only one ecphrasis of a bowl of any sort in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and that is of the crater, mixing bowl, which king Anius of Delos gives Aeneas as a gift (Met. 13.681-701). Curiously, it is decorated with a Theban narrative – we are told it was originally sent as a gift from Thebes (Met. 13.681-4) – and represents a return to Ovid’s fascination with Thebes that is demonstrated in Books 3-6 of the Metamorphoses. In this later book, the bowl tells through its decoration a long, obscure narrative (longo  argumento, Met. 13.684) concerning the Coronides, daughters of Orion. The bowl first shows funeral pyres outside Thebes, grieving mothers, a destroyed landscape. Yet the two young women, the Coronides, act jointly in their self-sacrifice to save Thebes. Their metamorphosis at their funeral pyre into geminos  iuuenes (twin youths, 697-8), is a reminder of the nefarious Theban brothers. But the miracle of the Coronides brings about renewal of the Theban dynasty, rather than continuing anger and division as with the split flame of the pyre of Eteocles and Polynices (Theb. 12.429-32).155 The narrative of the Coronides is thus a positive inversion of the more famous epic story. Ovid’s bowl signifies his fascination with the metamorphic power of art and poetry to contain horror and transmute it into something beautiful and precious, to be valued and admired. This positive effect is lacking in Adrastus’ bowl, where the metamorphic power of art is challenged by the immanent powers of Medusa’s head. The potentially paralysing effect of her gaze promises to block change and perpetuate the cycle of nefas. Art here cannot transmute or cancel the active and symbolic power of Medusa’s gaze.

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples The image of Medusa on Adrastus’ patera also invites an uncanny connection with Silu.1.1, the poem on Domitian’s equestrian statue. Here Statius refers to the aegis of Minerva, her Gorgon-decorated shield. The coin image of the equestrian statue shows a very small aegis beneath the hooves of the horse; in Statius’ poem, however, the figure of Domitian is represented as holding a statue of Minerva, his special divine patron who, in turn, displays the ‘severed head’ of Medusa (1.1.37-9):156 dextra uetat pugnas; laeuam Tritonia uirgo non grauat et sectae praetendit colla Medusae, ceu stimulis accendit equum. Your right hand forbids war; the Tritonian virgin does not weigh down your left hand as she stretches out the neck of the decapitated Medusa, as if to spur the horse.

The two facets of imperial power, peace-making and military action, are represented here through the contrasting gestures of the emperor’s left and right hands, but the syntactic emphasis falls on the left, which is holding the statue of Minerva wearing the aegis with Medusa’s head.157 The expression ceu stimulis accendit equum suggests that even as a work of art, and even as a disembodied head, Medusa retains her terrible power. Here, perversely, that power is not to turn to stone, but almost to animate the bronze horse, to break the boundaries of art and turn it into an object of terror (1.1.46-55). Unlike Adrastus, who uses the bowl in a sacral context, Domitian holds out the Medusa head while in battle guise, like Perseus. But the statue stands in the Roman forum; those who gaze upon Medusa’s head are not foreign enemies but Roman citizens. The first poem and first ecphrasis of the Siluae, and the first book and first ecphrasis of the Thebaid, are thus connected through Medusa’s severed head. Critics have recently read Silu. 1.1 as an ideological expression of Flavian dedication to peace-making through military triumph.158 But Medusa’s head, which seems to enflame the horse, is a sign of the generic transgressiveness of an occasional poem that refers to martial themes and departs from the neoteric descriptive tradition by describing immensity. It is also a sign of the potential for transgression and violence at the heart of any great imperial power. When Theseus rushes to war against Creon, Minerva rouses Medusa with her Libyan terrors, and her deadly snakes stand erect (Theb. 12.606-9). The shadow of Thebes colours the encomium of Domitian’s equestrian statue. One further example foregrounds the importance of ecphrasis in demonstrating the unconventional character of Statius’ Thebaid in method and theme, namely a curious incident involving a shield, the ecphrastic object par excellence since Homer’s description of the shield of Achilles (Il. 18.478-608). This occurs shortly before the second ecphrasis of the poem,

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3. Boundaries Argia’s necklace (Theb. 2.265-96), again an unusual object for epic description. As the two brides of Polynices and Tydeus approach the temple of Pallas Athena on their wedding day, a bronze shield falls from the very top of the roof, extinguishing the bridal torches, an evil omen (2.256-60): celsam subeuntibus arcem in gradibus summi delapsus culmine templi, Arcados Euhippi spolium, cadit aereus orbis, praemissasque faces, festum nubentibus ignem, obruit. As they approach the lofty citadel and climb the steps, down from the very top of the temple roof fell a bronze shield, the war booty of Arcadian Euhippus, and it extinguished the heralding torches and the festal fire of the wedding procession.

The shield is briefly identified as war booty taken from the Arcadian Euhippus (Arcados Euhippi spolium, 258). Elsewhere in the Thebaid ‘Arcadian’ occurs in initial line position to refer to Parthenopaeus, the youngest of the Theban seven; his tragic early death is singled out for final mention at the end of the poem with the haunting triple repeated lament (at line start) of Arcada (12.805-7). The name Euhippus, moreover, is reminiscent of Hippomedon, another of the seven against Thebes. The fall of this shield is indeed an unlucky omen which comments not only on these blighted marriages and the fatal course of the war, but also on the approaching tragedy of destroyed young lives. Conventionally the epic warrior takes up a shield, a gesture of heroic glory. Here the fall of the shield suggests the opposite, a war without glory conventionally understood. Its fall is also a witty metaliterary act. The sound and sight of war preface a wedding, a violation of generic and cultural boundaries; furthermore the incident introduces five lines later the unconventional ecphrasis of a woman’s piece of jewellery instead of the traditional shield expected of heroic epic. The intricate description of Argia’s necklace (Theb. 2.265-96) has been well discussed by McNelis, who shows how this necklace, crafted from the poisons of Hell, foreshadows and indeed stimulates the destruction of the Theban house through familial hatred, while also symbolising the epic’s complex engagement with Callimachean themes.159 Echoing the poet’s refusal to tell the whole of Theban history (longa retro series, 1.7), the necklace, introduced with the comment longa est series (2.267), alludes to the past through its genealogy and symbolic associations; series means not only a series of events, but the series of jewels strung on the necklace. A major ecphrasis devoted to a necklace, a woman’s adornment, is surprising in an epic, particularly one which emphasises the particular horror of civil war. But again this unusual ecphrasis can be seen as part of Statius’ deviant poetics, following his deviant theme; perhaps too it is not

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples so surprising in retrospect for an epic which gives a major role to women. This snake-like necklace moreover is crafted not as a display piece of artistic pride but out of anger and jealousy by Hephaestus, the maker of Achilles’ and Aeneas’ glorious shields; it is an accursed object that symbolises the evil, interfamilial passions that drive the narrative. Even more overtly than on Adrastus’ bowl, the figures of this ecphrasis are actively alive and poisonous; the first items strung on the necklace are Gorgon’s eyes (Gorgoneosque orbes, Theb. 2.278).160 Orbis, literally a circle, is the perfect symbol of circumscription; yet these orbs have the power, according to Lucan, to threaten sky and sea with strange paralysis, and cover the earth with stone (Luc. 9.647-8), thus disrupting the orderly workings of the cosmos. Even when Medusa’s head is severed, her eyes, the source of her power, remain lethal (Luc. 9.680): quantumque oculos effundere mortis (how much death her eyes stream forth). Orbis too is the word that describes the shield which crashes to the ground before the Argive maidens’ feet and extinguishes the wedding torches (Theb. 2.258); the Gorgon’s orbes, the first items on the necklace, point to the poet’s substitution of the even more lethal necklace for a shield at the poem’s beginning. Indeed, the eyes that were reflected on Perseus’ shield in Ovid and Lucan now possess their own independent killing power on the necklace and on Adrastus’ patera, defying artistic boundaries. The first two descriptions of the Thebaid are thus linked through the Gorgon’s deadly gaze. Proleptic and metapoetic in function, they acknowledge the fragility of art, including the poet’s art, before the powers of evil that transgress the bounds of space and time, life and death. Through Medusa, moreover, the worlds of the Thebaid and of the Siluae overlap. Her dramatic appearance in Silu. 1.1 as a special symbol of Domitian, a disturbing consequence of his close association with Minerva, points to boundaries and transgression as a unifying concern of all Statius’ works that has deep political, contemporary relevance. This chapter began with a look at the imperial vision of the world as limitless in resources, but capable of being nonetheless regulated and civilised by the city of Rome, so that orbis and urbs became one. But the orbes of the Gorgon, like Vergil’s Furor (A. 1.294-6), symbolize the everpresent threat to that expansive ideal of imperial order and containment.

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4

Statius Auctor In the Middle Ages Statius was regarded as an auctor, a word that is better translated as ‘authority’ rather than simply ‘author’. As Minnis explains, ‘in a literary context the term auctor denoted someone who was at once a writer and an authority, someone not merely to be read but also to be respected and believed’.1 Both the Thebaid and the Achilleid were important didactic texts in the medieval classroom, teaching proper codes of masculine behaviour to future monks, scholars, politicians and knights, among other callings. These seeds of the development of Statius into an important teacher and purveyor of wisdom for later ages are already to be found in his poems themselves, where education is an important theme. With his interest in education Statius reflects both his own background as son of a grammarian (grammaticus), and contemporary social preoccupations of the late first century AD, prominently expressed in the educational writings of Quintilian and Plutarch.2 In a socially aggressive, competitive society that depended heavily on self-presentation, education sought to provide secure guidelines for successful elite masculinity.3 The publication in the early 90s of Quintilian’s Institutio, his twelve-book treatise for the training of the perfect orator, illustrates current debates about the role and nature of education in imperial Roman thought. Quintilian’s work, dedicated to the politician Vitorius Marcellus (Inst. 1 pr. 6), also the dedicatee of Statius’ fourth book of Siluae, was innovative in stressing the importance of early education and in following the pupil from birth to maturity. Education was an important aspect of Hellenism that guided the Italian elite to become citizens and leaders of the world, but Quintilian gave it a Roman stamp.4 Education involved learning correct gestures and physical self-presentation as well as correct forms of speech; it was thus closely implicated with contemporary Roman ideas of public masculinity, which involved performance and display. Learning how to be an elite male in pluralistic Roman society meant being trained in the correct modes of dress and gesture as well as speech; in other words, elite masculinity was systematically learned at the nurse’s knee both through the inculcation of manly speech and exempla, and through habitual performance of male behaviours. The heavily gendered language of rhetoric employed by Quintilian was specifically geared to avoid, in a changing, multicultural world, the dangerous, negative aspects of Hellenism, effeminacy and moral decadence. In Roman society, as generally, the assumption of gender roles was exclusionary;

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples thus to be a ‘normative’ Roman male meant that opposite characteristics had to be repudiated.5 The prescriptive polarities of Roman gendered educational discourse did not take into account variability in the production of performance and identity. But, as Barchiesi has argued, the elite male of imperial society had in reality to be flexible, for the existence of a court demanded different standards of behaviour from those inculcated by military training.6 For the traditionalists, however, in an age of anxiety about changing ideas of what it meant to be ‘Roman’ and male, the boundaries of gender had to be safeguarded all the more rigorously. Education of youth from an early age provided one important means. In this chapter I shall explore how Statius’ poetry reflects contemporary interest in the social and moral purposes of education. Keith has shown how epic, and particularly Virgil’s Aeneid, was crucial in a young man’s education not only for its superb Latinity but also for its inculcation of masculine values and virtues through the ‘deeds of great men’.7 Statius’ two epics also, I shall argue, have an exemplary function, although they both challenge traditional masculine norms and concern the evil or transgressive deeds of ‘great men’. Achilles is a key figure in this regard, and much of this chapter will be focused on his representation in Statius’ Siluae and Achilleid. But I shall conclude by arguing that Statius also presents the Thebaid as a didactic, exemplary text. The discourse of education is an important strategy of Statius’ poetic and generic selfdefinition and authority, and, as I shall discuss in later parts of this chapter, a key part of his posthumous reputation through the Middle Ages and beyond. I shall begin with the Siluae, and with the poem (5.3) in which Statius honours his father, a distinguished grammaticus, a professional teacher of correct speech imparted through the study and interpretation of literature, poetry in particular (Quint. Inst. 1.4.2-3).8 The grammaticus was responsible for the stage of a child’s education after the fundamentals of reading and writing had been learned (Quint. Inst. 1.4.1), that is, when the pupil was probably in his early teens. As Cribiore points out, only a select number of students reached the grammaticus and even fewer, such as those pursuing a career in law or administration, continued with the rhetor for formal training in oratory, probably in their mid-teens.9 As she comments, ‘in the class of a grammarian, a student acquired the mental fitness and the sense of identity required to be recognised as a person of culture’.10 The grammaticus generally taught a fairly restricted, canonical set of texts aimed at the social elite, or those aiming to be part of that elite, if they could afford the school fees; education was largely an agent of social, cultural and political continuity.11 Although many grammatici were poorly paid and undistinguished, Statius’ grammaticus father was an exception.12 He attracted students from all over Campania (Silu. 5.3.146-75) and, on the strength of that success, later moved to Rome to teach in aristocratic circles, including the

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4. Statius Auctor imperial court (176-94).13 For Statius, education therefore had a highly personal dimension that compensated for his lack of noble birth. In Silu. 5.3 he draws on his parent’s authority to confer authority on his own self-definition as a leading poet of the day.14 His father is presented as a moral as well as literary authority and guide (5.3.146-51): hinc tibi uota patrum credi generosaque pubes te monitore regi, mores et facta priorum discere, quis casus Troiae, quam tardus Ulixes, quantus equum pugnasque uirum decurrere uersu Maeonides quantumque pios ditarit agrestes Ascraeus  Then fathers’ hopes were entrusted to you and nobly born youths were governed under your guidance, as they learned the character and deeds of men of old: what fate befell Troy, how slowly Ulysses [returned home], the greatness with which Homer ran in verse through the fights of horses and men, and how much Hesiod endowed pious farmers 

Statius’ father taught correct speech through the inculcation of exemplary masculine codes of behaviour and civic values, mores et facta priorum. Archaic poetry – Homer and Hesiod – are the first items on his curriculum.15 Within this context the noun monitor (advisor, counsellor) puts Statius senior in a paternal role; fathers entrust their children to him to teach the appropriate mores of successful masculinity. In Silu. 5.3 poetry is the basis on which Statius’ grammaticus father fashioned model citizens. His pedagogical approach is in line with that of Quintilian, who argued that the study of poetry from an early age was essential for the training of children, although he cautions that the poetic texts read should be uplifting and morally improving; in typically gendered language (Inst. 1.8.5), he argues that the mind should ‘rise’ (adsurgat) by the sublimity of epic song. Quintilian’s moralistic approach to education, so Winterbottom suggests, was influenced by the sometimes pernicious use to which rhetoric was put in his age; his ideal of the orator as uir bonus dicendi peritus (a good man skilled in public speaking, Inst. 12.1.1) is set up against the common figure of the delator (informer).16 Quintilian’s Greek contemporary Plutarch (AD c. 40-c. 120) also argues for the moral value of education in his treatise ‘How the Young Man Should Study Poetry’ (Mor. 14d-37b). But Plutarch differs in his aims, for he wishes to turn young men to philosophy. Moreover, he argues that examples of bad men and wrongful deeds in poetry are also useful because they teach young readers to discriminate between good and evil. In Silu. 5.3 the reference to the fall of Troy and the delay of Ulysses (148) suggests that this too was essentially the father’s approach, to teach from heroes’ mistakes as well as from their great deeds. As McNelis observes, in the imperial period ‘the study of grammar was  intrinsically linked with social patterns, marking the haves from the

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples have-nots’.17 The first pupils of Statius’ father were nobly-born youths (generosaque pubes, 5.3.146), who flocked from all over southern Italy to attend his classes (162-71). These students were probably ambitious provincials, seeking particular access to the intellectual currency of elite Romans through the knowledge of Greek. Moral, exemplary, paternalistic, the teaching of Statius senior, whether in Naples or later in Rome, was in line with Roman educational ideals and aimed at showing students how to follow in the footsteps of their ancestors (176-7) and become leaders at home and abroad (185-90). Although Statius mentions that in Rome his father also gave instruction in Roman religious knowledge (5.3.178-84), there is no reason to suppose that he did not also continue with his Greek literary curriculum, particularly as he was teaching the elite of the imperial court.18 The successful career of this Greek professional poet and Neapolitan grammaticus, which was probably capped by his employment in the imperial household to tutor Domitian (5.3.178-80),19 is represented as a harmonious fusion between Greek and Roman in the matter of education. Yet, apart from Homer and the didactic poets, the curriculum that Statius claims his father offers is rather unconventional and abstruse, concluding with the Hellenistic poets Lycophron and Corinna (157-8). McNelis has argued that all these poets were studied by grammarians and that knowledge of them would have given young men an edge in competitive imperial society.20 Grammatici in Roman society moreover generally had low status; Statius elevates his father against the norm.21 Specifically, he seems to counter Seneca, who in Ep. 88 attacked the grammaticus for attempting to teach ethics through the study of poetry. The moralising approach to Homer in particular comes under attack at the start of the letter (Ep. 88.5); according to Seneca, the grammatici force Homer into incompatible philosophical positions. Statius on the other hand emphasises his father’s role as a guide to character, and in his description of his father’s curriculum accords Homer more space than the other poets (14850). The curriculum is also that of a successful poet, not of the journeyman grammarian defined by Seneca. Statius’ father was a prize-winning Greek professional poet who also earned some success at Rome with his poem on the civil war of AD 69 (5.3.195-204); at the time of his death he was planning a poem on the eruption of Vesuvius (5.3.205-8).22 Thus the challenging list of poetic texts taught by Statius senior promotes his son, the epic poet, as the most prominent beneficiary of his father’s training. Statius advertises the richness of his own poetic education and establishes his father’s poetics as foundational for his own. That education was the path to social advancement in this period is shown by the account Statius gives in Silu. 2.1 of the schooling of the foster son of Atedius Melior, a wealthy Roman patron of Statius and the dedicatee of Book 2 of the Siluae. The birth parents of the foster son, Glaucias, were slaves who were subsequently freed to ensure the child’s free status

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4. Statius Auctor (2.1.77-8);23 of exceptional promise, the boy died at the age of 12. Since Melior was rich, he had been able to afford to improve his foster son’s social status and prospects by giving him a first-rate education. In conformity with the traditional curriculum of the grammaticus, Glaucias studied Menander and Homer, whom he recited with great eloquence (113-19);24 he also underwent physical training in wrestling (110-13). The beautiful and talented Glaucias was a form of emotional and cultural capital for Melior, to be sure, and his talents are recounted with great pathos. At the same time the education of this former slave points to a flexibility in social opportunities greater than the elitist writings of Quintilian or Plutarch seem to allow.25 Melior himself offers a more flexible model of masculinity than we find also in the writings of Seneca, for instance. When the child dies, Melior exceeds the lamentation of women (2.1.23), thus running counter to Roman gendered notions of manly propriety in grief and also to the Stoic tradition, which laid heavy emphasis on the need for restraint.26 And his foster son, despite his servile origins, amazes his teachers and Melior with his eloquent recitations of Menander and Homer, thus enacting elitism (2.1.113-19). An instructive comparison with Glaucias’ education in Silu. 2.1 can be made with Silu. 5.2, a poem addressed to the 16-year-old Crispinus who, unlike Glaucias, came from a distinguished line of ancestors (15-28) but was socially disadvantaged by the loss of his father at an early age (64-7), and of his mother on criminal charges (75-97).27 Both poems, the one to the bereaved father (2.1) and the other to the bereaved son (5.2), use a frequent encomiastic strategy in Statius’ Siluae, the ‘topos of outdoing’ whereby through mythological comparison the person praised, who is living in the present, is elevated over legendary figures of similar talents.28 Silu. 5.2 is framed in largely didactic terms and provides the young man with positive exemplars for a political career by mingling living role models with the mythological fathers and teachers of classical epic, among them Aeneas and Ascanius (5.2.51-60; 108-10; 118-20) and Phoenix and Pyrrhus, Achilles’ son (150-1); Statius himself takes on the role of teacher here.29 Glaucias is likewise compared to famous mythological foster children such as Achilles, as his foster father Melior is compared to Achilles’ famous foster fathers Chiron (2.1.88-9) and Phoenix (2.1.90-1). In 2.1 such comparisons elevate the foster father as well as the foster son to the point, as Bernstein comments, that real social distinctions such as Glaucias’ servile origins diminish in importance.30 In both poems positive exemplars of teachers and pupils from legend and myth obviate social obstacles to a young man’s career, such as class or, in the case of Crispinus, the blemish on his family reputation. Education is represented as the decisive factor in overcoming social discrimination. The appearance of Achilles in 2.1 as the foster son of Chiron points to the importance of this pupil/teacher pair in ancient educational thought. The centaur Chiron was the archetypal teacher, and his training of Achil-

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples les in the physical and liberal arts provided a persistent core model for the education of the young.31 As early as the Iliad Chiron appears briefly teaching the arts of medicine to Achilles (Il. 11.831-2), although it is Phoenix who cares for the infant Achilles (Il. 9.485-91).32 Pindar provides the first literary attestation of Chiron’s role as the appointed teacher of Achilles (Nem. 3.43-52). The stay on Scyros, which Statius makes crucial to Achilles’ social development, was a fairly late development of the myth.33 It was Statius’ Achilleid that, as far as we know, first combined the two youthful episodes in Achilles’ life – his stay with Chiron and his stay on Scyros – into a coherent narrative focused on the youthful hero’s education before he went to Troy.34 In the roughly contemporary educational treatise ‘How the Young Man Should Study Poetry’ (Mor. 14d-37b), Plutarch singles out Achilles as a useful character for the moral study of literature because of the blatant contradictions in his character, angry but also capable of restraint.35 Plutarch responds here to Plato’s denigration of Achilles for the moral flaws that made him a poor model for youth (Rep. 391-3). On the contrary, for Plutarch, since Achilles was angry by nature, an aspect of his virility (Plut. Mor. 31a), he could demonstrate the positive effects of education. For example, Plutarch criticises Achilles’ insulting words to Agamemnon (Il. 1.223-44) for being spoken in anger (Mor. 19c); on the other hand, later in the treatise Achilles appears as a wise counsellor, praised for his considered, restrained speech to Agamemnon, and for his skill in medicine, which gives him knowledge of how to deal with the plague (Mor. 26c-d). In this section Plutarch juxtaposes examples of Achilles’ admirable and reprehensible behaviour, showing the hero engaged in a struggle to contain his anger. Phoenix, his carer in the Iliad, helps Achilles understand why anger is wrong, as it is ungoverned by reason and causes wild actions (26d-27a). Plutarch’s essay is framed as a missive to a friend with a young son of the same age as Plutarch’s own son (15a); its educational goals therefore are aimed at the male elite. The Achilles who appears here is the heroic warrior, not the cross-dressing youth of indeterminate gender we find in the Achilleid. Whereas for Plutarch the mature Achilles is interesting because of his mixed character, the tensions in the character of Statius’ youthful Achilles rest on his ‘mixed’ or ambiguous sexuality, not his anger. A good part of the drama of the Achilleid is generated by the process of the hero’s learning how to negotiate competing loyalties, for instance between his mother and the mother of his child, between personal desire and public duty – an important aspect of his social and moral education. In Statius, as in Quintilian, the idea of education is underwritten by ideas about gender and the relative importance of nature versus nurture in a young person’s development. Achilles’ gendered, ephebic ambiguity, rather than his anger – the feature of his character emphasised by Homer and Plutarch – is closely implicated with his education both on Chiron’s cave and on Scyros. The sexual ambiguity of Achilles and his importance as a possible

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4. Statius Auctor educational model are features of the hero that occur in the Siluae as well as in the Achilleid. Although we do not know the date of Silu. 5.3 relative to the composition of the Achilleid, it was probably earlier; 36 Chiron and Achilles feature briefly as paradigms of the teacher/student relationship in anticipation of their role in the Achilleid. In 5.3 Statius applies the topos of ‘outdoing’ to his own father who, undoubtedly with some humour, is praised as greater than the famous teachers of old, in particular Chiron (193-4): quique tubas acres lituosque audire uolentem / Aeaciden alio frangebat carmine Chiron (Chiron, who tried to break with a different song the spirit of Achilles when he was wishing to hear the harsh trumpets and curved war-horns). Statius refers here to Achilles’ notorious reluctance to concentrate on his lessons (Ov. Ars 1.11-16); in the Achilleid Chiron is ready to deliver him to Thetis as he has become hard to govern (Ach. 1.147-58). But what kind of poetry did Chiron try to teach the young Achilles? Alio  carmine (with a different song) is interestingly vague. And what might this brief reference in Silu. 5.3 indicate about the larger role Achilles plays in the flexible nexus of genre and gender that constitutes the Achilleid? From early on skill in music was associated with Achilles; in the Iliad he is shown playing the lyre (Il. 9.186-9), though the context is not one of tutelage.37 Later, music becomes a central part of Chiron’s curriculum. Trimble notes that in the visual arts, scenes of Chiron teaching Achilles how to play the lyre are first attested in the first century BC and become most numerous in the first century AD.38 Music and education thus were important aspects of the definition of Achilles in the period in which Statius wrote the Achilleid. Yet Roman literature portrays Achilles as having a rather ambiguous attitude towards music. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Achilles, unlike his Homeric prototype, refuses to sing or play music; although his theme is essentially the same as at Iliad 9.189, kl2a ¢ndrîn (the deeds of heroes), he speaks only of battles and his opponents (Met. 12.157-63). He is overdetermined here as an epic warrior, arrogant and with limited social skills (Met. 12.162-3): quid enim loqueretur Achilles? / aut quid apud magnum potius loquerentur Achillem? (for what else could Achilles talk about, or rather, what else could they talk about in his presence?). Ovid’s humorous and ironic portrayal of the mature Achilles follows his youthful representation at the start of the Ars Amatoria (1.11-18) where he learns music only under duress, and is compared to Cupid as a ‘savage child’ (saeuus  puer, Ars 1.18) who has to be brought under control by forceful means. Ovid’s Achilles, like Homer’s, is known for his anger (iratum  Achillem, Am. 2.18.1), but Ovid here attempts to make him elegiac. Ovid’s first book of the Ars Amatoria forms an important precedent for Statius’ Achilleid, for it is bookended by Chiron’s education of Achilles and by Achilles’ rape of Deidamia on Scyros. Moreover, as in Silu. 5.3, Chiron is represented as a teacher of non-epic poetry who is paradoxically violent in his methods (Ars 1.11-14):

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples Phillyrides puerum cithara perfecit Achillem atque animos placida contudit arte feros. qui totiens socios, totiens exterruit hostes, creditur annosum pertimuisse senem. Chiron made the young Achilles accomplished in the lyre and he hammered his wild spirits with his peaceful art. He who so many times terrified his friends, so many times his enemies, is believed to have feared an old man well on in years.

Homer represents Achilles singing heroic themes, but placida arte suggests a different type of song that quells rather than rouses the child’s wild spirits. In Silius’ Punica, Achilles’ training in the lyre is part of his moral education, for music taught him to quell the passions (Sil. 11.449-52). Here, although Chiron’s lyre is a powerful instrument that could ‘calm the wrath of the sea or even of Hell’, his teaching methods are gentle; his lyre ‘shaped’ (formabat, Sil. 11.449), not ‘crushed’, the spirit of great Achilles’ (11.449-50).39 In the Ars Amatoria the same essential double paradox occurs as in Silu. 5.3; to teach a peaceful art Chiron resorts to harsh teaching methods such that even as a great warrior Achilles feared his old teacher. If anything, Ovid’s contudit is even harsher than Statius’ frangebat, for it means literally ‘pound to bits’ and metaphorically ‘completely crush’ or ‘subdue’, and the perfect tense, as opposed to the imperfect, suggests success. Yet this is accomplished by teaching the ‘peaceful art’ of music! Statius’ alio carmine corresponds to Ovid’s placida arte, for it is set in contrast to trumpets and war horns, the sounds of epic.40 In Book 1 of the Achilleid Achilles displays his skills in both kinds of poetry by singing on a variety of themes to the accompaniment of the lyre (Ach. 1.188-94). He begins, as he does in the Iliad, with heroic deeds, immania laudum / semina (the mighty seeds of glory, Ach. 1.188-9), but he ends with a complimentary reference to his own parents’ wedding (Ach. 193-4) that is a sly allusion to Catullus 64.41 Statius’ Achilles thus differs here from the Achilles of his most immediate precedent, Seneca, who in the Troades makes Chiron whet Achilles’ appetite for war by teaching him only epic songs of war (830-5). Already in the Siluae, the Achilles who learns ‘another style of song’ hints at the more complex, more humane Achilles that we find in the Achilleid.42 But in the context of praise for Statius’ father, Silu. 5.3 may also offer a witty critique of Chiron’s teaching methods (compared to those of Statius senior). Quintilian for instance cautions against extreme severity with the very young (Inst. 1.1.20; 2.2.1-8); if pupils are correctly taught, they love and revere their teacher (Inst. 2.2.8).43 Statius senior ‘fashions’ (fingere, 5.3.191) the hearts of his youthful charges, a verb that suggests both artistry and gentle care. On the one hand Chiron’s methods are harsh; on the other hand they are in danger of making Achilles too soft, for frangere

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4. Statius Auctor has both a rhetorical and sexual sense, ‘to weaken’ and ‘to emasculate’ (OLD 8). When Thetis hands the disguised Achilles over to King Lycomedes on Scyros, she cunningly passes him off as Achilles’ twin sister, and asks that his tomboy nature be ‘broken’ (Ach. 1.355-6): haec calathos et sacra ferat; tu frange regendo / indocilem sexuque tene (let her carry wool and sacred objects; you, break her unruly character by discipline and keep her in her sex), that is, Thetis is asking the king in her coded language to make Achilles a girl. The violence implied by frangere suggests that Thetis is playing a dangerous game with the not yet fully formed sexual identity of her son. The problem of finding a correct balance in education between gender extremes is again shown by Quintilian, who warns that being too indulgent to a pupil destroys his virility (Inst. 1.2.6): mollis illa educatio, quam indulgentiam uocamus, neruos omnis mentis et corporis frangit (that soft way of raising children, which we call indulgence, breaks all the sinews of mind and body); and he discusses how easily the Achillean educational paradigm, in particular the importance it gives to music, could be corrupted by effeminacy (Inst. 1.10.30-1).44 Silius uses frangere in a somewhat similar way to Statius when he describes the fatal softening of Hannibal’s men as they listen to the music of the Campanian bard Teuthras (Sil. 11.481-2): sic tunc Pierius bellis durata uirorum / pectora Castalio frangebat carmine Teuthras (thus with his divinely inspired song Teuthras, the singer of the Muses, broke the men’s hearts that had been hardened in war).45 In Silu. 5.3 frangebat, with its paradoxical associations of violence and softness, hints that Achilles is a hero particularly prone to gender instability; it also anticipates his malleability in the Achilleid as a paradigm for talking about education and genre. In elevating his father as educator over Chiron, Statius wittily suggests that the Centaur’s teaching methods had the potential both to hinder the development of Achilles’ heroic masculine identity, but also to introduce him, through other forms of poetry, to alternative ways of being. Indeed, the rather abstruse expression alio carmine could categorise the generically elusive Achilleid which incorporates elegiac themes and tropes and plays with the opposing ideas of hybridity and essentialism, erecting binary distinctions only to challenge them.46 These two lines in Silu. 5.3 thus suggest the poet’s interest in the young Achilles as a particularly striking instance of the ephebic youth whose gendered ambiguity provides rich material for generic and psychological exploitation, tacitly underwritten by the contrast with the adult, Homeric hero of the Trojan war. Not surprisingly therefore, education and gender are central to what exists of Statius’ final epic, the Achilleid. Here the scope of Achilles’ education is broadened from Chiron’s tutelage to include his stay on Scyros and his acculturation there to a peaceful, civilised society, but also his introduction to male, martial society.47 In his transgression of social and gender norms as wild boy turned girl turned warrior, Statius’ Achilles

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples participates in the central imperial debate about what constituted the proper education for an elite male. Furthermore, in the central episode on Scyros in particular, Statius’ Achilles raises questions of the relative importance of nature versus nurture in the upbringing of children, and the ‘naturalness’ of gender distinctions.48 These questions are central to Quintilian’s ideas about education and are underwritten by the implicit assumption that gender is largely a social construction expressed and achieved through language and performance; masculinity therefore has to be learned from infancy.49 Statius’ poem on the other hand teasingly plays with the idea of male acculturation and the degree to which masculine identity is acquired or innate. His Achilles resembles a particular type of young male found in Statius’ poetry, the ephebe; in the Thebaid the most notable example is Parthenopaeus whose appearance, like Achilles’ (Ach. 1.159-66), is ambiguous, both charmingly beautiful and bellicose (Theb. 6.561-76).50 But whereas Parthenopaeus is shown as flagrantly disobedient to his mother, for he has run off to war and is indifferent to sexual attraction, Achilles by contrast obeys his mother and enhances his feminine appearance due, paradoxically, to masculine desire – he falls in love. I have already discussed a number of aspects of the Achilleid in the previous chapter, so my focus here will be on Achilles’ education in feminine ways by his mother, the goddess Thetis, who succeeds Chiron as the boy’s instructor in this poem. As Heslin points out, Thetis gives Achilles ‘the imaginary inverse of a Roman education, where his natural virtues are to be hidden rather than enhanced’.51 When Thetis puts women’s clothing on Achilles, and teaches him how to move and talk as a young woman, she constructs his gender as female. She is described as ‘softening’ him (mollit, Ach. 1.326), an idea that is reinforced by the concluding simile comparing her to an artist working in wax (1.332-4): qualiter artifici uicturae pollice cerae accipiunt formas ignemque manumque sequuntur, talis erat diuae natum mutantis imago. As wax about to come to life under the artist’s thumb takes shape and follows fire and hand, such was the image made by the goddess as she transformed her son.

The comparison of a goddess’s enhancement of her hero to the work of an artist goes back to Homer (Od. 6.229-35; 23.155-62) and was imitated by Virgil who, unlike Homer, focused entirely on artistic comparanda.52 Venus makes Aeneas dazzlingly handsome for Dido; she is like a carver in ivory, or a jeweller surrounding silver or marble with gold (A. 1.588-93). But whereas Aeneas’ natural assets are enhanced by his mother, Thetis as artist subdues those of her son. Wax moreover is a soft and malleable

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4. Statius Auctor substance; it suggests that Achilles’ character is not yet fully developed. Wax is also the material from which ancestral portrait busts, the imagines, were made; indeed cerae is a poetic term for the portrait busts themselves (OLD 5). As if to allude to the connection, the word imago (334) concludes the simile. Thetis’ shaping of Achilles is a travesty of the traditional Roman model of education transmitted from one’s ancestors. Imagines represent the old, the masculine, and the exemplary; Thetis makes something new and feminine. But the artistry involved suggests that, pace Heslin, there is also value in Achilles’ transformation. Like the poet, Thetis can change (mutantis, 334) Achilles and invite new perspectives on him. Moreover, to learn proper social behaviour Achilles has to become ‘the other’ by impersonating a woman. However, the artistic simile also points to the constructedness of Achilles’ new image. Ulysses and the Greeks arrive on Scyros in an attempt to uncover Achilles’ disguise and lure him to the war at Troy. As Trimble points out, Achilles’ sight of the weapons that Ulysses cunningly places amongst the gifts for the women of the palace provokes a physical reaction that swiftly reverses Thetis’ moulding (Ach. 1.855-6): infremuit torsitque genas, et fronte relicta /surrexere comae (he roared, he screwed up his face, his hair rose up from his forehead and stood on end).53 Given the right martial prompts, quickly gone are the female accoutrements of soft voice, gentle face, groomed hair.54 His physical reactions are like a lion’s: not only does he roar, but the standing of hair on end was understood to be a sign of a lion’s anger (Virg. A. 10.726).55 A striking simile comparing Achilles to a tamed lion (1.858-63) that turns against its trainer at the first flash of steel stresses the visceral nature of Achilles’ reaction, the outing of his ‘essential’ male nature and its dangerous potential for savagery.56 But, without the right prompts, to what extent would Achilles’ martial proclivities have remained hidden? Was his ‘civilised’ demeanour simply a veneer? The poem teasingly raises such questions. As we saw in the previous chapter, Achilles does not, like the lion, turn against his hosts but shows what he has learned by way of civil speech in the difficult but persuasive address he makes to Lycomedes, confessing his love of Deidamia and revealing their child (1.889-910). The revelation of Achilles’ masculinity brings about marriage as well as war. Book 1 of the poem shows him torn between the responsibilities of love, marriage and parenting and the demands of a military career. The Achilleid thus destabilises any neat divide between nature and nurture and challenges the idea of orderly, progressive acculturation prescribed by Statius’ educational contemporaries. Moreover, although Ulysses’ guile substantially undoes the ‘teachings’ of Thetis, causing a further shift in the power dynamic between genders, the frequent allusions to Ovid’s Heroides in the Achilleid allow a powerful undercurrent of feminine discourse and values to underpin the poem.57 Deidamia’s speech, cried out as Achilles departs on the Greek ship (1. 931-55), makes a powerful emotive appeal to the importance of personal

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples ties to which Achilles tearfully, if fruitlessly, responds (1.956-60). Even on board ship he wavers in his loyalties as he thinks of the ‘home’ he is leaving behind (2.27-9) until Ulysses once again cunningly intervenes.58 Statius’ poem explores the idea that the attainment of mature masculinity should incorporate to some degree the ‘feminine’. Cross-dressing challenges binary thinking and rigid distinctions between ‘male’ and ‘female’;59 Statius’ epic thus also humorously confronts Roman fears, so prevalent in Quintilian, of the dangers of the feminine. Statius’ Achilles is a figure who playfully challenges rigid stereotypes of masculinity and investigates more flexible models of Roman manhood for contemporary society. In particular, this Achilles challenges the influential Homeric stereotype of Achilles as an impetuous and angry, if brilliant, warrior. Even in Book 2, when he has chosen the path of war, he shows an enlarged understanding of his responsibilities as warrior and leader. He acknowledges his stereotypical wrath when he tells the Greek warriors that he wishes to know the causes of war so that he can work up his anger for it;60 but he adds the significant modifier iustas (iustas  iras, ‘righteous wrath’, Ach. 2.48) which indicates a new, more thoughtful, possibly more principled Achilles. Heslin has argued that Ulysses, not Chiron or Thetis, is the positive role model that can guide Achilles to his destiny and teach him finally how to be a man.61 I have argued here instead that it is precisely by cross-dressing on Scyros that Achilles learns how to be a man and negotiate the conflicting demands imposed by his mother, his wife and his destiny. While his essential warrior nature wins out, he has also become on Scyros a social and moral being. His decision to go to war means personal glory but also personal loss keenly felt – of family as well as his own life. The Scyrian episode, with its acculturation of Achilles to male and female identities, is thus key to his burgeoning human development. As in imperial society, so in the Middle Ages the study of authoritative ‘classics’ in the classroom formed the basis of the educational system.62 By the 12th century the Achilleid and Thebaid had become key texts, for Statius was widely regarded as a teacher of morals to the Roman people, and sometimes as a wise counsellor to Domitian too.63 The common belief that he began his career as a teacher of rhetoric in Toulouse lent didactic purpose and authority to his poetry. (The Siluae with their wealth of personal and local information were not known until their rediscovery in the 15th century.64) The Achilleid in particular had by the 13th century become one of the most popular texts in the medieval classroom. It was often included with the Liber Catonianus, or Dicta Catonis, a collection of six school texts that took its authority from Cato as Roman antiquity’s most prominent ethical didact.65 From early on in the medieval tradition it was understood that Statius’ main motive in writing the Achilleid was educational, to provide lessons for imitation: inde hoc libro puerilis uite instructionem instruit per Achillem a Chirone nutritum (then in this book

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4. Statius Auctor he teaches the education of a child’s life through Achilles’ upbringing by Chiron).66 The Chiron episode was obviously appealing for a classroom; but the medieval interpretation of the poem encompassed the whole of Statius’ account of Achilles’ maturation within a moralising framework. Since Achilles has become a grown man by the end of the extant poem, there was a strong interest in claiming that the poem, having fulfilled its educational goals, was in fact complete. The poem was commonly divided into five short books;67 an additional line was added to many manuscripts to indicate closure, using the metaphor of ‘the ship as poem’ (Theb. 12.809), aura silet puppis curuans68 ad litora uenit (the breeze falls silent and the curving ship reaches shore).69 To have continued the story with Achilles’ anger at Troy would have destroyed the poem’s value as an exemplary educational text.70 Interpretation of the medieval Achilleid was conducted via extensive glosses of ancient origin that not only explicated grammar, vocabulary and classical allusions but also commented on the poem’s themes.71 In addition, the accessus to the poem – partly biographical, partly literary-critical introductions – provide a good idea of medieval readers’ interpretive approaches.72 Above all, the poem is presented as an important educational text for young males, teaching them the Latin language and providing moral guidance. Statius is consistently presented as an important poet/teacher of antiquity, an auctor in the medieval sense of a great and wise authority. Neither gender nor anger was seen as a major issue in the medieval Achilleid. Achilles is reminiscent of a Christian hero who demonstrates that it is possible to stray from the right path and still find redemption. For instance, a 12th-century accessus to the Achilleid now at the Bodleian, Oxford, MS Lincoln College lat. 27, skirts delicately round the issue of gender and stresses the exemplary function of the poem both in its Roman sociopolitical context and in the present. Thus we are told that Statius denied Domitian’s request for a poem about his own deeds, deciding instead to write a morally instructive poem for Roman citizens that would ensure the health of the state, using the example of a great soldier, Achilles (6-13). Later on in this accessus the poem is presented as a collection of moral exempla that teaches male virtue in particular (73-81):73 Ergo et hic liber Statii merito subponitur ethice, id est morali parti. Agit enim de moralibus multipliciter: agit de affectu materne pietatis in Thetide, de magisterio sedule eruditionis in Chirone, de culpando adulterio in raptu Helene, de zelo iuste ultionis in Menelao et Agamemnone, de malo prescriptionis et preceptacionis in Prothesilao milite; de consilio et prudentia in Ulixe, de animositate et fiducia in Diomede, de honore regie mansuetudinis in Licomede, de titulo uerecundie puellaris in Deidamia uirgine, de uirilis animi constantia in iam reperto et mutato Achille.

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples Thus this poem of Statius is deservedly classified as ethical, that is, in the moral category. For it deals with morals in multiple ways: in Thetis it deals with the feeling of maternal devotion, in Chiron with instruction of careful erudition, with the culpable adultery involved in the rape of Helen, with the zeal of just revenge in Menelaus and Agamemnon, with the evil of prescription and haste in the soldier Protesilaus, in Ulysses with counsel and prudence, in Diomedes with spiritedness and loyalty, in Lycomedes with the virtue of regal clemency, in the virgin Deidamia with the attribute of girlish modesty, in Achilles, once he has been discovered and has been transformed, with firmness of manly spirit.

Medieval readings of the Achilleid tended to follow this succinct analysis of the protagonists’ characters. Apart from Protesilaus, criticised perhaps for urging war because he knew he would be the first to earn a glorious death (Ach. 1.494-5), the male heroes come off well in the accessus; Ulysses for instance lacks his customary wiliness. The accessus ends by emphasising the importance of Achilles’ reverse metamorphosis to full manhood. Mutato elides the whole Scyrian episode; only when Achilles embraced a full masculine identity could he exhibit true moral virtue, firmness of purpose and strength of mind. Achilles was an appealing figure for a Christian audience because he provided an example of a man who reached greatness through learning from error how to change. The Lincoln College accessus also applies the supposed moral of the poem to a medieval context by adapting Roman militarism to the Christian imagery of spiritual warfare (39-41): utilitas legentium in hoc opere est ad exemplum et imitationem tanti iuuenis uicium corporis abicere et effeminati cordis habitu conscisso in castris uirtutum fortiter militare. The usefulness for readers in this work is to follow and imitate the example of the great youth by throwing off the vice of the body and, once the habit of an effeminate spirit has been broken, to fight bravely in the camp of virtues.

Here the Roman poem’s play with sexual identity is explained away as a lesson in spiritual weakness and strength: to be truly virtuous and Christian is to renounce wrongful sexual desire and thus become fully male. Achilles foreshadows therefore the Christian, spiritual warrior. This central text of the medieval curriculum taught generations of medieval schoolboys what was generally regarded as proper male conduct and leadership through the representation of the maturation of a great hero who showed human fallibility; greatness was reached through trial and error. It also taught them incidentally what to value in women: the stereotypical virtues of motherly devotion and virginal modesty (Thetis and Deidamia). In the medieval interpretation of the Achilleid, gender instability and the relationship between nature and nurture, themes that are foregrounded in modern discussions of the poem, are not elaborated upon. In

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4. Statius Auctor general in the accessus tradition Achilles’ disguise as a young woman, when mentioned, is interpreted as the youth’s obedience to his mother, not as a matter of unstable identity or of erotic desire.74 Although little is said about Thetis in the Lincoln College accessus, she generally appears in the accessus tradition as an example of the futility of trying to block the fates and prevent the full flowering of Achilles’ heroic genius. The earliest accessus to the Achilleid (the 11th-century Firenze, BML, plut. 24 sin. 12)75 reports a common story that Statius in the guise of a wise counsellor wrote the Achilleid as a result of a debate with Domitian over whether one’s fate can be avoided; the case of Thetis provides the answer (3-7). Achilles’ dilemma of whether to obey his mother or a higher destiny was a theme suitable for boys learning to separate from their mother’s influence and embrace adulthood. Moreover, the medieval emphasis on misguided maternal influence fits in with the powerful medieval tradition of misogyny and largely sidesteps the problematic embrace by Thetis’ son of a gender change. Apart from Achilles’ education by Chiron, which stamped a school curriculum with the authority of antiquity, the inexorability of fate (or of God’s will), a central topos of antiquity and the Middle Ages, provided the dominant moralising approach to the medieval Achilleid.76 In the medieval tradition Achilles is an example of a successful hero who learns how to be great and who serves not only as a spiritual leader but as an inspiring political model of civic and military responsibility for citizens who, it is implied, had become soft (Lincoln College accessus 8-11): arbitrabatur enim utilius fore rei publice alicuius magni et bellicosi uiri facta describere, cuius exemplo ciues Romani prouocarentur ad amorem milicie et usum armorum, sine quibus non potest res publica salua consistere. For he [sc. Statius] thought it more useful for the state to describe the deeds of a great and warlike man, whose example would stir the citizens of Rome to love of war and the use of weapons, without which a state cannot stand secure.

The Homeric warrior seeking individual glory has become a responsible warrior/citizen, leading the state by example in self-defence, not random aggression; Statius is an important intermediary in this transformation of Achilles for he shows Achilles undergoing change, at least in part, into a social, responsible human being. The Middle Ages also read the Thebaid as an educational text, important for its political lessons of governance and dynastic stability, as well as for its style and sententiae.77 This approach again goes back to Statius, who asserts the educational value of his Thebaid in the epilogue to his poem (Theb. 12.813): coepitque nouam monstrare futuris ([Fame] has begun to teach this new poem to future generations).78 Monstrare means ‘to teach’ as well as ‘to show’; the verb suggests that teaching is done in the epic through example and vivid narrative and description. In addition to

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples posterity, the immediate target readership for the poem is Domitian and the youth of Italy (Theb. 12.814-15): iam te magnanimus dignatur noscere Caesar, Itala iam studio discit memoratque iuuentus Now great-hearted Caesar deigns to get to know you, and the youth of Italy is enthusiastically learning you by memorisation and recital.

Tellingly perhaps for a poet born in Naples, Statius in his epilogue targets ‘Italian’ youth, not simply ‘Roman’ youth; his view is not centred solely on the capital but on the towns throughout the peninsula where young men grew up to become leaders in their communities, or perhaps moved to Rome as senators. As the expression studio discit memoratque suggests, these young men were encountering the Thebaid in the classroom – or so Statius hopes. As Keith points out, with this didactic statement Statius aspired to a place in the Classics school curriculum, where epic was central to a young Roman’s education.79 The medieval view of the poem as morally as well as linguistically valuable is however contrary to modern interpretations of the poem, which have seen it as an epic of madness, of the ultimate sacrilege, and of social disintegration.80 The protagonists of the poem, with the possible exception of the ambiguous Theseus and the benevolent but ageing Adrastus, are deeply flawed, scarcely examples for emulation.81 Moreover, Statius develops the tragic element inherent in epic beyond Lucan’s efforts ‘in his (sc. Statius’) intensive use of lament as an instrument of condemnation’.82 In a powerful statement Fantham comments that the prevalence of lament in the Thebaid conveys the message that the ‘grief is greater than the glory. There is no glory in this war. These heroes have died for nothing. There is no new liberty, no heroic code of values, to celebrate: there is only a tale of destruction willed by the gods as punishment for humankind  Statius’ poem goes a long way to becoming the negation of epic’. 83 All the same, we need to take into account the role of Thebes in the Roman cultural imagination. For Roman readers, the story of fratricidal strife over a throne was the foundational story of Rome.84 Thebes was not an anti-Rome but rather the evil twin city always threatening usurpation.85 It is perhaps significant that Euripides’ Phoenissae, which covers the family saga of Oedipus, was an immensely popular school text in imperial society; as Cribiore comments, ‘the Phoenissae ended up permanently engraved upon the mind of a student, who continued to revisit it even when the school years were over’.86 Readers of Statius’ epic therefore were inured to a didactic approach to the Theban story which, with great emotional power for a Roman readership, dramatised the problems that could accompany kingship and the devastating effects of civil war on society and the land. Thebes therefore had particular political resonance for the Roman reader.

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4. Statius Auctor Despite the bleakness of the poem’s social and political vision, epic’s exemplary function is nonetheless retained, though redefined for the changed circumstances of post-Augustan imperial society. Again, Plutarch’s essay ‘How the Young Man Should Study Poetry’ (Mor. 14d-37b) is helpful in thinking about the didactic function of the Thebaid, for Plutarch directly confronted the Platonic suspicion of poetry by emphasising its exemplary function, one moreover that was not necessarily confined to the deeds of great men; bad as well as good characters, and those in between, could constitute the ethical, gender-based education of the youthful male reader. Plutarch cites for instance Eteocles as a useful example of a wicked man – his wrongheaded desire for power at all costs is so blatant, and so tragic in its consequences, that it is obvious that the young man must repudiate him and his type (Mor. 18d-f). Plutarch of course differs from Statius in seeing poetry as a means to the true end of philosophy (Mor. 37b). But, like Plutarch, Statius in the epilogue to the Thebaid invites his readers to be active in their response to the poem, and morally and intellectually engaged. The emphasis that Statius places at the end of the Thebaid upon its educational value for contemporary Italian youth, as the future leaders of the imperial state, invites a political and moral interpretation of the poem and hints at Statius’ hope that the poem would become a canonical school text like the Aeneid. However, there is little evidence for the use of the Thebaid as a school text in late Antiquity. The commentary of Lactantius Placidus on the Thebaid has very few grammatical entries and hence is thought not to have been intended for classroom use.87 But later in the Middle Ages the poem was regarded as teaching the young valuable political and moral lessons about the evils of civil war specifically, and about character faults and vice more generally.88 One of the earliest introductions to the poem, the 12th-century ‘Bern-Burney accessus’, for instance, emphasises that the Thebaid aimed to guide the reader to recognise and avoid evil (43): utilitas siue finis est correctio malorum et per hec exempla ab eis continere (its usefulness or aim is the correction of faults and their restraint through the following examples).89 The accessus also places the poem firmly within its political context and suggests that Statius uses in the poem a form of ‘safe speech’. The evils specifically are those of civil war from which Statius sought to save Rome through his poem; but he chose the Theban myth since writing Roman history under Domitian was too dangerous, for the emperor had passed an edict forbidding any poet to chastise a Roman noble (3-21).90 A 12th-century accessus to the Achilleid (Uniuersitatis Bruxellensis) elaborates upon this broad understanding of exemplarity through a comparison of Statius with Homer and Virgil (4-8): Aliter intentio sua est cum in Homero exemplum datum sit sapientie per Vlixem, cum et in Virgilio datum est exemplum pietatis in homines et religionis in deos per Eneam, cum etiam iste auctor in maiori opere suo

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples exemplum det iuuenibus per Polinicem et Ethioclem (omnia enim aut exempla sunt ad imitandum aut dehortandum data sunt).91 His motive is different (sc. in the Achilleid) from when an example is given in Homer of wisdom through Ulysses, in Virgil of piety to men and of devotion to the gods through Aeneas, and when also that authority (sc. Statius) in his greater work gives an example to young men through Polynices and Eteocles (for all examples are given for imitation or deterrence).

The negative examples of Polynices and Eteocles are set beside the positive examples culled from Homer and Virgil as equally useful for a moralising reading. Unlike with Ulysses and Aeneas, the accessus does not specify what Polynices and Eteocles are examples of – perhaps they are too complex to be reduced to one particular vice – but they are targeted specifically as useful to young men as examples of behaviour to avoid. Auctor identifies Statius in his common medieval role of venerated moral teacher to the young. Such later readings help provide a further context for the poet’s remarks in the epilogue about the educational value of the Thebaid on moral and political as well as stylistic grounds. Furthermore, the destructively rigid, deformed heroism of the male protagonists invites, as in the Achilleid, more flexible thinking about new models and standards for masculine conduct (which undoubtedly was appealing for a medieval Christian readership). The Thebaid presents the reader with several types of leader: the peaceable Adrastus, weakened however by age and his lack of sons; the youthful, overly ambitious Polynices, not content with his dynastic marriage to Adrastus’ daughter; the heroic Theseus, successful foreign conqueror who, unlike the inbred house of Oedipus, looks to foreign, non-Greek realms for his bride, yet whose military prowess is troublingly imbued with savagery;92 the uncompromising tyrants Creon and Eteocles. The general absence of justice and selfless leadership in the poem means that these rare virtues are elevated when they do appear. The poem can thus be seen as guiding elite young men, on the cusp of a political career, away from negative, destructive patterns of masculine behaviour that could lead to civic strife. That Domitian in Statius’ epilogue is included too in the target audience is significant not just as a potential sign of Statius’ hopes for imperial endorsement and promotion for his poem. Rather it also suggests the importance of the poem for thinking about ideas of masculinity and of governance, the destined path of Italy’s elite youth. In particular, it recalls an earlier, controversial injunction at the terrible climax of the poem, the impious deaths of the two brothers, where Statius makes an unusual authorial intervention (Theb. 11.574-9):93 ite, truces animae funestaque Tartara leto polluite et cunctas Erebi consumite poenas!

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4. Statius Auctor uosque malis hominum, Stygiae, iam parcite, diuae: omnibus in terris scelus hoc omnique sub aeuo uiderit una dies, monstrumque infame futuris excidat, et soli memorent haec proelia reges. Be gone, savage spirits, pollute grim Tartarus by your death and exhaust all the punishments of Erebus. And you, Stygian goddesses, now spare the ills of humans; in every land and every age let this one day alone have seen this crime, and let this infamous monstrosity be excised from future generations; let only kings remember this duel.

In a parody of Virgil’s conferring of fame on Nisus and Euryalus and of the poet’s conventional hope for immortality (A. 9.446-9), Statius paradoxically prays that the two brothers’ duel and treacherous deaths be forgotten, even as he has made it the horrific climax of his epic; thus Seneca the Elder (Con. 10.3.5): optima ciuilis belli defensio obliuio est (the best defence against civil war is oblivion). But he makes one exception to the desire for oblivion – the death of Polynices and Eteocles is a lesson for kings. Again we have that didactic word memorent (cf. Theb. 12.815), which suggests not only memorisation but internalisation of the cautionary values inscribed in the brothers’ sacrilege. Unlike Lucan, Statius rarely intervenes propria uoce in his epic. As Bessone comments, this intervention is far more than a rhetorical expression of horror. Rather it suggests the importance of his injunction to rulers to remember the depths of human depravity to which civil war can lead. Memory in this instance has been taken away from the Muses and transferred to kings. It is a crucial affirmation that, in all but name, Rome is a monarchy with all its attendant problems; in a poem that represents the corrupting effects of absolute power and extreme militarism and the dangers of genealogical dependency, the poet here makes an impassioned appeal for political responsibility through remembering.94 The appeal comes moreover shortly before a potentially more positive model of leadership – at least compared with what we have seen before – enters the poem and prompts further critical examination of the nature of true governance.95 Theseus has married an outsider, the Amazon Hippolyte; he thus represents a break from the system of dynastic succession and offers hope for a new future. The interpretation of Theseus’ character has been generally seen as central to the interpretation of the Thebaid.96 Braund has suggested that Statius has Romanised the Greek hero, moulding him into a model of an ‘idealised’ Roman emperor.97 And yet the shield that he carries into war against Thebes (12.665-76) troublingly conveys, through its images of his struggle against the Minotaur and of Ariadne holding the thread, two sides of his character, the heroic conqueror and the faithless lover of Catullus 64.98 Moreover, the shield acts like a mirror, doubling the image of Theseus to the spectators and making him seem monstrous in his battle gear (12.673-4): bis Thesea bisque cruentas / caede

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples uidere manus (they see a double Theseus and a double set of hands bloody with slaughter). Through the mimetic power of art two Theseuses (person and image) bent on slaughter offer a terrifying sight (672) that perhaps recalls the two fratricidal twins and emphasises the indissolubility of evil. At the very least, the ecphrasis of the shield suggests that even good leaders, through the very nature of the position, have a propensity for cruelty and violence. If Theseus offers a more positive model of leadership, his shield alone suggests the corruption of war that makes him nonetheless a flawed hero. In his epilogue Statius suggests a model readership for his poem, Domitian and the youth of Italy, and a congruent moral and political approach. To conclude this chapter I shall briefly discuss the continuation of this interpretive approach in the first translation into English of the Thebaid (at least its first five books), which was published in 1648, towards the end of the English civil war. It was written by the schoolmaster Thomas Stephens as a schooltext, heavily annotated, for his grammar schoolboys.99 Stephens and his schoolboys were experiencing the turmoil of the English civil war first-hand. As Stephens comments in the preface to his commentary on the Siluae three years later, undique insonuit bellorum tuba (on all sides the trumpet of war resounded) when he translated the Thebaid.100 In this time of political upheaval, Stephens saw the importance of Statius’ civil war poem for his young pupils. The translation has clearly a didactic purpose beyond the teaching of elegant Latinity. Unlike Lucan’s great civil war poem, which was popular at the time among republicans thanks to Thomas May’s translation and ‘continuations’ of the poem, Stephens’ translation presents the Thebaid as a royalist text which teaches the evils of civil strife and the value of stable monarchy.101 Stephens clearly understood that, unlike Lucan’s epic, Statius’ Thebaid championed not republican values but stable, one-man rule; that the poem therefore concerns the nature of monarchy and what constitutes enlightened rulership. Stephens was headmaster of the King Edward VI Grammar School at Bury St Edmunds in East Anglia and an ardent royalist.102 His translation of the Thebaid looks beyond the schoolroom, for it was published in London by a royalist publisher, Richard Royston, who, as Mengelkoch points out, at the time was involved in the publication of the king’s highly emotional, quasi-religious self-defence from prison, Eikon Basilike.103 Moreover, Stephens dedicated his work to two East Anglian royalist aristocrats, describing them as religionis profligatae assertoribus (defendants of a ruined religion). As with Statius in the Siluae, the prominent naming of dedicatees suggests an educated, elite readership in addition to his schoolboy clientele; it also suggests a particular type of reading that was sympathetic to monarchical rather than republican ideals. The ode that is printed on the frontispiece represents Stephens’ trans-

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4. Statius Auctor lation of the Thebaid as an act of cultural and political recuperation, here closely associated with the education of the young as the state’s future citizens (7-8): ‘Singing Thebes Ruines, he doth teach / The listning stones to mend the breach’. The ode refers to the myth that Amphion built the walls of Thebes by charming the stones into place; now, through translation, the stones stand for the citizen fabric, the readership who, by absorbing the lessons in civic wisdom that the translated poem has to offer, will take care to mend the breach in the walls, that is, heal the broken state. These lines also indicate the neglect of Statius’ poem by the 17th century. Through this potent architectural metaphor, translation is seen as an act of restoration and renewal for Statius’ text in a more enduring form, despite civic turmoil. The rescuing of the classics is associated with saving the country’s national heritage. Here then is an attempt to combat the Theban recursive view of history and to suggest, through translation, the possibility of a better future. But the text was avowedly difficult for English schoolboys. Hence Stephens includes a running commentary, holding ‘the torch to the dark and mysterious places of the poem’, as he comments in the preface. He translated only the first five books of the Thebaid, perhaps so that the poem was not too long for his pupils, but perhaps also to repackage the poem in a more optimistic format that emphasised the importance of monarchy. By ending with Book 5, the progressive degradation of the Argive heroes was avoided, and the Hypsipyle episode was thrown into relief even more than in the original. The latter had particular relevance to Stephens’ own times, for it describes the ups and downs of monarchy: its collapse on Lemnos, the rescue of its king by his devoted daughter, her selfless assumption of the throne, her own deposition, her final reunion with her two full-grown sons, and the peacekeeping by Adrastus and Amphiaraus. The inset story of the internecine massacre on Lemnos ends with hope, bolstered by the arrival of a new generation of fine young men, Hypsipyle’s sons, who appear to offer the possibility of mending the breach in the social fabric. True, as O’Gorman points out, ‘the harmony of the Lemnian twins, who form a striking counterpart to the accursed Theban twins, in fact “gets them nowhere” in the Theban narrative; in the games of Book 6 they perform abysmally’104 – not a good model for schoolboys! But this is in the future. True also, in Book 5 the child Opheltes dies, the first innocent casualty of the civil war, but the book ends with compensatory assurance of the child’s deification. And Adrastus and Amphiaraus provide good models of leadership when they restrain the angry, grieving king Lycurgus from punishing Hypsipyle, and they prevent a full-scale fight breaking out (Theb. 5.690-753).105 This surely was a powerful closure to the version of the Thebaid that Stephens offered his schoolboys and aristocratic patrons in 1648, on the eve of the execution of Charles I. Statius’ poem was completed in less dire, but nonetheless politically

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples turbulent circumstances towards the close of Domitian’s reign. The emphasis that Statius places at the end of the Thebaid upon the educational value of his poem and its Greek myth for contemporary Italian youth – and future generations – makes a strong claim for the continuing value of epic in a post-Virgilian age grappling with the dissolution of that poem’s promised imperial stability. In the epilogue Statius responds not only to Virgil, Ovid and Lucretius, but also probably to Seneca, who, as I mentioned above, had attacked the liberal arts-based curriculum of the grammaticus as useless for teaching virtue (Ep. 88.3): quid horum ad uirtutem uiam sternit?  quid ex his metum demit, cupiditatem eximit, libidinem frenat? Which of these (sc. liberal arts) paves the way to virtue?  which of these takes away fear, removes desire, reins in lust?

Seneca uses a rare metaphor here, uiam sternit (pave the way [to virtue]). Statius uses the same metaphor at the end of the Thebaid, directly before his reference to the Italian youth and Domitian (Theb. 12.812-13): iam certe praesens tibi Fama benignum / strauit iter coepitque nouam monstrare futuris (now certainly contemporary Fame has paved a kindly road and has begun to teach this new poem to future generations).106 In his proud assertion of the importance of his poem for posterity, Statius is very possibly, given the rarity of the metaphor, responding here to Seneca’s attack on the grammaticus (his father’s profession) as well as to Seneca’s dismissal of any ethical value in studying poetry, epic in particular. Education is an important aspect of Statius’ self-definition both as the son of a famous grammaticus, and as a poet committed to the experimental development of epic – along both comic and tragic lines, to be sure, but with a firm connection to the social and political issues of the day. To conclude, all three of Statius’ major published works exhibit an interest in the education of the young through poetry. They investigate the nature of heroism and masculinity from the perspective of the late first century AD; the Siluae and the Achilleid in particular propose new models for male heroes. All three works moreover interrogate the boundaries of genre and the social and cultural values underpinning generic conventions. As the extant Achilleid examines the nature of heroism from a comic perspective, the Thebaid does so from a tragic one, pushing its examples to the extremes of a negativity that admonishes even as it shocks. The Thebaid is exemplary epic, redefined and redirected to new political and social goals and conditions for the late first century AD. Though his poem may follow in the footsteps of Virgil’s Aeneid (Theb. 12.815), that acknowledgement is preceded by the claim that the Thebaid is both new and novel (nouam, Theb. 12.813). As a poet raised in Naples, Statius looks not to the

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4. Statius Auctor great Romans of the past, as had Ennius and Virgil, for examples of epic masculinity and leadership. Rather, for his new kind of Roman epic he finds in the tragic models of Greek myth the most powerful commentary upon the social and political challenges confronting the contemporary Roman state; and he looks to the youth of Italy for his future heroes.

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5

‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’ Lament and consolation play a significant role in Statius’ poetry. The Thebaid has been interpreted as Roman poetry’s great epic of lament in its exploration of female mourning;1 indeed, if anger is the defining mark of Lucan’s civil war epic, we might say that empathy is the defining mark of Statius’. The Achilleid, partly humorous though it is in its treatment of Achilles’ education, is underwritten by the sorrow of Thetis who knows her son is fated to die young (Ach. 1.252-8).2 The attempt to forestall his premature death drives the plot of the extant poem. Personal expressions of overwhelming sorrow are a significant part of Statius’ self-representation in the Siluae. In the first consolatory poem of the Silu. 2.1, Statius portrays himself as famous for the poems he has written for bereaved fathers, mothers and sons (2.1.30-2; also 5.5.38-41).3 He claims particular authority in the genre of lament and consolation, for he has personal understanding of bereavement. In two poems he laments the death of his own father (5.3) and of his infant foster son (5.5); his expression of love for his young child and his overwhelming grief are rare phenomena in Roman literature. Four more of the Siluae (2.1; 2.6; 3.3; 5.1) console bereaved friends, with an emphasis upon the poet’s role as a ‘companion and fellow sufferer in sorrow’ (comitem sociumque doloris, 2.1.28).4 Such poems mark Statius out as a poet unafraid to explore intimate feelings, a geographical outsider who flouts Roman societal norms for restraint in grief, and who also pushes the generic bounds of Roman poetic consolation with his poems on the death of beloved children (2.1, 5.5) and a Greek slave (2.6). The theme of premature death is common to all three of Statius’ works, though it is explored from different angles. In the Thebaid the lamenting, inconsolable voices of mothers for their sons, and of wives for their husbands, provide a powerful perspective on the tragic consequences of civil war. In the Achilleid the costs of Achilles’ short-lived career as peerless warrior are complicated by the play given to other points of view, most notably that of his mother, who wishes to keep her son safe, and that of Ulysses, who promotes the idea of heroic (but short-lived) glory; Achilles’ options are complicated by the representation of the war as less than noble in its origins (Ach. 1.20-3). In contrast to the emphasis on maternal grief in the two epics, the Siluae explore the theme of early death from the point of view of male mourners, and in a more personal context. In the first part of this chapter I shall explore lament for premature

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5. ‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’ death as an important theme in Statius’ poetry that invites new perspectives on gender genre, and also class. My emphasis will be upon female lament in the Thebaid, and male lament in the Siluae.5 In the second part of the chapter I shall explore how certain medieval writers, outwith the pedagogical tradition that we investigated in Chapter 4, fastened upon the prominence of female lament in the Thebaid in their interpretation and rewriting of the epic; female readership and patronage played a significant role in the poem’s incorporation into the developing tradition of lyric poetry and of romance. Grief therefore in Statius’ poetry remained a key trope that into the Middle Ages continued to challenge significant hierarchies of genre and gender. But first, in order to show what is striking and different about Statius’ approach to grief, I will discuss his poetry in relation to social attitudes to grief in his day. Roman grief In Greek and Roman society grief was a gendered category. In general, according to Roman moral and philosophical codes, women could display grief in controlled circumstances but men should suppress it or else risk the charge of effeminacy.6 Such gendered norms of conduct in grief are best known to us through Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, which reflect the thought of the Academic Crantor (c. 325-372 BC), and through Seneca’s letters. The latter in particular have dominated critical thinking about the expression of grief in imperial society, and yet their prescriptive reinforcement of gendered norms for proper conduct in bereavement suggests that these letters were written in the face of changing attitudes.7 For Seneca, how one grieved was a test both of proper citizenship and of proper manhood. Plutarch, in his Consolatio ad uxorem (Mor. 608b-612b), a work possibly contemporary with Statius’ poetry of the 90s AD, attempts to regulate female mourning through the example of his wife, who has refused to give way to grief over the loss of their infant daughter.8 And yet, as Schorn suggests, Plutarch was swimming against the tide of changing public opinion and custom; his harsh counsels probably had effect only on those aiming to lead a strict philosophical life.9 The philosophical prescriptions of high-profile writers such as Seneca and Plutarch are not necessarily an accurate reflection of Roman belief and practice in imperial society. Statius’ poetry was the product of a period of changing attitudes to grief, when new forms of mourning were taking hold in private life. In the Republic there were sanctioned public occasions for extravagant displays of mourning, namely the funeral procession with its elaborate pageantry of grief and commemoration, and the court case, where witnesses pressed their law suit by dressing in the garb of mourning and openly lamenting (e.g. Cic. Sest. 144-6).10 Yet since grief had often been exploited for political purposes on such occasions, the emperor co-opted public expressions of mourning. In particular, the Republican funeral pageant with its public

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples display of aristocratic family pride was replaced in the imperial period by more private, personalised forms of memorialisation; for instance, a new interest in family graveside posthumous rituals and sepulchral monuments emerged.11 This shift in Roman funerary practices invited new forms of visual and literary expression. Tombs became increasingly elaborate and by the end of the first century AD were being carved with mythological scenes, an important new type of funerary art.12 Funerary inscriptions and other sources from the first century AD suggest that attitudes to mourning had begun to allow for a greater freedom of expression within a dominantly conservative ideology. The desire for graveside commemoration led to a striking increase in the production of epitaphic epigrams (as well as epigrams of other types).13 Greek funerary speeches of the period which, contrary to the philosophical tradition, encouraged expressions of grief, may also have been influential in shaping new attitudes to mourning and could well have been important for Statius, who was steeped in the Greek epideictic tradition.14 But in Roman literature, praise of the dead and consolation for their loss were now generally transferred to more ‘private’ literary forms such as the prose epistle. A new imperial literary genre flourished at this time, exitus illustrium uirorum, works commemorating the deaths of famous men who martyred themselves for political causes (Plin. Ep. 8.12.4).15 Although Seneca is conservative in his approach to mourning, his consolatory letters 63 and 99 with his lengthier, freestanding epistles (Dial. 6; 11; 12) represent innovations in the genre; Dial. 12 (ad Heluiam matrem) for instance is a consolation to his mother by Seneca, ‘dead’ only figuratively through exile; thus, uniquely, the one being mourned also offers the consolation.16 Statius’ Thebaid and Siluae are both innovative in their formal handling of grief; the latter experiment with new poetic forms of expression, while the epic makes female lament central to its structure and theme. Female grief was of particular interest to Seneca, as it was for Statius. Traditionally it was characterised as liable to uncontrolled expression and thus a threat to Stoic reason and wisdom as well as to Roman masculine norms. It was believed that women felt bereavement more deeply than men and thus acted in a manner far from the dignity expected of a Roman male, wailing, beating the breast, and disfiguring the face with tears and blows (Sen. Dial. 6.6.1-2). Addressing Polybius, who had lost his brother, Seneca asks ‘what is so low and so womanish as to let oneself be consumed by grief?’ (quid autem tam humile ac muliebre est quam consumendum se dolori committere?, Dial. 11.6.2). How a Roman male coped with grief was for Seneca, as for Plutarch, crucial to the definition of Roman masculinity and citizenship: moderation and self-control, in contradiction to female excess, were essential.17 Seneca points out the gendered differences between male and female mourning by appealing to early Roman law that allowed women to mourn their kin for

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5. ‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’ ten months so that their grief might be limited to a set period of time; for men there was no need for a time period (Ep. 63.13). In Seneca’s two consolatory essays that address elite women – Marcia (a friend of Livia) who had lost a son (Dial. 6), and Helvia, his own mother, who had lost a son to exile (Dial. 12) – he offers a philosophical road map for female mourning that stresses the need for moderation; prolonged, excessive grief could threaten the stability of the family and thus also the state. Stoicism regarded children as among the transitory ‘externals’ that distracted human beings from the pursuit of true wisdom (Dial. 6.10.1-4); but implicit in Seneca’s prescriptions is also a fear of the destablilising potential of female grief. Erker has suggested that the loyalty of Roman matronae of the early empire to their families could pose a danger to political concord and stability; likewise men mourning like women challenged the core values of the state.18 Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, appears in both of these dialogues of Seneca as a model not only of proper female comportment in grief but also of civic responsibility; she does not let her public duties and her family responsibilities come into conflict (Dial. 6.16.3; 12.16.6). Seneca links his female addressees with earlier Roman exemplars of female virtue, thus proposing Marcia and Helvia as new models of unchanging Roman values. Women’s grief in the Thebaid Like Seneca, Statius is interested in female grief; unlike Seneca, in the Thebaid he sympathetically explores its emotional and political power. When she discovers the mangled body of the infant Opheltes, Hypsipyle acts in a manner that is far from the Roman matronly ideal; she begs for death (Theb. 5.628-35), like the child’s mother, who is maddened by grief (6.174-6). To be sure, this treatment of female mourning derives in part from Statius’ tragic vision; Seneca’s Troades for instance provided a powerful precedent for the exploration of female suffering. But the dominance of grief in his poetry, and the empathy with which it is explored, also derive, I argue, from social change. In his poetry Statius challenges traditional binary thinking about grief, blurring the strict divisions between male and female behaviour and engaging in a sympathetic exploration of the tragic psychology of mourning. Given full rein, moreover, female mourning in the Thebaid functions both as a critique of civil war and as an instrument of political action. As Murnaghan comments of lament in Greek epic poetry, ‘spoken largely by women, laments are the medium by which a female perspective on epic action makes its way into these male-centred texts’. Indeed, whereas in Greek epic male lament turns the speaker back towards an affirmation of heroic glory and epic purpose, female lament ignores the death-defying fame that epic provides as compensation for heroic loss.19 Statius’ epic sets considerable value on women’s mourning and gives it an unprecedented role in the poem’s politics. More-

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples over, it also explores the dangerous potential in female grief that the philosophers sought prescriptively to contain. Like Lucan, Statius is open-eyed about the horrors of civil war, but he retains a deep human sympathy; undoubtedly it was a difficult task to negotiate between the heroic, political world of power and the heart of tragic, empathetic poetry. The episode at the end of the Iliad when Priam and Achilles join together in weeping for their dead (Il. 24.507-51) provided a defining moment for the poetic tradition of lament and consolation.20 The Thebaid by contrast focuses upon female grief and the absence of consolation in the case of premature death; the poem is punctuated at regular intervals by women’s mourning for their sons, and sometimes spouses or betrotheds. For example, Hypsipyle’s central narrative of her personal history as queen, daughter and mother takes the form of a long lament for her sufferings in war and exile that then continues into a lament for her foster child Opheltes (Theb. 5.48-498; 608-35). Lovatt has argued that in the Thebaid the female attitude to premature death is different from that of the fathers; the women lament the loss of male protectors while men such as Opheltes’ father lament the long-term political future of the family.21 Yet, in general, in the role of griever, the women of the Thebaid abandon a socially submissive role; they critique the war and in the end take action to try to end it. There is only one maternal lament over a slain son in the Aeneid, that of Euryalus’ mother (A. 9.481-97), and because of her inflammatory words she is quickly removed from the city walls by Ascanius’ soldiers and cloistered sub tecta (498-502). By contrast, female lament is a recurrent theme in the Thebaid and appears early on in the poem when the mothers and wives of ordinary men seek out the bodies of the Thebans killed in the ill-fated ambush of Tydeus (Theb. 3.114-217). The spokesman for the group of mourners is a mother who, unlike Euryalus’ anonymous parent, is humanised by being given a name, Ide (Theb. 3.147-68).22 As a woman without elite rank or privilege, she programmatically offers a universalising condemnation of the sheer wastefulness of civil war in terms of ordinary, individual lives, and she challenges the relevance of the heroic code for ordinary mortals (Theb. 3.160-4): sed nec bellorum in luce patenti conspicui fatis aeternaue gentibus ausi quaesistis miserae uulnus memorabile matri, sed mortem obscuram numerandaque funera passi, heu quantum furto cruor et sine laude iacetis! But you did not seek a wound to live on in memory for your wretched mother, since you were not noticeable to fate in the open light of battle nor did you dare immortal deeds for nations. Instead you suffered death unnoticed, becoming a mere statistic to be tallied; alas, amidst how much blood flowing secretly, you lie without praise!

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5. ‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’ Ide is the mother of twin sons who are physically linked in death by a spear that pierced both of their chests (Theb. 3.148-9); the perversions of civil war are gruesomely conveyed in this travesty of the common wish to be joined in death with one’s closest friend, lover or kin. Her lament is unusual in the attention it focuses on the experience of those countless young men who die in the ranks unhonoured and unmourned, except by individual family members; it also focuses on her experience, left without a male protector (Theb. 3.154-5): uosne illa potentia matris, / uos uteri fortuna mei (you were the power I had as mother, you were the fortune of my womb). Her lament for the twins’ untimely death expresses a tragic viewpoint, and Segal’s words are apposite here: ‘whereas epic keeps the immortal fame in the foreground, tragedy, even when it promises cultic immortality, keeps this at the margins and places mortality in the foreground’.23 Ide’s lament is an important initial voice amidst the multiplicity of voices that are interwoven in this epic of lament; as a woman, a mother, and a person without rank, she speaks from outside the heroic world of individual champions and fundamentally questions its values and goals. Ironically, by giving Ide a voice here, Statius’ text does make the twins’ death memorabile (162), although notably their names are not given. They are an inversion of Eteocles and Polynices in that they lack social rank and status and loved one another. Ide’s final wish that ‘one urn mingles their dear shades’ (168) ironically foreshadows the split flame at the funeral pyre of Polynices and Eteocles, a sign of these brothers’ unstoppable hatred (Theb. 12.429-32). Jocasta is Ide’s regal counterpart. Statius departs from the Sophoclean tradition according to which she kills herself when she learns the truth about Oedipus; he follows the alternative tradition of Euripides’ Phoenissae and Seneca’s play of the same name by making her still alive, an aged figure of suffering.24 Unlike Oedipus, who cursed his sons, she wishes to put a stop to their deadly rivalry. On the arrival of the Argives at Thebes, she confronts Polynices and his army, a figure of mourning with unkempt hair, pale face, and arms black and blue from beating (Theb. 7.474-6). Civil war disrupts all natural order, even time itself; paradoxically she laments her two sons while they are still alive (Theb. 7.514-15): nupsi equidem peperique nefas. sed diligo tales – a dolor! – et vestros etiamnum excuso furores. I married and gave birth to sin. But I love you both such as you are – ah, the pain! – and even now I excuse the madness of you two.

Jocasta is a paradox. She is a figure of maternal distress, physically supported by her two daughters (479-81), another Statian innovation, and yet she is compared to the most ancient of the Furies (Eumenidum uelut antiquissima, 477).25 These contradictions are expressed in her words

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples which voice her terrible dilemma; she loves the two children who are her terrible shame and, as Dante described, her ‘double grief’ (Purg. 22.55-6). In Jocasta the pain of motherhood is intensified by the evil of the offspring that she loves. Her lament is more than an expression of sorrow for her sons; she laments Theban history and her inability to break free of its recursive tendencies.26 As Keith points out, the shockingly paradoxical expression peperique nefas aligns her with the Furies, making hope of reconciliation futile.27 Motherhood here is a trope for the production of civil strife. Ide for instance wishes she had remained barren (Theb. 3.157-60). Jocasta thus represents the other side of maternal grief, its potential for further anger and violence. Lament is double-voiced and double-faced.28 Like the Theban queen, Ide too has another face, one of madness; as she hunts for her children on the battlefield, she is compared to a Thessalian witch seeking a corpse to revivify (3.140-6), a reminder of the potentially dangerous, even destructive, power of female grief (3.137): terror inest lacrimis (there is terror in tears). The quick suppression of the speech of Euryalus’ mother in the Aeneid (9.498-502) expresses the fear that women’s laments are dangerous. The Thebaid differs in this regard in that lament often inspires further anger and violence; it can, however, also lead to positive action, as when the Argive women march in a group to Athens to petition Theseus to end the war (Theb. 12.464-610).29 However, when Argia secretly slips away from the group of Argive women to find her husband’s body, her confrontation with Antigone on the battlefield almost leads to a fatal conflict with her Theban sister-in-law (12.173-463). The violent potential of lament is dramatically suggested at the poem’s conclusion when the mourning Argive women descend on the battlefield in a manner reminiscent of the end of Euripides’ Bacchae (Theb. 12.791-2), quales Bacchea ad bella uocatae / Thyiades amentes (like mad Maenads summoned to Bacchic wars). They have come to bury the dead, but, with their men gone, they are the new warriors, seemingly capable of nefas (792-3); their Bacchic associations suggest uncontrolled emotion and violence. Frenzy drives them all over the battlefield (rapit huc, rapit impetus illuc, 12.794); their ‘women’s cries shake the stars’ (femineus quatit astra fragor, 790), not a mere figurative expression but a sign of their threat to cosmic order. They stream down from the ‘Dircaean heights’ (789), a reminder of the violent story of hate, revenge and dismemberment involving the former Theban queen Dirce. As always in Statius the geography of the poem is not neutral but is implicated in the terrible history of Thebes which seems destined to endless repetition. The collective grief of the women at the end of the epic represents a threat to strict gender categories as they perform a woman’s task of burying the male dead in a frenzied, violent manner. Thus even the concluding scene of lament in the Thebaid hints at further, vengeful violence to come.30 The poem demonstrates how the nefas of civil war is an infectious evil (793). The poem’s end puts in doubt the possibility of an end to violence, or of the deadly pattern of

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5. ‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’ Theban recursive history (which will be repeated in subsequent wars of the Epigoni).31 But the poem also gives final expression to the sympathetic voice of mourning. The powerful resounding of lament in the triple echoing of Parthenopaeus’ name under the sobriquet ‘Arcadian’ – Arcada, Arcada, Arcada – first by his mother and then by the chorus of women, Thebans and Argives joined together, invites deep pathos and a tragic perspective on events (12.805-7). The opposing groups of Theban and Argive women come together in weeping for the youngest and most beautiful of the premature dead (12.807): geminae pariter fleuere cohortes (the twin cohorts wept in unison). The word ‘twin’, hitherto a sign of fatal opposition in the poem, suggests that in certain instances grief can transcend difference and hatred. The word ‘Arcadian’ evokes lost innocence; the poem thus alludes briefly to the healing power of lament. But this moment is followed immediately by the poet’s statement that ‘a new madness’ could scarcely do justice to the women’s grief; the expression nouus furor recalls Theseus’ questioning of Creon’s refusal to allow the Argives’ burial, nouus unde furor? (Theb. 12.593), and again emphasises a cycle of madness and violence that implicates even the poet, who finally draws the poem to a halt. Thus at the poem’s end the emphasis falls on the tragedy of premature death, on mortality, not immortal glory – the women’s perspective.32 The Thebaid is thus unusual in the attention it accords women’s grieving voices. In Greek and Roman society such voices were marginalised and controlled by the state because of their potentially subversive power. Women’s lament could however be harnessed usefully to the benefit of the state. As Erker points out, narratives of the origins of Rome feature women’s successful use of supplication and weeping to bring about concord; for instance they were instrumental in ending the war between the Sabines and the Romans and in deterring Coriolanus and the Volscians from attacking Rome. The public ritual of supplicatio (supplication) allowed women’s gestures of mourning within a carefully controlled religious context.33 In the Thebaid, women do make efforts to end the war, but such attempts tend to be futile or double-edged. Apart from Jocasta’s futile interventions – there are no gods on whom she can call – the Roman rite of supplicatio is twice evoked; first when the women of Argos, along with their small children, engage in a ritual of supplication of Juno, spending the night in the goddess’s temple, dressing her statue in a special cloak, and begging her to destroy Thebes and return their children safely home (10.49-69); their supplication brings about more carnage, and expands the nefas of civil war. The closest to a successful supplication comes at the poem’s end at the altar of Clemency (12.481-590); the women’s arrival there is followed by the entry of Theseus, who takes up their cause. And yet Theseus’ intervention brings about further war as he refuses to negotiate with Creon. The tragic character of the poem is emphasised by Statius’ final acceptance that a continuation of the narrative would mean nouus furor (a new frenzy, Theb. 18.808).

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples Male mourning: the Siluae The mythological figure of Ino, the Theban queen who lost her two children – Learchus to her husband’s madness, Palaemon to drowning – is a unifying figure of the Thebaid and the Siluae. She appears in the opening of the epic (Theb. 1.12-14) and at regular intervals thereafter as if to comment upon and reinforce its major theme of male violence experienced through women’s grief.34 She also appears several times in the first consolatory poem of the Siluae (2.1.97-8, 179-80), a lament for the sudden death of Melior’s 12-year-old foster son, and at 3.2.39-40 where she and her son Palaemon are acclaimed as inspiring deities of the Thebaid. But whereas the Thebaid gives unusual space to women’s experience of grief, granting them a powerful critical voice on the tragedy of civil war, the Siluae particularly explore male grief for premature death. They have a high number of poems that both share in lamentation with male friends and console them for the loss of loved ones; death, with one exception (3.3), is untimely (2.1; 2.6; 2.7; 5.1; 5.5).35 Achilles, a prominent figure associated with premature death, appears, like Ino, both in the Achilleid and also in the Siluae (2.1.88-91; 2.6.30-3; 2.7.96-7). Such mythological figures unify Statius’ works; in the Siluae they provide elevated points of comparison for Statius’ mourning friends whose grief and losses are ennobled and universalised through the precedent of legendary figures from the past – not the austere Roman past mined by Seneca for noteworthy models of gender-appropriate behaviour, but more usually the mythological past of epic and tragedy. Premature death, a too frequent tragedy in the ancient world, is also a preoccupation of Seneca’s Dial. 6 and Ep. 99 and of Plutarch’s treatise Consolatio ad uxorem, works which counsel the bereaved in restraint. For instance, Seneca adduces as a positive example of forbearance the republican pontifex Horatius Pulvillus, who did not falter in his dedication of a temple, even though in the midst of the ritual he was given the news that his son had died (Dial. 6.13.1-2). This comportment is far from that of Atedius Melior, to whom Book 2 of the Siluae is dedicated; he is described as demented with grief for his 12-year-old foster son Glaucias and, like Eurydice at Opheltes’ funeral (Theb. 6.173-6), had to be restrained from throwing himself on the pyre at an exceptionally lavish funeral (2.1.19-25, 157-82). In Silu. 5.1 a prominent Roman citizen and member of the court, Abascantus, displays his grief for the untimely death of his wife in forms more usually associated with female mourning; he weeps, tears his clothes, and even surpasses his slaves in the striking of his breast (20-3); he prostrates himself on the ground (162-4). The idea that Abascantus outdoes his slaves in grief is a startling hierarchical inversion that is used elsewhere only of women, for instance in the Thebaid of Eurydice mourning her son Opheltes (6.33-4): asperior contra planctusque egressa uiriles / exemplo famulas premit hortaturque uolentes (but more frenzied [sc.

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5. ‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’ than her husband] she exceeds his manly beatings of his breast and by her example urges on and exhorts her female slaves, though they are willing enough), a development of Lucan’s grieving matron’s order to her slaves (2.23-4). The extremity of Eurydice’s grief is described in transgressive terms: she exceeds male norms, and, though a queen, she makes herself an example to the lowest stratum of society. Abascantus is typical of other male mourners in the Siluae who are unrestrained in their grief and are marked out as transgressing social and gendered norms. Death and grief, Statius seems to be suggesting, are no respecters of gender or class. Markus has argued that the poems of consolation in the Siluae form ‘a pointed resistance to the prescriptive philosophical consolatio which laid particularly heavy emphasis on the need for restraint in grief’.36 For example, Silu. 2.1 can be seen perhaps as a strong response to the kind of sentiments expressed in Seneca Ep. 99, a letter in which Seneca chides Marullus for continuing in his profound grief for the death of his little son.37 Seneca’s tone is decidedly unsentimental; he combines with traditional Roman male restraint the Stoic belief that children are ‘externals’ to a life of true wisdom. The child’s life, he argues, being so short, was of little significance (99.2); loss in such circumstances was ‘not grief but simply a sting’, non est dolor iste sed morsus (99.14).38 Melior on the other hand abandons the decorum that Seneca counsels is appropriate for men to adopt in grief, est aliquis et dolendi decor (Ep. 99.21).39 Melior even outdoes female grief in, for instance, his laceration of his arms (superantem et bracchia matrum, 2.1.23); Statius takes an anti-prescriptive stance in telling Melior that ‘nobody forbids’ him to grieve (nemo uetat, 2.1.14). Seneca however sees excessive grief as emasculating (Ep. 99.17): uidet aliquem conlabentem et corpori adfusum: effeminatum ait et eneruem (he sees someone falling apart and physically prostrate; he says he is effeminate and enervated).40 The contained body is a sign of proper masculinity; the loose, unfolding body of the griever, on the other hand, is feminising. Melior in grief lies spread-eagled on the ground, fusus humi (2.1.170), like Abascantus (5.1.163-4) in a position of abjection.41 Although in imperial society attitudes had changed towards the display of grief, nonetheless masculine extravagant behaviour in grief, especially when displayed in public, was persistently regarded as counter to Roman notions of manly propriety as well as to philosophical tradition. Pliny the younger for instance criticises the lawyer Regulus for his extravagant grief for his young son and the lavish funeral at which all the child’s pets, including his ponies, were burned (Ep. 4.2). Statius seems to anticipate such criticism when, mourning the death of his own foster child, he asks ‘am I perhaps called excessive and obsessive in grief, exceeding due modesty in my tears?’ (nimius fortasse auidusque doloris / dicor et in lacrimis iustum excessisse pudorem?, 5.5.56-7).42 In drawing attention to his own fulsome grief, he makes apparent his challenge to Roman social norms as regards gender and also class, for his foster son, like Glaucias,

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples was a former slave, freed as an infant (5.5.73-5; 2.1.77-8), and thus of a status not normally accorded literary grief. (For instance in Carm. 2.9 Horace reprimands his friend Valgius for his excessive grief for a slave boy.) Silu. 5.5 is in a corrupt and fragmentary state, but in 2.1 the poet defends excessive grief for a child by describing him as exceptional in looks, in athletic ability, and in intellectual promise; virtue, rather than distinguished birth, is the true marker of excellence and thus worthy of displays of great grief.43 Statius thus correlates lavish mourning with the exceptional character of the deceased, regardless of social status. Counteracting the notion that the display of sorrow is a sign of weakness, he furthermore heroises grief by inscribing the prematurely dead youth of the Siluae and their mourners into a tradition of tragic, untimely death extending from Homer and reaching particular prominence in his Thebaid.44 Statius approaches the exemplary past with a different twist from Seneca, for instance; his characters surpass the models to whom they are compared. Glaucias, though of low social status, was of exceptional beauty, character and talent, surpassing Hyacinthus or Hylas (2.1.112-13); as a foster child he exceeds the young Achilles or Perseus (2.1.88-91, 94-5) or, turning to Roman mythology, even Pallas, Evander’s son (2.1.92-3), or the child Romulus (2.1.99-100). Correspondingly Melior is superior to the legendary foster fathers of mythological tradition such as Achilles’ tutors Chiron and Phoenix and others (2.1.88-105). The slave Philetos, mourned in Silu. 2.6, matched the Argive hero Parthenopaeus in ephebic beauty and upright morality (2.6.38-45); his master Ursus emulates Ulysses in his relation with Eumaeus (2.6.56-7). As in the mythological scenes with which Roman tombs were being decorated, myth provided a language for emotional expression in both everyday and exceptional circumstances. Statius’ poems provide exaggerated mythological exempla, to be sure, but they serve to elevate the occasion and the characters concerned, overcoming the barriers of low social status and of gendered division.45 Most Roman poems of consolation were written in elegiacs. Like the poets of love elegy, Statius redefined ideas about masculinity as well as about sorrow. But, by writing in hexameters, he heightened the consolatory genre and dissolved the traditional polarities between elegy and epic.46 Silu. 2.1 is innovative not only in its approach to male mourning but in its attitude to what constitutes true nobility; it is also innovative in its programmatic interest in children. In writing poetry that endorses profound grief for children and lowborn youths, Statius boldly adapts to a Roman social context Hellenistic poetry’s interest in humble characters and children. He also reflects what recent work on Roman childhood has shown, namely a new positive climate of sentiment about children in various media.47 Early Roman prescriptions had prohibited mourning for a child less than three years old (Plutarch Numa 12.2). In the republic

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5. ‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’ children were buried quietly at night;48 in the first century AD funerals, such as that of Glaucias (2.1.19-25, 157-82), also began to be held by day. The numerous imperial epitaphs on tombstones for young children convey enormous sorrow at the death of a child, which the parents wished publicly acknowledged.49 Among his many epitaphic examples, Lattimore cites this stark inscription for an 11-year-old son, ‘at his loss his most unhappy parents are condemned to perpetual darkness and daily, wretched lamentation’ (CIL 9, 173).50 Personal grief even intrudes into Quintilian’s educational treatise; the preface to Book 6 of his Institutio Oratoria laments with great bitterness and pathos the deaths of his two promising young sons, orators in the making.51 What is striking about Statius’ poetry is the challenge it poses to hierarchical thinking about gender and class. Although the bereaved protagonists of the Siluae are the male elite, social distinctions break down in the face of the sudden, unexpected loss of a beloved child; men in the Siluae mourn like women, and yet are also heroic in their grief. At the same time, as we see from the Thebaid, mourning is not free from politics. In the Siluae consolation invites exploration of the interaction between the home and the state. This is brought out in 5.1, the poem of consolation for Abascantus’ loss of his wife Priscilla. Abascantus was imperial secretary (ab epistulis) to Domitian, but records show that another man held that post late in Domitian’s reign. Thus when 5.1 was composed, no earlier than AD 94, Abascantus was in danger of losing this position, or had in fact lost it. His wife Priscilla uses her farewell speech to commend her husband’s loyalty to Domitian and, as a kind of insurance policy, vows a considerable sum of gold to the Capitoline treasury for a statue of Domitian (5.1.188-93). This seems to be a defensive poem that uses mourning to cancel suspicions that Abascantus was less than loyal to Domitian.52 Silu. 3.3, the poem written on the death of Claudius Etruscus’ father, Domitian’s treasurer who was suddenly dismissed from his post after a long career (3.3.154-71), reads as a defence of this man and his family:53 it puts on record his distinguished imperial service (3.3.59-110); it also counters the common association of freedmen with luxury and extravagance by emphasising the father’s virtuous Roman ethos: he worked hard, did not pursue pleasure, ate frugally, avoided drunkenness and made a respectable marriage (3.3.106-10). His son likewise demonstrates his noble character. In mourning for his father as if he had lost a young wife or child, he shows not weakness but the highest form of piety (3.3.1-30); the personified Pietas, invoked at the poem’s start (3.3.1-7), by contrast flees from the final duel in the Thebaid, ineffective in her intervention (11.458-96).54 The poem thus defends the reputation of Domitian’s former servant and that of his family. Silu. 2.7, a poem written in honour of the poet Lucan’s posthumous birthday, makes a case for the poet’s freedom from imperial censorship and attempts to rehabilitate Lucan’s literary and political reputation.55 Grief and conso-

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples lation thus can have a polemical, political element. Who one mourns and how one mourns can through publication create a powerful and even polemical form of memory.56 The Siluae counter the Thebaid where grief, for the most part, is not consoled. Unlike in the fractured society of the Thebaid, the Siluae strengthen and confirm social bonds and uphold the value of friendship between poet and bereaved. They represent extravagant grief as therapeutic in its own right; praise of the dead also evokes the power of memory to heal the pain of grief. The Siluae work towards the reestablishment of social order in the face of tragic loss; the very gift of the consolatory poem to the bereaved is an act of friendship that reinforces social bonds formed from shared loss. The engagement in the Siluae with epic themes in particular marks the distinction between the private social world of the Siluae and the dysfunctional public world of the Thebaid. The child Glaucias for instance descends to the Underworld, but he encounters there no avenging or terrifying figures such as populate the Hell of the Thebaid, but a benevolent, surrogate foster father in Melior’s friend Blaesus (2.1.189-207). Familiar social patterns thus repeat themselves in a positive way even after death. The division between the treatment of lament and grief in the Thebaid and the Siluae suggests that when grief goes public, when it is motivated by high-level power struggles that tear apart innocent families, then it is most tragic, and most dangerous. Female lament and medieval transformations The Middle Ages understood the Thebaid as antiquity’s great poem of lament. Dante describes the poem as tragic epic, focused on women’s grief, ‘the cruel warfare of Jocasta’s twofold sorrow’ (Purg. 22.55-6). Although the Thebaid made a major contribution to the development of allegory in medieval literature through the number and active role of its personifications such as Virtus and Pietas, the poem was not subject to the systematic allegorical treatment accorded Ovid’s Metamorphoses.57 The pseudo-Fulgentian allegorical commentary Super Thebaiden was probably a 12-century anomaly.58 In the previous chapter we saw the importance of Statius’ epic in the schools as a morally and politically didactic text. But it was through lament in particular that the Thebaid was tied to another important interpretive strand in the Middle Ages, the developing literary traditions of lyric and romance which fastened upon Statius’ epic as a vehicle for ideas about gender and genre and as an outlet for the female voice and experience. The medieval reception of Statius’ Thebaid is rich and complex, and I have obviously had to be selective, concentrating my discussion upon three works associated with England which represent the Latin and vernacular literary traditions respectively, the 11-century Cambridge Songs, the Vita

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5. ‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’ Ædwardi (‘The Life of Edward’) of the same period, and Chaucer’s 14thcentury epic poem Troilus and Criseyde. These three works are most likely the product of a courtly culture, not of the schools. They sketch out a trajectory by which the Thebaid in this crucial early period of its reception generated new poetic forms and entered the vernacular transformed into the important new genre of medieval romance. The Cambridge Songs and Troilus and Criseyde in particular demonstrate the interpretive and aesthetic possibilities offered by the prominence of the female voice and lament in the Thebaid. The Vita Ædwardi, an anonymous work composed in England, helps illuminate the intellectual and political climate in which the Thebaid was extracted from, read and transformed. In the Latin lyric tradition medieval writers mined the Thebaid as a source of powerful, dramatic speech. The poem contributed to the burgeoning tradition of Biblical and secular lament by generating a new poetic lament, the Planctus of Oedipus, which first appears in a 12th-century manuscript and tells the story of Oedipus in his own voice, giving it psychological depth.59 Excerpts too from the Thebaid, the majority of which were female laments, circulated independently from the poem, thus drawing attention to the importance of the emotive female voice for medieval readers of the Thebaid. This practice of excerption, and fragmentation, was characteristic of medieval aesthetics.60 Our earliest evidence for such excerpts occurs in the 11th-century collection of medieval poems known as the Cambridge Songs, found in a unique manuscript residing since the 17th century in Cambridge University Library, hence their name. The songs reflect a continental provenance, heavily but not exclusively associated with German courts; some seem to have been written in France, Italy and Spain. 61 At some point in the 11th century this song collection came to pre-Conquest England from the Continent where the monastic scribes of St Augustine at Canterbury made a copy; what happened to the original is unknown.62 The collection is generically and metrically varied, consisting of love-songs, comic songs, celebratory and political songs, religious songs and laments, including five classical Latin extracts. In the Cambridge Songs the secular and the religious, the classical and the contemporary, coexist. The original occasion for the individual songs must have varied widely; but medieval readers were used to mixed forms and juxtapositions.63 At a time when vernacular lyric was beginning to flourish in Europe, this collection of medieval Latin lyric remains an enormously important collection, ‘the most varied and substantial assemblage of Medieval Latin lyrics that is extant from the centuries between the Carolingian corpora of the ninth century and the Carmina Burana of the thirteenth’.64 Of particular interest for us are the five classical Latin laments, three of which are extracts from the Thebaid (29 = Theb. 12.325-48; 31 = Theb. 5.608-16; 32 = Theb. 12.325-35, 322-4), one from the Aeneid (34 = A. 268-83), and one from Horace (46 = Carm. 3.12).

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples The classical laments are interspersed among the medieval Latin lyrics towards the end of the collection; all are in the first person. Aeneas reacts in grief to the ghost of Hector (34); Horace’s Neobule laments her lovesickness for a young man (46); Statius’ Argia voices her sorrow over Polynices’ corpse, a lament that occurs twice in the collection but with slightly different line ordering (29, 32); and Hypsipyle laments over the corpse of the infant Opheltes (31). Female lament is dominant; the three extracts from the Thebaid are also the longest. Classical laments were aligned with the Biblical tradition of lament. Although there was male lament in both the classical and the Biblical tradition, it was women’s lament that was particularly prominent in this genre. The lament of Rachel for her slaughtered children, the Old Testament type of the mourning mother (Jeremiah 31:15), was foundational for the genre and widespread in the Middle Ages.65 In the Cambridge Songs her lament follows directly after the Horatian lament (47). Apart from her name, there is nothing in its opening line that directly indicates its Biblical source, for Rachel implores the stars, not God (1): pulsat astra planctu magno Rachel plorans pignora (Rachel appeals to the stars with loud lament, weeping for her children).66 The lament of Hypsipyle in particular, a mother weeping for her child, would have been accommodated easily to Biblical tradition. Although Ovid’s Heroides provided a model for laments of women deserted by their husbands or lovers,67 Statius’ Thebaid provided the recurrent figure of the grieving mother, a close parallel with the Biblical Rachel. Female lament, whether Biblical or classical, counters the misogyny of much medieval Latin poetry, including love lyric, by conferring value on the female voice.68 All the excerpts in the Cambridge Songs were meant to be sung, for in other manuscripts they are marked with neumes, a rudimentary form of musical notation used from the early ninth to twelfth centuries;69 Statius’ verse was thus reconceptualised as song.70 The excerpts moreover are short, but the verbal patterning tends to be elaborate and dramatic, thus providing a flexible vehicle for melodic settings.71 The second appearance of Argia’s lament (32) in the Cambridge Songs with a slightly different arrangement of lines is perhaps to be explained by their having different melodies.72 Although the Aeneid was the classical text most heavily excerpted for musical notation in the early Middle Ages,73 in the Cambridge Songs it is represented by only one excerpt. It seems that the Thebaid held special emotional appeal and musical possibilities. In the Middle Ages only a fraction of classical texts were given musical notation; those that were tended to be speeches, or direct addresses, designed to be sung.74 The singing of the classics revealed the imprint of rhetoric in medieval education, particularly a fascination with sophisticated patterns of speech and a spectrum of emotions.75 Chanting the classics in school may well have been in part a mnemonic aid;76 but it also taught an appreciation for the aesthetics of the classical dactylic hexame-

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5. ‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’ ter and the melodic and performative possibilities of lament. The classical extracts therefore could have had a double life, read and chanted in church schools and also performed with great expressiveness at an ecclesiastical or aristocratic court – though this may also have occasioned clerical opposition at times.77 Neumed excerpts from classical poetry therefore seem generally to have been chosen for their expressive quality. Detached from their epic framework however, extracts from classical Latin poetry assumed new, independent life as a direct expression of female grief. Young men, probably boy sopranos, would have voiced these laments, thus taking on the persona of a woman and counterfeiting a woman’s voice; like Achilles they would have assumed temporarily a female role, an act of ‘transvestite ventriloquism’.78 The conventionally marginalised discourse of women thus, through male vocalisation, would have temporarily effaced gender difference and given voice to emotions that were usually suppressed in masculine society. Detailed knowledge of the plot of Statius’ epic would not have been necessary. In the Cambridge Songs Hypsipyle and Argia both speak in the time-honoured roles of bereaved mother and wife. Separated from the narrative and political context of the Thebaid, their excerpted laments take on an independent life as a vehicle for the impersonation of the female voice and as a forceful expression of female experience, unmediated by external contingencies. The impersonation of women’s speeches by young men, so Ziolkowski suggests, would have encouraged expressive musical and rhetorical experimentation.79 Let us look at one example, the extract from Hypsipyle’s lament (Cambridge Songs 31): O mihi deserte natorum dulcis imago, Archemore, o rerum et patrie solamen adempte seruitiique decus, qui te, mea gaudia, sontes extinxere dei, modo quem digressa reliqui lasciuum et prono uexantem gramina cursu? Heu ubi siderei uultus? ubi uerba ligatis imperfecta sonis risusque et murmura soli intellecta mihi? quoties tibi Lemnon et Argos sueta loqui et longa somnum suadere querela. O image of my sons, sweet to me in my exile, Archemorus, o consolation for my fate and lost country, and pride of my slavery, what guilty gods, my joy, have wiped out your life, you whom I, when I stepped aside, left just now playing and ruffling the grass as you crawled? Alas, where is your starlike face? Where are your babbling, tongue-tied words and smiles and sounds understood only by me? How often I would speak to you of Lemnos and the Argo and lull you to sleep with my long lament.

These words represent Thebaid 5.608-16, the most emotional part of Hypsipyle’s lament as she grieves over what is left of the baby’s body. In

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples his examination of the neumed speeches of Virgil, Ziolkowski comments that the extracts tend to be complex in psychology, rhetoric and prosody.80 The same is true here. Hypsipyle’s lament is a mixture of grief, regret and guilt expressed at a high rhetorical pitch, as we see from the opening sentence. In the first line Hypsipyle represents herself as an exile (desert(a)e), and recalls her own separation from her biological sons. Archemorus, the alternative name for Opheltes, was compensation for that loss and for her slavery in a foreign land; with great pathos she recalls the last time she saw the infant, crawling playfully among the grass. She addresses the child as if he were still alive; repetition of the exclamation o, echoed in imago, and Archemore, suggests the musically expressive possibilities of these lines. The second half of the extract also includes a high number of words referring to sound, uerba, sonis, risusque, murmura, loqui, longa  querula; the -a ending, like the -o ending, lent itself to considerable melodic variation in medieval music.81 The rhetorical devices used here, apostrophe, alliteration, particularly of ‘s’, assonance, and short, rhetorical questions, are all features of tragic lament.82 Considerable rhetorical power here combines with a complicated psychological reaction to the child’s death. A small gloss in another manuscript explains that Hypsipyle uttered her lament over Opheltes’ body after she had recovered from a swoon.83 In the Middle Ages Statius did not suffer the fanciful biographies concocted for Ovid and Virgil, since so little was known about him. As we saw in Chapter 4, he was believed to be a rhetorician from Toulouse; in the commentary tradition he was valued for his learning as a teacher. But the lyric tradition invited a different reception of Statius’ work. The already almost invisible author here disappears behind the woman’s voice, while the gender of the internal speaker becomes more important than the gender of the author; if sung by young men with unbroken voices, their voices would reproduce female tonalities. The Thebaid was heard as passionate, beautiful song that delved into tragic female experience with great rhetorical and emotional power. In the Middle Ages at least six excerpts circulated from the Thebaid, all laments or complaints of some form, and they are predominantly female; apart from the laments of Argia and Hypsipyle found in the Cambridge Songs, there are extracts from Jocasta’s speech before the battle between her two sons (Theb. 11.329-33, 343, 346-7), and from the end of Argia’s lament to Polynices (Theb. 2.334-52). The two speeches in the male voice are Tydeus’ dying command for Melanippus’ head (Theb. 8.736-41), and Polynices’ lament for Tydeus (Theb. 9.49-62).84 Moreover, in terms of appearance in surviving manuscripts, the laments of Hypsipyle and Argia outweigh the men’s in number. The prevalence of lament in the selections from Statius’ epic suggests a disposition to reading the Thebaid as a poem that privileges female experience and thereby offers male youth the opportunity to explore female identity through musical and dramatic

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5. ‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’ performance. It is a fitting development for the author who in the Achilleid in particular explored the flexibility of gender roles. What was the appeal of the Cambridge Songs, with their emphasis on female lament, to pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon England? Why was the manuscript copied by the Anglo-Saxon monks of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury? Desmond has pointed out that upper-class women of AngloSaxon England had a good deal more authority and education than their continental counterparts.85 It is interesting to note moreover that the twin aspects of female experience explored in the Theban laments, exile and the untimely death of a beloved, are also dominant in the two anonymous Anglo-Saxon elegies from outside the religious tradition, The Wife’s Lament, and Wulf and Eadwacer, the former a female soliloquy.86 These laments are found in the anthology of Anglo-Saxon poetry known as the Exeter Book, which was donated to the cathedral library in the mid-eleventh century by the bishop Leofric, a close companion of the English King Edward (the Confessor), who was married to the learned and educated Edith. Records of library holdings from early England are scarce, in part owing to the devastation caused by the Viking raids, but we have the valuable information that Leofric also donated to Exeter a glossed Thebaid.87 The Cambridge Songs, the Anglo-Saxon laments and Statius’ poem are united in their interest in the female, lamenting voice as a powerful form of social and political critique; they may also reflect the social and political upheaval of the times. Exile and civil strife were major, recurrent problems of pre-Conquest England. Edward spent 24 years in exile in Normandy before becoming king of England; his hold on power eventually collapsed owing to civil war.88 But his reign (1042-65) was also one of flourishing cultural activity. England had close political, ecclesiastical and intellectual links with the continent; monks and scholars travelled freely across the Channel. Edward and his wife Edith were highly educated, cultured rulers, and she was an active patron of the arts.89 For a variety of reasons, therefore, the court of Edward and Edith seems the likely cultural venue for the transmission of the Cambridge Songs from the Continent to England. Their court moreover had close ties with Canterbury, so this perhaps explains why the Cambridge Songs were copied there. Moreover, the possession of a Thebaid by their close friend Leofric connects that poem closely with their court. Such a possession was not an anomaly; the Thebaid was read in England from early on. The eighth-century scholar Alcuin mentions a ‘Statius’ in his library at York;90 and four manuscripts of the Thebaid from pre-Conquest England are still extant.91 It is possible that the Vita Ædwardi was also copied in Canterbury. This 11th-century, anonymous work uses the Thebaid as a source both of lament and political commentary; it also reveals the importance of female patronage and readership at this time and the breaking down of the exclusionary practices of classical learning. It was written in Latin in a sophisticated prosametric form, that is, with poems alternating with

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples prose. The work is doubly divided in form, for Book 1 provides a history of the reign while Book 2 is essentially hagiography; the alternation of poetry and prose ends after the introductory poem to Book 2. It was composed shortly after Edward’s death for his widow, Queen Edith, probably between 1065 and 1067, a period of great tumult in England with the arrival of the Normans and the displacement of Anglo-Saxon culture; in its opening poem Edith is explicitly named as the inspiration behind the work (VE 1, p. 4, 28-51), evidence of the courtly, well-educated readership for this work.92 The poems – six in hexameter, and two in elegiac distichs – provide an emotional commentary on the prose history, setting the reign of Edward the Confessor into the tragic framework of the Theban conflict and civil war. Edward, who had no heirs, had been further weakened by the fact that he had come to power under the protection of his wife’s father Godwin, Earl of Wessex and father of ambitious sons; in 1065 a quarrel between the two most powerful, Harold and Tostig, led to war and to Tostig’s exile; Edward lost the throne to Harold, and the weakened kingdom was ripe for invasion. The Vita Ædwardi laments the brothers’ hostility to one another as fatal for the kingdom, making possible its takeover by the Normans.93 As Tyler observes, the engagement of the poems in the Vita with Virgil, Statius, Lucan, and Ovid suggests that ‘the Vita Ædwardi was simultaneously a sophisticated text situated at the vanguard of developments in Latin poetry in western Europe and rooted in an English literary tradition’.94 While the use that the Vita Ædwardi makes of the Thebaid suggests that the court of Edward and Edith is a likely candidate for an interest in the Cambridge Songs, it also suggests the way in which Statius’ epic was read at an early stage of its medieval reception and points towards the epic’s further development into romance. Since the Vita Ædwardi was dedicated to Queen Edith, its primary readership is imagined as female. The double form of the work, alternating between poetry and prose, between elegiac and hexameter verse, is reflected in the double voice of the author whose poetic ‘voice’, increasingly dark and lamenting in tone, is set in counterpoint with his prose factual voice. Thus different responses to the ‘life’ display the generic tension within the prosametric form.95 ‘Its chaotic and self-contradictory form’ is part of its meaning; the generic crisis the text enacts is closely tied to the historical crisis of pre-Conquest England.96 The hostility between Eteocles and Polynices is explicitly invoked in two poems, giving the downfall of Edward’s England a tragic, universalising framework. In poem 6 (pp. 58-61), the poet laments the threat of a Theban scenario in England, using the image of the twin pyres (p. 58, 9-16):97 Quid super his geminis infelix fortuna, Thebanis accincta rogis funereas intenta faces

turbato felle minaris, nimis liuore gemello hinc inde ministras furialibus armis?

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5. ‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’ Heu discors uitium Non pudet urgueri a primogenito mollius infectam

fraternis cladibus ortum! super aucto pondere leti prime genitricis ab aluo germano sanguine terram?

Why then, perverse Fortune, do you threaten these two brothers with thickened gall, with excessive, double envy; why, girded for Theban pyres, do you administer the Furies’ torches on both sides, intent on impious war? Alas, the evil of discord sprung from brothers’ strife! Are you not ashamed that earth, less deeply stained by the brother’s blood from Eve’s firstborn, should be oppressed even more by the added weight of death?

Biblical precedent intensifies the horror of the Theban nefas; Cain too killed his brother (Eve’s first-born Abel) and invited God’s heavy anger (14-16). Thebes thus functions typologically within the theology of original sin. The author’s first-hand knowledge of the Thebaid is indicated by furialibus armis, an allusion to Theb. 11.90; later in this poem the splitting of the flame on the brothers’ funeral pyre (Theb. 12.431-2) is referred to (41-2).98 The Theban story of recursive history and internecine strife proved tragically persistent to the extent that even in 11th-century England Thebes provided a model for analysing and lamenting the Anglo-Saxon kingdom’s fall. The interpretative bias of ‘The Life’ towards lament, moreover, is programmatically inscribed in its opening poems to Books 1 and 2 (VE 1, pp. 2-9; VE 2, pp. 84-91), both written in elegiac couplets; the civil war theme of doubleness and division is integrated into the poetic structure through the form of a dialogue between the poet and the Muse. In the first poem, attention is drawn in a nuanced way to the poet’s use of elegiacs for describing the deeds of Earl Godwin’s sons (p. 8, 83-6): Horum discreta serie dices probitatem, quos actu proprio prestiterint titulos. Carmine germano germanos plenius actus alternans operis ordine pone modum. You will tell in a series, one by one, of their worthiness, and of the honours they have won by their great actions. By means of brotherly song, tell in turn and in full the deeds of the brothers, and set the course of the work by the ordering of the rhythm.99

‘Brotherly song’ is a metaphor for the elegiac couplet, which is constructed of a hexameter and a shorter pentameter line; Ovid jokingly personifies Elegy as a young woman with one ‘foot’ shorter than the other (Am. 3.1.7-8). In linking the celebration of the brothers’ deeds with this metrical form, the Muse subtly suggests not the parity of the brothers, but their dangerous inequity. Alternus is Statius’ epithet for civil war (alternaque regna, Theb. 1.1; alternas  pugnas, Theb. 11.112). The elegiac couplet

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples thus suggests also the possibilities for division and lament, for it incorporates inequality into its formal structure. At the programmatic start of the Vita, the metrical form is subtly correlated to content. Moreover, series recalls its programmatic use at Thebaid 1.7 (longa retro series). These opening lines with their emphatic, juxtaposed repetition of germano and germanos foreshadow the divisions in Edward’s kingdom and also look forward to the rewriting of Statius (and Lucan) as English tragic history. Although the work opens with hopes for the prosperity of Edward’s reign, in the poems the threat of destructive division is an undercurrent from the start.100 The elegiac couplet throws into question hopes of epic celebration. The opening poem of Book 2 of the Vita Ædwardi, like the opening poem to Book 1, is constructed as a dialogue with the Muse in elegiacs but is more openly pessimistic (VE 2, pp. 84-91). There is a serious division now between the author of the Vita and his Muse, whom he names as Clio (Statius’ Muse, Theb. 1.41) in the opening elegiac couplet. The poet complains that his hopes for a fine work about a prosperous kingdom have been dashed (p. 84, 13-14): et nunc Thebaidos fedo sub scemate carmen hoc opus horrenti discipulo retegis. Yet now you reveal to your appalled student that this work is a Thebaid, foul of form.

With this striking use of the title of Statius’ epic, the Thebaid has become elegiac, while elegy has become like tragedy, foedus. Both distortions of generic norms are evidence of the disorder wrought by the subject matter of civil war, while the poet himself has assumed the double voice of Statius’ civil war poetics; horrenti suggests that he recoils in horror from what his poem has begun, but also that he has taken on the appearance of a barbaric, uncouth warrior. The poet goes on to lament that English politics have followed the destructive pattern of Theban history, horrida stirps (a ghastly race, p. 84, 26), born from civil strife, and doomed to repeat it; like Statius at the end of the Thebaid he wishes to abandon writing, for ‘what madman will write about this’ (quis demens scribet?, p. 88, 66). The Muse responds in consolation; Edward will be sanctified, and the book will be read with care by Queen Edith, who is represented here as the specific recipient of the book and a powerful patron (pp. 88-91, 87-106). With the designation of a courtly female reader/patron and the hope for poetic reward the poems stop; the Muse urges a fresh beginning in prose. The female voice here is not lamenting and destructive, but consolatory. The Vita Ædwardi in Boethian style, becomes a kind of working through of the Theban conflict as a model for civil war poetry, a model that in the end is rejected through the twin consolation of a patron queen and the

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5. ‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’ goodness of God. Unlike in the Thebaid, the narrative continues in the laudatory mode of prose hagiography. Yet even as the poet obeys the Muse, he does so ‘with a very heavy heart’ (nimium sed corde dolente, p. 90, 113-14), for he is bereft of great English lords. The poet’s crisis of identity and purpose is linked to the historical crisis of England; thus his definition of himself as a grief-stricken writer, even as he goes on to praise Edward’s sanctity, marks out generic and ideological tension as central to this work. The Vita Ædwardi provides early evidence for the circulation of the Thebaid outside a school and ecclesiastical context. As Statius had wished (Theb. 12.814-15), the poem was indeed read by rulers, as well as within the classroom. The allusions to the Thebaid in the Vita Ædwardi speak to an audience who understood the classical references. In this case the primary reader was an educated queen, and thus we see the importance of the female reader and patroness in the circulation of the Thebaid outside schools. The English court did not have a special interest in the Trojan narrative, for the Saxon kings did not promote genealogical links with that line; instead, the civil war epics had particular relevance at the end of the Saxon era.101 Likewise, but in a more overt, blunt manner, the first vernacular translation of the Thebaid, the Gaelic Togail na Tebe, ties Statius’ epic to contemporary events, for it is prefaced by an account of the internecine feuds raging at that time in Ireland.102 Yet despite the horrors of the Theban story of nefas, its privileging of female experience provided an important stimulus for queenly patronage in related genres. The Vita Ædwardi constitutes an interesting precursor to a key development of the following century, the vernacular transformation of the poem into courtly romance under the aegis of another powerful queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. The Roman de Thèbes, composed in Old French around 1150 for the Plantagenet court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, is the first romance narrative of the Middle Ages and an imaginative reconstruction of the Theban narrative that introduces erotic elements.103 This work takes the Thebaid as its basis but adds the entire story of Oedipus as well as ‘romance’ adventures, adapting the poem to a chivalric and Francophone environment. The great emotional appeal of the Thebaid – its structuring around a divided court, and its emphasis on the personal consequences for families and women in particular – invited the vernacular recontextualisation of its epic narrative as romance. The popularity of the Thebaid and its romantic offspring is shown in an interesting episode in Book 2 of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde.104 Statius was an important author for Chaucer. His reception of the Thebaid and its vernacular descendants was deeply informed by an appreciation of the poem’s tragic empathy and the possibilities for this recursive history nonetheless to move forward into new poetic narratives and forms. The first mention of Statius in English literature occurs in Chaucer’s House of Fame, Book 2.1456-63, where Statius is presented as the epic poet of civil war. Chaucer’s romantic poems Anelida and Arcite and The

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples Knight’s Tale were heavily based on the Theban myth; as well as on Statius, they drew on Boccaccio’s Teseida, a romance that synthesised Statius’ two epics.105 The Knight’s Tale, the first of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, involves two Theban brothers who, while prisoners of Theseus, fall jealously in love with the same young woman; the debt to Statius’ Thebaid is announced in Chaucer’s prefatory lines which cite Thebaid 12.519-20 on Theseus’ triumphant entry into his home city of Athens: ‘here bigynneth the Knyghtes Tale. Iamque domos patrias, Scithice post aspera gentis / prelia, laurigero, etc.’. The Latin tag with its teasing ‘etc.’ appeals to a learned audience who would know to set Chaucer’s poem within a specific Theban context. Post  / prelia (after the battles) suggests not only the end of Statius’ epic, but also the generic turn from epic to romance; the preposition post also positions Chaucer as a poet coming after Statius, and thus appropriating the Theban narrative for his own purposes. Moreover Troilus and Criseyde, a five-book narrative poem that takes place during the siege of Troy, nevertheless, as Patterson points out, ‘is saturated with “Thebanness” ’.106 A large number of its classical allusions are to the Thebaid; its recursive view of history also draws from Statius’ epic.107 The poem opens with a reference to Statius’ epic via Dante, ‘the double sorwe of Troilus to tellen’ (TC 1.1).108 These opening words restructure the Trojan hero as a figure of lament and assimilate him to Jocasta; his ‘double sorrow’ however arises not from his love for two sons, but from his doomed love for Criseyde, who proves unworthy of him. The Theban myth moreover is deployed, as in the Thebaid itself, to comment on contemporary history. Baswell argues that the redaction of classical texts into romance often provided a mirror through which to explore the anxieties of the present.109 Chaucer wrote during the Hundred Years’ War, which pitted the Plantagenet house of England against the French in competition for the French crown; since the Plantagenets were of Norman origin – French remained the language of the English court – they were engaged in what was essentially a draining civil war. Writing in the English vernacular, not French, Chaucer approached Statius’ epic as a work of great emotional power that examines war through the personal lens of the individual voice and experience.110 In Book 2 of Troilus and Criseyde Chaucer offers us a fascinating glimpse into the two parallel traditions of reading the Theban narrative in his own century, the scholarly and the romantic, the Latin and the vernacular. The episode suggests that the Thebaid, or at least the Theban story, appealed to a textual community of female readers. Such at least is one of the implications of Chaucer’s treatment of the story. Book 2 opens with the poet’s invocation of Statius’ Muse, Clio (TC 2.8; Theb. 1.41). Shortly thereafter, two different views of the Thebaid are juxtaposed, and two different readerships. When Pandarus first visits Criseyde to tell her of Troilus’ love for her, he finds her with a small reading group; she is listening with two of her ladies to a young woman

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5. ‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’ reading a book about the siege of Thebes (2.81-4). Since Criseyde refers to the work as ‘the romaunce [sic]  of Thebes’ (2.100), the women are most likely listening not to the Thebaid but to the French vernacular Roman de Thèbes.111 This scene was not in Chaucer’s source, Boccaccio’s Filostrato, and thus seems to represent reading practices of Chaucer’s day. Women were largely excluded from learning and reading Latin, for classical education was institutionally a male preserve.112 In Chaucer’s historical romance, it is appropriate therefore for Criseyde and her ladies to be listening to the vernacular version of the Theban narrative, which had probably been written, moreover, under female patronage.113 Through the Roman de Thèbes the classics could be made available to women readers in a new creative form. In this anachronistic situation, Criseyde is presumably listening to a French text, the language of the court and of considerable cultural prestige in Chaucer’s day. Reading too is seen here as a communal activity; Criseyde listens with two other women in the intimate setting of a parlour, a situation which suggests the opportunity for discussion of the text and for interactive reading. Pandarus on the other hand seems to have read the Latin poem. As an educated male he would have had access to Latin texts, and he claims to know the whole story of Thebes (2.106-8): ‘Al this knowe I myselve / And al th’assege of Thebes and the care; / for hereof ben ther maked bookes twelve’. With the mention of 12 books (108), he seems to be referring to Statius’ epic poem, though no author is named.114 Pandarus draws on the immense cultural authority of the classical text in order to engage in a show of masculine oneupmanship over Criseyde. But for all his boasting, Pandarus discounts the message that could be found for Troy in this poem of recursive history and division. Pandarus seems to read Statius for his own self-promotion, for the cultural cachet and gender advantage that reading the classics gives him. At the same time it is possible that Chaucer here is making fun of the scholarly community and the detachment of its reading practices from real life issues, for Pandarus seems to have learned nothing from the poem that might relate to real-life situations, such as the siege of his own city – or the human cost of love. Chaucer also perhaps makes fun of an accepted division of readings of Thebes along gender lines. Pandarus asks Criseyde if she is listening to a book about love (2.96-7), a question underwritten by stereotypical assumptions about female readership; he himself refers to the Theban story in military terms of the siege and ‘care’. Ironically Pandarus has come to speak of love, on behalf of Troilus. He tries to persuade Criseyde to stop the reading and dance with him, for it is Mayday (2.108-12); again, he does not seem to take female reading seriously. Criseyde however defeats his expectations. She is shocked at his request for a dance, seeing this as inappropriate behaviour for a young widow (2.113-19). Reading is implicitly seen as a respectable occupation for mature women that is also therapeutic, for she is reading of the archetypal mythical siege while under

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples siege at Troy, and one of her first questions to Pandarus is whether the siege by the Greeks is over (2.123-4). All the same, Pandarus’ reaction to her choice of reading matter and to his request that she set the book aside for merriment suggests that she may transgress the normal expectations for women in a courtly environment; her reading practices subtly indicate that she could pose a threat to hierarchical order, as indeed proves to be the case. In other words, her dangerous sexuality and her engaged reading of the powerful, transgressive Theban narrative are here interlinked.115 Chaucer marks precisely the point where Pandarus interrupts the narrative; the women had finished hearing the story of Oedipus (2.101-2) and had just reached the dramatic descent of ‘the bishop Amphiorax’ to the Underworld (2.104-5). As in the Roman de Thèbes, Amphiaraus is here called a bishop, not a warrior. In the Thebaid the death of Amphiaraus occurs at the end of Book 7, which forms a clearly defined boundary in Statius’ text: in this book the Argives resume their march on Thebes after a long delay, and Amphiaraus is the first of the Seven to fall. Criseyde’s point of interruption likewise occurs at a textual division, marked by red letters or rubrics (103); it is also symbolic and full of retrospective irony. Though she does not yet know it, Criseyde is at a turning point in her life; Pandarus’ news of Troilus’ love for Criseyde will change the direction of their lives – and also the direction of Chaucer’s narrative. There is a further irony in that Amphiaraus’ spectacular descent to the Underworld was caused by his betrayal by his wife; Criseyde in turn will betray Troilus. That Criseyde can retort to Pandarus that she is not reading about love (2.96-100) is somewhat disingenuous; Amphiaraus’ death is linked to his wife’s faithlessness. By the end of the poem Criseyde, who never finishes the Theban narrative but stops in the middle, is separated from Troilus through her own faithlessness, serving as a moral example of the treachery of secular love (TC 5.1821-48). The breaking point in the reading therefore both replicates an important textual boundary in Statius’ poem and also foreshadows Criseyde’s tragic betrayal of her lover. Had she continued her reading beyond the spectacular death of ‘Amphiorax’, she might have learned the full horrific costs of a wife’s betrayal. In Troilus and Criseyde, we have two views of the Thebaid, the Latin poem which in Pandarus’ account focused on the siege, and its romantic, vernacular spin-off that appeals especially to a female audience. Reading and listening to Thebes are presented as prestigious activities for women, as a therapeutic diversion from the siege, as a courtly, communal activity, and as a way of educating them in the classics that has possibly dangerous consequences. Interestingly, the two traditions of reading the Theban story, the Latin and the vernacular, come together in the final book of Chaucer’s poem. Cassandra explains to Troilus a dream that involves a summary of Statius’ epic (TC 5.1485-510). Half-way through her précis, at line 1498, most manuscripts of Chaucer’s poem insert a 12-line Latin hexameter verse

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5. ‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’ summary of the poem. With one line for each book, it takes the form of a mnemonic and suggests the importance of the plot of the Thebaid as a key to understanding Chaucer’s poem. Magoun argues that Chaucer himself was almost certainly responsible for the insertion of the Latin summary, drawing on the brief arguments often attached to the beginning of manuscripts of the Thebaid.116 Yet at the end of Troilus and Criseyde, the Latin and vernacular tradition intermingle, instead of running parallel as they do in the second book; the rich fabric and potential of Statius’ poem are thus demonstrated in the multi-authored ending, and in the appeal to the twin audiences. Yet because the epitomes are voiced by Cassandra, Chaucer also pays deference to the importance of the female narrator in the Thebaid; as epic narrator who provides a retrospective account of tragic events, Cassandra here briefly plays the part of Statius’ Hypsipyle.117 In maintaining my focus on the importance of the female voice, I have not discussed perhaps the most prominent and intriguing literary figure in the reception of Statius, Dante, who in the Purgatorio made the startling innovation of turning the Latin poet into a Christian (Purg. 22.64-93).118 As Wetherbee has argued, when Statius appears in Dante’s Commedia he has set the grimness of Thebes behind him for the tranquility of upper Purgatory, the site for therapeutic transition from grief to joy.119 Weeping in Dante is necessary for salvation,120 and Dante makes ‘Stazio’ take part in the salvific process by constructing in Books 21 and 22 of the Purgatorio a biography that leads Statius through mourning to baptism.121 The redemptive turn in the Purgatorio is marked by a complex simile referring to Hypsipyle’s recovery of her lost sons (Purg. 26.94-6), which turns mourning into joy; she and her sons furthermore escape from the tragic action.122 Chaucer however ends Troilus and Criseyde with a reworking of the epilogue of the Thebaid in which his poem, like Statius’, is associated with tragedy, here through the failure of his protagonists’ love (TC 5.1786-92). Nonetheless, Chaucer’s poem shows a better form of ‘love’ in its reverence for its predecessors; Statius, as he himself had hoped, is now a prominent figure in that immortal tradition (TC 5.1786, 91-2): Go, litel bok, go, litel myn tragedye  And kis the steppes where as thow seest pace Virgile, Ovide, Omer, Lucan and Stace.

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6

Between Rome and Naples

1

Quid? uos duas habetis patrias? (Cic. Leg. 2.5) The first collection of Siluae (Books 1-3) is bookended by two poems (1.1 and 3.5) about Rome and Naples respectively, two famous cities of imperial Italy. In Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities Marco Polo does not describe cities by mere facts, such as the types of materials used in the construction of their buildings. Rather, great cities are constituted by the relationships between their spaces and past events. Buildings, squares, streets and monuments are inscribed with memories; the city is a place of living history. Statius too does not describe Rome or Naples in the sense of providing detailed facts about their layout and construction. As we have seen with Argos and Thebes, and Rome with its colossal equestrian statue in the Forum, his cities are palimpsests where the past is ever-present to comment on and even determine contemporary and future events. This final chapter focuses upon the praise of Naples in Silu. 3.5, the concluding poem of the first published collection (Books 1-3), which completes the trajectory of the poetry book as a whole from Rome to Naples and confirms the generic associations of this geographical shift; the completion of the Thebaid and of Silu. 1-3 frees the poet to seek the peace of his home city and try other poetic forms – another book of Siluae and a different type of epic, both of which rework and incorporate elegiac themes.2 The poem, and the collection, come to a climactic end with a formal encomium of Naples and the surrounding region (3.5.72-107).3 Statius counters the negative, persistent Roman stereotype of Campania as a centre of luxury and decadence; and he promotes the regeneration of the region after the devastation caused by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. He challenges a Romanocentric view of the world by guiding the reader towards an external viewpoint whereby Rome is not unique as a great city. In 3.5, the encomium of Naples acts as an important strategy in the poet’s self-fashioning as a successful mediator between Greek and Roman culture, and as a son of Naples as well as a Roman poet of first rank.4 Praise of one’s native region was a closural strategy in the Augustan elegists.5 Propertius praises his Umbria at the end of Book 1 in bitter relation to Rome; at the end of the Amores Ovid asserts his pride in his native Sulmo, but he does so as a way to compare the smallness of the town with the greatness of its poet (Am. 3.15.8-14). In place of the centripetal movement of the elegists – and also of Virgil – to Rome, Statius praises

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6. Between Rome and Naples Naples as a rival city to Rome and a fitting, creative environment for a great poet, for his home city has its own special, noble identity as a cultural centre of long standing.6 He here differs also from Martial, who retired to his homeland of Spain but, as he complains in the preface to his final, twelfth book of Epigrams, is destitute without the stimulus of libraries, theatres, and lively verbal interchange of the capital city. In 3.5, Statius writes of Rome and of Naples from an insider’s perspective. His Campania, as we shall see, is not that of the distinguished literary visitors to the Bay, Seneca and Silius Italicus or even Virgil. As Whitmarsh has observed, in the first century AD the centralisation of imperial power in fact helped foster a continuing sense of regional diversity; local identities, shaped by distinct cultural traditions, were in constant dialogue with the translocal.7 As Eck comments, ‘the world outside Rome was also able to assert its rights’.8 Statius’ proud attachment to Naples, however, is validated not only through its cultural sites and traditions, but through the living literary memory created by other Roman writers.9 His Naples is an intertextual, bicultural city, shaped by the Roman literary past as well as by his own deeply personal ties. Campania As Ker remarks, Campania was composed of many historical strata. It was ‘the gateway for Greek culture in Italy; a site of contention in the second Punic war; the main expansion zone for Roman otium and withdrawal; a region of celebrated fertility and prosperity (Campania felix); the go-to place for Sibylline prophecy or katabasis; a stopping place for Aeneas en route to founding Rome’.10 Above all, the Bay of Naples was the region most closely associated with elite Roman leisure.11 The Siluae as a whole, as we have seen, vigorously challenge the notion that Statius’ home region lacked civic vitality and was simply a playground for the wealthy and dissolute. Such a notion subscribed to the kind of negative definitions of Greek identity which the Romans often imposed. Lomas has argued that from the Ciceronian period on ‘the more positive attributes of Magna Graecia – its peacefulness, the opportunity to lead a cultured life and the connection with philosophy and literature – also appear in our literary sources, particularly in connection with Naples’.12 In the first century AD, moreover, local elites within Italy, acting either as magistrates or (increasingly frequently) in a private capacity, were enormously important in civic benefactions.13 There was a dramatic upsurge in building activity in regions such as Campania, with the focus particularly on constructions associated with leisure activities – baths, amphitheatres, theatres.14 Such types of building fostered burgeoning civic identities and were very possibly spurred by competition for local and regional status between cities and individuals.15 Thus the period in which the Siluae were written can be characterised as one of marked civic euergetism on the local

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples level; Statius’ poems addressed to Pollius Felix (2.2 and 3.1) are underpinned by their recognition of the villa owner’s philanthropy towards the cities of Naples and its commercial neighbour, Puteoli. As Tacitus observes, Naples, the city of Statius’ birth (3.5.106-7), was ‘an almost Greek city’ (quasi Graecam urbem, Ann. 15.33.2). The prestige of Hellenism was crucial to the city’s self-definition; it cultivated its Greek traditions as a form of cultural capital, supported by Roman wealth and power.16 The city celebrated the Augustalia/Sebasta, the games founded by Augustus on the model of the great Greek international games;17 Greek and Latin, and probably Oscan, were spoken in the city, with Greek remaining the language of cultural prestige in many official contexts.18 The emperors took an active interest in the Bay of Naples, and not only for its cultural Hellenism. The region was also extremely important for trade and vital to Rome’s economy. Nero embraced its Hellenic culture, but in AD 64 he also attempted an ambitious engineering project, a canal between lake Avernus and Ostia (Suet. Nero 31.3) that was lambasted as hubristic but would have facilitated trade between Rome and Puteoli.19 The Flavian emperor Titus responded swiftly and generously after the eruption of Vesuvius (Suet. Titus 8.3-4). In the 90s Domitian built the Via Domitiana, a road that shortened the time taken to travel from Rome to the Bay of Naples (Silu. 4.3; 4.4.1-5). The Roman emperors therefore had important economic as well as cultural interests in the Bay of Naples. Only in Silu. 4.3, however, does Statius acknowledge Domitian’s contributions to the region’s economy. Otherwise Naples and its Bay appear in his poetry as a realm separate from Roman imperial politics, and the representative of key literary and philosophical interests. Silu. 3.5 situates itself within the complex cultural history of Naples and the region and emphasises the positive aspects of Hellenism, the distinguished cultural traditions, the practice of Epicureanism as a pathway towards a life of moderation and tranquillity, and its prestigious literary associations, above all with Virgil. Silu. 3.5 Statius’ poem is presented in the form of a suasoria to his wife, persuading her to retire with him from Rome to Naples, Statius’ native city (3 pr. 20-3), and to bring her unmarried daughter to look for a husband (3.5.54-71). Several factors are given for his decision to settle in retirement in Naples – old age (13), a recent life-threatening illness (37-42), the completion of the Thebaid after 12 laborious years (33-6), Domitian’s failure to reward Statius’ talent at the Capitoline games (31-3). That the addressee is his wife is already a sign that Statius’ Bay of Naples is not that of Propertius, who lamented Cynthia’s departure for ‘corrupt Baiae’ (corruptas  Baias, 1.11.27), the notorious bathing resort on the Bay of Naples, ‘its shores hostile to chaste girls’ (litora  castis inimica puellis, 29); or indeed of Martial who ‘regrets’ the transformation of a ‘Penelope’ of a wife into a

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6. Between Rome and Naples ‘Helen’ at Baiae (Mart. 1.62). Rather, Statius wittily reformulates the Bay of Naples as a respectable region for wives and marriageable daughters! Indeed, he casts his wife as a ‘Penelope’ in fidelity (3.5.46-7). The poem’s occasion and its moral discourse recall Horace Carm. 2.6, an ode in which the poet invites a friend to join him in either Tibur (5-8) or Tarentum (9-24).20 Tarentum was a Spartan foundation, a city associated with Hellenistic culture and, located in the south, a gentler environment than the Sabine farm for Horace’s old age (Carm. 2.6.6). Yet Tarentum was not Horace’s native city; nor does he describe its urban culture but rather its idyllic natural environment.21 Statius by contrast imagines a return to the city where he was born and raised (3.5.106-9). As Vessey notes, the poem is framed as an emotional appeal of nostos and anticipates a physical and spiritual homecoming, with Statius playing Odysseus to his wife’s Penelope.22 Statius describes this final poem modestly as sermo (plain speech, 3 pr. 21), a word that indicates a lower literary genre than epic; Horace used it of his satires and epistles and Seneca of his epistles to Lucilius (OLD 1b). The poem is thus presented as a persuasive, yet informal letter to his wife, who is a stand-in for the general reader. The epistolary character of this sermo is also emphasised by its numerous allusions to Ovid’s poetic epistles, the Heroides and the Tristia.23 Thus, despite the modest language in which it is introduced in the preface, this final poem is underpinned by a literary tradition involving voluntary or involuntary separation from a perceived centre of desire, in particular Rome. Statius also describes this sermo in his preface as securus (safe, 22), a word already used in the preface of the third book, which is securus (6) in being sent to Pollius Felix on the Bay of Naples. The word has Epicurean overtones, suggesting lack of anxiety and cares.24 In the Epicurean culture of the Bay of Naples, Statius and his wife will enjoy peace, tranquillity, safety (pax secura locis, 3.5.85). Securus may also have political overtones. Juvenal at the conclusion of his first Satire, reflecting that his society can no longer accommodate the outspokenness of a Lucilius, uses the adjective to describe mythological epic as a type of literature that is ‘safe’ from political censorship and punishment (162-3): securus licet Aenean Rutulumque ferocem / committas, nulli grauis est percussus Achilles (you can safely commit to writing Aeneas and the fierce Rutulian; Achilles’ death is not bothersome to anyone); he perhaps has Statius as well as Virgil in mind here since he refers to Achilles.25 Statius’ use of the phrase sermo securus locates his final poem in the tradition of Horatian sermo (acknowledging Seneca too), and suggests a political dimension to his return to Naples, at the very least because Pollius grants him stable patronage in contrast to Domitian who is a ‘cruel and ungrateful Jove’ for failing to award Statius the crown at the Capitoline games (3.5.31-3).26 Moreover, whereas the first poem of the Siluae began by addressing the emperor through his statue in the heart of Rome, Statius makes his poem of

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples departure ‘safe’ by addressing it to his wife, not to the emperor. The poem’s inversion of Ovidian tropes of exile, casting separation from Rome as positively desirable, not a devastating ejection from the centre of civilised life, suggests not so much disempowerment as disengagement from the power structures of Domitian’s Rome.27 Naples, unlike Ovid’s Tomis, is a viable, even preferable cultural alternative for the poet. The opening scene of 3.5 evokes familiar tropes of Ovidian elegy, anxious separation from a beloved, whether through failed love (as in the Heroides), or exile. But there is an allusion also to a scene in Statius’ own epic, where Argia is kept awake all night by her husband’s sighs (Theb. 3.678-95); Statius too is kept awake by his wife’s anxiety. Hinds has shown how the exilic Ovid used the epistolary form to keep his memory alive among the Roman people, reminding them of the importance of his Metamorphoses.28 Just so Statius reminds his readers of the importance of the Thebaid, on the eve of his departure from Rome for Naples. Laudes Campaniae In the encomium of his native city and region with which Silu. 3.5 ends (72-109), Statius positively remoulds the Ovidian trope of exile, for Naples is everything that Tomis was not; Rome on the other hand is like Tomis. Ovid complains in Tristia 3.8 that neither climate nor water, neither land nor air suits him at Tomis (23); he is cursed with perpetual sleeplessness (27). Statius’ Naples, however, is a site of moderation, evidenced by the climate, which has ‘a mild winter and a cool summer’ (83); unbroken sleep is possible here (86), and the waters are healthful (3.5.104). Statius’ Rome is not the ideal city of Ovid’s exilic longings, but is described in negative, militaristic terms as a restless, violent city whose entertainments mimic war, such as ‘the battles of the rabid Circus’ (rabidi  proelia Circi, 15); even the theatre is turned into ‘a noisy mob scene’ (clamosi turba theatri, 16). By contrast drama at Naples represents a union of Roman dignity with Greek creative freedom (Romanus honos et Graia licentia, 94). Nero had made Neapolitan theatre notorious with his outrageous dramatic debut there (Tac. Ann. 15.33.2), but Statius presents the Neapolitan stage as synecdoche for the city as a whole, a happy fusion of the best of Greek and Roman culture (94). And Statius himself, a Roman poet born and educated in Naples, positions himself here at the centre of this GrecoRoman cultural interchange.29 Virgil as well as Ovid is a major influence on Statius’ poem. Virgil had personal ties with Naples, for he claimed to have written the Eclogues and the Georgics in Naples (G. 4.563-6); his tomb, visited by both Statius and Silius, was outside the city (Silu. 4.4.49-55; Plin. Ep. 3.7.8). 3.5 acknowledges its debt to Virgil in the prefatory reference to the poem as ecloga (3 pr. 20) as well as sermo.30 The term evokes a pastoral contrast between city and country, between public careerism and withdrawal, reformulated in

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6. Between Rome and Naples 3.5 as a contrast between Rome and Naples. The encomium of Naples draws in particular on two famous passages of Book 2 of Virgil’s Georgics, the laudes Italiae (G. 2.136-76), and the closural passage in which virtuous country life is contrasted with the decadence of Rome (G. 2.458-540). The main features of Virgil’s encomium of Italy – its temperate climate, its fertile fields, its great cities and technological marvels – are transferred to the praise of Naples. As Thomas has shown, ethnographical encomia typically use negative contrasts with other places, peoples or countries to highlight the virtues of the object of praise. Thus Statius in 3.5 rejects ‘barbarous Thrace’ and Libya (81-2) as destinations.31 But, whereas for Virgil Rome and Italy stand out as the positive mean, Statius proceeds to target Rome itself as his main negative contrast (85-8; cf. 15-16). Rome appears, from the perspective of the Neapolitan, as the negative ‘other’. The closural passage to Georgics 2, which in contrast to the laudes Italiae projects an overtly negative view of Rome, is particularly close to the following lines of Statius’ poem (85-8): pax secura locis et desidis otia uitae et numquam turbata quies somnique peracti. nulla foro rabies aut strictae in iurgia leges: morum iura uiris solum et sine fascibus aequum. Here we enjoy secure peace and the leisure of an unstressed life, quiet that is never disturbed and long deep sleep. There is no madness in the forum or laws unsheathed against disputes; people are ruled only by morality and there is justice without the rods of power.

Line 85 evokes G. 2.467 secura quies, while line 87 evokes G. 2.501-2 nec ferrea iura / insanumque forum (no iron laws nor insane forum).32 But Virgil’s idealisation of the rural life that he holds up in contrast is essentially nostalgic (G. 2.538): aureus hanc uitam in terris Saturnus agebat (this type of life golden Saturn led on earth); the growth of Roman power has created a warlike society (G. 2.539-40). Naples by contrast is a viable alternative for Statius, a ‘heterotopia’, to use Foucault’s term, that is not a lost paradise but an actually realised utopia, a space that is both timeless and located firmly in contemporary life, physically protected and yet accessible to the privileged few.33 True, Statius’ region had been devastated by the catastrophe of Vesuvius, but he opens his encomium by making the point that ten years or so later the people of the region ‘stand firm and flourish’. Four main towns in the central region of the Bay had been completely destroyed – Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, and Stabiae – but, as Statius comments, the Bay of Naples was a populous region; by no means all cities had been wiped out or had lost substantial numbers of citizens (3.5.72-4):

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples non adeo Vesuuinus apex et flammea diri montis hiems trepidas exhausit ciuibus urbes: stant populisque uigent. Not to such an extent has the fiery storm at the summit of Vesuvius, dreaded mountain, drained the fearful cities of their citizenry; they stand firm and flourish with people.

The Laudes Campaniae are underpinned by the natural disaster of AD 79. Through the letter to his wife, Statius makes a pitch for the recovery of his home region. The people of the Bay of Naples have not been crushed by the ‘war’ made upon them by Vesuvius; resilient life and productivity have returned to its cities, ‘perfect real spaces’ in present time and in opposition to the turbulence of Rome and the chaos caused by nature’s powers.34 Campania’s resistance to the might of Vesuvius suggests that this is a region not of the effete, but of the hardy. Statius turns here the eruption of Vesuvius to his advantage. Thomas has argued that Virgil in the Georgics, even in the laudes Italiae (G. 2.136-76), expressed unease over the militaristic character of Rome.35 If so, then Statius takes these intimations of unease much further in his negative portrayal of the capital city. A comparison with Horace’s contrast between Rome and his places of retirement also show the boldness of Statius’ strategy here. In the Epistles Horace chooses quiet places of retirement (the Tibur and Tarentum of Carm. 2.6) in preference to Rome (Ep. 1.7.44-5): paruum parua decent: mihi iam non regia Roma sed uacuum Tibur placet aut imbelle Tarentum. Humble places suit the humble; regal Rome does not please me now, but rather uncrowded Tibur and unwarlike Tarentum.

Horace’s criticism of Rome is not overt; he frames his preference for quieter regions in terms of what is ‘fitting’ for the man of ‘small’ ambitions (or the Callimachean poet who eschews epic with its ‘kings and battles’). But Statius’ focus on Rome as the negative foil to Naples is striking. Rome is set not against a more remote, humbler ‘corner’ of Italy like Tarentum (angulus, Hor. Carm. 2.6.14),36 or a wilder, harsher place like Libya or Thrace, but against a cultural, urban rival: Naples, blessed by the deities Apollo and Venus (80), safe and non-violent (85-8), and with a rich historic civilisation, is a new type of locus amoenus, where nature and culture harmoniously meet. Silu. 3.5 presents the nostalgic ideals of Virgil as attainable in the present. He gives a local identity to the georgic and pastoral existence idealised at the end of Georgics 2. Furthermore, in his itemisation of the praiseworthy features of Naples, he inverts the homesick Ovid’s vision of

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6. Between Rome and Naples Rome (Pont. 1.8.35-6): nunc fora, nunc aedes, nunc marmore tecta theatra, / nunc subit aequata porticus omnis humo (now the fora, now the temples, now the theatres covered in marble, now every porticus on the levelled ground comes [to my mind’s eye]). Statius applies these features instead to Naples (3.5.89-91): quid nunc magnificas species cultusque locorum templaque et innumeris spatia interstincta columnis, et geminam molem nudi tectique theatri. What now shall I say of the magnificent sites and their elegance, of the temples and the porticos demarcated by countless columns, and of the twin mass of the open air and covered theatre?

Physically Naples is a replica of Rome as imagined in exile by Ovid; Statius’ home city also has magnificent architecture, in particular temples, porticoes and theatres; culturally it is on a par with Rome, for it has excellent drama and famous international games that rival the Capitoline games (92-4); morally it is superior, its society founded on social and philosophical order, not on military and legalistic might. In this final poem Rome and political life are relegated to the periphery, while Naples occupies centre stage as the defining point of Statius’ new literary existence as the poet of the Siluae. Statius engages here in what Stafford, writing of regional nineteenth-century English poetry, has named ‘re-centralizing’. That is, by placing Rome on the margins and by depicting Naples as the poet’s emotional and cultural centre, Statius invites scrutiny of the conventional values associated with Rome; by displaying his own bicultural identity, he asks what it means to be Roman.37 The encomium of Naples ends with praise of the surrounding area as a key part of the attractions of homecoming (95-104). Typically, as Clarke observes, local histories linked place names with particular people or events in the recent and mythical past; they thus tied the local into a wider framework.38 Campania was rich in historical and mythological associations. In 3.5 the famous places to visit are almost exclusively those mentioned by Virgil, particularly in Book 6 of the Aeneid, which was located in Campania. However, in 3.5 Statius rewrites Virgilian sites of memory in the twin interests of the short, unwarlike poem and of a region known for its Epicureanism. The Virgilian past of gods, monsters and ghosts was not compatible with the Epicureanism of the region, nor with the new genre of Siluae. In the final part of his encomium Statius reshapes Virgilian topography and history by bringing them into the present and in line with poetic and philosophical values. For instance Lake Avernus and the Underworld are not mentioned. The Sibyl’s cave in Aeneid 6 was a terrifying place, with a hundred entrances and as many voices echoing from the

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples depths hewn into massive rock (A. 6.42-4). It is now a pleasant stop on the tourist itinerary of the Bay (97-8): enthea fatidicae seu uisere tecta Sibyllae / dulce sit (or if it is pleasing to visit the divinely-filled home of the prophetic Sibyl). At first the Sibyl is solemnly introduced through the juxtaposition of enthea, a word of Greek origin introduced by Seneca to Latin poetry (Troades 674), with the virtually synonymous Latin fatidicae. But dulce playfully undercuts the solemnity by suggesting that there is nothing frightening here; the river Galaesus at Tarentum was likewise dulce (pleasing) for Horace (Carm. 2.6.10).39 The adjective is repeated two lines later (dulcia, 100) to describe the lighthouse off Capri (100-1): Teleboumque domos, trepidis ubi dulcia nautis lumina noctiuagae tollit Pharus aemula lunae the home of the Teleboans, where the lighthouse, brilliant as the moon, raises its pleasing light to fearful sailors.

The Teleboans formed part of Virgil’s Italian catalogue as a proudly militant race (A. 7.733-43). Now, thanks to the advances of technology, the darkness of fear has been dispelled, and with it the monsters (and terrors) of the past. The names of the great Virgilian heroes have also been removed from Statius’ topography. In Silius Italicus’ Punica, to which we will shortly turn, the ‘Greekness’ of the region is offset by the individual sites associated with the deeds or memory of great Trojan heroes. Cape Misenum for instance commemorates Aeneas’ trumpeter in battle (Sil. 12.155-6): necnon Misenum seruantem Idaea sepulcro / nomina (and also Misenum which preserves the name of the Trojan with his tomb). Silius here alludes to the passage where Aeneas places an oar, along with arms and a trumpet, upon the burial site (A. 6.233), a place which, Virgil declares, will preserve Misenus’ name for ever (A. 6.234-5): nunc Misenus ab illo / dicitur aeternumque tenet per saecula nomen (now it is called Misenus after him and it holds his immortal name for ever). Statius’ reference to the site pointedly omits the name, while claiming the site is ‘memorable’ (3.5.98): Iliacoque iugum memorabile remo (the ridge made memorable by the Trojan oar). The repackaging of Virgilian epic geography and history in the form of tourist sites reflects to some extent the cultural reality of the region, whose ‘landscapes of allusion’ held enormous fascination for the Roman visitor and brought the region considerable cachet.40 But there is an ideological purpose here too. The leitmotif of Statius’ Campania is securus, an epithet which describes both his new kind of poetry – (securus  tertius hic Siluarum nostrarum liber, 3 pr. 6-7; sermo  securus, 3 pr. 21-2) – and the calm, Epicurean conditions in which he can write under Pollius’ patronage; it surely also refers to the physical safety of the region that helps make

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6. Between Rome and Naples such cultural conditions possible. By removing epic grandeur from Virgilian topography, 3.5 maps out a literary topography of ‘minor poetry’ that reflects literary and Epicurean ideals: freedom from anxiety, and friendship, particularly with his patron Pollius Felix and his wife Polla. The poem also removes the region’s association with the Virgilian teleological purpose, according to which Campania was a temporary stopping-off point in Aeneas’ mission to found Rome. Campania is reimagined as a final destination offering cultural and philosophical sanctuary and new possibilities for literary production. The last word of the encomium is renatas (104). Stabiae, the site of Pliny the Elder’s death in the eruption (Plin. Ep. 6.16.12-20), has been ‘reborn’, that is ‘rebuilt’. Statius thus begins (72-4) and ends his laudes Campaniae with pointed reference to the regeneration of the region after the eruption of AD 79. But the epithet securus also suggests a deeper process of regeneration involving new beginnings for the poet also. The Siluae thus re-calibrate the trajectory of Virgil’s career which associated Naples with the first poetry, Eclogues and Georgics, and Rome with the masterpiece, the Aeneid.41 In Silu. 3.5 Naples and Siluae are a post-epic destination (as well as a pre-second epic destination). Statius introduces 3.5 as ‘the final eclogue’ (summa  ecloga, 3 pr. 20). Summa (final) invites correspondence with Virgil’s concluding pastoral poem, Eclogue 10. Like 3.5, Eclogue 10 is an invitation to the pastoral life of otium that also engages with elegiac poetry, here through the interaction of the poet-narrator and his addressee, the elegiac poet Gallus. But in Eclogue 10 the invitation fails; the poem itself is an envoi to pastoral poetry. Surgamus (let us rise, Ecl. 10.75) suggests the poet’s ambition to ascend to the top of the generic hierarchy. Naples however is where Statius plans to settle in his old age (3.5.13): patria senium componere terra (to settle our old age in my native land). Componere suggests calm and order; it also means to ‘compose’ a literary work. Creativity thus is not absent from retirement from Rome, for Naples will be the site where he embarks on his second epic (4.4.93-4). The rhetorical injunction to his wife, uenies, carissima coniunx, / praeueniesque etiam (you will come, dearest wife, in fact you will come ahead, 110-11) suggests that, unlike Virgil’s invitation to Gallus, his plea has been successful.42 In 3.5 Statius challenges Virgil’s model of generic ascent. The ‘pastoral’ destination is not a dead end but a new creative site for literary possibilities, another book of Siluae, a second epic. In boldly redrawing Virgilian generic topography the Siluae invite a fresh perspective upon post-Virgilian epic and the literature of ‘withdrawal’. The theme of the Achilleid, as far as we can tell from one and a half books, is far different from the savage militarism of the Thebaid or the national agenda of the Aeneid; the youthful, fleet-footed Achilles seems a congenial hero for the poet of the speedily composed Siluae. Virgil, Ovid and Horace were important Augustan poetic influences in

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples Statius’ reshaping of the cultural history of his region. So too were more recent Roman authors and visitors to Campania, Seneca and Silius Italicus. Both these aristocratic outsiders from Rome maintain the ambivalence towards the Bay of Naples so characteristic of earlier Augustan literature. But both in different ways show, like Statius, that the return to Campania, a region saturated with Virgilian, epic allusion, is a complex matter for the post-Augustan author. Hannibal’s Campania Campania plays an important role in the Punica of Silius Italicus, Statius’ contemporary and fellow resident on the Bay of Naples. In this epic of the second Punic war (218-202 BC), Hannibal’s stay in Campania is spread out over several books (6-12). Silius’ view of Campania, like Seneca’s, is characterised overall by an aristocratic disdain for ‘un-Roman’ softness and luxury. But it is also inflected by different historical relationships. The epic oscillates in time among the Campania of Virgilian epic, the Campania of the republican past, and the present-day Campania where Silius lived in retirement (Plin. Ep. 3.7). Unlike Statius, he uses these oscillations in time to emphasise his sense of literary secondariness and historical decline. From the start of the Carthaginian invasion of Campania, when the Campanians gather to support the war against Hannibal, they are characterised as feebler than the Roman troops. It is the Roman aristocrat Scipio who puts real backbone into the men by giving them proper weapons for the ‘lighter’ ones they carried at home (8.546-50). But Capua, which defects to the Carthaginians, bears the weight of the negative Campanian stereotype; it lacks moderation (inconsulta modum, 8.545) and displays the enfeebling effects of luxury (11.33-6): luxus et insanis nutrita ignauia lustris consumptusque pudor peccando unisque relictus diuitiis probrosus honor lacerabat hiantem desidia populum ac resolutam legibus urbem. Luxury and sloth fed by mad celebrations, shame overridden by vice and respect scandalously granted riches alone were tearing apart a people yawning with laziness and a city freed from legal restraint.

The language of ‘laceration’ describes the effects of luxury in physical terms, here as a tearing apart of the social and moral bonds that constitute the body politic. The leader too of this damaged city is tellingly a man of low social origin (11.65-6): cunctis praecellens Virrius ore, / sed genus obscurus nullique furore secundus (Virrius, who surpassed all others in speech, but was of obscure descent and second to none in passion). In Capua proper Roman values are inverted: the lowly Virrius, lacking

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6. Between Rome and Naples distinguished ancestors, is lord of misrule. The unmanning of Hannibal and his men by luxury begins with the first banquet at Capua, when rich food and wine relax even Hannibal’s hardness of mind (duram / laxarunt mentem, 11.285-6). When his army returns to fight, he finds their minds ‘enfeebled by luxury and worn down by good living’ (fessas luxu attritasque secundis, 12.82). By contrast Capua in Silu. 3.5 is honoured by its Trojan ancestry as the permanent site of settlement of Capys and his followers (76-7). Naples itself plays only a small part in Silius’ epic. Although it is called a ‘Greek’ city (12.41), it is exempted from the charge of luxury and successfully resists its siege by the Carthaginians (12.27-59). It is portrayed as not so rich as traitorous Capua, and its ‘vigour is not disdained’ (non spreta uigoris, 12.28), that is, it falls outside the regional stereotype exemplified so damningly by Capua, which unites luxury with perfidy to the Roman cause. All the same, Silius indicates with some ambivalence that in his own times the city has lost its martial capabilities (12.31-2): nunc molles urbi ritus atque hospita Musis / otia et exemptum curis gravioribus aeuum (now the city’s rituals are unwarlike (molles), its leisured peacefulness is hospitable to the Muses, and life is exempt from more serious cares). Naples is a place for the pastimes of otia, not for great affairs of state; molles suggests its gentle climate and its peacefulness, but it is also a catchword of un-Roman effeminacy.43 Naples is chiefly important in Silius’ epic as the prompt that occasions Hannibal’s survey of Campania. During his unsuccessful siege of Naples (Sil. 12.27-59), he visits the attractions of the region, an episode that has little external motivation or indeed historical basis.44 His tour is Silius’ version of Aeneas’ guided tour of early Rome in Aeneid 8, with its similar temporal shifts between past and present;45 it also travels the literary terrain of Vergil’s Campanian geography in Aeneid 6, starting with Cumae, Aeneas’ landing point, and lingering at Avernus, the gateway to the Underworld (12.83-103, 113-57).46 Here as in Silu. 3.5, the visit to Campania defines the poet’s relationship to the Virgilian epic tradition. But the Campania to which we are introduced through Hannibal’s eyes is very different terrain from the tranquil Epicurean landscape of 3.5 (which does not mention Avernus or the Underworld); or indeed from the luxurious pleasure grounds that enervated the Carthaginian army. Hannibal is confronted by another, equally dangerous side of Campania, its frequent display of the savage and sublime power of nature. Silius’ description lies firmly in the paradoxographical tradition, according to which nature is a source of curious or awe-inspiring marvels.47 For instance, the climax of Hannibal’s tour is Vesuvius, and here time collapses as we fast forward to the present (12.152-4): monstrantur Vesuuina iuga atque in uertice summo depasti flammis scopuli stratusque ruina mons circum atque Aetnae fatis certantia saxa.

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples They showed Hannibal the slopes of Vesuvius and on its summit the rocks fed by its flames; the blasted mountain lies in ruins all around; its boulders rival Etna in their fatal discharge.

With a striking temporal switch, Silius seems to be describing the devastation caused by Vesuvius in his own day; until its eruption in AD 79 the volcano was believed to be extinct (Plin. Nat. 3.62; 14.22). Hannibal’s final reaction to Campania is one of wonder at a land where nature threatens with such epic might (12.157): miratur pelagique minas terraeque labores (he wonders at the threatening roughness of the sea and the upheavals of the land). Silius ends the Campanian ‘tour’ with a different image of the region therefore from what he has experienced to this point; a land of luxury and softness is also a land of terrifying natural power, with notorious storms on its Bay, frequent earthquakes, and terrifying volcanic instability. Hannibal, the hero who dared to cross the Alps, is awed as he confronts the power of nature, a sign of the formidable challenges of the terrain that he seeks to conquer. This description of Vesuvius also suggests the challenges confronting Silius in his attempt to rival Virgil’s descriptive powers; his Vesuvius challenges (certantia, 154) Virgil’s Etna, graphically described in A. 3.57087.48 Campania is thus also the site where Silius directly confronts the Virgilian past, in the Underworld in particular, and comes to acknowledge the impossibility of recreating the conditions in which great poetry once flourished. For instance, the notion of decline is implicit in the replacement at Cumae of Virgil’s Sibyl by a Sibyl of lesser powers, a type of business manager of the oracle rather than prophetess; the Virgilian Sibyl now resides in the Underworld, ‘a greater prophet’ (maiori uate, Sil. 13.409), but lost to humankind. Her location in the Underworld, in the company of the great heroes and poets of the past, defines Silius’ relationship to his literary heritage as one of deference to a greater epic tradition, coupled with a sense of his secondariness. And yet, the relationship to the past is always fraught with complexities. In another temporal shift between past and present, Silius comments that Avernus, still menacing with Stygian exhalations when Hannibal visited it, is now famous among lakes for being calm and gentle (stagna inter celebrem nunc mitia  Auernum, 12.121). Like Statius, Silius acknowledges at least some of the benefits of modernity. Even for a poet as reverent of Virgil as Silius, Campania embodies a past to which it is not possible, or even necessarily desirable, to return. Statius probably acknowledges Silius’ epic in the opening lines of 3.5. The reference to his wife’s sleeplessness (1-2) alludes not only to his own Thebaid (3.678-721) but, I suggest, also to the passage in which Hannibal is kept awake by his anxiety over the course of the war in Campania (Sil. 8.207-41).49 Along with the scene from Statius’ own epic, this episode provides an interesting model for Statius’ generic self-representation at

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6. Between Rome and Naples the start of the poem. In the Thebaid and the Punica the scenes of sleeplessness lead to a summons to arms, aided and abetted by female characters, Argia, Polynices’ wife, and the goddess Anna Perenna respectively. In 3.5, however, Statius, having completed his epic, inverts the call to war by summoning his wife away from the turbulent city of Rome to a more peaceful existence – and the more peaceful genre of Siluae. Significantly gone from Statius’ description is the notorious roughness of the Bay of Naples at which Hannibal wonders (pelagique minas, 12.157). The sea instead is imbelle (3.5.84), an adjective used by Horace of ‘unwarlike Tarentum’ (imbelle Tarentum, Ep. 1.7.45); used of the Bay of Naples it has a particularly rich set of connotations. It conventionally connotes the region’s freedom from war and from its turbulent epic past, a point emphasised in the following line (85), pax secura locis (peace is secure here). The sea too was a common philosophical symbol of human confusion and error (Lucr. 2.1-2; Silu. 2.2.129-32); a calm sea connoted the idea of Epicurean ataraxia, freedom from debilitating care, an idea implied by secura. Finally, imbelle has literary connotations and suggests the affinity between the Siluae and elegy; Ovid described his Amores as inbelles elegi (Am. 3.15.19). By contrast with Silius’ Campania, with its shifting frames of perception and time and its uneasy relationship to both the past and the present, Statius’ Campania is a stable region characterised by peace, security and friendship, virtues that are complemented by the ideal climate and gentleness of the region (83-8) over a decade after the eruption. Both pastoral and elegiac, it is freed too from the burdensome aspects of its epic past. Indeed, 3.5 returns Naples to its Virgilian pastoral origins, making however the city, not Arcadia, the ideal site for poetry and tranquillity. Seneca’s letters For Silius and Statius, Campania provides the physical and symbolic territory for the articulation of their relationships to their Virgilian heritage. Silu. 3.5 seems also to have been influenced by the letters that Seneca wrote to Lucilius about Campania.50 The date of publication of Seneca’s letters, and their fate after his death, are uncertain.51 But since Statius was connected to the Annaei family of Seneca through the patronage of Polla, wife of Lucan (Seneca’s nephew), he would surely have had access to them at least through private circulation.52 Seneca’s letters took the Roman epistolary tradition in a new direction, away from politics and world affairs to moral debate.53 In this section of the chapter, I will argue that Statius in his Campanian poems (2.2; 3.1; 3.5) responds to Seneca’s Campanian letters, in particular over the moral discourse of villa ownership and the notion of withdrawal. In an age of significant elite removal from Rome, Seneca’s letters provide at the very least an interesting set of ideas about Campania and Rome against which Statius’ new, positive view of a virtuous Campania asserts itself.

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples In Seneca’s letters Campania assumes a double identity as a region of respectable, philosophical withdrawal and also of enervating, demoralising luxury. His experiences there involving his poor health and the discomforts of travel provide anecdotal illustration of the frailty of the human body but the strength of the mind trained in philosophy. Seneca recognises the region’s moral dangers but also its attractions as a place of withdrawal from public life. Villa culture is central to his view of the region,54 and the trajectory of the Campanian letters virtually spans from Vatia’s villa near Baiae, the modern home of an indolent man (Ep. 55), to its opposite, Scipio Africanus’ old-fashioned home at Liternum where Seneca finds a form of redemption through the connection between agriculture and philosophy (Ep. 86).55 In his letters Campania appears as more than a geographical region; it represents a place that challenges Roman power. This Hellenised region of Italy was also rich in Roman history and mythology and thus full of contradictions; it was a place good to think with, a mindscape that offered a palimpsest of how to live. At the same time Seneca’s own withdrawal from Rome allowed him as a Stoic to propose ultimately the relativities of place, and the importance of cultivating inner, safe detachment from external conditions.56 Exile, or separation from Rome, in Seneca’s view, as Williams points out, is most importantly a metaphor for a state of mind.57 For Statius, by contrast, Campania never becomes simply a vivid figure useful in moral discussion. Place matters fundamentally in Statius’ withdrawal from Rome; Campania is the land where he was born and raised (3.5.106-9). Seneca regards the very attractions of Campania as a useful testing ground for virtue. In Ep. 51 he elaborates on the softening, feminising effects of living in a region known for its pleasant climate and surroundings (Ep. 51.10): effeminat animos amoenitas nimia (an environment that is too pleasant womanises the spirit). Campania threatens manliness. It is an indisputable sign of their greatness that Rome’s most famous leaders such as Caesar and Pompey, and especially Scipio Africanus, could live in the region without succumbing to its fatal charms; Scipio’s opponent, the Carthaginian Hannibal, on the other hand exhibits his moral inferiority when he is seduced by Campanian amoenitas. His extraordinary physical hardiness was shockingly and swiftly eroded by the challenge that the region posed to his manhood (Ep. 51.5): una Hannibalem hiberna soluerunt et indomitum illum niuibus atque Alpibus uirum eneruauerunt fomenta Campaniae (one season spent in winter quarters undid Hannibal, and the pampering of Campania unstrung a man who had been unconquered by Alpine snows). As in Silius’ epic, Scipio Africanus is adduced as the counterpoise to Hannibal. But Seneca’s focus falls on Scipio’s enforced retirement to Campania (Ep. 86.3), and his building of a villa at Liternum, a far more rugged site than Baiae (Ep. 51.11): Literni honestius Scipio quam Bais exulabat; ruina eiusmodi non est tam molliter conlocanda (at Liternum

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6. Between Rome and Naples Scipio lived more honourably in exile than at Baiae; personal ruin of this sort is not to be so comfortably settled). Scipio showed his upright, Roman character by refusing luxurious accoutrements (such as hot baths, Ep. 86.4-13), and by making his land so productive with olives and vines that, when Seneca went to stay at the villa, transplants from Scipio’s stock still flourished (Ep. 86.14-21), proof of the values and precepts provided in Virgil’s Georgics.58 Through his stay at Scipio’s villa, Seneca could promote traditional Roman values of hard work and thrift even in Hellenised Campania. In Scipio’s villa he could relive and revitalise the past; in particular Virgil’s Georgics provides the basis for moral precepts in the present.59 By contrast, Seneca condemns the Baian villa of Vatia because, though it had modern amenities, its owner lived in sloth. Seneca thus puns (Ep. 55.4), Vatia hic situs est, an epitaphic expression that means both ‘here lives Vatia’ and ‘here are dust and neglect’. Both Seneca and Statius offer an off-centre view of Rome, challenging the hegemony of the capital from a philosophical viewpoint in the one case, from a Neapolitan’s in the other. Seneca resists the Greek culture of the area, with the exception of philosophy. For instance, in 3.5 drama is presented as one of the glories of Naples, a successful fusion of Greek and Roman culture (91-4). When Seneca, however, passes by the theatre on his way to the philosophers’ school in Naples, he condemns the city’s famous drama as vulgar and crowd-pleasing, a fatal temptation moreover from the pursuit of wisdom, for he finds the philosophers’ school poorly attended (Ep. 76.4). From his Stoic point of view, the city is dangerously imbalanced. For Seneca, the externals of the physical world, whether man-made or natural, offer challenges to the pursuit of wisdom and reason, goods which ultimately should be independent of place. The luxury villa, on the other hand, is Statius’ philosophers’ school. Seneca and Statius thus clash in particular over the discourse of villa ownership. In Dial. 12.9.2 Seneca attacks the signs of the architecture of luxury – the lengthy porticus, the high, decorative towers – because they figuratively obscure the sight of ‘heaven’. Whereas Seneca professes to despise the new, and the amenities made possible by technological advances, Statius by contrast embraces modernity, seeing technological improvements as an aid to philosophical virtue, not a barrier. Luxury architecture is an aesthetic marvel that, in Statius’ villa poems, is also, but not exclusively, capable of moral interpretation. The contrast between the two approaches to Campania crystallises around the villas of Scipio Africanus and Pollius Felix, Statius’ patron and the dedicatee of Book 3. Campania is redeemed for Seneca by the oldfashioned villa of Scipio Africanus. For instance, he praises its decidedly unmodern baths, and he satirises the modern fashion for luxurious, attractive bathing houses with hot water (Ep. 86.4-13). By contrast, the first attraction of Pollius’ Felix’s villa outside Sorrento is the architecturally innovative bathhouse offering both hot and cold water (2.2.17-19).60 For

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples Seneca, big picture windows and the desire for a commanding view are a wasteful luxury (Ep. 86.8; Ep. 89.21); a special feature of Pollius’ villa are the many windows which command a premier view of the Bay of Naples (2.2.72-85). Scipio Africanus’ villa was built on a Roman model like a military camp with defensive towers (Ep. 86.4). Marius, Pompey and Caesar built their villas at Baiae, but nonetheless they too constructed them like Roman military camps and placed them in defensive positions on mountain tops (Ep. 51.11). Pollius Felix likewise built his villa on a high elevation overlooking the Bay of Naples (2.2.3), celsa Dicarchei speculatrix uilla profundi (a lofty villa looking out over the Bay of Naples), not however for defence but for the view, a highly prized feature of luxury homes.61 In the course of Statius’ poem, the architectural features of luxury assume symbolic meaning; height and radiance, for instance, signify wealth, taste, and also moral worth. In its symbolic meaning, the villa is a ‘citadel of the mind’ (celsa  mentis  arce, 2.2.131).62 But it also remains in its elevated situation a marvel of technological achievement. Both Seneca and Statius also represent Campania through the lens of Virgil’s Georgics. In Ep. 86 Seneca draws moral lessons from the enduring plantings and grafting in the garden of Scipio’s villa, thus finding value and continuity with the past through Virgil’s poem.63 Statius’ Pollius, on the other hand, changes his land completely. His transformation of rugged terrain into an elegant villa estate is described as ‘taming’ and ‘dominating’ nature (2.2.52-62).64 The military character of this passage presents Pollius as a type of georgic hero – (domuit possessor, the owner has conquered, 2.2.56) – not the soft and effeminate villa owner Seneca perceives in Vatia. On the other hand, there is no planting or grafting on Pollius’ estate, but nor is there the persistent tension between human endeavour and a resistant nature characteristic of Virgil’s Georgics. Instead, with a swiftness in keeping with Statius’ ‘Silvan’ poetics, the villa owner creates an environment where art and nature are in harmony, as in Statius’ Naples: pax secura locis (3.5.85). Statius updates the Virgilian georgic model for a new environment and a new age. The section on Pollius’ georgic activity ends with his comparison to Orpheus (2.2.62): et tu saxa moues, et te nemora alta sequuntur (you too move rocks, and the lofty groves follow you). The comparison emphasises the ease with which the land was transformed, as well as the ultimate benefit to nature; in this Epicurean landscape, there is no place for the angst-ridden Orpheus who ends Virgil’s Georgics. At the same time Statius compliments Pollius as a poet (cf. 2.2.36-40, 112-20); landscaping is further seen as comparable to poetic composition, the ‘raw material’ (silua) of woods and rocks transformed into works of art.65 Pollius learns moral lessons not from his plantings but, true to the Hellenic character of Naples, from the masterpieces of Greek sculpture that adorn his home. They represent another sign of luxury that also serves, however, a didactic purpose. Statius singles out three categories of

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6. Between Rome and Naples subject that inspire Pollius to emulation (2.2.69-70) ora ducum ac uatum sapientumque ora priorum / quos tibi cura sequi (the busts of generals, poets and philosophers of old that you strive to follow). Pollius’ art therefore was not simply for purposes of decoration or of prestige but represented a didactic programme such, for instance, as was found at the late republican Villa dei Papiri outside Naples.66 In that villa’s large peristyle, busts of historical figures such as kings and military leaders were paired with those of philosophers and writers, an arrangement that seems to have been designed to invite the viewer to contemplate the contrasts. Likewise, in Pollius’ villa the sculptures invited the spectator to consider opposing models of leadership. The imposition of a didactic programme upon works of art displayed in a villa was not in itself a new idea in Statius’ times.67 What was new was that the non-aristocratic Pollius Felix had the means to possess such a collection of art and pursue the life cultivated by the Roman elite a hundred years before. Wallace-Hadrill has argued that the Roman debate about luxury rested on the issue of social ranking. Traditionally luxury demonstrated social superiority; but in the early empire the old hierarchy was challenged by wealthy newcomers such as freedmen, who invested in wealth as an affirmation of social status.68 Pollius, a prestigious member of the local Neapolitan elite of possibly freedman origins, was part of this ‘cultural revolution’.69 But as Rosati comments, luxury became in the Flavian age an important instrument of social cohesion, not disintegration. Statius emphasises that Pollius’ luxury villa is admired by the people of Naples as the work of a ‘learned citizen’ (2.2.95-7). It is not a symbol of upstart wealth; fashioned from georgic enterprise and filled with Greek works of art, Pollius’ villa united Romanus honos et Graia licentia (Roman honour and Greek freedom liberality) (3.5.94). A window on Campania The highest, most richly adorned room in Pollius’ villa is the diaeta; the Greek name refers to a secluded room for quiet and repose, which happens here to have the best view (2.2.83-6):70 una tamen cunctis, procul eminet una diaetis quae tibi Parthenopen derecto limite ponti ingerit: hic Grais penitus desecta metallis saxa  One room, one room outshines them all in height and décor, which brings Parthenope to you by a straight line over the sea: here are marbles cut lavishly from Greek quarries 

The diaeta is richly decorated with marbles from all over the Mediterranean world (2.2.85-93). Its window, opening onto a view of Naples and its

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples Bay, provides a way of framing nature, thus giving order and calm to the unruly and making the view an aesthetic commodity.71 Indeed, the act of framing specifically stimulates the interplay between the natural and the cultivated, the exterior and the interior, such as we find in the framed vistas of the fourth-style murals of Pompeian houses.72 A window can be both a barrier or a threshold to the outside world. Statius’ striking expression, ‘the room brings Parthenope in’, is an image of appropriation that collapses the distinction between exterior and interior and suggests a symbolic aspect to the aesthetics of viewing; that is, the diaeta distils within its small but richly adorned compass the essence of the city: its cosmopolitanism, its wealth, its sophisticated artistic culture, its Epicureanism. It also suggests that through the diaeta Pollius can formulate his own vision of Naples, here called after the Siren who gave the city its mythological name. Traditionally of course the music of the Sirens was so powerful that it killed its listeners; the representation of Pollius in this poem as a controller of nature and of the passions is shown here too in his control of the Siren and all her potential, bringing her in by a straight line (limite, a boundary word) to his philosophical, architecturally controlled vision. Naples thus is subjected to the discipline of Pollius’ orderly mind. A modernist critic would object that what Statius describes here is basically an imperialist gaze; the window is both an instrument and a symbol of the owner’s domination over space, people, and nature. Thus Mitchell comments: ‘we have known since Ruskin that the appreciation of landscape as an aesthetic object cannot be an occasion for complacency or untroubled contemplation, rather it must be the focus of a historical, political, and (yes) aesthetic alertness to the violence and evil written on the land, projected there by the gazing eye  landscape itself is the medium by which this evil is veiled and naturalised’.73 True, the windows of Pollius’ villa do not encompass in their view the cities devastated by Vesuvius, or indeed the mountain itself; windows were luxury items, signifying the owner’s privileged possession of a pleasing view.74 Furthermore, the poem does not refer here to the slave labour that made Pollius’ leisure possible. He cultivates grapes on his estate; but the poem refers only to mythological nymphs and satyrs sporting with the vines, not to labourers (2.2.98-106). In this regard Statius reflects contemporary taste in the decorative arts for the occlusion of labour; Campanian wall paintings, such as those from the Casa dei Vettii in Pompeii, depict cupids, not slaves, cheerfully engaged in household tasks. The existence of ‘labour’ is occluded, but not entirely ignored, by its translation to the mythological realm. However, Statius introduces new perspectives on villa ownership in this poem. Pollius is also a benefactor to the region. As mentioned above, the citizens of Naples valued his fine taste as an art collector, which enhanced the prestige of their cultured region (2.2.97-8); they also showed their appreciation of his civic benefactions by making him an honorary citizen (2.2.133-6; 3.1.91-103). Thus the citizens of the region corroborate Statius’

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6. Between Rome and Naples praise of Pollius for his wise use of wealth and a philosophic calm and balance in retirement (2.2.121-42). Moreover, he was hardly provincial in his tastes or his connections, for he was the patron of arguably the most distinguished poet of the age. His cultivation of Epicureanism dovetails with his provision for Statius of an informed, safe reception for his poetry (3 pr. 6-7): securus itaque tertius hic Siluarum nostrarum liber ad te mittitur (thus safely this third book of Siluae is sent to you). Spencer has remarked of Statius’ ‘villascapes’ that ‘they exhibit little in the way of local or contextual ties nor accessibility or networking within the wider landscape’.75 Yet Pollius’ civic connections in Puteoli and Naples and his patronage of Statius hardly support the picture of an isolated, introverted villa owner. He enjoys wealth, yet shares his good fortune. Statius puns on that generosity when he says (3.5.103) that ‘Pollius augments’ (Pollius auget) the hills of Sorrento. With this play on Greek polÚj (polus, much), and thus on Pollius’ name, which looks like a Latin comparative form of the Greek, Statius suggests that Pollius’ name means generosity; he ‘adds much’ to the area. The bilingual pun reflects his – and Campania’s – bicultural identity.76 To return to the diaeta. Although a window looks outwards, it also looks inwards. It marks the bridging of the boundary between the external world and the inner world of the inhabitants of the room. The high room, veneered in costly marble, and looking out over the sea, also represents the inner world of its owner, his withdrawal from the trials of the world into Epicurean quietude. Pollius is still part of the world that he surveys, but sheltered from its passions. The description of the diaeta and its view forms a threshold to the second part of the poem where the commanding position of Pollius’ villa, overlooking a calm sea and tamed land, is correlated with his highmindedness and pursuit of ataraxia, freedom from passions and cares (2.2.107-42).77 Pollius’ gaze, like that of his window, is both outwards and inwards. Statius calls Pollius macte, ‘blessed’, for his cultivation of Hellenism (2.2.95). Usually the term applies to military courage or civic deeds (OLD 2), but Statius is making the point here that Pollius departs from this traditional Roman model of uirtus. His virtues rest firmly on the arts of peace. Campanian hero(es) The Campania of Virgil, Seneca and Silius was a region of great military commanders of the past who helped build Rome – Aeneas, Scipio Africanus, Julius Caesar. These great Romans who visited or settled in the area lent it cultural and ethical prestige and provided reassurance of the stability of Roman values, despite the ethical ambiguities of this Greek part of Italy. Their Campania is seen through the lens of Roman exemplarity. Virgil’s laudes Italiae, an important influence on Statius’ encomium of Naples, praise great men in a list spanning from famous ancient families

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples to Augustus Caesar (G. 2.167-72). But Statius’ laudes Campaniae lack the big Roman names. And although Campania was enormously important to wealthy Romans, including the imperial family, there is no hint of this in Statius’ final poem. Rather, in 3.5 only one man merits mention by personal name, Pollius Felix, (102-3):78 caraque non molli iuga Surrentina Lyaeo, / quae meus ante alios habitator Pollius auget (the hills of Sorrento dear to a Bacchus who is not soft, hills which my Pollius above all other men enhances with his home). Non molli refers to the tartness of Surrentine wine; it also of course makes the point, contra Seneca and Silius, that Pollius’ luxury villa has nothing effeminate or decadent about it.79 The phrase meus ante alios  Pollius elevates Statius’ patron, a citizen of Puteoli and Naples and probably a wealthy freedman, before all other possible, but here unnamed, elite exemplars of virtue. Pollius is exalted at the end of his first collection of Siluae as a type of culture hero who reverses the negative stereotype of the region. In Statius’ poetry Campania is a region of friends and benefactors, not great military heroes. From his perspective, a fellow citizen of the region, not a Roman aristocrat, is the ornament of the Bay.80 Three centuries before Seneca and Pollius Felix, Scipio Africanus retired to his Campanian villa in voluntary exile (Sen. Ep. 86.3), to lead out his life in an austere, isolated manner. Pollius is a very different figure. Though retired, he remains connected to an appreciative local community; as patron of Statius he is also connected to the larger world of literature. Pollius leads a virtuous life but without the dank austerity that Seneca praised in Scipio Africanus. He also, importantly, has a wife who is both elegant (nitidae, 2.2.10) and frugal in the time-honoured Roman manner; she manages the household finances with a prudent generosity (2.2.151-4). In 2.2 and 3.1 Pollius and Polla are represented as a devoted, long-married and pious couple. Their marital (and onomastic) harmony complements the Epicurean serenity of their lives at the Surrentine villa; they also display traditional Roman familial values.81 Pollius and Polla head a fertile family line (3.1.46-7, 143, 175-9; 4.8). They offer a modern inflection of the rural ideal expressed in Virgil’s G. 2.523-4, interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati, / casta pudicitiam seruat domus (meanwhile sweet children hang on their parents’ kisses and the chaste home preserves purity).82 Their luxurious villa, moreover, is described in ethical terms as felix simplexque domus fraudumque malarum / inscia et hospitibus superis dignissima sedes (a happy and innocent home, ignorant of evil deceptions, a site most worthy of heavenly guests, 3.1.32-3).83 Felix, a pun on Pollius’ cognomen Felix, suggests his good fortune, fertility, and wealth (3.1.1759);84 simplex suggests a wise use of that good fortune. Using traditional ethical terms, Statius provocatively points to a shift in values whereby wealth enables virtue. He thus challenges Seneca’s model of the ideal villa owner, Scipio Africanus, whose practice of traditional Roman virtues is undertaken in virtual isolation.

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6. Between Rome and Naples The theme of marriage also underpins 3.5, for the poem’s primary addressee is his wife, his companion for life (3.5.106-9): creauit me tibi, me socium longos adstrinxit in annos. nonne haec amborum genetrix altrixque uideri digna? [Naples] created me for you and bound me to you as your companion for long years. Is she not worthy of being regarded as mother and fosterer of us both?

Here Statius demonstrates the interest that underpins the Achilleid, the formative influence of place upon one’s social and moral education. But he represents Naples in a new light not as the lodestar of adulterers but as the fosterer of long and devoted marriage! The encomium is framed by the marital theme and begins with the assurance that Rome does not hold the monopoly on marriage (3.5.71): et nostra generi tellure dabuntur (sons-inlaw will be provided by our land too).85 Statius’ attempt to persuade his own wife away from Rome is a symbolic redrawing of the moral map that transfers traditional virtues to Naples and boldly represents the region as a site of both cultural and moral authority. In his Campanian poems therefore, Statius offers new perspectives on the Senecan discourse of villa ownership that take positively into account not only the long-established, distinguished philosophical and literary traditions of the region but also the changes wrought by increased social mobility and by the flourishing of local elites under the Flavians. Seneca’s counsel to Lucilius, ‘do not make a display of yourself in retirement’ (Ep. 68.3), is to be contrasted with Pollius’ bold architectural display. In an age that continued to debate the rights to luxury, Statius alters its negative valence, and gives it also a symbolic dimension as a guide to moral worth. Rome from Naples, Naples from Rome Silu. 3.5 ends with a striking contrast between the two cities that neatly encapsulates the architectural and generic contrasts that I have traced in this poem. Here, in the final address to his wife, Statius draws particularly on elegiac themes, adapted to a marital context. If she stays behind in Rome without him, Statius assures his wife, the river Tiber and Rome’s divine architecture will lose their charm (3.5.111-12): sine me tibi ductor aquarum / Thybris et armiferi sordebunt tecta Quirini (without me Tiber the commander of waters and the buildings of arms-bearing Quirinus will seem drab).86 Sine me is an elegiac amatory motif; it contrasts with the militaristic character of Rome which is also emphasised here through ductor and armiferi. Quirinus, the deified Romulus, set the precedent for

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Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples imperial apotheosis; we are reminded of Rome’s power as world capital and of the quasi-divine status of its present emperor. The military language recalls too the world of martial epic, which Statius now rejects. Statius may refer specifically to the Templum Gentis Flauiae, built on the site of Domitian’s birthplace in honour of the deified members of his family and one of the newest, most splendid buildings in Rome.87 But whether the reference is to this specific monument or to Domitian’s Rome in general, sordebunt is a striking word that can signify not only unworthiness but also dullness or dirtiness of colour. At the end of this poem the brilliance of imperial Rome has become dim.88 Statius evokes Propertius here, with a significant inversion. In 2.32 Propertius claims that Cynthia has suspiciously abandoned him and Rome for the countryside (11-12): scilicet umbrosis sordet Pompeia columnis / porticus (even the Porticus of Pompey with its shade-capturing columns is dingy [to you]). The Porticus of Pompey was one of the most splendid buildings of Propertius’ contemporary world,89 but love changes the beloved’s relationship to works of art and architecture, blinding her eyes to their attractions. Statius alters the elegiac situation: sordere is part of his argument against the attractions of Rome, which will seem dingy not because of a new lover, but because of the absence of a husband. In the epigraph to this final chapter I cite a line from the discussion between Atticus and Cicero, in which the orator reveals his love for his native Arpinum. The two men conclude that each has essentially two patriae, the region where one was born and raised, and Rome, the adoptive patria. Cicero gives voice to an issue that vexed him as a ‘new man’ to Rome: where do one’s loyalties lie? And how can loyalty to one’s origins be preserved before the gravitational pull of the capital city? Cicero was clear, however, where his loyalties lay. He had two patriae, but Rome was the greater. For Catullus and for the Augustan poets, their native towns or regions were key points of identification. Yet despite the poets’ pride in their Italian origins, already we see in Virgil a different story; the once great cities of Italy such as Gabii are, his text hints, now ghost towns (A. 6.773-6; cf. Luc. 1.24-32). But Statius writes in a period of burgeoning, renewed civic identities under the Flavians. His response is different from Cicero’s. His idea of Rome and of Naples as two competing centres of authority that are nonetheless mutually reliant on one another is crucial to Statius’ mediated identity as a Roman and Campanian poet of the imperial age. In Silu. 3.5 Statius challenges his poetic ‘fathers’, above all Virgil. He also challenges the trajectory of his own biological father, who left Naples to teach the youth of Rome and recite his poetry to the imperial family. In a show of political and literary independence Statius returns to Naples at the height of his career, having published the Thebaid. In his formation as a poet, Statius reveres his father, as he reveres Virgil, but he also leaves both behind.

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6. Between Rome and Naples Statius published another book of Siluae two years later, in AD 95, which was sent from Naples (4 pr. 9-10) and is dedicated to the praetor of 95, Vitorius Marcellus, also the dedicatee of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria. In the prefatory letter Statius complains that the first publication of Siluae had met with some harsh criticism (4 pr. 24-35). Perhaps in response, Book 4 of the Siluae is metrically more ambitious and longer, with nine poems that play markedly with Horatian themes, in particular imperial encomium, rural withdrawal and the symposium; moreover, Statius requests the help of Vitorius, a distinguished Roman politician and man of letters, for defence against his critics (4 pr. 34).90 Although the first publication of Siluae (1-3) and Book 4 are markedly different from one another, they reveal the ease with which Statius negotiated a wide circle of patrons and admirers from the two major cultural centres of Rome and Naples. But the overall structure of Books 1-3 of the Siluae provides a trajectory of withdrawal; the first poem is set in the heart of the Roman forum, the middle poem of the collection (Silu. 2.3) is set in Melior’s garden, a retreat in the heart of Rome, and the final poem brings the reader in the poet’s imagination to Naples.91 Throughout this book I have emphasised the importance of Ovid as a major influence on Statius’ works. I shall end it therefore with Ovid. Statius’ witty approach to the negative stereotype of his region is typified by the final Ovidian reference (Silu. 3.5.105): mille tibi nostrae referam telluris amores? (shall I relate to you the thousand attractions of our land?). Statius here repurposes the erotic meaning of amores for praise of his native region, making humorous capital out of the feminine gender of ‘land’ (telluris). Ovid used the same concluding device in Am. 1.5.23 when, in a poem set in the intimate, private space of his bedroom, he cut off his erotic description of Corinna’s naked beauty with the rhetorical question singula quid referam? (why should I relate individual details?). Amores of course is the title of Ovid’s three books of elegiac poems. Statius multiplies the modest number to a thousand, applying Ovidian erotic desire to his love of Campania; he here also multiplies Ovidian roles, being in this poem the poet of the Heroides, of the exile letters, and now of the Amores. Such multiplication adds intensity to his promotion of the Bay of Naples as a powerful counter to Rome; it also adds to his self-definition as a poet creatively engaged in both Siluae and epic in reshaping literary history.

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Notes 1. Introduction 1. Reeve (1977), 225 n. 101. On the textual tradition of the Siluae see Reeve (1983), 397-9. The Siluae however seem not to have been in circulation until 1453. 2. The idea that Juv. 4 parodies the council of the gods in Statius’ De Bello Germanico rests solely on Valla’s authority. See Courtney (1980), 195-200; Braund (1996), 271-2 . 3. Courtney (1980) on Juv. 7.87. 4. Fitzgerald (2007), 1. 5. Rimell (2008), 8 follows Martial in dismissing Flavian epic as ‘long-haul, ornate’. Mart. 4.49, which attacks poets who employ a ‘tumid’ style, has been thought to target Statius also. 6. Rosati (1999), 160-3 discusses how Statius’ epithalamium, Silu. 1.2, confers new dignity on traditionally elegiac themes such as love. 7. See Morgan (2010), 49-113 on Statius’ use of the hendecasyllable in the Siluae. 8. That is, he taught young men the principles of correct Latinity through the study of Greek and Latin poets. On the success of Statius senior as a grammaticus see Silu. 5.3.146-94; McNelis (2002); further Chapter 4, 88-90. On the tradition of Greek professional poets see Hardie (1983), 15-30. 9. Cf. Silu. 3.5.72-4; Silu. 4.4.78-86. 10. Newlands (2010a). 11. The Thebaid took 12 years to complete (Theb. 12.811-12). On the dating of Statius’ works see Coleman (1988), xvi-xx. The idea that Silu. 1-3 were published as a set goes back to the commentary of Vollmer (1898), 10-13. Nauta (2002), 285-9 argues that each of the first three books was published separately and then assembled as a set in 94. Book 5 was published posthumously; on its dating see Gibson (2006), xxviii-xxx. 12. On Domitian’s significant reshaping of the urban landscape of Rome see further Chapter 2, 20-3; also D’Ambra (1993), 3-46. 13. Flower (2006), 240-56. Although Domitian’s name was virtually erased from Rome after his assassination, it sometimes remained on milestones, funerary monuments and private dedications, evidence of loyalty and admiration among various sectors of the population, particularly the army. 14. Jones (1992), 180-92 lists Domitian’s consular victims of execution and also prominent exiles. On his strained relations with freedmen as well as with the senate see Collins (2009), 80-3. But Whitmarsh (2001), 156-67, also 141, cautions that philosophers used exile as a rhetorical strategy to advertise their superiority to imperial oppression. 15. Newlands (2002), 8-10; 317-18. 16. Suet. Dom. 15.1. For a detailed discussion of the people involved in the assassination, which seems to have been a palace plot, see Collins (2009). 17. Dominik (1994), 130-80.

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Notes to pages 3-6 18. Although Silius supported Vitellius’ cause in the civil war, it did not initially harm his career. He was appointed proconsul of Asia under Vespasian and did not retire from politics until AD 77. On Silius’ career see Plin. Ep. 3.7; Augoustakis (2010a), 5-6. About Valerius we are less well informed. He too was an aristocrat, one of the quindecemuiri in charge of the Sibylline books (V.Fl. 1.5-6). In Statius’ case, it is unclear when his father moved from Naples to Rome. Statius senior’s composition of a poem on the burning of the Capitol (Silu. 5.3.195-204) suggests that he and his son were in the capital either during or shortly after the civil war; in that case they would have seen the devastation of the city first-hand. 19. Dio 67.12.5 records the execution of a Maternus, a sophist, in AD 91; Syme (1958), 111 identifed this Maternus with Tacitus’ tragic poet. No fabulae praetextae (‘tragedies in Roman dress’) are recorded in Rome thereafter. The Thyestes was taken as an imperial critique; the Cato evoked the provocative ‘disciple’ of Cato Uticensis, Helvidius Priscus, who was executed under Vespasian in AD 74. See Boyle (2006), 160-2; 232-3, and (2008), liv-lv. 20. Zeitlin (1986); Hardie (1990). 21. Hardie (1990), 230. The idea of a mirror city to Rome is played out in epic with other cities. Thus Cowan (2002), 52-3 explores how Silius’ Capua plays a multiple mirroring role of altera Carthago and altera Roma (a second Carthage and a second Rome); Capua’s resemblance to Rome allows important but dangerous issues to be explored safely without openly admitting their presence in Rome. 22. Zissos (2009), 351-2. 23. As Criado (2000), 226-7 comments, Lucan returns epic to the tragic vocation it had possessed since its tragic origins in Homer; Virgil had essentially deviated from these origins by taking epic in another, teleological direction. On the relationship between Statius and Greek tragedy see Vessey (1973), who emphasises the importance of Euripides and Seneca, e.g. 69-80; 205-9; see also Bessone (2011), esp. 19-22; 103-6; Heslin (2008) argues for the importance of Sophocles’ Theban trilogy also. Statius announces his debt to Senecan tragedy at the very start by beginning his narrative with Oedipus’ furious speech (Theb. 1.46-87; Sen. Oed. 1-81). See Boyle (2011) xc-xciii. On the influence of Senecan tragedy upon post-Augustan epic see also Schiesaro (2003), esp. 207-8, 250. 24. Heslin (2008). 25. Mellor (2003), 69. 26. Woolf (2006), 173. 27. Morgan (1998). 28. Clinton (1973); see also n. 8 above. 29. On the Greek literary texts taught by Statius’ father see McNelis (2002). See also Chapter 4, 89-90. 30. Nagel (2000). 31. Rosati (2011a). See also Leiwo (1994) on the cultural Hellenism of Naples. 32. Zeitlin (2001), 211. 33. Carey (2003), 131-2. 34. On Statius and contemporary painting see Bergmann (1991); Morzadec (2009), 17-19. See Keith (2007) on the importance of architectural ecphrasis in the Thebaid. Leach (1988) provides fundamental background on the origins of landscape and villa painting in the Augustan period. 35. On the villa poems see Myers (2000), (2005); Newlands (2002), 119-98. Elsner (2007), 37 points out that the description of the emperor’s buildings formed an important feature of imperial biography. Bodel (1997) 17 points out that the

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Notes to pages 6-10 poetic commemoration of a patron’s domestic environment was a new feature of the Flavian period. 36. Myers (2005), 111-12; Newlands (2010a), 116-20. Gibson and Morello (2012), 212 n. 31 suggest that Pliny’s description of his Laurentine villa (Ep. 2.17), responds to Statius’ provocation that Laurentine territory is no match for the villa of Manilius Vopiscus (Silu. 1.3.83-4). On the later description of buildings see Lucian De Domo; Morales (2004), 18-23; Elsner (2007). 37. Fitzgerald (1995), 140-68. 38. Woolf (2006), 176-8. 39. D’Arms (1970), 39-43; Lomas (1997), 32-4. 40. Whitmarsh (2001), 4-5; 38. 41. On the Bay of Naples as an important intellectual centre from the first century BC on, see D’Arms (1970), 56-61. 42. See Whitmarsh (2001), 20-6 on the dangers of hypostatisations of ‘Greek’ and ‘Roman’. 43. The most exhaustive study of possible Homeric parallels is by Juhnke (1972), though he fails to take into full account Virgil and Virgil’s epic successors; see Smolenaars (1994), xxvi-xxxv; Taisne (2008). On the influence of tragic drama see n. 23 above. 44. Hardie (1983), 68. On Stella as poet see Silu. 1.2.257-9; Mart. 1.7; 5.11; 5.12; 7.14; 12.2. 45. Mayer (1982), 317-18; Hinds (2000), 235. 46. Flower (2006), 235. 47. Bernstein (2005), (2008); see also Zeiner (2005). 48. Mellor (2003); Zeiner (2005). 49. Newlands (2002), 119-98. 50. See Wallace-Hadrill (2008), 315-55 on the shifting nature of the debate on luxury in the first century AD. On Roman nostalgia for the past see Malamud (2009). 51. Coleman (1988), xv. 52. Like Silius, Valerius Flaccus was probably of the senatorial order; see Zissos (2009), 355. Lucan was closely connected to the imperial family through his uncle Seneca and, before falling out of favour, had assumed the quaestorship. 53. We might of course think differently if it were to turn out that Lucan’s ten books of Siluae have survived (mentioned in Vacca’s ‘Life of Lucan’). 54. The Augustan poet used siluae as a collective image for his Eclogues (si canimus siluas, siluae sint consule dignae, Ecl. 4.3). 55. Newlands (2002), 142-53. 56. Hardie (1983), 154-71; Henderson (1998), 114. 57. Newlands (2011a), 14-15; Mariscal (2006) points out the influence of satire also. 58. Morgan (2010), 51-76. 59. The Thebaid too is informed by elegiac as well as tragic themes. See Bessone (2002); Parkes (2009). 60. Lewis (1936), 48-56. 61. Braund (1996), 8. 62. On the Virgilian echoes of failed followers – Orpheus’ Eurydice (G. 4) and Aeneas’ Creusa (A. 2) – see Ganiban (2007), 3, who concludes that these lines also convey something of Ovid’s ‘bravado’. 63. Fowler (2000), 209-11. See also the discussion of these two lines in Hinds (1998), 91-5. He argues that they are so carefully constructed as to invite us to reflect on their value-judgment rather than internalise it. 64. Parkes (2009).

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Notes to pages 10-16 65. On the importance of Ovid in the Thebaid see Keith (2002), (2007); Newlands (2004), 135-6; in the Achilleid see Rosati (1994); Hinds (1998), 135-44; in the Siluae see Newlands (2011a), 157-8. Feeney (1991), 343-4 notes that particularly important for the development of Statius’ epic is not only the theme of blighted foundation, but the close topographical and thematic connection Ovid draws in Met. 4 between Thebes and the Underworld. On the importance of Thebes in Ovid’s Metamorphoses see Hardie (1990). 66. McNelis (2004), 262. 67. Fantham (1979). On the influence of Lucan’s epic and Senecan tragedy on Statius’ Thebaid see Criado (2000), e.g. 7: ‘el espíritu de Estacio se aproxima más a la épica de corte senecano de Lucano que a la virgiliana’ (the spirit of Statius is closer to Lucan’s Senecan-style epic than to Virgilian epic). See also n. 23 above. 68. On Seneca’s alteration in the Troades of his Euripidean models so as to emphasise female suffering see Boyle (2006), 205-6. 69. On Polla see Newlands (2011a), 21-2. 70. Ganiban (2007), 217-24. 71. Vessey (1973), 15. 72. Cf. Silu.1 pr. 5-9: ‘why should they [sc. Siluae] be burdened with the weight of publication when I am still in a state of nerves about my Thebaid, although it has left my hands? But we read [Virgil’s] Gnat and even [Homer’s] Battle of the Frogs, and there is no illustrious poet who has not first played about in a more relaxed style in his works’. Part of the joke is that the Siluae are of course a second work, not the first. 73. On the relationship between the Thebaid and the Siluae see Newlands (2002), 199-226; (2009a). 74. Ahl (1984), 97 notes the parallels between the two heroes. See also Newlands (2002), 62-5. 75. On Silu. 1.1 see further Chapters 2, 29-33 and 3, 84. 76. For instance Hardie (1993); Ganiban (2007). 77. Harrison (2001). 78. On Silu. 1.1 see Newlands (2002), 46-73; Frederick (2003), 119-221. Book 4 of the Siluae alternates in its poems between Rome and Naples, but the book as a whole was put together in Naples (Silu. 4 pr. 10). On the ideological structuring of Books 1-3 see Newlands (2009a); Chapter 6 below. 2. Misconceptions about Statius 1. Connors (2000), 492. 2. E.g. Barchiesi (2001), 351-4; Delarue (1996); Vessey (1982), 562. 3. His social status is unclear but it seems probable that his family had fallen from equestrian ranking; see Coleman (1988), xv. 4. D’Arms (1970), 70-2. 5. On the turn of postclassical philosophy to therapeutic goals see Nussbaum (1994). 6. Williams (2003), 7. On the importance of Seneca to ideas about otium in imperial society, particularly in the thought and practice of Pliny the Younger, see now Gibson and Morello (2012), 169-99. 7. Key to this distinction is Sen Ep. 68; see Gibson and Morello (2012), 179-80. Cf. Sen. Ep. 55.4: multum autem interest utrum uita tua otiosa sit an ignaua (it makes a huge difference whether your life is leisured or slothful); cf. also Ep. 82.1-5.

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Notes to pages 16-21 8. On Seneca’s definition of otium as ‘internal peace’ see Griffin (1976), 328-34. 9. Long and Sedley (1987), 121-5. 10. Williams (2003), 10. 11. The pattern for withdrawal to Campania for political reasons was set early on by Scipio Africanus, who was ‘exiled’ there after his power was seen as dangerous for Rome. See Sen. Ep. 86. 12. Acton (2011), 114. 13. Myers (2005), 104. 14. Myers (2005), 105. 15. Woolf (2003), 209, using Hopkins’ (1983) terminology. 16. Nauta (2002), 309. 17. Asmis (2004). 18. Newlands (2002), 154-74. 19. Nauta (2002), 308; 318-19. 20. Myers (2005); Gibson and Morello (2012), 172-87. 21. Gibson and Morello (2012), 169-99; see also Connors (2000), 493-8. 22. Thus Woolf (2003), 213 of Pliny the Younger. 23. Vessey (1981); White (1975), 272; Nauta (2002), 312-15. 24. Apart from Domitian, the most prestigious political person addressed in the Siluae is the praetorian prefect Rutilius Gallicus (1.4). 25. Bernstein (2008); Zeiner (2005). 26. For a detailed study of Flavian patronage see Nauta (2002); Rühl (2006). On Domitian’s lack of patronage of Statius see the following section. 27. He owned a modest home by Lake Alba, referred to at Silu. 4.5.1-20; see this chapter pp. 26-8. 28. Barchiesi (2001), 351-4. 29. See Chapter 4. 30. Hirsch (2008). 31. André (1966), 541. 32. In Ep. 3.1 Pliny praises his friend Spurinna who is 77 years old and lives a life of leisure that is well-ordered and includes serious reading and conversation. Pliny stresses that he has earned his ‘leisure’ in that he accepted public offices, magistracies and governorships of provinces as long as it was his duty to do so (multoque labore hoc otium meruit, 12). 33. Leach (1990), 32-3 has argued that imperial society was characterised not by withdrawal but by the full integration of the ethical self within society. 34. Bartsch (1994), 132-3; see also e.g. Conte (1994), 481; Jones (1992), 30. Shackleton Bailey (2003), 5 is more cautious and refers to ‘the presumed support of the Emperor and wealthy patrons’. 35. Rosati (2011a). 36. Coleman (1986), 3105. 37. Flower (2006), 228. 38. Levick (1999), 124. 39. On Vespasian’s forum see Packer (2003), 170-2; Darwall-Smith (1996), 55-68; Beard (2003). Darwall-Smith points out that contemporary sources refer only to the ‘Temple of Peace’, not the ‘Forum of Peace’, though the complex was, like the other imperial fora, headed by a magnificent temple and art gallery, and with a frontal square planted, in this case with roses. On Domitian’s Forum Transitorium see D’Ambra (1993). 40. Newmyer (1984). Cf. Suet. Dom. 13.2. 41. Mellor (2003), 84-6; also Levick (1999), 170-83.

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Notes to pages 21-25 42. Levick (1999), 175. 43. Fishwick (1987), 295-300. 44. He cultivated a mystique with the performance of miracles in the East; cf. Suet. Vesp. 7; also 5; Tac. Hist. 4.81; Fishwick (1987), 295-8. 45. Gallia Narbonensis and probably also Baetica (southern Spain) and Africa. See Fishwick (1987), 297-9. 46. Haeckl (1996a). 47. Haeckl (1996b), 30-1. 48. Marks (2005), 234-5; also Fears (1977), 223. 49. Haeckl (1996a), 17-18. Cf. Mart. 9.34, which seems to express anxiety about the overreach of Domitian’s ambitions. 50. Zanker (2002), 117-18. 51. Zanker (2002), 117-19. 52. On Domitian’s interest in the arts and literature see Coleman (1986). 53. Tac. Ann. 1.15.2; Dio 55.10; Caldelli (1993), 28-37; Leiwo (1994), 45-8. 54. Plin. Ep. 4.22 targets the Capitoline games through his condemnation of Greek athletics at Vienne; see Woolf (2006), 172-8 who posits that the connection with Domitian was closely associated with Pliny’s anti-Flavian attitude. 55. On the Capitoline games see Caldelli (1993), 53-120; Hardie (2003), 126-34, and, on the Alban games, 135-42; on their bicultural vision see Woolf (2006), 172-4. 56. Hardie (2003),130-2. 57. CIL 6. 33976; Rawson (2003), 17-20. 58. Hardie (1983), 2-14; Rosati (2011a), 15-18. Statius also competed in the Neapolitan games, the Augustalia/Sebasta (Silu. 2.2.6). 59. The term ‘lackey’ is Conte’s (1994), 481. Cf. Vessey (1982), 563, ‘Domitian showed marks of favour to one who so deftly expressed official propaganda under a dazzling veil of verbal conceits’. See further Chapter 2, pp. 23-35. 60. See Silu. 3.5.28-33; 4.2.65-7; 5.3.227-33. On the disputed date of Statius’ competitions (probably AD 90) see Coleman (1988), xvii-xviii. 61. On gratia see Saller (1982), 27-36. 62. See pp. 2; 22. 63. Rosati (2011b), 265-6. 64. On the date of Juvenal’s works see Courtney (1980), 1-10. Martial addresses Juvenal in epigrams dated to AD 92 (7.24, 7.91). 65. E.g. Tandoi (1969); Bartsch (1994), 132-3. 66. Courtney (1980) ad loc, esp. on lines 82, 87. 67. Gold (2003), 602-3, citing Hardie (1983), 70. But Hardie is more cautious; referring to Polla Argentaria’s request that Silu. 2.7, the genethliacon Lucani, be ‘charged to her’, Hardie notes that there is ‘something approaching a straightforward poetry-for-cash transaction’; at the same time he acknowledges the financial play on her name (‘Argentaria’ = ‘banker’). As Coffee (2006), 421-7 has argued, economic metaphors are part of the code of friendship and need not imply material gifts of exchange. 68. He sells the script to Paris, an actor supposedly hated by Domitian (Suet. Dom. 3.1). 69. E.g. Bartsch (1994), 130-3. 70. Plin. Ep. 3.21.3 (on the death of the poet Martial) comments that although poets used to be rewarded with money for panegyrics on cities or people, this was no longer the case. Nauta (2002), 89 argues that three of Statius’ poems were the result of a patron’s ‘bidding’ (a word he prefers to ‘commission’; see 28-9), namely Silu. 1.2, 2.7 and 3.4. But the language Statius uses is vague. On the question of

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Notes to pages 25-27 the patron’s or the poet’s initiative see further Nauta (2002), 244-8; Newlands (2011a) on Silu. 2. pr. 24; n. 67 above. 71. Anderson (2009), 82. Mayer in his commentary on Juv. Sat. 7 does not see satire of Statius here, commenting that the author of one of the medieval lives of Juvenal ‘seems, somewhat strangely, to consider this passage to be an attack upon Statius’. 72. Markus (2000), 163-8; 171-5. 73. Mariscal (2006), 255. 74. See Chapter 1, n. 2. 75. Hardie (1983), 68. 76. Cf. Silu. 3.5.33-6 where Statius describes staying awake over his poem at night with his wife, like anxious parents; his beloved poem grew step by step with his partner’s years (cumque tuis creuit mea Thebais annis). See Newlands (2009a), 398-400. 77. Markus (2000). 78. i.e. Sorrento; cf. Newlands (2011a) on Silu. 2.2.1. Notas signals Statius’ attachment to his origins as well as his frequent enjoyment of Pollius’ hospitality. 79. Cf. Hor. Sat. 2.6.2: tecto uicinus iugis aquae fons (a spring of water near the house), a key feature of the Sabine property. 80. Cf. Hor. Carm. 1.17.1-4. 81. Forbes (1955), 165. The position of curator aquarum was given only to men of the highest sociopolitical rank, the senatorial class. See Eck (1983), 67-8. 82. Peachin (2004), 103-4 n. 53; Appendix 3, 146-8; Eck (1983), 72-3; Rodgers (2003) on Aq. 99.3 stresses that imperial control over grants to private citizens remained the rule; on Aq. 105.1 he stresses that the grant came by letter from the emperor himself, not by an imperial bureaucrat acting on his behalf. On the emperor’s bestowal of beneficia see Millar (1977), 135-9. Forbes (1995), 170 comments that ‘the emperor could grant any syndicate or person (even for life) the right to tap the mains for his own use’. 83. Fron. Aq. 88 notes that under Nerva private consumers received a significant increase in imperial private grants and many no longer had to tap water illegally. As one aspect of Frontinus’ work is self-promotion (Peachin (2004), 141), we cannot assume that Domitian was not at all generous with his beneficia. Peachin (2004), 111 n. 82 mentions that a particularly high number of procuratores aquarum, the middlemen working under the curator, are attested for Domitian’s reign. 84. Henriksén (1998), 114-15; Bannon (2009), 5. 85. Four aqueducts served the imperial villa. See Bruun (1991); Lugli (1918), 54-65. 86. Henriksén (1998), 114 n. 5. 87. Fantham (1996), 177 supposes that Statius lived on ‘his prize money and the villa given to him by Domitian’. See also Shackleton Bailey (2003), 3. 88. Hardie (1983), 13. 89. Hopkins (1978), 79-80. 90. See Silu. 5.3.178-84 and the interpretation of Hardie (1983), 10-12, supported by Gibson (2006) on 5.3.178-80. Statius seems to refer delicately to his father’s training of Domitian to be the future pontifex maximus, a position he held in perpetuity. Shackleton Bailey (2003), 362 n. 44, is sceptical that Statius’ words at 178, Dardanius facis explorator opertae (the Trojan inspector of the hidden fire), are too oblique to be taken as a reference to Domitian (but cf. Silu. 1.1.36). On the career of Statius’ father see also Chapter 1, p. 5. 91. McNelis (2002), 91. The date of the death of Statius’ father is disputed and

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Notes to pages 27-32 is generally placed between AD 79 and 90; see Hardie (1983), 13-14; (2003), 139-40; Gibson (2006), 260-6. However, his (sc. Statius senior’s) poem on the civil wars was written very soon after the burning of the Capitol and Vespasian’s accession (Silu. 5.3.199-204). 92. Cf. Fron. Aq. 107.1: ius impetratae aquae neque heredem neque emptorem neque ullum nouum dominum praediorum sequitur (the right to acquire water does not automatically fall to an heir or a buyer or a new owner of property). Water rights to a property were cut off after 30 days so that they could be sold or granted to other interests (Fron. Aq. 109.1-4). See Peachin (2004), 124-5. 93. Nauta (2002), 202-3. 94. Gibson (2011), 104-6. 95. Fowler (1995), 254; Hinds (2007), 211. 96. Ahl (1984); Bartsch (1994); Roche (2009), (2011). 97. Roche (2009), 373-4. 98. Thomas (2000) makes the point that rhetorical ambiguity has a long poetic tradition behind it. But Quintilian stresses the particular popularity of the figure in imperial contexts. 99. Boyle (2006), 152-4. 100. Roche (2011), 5. 101. MacCormack (1981), 1-14, esp. 12-13. 102. Braund (1998), 66-8; Roche (2011), 5-14. 103. Coleman (1999). 104. Rosati (2006), 49-50. 105. Coarelli (2009), 82. See also Dewar (2008), 74-80 on the size and location of the statue. 106. Reality proved resistant to the radiant vision of effortless conquest – the statue was erected in a period of turmoil on the Roman frontier. 107. Frederick (2003); also Newlands (2002), 51-72. 108. Further discussion of Statius’ Medusa in Chapter 3, pp. 80-6. 109. Purcell, LTUR II. 336-42. 110. The process of legitimating imperial power with honorific monuments in the Roman Forum had a long history (going back to Augustus) and afterlife; see Purcell (1995), 340-2. 111. Coarelli (2009), 82-3. 112. Coarelli (2009), 82-3. See also Dewar (2008), who argues that the imperial appropriation of the old forum started earlier; Statius specifically targets the founder of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Julius Caesar, and emphasises the new Flavian stamp of the old forum. 113. Tac. Hist. 1.40-1; Suet. Galba 19-23. See Newlands (2002), 60-5. 114. See Chapter 3, pp. 30-1. 115. i.e. Venus Genetrix, mother of Aeneas and hence of the Roman people. 116. On the poem’s theme of the upstaging of Julius Caesar see Dewar (2008). 117. Stewart (2005), 184-5. 118. Stewart (2005), 185 suggests that this set of poems was either composed for this poetry collection or excerpted by the Milan papyrus’ editor from a separate poetry book on sculpture. 119. Sens (2005). 120. Sens (2005), 220-2. 121. Quintilian too claims that Lysippus and Polyclitus were most successful in their representation of truth (Inst. 12.10.9). See the discussion of these passages in Stewart (2005), 190-6.

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Notes to pages 33-38 122. The use of ‘building’ metaphors to describe the writing of poetry goes back to Pindar. See Lowrie (1997), 70-6 on Pindar, and Horace’s use of such metaphors. On the poetics of Statius’ ‘statue poem’ see Newlands (2002), 51-4. 123. Larmour and Spencer (2007), 23. 124. Newlands (2009a); see also Chapter 6. 125. On the father of Claudius Etruscus see above p. 17. 126. Hardie (1996), 262-7. See however Henderson (1998), 47-50, who argues that Statius’ representation of the link between Gallicus’ health and Rome’s secular revival is fraught with anxieties. 127. Rosati (2011b), 276-8. 128. Bartsch (1994), 148-87. 129. See Chapter 3, pp. 47-51, 62-3. 130. Ferri (2003), 26, like Boyle (2008), argues that the play contains echoes of Statius’ Siluae (e.g. Silu. 2.7.118-9 = [ps.] Sen. Oct. 23-4; 594-5); he is however alone in dating the Octauia to late in Domitian’s reign. 131. Delarue (2000), 27-33. He argues that Statius senior was influenced by Lucan’s poetics of the ‘sublime’. 132. On Stella see Chapter 1, n. 43. 133. Coffee (2009), 188-91. 134. Text and commentary in Lana (1949). The Flavian Sulpicia is celebrated in Mart. 10.35 and 38. 135. Newlands (2010a). 136. As Citroni (2006) points out, Quintilian shows reservations about most of the Latin poets he cites, with the few exceptions being the Augustans. 137. Newlands (2011b). 138. Shared themes are Stella’s wedding (Silu. 1.2, Mart. 6.21), the baths of Claudius Etruscus (Silu. 1.5, Mart. 6.42), the death of Melior’s foster son Glaucias (Silu. 2.1, Mart. 6.28, 29); the birthday of Lucan (Silu. 2.7, Mart. 7.21, 22, 23); Earinus and the dedication of his hair (Silu. 3.4, Mart. 9.11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 36); the statue of Hercules owned by Novius Vindex (Silu. 4.6, Mart. 9.43, 44). See Nauta (2002), 88-9. On the relationship between Silu. 2.3 and Mart. 9.61, two unusual “tree” poems, see Newlands (2011c). 139. Swann (1994), 55-61. 140. Nauta (2002), 374-8; Johannsen (2006) offers an in-depth study of the relationship between the two in their use of prefaces, or ‘paratexts’. Pagán (2010) demonstrates that Pliny the Younger was influenced by Statius’ epistolary prefaces. 141. Heuvel (1936-7). 142. Statius possibly corrects Martial on detail in one instance, when, after Martial had included alabaster and serpentine among the marbles of Claudius’ Etruscus’ baths (6.42.14-15), Statius explicitly writes that these very marbles were not used (Silu. 1.5.35). See Nauta (2002), 246-7. 143. On the dating of Statius’ and Martial’s poems on Lucan see Nauta (2002), 442-3. 144. Newlands (2011a) on Silu. 2.7.1; Mart. 7.21.1-2; 7.22.2-3; 7.23.3. Henderson (1998), 12 points out that Seneca puns similarly on the name Lucilius. 145. On the format of Martial’s epitaphic epigrams, see Henriksén (2006). 146. Newlands (2011b). 147. On the dating of the Punica, especially relative to Statius’ work, see Smolenaars (1994), xvii-xviii; Augoustakis (2010a), 6-8; Littlewood (2011), xviiixix; lvi-lvii. 148. Lovatt (2010), 175-6, discussing Scipio’s funeral games in Punica 6 and

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Notes to pages 38-41 those of Opheltes in Thebaid 6: ‘the two poems have a complex relationship displaying the cut and thrust of mutual competition  This allows us to see true interplay, an athletic poetics at work, in which both self-consciously compete with each other, belittle, exceed, suppress, sanitise, and miniaturise, questioning each other’s choices and their own’. Littlewood (2011), lvi-lix supports the notion of creative interplay with further examples of the poets’ self-conscious competition. 149. Tipping (2010), 164-5 notes Statius’ combination of ‘war and peace’, including the use of mitis, in the representation of the statue of Domitian (Silu. 1.1), and suggests that this implies a degree of ideological tension in the depiction of autocracy. 150. Tipping (2010), 169-74; 191 n. 233 151. Feeney (1991), 358-9. 152. There has been heated debate over the date of the composition of Valerius’ Argonatuica. Zissos (2008), xiv-xvii makes the convincing argument that the poem was written slowly over a long period of time, from early in Vespasian’s reign until the poet’s death in Domitan’s reign probably in the early 90s; the poem was left incomplete at Book 8. On the epic’s incompleteness and intended length see also Zissos (2008), xxvi-xxviii. On the poem’s anti-imperialist expressions of republican nostalgia see Zissos (2009). 153. Cf. Silu. 2.7.77, where, although the republican poet Varro of Atax is meant in a chronological list of Roman epic poets, Statius does not actually name him, thus allowing for Valerius also to come to mind as the most recent poet of the Argonauts. See Gibson (2004), 151-2. 154. See Perutelli (2006) on Statius’ epics as responses to Valerius’ Argonautica. The Achilleid in particular is seen as an attempt to rekindle interest in an audience jaded by mythological themes such as the Argonautic expedition. 155. Zissos (2008), xvi follows the consensus of modern scholars that the proem was addressed to a still-living Vespasian. 156. Zissos (2008) on 11-13. 157. Zissos (2008) on 12-14. 158. Feeney (1991), 335. 159. Zissos (2008) on 12-14. 160. Ahl (1986), 9-10; Dominik (1994), 168-9. 161. Stover (2009) draws attention to Statius’ debt to Valerius also in the prophetic scene of Thebaid 3. 162. E.g. Vessey (1973), 170 vigorously disputes the idea that the episode is superfluous. 163. On the Virgilian influence on this episode see Frings (1996), 145-60; Gibson (2004), 157. Frings sees as a particular model Aeneas’ speech to Dido on the fall of Troy and his rescue of his father and son. Hypsipyle is a problematic narrator in that Statius does not explain how she could have seen many of the individual murders she describes. 164. Augoustakis (2010c), 58. See his full discussion of this episode, 37-61. 165. On Varro of Atax and Statius see Newlands (2011a) on Silu. 2.7.50, 77. 166. For a discussion of Statius’ debt to his predecessors, including Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica, see Vessey (1973), 171-9; he supports the claim that the divergences from Apollonius far outweigh the resemblances. 167. Vessey (1985), 335; also Hershkowitz (1998b), 136-8; Gibson (2004), 165-6. 168. Hershkowitz (1998b), 146. She discusses Hypsipyle’s character at 136-46. 169. Hershkowitz (1998b), 136-8. 170. Hershkowitz (1998b), 137.

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Notes to pages 42-45 171. Dietrich (1999), 49. 172. See the summary of Euripides’ Hypsipyle in Hardie (2011), 11-12. The play seems to have been oriented towards the foundation of the Nemean games and emphasises the role of Hypsipyle’s two sons, Thoas and Euneos; the latter, an acclaimed musician taught by Orpheus and founder of the Euneid cult of Dionysus Melpomenos, is not even given a name in Statius’ epic. 173. Hardie’s (2011) translation. I am indebted to his discussion (12-14) of these lines. Statius probably imitates Euripides’ Hypsipyle again at Theb. 5.340-5; see Hardie (2011), 15 n. 53. 174. E.g. Sen. Dial. 5.39.3. 175. Gibson (2004). In Hypsipyle’s extended monody in Euripides’ play she seems to distinguish the type of song she performed on Lemnos – self-consolation – from the type she sang to the infant Opheltes to soothe him (Hardie (2011), 12-14). In the Thebaid she sings to Opheltes the tale of Lemnos, both the massacre and the advent of the Argo, a grim lullaby (Theb. 5.615-16). 176. Cf. Theb. 5.244-5; Theb. 5.499-500; Theb. 5.615-16; Theb. 6.149-50; Gibson (2004), 161-3. 177. Nugent (1996); Casali (2003). Cf. A.R. 1.793-835 where she lies to Jason from expediency in claiming the Lemnian men left the island with their new Thracian brides and the male children. 178. Vessey (1973), 173-9 stresses the importance of the Argive audience and argues that Hypsipyle’s tale is essentially didactic, with many warning parallels with future events of the Theban conflict (that the Argives fail to assimilate). 179. O’Gorman (2005), 39-40. 180. Keith (2000), 93-5; 97-100. Hypsipyle moreover links both Lemnos and Nemea closely with the Theban conflict when she interprets Opheltes’ death as payment for her deceptive rescue of her father (Theb. 5.628): exsolui tibi, Lemne, nefas (I have paid the penalty for my sin, Lemnos); see Keith (2000), 98. From another point of view the death was fated, predicted to Lycurgus by Apollo’s oracle (Theb. 5.638-49). 181. Gibson (2004), 166. 182. Venus had commanded the murder of husbands only (Theb. 5.135-8); but the berserk women also slaughter children; see 5.224-35. The killing is provoked by furor; on this Statian innovation see Vessey (1973), 172-3. 183. Wetherbee (2008), 171-4. 184. The founding of the Nemean games in Opheltes’ honour was a popular theme of Hellenistic poetry. 185. Lovatt (2005). 186. Gibson (2004), 165-6. 3. Boundaries 1. Nicolet (1991). 2. As Clarke (1999), 21 points out, the two fields of history and geography, which Kant had separated as concerned with space and time respectively, are interdependent: ‘The formulation that place, as experienced in the world and made distinctive by its collective memory, is “space structured by time”, shows how closely interrelated, even inseparable, are these matrices’. 3. This represented the greatest territorial expansion of the Flavians; see Evans (2003), esp. 255-61. 4. E.g. Newmyer (1984).

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Notes to pages 45-51 5. Packer (2003), 198. 6. Rimell (2008), 7-12. 7. I use ‘space’ broadly to encompass ‘place’; thus Clarke (1999) defines ‘place’ as ‘lived in space’, that is, structured by human experience as opposed to abstract, geometrical space. 8. See the discussion of the figure of ‘emphasis’ in Chapter 2, pp. 28-9. On Statius’ style see e.g. Newlands (2011a), 23-7. 9. Vessey (1971). 10. On the mutiny of Saturninus, a significant turning point in Domitian’s reign, see Jones (1992), 144-9; Suet. Dom. 6.2. 11. Evans (2003), 269-76. 12. On this theme in Lucan see Bartsch (1997), 13-29; in the Thebaid see Ahl (1986), 2817-22. 13. Ash (1999), 5-22; Gibson (2008), 93-4 has shown that in his battle narratives Statius presents the perspectives of both Argos and Thebes, thus highlighting their similarities and the pointlessness of their lethal antagonism. 14. This observation looks to contemporary Rome, both to its recent civil wars, which by contrast were fought over many lands, and to its massive wealth (referred to earlier at Theb. 1.144-6). The architectural features targeted here are similar to those of Domitian’s palace, described in Silu. 4.2: marble columns (4.2.18-20, 26-9); gold-panelled ceiling (4.2.30-1); spaciousness (4.2.23-6). But the concomitants of luxury are the ruler’s sleeplessness and paranoia (Theb. 1.147-50). 15. Hardie (1993), 95. 16. Stafford (2010), 6. 17. Rosati (2002), 230-1. 18. Hardie (1990), 226 notes that the Theb. 1.4-16 is virtually a summary of Ovid’s Theban books (which do not, however, mention ‘the house of Oedipus’). 19. Thus Virgil ends his Eclogues with satis as a programmatic marker (10.70): haec sat erit, diuae, uestrum cecinisse poetam. Statius by contrast uses satis as an opening device, and to suggest epic limits. On the programmatic use of satis as generic or closural boundary marker see also Ov. Am. 2.1.11-12; Statius Silu. 2.3.6-7; 3.5.106. 20. Bessone (2006), 94-6. 21. Ahl (1986), 2818. 22. See Chapter 2, pp. 39-40. 23. Dominik (1994), 168. 24. Newlands (2004). 25. See for instance the discussion in Hinds (1987), 23-9. 26. Rosati (2008), 184-95. 27. Feeney (1991), 358-9. Feeney claims that only humans attempt to penetrate all three realms; but Apollo disturbingly seems to visit the Underworld to summon his child-slaying monster (Theb. 1.596-604). 28. E.g. Virg. Ecl. 4.31-5. 29. The poem of course is much more complicated than this; see Zissos (2006) who argues that, throughout, the poem sustains an ambivalent attitude towards the ethical discourse of seafaring, thereby undercutting any secure understanding of the historical present. The proem, however, which was probably written early in Vespasian’s reign, seems to reflect the optimism of the new dynasty. See Chapter 2, pp. 38-40. 30. On the complex resonance of omni see Zissos (2008) ad loc. 31. See Zissos (2008) ad loc. on rival accounts of the Argo’s fate.

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Notes to pages 51-56 32. See Tipping (2010), 1-7 for an analysis of the first lines of Silius’ proem. As he points out (3), arma, the second word of Silius’ epic and the first of Virgil’s, signals that the Punica looks back specifically to Virgilian epic. On Silius’ proem see further Marks (2005), 67-72. 33. Thus Marks (2005), 273-4. See also Tipping (2010), 3-4. 34. On different approaches to the panegyric see Marks (2005), 212-17. 35. Horace, echoing Pindar Olympians 2.1-2, likewise addresses the Muse Clio. 36. Cf. Sil. 1.3-5. Silius’ expansive vision by contrast is not limited to a few heroes; he speaks to the Muse in terms of quantos (4) and quot (5), ‘all those many heroes’. 37. Tydeus’ cannibalism was traditional, its origins in the epic cycle; see McNelis (2007), 132-4. 38. Ahl (1986), 2845 countered Vessey’s (1973), 82-91 view of Jupiter as a just and impartial ruler with Stoic leanings. See Feeney (1991), 337-91; Dominik (1994), 1-75; Criado (2000), 196-204; Ganiban (2007), 179-83; Coffee (2009), 20425. Jupiter finally hurls a thunderbolt at Capaneus to stop the assault on Thebes, proof that he had the power to stop the horror of internecine strife but chose not to exercise it (Theb. 10.907-39). 39. Gibson (2008), 86-9. 40. Jones (2005). 41. On the Ovidian locus amoenus see Hinds (2002). On its violation in the Thebaid see Newlands (2004), with 141-6 on the Nemean grove in particular. 42. Ash (forthcoming). 43. Cf. Theb. 6.114-17; see pp. 54-5. 44. Callimachus Hymn 2.110-12; McNelis (2007), 86-8; also McNelis (2004), 271-5. 45. Williams (1970), 263-7. 46. Thomas (1988), 262-5. 47. Thomas (1988), 267-8. 48. Hinds (1998), 12-14. 49. Particularly influential for later epic was Ovid’s myth of Erysichthon (Met. 8.738-878), and Lucan’s narrative of Julius Caesar’s destruction of a Gallic grove (Luc. 3.399-452). See Augoustakis (2006). 50. Augoustakis (2006). 51. See e.g. Laurence (1996), 119: ‘cities were part of a human landscape, but their creation and perpetuation was a necessary part of the world order; to destroy was to bring the destroyer into conflict with that order and to expect retribution in some form’. 52. Thomas (1988), 272-3. 53. Gibson (2008). 54. The maligned Euphrates of Callimachus provided the aesthetic paradigm (Hymn 2.108-9); see McNelis (2004), 294. 55. The interpretation of Dante’s passage is however controversial. Wetherbee (2008), 183-4, for instance, argues for the Nemean spring; against his theory is the fact that it is not a ‘Theban river’ like the Asopus. 56. See Apollodorus 3.12.6; Pausanias 2.5.2. 57. As early as Lactantius ista was taken to refer to the rape of young women; see Smolenaars (1994) on Theb. 7.321-2. 58. There is a double irony in Hypseus’ death. He strips the armour from the corpse of Hippomedon, who led the Argive army over the Asopos, but then is killed by Capaneus (Theb. 9.540-69), who, like Asopus, dares to challenge Jupiter himself.

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Notes to pages 56-64 59. There was confusion in antiquity about the myth of Asopus and the number and names of his children; moreover there were two famous rivers by that name, one in the Peloponnese, one in Boeotia. Statius’ cautious Asopus genuisse datur (Asopus is given as his father, Theb. 7.315) suggests the uncertainty in the tradition. At 7.424-5 the river is identified as Boeotian. 60. On the parallels see Smolenaars (1994), 188-9. He also adduces Valerius Flaccis 4.195-8. 61. McNelis (2007), 120-3. 62. McNelis (2004), 305-8. 63. On the difficulties of the text of lines 31-3 see Shackleton Bailey (2003), 384. 64. On Statius’ debt to Horace’s concept of Tibur as a site of poetic inspiration see Newlands (1988). 65. Rosati (2002), 230-1 emphasises that the inspiration for the Thebaid was both unexpected and unrequested. 66. Ov. Fast. 3.707-8. 67. Rosati (2002), 236-7. Cf. the effect of Cato’s words upon Brutus, Luc. 2.324-5: iuuenisque calorem / excitat in nimios belli ciuilis amores (the young man’s ardour was fired with excessive passion for civil war). 68. Hardie (1993), 45-6. 69. Feeney (2004), 88. Pollmann (2004) on Theb. 12.809 suggests the rivalry with Valerius Flaccus, who unlike Statius had not completed his epic poem. 70. Feeney (1991), 363. 71. See Chapter 4. 72. See Rosati (1992). 73. Cameron (2009); Burgess (2009), 19-25. The theme of Chiron’s raising of Achilles appears very early in Greek art. 74. The play on secunda (second) has been well discussed by e.g. Hinds (1998), 91-8; Feeney (2004), 86-7; see also the discussion of the proem in Heslin (2005), 71-84. 75. Heslin (2005), 76. Pollmann on Theb. 12.814 notes that Domitian likewise is not a source of inspiration for the Thebaid, but rather a reader. 76. Hinds (1998), 124-5. 77. See the discussion of deducere in McNelis (2004), 284-6. Heslin (2005), 72-3 points out that deducere is also an educational metaphor that plays upon the epic’s major theme, the hero’s education. 78. On the major influence of Ovid on the Achilleid see e.g. Hinds (1998), 142; Rosati (1994) shows the extensive influence of Ovid’s Heroides also and its novel approach to genre. 79. Cf. Ach. 1.116-18; Ach. 2.96-167, where Achilles however, describing his education at Diomedes’ request, emphasises his martial training over his education in music and medicine. See Fantham (1999b), 60-6. 80. Mendelsohn (1990), 297. 81. Zanker (2002), 117-19. 82. See Nauta (2006), 32-4. Statius uses the metaphor of ‘play’ also in the preface to Silu. 4 where he compares poetic composition to game-playing (4 pr. 29-31). Cf. the use of praeludere to describe the composition of both the Siluae (Silu. 1 pr. 8-9), and the Achilleid (Ach. 1.19). 83. The Roman tradition of the Hellespont as a famous literary strait began with Catul. 64.1-21, drawing on A.R. 1.549-58; cf. V.Fl. 2.584-91. See also Ov. Ep. 18 and 19. 84. On Statius’ self-referential use of Catullus 64 in the Achilleid see Hinds (1998), 124-9.

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Notes to pages 64-69 85. Feeney (2004), 102. 86. Feeney (2004), 88, with other examples of the crowded seas of the Achilleid; and 101 discussing a similar choked sea, the Isthmus of Corinth. On the Hellespont as a metapoetic transitional marker see Barchiesi (1997), 182-3. On Statius’ self-referential use of Catullus 64 in the Achilleid see Hinds (1998), 124-9. 87. Heslin (2005), 261-7. 88. Dilke (1954) on Ach. 1.108 sees a direct allusion specifically to Ovid’s account, for the cave in which Peleus raped Thetis is described as ambiguously poised between art and nature (natura factus an arte / ambiguum, magis arte tamen, Met. 11.235-6), like Chiron’s cave. 89. Du Bois (1982), 30-1. 90. Mendelsohn (1990), 303. 91. Heslin (2005), 190; also 188-91. 92. Heslin (2005), 131-7 sees her as an ineptly comic orator and failed prophet. But beneath the comic plot of Book 1 of the Achilleid is the larger tragic plot of Achilles’ life, which Thetis works to forestall. On Thetis’ fears over Achilles’ mortality see Burgess (2009), 8-19. 93. Mendelsohn (1990), 303-4. 94. Hinds (1998), 12-14. See above, pp. 53-4. 95. Our earliest attestation of Achilles’ clandestine stay on Scyros is from the fifth century BC; Euripides’ Scyrians was performed mid-century, but it survives in only a few fragments. In Homer Scyros is briefly mentioned as an island sacked by Achilles (Il. 9.666-8) where his son was raised (Il. 19.326-7). See Heslin (2005), 195-205. We know of a lost painting by Polygnotus of ‘Achilles with the Maidens’ from roughly the same period as Euripides. Later there is a reference to the story in Lycophron, Al. 276-80. But the story does not seem to have been well-known until its immense popularity in the visual arts from the first century AD on. Burgess (2009), 13-18 disagrees with Heslin (2005), 202-5 that the story of a transvestite Achilles went back to the archaic age. 96. On Domitian’s special association with Minerva see Coleman (1988) on Silu. 4.1.22; D’Ambra (1993), 3-4; 10-12. A Temple of Minerva was the centrepiece of Domitian’s new forum, the Forum Transitorium. 97. As D’Ambra (1993), 11 comments, Pallas Minerva was ‘feminine in form, yet masculine in her military role and demeanour  she was the virginal goddess, born from her father and barren, yet she ruled over the social institution of the family and its patriarchal organisation’. 98. On Statius’ Achilles as a figure who has learned well Ovid’s lessons in the Ars see Micozzi (2008). 99. Frantzen (1998), 88. 100. Bremmer (1999) argues in his discussion of Dionysus, who was often represented in feminine, youthful guise, that the introduction of the cross-dressed male often precedes his dramatic, assertive display of masculine violence. 101. By contrast, Ovid’s version of Achilles’ time on Scyros (Ars 1.681-706) lacks the manipulation of geographical space that corresponds to the stages of the hero’s maturity. The rape too is an opportunistic event (Ars 1.697-8), not the culmination of a period of love. 102. Trimble (2002). 103. See Trimble’s (2002) fascinating discussion of the Achilles fresco in the house of the Dioscuri at Pompeii, 230-6; she points out the sophisticated ambiguity of the iconography. 104. King (1987), 3; Burgess (2009), 8; 13.

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Notes to pages 69-75 105. On the sexual ambiguity of frangere (to break) see Chapter 4, pp. 94-5. 106. Statius seems to be responding to Ovid’s version of the rape by mitigating his predecessor’s emphasis on the rape as stuprum (Ars 1.698, 704) – a Roman legal term meaning ‘sexual crime’ – which suggests condemnation of Deidamia’s violation by Achilles. 107. Cameron (2009), 19. 108. King (1987). 109. Dilke (1954) ad loc.; Hinds (1998), 126; Heslin (2005), 143-4. 110. The Achilleid ‘corrects’ Catullus by providing the bitter aftermath to the wedding celebrated in Catul. 64. 111. See Feeney (2004), 97 on the generic instability of the book’s boundary. 112. On the use of parenthesis in the Siluae to lend an air of informality and intimacy see Coleman (2010). On the distance of the stylistic register of the Siluae from that of epigram see Coleman (2010), 294. 113. Consolatory poems: Silu. 2.1, 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 5.1, 5.5. 114. Janson (1964), 107-12. Book 5 was published posthumously and has a preface to 5.1 only. See Gibson (2006), xxviii-xxx. 115. See Newlands (2009b). 116. Newlands (2002), 300; Morgan (2010), 54-6. 117. On the temporal structuring of Book 4 of the Siluae see Newlands (2010b). 118. Aratus 1.1; Theocritus 17.1. 119. Actually Silu. 1.1 is 107 verses long; in the preface Statius rounds off the number. On Statius’ use of Lucilius here, see Rosati (forthcoming). 120. On the theme of plagiarism in Martial’s work see Howell (1980) on 1.29. 121. Martinelli (1978), 436-7 on Poliziano. Friedländer (1912) first gave significant, detailed attention to the importance of Statius’ descriptions for later poets. See also Duncan (1914); now Morzadec (2009). 122. Scott (1991), esp. 306-8. 123. Useful starting points to recent interpretive approaches to ecphrasis are Scott (1991); Fowler (1991); Laird (1996); Ramus (2002); Bartsch and Elsner (2007); and Squire (2009). 124. Scott (1991), 301. For a more detailed analysis of the ancient use of the term and its role as a branch of epideictic oratory see Webb (2009) and Goldhill (2009). 125. Squire (2009). 126. The shield of Achilles (Il. 18.478-608), the house of Hephaestus (Il. 18.36977), and the palace of Alcinous (Od. 7.78-132). 127. Leach (1974), 105. 128. Scott (1991), 304. 129. On enargeia see for instance Theon, Progymnasmata 2.118.7-119.29 (Spengel); Friedländer (1912), 83-6; Zanker (1981); Webb (2009). 130. Chinn (2007), esp. 272-6, argues that Quintilian probably had access to the progymnasmata, elementary rhetorical exercises such as those of the roughly contemporary Theon. 131. Newlands (1991). 132. E.g. Myers (2000); (2005); Newlands (2002), 119-98; Heinen (2011). 133. Scott (1991). 134. E.g. for Krieger (1992), the ideal goal of ecphrasis was ‘to stop time’, to allow for both aesthetic enjoyment and interpretation. Fowler (1991), 25 describes ecphrasis as a ‘narrative pause’. But, as he points out, the chronological order of the description makes the difference between narrative and description far from clear-cut.

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Notes to pages 75-88 135. Scott (1991), 303. 136. Dällenbach (1989). 137. See McNelis (2007), 27-9 for close thematic and verbal similarities. 138. See the comparison between Virgil’s and Catullus’ hospitality scenes in Panoussi (2009), 95-100. 139. Ripoll (2000), 485. 140. Hardie (2002); Putnam (1998). 141. See Hershkowitz (1998b), 142-3 on Jason’s cloak, which derives from his fabulously embroidered cloak in A.R. 1.721-67, a gift of Athena. Valerius alludes here also to the cloak given by Dido to Aeneas, which, like Valerius’ Hypsipyle, she herself had woven (A. 11.72-7). 142. Cf. Virg. A. 5.252, 255. Soubiran (2002) on V.Fl. 2.414-17 surmises that the scene is included here for its prestige value, as a homage to Virgil. 143. Ripoll (2000), 487-8. 144. Ripoll (2000), 487-8. 145. Harrison (2001). 146. Newlands (2009c). 147. Cf. also Arat. Phaen. 248-53; Germ. 248-54; Possanza (2004), 26-8. 148. Fantham (1992), 111-13. 149. On Lucan’s innovation here of the vigilant snakes see Fantham (1992), 106. 150. Fantham (1992), 97. 151. Fantham (1992); Malamud (2003). 152. Fantham (1992), 110; Malamud (2003), 32-9. 153. Fantham (1992), 119. 154. See Malamud (2003), esp. 41-3 where she develops Medusa’s association with poetry through the winged horse Pegasus, creator of the poetic spring Hippocrene, yet one of the monstrous progeny of the blood that dripped from the Gorgon’s head (Ov. Met. 5.256-9); the snake-infested pool in the Libyan desert (Luc. 9.607-10) is a sinister inversion of the Muses’ spring. 155. In Nicander’s version of this story, the young women become stars; see Hopkinson (2000), 32-3. 156. On Domitian’s equestrian statue see also Chapter 2, pp. 29-33. 157. Cf. Silu. 1.1.15-16; Tipping (2010), 164-5. 158. E.g. Dewar (2008); Bessone (2011), 37-45. But the gentleness of Domitian’s expression (mitis, 15, mitior, 25) is offset by the vast size and height of the statue, a vivid expression of the ruler’s enormous power and potentially dangerous ambitions. See Chapter 2, n. 149. 159. McNelis (2007), 50-75. 160. See McNelis (2007), 58-9. 4. Statius Auctor 1. Minnis (1988), 10. On Statius as poeta doctor see Anderson (2009), 23; 27. 2. Unlike other prominent Flavian Greek writers, Josephus and Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch never lived in Rome itself, though he became a Roman citizen. 3. See Gleason’s (1995) fundamental study of masculinity and rhetoric in the imperial period. 4. Morgan (1998). 5. Butler (1990). 6. Barchiesi (2005) argues that the elite male in early imperial society had the need for a ‘flexible  bi-facial model’, incorporating the ability to shift between the

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Notes to pages 88-92 two poles of military uirtus and courtly ‘softness’ or, better yet, to find a middle course. 7. Keith (2002), 8-35. 8. On the responsibilities of the ancient grammarian see Cribiore (2001), 185-219. 9. Cribiore (2001), 36-8; 56. 10. Cribiore (2001), 187. Female students, and those who could not afford the fees of the grammaticus, did not continue with their studies. 11. Cribiore (2001), 8-9. 12. Cribiore (2001), 56. 13. Hardie (1983), 12 suggests that Statius senior may have been invited to Rome by Nero, a philhellene who was particularly fond of Naples. 14. On the social and cultural background of Statius’ father see McNelis (2002), 73-4. 15. On the centrality of Homer in the school curriculum, especially the Iliad, see Cribiore (2001), 194-7, and on the importance of Hesiod, 198. 16. Winterbottom (1964). 17. McNelis (2002), 67. 18. While the curriculum seems to reflect the Greek character of Naples, critics have questioned whether it would have worked so well in Rome. McNelis (2002), 69-70 argues that such a curriculum is in line with elite intellectual pursuits in Rome. See further Ventura (2010), 210-11. Quintilian (Inst. 1.1.12) recommends that Greek should be the first language that a child studies before Latin therefore. 19. See Gibson on Silu. 5.3.178-80. Quintilian Inst. 1.1.23 refers to the tradition that Alexander was given his elementary education by none other than Aristotle himself, on the grounds that children should have the best quality of education from the start. 20. McNelis (2002), 77-90 argues that all the texts mentioned by Statius were studied by grammarians, in particular for their knowledge of dialects such as Doric. The mastery of dialects would give a young man a very competitive edge in imperial society. See Cribiore (2001), 194-204 for the traditional authors and texts of the ancient curriculum; she acknowledges that there were deviations in exceptional circumstances. 21. Cribiore (2001), 56; McNelis (2002), 68. 22. Hardie (1983), 12-13. 23. On foster children in antiquity see Nielsen (1987); on Silu. 2.1 in particular see Bernstein (2008). 24. Quintilian recommends Menander at this elementary level (Inst. 1.8.7-8) and also Homer (Inst. 1.8.4-5). 25. See Bernstein (2008), 106-9. 26. See Chapter 5: 111-13. 27. On Crispinus see Gibson (2006), introduction to Silu. 5.2, esp. 176-83. 28. Markus (2003), 449. 29. Bernstein (2007). 30. Bernstein (2007), 195. 31. Cameron (2009), 18. 32. By the time of Plato, Homer seems to have been a mainstay of the educational curriculum. See e.g. Plato Rep. 398a-b; King (1987), 108-9. 33. On the origins of the Scyrian episode see Chapter 3, n. 95. 34. Cameron (2009).

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Notes to pages 92-98 35. Michelakis (2002), 1 comments that on the stage Achilles was dramatised as both ‘a model and a problem’. 36. The date of Silu. 5.3 is tied up with the vexed question of the date of Statius’ father’s death. See Chapter 2, pp. 167-8, n. 91 above. 37. Quintilian Inst. 1.10.30. See Fantham (1999b), 60-3 on the moral and musical education Chiron offers Achilles in the Achilleid; also Heslin (2005), 86-93. 38. Trimble (2002), 234 n. 19. 39. E.g. Ov. Am. 2.18.1: iratum  Achillem. 40. See Micozzi (2007) on Theb. 4.261-3. In the Achilleid the blast of the war trumpet blown by Agyrtes causes Achilles to forfeit his feminine disguise and lunge for the weapons brought by Ulysses (Ach. 1.874-85), thereby setting Statius’ epic on a trajectory to Troy. 41. Hinds (1998), 126-7; Fantham (1999b), 63. 42. In Achilleid 2 Achilles gives short shrift to music when, on the ship bound for Troy, he describes his early education to Diomedes, claiming too that he sang only of the conventional theme of great men’s deeds (Ach. 2.156-8). But he clearly tailors his account to his audience and attempts to emphasise his hypermasculinity to the Greek warrior; learning the lyre was also sudor (sweat). 43. Cf. Silu. 5.2.68-70 where Statius uses the pruning hook metaphor for the necessary moral training of the young; he recommends trimming, not amputation. 44. While Quintilian approves of traditional music that accompanies heroic song, he attacks the contemporary music of the stage as ‘effeminate and emasculated by licentious rhythms’ (effeminata et inpudicis modis fracta, Inst. 1.10.31). 45. The generic and sexual senses of frangere coalesce clearly in Ovid’s claim (Am. 2.18.3-4) nos /  ausuros grandia frangit Amor (Love breaks me when I am about to dare grand themes), a witty reference to his choice of elegy in place of epic and to the ‘softness’ of the lover. 46. Barchiesi (2005). 47. See Fantham’s influential article (1999b) on the importance of the theme of education in the Achilleid. 48. On the centrality of the theme of ‘nature versus nurture’ to imperial discourse see Augoustakis (2007). 49. See e.g. Quint. Inst. 1.2.6; Barchiesi (2005). 50. See Newlands (2011a) on Silu. 2.6.42-7. 51. Heslin (2005), 126-7. 52. Whereas Homer compares Odysseus’ hair to the wild hyacinth (Od. 6.231), Virgil replaces organic references with ‘hard’ artistry. 53. Trimble (2002), 237-8. 54. Cf. Ach. 1.328: impexos certo domat ordine crinis (she conquers with regular order his uncombed hair). 55. Newlands (2011a) on Silu. 2.5.14. 56. The lion was a frequent image of Homeric heroism. On Achilles’ close and dangerous association with the lion in Chiron’s cave see Heslin (2005), 173-5; 187-91. 57. Rosati (1994). 58. See Chapter 3, 70. 59. Garber (1992), 10-11. 60. King (1987), 129. 61. Heslin (2005), 191. 62. Minnis (1988), 13. 63. It is generally assumed that Statius’ poems were not taught in the schools

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Notes to pages 98-102 in late Antiquity, since the fourth century commentary of the so-called Lactantius Placidus does not seem to have been compiled as a classroom text. See Sweeney (1969); Kaufmann (forthcoming). 64. The identification of Statius the poet with a rhetorician from Toulouse is based upon confusion with the L. Statius Ursulus mentioned in Suetonius’ De Rhetoribus 12 and in Jerome’s translation of Eusebius’ Chronica. See Anderson (2009), 2. 65. Clogan (1968), 1-3. 66. Uniuersitatis Bruxellensis accessus (12th century) 8-9. See Anderson (2009), 27-9. 67. Clogan (1968), 4-7 provides a summary of the five books of the medieval Achilleid. 68. An alternative reading is currens (racing). 69. On the poem-as-ship metaphor see Chapter 3, pp. 59-61. 70. Dante however knew that the poem was incomplete: cantai di Tebe, e poi del grande Achille; / ma caddi in uia con la seconda soma (I (sc. Statius) sang of Thebes, and then of the great Achilles, but fell on the way with the second task, Purg. 21.92-3). 71. Clogan (1968), 7-8. 72. For a definition of the medieval accessus see Minnis (1988), 1-4; Anderson (2009), I-II. 73. Text reprinted from Anderson (2009), 24-5. 74. Here medieval readers seem to have been influenced by Ovid’s version of the cross-dressed Achilles which opens with explicit condemnation but also recognition that the hero was obeying his mother rather than, as in Statius’ text, also powerful sexual desire (Ars 1.689-90): turpe, nisi hoc matris precibus tribuisset, Achilles / ueste uirum longa dissimulatus erat (it was shameful that Achilles disguised his manhood in a long dress – except that he obeyed his mother’s entreaties). 75. Anderson (2009), 14-16. 76. Anderson (2009), 17-19. On the conservative nature of moralising interpretations of the Achilleid see Anderson (2009), 63. 77. See Anderson (2009), 8. 78. On the epilogue to the Thebaid see also Chapter 1, p. 10; Chapter 3, pp. 60-1. 79. Keith (2000), 8-9. 80. See e.g. Hershkowitz (1998a). 81. Braund (1996) sees Theseus as the model of the just king, a position that has roused controversy but, as Ganiban (2007), 4-6 demonstrates, has held sway especially in Europe. Less convinced is Keith (2000), 99, who notes that the Argive women force Theseus into the dual role of war-monger and peace-maker (Theb. 12.682-4). Heslin (2008) emphasises Theseus’ exogamous marriage and suggests that Theseus is a model for Romulus (an ambivalent parallel) in his attempt to diversify Athenian stock. Ganiban (2007), 228-31 and Coffee (2009), 234-6 argue that Theseus has a disturbing taste for violence. See now the important discussion of Bessone (2011), 128-99, which examines Statius’ Theseus in the light of tragic and Callimachean models and concludes that though he is indeed the model of a just, clement ruler, he also represents the poem’s pessimism in that his exemplarity is contaminated in battle by the fury of his army. But he does offer an alternative to the triumph of the tyrant at the end of Lucan’s epic, a partial rehabilitation. See my discussion of his shield above, pp. 105-6. 82. Fantham (1999a), 232. 83. Fantham (1999a), 232.

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Notes to pages 102-108 84. Hardie (1990), 229-30. 85. Cf. Suet. Titus 9-10 on reported fears of the rivalry between Titus and Domitian and the suspicion that the latter caused his brother’s death. 86. Cribiore (2001), 199. 87. Servius quotes the Thebaid extensively, a testament to its popularity; see Reeve (1983), 395. Kaufmann (forthcoming) postulates that Servius may have had the commentary of Lactantius Placidus to hand. On the scholia collected under the name of Lactanius Placidus see Klotz (1908). 88. The Thebaid was also valued by medieval readers for its prominent use of personifications that, particularly in the later books, virtually displace the traditional gods as active agents. See Lewis (1936), 48-56; Feeney (1991), 364-91. 89. Anderson (2009), 11. 90. Sometimes a connection in the accessus is made between the rivalry of Eteocles and Polynices and that of Titus and Domitian. See Anderson (2009), 8-9. 91. Anderson (2009), 29. 92. See n. 81 above. 93. See the fine discussion of this passage in Bessone (2006), 99-109. 94. Bessone (2006), 108. Nisbet and Hubbard (1978) on Hor. Carm. 2.20.19 however note that noscere (the verb used of Domitian’s knowledge of the Thebaid, Theb. 12. 814) implies less detailed study than discere (used of the Italian youth). 95. As McNelis (2007), 5 comments, ‘monarchy, the inheritance of it, and its role in society similarly confronted Thebes and Flavian Rome’. 96. Ganiban (2007), 4-6. 97. Braund (1996), 12-13; n. 81 above. Statius uses the heroic epithet magnanimus of both Theseus and Domitian (Theb. 12.795; Theb. 12.814). See Pollmann (2004) on Theb. 12.814. 98. McNelis (2007), 172-4 cautions that we need not privilege the Catullan allusions, while allowing that they prevent cohesion in the portrayal of Theseus. My view of the ecphrasis of the shield differs here from Pollmann (2004) on Theb. 12.665-76, for whom the shield ‘depicts peace’, a view that the doubled set of ‘bloodied hands’ seems to contradict. See also Bessone (2011), 156-63. 99. See Gillespie (1999); Mengelkoch (2010), 149-211. Alexander Pope partially translated the first book of the Thebaid, relying on Stephens but also criticising him for his extravagant theme and style. The entire poem was first translated into English in 1767 by the young William Lillington Lewis (The Thebaid of Statius, Translated into English Verse with Notes and Observations; and a dissertation upon the whole by way of preface (Oxford: Clarendon Press)). See ODNB 33: 667 (Tissol). 100. In the same period, but during the 30 years’ war in Germany, Caspar Barth was writing his lengthy commentary on the Thebaid, a project which inspired reflection on the devastation around him. See Berlincourt (forthcoming). 101. On Thomas May’s translation and continuation of Lucan’s poem see Norbrook (1999). 102. On the career of Stephens see Elliott (1963). 103. Mengelkoch (2010), 164. 104. O’Gorman (2005), 42-4. 105. Though as O’Gorman (2005) points out, Adrastus’ first appearance in the poem reveals his weakness as a leader, for he makes the mistake of assuming that the past can be forgotten or transcended. 106. Shackleton Bailey’s Loeb translation of ‘strewn’ for strauit overlooks the metaphor. Monstrare also is a didactic word; see p. 101.

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Notes to pages 110-116 5. ‘The Double Grief of Jocasta’ 1. On the dominance of female lament in the Thebaid see Henderson (1993), 180-2, 185-7; Dominik (1994), 99; Fantham (1999a), 226-32; Augoustakis (2010c), 30-91. 2. On the theme of maternal anxiety in Ach. 1 see Mendelsohn (1990). On Thetis’ fears for her son’s mortality see Burgess (2009), 8-19. 3. We have no poems by Statius written for mothers. Statius perhaps refers to unpublished poems, or poems not selected for the editions of Siluae (Nauta (2002), 285). 4. Silu. 2.7, written for the commemoration of Lucan’s birthday, is also a consolatory poem of a particularly innovative kind. See Newlands (2011b). 5. See Chapter 3, pp. 70-1, on the elegiac lament of the abandoned lover in the Achilleid. 6. On male tears see Segal (1993), 62-7. 7. On the consolatory tradition in prose and poetry that underpinned Roman attitudes to grief see Scourfield (1993), 15-23; also Gibson (2006), xxxi-xxxiv. 8. On the possible date see Schorn (2009), 337 n. 9. 9. Schorn (2009). 10. MacMullen (1980); Markus (2004). Cf. Cic. De Oratore 2.47.196 on tears in court: C. Marius was reinforcing the pathos of Cicero’s appeal by weeping. Cicero was weeping too, which was deemed acceptable if indignation was present, that is, if they were not simply crocodile tears. Strubbe (1998), however, has argued that consolatory speeches developed in the rhetorical schools and present more extreme expressions of grief than those found in philosophical tracts. 11. Bodel (1999), 270-1; Zanker (2004), 33-6; 65. 12. Koortbojian (1995). 13. Henriksén (2006), 355-7. 14. Gleason (2010), 157-8; Hardie (1983), 74-102. 15. Marx (1937-8). 16. Sen. Dial. 12.1.2; Williams (2006), 147-8. Ep. 99 too is innovative in its incorporation of the free-standing consolation of his early period into an epistle, where it takes the form of an enclosure; see Graver (2009), 236. 17. See Wilson (1997), 59-60 on Sen. Ep. 63.13. 18. Erker (2009), 147-9. 19. Murnaghan (1999), 204-8. 20. Scourfield (1993), 15-16. 21. Lovatt (2005), 79. 22. Other significant maternal laments are those of Hypsipyle as foster mother (Theb. 5.608-35), Eurydice, Opheltes’ mother (6.138-76), the nymph Ismenis, mother of Crenaeus (9.376-98), Eurydice, Menoeceus’ mother and Creon’s wife (10.793-814). 23. Segal (1993), 25. 24. The earliest attestation of Jocasta’s attempt at intervention is in Stesichorus, sixth-century Greek lyric poet; see Smolenaars (1994), 213-17, who also discusses the parallels and differences between Statius’ account and his tragic sources; also Smolenaars (2008); Augoustakis (2010c), 62-8. 25. Augoustakis (2010c), 62-4. 26. Cf. Theb. 11.315-53, where she makes another futile and more frenzied, attempt, to stop the war by confronting Eteocles. Smolenaars (1994), 217 also refers to the suggestive parallels between Jocasta and the mother of Coriolanus, Veturia, in Livy’s account (2.40); Veturia however is successful in turning her son away from war against Rome.

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Notes to pages 116-121 27. Keith (2000), 96. 28. Thus too the poem’s narrator; see Dominik (1994), 170. 29. Keith (2000), 95-100; also Fantham (1999a), 226-32. 30. Keith (2000), 100; Dominik (2003), 99-101; Pollmann (2004) on Theb. 12.791-4. 31. See Ahl (1986), 2897. 32. Ahl (1986), 2905, drawing a correspondence between Statius’ lament for his own son (Silu. 5.5) and the lament for the elite hero Parthenopeaus (Theb. 12.805-7), argues that the epic narrative itself provides a form of immortality. For Fantham (1999a), 231-2 the message of that epic narrative is itself condemnation of traditional epic ideals. 33. Erker (2009), 149-55. On the influence of Euripides’ Suppliants upon Thebaid 12 see Bessone (2011), 20-2. 34. Martinez (1997), 59. On the myth of Ino and Palaemon in Statius see Newlands (2011a) on Silu. 2.1.179-80. 35. Silu. 3.3 alone commemorates the death of the elderly father of Claudius Etruscus. Priscilla dies in the prime of life (Silu. 5.1.182-3). Statius’ father lived to a good age, but his death still seemed untimely to his son; see Gibson (2006) on Silu. 5.3.73. 36. Markus (2004). 37. Discussion of this letter in Wilson (1997); Graver (2009). 38. Cf. the similar approach to the death of his two-year-old daughter by Plutarch (Mor. 608b-12b). 39. Markus (2004). 40. On the persistence of the idea of grief as effeminate cf. Tac. Agr. 46.1: nosque domum tuam ab infirmo desiderio et muliebribus lamentis ad contemplationem uirtutum tuarum uoces (call us, your family, away from weak longing and womanish laments to the contemplation of your virtues). 41. Statius for instance uses affundo of Argia, when she prostrates herself before Adrastus (affusa, Theb. 3.686). 42. Zeiner (2005), 166-7. 43. Bernstein (2005). 44. See Griessmair (1966) on the tradition of mors immatura; Lattimore (1962), 184-98. 45. Asso (2010) has recently argued that the relationship between Melior and Glaucias was homoerotic rather than paternal and that myth too elevates a love that was contrary to Roman norms. This is difficult to determine, particularly since in Latin there is overlap between the affective language of parents and of lovers, and of funerary and erotic elegy. See Newlands (2011a) on 2.1.71. 46. As Rosati (1999), 163 argues of Silu. 1.2, in writing in hexameter Statius gives elegy a new dignity. 47. See especially Rawson (1997), (2003); Schorn (2009), 343-6. 48. Flower (1996), 96-7. 49. Schorn (2009), 339-44. See also Lattimore (1962), 178-84. 50. Lattimore (1962), 182 (parentes infelicissimi amissione eius perpetuis tenebris et cotidiana miserabili ululatione damnati). 51. Leigh (2004) points out that Quintilian uses the loss of his sons in the preface to a book that teaches the budding orator about emotions; Quintilian pragmatically practises what he preaches, moving his audience as a preliminary basis for his teachings in Book 6. He thus exploits an unresolved tension between the personal and the professional.

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Notes to pages 121-124 52. Hardie (1983), 185-7 identifies loyalty as the main theme of the poem – between husband and wife, and between emperor and servant. See also Gibson (2006), 71-5. 53. See Chapter 2, p. 17. 54. See Laguna (1992) on Silu. 3.3.1 and 3.3.7, noting that the opening invocation of the personified Pietas to the funeral (3.3.1-7) endows the scene of extravagant grief with a moral atmosphere from the start. Pietas is also the central theme of Mart. 7.40, which pays tribute to Etruscus and his father. 55. Newlands (2011b). 56. Melior too may have been in retirement for political reasons, having chosen the wrong political allies. See Newlands (2011a), 20-1. 57. As Lewis (1936), 50-2 noted, in the Thebaid the gods too act as virtual personifications; Mars for instance has no other interests outside war. 58. In this fanciful allegorical interpretation, Thebes represents the soul, fought over by Eteocles and Polynices, the representatives of greed and luxury. See Hays (2002). 59. The Planctus is discussed and edited by Clogan (1970). The Planctus of Dido, a lament for her abandonment by Aeneas, occurs in the next major collection of medieval Latin poetry after the Cambridge Songs, the Carmina Burana. 60. Ziolkowski (2007), 189. 61. On the provenance of the songs and their manuscript see Ziolkowski (1994), xxxi-xxxix. 62. The entire manuscript, however, into which the Cambridge Songs were bound, contained Christian Latin poetry and works predominantly by early English authors. On the contents of the manuscript see Rigg and Wieland (1975); Gibson, Lapidge and Page (1985). 63. Ziolkowski (1994), xxv compares the Cambridge Songs to the Greek Palatine Anthology; as a collection, the poems may have functioned as a connoisseur’s poetry or music book, though Ziolkowski concedes that the Cambridge Songs could also have been used in monastic communities for their musical qualities; the poems themselves lack glosses, which suggests that they were not used in schools for language instruction. He rightly points out that we need to distinguish between reasons for the original composition of the poems, reasons for which they were put in a collection, and reasons for which the Cambridge Songs themselves were copied in Canterbury. 64. Ziolkowski (1994), xviii. 65. Stevens (1986), 351-61. 66. A lament of Rachel over the bodies of her children was sung from the 11th century on in ecclesiastical musical dramas at the festival of the massacre of the innocents. See Ziolkowski (1994), 304. 67. The Planctus of Dido, for instance, was based on Heroides VII as well as on Aeneid IV. See Desmond (1994), 49-50. 68. Schotter (1981). 69. See Ziolkowski (2007), 14-29 on the definition and function of a ‘neume’. 70. Ziolkowski (2007), 36. However, no neumed classics are extant before the tenth century. 71. Stevens (1986), 154-5. 72. Ziolkowski (1994), 273. 73. Ziolkowsi (2004). 74. Ziolkowski (2007), 143-72. See also his (2004) appendix of classical speeches with medieval musical notation, 119-26.

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Notes to pages 124-131 75. Ziolkowski (2004). 76. Ziolkowski (2007), 144-8 suggests that one function of neuming was to facilitate recollection of the text by associating it with music. 77. Ziolkowski (2007), 197-9. 78. The term is Harvey’s (1992). Ziolkowski (2007), 217-8 cautions that to imagine also the cross-dressing of boy sopranos would be anachronistic. But the assumption of different character roles was fundamental to education in this period; ‘Colloquies’ from pre-Conquest England show that children learned Latin by acting out in the classroom various dramatic and everyday situations. See Gwara (1996). 79. Ziolkowski (2007), 212. 80. Ziolkowski (2004), 116-7. 81. Some of the Cambridge Songs discuss music history and theory; e.g. 10, 12, 21, 45. See Ziolkowski (1994), xli-ii. 82. Barchiesi (1978). 83. Ziolkowski (2007), 215-17. It is probably not irrelevant that Statius was admired in the Middle Ages for the loveliness of his spoken verse; the etymology of what was believed to be his cognomen, Surculus, was sursum (canens), for he was believed to have a pleasant, deep voice in recitation. See Anderson (2009), 2. 84. Ziolkowski (2004), 121-3. 85. Desmond (1990), 584-5. 86. Desmond (1990). 87. On the life of Leofric see Barlow (1972), 1-16; on his donation to the cathedral library see Lapidge (1985), 64-9; (2006), 139-40. 88. On the life of King Edward see Barlow (1970). The Vita survives in a single mutilated manuscript from c. 1100 (Barlow (1992) xviii-xxi). 89. On the learning of Edith and her connections both with the court and with royal Anglo-Saxon nunneries, see Tyler (2009), 152-5. 90. Alcuin’s book list appears in his poem ‘Bishops, Kings and Saints of York’, 1540-56. See Lapidge (2006), 230-3. 91. Lapidge (1993). 92. I have added line numbers, not provided in Barlow’s text. Formatting follows that of his printed text. 93. For a history of Edward’s reign see n. 88. 94. Tyler (2009), 152. 95. Tyler (2009), 138-49. See pp. 147-8 for her discussion of the use of the Thebaid in the Vita. 96. Tyler (2009), 149. 97. On the metrical form of the poems and the preference for internal rhyme see Barlow (1992), xxvii-xxviii. The formatting of the hexameter verse is designed to display the internal rhyme. 98. Though the poet may also be referring to Luc. 1.550-2. 99. The text of the final pentameter line may be corrupt. For the expression carmine germano cf. Ov. Pont. 4.16.12: gemino carmine (but with reference to both epic and elegiac poetic forms). 100. See Tyler (2009) on the work as a thoroughly self-contradictory form. 101. Tyler (2009), 151. 102. Calder (1922); Ahl (1986), 2804. 103. Patterson (1991), 104-14 defines medieval ‘romance’ as a narrative work that focuses on the fate of an individual and privileges the personal over the historical, the erotic or amorous over the political. Cf. Bruckner (2002), 17: ‘that romance speaks to lovers is a staple of the genre and marks the path of its

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Notes to pages 131-137 divergence from the Latin and vernacular epic traditions’. Edwards (forthcoming) notes that the author of the Roman de Thèbes gives erotic motives to the participants; Ismene for instance frankly declares her love for Atys. 104. All references to Chaucer’s works are from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L.D. Benson and F.N. Robinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987). 105. Edwards (forthcoming). 106. Patterson (1991), 132. 107. On the importance of the Thebaid for Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde see Patterson (1991), ch. 2, esp. 130-6. 108. Cf. Dante, Purg. 22.55-6. 109. Baswell (2002), 32-3. 110. In the 15th century John Lydgate’s poem Siege of Thebes drew on French and English tradition as well as Statius’ text to produce the only Middle English poem focused on the deadly rivalry between Eteocles and Polynices; it too is deeply connected to contemporary politics. See Edwards (2001). 111. Patterson (1991), 132. But cf. Sanok (1998), who argues that Criseyde was reading the Latin poem. 112. Desmond (1994), 67-73. 113. Edwards (2001), 2. 114. Chaucer’s direct knowledge of Statius’ poem is suggested by Cassandra’s summary of the Latin poem (TC 5.1485-512). 115. On the perceived dangers of the learned female reader see Desmond (1994), 67-8. 116. Magoun (1955). 117. On Hypsipyle as a figure of the epic narrator see Chapter 2, pp. 42-4. 118. Anderson (2009), 65-73; Wetherbee (2008), 159-202, who interprets Statius’ role in the Purgatorio primarily in terms of the Thebaid; Heslin (forthcoming). 119. Wetherbee (2008), 161-2. 120. Martinez (1997), 67-8. 121. Martinez (1997), 58-62. 122. Martinez (1997), 68-9. 6. Between Rome and Naples 1. This chapter is a much expanded version of my (2009a) article. 2. Rosati (1999). 3. On the description of a city as an encomiastic topos see Quint. Inst. 3.7.26-7; Nisbet and Hubbard (1978), 95-6; Laguna (1992), 343-6; Szelest (1972), 91. 4. Rosati (2011a) applies Gellius’ (17.17.1) famous definition of Ennius as a poet ‘with three hearts’ to Statius – that is, three identities comfortably coexist in Statius: the Roman, the Greek, and the Neapolitan. 5. Gardner (2010), 283-90. 6. Rosati (2011a), 28. 7. Whitmarsh (2010). 8. Eck (1997), 99 argues that the outside world, specifically daily life in other Italian and provincial towns, played an important role in aristocratic thoughts and mentalities; thus Pliny’s Comum was the true reference point of his life, his old patria. See also Wallace-Hadrill (2008), 73-143; as he comments, Roman dominance helped enhance local communities’ power of self-expression. 9. Statius may also have been influenced by the Greek tradition of local histories, the product of the need from the Hellenistic period onwards to express

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Notes to pages 137-142 local pride against the dominant panhellenic narratives; later they provided a vital counterpoise to Romanocentrism. See Clarke (2008), esp. 338-46. 10. Ker (2009), 344. 11. Lomas (1997), 37-8; Connors (2000), 499. 12. Lomas (1997), 38. 13. Lomas (2003), 39. 14. Lomas (2003), 33-4. 15. Lomas (2003), 41. 16. Leiwo (1994), 40-1 comments that for the Romans the positive side of Hellenism was cultural: literature, arts, architecture. 17. Leiwo (1994), 45-6. 18. On the Greek character of Naples see D’Arms (1970), 142-3; Hardie (1983), 2-4. Leiwo’s (1994) survey of the epigraphic use of Greek and Latin in Naples concludes that the city stands out in Campania for its use of Greek as the language of bureaucracy, though often in a hybrid form, until the end of the third century AD. 19. Coleman (1988) on Silu. 4.3.7-8. On the importance of Puteoli as the major commercial centre and port of the region see D’Arms (1974). 20. Burck (1987). 21. Thomas (1982), 56-60 discusses the pastoral and Callimachean associations of Tarentum; ‘Tarentum stands virtually as a paradigm for the exclusive world of the poet’ (59). 22. Vessey (1977), 138. For the parallel with Odysseus and Penelope cf. Silu. 3.5.6-10. 23. Newlands (2009a). 24. Newlands (2011a) on Silu. 2.2.140. 25. See Cameron (2009), 1, who argues for Nisbet’s emendation of percussus to excussus (revealed) and thus a direct allusion to Statius’ Achilleid. 26. Garthwaite (1989), 88-90 sees the expression ‘a cruel and ungrateful Jove’ as a direct insult to Domitian. Hardie (2003), 145-6, however, sees it as less harsh, for the reference to Jupiter was appropriate in the context of the Capitoline games, which were dedicated to Jupiter. Yet ingratum suggests a lack of gratia, a key component of patronage; cf. Silu. 2.7.58 where Nero is called ingratus for his failure to appreciate Lucan’s talent. See also Chapter 2, p. 166 n. 61. 27. Laguna (1992), 343-3; Newlands (2009a), 396-404. 28. Hinds (1985), 16. 29. Rosati (2011a), 26-31. 30. There is only one other instance of ecloga in Statius’ poetry, used of Silu. 4.8 (4 pr. 20), a poem of thanksgiving on the birth of a child (in Naples). 31. Cf. Virg. G. 3.339-83, where Virgil expands on Libya (the south) and Scythia (the north) as ethnographical extremes. 32. The reference to the forum may also look back to the start of the Siluae, with the towering equestrian imperial statue in the centre of the Roman forum (1.1). 33. Foucault (1998), 178-85. He provides the example of the garden, ‘the smallest parcel of the world and the whole world at the same time’, where antithetical elements such as art and nature are harmoniously juxtaposed (181-2). 34. Foucault (1998), 184: ‘a different real space as perfect, as meticulous, as well-arranged as ours is disorganized, badly arranged, and muddled. This would be the heterotopia not of illusion but of compensation’. 35. Thomas (1982), 46-7. 36. On the connotations of inconspicuousness in angulus, see Nisbet-Hubbard (1978) ad loc.

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Notes to pages 143-151 37. Stafford (2010), 86. 38. Clarke (2008), 193-244. 39. For this meaning of dulcis see Nisbet-Hubbard (1978) ad loc. 40. Bergmann (2001). 41. On Virgil’s literary career and its canonisation see Farrell (2002). 42. Laguna (1992) on Silu. 3.5.110-11 sees an echo of Hor. Carm. 2.17.10-12: ibimus, ibimus, / utcumque praecedes, supremum /carpere iter comites parati (we will go, we will go, friends, prepared to travel the last road, though you go ahead). If so, the allusion to death thus suggests closure; Naples is to be his last, but enjoyable, stop on life’s journey. 43. OLD 2. On the use of mollis to suggest lack of moral and literary virility see Edwards (1993), 63-97. 44. See Muecke (2007). At 87-90 she discusses the scant historical justification for the episode, suggesting however that the myths of Gigantomachy embedded in the Campanian landscape spelled out Hannibal’s doom. 45. Pomeroy (2000). 46. But he is not granted the privilege of descending to the Underworld in the footsteps of Aeneas, and thus is not granted access to the great heroes, Greek and Roman, of the past. That privilege is accorded Scipio Africanus in the following book (13.400-895). 47. Muecke (2007), 76 notes the emphasis on ‘words of “wonder” ’ that frame the episode; on the paradoxographical tradition see Myers (2000). 48. On Etna as a locus classicus of challenging description cf. Sen. Ep. 79.7. 49. If Silius began writing his epic around AD 80, Book 8 would have been published before the composition of Silu. 3.5. I follow here Hardie (1983), 153-4, not Littlewood (2011), lvii, who suggests that Silius adapts Statius here; rather, as Hardie suggests, an allusion by Statius to Silius suits the poet’s heroic self-representation at the start of Silu. 3.5. On the problem of the chronological relationship between Statius and Silius see Chapter 2, pp. 37-8. 50. On Seneca’s Campanian letters as a sequence see Henderson (2004), 32-9. On the possible influence of Seneca’s letters on Statius see also Chapter 1, pp. 8; 11. 51. See Griffin (1976), 349; 418 n. 4. She argues that Seneca’s letters were certainly written with a view to publication, and dates the first seven books of letters (1-69) to a joint publication in AD 64. The fate of the rest of the correspondence is uncertain; Dio (62.25) mentions that Seneca left unpublished work at his death. 52. Cf. Silu. 2 pr. 22-6, with Newlands (2011a). 53. See Wilson (1997). Wilson (2008), 71-2 emphasises that Seneca wrote letters, not dry ‘essays’, for they are characterised by intimate epistolary tropes and are referred to as sermo (Ep. 65.2; 67.2), the same term Statius uses of the epistolary Silu. 3.5 (3 pr. 21). 54. Henderson (2004). 55. The entire sequence however begins at Seneca Ep. 49.1, ecce Campania et maxime Neapolis (look, Campania and especially Naples). 56. Henderson (2006), 123-4; 132. 57. Williams (2006). 58. On Ep. 86, probably Seneca’s final letter from Campania, and written from Scipio’s villa, see Henderson (2004), 93-170; Ker (2009), 346-58. 59. Henderson (2004), 119-38. On the exemplary Roman austerity of Scipio Africanus see Bodel (1997), 5; Val. Max. 2.10.2. 60. Hot baths moreover are a wonderful feature of Vopiscus’ villa at Tibur (Silu.

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Notes to pages 152-156 1.3.43-6); the private baths of Claudius Etruscus, the latest in technology and artistic materials and effect, merit an entire poem (1.5). 61. Bergmann (1991), esp. 62-4; Kuttner (1998). Leach (1988), 261-77 discusses the popularity of architectural panoramas in Roman wallpainting. 62. Newlands (2011a) ad loc. 63. Henderson (2004), 119-38. 64. Newlands (2002), 154-98; Newlands (2011a) on 2.2.52-62. 65. On the definition of silua in the senses of ‘wood’ and raw material and as a calque on Greek Ûlh, see Wray (2007). 66. Statius does not say where Pollius’ statues were displayed but the portico of a peristyle garden, as in the Villa dei Papiri, was often the site chosen for such a purpose. See Warden and Romano (1994), esp. 233-5; Koortbojian (2002), 177-9. 67. Cicero mentions in several letters the need for Greek statues for his villas. See Koortbojian (2002), 175-83. 68. Wallace-Hadrill (2008), 315-55. 69. His social origins are unclear. D’Arms (1974), 111 argued that he was the son of a freedman; Hardie (1983), 67-8 thinks it more likely that he was a member of the local aristocracy. He seems to have had long-established ties with Campania. He was very wealthy; Statius mentions that he possessed several villas (Silu. 2.2.107-11), including two on the Bay of Naples, a region of very expensive real estate. An inscription found at Posilypon and dated to AD 65, villa Polli Felicis quae est epilimones (Dessau ILS 5798), seems to refer to Pollius’ villa on the north of the Bay called ‘Limon’ (Silu. 2.2.81-2, 3.1.149); or possibly it belonged to his father. See Nisbet (1995). 70. On the function of the diaeta see Newlands (2011a) on 2.2.83. On the importance of windows in the Roman villa and as a literary marker of aesthetic control see Morzadec (2009), 52-60. 71. Kuttner (1998). 72. Wallace-Hadrill (1994), 31-7; Andrews (1999), 107-27, esp. 110, 120. 73. Mitchell (1994), 29-30. 74. Mozardec (2009) 55-6; 194-5. 75. Spencer (2010), 112. She also singles out Vopiscus of Silu. 1.3 as solitary in his pursuit of writing at his villa; yet Vopiscus is introduced in the preface as an active patron of literature on a national scale, who almost singlehandedly ‘has rescued the disappearing arts from decay’ (1 pr. 24-5). See also Hinds (2001), 242, who argues that Pollius is the ultimate consumer of Greek culture. 76. For a similar pun cf. Silu. 2.2.129 (of Pollius) plenum uita (full of life), echoing Lucr. 3.938 plenus uitae (of the person who has made appropriate use of his life), thus stressing Pollius’ felicitous union of wealth and Epicureanism. 77. Newlands (2011a) on Silu. 2.2.129-32. 78. At Silu. 3.5.76-7 Statius mentions Capys, the Trojan founder of Capua. This is the only mention of Trojans in the poem, and they do not migrate to Rome but stay in Campania. 79. On the effeminate connotations of mollis see n. 43 above. 80. Rosati (2011a), 31 sees Pollius as an emblem of the ‘Neapolitan way of life’. 81. Zeiner (2005), 178-90. 82. Cf. Lucr. 3.894-6: iam iam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor / optima nec dulces occurrent oscula nati / praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent. 83. There may be a reference here to Ovid’s myth of the virtuous old couple Baucis and Philemon; cf. dis hospitibus (Met. 8.685).

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Notes to pages 156-159 84. Cf. Virg. G. 2.490: felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. 85. It may be too that by making amatory, elegiac themes ‘chaste’, Statius was responding to Domitian’s moral legislation. He was appointed censor for life in AD 85, and revived the Augustan marriage laws. Cf. Mart. 6.7.1-2; Jones (1992), 106-7; D’Ambra (1993), 36-9. On Statius’ adaptation of elegy to marital themes see Rosati (2005). 86. On the elegiac overtones of this passage see Laguna (1992) on Silu. 3.5.10910, 3.5.111-12. 87. See D’Ambra (1993), 39-41. Martial describes it as a magnificent building covered in marble and gold (9.20.1-2). 88. On the pastoral and elegiac connotations of sordere see Newlands (2012). 89. Kuttner (1999). 90. On this preface and the markedly different character of Silu. 4 see Hardie (1983), 164-5. 91. On the temporal structure of Book 4 see Newlands (2010b).

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206

Index Locorum References to the pages and notes of this book are in bold type. ACCESSUS TO STATIUS

FRONTINUS

Bern-Burney 3-21: 103; 43: 103 Bodleian, Oxford, MS Lincoln College lat. 27 6-13: 99; 8-11: 101; 39-41: 100; 73-81: 99-100 Firenze, BML, plut. 24 sin. 12 3-7: 101 Uniuersitatis Bruxellensis 4-8: 103-4; 8-9: 98-9, 180n66

De Aquaeductu Urbis Romae 107.1: 168n92

GELLIUS

Noctes Atticae 17.17.1: 186n4

[HESIOD]

[Sc.] 216-37: 80-1

HOMER

Iliad 1.223-44: 92; 9.186-9: 93; 9.485-91: 92; 9.666-8: 175n95; 11.632-7: 75; 11.831-2: 92; 18.369-77: 176n126; 18.478-608: 84, 176n126; 19.326-7: 175n95; 23.114-120: 53; 24.507-51: 114 Odyssey 6.229-35: 96, 179n52; 7.78-132: 176n126; 11.488-91: 70; 23.155-62: 96

APOLLONIUS RHODIUS

1.793-835: 42, 171n177

CALLIMACHUS

Hymns 2.108-9: 173n54; 2.110-12: 173n44 CAMBRIDGE SONGS 10-21: 185n81; 29 (= Stat. Theb. 12.325-48): 123-4; 31 (= Stat. Theb. 5.608-16): 123-4, 125-6; 32 (= Stat. Theb. 12.325-35, 322-4): 123-4; 34 (= Virg. A. 2.268-83): 123-4; 45: 185n81; 46 (= Hor. Carm. 3.12): 123-4; 47: 124

HORACE

Ars Poetica 136-52: 62 Carmina 1.2.45: 50; 1.7: 57, 58; 1.12.1-3: 51; 1.17: 28, 167n80; 2.6: 58, 139, 142, 144; 2.17.10-12: 188n42; 2.20.18-20: 60-1, 181n94; 3.12: 123-4; 4.2.29-32: 58; 4.3.1-12: 58 Epistles 1.7.44-5: 142, 149 Satires 1.4.9-11: 72; 2.6.2: 167n79

CATULLUS

51.14-15: 16; 64.42-52: 76; 64.50-264: 6; 64.59: 70; 95.10: 46

CHAUCER

Troilus and Criseyde 1.1: 132; 2.8: 132; 2.100: 133; 2.106-8: 133; 5.1485-1512: 134-5, 186n114; 5.1786-92: 135

CICERO

Ad Atticum 2.19.3: 29 De Legibus 2.5: 136, 158 CORPUS INSCRIPTIONUM LATINARUM

VI 33976: 166n57; IX 173: 121

DANTE

Purgatorio 21.92-3: 180n70; 22.55-6: 116, 122, 186n108; 22.64-93: 135; 22.88-91: 56; 26.94-6: 135

INSCRIPTIONES LATINAE SELECTAE

5798: 189n69

JUVENAL

1.162-3: 139; 3.10.20: 35; 7.82-7: 24-5, 36, 161n3, 167n71 LUCAN

1.4: 10; 1.24-32: 158; 1.183-227: 56; 2.324-5: 174n67; 3.399-452: 54, 56, 173n49; 9.604-99: 80-2, 86, 177n154 LUCRETIUS

2.1-2: 149; 3.894-6: 189n82; 3.938: 189n76

207

Index Locorum Dialogi 6: 112-13, 118; 11.6.2: 112; 12: 112-13, 151, 182n16 Epistulae 49.1: 188n55; 51.5-11: 150-2; 55.4: 150-1, 164n7; 63.13: 112-13, 182n17; 65.2: 188n53; 67.2: 188n53; 68: 157, 164n7; 76.4: 151; 82.1-5: 17, 164n7; 86: 150-2, 156, 165n11, 188n58; 88.3: 108; 99: 112, 118-19, 182n16 Oedipus 1-81: 162n23 Phoenissae 354-5: 48 Thyestes 211-12: 34 Troades 674: 144; 830-5: 94

MARTIAL

De Spectaculis 45 Epigrams 1.1.2: 61; 4.49: 37, 161n5; 10.4.1-2: 1, 37

OVID

Amores 1.5.23: 159; 2.18.1: 93, 179n39; 2.18.3-4: 179n45; 3.15.19: 149 Ars Amatoria 1.11-18: 93-4; 1.681-706: 62, 68, 175n101, 176n106, 180n74 Epistulae ex Ponto 1.8.35-6: 143; 4.16.12: 185n99 Fasti 2.683-4: 45, 47 Metamorphoses 3.1-130: 10; 4.610-803: 80-1; 5.176-235: 81; 8.685: 189n83; 8.738-878: 173n49; 10.155-61: 79-80; 11.235-6: 65, 175n88; 12.157-63: 93; 12.210-535: 65-6; 13.681-701: 83; 15.879: 10 Tristia 2.469-70: 60; 3.8.23-7: 140

SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS

Carmina 9.229: 73; 22.6: 73

SILIUS ITALICUS

1.1-2: 51, 173n32; 1.3-5: 173n36; 8.545-50: 146; 8.560-1: 38; 11.33-6: 146; 11.65-6: 146-7; 11.285-6: 147; 11.449-52: 94; 11.481-2: 95; 12.27-59: 147; 12.82-103: 147; 12.121: 148; 12.113-157: 144, 147-9; 13.409: 148, 188n46; 15.425-32: 77, 79

PINDAR

Nemeans 3.43-52: 92 Olympians 2.1-2: 173n35

STATIUS

Achilleid 1.1-2: 63; 1.3-7: 10-11, 62; 1.1-19: 22, 24, 38, 61, 63, 174n82; 1.90: 65; 1.104-118: 64-6, 174n79, 175n88; 1.147-58: 66, 93; 1.159-66: 38, 63, 96; 1.171: 65; 1.188-94: 94; 1.285-8: 67; 1.326: 96; 1.328: 179n54; 1.332-4: 96-7; 1.355-6: 95; 1.360: 67; 1.428: 70; 1.560-674: 67-8; 1.689-98: 67-8; 1.855-6: 97; 1.858-63: 97; 1.866-89: 69, 179n40; 1.931-60: 70, 97-8; 2.20-2: 70; 2.27-30: 66, 70, 98; 2.48: 98; 2.96-167: 174n79, 179n42 Agaue 1 De Bello Germanico 1, 161n2 Siluae 1 pr. 3-4: 59; 1 pr. 5-9: 25-6, 73, 164n72, 174n82; 1 pr. 16-19: 72; 1 pr. 20-5: 19, 58, 72, 189n75; 1.1: 12, 22, 24, 29-33, 136, 170n149, 176n119, 177nn157-158; 1.1.37-9: 30-1, 84; 1.1.46-55: 30, 84; 1.1.84-8: 31-2; 1.2: 7, 161n6, 166n70; 1.3: 6, 29, 33, 57, 189n75; 1.3.2-4: 57-8;

PLATO

Republic 391-3: 92

PLINY THE ELDER

Naturalis Historia 34.61-5: 32

PLINY THE YOUNGER

Epistulae 1.9.6: 18; 1.22.11: 18; 3.1.12: 165n32; 3.7: 36, 37, 146, 162n18; 3.21: 36, 166n70; 8.12.4: 112 Panegyricus 48.3: 3

PLUTARCH

Moralia 14d-37b: 89, 92, 103; 608b-612b: 111, 118, 183n38

PROPERTIUS

1.11.27-9: 138; 2.32.11-12: 158

QUINTILIAN

Institutio Oratoria 1.2.6: 95, 179n49; 1.4.1-3: 88; 1.8.4-8: 89, 178n24; 1.10.30-1: 95, 179n37, 179n44; 8.3.61-90: 74; 8.7.67-70: 54; 10.1.85-100: 36, 39; 12.1.1: 89

SENECA THE ELDER

Controversiae 10.3.5: 105

SENECA THE YOUNGER

Agamemnon 101-2: 17

208

Index Locorum 1.3.15: 58; 1.3.20-6: 57, 58; 1.3.43-6: 58, 188-9n60; 1.3.108-9: 18; 1.4: 33, 165n24; 1.4.15-18: 33-4; 1.5: 17, 169n138, 188-9n60; 1.6: 1, 6, 22, 24; 2 pr. 22-6: 166n67, 166-7n70, 188n52; 2.1: 33, 90-2, 110, 118-21, 169n138, 176n113; 2.1.14: 119; 2.1.19-25: 91, 118-19, 121; 2.1.28: 110; 2.1.157-82: 118, 121; 2.1.170: 119; 2.2: 6, 29, 33, 138, 149-156; 2.2.3: 152; 2.2.10: 156; 2.2.52-62: 152, 189n64; 2.2.69-70: 152-3; 2.2.83-6: 153-5; 2.2.95-8: 153, 154, 155; 2.2.129-32: 149, 152, 189n76; 2.3: 33, 159; 2.5: 6, 22, 24; 2.6: 9, 110, 118, 120, 176n113; 2.7: 1, 9, 11, 35, 37, 46, 118, 121-2, 166n70, 169n138, 176n113; 2.7.58: 187n26; 2.7.75-80: 36, 170n153, 170n165; 3 pr. 6-7: 139, 144, 155; 3 pr. 20-3: 138, 139, 140-1, 144, 145, 188n53; 3.1: 6, 29, 33, 138, 149-156; 3.1.32-3: 156; 3.1.61-7: 26-8; 3.3: 17, 110, 118, 121, 176n113, 183n35; 3.3.1-7: 121, 184n54; 3.4: 9, 24, 166n70, 169n138; 3.5: 9, 136-159; 3.5.13: 145; 3.5.15-16: 140, 141; 3.5.32-3: 23, 139; 3.5.33-6: 167n76; 3.5.71: 157; 3.5.72-4: 141-2, 145, 161n9; 3.5.76-8: 1, 147, 189n78; 3.5.84-8: 15, 139, 141, 142, 149, 152; 3.5.89-91: 143; 3.5.91-94: 140, 151, 153; 3.5.97-8: 144; 3.5.100-1: 144; 3.5.102-3: 155, 156; 3.5.104: 145; 3.5.105: 159; 3.5.106-9: 138, 139, 150, 157, 172n19; 3.5.110-11: 145; 3.5.111-12: 157; 4 pr. 9-10: 159, 164n78; 4 pr. 20: 187n30; 4 pr. 24-35: 159, 174n82; 4.1: 22, 24, 175n96; 4.2: 22, 24, 29, 172n14; 4.2.32-3: 23; 4.3: 1, 22, 24, 29, 71-2, 138; 4.4.1-5: 138; 4.4.88-9: 60; 4.5.1: 27; 4.5.1-20: 28, 165n27; 4.7.23-4: 63, 69; 4.8: 156; 4.9: 1; 5.1: 110, 118-9, 121, 176n113, 183n35; 5.2: 91, 179n43; 5.3: 5, 88-90, 93-5, 110, 183n35; 5.3.35-40: 9, 27;

5.3.146-94: 5, 88-90, 93-5, 161n8, 167n90, 178n19; 5.3.195-204: 27, 90, 162n18, 167-8n91; 5.3.205-8: 90; 5.5: 110, 118, 176n113, 183n32; 5.5.56-7: 119 Thebaid 1.1: 10, 129; 1.3: 59; 1.7: 76, 85, 130; 1.16-17: 48, 49; 1.17-33: 22, 24, 39, 40, 48-50; 1.33-4: 7, 48, 50; 1.41-2: 51, 130, 132; 1.150-1: 47, 49; 1.156-61: 47; 1.515-21: 75; 1.540-51: 75-8, 80-6; 1.596-668: 50, 80, 172n27; 2.256-60: 85-6; 2.265-96: 84-6; 2.391: 59; 3.137-46: 116; 3.147-68: 114-5, 116; 3.686: 183n41; 4.677: 42; 4.725-9: 44, 52; 4.804-5.16: 52, 54; 4.811-12: 52-3; 4.823-6: 52-3; 5.5-6: 59; 5.36: 41; 5.48-498: 40, 42, 114; 5.499-500: 42, 171n176; 5.608-35: 113, 114, 123-4, 125-6, 171nn175-6, 171n180, 182n22; 5.668: 58; 6.33-4: 118-9; 6.84-117: 53-5, 173n43; 6.138-76: 113, 118, 182n22; 6.561-76: 96; 7.309-29: 56-7, 173n57, 174n59; 7.424-40: 52, 56, 174n59; 7.474-81: 115; 7.514-15: 115-6; 7.616: 52; 8.733-66: 51, 82, 126; 9.1: 51-2; 11.90: 129; 11.112: 129; 11.574-9: 104-5; 12.322-48: 123; 12.429-32: 59, 83, 115, 119; 12.519-20: 132; 12.593: 117; 12.665-76: 105-6, 181n98; 12.789-95: 116, 181n97, 183n30; 12.805-7: 85, 117, 183n32; 12.808-9: 60, 70, 99, 174n69; 12.811-3: 101, 108, 161n11; 12.814-15: 19, 22, 24, 60-1, 102, 105, 108, 131, 174n75, 181n94, 181n97; 12.816-17: 10; 12.819: 60 SULPICIA

Satires 67-8: 35-6

TACITUS

Agricola 46.1: 183n40 Annales 15.33.2: 138, 140 Historiae 1.2.1: 5; 1.40-1: 12, 168n113

VALERIUS FLACCUS

209

1.1-4: 51; 1.11-14: 39; 1.15-21: 50-1; 2.242-6: 40-1, 43-4; 2.408-17: 41-2, 77, 78-9, 177n142

Index Locorum Eclogues 3.60: 72; 4.3: 163n54; 10.70-75: 145, 172n19 Georgics 2.136-76: 141, 142, 155-6; 2.207-11: 55; 2.458-540: 141, 156, 190n84; 4.563-6: 140

VIRGIL

Aeneid 1.252: 79; 1.259-60: 78; 1.279: 45; 1.588-93: 96; 1.637-42: 75-6; 1.728-9: 75; 2.268-83: 123; 3.390: 67; 3.570-87: 148; 5.252-7: 77-8, 177n142; 6.42-4: 143-4; 6.179: 53, 66; 6.233-5: 144; 6.773-6: 158; 7.733-43: 144; 9.446-9: 41, 105; 9.481-502: 114, 116; 10.495-505: 82; 10.726: 97; 12.35-6: 59

VITA ÆDWARDI

Book 1 p. 4, 28-51: 128; p. 8, 83-6: 129-30; p. 58, 9-16: 128-9; Book 2 p. 84, 13-14: 130; p. 84, 26: 130; p. 88, 66: 130; p. 90, 113-14: 131

XENOPHON

Anabasis 4.7.24: 53

210

General Index Abascantus: 118-9; 121. accessus: 25; 99-100; 101. Achilles: 10-11; 38; 61-71; 91-101; 110; 114; 118; 120; 139; 145. Adrastus: 58; 75-6; 80; 82-3; 102; 104; 107. Aeneas: 75-6; 78; 83; 91; 96; 104; 124; 137; 139; 145; 155. Alexander the Great: 31; 32-3. Amphiaraus: 11-12; 58; 107; 134. Anglo-Saxon elegy: 127. Antigone: 56; 116. Antimachus of Colophon: 46. Apollo: 50; 59; 60; 75; 80; 82; 142. apotheosis: 21-2; 38; 45; 49-51; 63; 78-9; 107; 157-8. Argia: 85-6; 116; 124; 125; 126; 140; 149. Arruntius Stella: 7; 25; 35; 72. Atedius Melior: 18; 19; 20; 73; 90-1; 118-20; 122; 159. Avernus: 138; 143; 147; 148. Bacchantes: 116. Baiae: 138-9; 150-1; 152. biculturalism: 5-7; 8; 15; 22-3; 137-8; 140; 143; 151; 153; 155. Callimachus/Callimacheanism: 9; 33; 48; 52-3; 62; 71; 85; 142. calor: 59. Cambridge Songs: 123-7. Campania: passim Chapter 6. Capua: 146-7. Cassandra: 135. Catullus: 9; 16; 46; 158. Poem 64: 6; 76; 94; 105. Centaurs: 65-6. Chaucer: 131-4. children: 119-22. Chiron: 64-6; 91-5; 99. Cicero: 16; 111; 158.

civil war: 3; 4; 6; 12; 13; 17; 43; 44; 46-8; 50; 51; 52; 55; 56; 57; 58; 59; 81-3; 85; 102; 103-6; 107; 110; 113-18; 127-9; 130. civil wars of 68-9 AD: 3; 7; 12; 18; 19; 21; 27; 46; 90. civil war of England (1642-51): 106-8. Claudius Etruscus, father of: 17; 33; 121. consolatio: 73; 110; 112; 113; 119; 120; 121; 122; 130. Creon: 84; 104; 117. Dante: 14; 25; 56; 122; 132; 135. death, premature: 11; 14; 44; 70; 71; 77-9; 110-1; 114; 117; 118-21; 127. Deidamia: 67-70; 97-8. Dido: 75-6. Domitian: 1; 2-5; 8; 9; 15; 19; 20-36; 38-40; 45; 48-51; 60; 63; 67; 71; 72; 84; 86; 90; 98; 99; 101; 102; 103; 104; 106; 108; 121; 138; 139; 140; 158. ecphrasis: 6; 13; 29; 70; 73-86; 105-6. Edith, Anglo-Saxon queen: 127; 128; 130. educational curriculum: 89-91. Edward the Confessor: 127; 128; 131. Eleanor of Aquitaine: 131. elegy (see also Ovid): 70; 120; 129; 130; 150; 157. encomium 28-34; 51; 71-2; 136-45. Epicureanism: 1; 6; 15; 16; 18; 26; 138; 139; 143; 144; 145; 147-8; 149; 152; 154-6. epigram (see also Martial): 6; 31-3; 71; 72; 74; 112. equestrian statue (of Domitian): 29-33; 84; 139-40. Eteocles: 9; 48; 63; 83; 103-105; 115; 128-9.

211

General Index lament: 9; 11; 14-15; 41; 44; 71; 85; 102; 110; 111; 112; 113-7; 118; 122; 123-7; 128-30; 132. Leofric, Anglo-Saxon bishop: 127. limen: 62; 65; 69. limes: 13; 47; 48; 49-52. local identities: 2; 7; 8; 136-7; 143; 154-5; 158. Lucan: 3; 4; 7; 8; 9; 10; 11; 14; 34; 35; 36; 37; 46; 47; 50; 51; 54; 56; 59; 80-3; 86; 102; 105; 106; 110; 114; 119; 121; 128; 130; 135; 149. luxury: 6; 8; 16; 19; 75-6; 121; 136; 146-8; 150-7. Lysippus: 32.

Euripides: 106. Hypsipyle: 41-2; 43; 45. Phoenissae: 102; 115. Euryalus’ mother: 114; 116. Eurydice (mother of Opheltes): 118-9. Flavian architecture: 20-2; 30-3; 45; 72; 157-8. freedmen: 17; 121; 153. games: Augustalia/Sebasta: 22; 138. Alban: 23; 27-8. Capitoline: 6; 22-3; 138-9; 143. Secular (of 88 AD): 7; 33-4. Ganymede: 77-80. gender and sexuality: 62-3; 67; 87-8; 92; 95-8; 100-101; 112-13; 116; 118-9; 121; 133-4. grief, conventions of: 111-113; 118-22. grammaticus: 88; 108. haerere: 69-70. Hannibal: 95; 146-9; 150. Hellespont: 58; 64; 70-1. heterotopia: 141-2. Hippomedon: 56; 85. Homer: 6; 10-11; 53; 62; 63; 66; 69; 74; 79; 89; 91; 92; 93; 95; 96; 98; 101; 103-4; 120. Horace: 4; 5; 7; 8; 9; 15; 27-8; 30; 50; 51-2; 58; 60; 61; 62; 72; 120; 123; 124; 139; 142; 144; 145-6; 149; 159. Hypsipyle: 40-4; 52; 107; 113-114; 124; 125-6; 135. Ide: 114-5. Ino: 118. Italo Calvino: 136. Jason: 43; 78. Jocasta: 115-116; 122; 126; 132. Julius Caesar: 31-2; 45; 54; 56; 150; 152. Juno: 75-6; 79-80; 117. Jupiter: 22; 27; 50; 51; 56-7; 63; 72; 75; 77-8. Juvenal: 1; 13; 24-6; 36; 37; 139. Lacus Curtius: 12; 31. Lactantius Placidus: 103

Manilius Vopiscus: 19; 29; 33; 57-8. marriage: 156-7. Martial: 1; 4; 6; 12; 17; 25; 27; 36-7; 45; 61; 71; 73; 137; 138-9. Medieval romance: 15; 122; 123; 128; 131-2; 133. Medusa: 31; 79-86. Minerva/Pallas: 22; 27; 30; 57; 67; 82; 84; 86. Litorea (‘of the shore’): 67-8. Misenus: 144. Muse/s: 28; 35-6; 51; 59; 62; 105; 129-31. Naples: 1; 2; 5; 6; 7; 8- 9; 12; 20; 27-8; 33; 37; 90; 102; 108-9; passim Chapter 6 Nemea: 40-4; 53-6; 57. spring: 52-3; 59. Nero: 3; 16; 21; 23; 35; 37; 39; 50; 138; 140. neumes: 124-5 Octauia: 34-5. Odysseus/Ulysses: 68-9; 77; 89; 97; 98; 100; 104; 110; 120; 139. Oedipus: 1; 10; 48; 104; 115; 123; 131; 134. Opheltes: 42-4; 52; 53; 107; 113-114; 118; 124; 126. otium: 16-20; 137; 147. Ovid: 7; 9; 52; 80-3; 79; 86; 122; 126; 139; 145-6. and the myth of Achilles: 11; 62; 64-6; 68; 93-4; 97.

212

General Index and the myth of Thebes: 3; 10; 83. and amatory elegiac works: 41-2; 124; 129; 139-40; 149; 159. and exile: 3; 4; 10; 140; 142-3. and Metamorphoses: 7; 10; 79; 81. Pales: 54. Parthenopaeus: 85; 96; 117. patronage: 16; 17; 19-20; 22; 23; 25; 29; 34; 58; 127; 130-1; 139; 144; 155. Peleus: 64-6. Perseus: 76; 77; 79; 80-2; 86; 120. personification: 121; 122. Phaethon: 50. Pliny the Elder: 32; 47; 145. Pliny the Younger: 3; 6; 18-19; 29; 36; 119; 145. Plutarch: 87; 89; 91; 92; 103; 111; 112; 118. Poliziano: 73. Polla Argentaria: 11; 34-5; 149. Pollius Felix: 18-19: 20; 27-8; 29; 138; 139; 144-5; 151-7. Polynices: 9; 47; 48; 62; 63; 73; 75; 76; 82; 83; 104-5; 115; 124; 126; 128-9. Pompeii: 2; 69; 141; 154. Pompey: 29; 81; 150; 152. Porticus of: 158. Posidippus (of Pella): 32. praeteritio: 48. Propertius: 136; 138; 158. Quintilian: 13; 28; 29; 36; 39-40; 54; 74; 87-9; 91; 92; 94-6; 98; 121; 159. Quirinus: 157-8. prefaces (to the Siluae): 71-3. Rachel: 124. reception of the Achilleid: 87; 98-101. of the Thebaid: 87; 101-108; 122-35. recusatio: 39-40; 48-50; 63. reading practices, medieval: 132-5 rivers: Anio: 57-8 Asopus: 56-8 Rubicon: 56 Tiber: 59; 157-8. Roman de Thèbes: 131; 133. Rutilius Gallicus: 33-4.

Saturninus: 3; 46. Scipio Africanus: 38; 55; 146; 150-2; 155-6. Scyros: 66-70. Seneca: prose works: 8; 15; 16-18; 90; 91; 108; 111-113; 118; 119; 120; 139; 149-53; 156; 157. tragedy/tragedies: 4; 6; 11; 17; 34; 35; 48; 94; 113; 115; 144. shields: 84-6. (of Achilles): 69; 84; 86. (of Aeneas): 86. (of Theseus): 84; 105-6. ship metaphor: 60-1; 70. Sibyl: 137; 143-4; 148. Silius Italicus: 3; 15; 36; 37-8; 51; 55; 77; 79; 94; 95; 140; 144; 146-9. Silvanus: 54. slavery/slaves: 9; 90-1; 110; 118; 119; 120; 125-6; 154. Statius Alban property: 26-8. as auctor: 14; 87; 99; 103-4. father: 2; 5; 27; 34-5; 88-90; 93-5; 108; 158. medieval identity: 1; 25; 98; 126. social rank: 8. wife: 9; 156-7. works, dates of: 1; 2; 11. Stoicism: 16; 90; 112; 119; 150. Tacitus: 2-5; 18; 46. Tarentum: 139; 142; 144; 149. Theseus: 70; 84; 102; 104; 105-6; 116; 117; 132. Thetis: 64-7; 95-7; 101. Thomas Stephens: 106-7. Tibur: 57-8; 139; 142. Titus: 2; 20-2; 30-1; 39-40; 138. tragedy (see also Euripides; Seneca): 4; 6; 47; 115; 118; 130; 135. translation of the Bellum Ciuile: 106. of the Thebaid: 106-7; 131. tree-cutting: 53-5. Troy: 12; 62; 78; 92; 132; 133. Tydeus: 51-2; 59; 75-6; 82; 114; 126. Underworld: 11-12; 50; 70; 80; 122; 134; 147-8.

213

General Index Valerius Flaccus: 3; 4; 36; 38-44; 50-1; 60; 64; 77-9. Virgil: 9; 12; 135; 136; 138; 149. Aeneid: 4; 7; 10; 14; 41; 51; 53-4; 56-7; 59; 63; 75-6; 77-9; 82; 83; 88; 96; 103-4; 105; 108-9; 114; 116; 123; 124; 143-5; 147; 148; 158. Eclogues: 9; 72; 140-1; 145. Georgics: 55; 140-2; 151; 152; 155-6. exemplary career: 145. Vespasian: 3; 8; 20-2; 27; 30-1; 39-40; 46; 49-51; 79.

Vesuvius: 2; 90; 136; 138; 141-2; 147-8; 154. villas: 6; 9; 17-19; 27-8; 29; 37; 57-8; 74; 149-57. Villa dei Papiri: 17; 153. visual culture: 5-6; 69, 152-3; 154. Vita Ædwardi (Life of Edward (the Confessor)): 127-31. Vitorius Marcellus: 87; 159. windows: 153-5.

214