Statius, whose father before him was a poet, was born at Naples. His
works consist of the _Thebais_, an epic in imitation of the _Aeneid_ and
having for its subject the story of the Seven against Thebes; the
_Achilleis_, intended to celebrate the deeds of Achilles, but never
completed; and the _Silvae_, a collection of thirty-one miscellaneous
poems, of which our selection is one.
For Reference: Fr. Vollmer, _Silvae_, Leipzig, 1898.
Metre: Dactylic Hexameter, B. 368; A. & G. 615.
_1._ 1. placidissime divum: cf. Statius, _Thebais_, 10. 126, 127:
mitissime divum, Somne; Ovid, 11. 623-625-.
Somne, quies rerum, placidissime Somne deorum,
pax animi, quem cura fugit, qui corda diurnis
fessa ministeriis mulces reparasque labori;
and Shakspere, _Macbeth_, II. 2. 37 ff.:
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,...
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
4. simulant...somnos: rounded tree-tops take the semblance of tired
sleep. cacumina might mean mountain tops, but the parallelism of the
passage with _Aeneid_, 4. 522-528 favors the interpretation as tree-tops.
The trees, their rounded outline no longer broken by the winds,
seem to sleep as if exhausted by their tossing. 6. terris...adclinata:
we are reminded of those Elgin marbles which represent Thalassa, the
personified sea, as resting in the lap of Gaea, the personified land.
Cf. with lines 3-7 Goethe, _Wanderer's Nachtlied_, 1-6: 'Über allen
Gipfeln Ist Ruh, In allen Wipfeln Spürest du Kaum einen Hauch; Die
Vögelein schweigen im Walde.' 7. Septima...Phoebe: the seventh moon-lit
night. 8, 9. totidem...lampades: a second expression of the thought that
it is the seventh night since he has slept. Oetaeae Paphiaeque: the
planet Venus is called Oetaean since poetical tradition pictures it as
shining from above Oeta, a mountain of Thessaly; and Paphian because the
goddess Venus, whose star it is, was worshipped with especial devotion
at Paphos in Cyprus. lampades: each nightly appearance of the star is
poetically thought of as the kindling of a new torch. Tithonia: Aurora,
the dawn, wife of Tithonus, to whom she had been able to give
immortality, but not eternal youth. She is thought of as sprinkling the
dew from the lash with which she drives her chariot team. 13. Argus:
Io's thousand-eyed custodian, who was sacer, devoted to death, since he
was doomed to be slain by Hermes, her liberator. 18. leviter...transi:
pass lightly hovering above me.
Wordsworth's three sonnets _To Sleep_ should all be compared. The best
is as follows:
A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by,
One after one; the sound of rain and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds, and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water and pure sky;
I have thought of all by turns and still do lie
Sleepless! and soon the small birds' melodies
Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees;
And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry.
Even thus last night and two nights more I lay,
And could not win thee, Sleep, by any stealth;
So do not let me wear to-night away:
Without thee what is all the morning's wealth?
Come, blessed barrier between day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!