STATIUS
Our information as to the life of P. Papinius Statius is drawn almost
exclusively from his minor poems entitled the _Silvae_. He was born at
Naples, his father was a native of Velia, came of good family,[516] and
by profession was poet and schoolmaster. The father's school was at
Naples,[517] and, if we may trust his son, was thronged with pupils from
the whole of Southern Italy.[518] He had been victorious in many poetic
contests both in Naples and in Greece.[519] He had written a poem on the
burning of the Capitol in 69 A.D., had planned another on the eruption
of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., but apparently died with the work
unfinished.[520] It was to his father that our poet attributed all his
success as a poet. It was to him he owed both education and inspiration,
as the _Epicedion in patrem_ bears pathetic witness (v. 3. 213):
sed decus hoc quodcumque lyrae primusque dedisti
non volgare loqui et famam sperare sepulcro.
Thou wert the first to give this glory, whate'er it be,
that my lyre hath won; thine was the gift of noble speech
and the hope that my tomb should be famous.
The _Thebais_ was directly due to his prompting (loc. cit., 233):
te nostra magistro
Thebais urgebat priscorum exordia vatum;
tu cantus stimulare meos, tu pandere facta
heroum bellique modos positusque locorum
monstrabas.
At thy instruction my Thebais trod the steps of elder
bards; thou taughtest me to fire my song, thou taughtest
me to set forth the deeds of heroes and the ways of war
and the position of places.
The poet-father lived long enough to witness his son well on the way to
established fame. He had won the prize for poetry awarded by his native
town, the crown fashioned of ears of corn, chief honour of the
Neapolitan Augustalia.[521] Early in the reign of Domitian he had
received a high price from the actor Paris for his libretto on the
subject of Agave,[522] and he had already won renown by his recitations
at Rome,[523] recitations in all probability of portions of the
_Thebais_[524] which he had commenced in 80 A.D.[525] But it was not
till after his father's death that he reached the height of his fame by
his victory in the annual contest instituted by Domitian at his Alban
palace,[526] and by the completion and final publication in 92 A.D. of
his masterpiece, the _Thebais_.[527] This poem was the outcome of twelve
years' patient labour, and it was on this that he based his claim to
immortality.[527] He had now made himself a secure position as the
foremost poet of his age. His failure to win the prize at the
quinquennial Agon Capitolinus in 94 A.D. caused him keen mortification,
but was in no way a set-back to his career.[528] By this time he had
already begun the publication of his _Silvae_. The first book was
published not earlier than 92 A.D.,[529] the second and third between
that date and 95 A.D. The fourth appeared in 95 A.D.,[530] the fifth is
unfinished. There is no allusion to any date later than 95 A.D., no
indication that the poet survived Domitian (d. 96 A.D.). These facts,
together with the fragmentary state of his ambitious _Achilleis_, begun
in 95 A.D.,[531] point to Statius having died in that year, or at least
early in 96 A.D. He left behind him, beside the works already mentioned,
a poem on the wars of Domitian in Germany,[532] and a letter to one
Maximus Vibius, which may have served as a preface to the
_Thebais_.[533] He had spent the greater portion of his life either at
Rome, Naples, or in the Alban villa given him by Domitian. In his latter
years he seems to have resided almost entirely at Rome, though he must
have paid not infrequent visits to the Bay of Naples.[534] But in 94
A.D., whether through failing health or through chagrin at his defeat in
the Capitoline contest, he retired to his native town.[535] He had
married a widow named Claudia,[536] but the union was childless; towards
the end of his life he adopted the infant son of one of his slaves,[537]
and the child's premature death affected him as bitterly as though it
had been his own son that died. Of his age we know little; but in the
_Silvae_ there are allusions to the approach of old age and the decline
of his physical powers.[538] He can scarcely have been born later than
45 A.D., and may well have been born considerably earlier. His life, as
far as we can judge, was placid and uneventful. The position of his
father seems to have saved him from a miserable struggle for his
livelihood, such as vexed the soul of Martial.[539] There is nothing
venal about his verse. If his flattery of the emperor is fulsome almost
beyond belief, he hardly overstepped the limits of the path dictated by
policy and the custom of the age; his conduct argues weakness rather
than any deep moral taint. In his flattery towards his friends and
patrons his tone is, at its worst, rather that of a social inferior than
of a mere dependent.[540] And underlying all the preciosity and
exaggeration of his praises and his consolations, there is a genuine
warmth of affection that argues an amiable character. And this warmth of
feeling becomes unmistakable in the _epicedia_ on his father and his
adopted son, and again in the poem addressed to his wife. The feeling is
genuine, in spite of the suggestion of insincerity created by the
artificiality of his language. No less noteworthy is his enthusiasm for
the beauties of his birthplace, which shines clear through all the
obscure legends beneath which he buries his topography.[541] These
qualities, if any, must be set against his lack of intellectual power;
his mind is nimble and active, but never strong either in thought or
emotion: of sentiment he has abundance, of passion none. Considering the
corruption of the society of which he constituted himself the poet, and
of which there are not a few glimpses in the _Silvae_, despite the
tinselled veil that is thrown over it, the impression of Statius the man
is not unpleasing: it is not necessary to claim that it is inspiring.
Of Statius the poet it is harder to form a clear judgement. His
masterpiece, the _Thebais_, from the day of its publication down to
comparatively recent times, possessed an immense reputation.[542] Dante
seems to regard him as second only to Vergil; and it was scarcely before
the nineteenth century that he was dethroned from his exalted position.
Before the verdict of so many ages one may well shrink from passing an
unfavourable criticism. That he had many of the qualifications of a
great poet is undeniable; his technical skill is extraordinary; his
variety of phrase is infinite; his colouring is often brilliant. And
even his positive faults, the faults of his age, the crowding of detail,
the rhetoric, the bombast, offend rather by their quantity than quality.
Alone of the epic[543] writers of his age he rarely raises a derisive
laugh from the irreverent modern. Again, his average level is high,
higher than that of any post-Ovidian poet. And yet that high level is
due to the fact that he rarely sinks rather than that he rises to
sublime heights. His brilliant metre, always vivacious and vigorous,
seldom gives us a line that haunts the memory; and therefore, though its
easy grace and facile charm may for a while attract us, we soon weary of
him. He lacks warmth of emotion and depth of colour. In this respect he
has been not inaptly compared to Ovid. Ovid said of Callimachus _quamvis
ingenio non valet, arte valet_.[544] Ovid's detractors apply the epigram
to Ovid himself. This is unjust, but so far as such a comprehensive
dictum can be true of any distinguished writer, it is true of Statius.
Scarcely inferior to Ovid in readiness and fertility, he ranks far below
the earlier writer in all poetic essentials. Ovid's gifts are similar
but more natural; his vision is clearer, his imagination more
penetrating. 'The paces of Statius are those of the _manège_, not of
nature';[545] he loses himself in the trammels of his art. He lacks, as
a rule, the large imagination of the poet; and though his detail may
often please, the whole is tedious and disappointing. Merivale sums him
up admirably:[546] 'Statius is a miniature painter employed on the
production of a great historic picture: every part, every line, every
shade is touched and retouched; approach the canvas and examine it with
glasses, every thread and hair has evidently received the utmost care
and taken the last polish; but step backwards and embrace the whole
composition in one gaze, and the general effect is confused from want of
breadth and largeness of treatment.'
He was further handicapped by his choice of a subject.[547] The Theban
legend is unsuitable for epic treatment for more reasons than one. In
the first place the story is unpleasant from beginning to end. Horror
accumulates on horror, crime on crime, and there are but three
characters which evoke our sympathy, Oedipus, Jocasta, and Antigone.
These characters play only subsidiary parts in the story of the
expedition of the Seven against Thebes, round which the Theban epic
turns. The central characters are almost of necessity the odious
brothers Eteocles and Polynices: Oedipus appears only to curse his sons.
Antigone and Jocasta come upon the scene only towards the close in a
brief and futile attempt to reconcile the brothers. The deeds and deaths
of the Argive chiefs may relieve the horror and at times excite our
sympathy, but we cannot get away from the fact that the story is
ultimately one of almost bestial fratricidal strife, darkened by the
awful shadow of the woes of the house of Labdacus. The old Greek epic
assigned great importance to the character of Amphiaraus[548] persuaded
by his false wife, Eriphyla, to go forth on the enterprise that should
be his doom; it has even been suggested that he formed the central
character of the poem. If this suggestion be true--and its truth is
exceedingly doubtful--we are confronted with what was in reality only a
false shift, the diversion of the interest from the main issues of the
story to a side issue. The _Iliad_ cannot be quoted in his defence;
there we have an episode of a ten years' siege, which in itself
possesses genuine unity and interest. But the Theban epic comprises the
whole story of the expedition of the seven chieftains, and it is idle to
make Amphiaraus the central figure. In any case the prominence given to
the fortunes of the house of Labdacus by the great Greek dramatists, and
the genius with which they brought out the genuinely dramatic issues of
the legend, had made it impossible for after-comers to take any save the
Labdacidae for the chief actors in their story. And so from Antimachus
onward Polynices and Eteocles are the tragic figures of the epic.
To give unity to this story all our attention must be concentrated on
Thebes. The enlistment of Adrastus in the cause of Polynices must be
described, and following this the gathering of the hosts of Argos. But
when once the Argive demands are rejected by Thebes, the poet's chief
aim must be to get his army to Thebes with all speed, and set it in
battle array against the enemy. Once at Thebes, there is plenty of room
for tragic power and stirring narrative. First comes the ineffectual
attempt of Jocasta to reconcile her scarce human sons; then comes the
battle, with the gradual overthrow of the chieftains of Argos, the
turning of the scale of battle in favour of Thebes by the sacrifice of
Menoeceus, and last the crowning combat between the brothers. There,
from the artistic standpoint, the story finds its ending. It could
never have been other than forbidding, but it need not have lacked
power. Unfortunately, precedent did not allow the story to end there.
The Thebans forbid burial to the Argive dead; Antigone transgresses the
edict by burying her brother Polynices, and finds death the reward of
her piety; Theseus and the Athenians come to Adrastus' aid, defeat the
Thebans, and bury the Argive dead, while as a sop to Argive feeling
they are promised their revenge in after years, when the children of
the dead have grown to man's estate. If it were felt that the deadly
struggle between the two brothers closed the epic on a note of
unrelieved gloom and horror, there was perhaps something to be said for
introducing the story of Antigone's self-sacrifice, and closing on a
note of tragic beauty. Unhappily, the story of Antigone involved the
introduction of material sufficient for one, if not two fresh epics in
the legend of the Athenian War and the triumphant return of Argos to
the conflict. Antimachus[549] fell into the snare. His vast _Thebais_
told the whole story from the arrival of Polynices at Argos to the
victory of the Epigoni. Nor was he content with this alone, but must
needs clog the action of his poem with long descriptions of the
gathering of the host at Argos, and of their adventures on the march to
Thebes. And so it came about that he consumed twenty-four books in
getting his heroes to Thebes!
The precedent of Antimachus proved fatal to Statius. He did not, it is
true, run to such prolixity as his Greek predecessor; he eliminated the
legend of the Epigoni altogether, only alluding to it once in vague and
general terms; he succeeded in getting the story, down to the burial of
the Argive dead, within the compass of twelve books of not inordinate
length. But it is possible to be prolix without being an Antimachus,
and the prolixity of Statius is quite sufficient. The Argives do not
reach Thebes till half-way through the seventh book,[550] the brothers
do not meet till half-way through the eleventh book. The result is that
the compression of events in the last 300 lines of the eleventh book
and in the last book is almost grotesque; for these 1,100 lines contain
the death of Jocasta, the banishment of Oedipus, the flight of the
Argives, the prohibition to bury the Argive dead, the arrival of the
wives of the vanquished, the devotion of Antigone and Argia, the wife
of Polynices, their detection and sentencing to death, the arrival of
the Athenians under Theseus, the defeat and death of Creon, and the
burial of the fallen. The effect is disastrous. As we have seen, this
appendix to the main story of the feud between the brothers cannot form
a satisfactory conclusion to the story. Treated with the perfunctory
compression of Statius, it becomes flat and ineffective; even the
reader who finds Statius at his best attractive is tempted to throw
down the _Thebais_ in disgust.
It is perhaps in his concluding scenes that we see Statius at his worst,
but his capacity for irrelevance and digression is an almost equally
serious defect. That he should use the conventional supernatural
machinery is natural and permissible, though tedious to the modern
reader, who finds it hard to sympathize with outworn literary
conventions. But there are few epics where divine intervention is
carried to a greater extent than in the _Thebais_.[551] And not content
with the intervention of the usual gods and furies, on two occasions
Statius brings down frigid abstractions from the skies in the shape of
Virtus[552] and Pietas.[553] Again, while auguries and prophecies play a
legitimate part in such a work, nothing can justify, and only the
passion of the Silver Age for the supernatural can explain, the
protraction of the scenes of augury at Thebes and Argos to 114 and 239
lines respectively. Equally disproportionate are the catalogues of the
Argive and the Theban armies, making between them close on 400
lines.[554] Nor is imitation of Vergil the slightest justification for
introducing a night-raid in which Hopleus and Dymas are but pale
reflections of Nisus and Euryalus,[555] for expending 921 lines over the
description of the funeral rites and games in honour of the infant
Opheltes,[556] or putting the irrelevant history of the heroism of
Coroebus in the mouth of Adrastus, merely that it may form a parallel to
the tale of Hercules and Cacus told by Evander.[557] Worst of all is the
enormous digression,[558] consuming no less than 481 lines, where
Hypsipyle narrates the story of the Lemnian massacre. And yet this is
hardly more than a digression in the midst of a digression. The Argive
army are marching on Thebes. Bacchus, desirous to save his native town,
causes a drought in the Peloponnese. The Argives, on the verge of death,
and maddened with thirst, come upon Hypsipyle, the nurse of Opheltes,
the son of Lycurgus, King of Nemea. Hypsipyle leaves her charge to show
them the stream of Langia, which alone has been unaffected by the
drought, and so saves the Argive host. She then at enormous length
narrates to Adrastus the story of her life, how she was daughter of
Thoas, King of Lemnos, and how, when the women of Lesbos slew their
mankind, she alone proved false to their hideous compact, and saved her
father. After describing the arrival of the Argonauts at Lemnos, and her
amour with Jason, to whom she bore two sons, she tells how she was
banished from Lesbos on the discovery that Thoas, her father, still
lived, how she was captured by pirates, and twenty long years since sold
into slavery to Lycurgus. This prodigious narration finished, it is
discovered that a serpent sacred to Jupiter has killed Opheltes.
Lycurgus, hearing the news, would have slain Hypsipyle, but she is
protected by the Argives whom she has saved. Then follows the burial of
Opheltes--henceforth known as Archemorus--and his funeral games.
Now it is not improbable that the story of Opheltes and Hypsipyle
occurred in the old cyclic poem.[559] But that scarcely justifies
Statius in devoting the whole of the fifth and sixth books and some 200
lines of the fourth to the description of an episode so alien to the
main interest of the poem. But if we cannot justify these copious
digressions and irrelevances we can explain them. The _Thebais_ was
written primarily for recitation; many of these episodes which are
hopelessly superfluous to the real story are admirably designed for the
purpose of recitation. The truth is that Statius had many qualifications
for the writing of _epyllia_, few for writing epic on a large scale. He
has therefore sacrificed the whole to its parts, and relies on
brilliance of description to catch the ear of an audience, rather than
on sustained epic dignity and ordered development of his story. But
although he cannot give real unity to his epic, he succeeds, by dint of
his astonishing fluency and his mastery over his instrument, in giving a
specious appearance of unity. The sutures of his story are well
disguised and his inconsistencies of no serious importance. He fails as
an epic writer, but he fails gracefully.
It is, however, possible for an epic to be structurally ineffective and
yet possess high poetic merit. Statius' episodes do not cohere; how far
have they any splendour in their isolation? The answer to the question
must be on the whole unfavourable. The reasons for this are diverse. In
the first place the characters for the most part fail to live. Statius
can give us a vivid impression of the outward semblance of a man; we see
Parthenopaeus and Atys, we see Jocasta and Antigone, we see the struggle
of Eteocles and Polynices vividly enough. But we see them as strangers,
standing out, it is true, from the crowd in which they move, but still
wholly unknown to us. We cannot differentiate Polynices and Eteocles
save that the latter, from the very situation in which he finds himself,
is necessarily the more odious of the two; Polynices would have shown
himself the same, had the fall of the lot given him the first year of
kingship. Jocasta and Antigone, Creon and Menoeceus, Hypsipyle and
Lycurgus, play their parts correctly enough, but they do not live, nor
people our brain with moving images. We are told that they behaved in
such and such a way under such and such circumstances; we are told, and
admit, that such conduct implies certain moral qualities, but Statius
does not make us feel that his characters possess such qualities. The
reason for this lies partly in the fact that they all speak the same
brilliant rhetoric,[560] partly in the fact that Statius lacks the
direct sincerity of diction that is required for the expression of
strong and poignant emotion. Anger he can depict; anger suffers less
than other emotions from rhetoric. Hence it is that he has succeeded in
drawing the character of Tydeus, whose brutality is redeemed from
hideousness by the fact that it is based on the most splendid physical
courage, and fired by strong loyalty to his comrade and sometime foe
Polynices. His accents ring true. When he has gone to Thebes to plead
Polynices' cause, and his demands have been angrily refused by Eteocles,
who concludes by saying (ii. 449),
nec ipsi,
si modo notus amor meritique est gratia, patres
reddere regna sinent,
Nor will the fathers of the city, if they but know the love
I bear them or if they have aught of gratitude, allow me to
give back the kingship.
Tydeus will hear no more, but breaks in with a cry of fury (ii. 452):
'reddes,'
ingeminat 'reddes; non si te ferreus agger
ambiat aut triplices alio tibi carmine muros
Amphion auditus agat, nil tela nec ignes
obstiterint, quin ausa luas nostrisque sub armis
captivo moribundus humum diademate pulses.
tu merito; ast horum miseret, quos sanguine viles
coniugibus natisque infanda ad proelia raptos
proicis excidio, bone rex. o quanta Cithaeron
funera sanguineusque vadis, Ismene, rotabis!
haec pietas, haec magna fides! nec crimina gentis
mira equidem duco: sic primus sanguinis auctor
incestique patrum thalami; sed fallit origo:
Oedipodis tu solus eras, haec praemia morum
ac sceleris, violente, feres! nos poscimus annum;
sed moror.' haec audax etiamnum in limine retro
vociferans iam tunc impulsa per agmina praeceps
evolat.
'Thou shalt give it back,' he cries, 'thou shalt give it back.
Though thou wert girdled with a wall of bronze, or Amphion's
voice be heard and with a new song raise triple bulwarks about
thee; fire and sword should not save thee from the doom of thy
daring, and, struck down by our swords, thy diadem should smite
the ground as thou fallest dying, our captive. Thus shouldst
_thou_ have thy desert; but _these_ I pity, whose blood thou
ratest lightly, and whom thou snatchest from their children and
their wives to give them over to death, thou virtuous king. What
vast slaughter, Cithaeron, and thou, Ismenus, shalt thou see
whirl down thy blood-stained shallows. This is thy piety, this
thy true faith! nor marvel I at the crimes of such a race: 'twas
for this that thou hadst such an author of thy being, for this
thy father's marriage-bed was stained with incest. But thou art
deceived as to thine own birth and thy brother's; thou alone
wast begotten of Oedipus, that shall be the reward for thy nature
and thy crime, fierce man. We ask but for a year! But I tarry over
long.' These words he shouted back at him while he still lingered
on the threshold; then headlong burst through the crowd of foemen
and sped away.
As he is here, so is he always, unwavering in decision, prompt of speech
and of action. Caught in ambush, ill-armed and solitary, by the
treacherous Thebans, as he returns from his futile embassy, he never
hesitates; he seizes the one point of vantage, crushes his foes, and
when he speaks, speaks briefly and to the point. He spares the last of
his fifty assailants and sends him back to Thebes with a message of
defiance, brief, natural, and manly (ii. 697):
quisquis es Aonidum, quem crastina munere nostro
manibus exemptum mediis Aurora videbit,
haec iubeo perferre duci: cinge aggere portas,
tela nova, fragiles aevo circum inspice muros,
praecipue stipare viros densasque memento
multiplicare acies! fumantem hunc aspice late
ense meo campum: tales in bella venimus.
Whoe'er thou art of the Aonides, whom to-morrow's dawn shall
see saved from the world of the dead by my boon, I bid thee
bear this message to thy chief: 'Raise mounds about the gates,
forge new weapons, look to your walls that crumble with years,
and above all be mindful to marshal thick and multiply thine
hosts! Behold this plain smoking with the work of my sword.
Such men are we when we enter the field of battle.'
On his return to Argos he bursts impetuously into the palace, crying
fiercely for war.[561] When Lycurgus would slay Hypsipyle for her
neglect of her nursling, he saves her.[562] She has preserved the Argive
army, and Tydeus, if he never forgives an enemy, never forgets a friend.
He alone defeats the entreaties of Jocasta[563] and launches the hosts
of Argos into battle; and when his own doom is come, he dies as he had
lived, _impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis_; he has no thought for
himself; he cares nought for due burial (viii. 736):
non ossa precor referantur ut Argos
Aetolumve larem; nec enim mihi cura supremi
funeris: odi artus fragilemque hunc corporis usum,
desertorem animi.
I ask not that my bones be borne home to Argos or Aetolia;
I care not for my last rites of funeral; I hate these limbs
and this frail tenement, my body, that fails my spirit in
its hour of need.
His one thought is for vengeance on the dead body of the man who has
slain him[564] and for the victory of his comrades in arms.
Only one other of the heroes has any real existence, the prophet
Amphiaraus. Statius does not give him the prominence that he held in the
original epic, and misses a noble opportunity by almost ignoring the
dramatic story of Eriphyla and the necklace that won her to persuade her
husband to go forth to certain death. But the heroic warrior priest of
Apollo, who knows his doom and yet faces it fearlessly, could not fail
to be a picturesque figure, and at least in the hour of his death
Statius has done him full justice. Apollo, disguised as a mortal, mounts
the chariot of Amphiaraus and drives him through the midst of the
battle, dealing destruction on this side and that (vii. 770):
tandem se famulo summum confessus Apollo
'utere luce tua longamque' ait, 'indue famam,
dum tibi me iunctum mors inrevocata veretur.
vincimur: immites scis nulla revolvere Parcas
stamina; vade, diu populis promissa voluptas
Elysiis, certe non perpessure Creontis
imperia aut vetito nudus iaciture sepulcro.'
ille refert contra, et paulum respirat ab armis:
'olim te, Cirrhaee pater, peritura sedentem
ad iuga (quis tantus miseris honor?) axe trementi
sensimus; instantes quonam usque morabere manes?
audio iam rapidae cursum Stygis atraque Ditis
flumina tergeminosque mali custodis hiatus.
accipe commissum capiti decus, accipe laurus,
quas Erebo deferre nefas. nunc voce suprema,
si qua recessuro debetur gratia vati,
deceptum tibi, Phoebe, larem poenasque nefandae
coniugis et pulchrum nati commendo furorem.'
desiluit maerens lacrimasque avertit Apollo.
At length Apollo revealed himself to his servant. 'Use,' he
said, 'the light of life that is left thee and win an age of
fame while thy doom still unrepealed shrinks back in awe of me.
The foemen conquer: thou knowest the cruel fates never unravel
the threads they weave: go forward, thou, the promised darling
of the peoples of Elysium; for surely thou shalt ne'er endure
the tyranny of Creon, or lie naked, denied a grave.' He answered,
pausing awhile from the fray: 'Long since, lord of Cirrha, the
trembling axle told me that 'twas thou sat'st by my doomed steeds.
Why honourest thou a wretched mortal thus? How long wilt thou
delay the advancing dead? Even now I hear the course of headlong
Styx, and the dark streams of death, and the triple barking of
the accursed guard of hell. Take now thine honours bound about my
brow, take now the laurel crown I may not bear down unto Erebus:
now with my last utterance, if aught of thanks thou owest thy
seer that now must pass away, to thee I trust my wronged hearth,
the doom of my accursed wife, and the noble madness of my son
(Alcmaeon).' Apollo leapt from the car in grief and strove to
hide his tears.
An earthquake shakes the plain; the warriors shrink from
battle in terror at the thunder from under-ground; when
(816)--
ecce alte praeceps humus ore profundo
dissilit, inque vicem timuerunt sidera et umbrae.
illum ingens haurit specus et transire parantes
mergit equos; non arma manu, non frena remisit:
sicut erat, rectos defert in Tartara currus
respexitque cadens caelum campumque coire
ingemuit, donec levior distantia rursus
miscuit arva tremor lucemque exclusit Averno.
Lo! the earth gaped sheer and deep with vast abyss, and the stars
of heaven and the shades of the dead trembled with one accord: a
vast chasm drew him down and swallowed his steeds as they made
ready to leap the gulf: he loosed not the grip on rein or spear,
but, as he was, carried his car steadfast to Tartarus, and, as he
fell, gazed up to heaven and groaned to see the plain close above
him, till a lighter shock once more united the gaping fields and
shut out the light from hell.
Here we see Statius at his highest level, whether in point of metre,
diction, or poetic imagination.
Of the other characters there is little to be said. For all the wealth
of detail that Statius has lavished on them, they are featureless.
Adrastus is a colourless and respectable old king, strongly reminiscent
of Latinus. Capaneus and Hippomedon are terrific warriors of gigantic
stature and truculent speech, but they are wholly uninteresting. Argia
and Jocasta are too rhetorical, Antigone too slight a figure to be
really pathetic; Oedipus can do little save curse, which he does with
some rhetorical vigour; but the gift of cursing hardly makes a
character. Parthenopaeus, however, is a pathetic figure; he is an
Arcadian, the son of Atalanta, a mere boy whom a romantic ambition has
hurried into war ere his years were ripe for it. His dying speech is
touching, though it errs on the side of triviality and mere prettiness
(ix. 877):
at puer infusus sociis in devia campi
tollitur (heu simplex aetas!) moriensque iacentem
flebat equum; cecidit laxata casside vultus,
aegraque per trepidos exspirat gratia visus,
* * * * *
ibat purpureus niveo de pectore sanguis.
tandem haec singultu verba incidente profatur:
'labimur, i, miseram, Dorceu, solare parentem.
illa quidem, si vera ferunt praesagia curae,
aut somno iam triste nefas aut omine vidit.
tu tamen arte pia trepidam suspende diuque
decipito; neu tu subitus neve arma tenenti
veneris, et tandem, cum iam cogere fateri,
dic: "Merui, genetrix, poenas invita capesse;
arma puer rapui, nec te retinente quievi,
nec tibi sollicitae tandem inter bella peperci.
vive igitur potiusque animis irascere nostris,
et iam pone metus. frustra de colle Lycaei
anxia prospectas, si quis per nubila longe
aut sonus aut nostro sublatus ab agmine pulvis:
frigidus et nuda iaceo tellure, nec usquam
tu prope, quae vultus efflantiaque ora teneres.
hunc tamen, orba parens, crinem"--dextraque secandum
praebuit--"hunc toto capies pro corpore crinem,
comere quem frustra me dedignante solebas.
huic dabis exsequias, atque inter iusta memento,
ne quis inexpertis hebetet mea tela lacertis
dilectosque canes ullis agat amplius antris.
haec autem primis arma infelicia castris
ure, vel ingratae crimen suspende Dianae."'
But the boy fell into his comrades' arms and they bore him
to a place apart. Alas for his tender years! As he died, he
wept for his fallen horse: his face drooped as they unbound
his helmet, and a fading grace passed faintly o'er his
quivering visage....
The purple blood flowed from his breast of snow. At length he
spake these words through sobs that checked his utterance: 'My
life is falling from me; go, Dorceus, comfort my unhappy mother:
she indeed, if care and sorrow can give foreknowledge, has seen
my woeful fate in dreams or through some omen; yet do thou with
loving art keep her terrors in suspense and long hold back the
truth; and come not upon her suddenly, nor when she hath a weapon
in her hands; but when at last the truth must out, say: "Mother,
I deserved my doom; I am punished, though my punishment break thy
heart. I rushed to arms too young, and abode not at home when
thou wouldst restrain me: nor had I any pity for thine anguish in
the day of battle. Live on then, and keep thine anger for my
headstrong courage and fear no more for me. In vain thou gazest
from the Lycaean height, if any sound perchance may be borne from
far to thine ear through the clouds, or thine eye have sight of
the dust raised by our homeward march. I lie cold upon the bare
earth, and thou art nowhere nigh to hold my head as my lips
breathe farewell. Yet, childless mother, take this lock of hair"--
and in his right hand he stretched it out to be cut away--"take
this poor lock in place of my whole body, this lock of that hair
which thou didst tire in my despite. To it shalt thou give due
burial and remember this also as my due; let no man blunt my
spears with unskilful cast, nor any more drive the hounds I loved
through any caverned glen. But this mine armour, whose first
battle hath brought disaster, burn thou, or hang it to be a
reproach to Dian's ingratitude."'
When we have said that Parthenopaeus is almost too young to have been
accepted as a leader, or have performed the feats of war assigned to
him, we have said all that can be said against this beautiful speech.
Parthenopaeus is for the _Thebais_ what Camilla is for the _Aeneid_,
though he presents at times hints both of Pallas and Euryalus. But he
is little more than a child, and fails to carry the conviction or
awaken the deep emotion excited by the Amazon of Vergil.[565]
Statius then, with a few striking exceptions, fails in his portrayal
of life and character. On the whole--one says it with reluctance in
view of his brilliant variety, his boundless invention, his wealth of
imagery--the same is true of his descriptions. The picture is too
crowded; he has not the unerring eye for the relevant or salient
points of a scene. Skilful and faithful touches abound, but, as in the
case of certain pre-Raphaelite pictures, extreme attention to detail
causes him to miss the full scenic effect. He is not sufficiently the
impressionist; he cannot suggest--a point in which he presents a strong
contrast to Valerius Flaccus. And too many of his incidents, in spite
of ingenious variation of detail, are but echoes of Vergil. The
foot-race and the archery contest at the funeral games of Archemorus,
together with the episode of Dymas and Hopleus,[566] to which we have
already referred, are perhaps the most marked examples of this
unfortunate characteristic. We are continually saying to ourselves as
we read the _Thebais_, 'All this has been before!' We weary at times
of the echoes of Homer in Vergil, and the combats that stirred us in
the _Iliad_ make us drowsy in the _Aeneid_. Homer knew what fighting
was from personal experience, or at least from being in touch with
warriors who had killed their man. Vergil had come no nearer these
things than 'in the pages of a book '. Statius is yet one remove
further from the truth than Vergil. He is tied hand and foot by his
intimate acquaintance with previous poetic literature. If he is less
the victim of the schools of rhetoric than many post-Augustan writers,
he is more than most the victim of the poetic training of the schools.
But with all these faults there are passages which surprise us by their
effectiveness. It would be hard to imagine anything more vigorous and
exciting than the fight of Tydeus ambushed by his fifty foes. The
opening passage is splendidly successful in creating the requisite
atmosphere (ii. 527):
coeperat umenti Phoebum subtexere palla
Nox et caeruleam terris infuderat umbram.
ille propinquabat silvis et ab aggere celso
scuta virum galeasque videt rutilare comantes,
qua laxant rami nemus adversaque sub umbra
flammeus aeratis lunae tremor errat in armis.
obstipuit visis, ibat tamen, horrida tantum
spicula et inclusum capulo tenus admovet ensem.
ac prior unde, viri, quidve occultatis in armis?'
non humili terrore rogat. nec reddita contra
vox, fidamque negant suspecta silentia pacem.
Night began to shroud Phoebus with her humid pall and shed
her blue darkness o'er the earth. He drew nigh the forest,
and from a high knoll espied the gleam of warriors' shields
and plumed helmets, where the boughs of the wood left a space,
and in the shadow before him the quivering fire of the moonbeam
played o'er their brazen armour. Dumbstruck at what he saw, he
yet pursued his way, only he made ready for the fight his
bristling javelins and the sword sheathed to its hilt. He was
the first to speak: 'Whence come ye?' he asked, in fear, yet
haughty still. 'And why hide ye thus armoured for the fray?'
There came no answer, and their ominous silence told him no
peace nor loyalty was there.
The fight that follows, though it occupies more than 160 lines, is
intensely rapid and vigorous; indeed it is the one genuinely exciting
combat in Latin epic, and forms a refreshing contrast to the
pseudo-Homeric or pseudo-Vergilian combats before the walls of Thebes.
In no other portion of the _Thebais_ does Statius attain to such
success, with the exception of the passage already quoted descriptive of
the death of Amphiaraus. But there are other passages of sustained
merit, such as the vigorous description of the struggle of Hippomedon
with the waters of Ismenus and Asopus.[5671] While it is not
particularly interesting to those acquainted with the corresponding
passage in the _Iliad_, it would be unjust to deny the gifts of vigour
and invention to the Latin poet's imitation.
It is, however, rather in smaller and more minute pictures that Statius
as a rule excels. The picture of the baby Opheltes left by his nurse is
pretty enough (iv. 787):
at puer in gremio vernae telluris et alto
gramine nunc faciles sternit procursibus herbas
in vultum nitens, caram modo lactis egeno
nutricem plangore ciens iterumque renidens
et teneris meditans verba inluctantia labris
miratur nemorum strepitus aut obvia carpit
aut patulo trahit ore diem nemorisque malorum
inscius et vitae multum securus inerrat.
But the child, lying face downward in the bosom of the vernal
earth, now as he crawls in the deep herbage lays low the
yielding grass; now cries for his loved nurse athirst for milk,
and then, all smiles again, with infant lips frames words in
stumbling speech, marvels at the sounds of the woods, gathers
what lies before him, or open-mouthed drinks in the day; and
knowing naught of the dangers of the woods, with ne'er a care
in life, roams here and there.
Fine, too, in a different way is the sinister picture of Eteocles left
sole king in Thebes (i. 165):
quis tunc tibi, saeve,
quis fuit ille dies, vacua cum solus in aula
respiceres ius omne tuum cunctosque minores
et nusquam par stare caput?
Ah! what a day was that for thee, fierce heart, when, sitting
alone amid thy courtiers, thy brother gone from thee, thou
sawest thyself enthroned above all men, with all things in thy
power, without a peer.
Less poetical, but scarcely less effective, is the description of the
compact between the brothers (i. 138):
alterni placuit sub legibus anni
exsilio mutare ducem. sic iure maligno
fortunam transire iubent, ut sceptra tenentem
foedere praecipiti semper novus angeret heres.
haec inter fratres pietas erat, haec mora pugnae
sola nec in regem perduratura secundum.
It was resolved that in alternate years the king should quit
his throne for exile. Thus with baneful ordinance they bade
fortune pass from one to the other, that he who held the
sceptre on these brief terms should ever be vexed by the
thought of his successor's coming. Such was the brothers'
love, such the sole bond that kept them from conflict, a bond
that should not last till the kingship changed.
But far beyond all other portraits in Statius is the description of
Jocasta as she approaches the Argive camp on her mission of
reconciliation (vii. 474):
ecce truces oculos sordentibus obsita canis
exsangues Iocasta genas et bracchia planctu
nigra ferens ramumque oleae cum velleris atri
nexibus, Eumenidum velut antiquissima, portis
egreditur magna cum maiestate malorum.
Lo! Jocasta, her white hair streaming unkempt over her wild
eyes, her cheeks all pale, her arms bruised by the beating
of her anguished hands, bearing an olive-branch hung with
black wool, came forth from the gates in semblance like to
the eldest of the Eumenides, in all the majesty of her many
sorrows.
In this last line we have one of the very few lines in Statius that
attain to real grandeur. In the lack of such lines, and in the lack of
real breadth of treatment lies Statius' chief defect as a narrator. All
that dexterity can do he does; but he lacks the supreme gifts, the
selective eye and the penetrating imagination of the great poet.
Of his actual diction and ornament little need be said. Without being
precisely straightforward, he is not, as a rule, obscure. But his
language gradually produces a feeling of oppression. He can be read in
short passages without this feeling; the moment, however, the reader
takes his verse in considerable quantities, the continued, though only
slight, over-elaboration of the work produces a feeling of strain.
Throughout there runs a vein of artificiality which ultimately gives the
impression of insincerity. He can turn out phrases of the utmost nicety.
Nothing can be more neatly turned than the description of the feelings
of Antigone and Ismene on the outbreak of the war (viii. 614):
nutat utroque timor, quemnam hoc certamine victum,
quem vicisse velint: tacite praeponderat exsul;
Their fears incline this way and that: whom would they have the
conqueror in the strife, whom the vanquished? All unconfessed
the exile has their prayers.
or than the line describing the parting of the Lemnian women from the
Argonauts, their second husbands (v. 478):
heu iterum gemitus, iterumque novissima nox est.
Alas! once more the hour of lamentation is near, once more is
come the last night of wedded sleep.
But this neatness often degenerates into preciosity, _bellator campus_
means a field suitable for battle (viii. 377). Nisus, the king of
Megara, with the talismanic purple lock, becomes a _senex purpureus_ (i.
334); an embrace is described by the words _alterna pectora mutant_ (v.
722); a woman nearing her time is one _iustos cuius pulsantia menses
vota tument_ (v. 115). We have already noted a similar tendency in
Valerius Flaccus; such phrase-making is not a badge of any one poet, it
is a sign of the times. In the case of Statius there is perhaps less
obscurity and less positive extravagance than in any of his
contemporaries, but whether as regards description or phrase-making,
there is always a suspicion of his work being pitched--if the phrase is
permissible--a tone too high. This is, perhaps, particularly noticeable
in his similes. They are very numerous, and he has obviously expended
great trouble over them. But, with very few exceptions, they are
failures. The cause lies mainly in their lack of variety. There are, for
instance, no less than sixteen similes drawn from bulls, twelve from
lions, six from tigers.[568] None of these similes show any close
observance of nature, and in any case the poetic interest of bulls,
lions, and tigers is far from inexhaustible. It is less reprehensible
that twenty similes should be drawn from storms, which have a more
cogent interest and greater picturesque value. But even here Statius has
overshot the mark. This lack of variety testifies to a real dearth of
poetic imagination, and this failing is noticeable also in the
execution. There is rarely a simile containing anything that awakens
either imagination, emotion, or thought. Still, to give Statius his due,
there _are_ exceptions, such as the simile comparing Parthenopaeus, seen
in all his beauty among his comrades, to the reflections of the evening
star outshining the reflections of the lesser stars in the waveless sea
(vi. 578):
sic ubi tranquillo perlucent sidera ponto
vibraturque fretis caeli stellantis imago,
omnia clara nitent, sed clarior omnia supra
Hesperus exsertat radios, quantusque per altum
aethera, caeruleis tantus monstratur in undis.
So when the stars are glassed in the tranquil deep and the
reflection of the starry sky quivers in the waves, all the
stars shine clear, but clearer than all doth Hesperus send
forth his rays; and as he gleams in the high heavens, even
so bright do the blue waters show him forth.
The comparison is. a little strained and far-fetched. The reflection of
stars in the sea is not quite so noticeable or impressive as Statius
would have us believe. But there is real beauty both in the conception
and the execution of the simile. Of more indisputable excellence is the
comparison in the eleventh book (443), where Adrastus, flying from
Thebes in humiliation and defeat, is likened to Pluto, when he first
entered on his kingdom of the underworld, his lordship over the
strengthless dead--
qualis
demissus curru laevae post praemia sortis
umbrarum custos mundique novissimus heres
palluit, amisso veniens in Tartara caelo.
Even as the warden of the shades, the third heir of the world,
when he entered on the realm that the unkind lot had given him,
leapt from his car and turned pale, for heaven was lost and he
was at the gate of hell.
The picture is Miltonic, and Pluto is for a brief moment almost an
anticipation of the Satan of _Paradise Lost_.
The metre, like that of Valerius Flaccus, draws its primary
inspiration from Vergil, but has been strongly influenced by the
_Metamorphoses_ of Ovid. There are fewer elisions in Statius than in
Vergil, and more dactyls.[569] He is, however, less dactylic than
Valerius Flaccus and Ovid. In his management of pauses he is far more
successful than any epic writer, with the exception of Vergil. As a
result, he is far less monotonous than Ovid, Lucan, or Valerius. The
one criticism that can be levelled against him is that his verse,
while possessing rapidity and vigour, is not sufficiently adapted to
the varying emotions that his story demands, and that it shows a
consequent lack of nobility and stateliness. For the _Silvae_ his
metre is admirably adapted. It is light and almost sprightly, and the
poet can let himself go. He was not blind to the requirements of the
epic metre even if he did not satisfy them, and in his lighter verse
there is a notable increase of fluency and ease.
The _Thebais_ is a work whose value it is difficult to estimate. Its
undeniable merits are never quite such that we can accord it
whole-hearted praise; its cleverness commands our wonder, while its
defects are not such as to justify a sweeping condemnation. But it must
be remembered that epic must be very good if it is to avoid failure, and
it is probable that there are few works on which such skill and labour
have been expended without any proportionate success. An attempt has
been made in the preceding pages to indicate the main reasons for the
failure of the _Thebais_. One more reason may perhaps be added here.
Over and above the poet's lack of originality and the highest poetic
imagination, over and above his distracting echoes and his
artificiality, there is a lack of moral fire and insight about the poem.
Statius gives us but a surface view of life. He had never plumbed the
depths of human passion nor realized anything of the mystery of the
world. His reader never derives from him the consciousness, that he so
often derives from Vergil, of a 'deep beyond the deep, and a height
beyond the height'. He has neither the virtues of the mystic nor of the
realist. Ultimately, life is for him a pageant with intervals for
sentimental threnodies and rhetorical declamation.
The same qualities characterize the _Achilleis_ and still more the
_Silvae_. The _Achilleis_ was to have comprised the whole life of
Achilles. Only the first book and 167 lines of the second were composed.
They tell how Thetis endeavoured to withhold Achilles from the Trojan
War by disguising him as a girl and sending him to Scyros, how he became
the lover of Deidamia, the king's daughter, was discovered by the wiles
of Ulysses, and set forth on the expedition to Troy. The fragment is not
unpleasant reading, but contains little that is noteworthy.[570] The
style is simpler, less precious, and less rhetorical than that of the
_Thebais_. But it lacks the vigour as well as many of the faults of the
earlier poem. There is nothing to make us regret that the poet died
before its completion; there is something to be thankful for in the fact
that he did not live to challenge direct comparison with Homer.
The _Silvae_, on the other hand, is a work of considerable interest.
The meaning of the word _silva_, in the literary sense, is 'raw
material' or 'rough draft'. It then came to be used to mean a work
composed at high speed on the spur of the moment, differing in fact but
little from an improvisation.[571] That these poems correspond to this
definition will be seen from Statius' preface to book i: 'hos libellos,
qui mihi subito calore et quadam festinandi voluptate fluxerunt....
Nullum ex illis biduo longius tractum, quaedam et in singulis diebus
effusa.' There are thirty-two poems in all, divided into five books.
The fifth is incomplete; and, if we may judge from the unfinished state
of its preface, was published after the author's death. The poems are
extremely varied in subject, and to a lesser degree in metre,
hendecasyllables, alcaics, and sapphics being found as well as
hexameters. They comprise poems in praise of the appearance and the
achievements of Domitian,[572] consolations to friends and patrons for
the loss of relatives or favourite slaves,[573] lamentations of the
poet or his friends for the death of dear ones,[574] letters on various
subjects,[575] thanksgivings for the safety of friends,[576] and
farewells to them on their departure,[577] descriptions of villas and
the like built by his acquaintances,[578] an epithalamium,[579] an ode
commemorating the birthday of Lucan,[580] the description of a
statuette of Hercules,[581] poems on the deaths of a parrot and a
lion,[582] and a remarkable invocation to Sleep.[583] One and all,
these poems show abnormal cleverness. These slighter subjects were far
better suited to the poet's powers. His miniature painting was in
place, his sprightly and dexterous handling of the hexameter and the
hendecasyllable could be more profitably employed. Yet here, too, his
artificiality is a serious blemish, his lamentations for the loss of
the _pueri delicati_ of friends do not, and can hardly be expected to,
ring true, and the same blemish affects even the poems where he laments
his own loss. Further, the poems addressed to Domitian are fulsome to
the verge of nausea;[584] the beauty of the emperor is such that all
the great artists of the past would have vied with one another in
depicting his features; his eyes are like stars; his equestrian statue
is so glorious that at night (i. 1. 95)
cum superis terrena placent, tua turba relicto
labetur caelo miscebitque oscula iuxta.
ibit in amplexus natus fraterque paterque
et soror: una locum cervix dabit omnibus astris.
When heaven takes its joy of earth, thy kin shall leave
heaven and glide down to earth and kiss thee face to face.
Thy son and sister, thy brother and thy sire, shall come to
thy embrace; and about thy sole neck shall all the stars of
heaven find a place.
The poem on the emperor's sexless favourite, Earinus, can scarcely be
quoted here. Without being definitely coarse, it succeeds in being one
of the most disgusting productions in the whole range of literature.
The emperor who can accept flattery of such a kind has certainly
qualified for assassination. The lighter poems are almost distressingly
trivial, and it is but a poor excuse to plead that such triviality was
imposed by the artificial social life of the day and the jealous
tyranny of Domitian. Moreover, the tendency to preciosity, which was
kept in check in the _Thebais_ by the requirements of epic, here has
full play. The death of a boy in his fifteenth year is described as
follows (ii. 6, 70):
vitae modo cardine adultae
nectere temptabat iuvenum pulcherrimus ille
cum tribus Eleis unam trieterida lustris.
Come now to the turning-point where boyhood becomes manhood,
he, the fairest of youths, was on the point of linking three
olympiads (twelve years) with a space of three years.
Writers of elegiac verse are addressed as (i. 2. 250)
'qui nobile gressu
extremo fraudatis opus'.
Ye that cheat the noble march of your verse of its last stride.
A new dawn is expressed by an astounding periphrasis (iv. 6. 15):
ab Elysiis prospexit sedibus alter
Castor et hesternas risit Tithonia mensas.
Castor in turn looked forth from the halls of Elysium and
Tithonus' bride made merry over yesterday's feasts. [Castor
and Pollux lived on alternate days.]
There is, in fact, no limit in these poems to Statius' luxuriance in
far-fetched and often obscure mythological allusions. In spite, however,
of such cardinal defects as these, the _Silvae_ present a brilliant
though superficial picture of the cultured society of the day and
contain much that is pretty, and something that is poetic.[585] Take,
for instance, the poem in which the poet writes to console Atedius
Melior for the death of his favourite Glaucias, a _puer delicatus_. The
work is hopelessly clever and hopelessly insincere. Statius exaggerates
at once the charms of the dead boy and the grief of Atedius and himself.
But at the conclusion he works up an old commonplace into a very pretty
piece of verse. He has been describing the reception of Glaucias in the
underworld (ii. 1. 208):
hic finis rapto! quin tu iam vulnera sedas
et tollis mersum luctu caput? omnia functa
aut moritura vides: obeunt noctesque diesque
astraque, nee solidis prodest sua machina terris.
nam populos, mortale genus, plebisque caducae
quis fleat interitus? hos bella, hos aequora poscunt;
his amor exitio, furor his et saeva cupido,
ut sileam morbos; hos ora rigentia Brumae,
illos implacido letalis Sirius igni,
hos manet imbrifero pallens Autumnus hiatu.
quicquid init ortus, finem timet. ibimus omnes,
ibimus: immensis urnam quatit Aeacus ulnis.
ast hic quem gemimus, felix hominesque deosque
et dubios casus et caecae lubrica vitae
effugit, immunis fatis. non ille rogavit,
non timuit meruitve mori: nos anxia plebes,
nos miseri, quibus unde dies suprema, quis aevi
exitus incertum, quibus instet fulmen ab astris,
quae nubes fatale sonet.
Such is the rest thy lost darling has won. Come, soothe thine
anguish and lift up thy head that droops with woe. Thou seest
all things dead or soon to die. Day and night and stars all
pass away, nor shall its massive fabric save the world from
destruction. As for the tribes of earth, this mortal race, and
the death of multitudes all doomed to pass away, why bewail them?
Some war, some ocean, demands for its prey: some die of love,
others of madness, others of fierce desire, to say naught of
pestilence: some winter's freezing breath, others the baleful
Sirius' cruel fire, others again pale autumn, gaping with rainy
maw, awaits for doom: all that hath birth must tremble before
death: we all must go, must go: Aeacus shakes the urn of fate in
his vast arms. But this child, whom we bewail, is happy, and has
escaped the power of men and gods, the strokes of chance, and the
slippery paths of our dark life: fate cannot touch him: he did not
ask, nor fear, nor deserve to die. But we poor anxious rabble, we
miserable men, know not whence our last day shall come, what shall
be the end of life, for whom the thunderbolt shall bring death from
the starry sky, nor what cloud shall roar forth our doom.
There is nothing great about such work, but it is a neat and elegant
treatment of a familiar theme, while the phrase _non ille rogavit, non
timuit meruitve mori_ has a pathos worthy of a better cause.[586] Far
more suited, however, to the genius of Statius, with its lack of
inspiration, its marvellous polish, and its love of minutiae, are the
descriptions of villas, temples, baths, and works of art in which he so
frequently indulges. The poem on the statuette of Hercules (ii. 6) is a
wonder of cunning craftsmanship, the poems on the baths of Etruscus,
the villa of Vopiscus at Tibur, and of Pollius at Surrentum, for all
their exaggeration and affectation, reveal a genuine love for the
beauties of art and nature. It is true that he shows a preference for
nature trimmed by the hand of man, but his pleasure is genuine and its
expression often delicate. Who would not delight to live in a house
such as Pollius had built at Sorrento (ii. 2. 45)?--
haec domus ortus
aspicit et Phoebi tenerum iubar; illa cadentem
detinet exactamque negat dimittere lucem,
cum iam fessa dies et in aequora montis opaci
umbra cadit vitreoque natant praetoria ponto.
haec pelagi clamore fremunt, haec tecta sonoros
ignorant fluctus terraeque silentia malunt.
* * * * *
quid mille revolvam
culmina visendique vices? sua cuique voluptas
atque omni proprium thalamo mare, transque iacentem
Nerea diversis servit sua terra fenestris.
One chamber looks to the east and the young beam of Phoebus;
one stays him as he falls and will not part with the expiring
light, when the day is outworn and the shadow of the dark mount
falls athwart the deep, and the great castle swims reflected in
the glassy sea. These chambers are full of the sound of ocean,
those know not the roaring waves, but rather love the silence of
the land.... Why should I recount thy thousand roofs and every
varied view? Each has a joy that is its own: each chamber has
its own sea, and each several window its own tract of land seen
across the sea beneath.
We cannot, perhaps, share his enthusiasm in the minute description that
follows of the coloured marbles used in the decoration of the house, and
his panegyric of Pollius leaves us cold, but we quit the poem with a
pleasant impression of the Bay of Naples and of the poet who loved it so
well. It recalls in its way the charming, if over-elaborate and
exaggerated, landscapes of the younger Pliny in his letters on the
source of the Clitumnus and on his Tuscan and Laurentine villas.[587]
But it is in two poems of a very different kind that the _Silvae_ reach
their high-water mark. The _Genethliacon_ _Lucani_, despite its
artificial form and the literary conventions with which it is
overloaded, reveals a genuine enthusiasm for the dead poet, and is
couched in language of the utmost grace and verse of extraordinary
melody; the hendecasyllables of Statius lack the poignant vigour of the
Catullan hendecasyllables, but they have a music of their own which is
scarcely less remarkable.[588] The lament of Calliope for her lost
nursling will hold its own with anything of a similar kind produced by
the Silver Age (ii 7. 88):
'o saevae nimium gravesque Parcae!
o numquam data longa fata summis!
cur plus, ardua, casibus patetis?
cur saeva vice magna non senescunt?
sic natum Nasamonii Tonantis
post ortus obitusque fulminatos
angusto Babylon premit sepulcro.
sic fixum Paridis manu trementis
Peliden Thetis horruit cadentem.
sic ripis ego murmurantis Hebri
non mutum caput Orpheos sequebar
sic et tu (rabidi nefas tyranni!)
iussus praecipitem subire Lethen,
dum pugnas canis arduaque voce
das solatia grandibus sepulcris,
(o dirum scelus! o scelus!) tacebis.'
sic fata est leviterque decidentes
abrasit lacrimas nitente plectro.
'Ah! fates severe and all too cruel! O life that for our
noblest ne'er is long! Why are earth's loftiest most prone to
fall? Why by hard fate do her great ones ne'er grow old? Even
so the Nasamonian Thunderer's son like lightning rose, like
lightning passed away, and now is laid in a narrow tomb at
Babylon. So Thetis shuddered, when the son of Peleus fell
transfixed by Paris' coward hand. So I, too, by the banks of
murmuring Hebrus followed the head of Orpheus that could not
cease from song. So now must thou--out on the mad tyrant's
crime!--go down untimely to the wave of Lethe, and while thou
singest of war and with lofty strain givest comfort to the
sepulchres of the mighty,--O infamy, O monstrous infamy!--art
doomed to sudden silence.' So spake she, and with gleaming
quill wiped away the tears that gently fell.
But more beautiful as pure poetry, and indeed unique in Latin, is the
well-known invocation to Sleep (v. 4):
crimine quo merui iuvenis,[589] placidissime divum,
quove errore miser, donis ut solus egerem,
Somne, tuis? tacet omne pecus volucresque feraeque
et simulant fessos curvata cacumina somnos,
nec trucibus fluviis idem sonus; occidit horror
aequoris, et terris maria acclinata quiescunt.
septima iam rediens Phoebe mihi respicit aegras
stare genas; totidem Oetaeae Paphiaeque revisunt
lampades et totiens nostros Tithonia questus
praeterit et gelido spargit miserata flagello.
unde ego sufficiam? non si mihi lumina mille
quae sacer alterna tantum statione tenebat
Argus et haud umquam vigilabat corpore toto.
at nunc heus! aliquis longa sub nocte puellae
bracchia nexa tenens ultro te, Somne, repellit:
inde veni! nec te totas infundere pennas
luminibus compello meis (hoc turba precetur
laetior): extremo me tange cacumine virgae
(sufficit) aut leviter suspenso poplite transi.
By what crime, O Sleep, most gentle of gods, or by what error,
have I, that am young, deserved--woe's me!--that I alone should
lack thy blessing? All cattle and birds and beasts of the wild
lie silent; the curved mountain ridges seem as though they slept
the sleep of weariness, and wild torrents have hushed their
roaring. The waves of the deep have fallen and the seas, reclined
on earth's bosom, take their rest. Yet now Phoebe returning gazes
for the seventh time on my sleepless weary eyes. For the seventh
time the lamps of Oeta and Paphos (i.e. Hesperus and Venus) revisit
me, for the seventh time Tithonus' bride sweeps over my complaint
and all her pity is to touch me with her frosty scourge. How may I
find strength to endure? I needs must faint, even had I the
thousand eyes which divine Argos kept fixed upon his prey in
shifting relays (so only could he wake, nor watched he ever with
all his body). But now--woe's me!--another, his arms locked about
his love, spurneth thee from him all the long night. Leave him, O
Sleep, for me. I bid thee not sweep upon my eyes with all the force
of thy fanning pinions. That is the prayer of happier souls than I.
Touch me only with the tip of thy wand--that shall suffice--or
lightly pass over my head with hovering feet.
Here Statius far surpasses himself. Had all else that he wrote been
merely mediocre, this one short poem would have given him a claim on the
grateful memory of posterity. The note it strikes is one that has never
been heard before in Latin poetry and is never heard again. We have
wavered before as to Statius' title to the name of true poet; this
should turn the balance in his favour. Great he is not for a moment to
be called; Lucan, with all his faults, stands high above him; Valerius
Flaccus, aided largely by his happier choice of subject, is in some
respects his superior; but for finish, dexterity, and fluency, Statius
is unique among the post-Augustans. Just as an actor who has acquired a
perfect mastery of all the tricks and technique of the stage may
sometimes cheat us into believing him to be a great actor, though in
reality neither intellect, presence, nor voice qualify him for such high
praise, so it is with Statius. His facility and cunning workmanship hold
us amazed, and at times the reader is on the verge of yielding up his
saner judgement before such charm. But the revulsion of feeling comes
inevitably. Statius had not learned the art of concealing his art. The
unreality of his work soon makes itself felt, and his skill becomes in
time little better than a weariness and a mockery.