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INTRODUCTORY
It was only at the Renaissance too that Statius' shorter poems, the Silvae,
were brought again to light. Four books of vers ({'occasion, and the semblance
of a fifth, prove that his literary skills were not confined to the grandeur of
epic but were equally adapted to lesser genres. The Silvae rapidly acquired
a high reputation among neo-Latin and vernacular writers. Today there are
those who set a greater price upon them than upon the Thebaid, which Statius,
adhering to the hierarchical view of poetic kinds, regarded as his masterpiece
and his guarantee of immortality. Death prevented him from writing more
than a fraction of the Achilleid. It breaks off at line 167 of the second book and
what was composed is best regarded rather as a provisional draft than as a
definitive version. How Statius intended to fulfil his ambitious project of
narrating Achilles' life from birth to death must remain a matter of vain
speculation.
Valerius, Statius and Silius had to come to terms with an array of predecessors
whose claims to homage were coercive and dominant. Virgil, Ovid, Seneca
and Lucan had established canons which could be neither ignored nor spurned.
It is true that there was in the late first century a movement — Quintilian is its
chief theoretical exponent — that saw much to condemn in the stylistic
innovations that Seneca and his nephew Lucan, in the wake of Ovid, had
developed and fostered. Virgilian purity, however, could not be reproduced
in the Flavian era. None of the three epics is a replica, in manner or ethos, of
the Aeneid. It is permissible to speak of degrees of proximity to Virgil.
At the end of the Thebaid, Statius proclaims his acquiescence in the inevitable.
His chefd'ceuvre would for ever remain in a place second to the 'divine' Aeneid
(12.816—17). In the Silvae, he mentions visits to the tomb of Virgil, his 'great
teacher', in the hope of inspiration (4.4.53—5). This quasi-religious devotion
was shared by Silius. Pliny, in his famous necrological notice, remarks that the
author of the Punica was in the habit of celebrating Virgil's birthday with
more pomp than his own and of reverencing his tomb like a temple (Epist. 3.7.8).
Indeed, Martial informs us that Silius — already the proud possessor of a villa
that had once housed Cicero — went so far as to purchase the site of, and to
embellish, Virgil's monimentum (11.48, 49). In the Punica, an explicit tribute
occurs at 7.592—4, where Silius, conventionally, asserts the equality of Homer
and Virgil.
So much for claims. Despite his veneration, Statius stands farthest from
Virgil, closest to Seneca and Lucan. Silvae 2.7 is a commemorative poem on
Lucan: Statius' hyperbolic praises indicate a genuine admiration. Silius,
saturated in the Aeneid, was too much of an eclectic to be fully or even predominantly
Virgilian. He owed much to Ovid, much, by imitation or purposeful
contrast, to Lucan — who had, after all, also based his epic on Roman
history. Silius saw himself, too, as an heir of Ennius, providing him with a gener-
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