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FLAVIAN EPIC
value; they reveal much about the outlook and pursuits of those who commissioned
them. Taken as a group, they emerge as' men of influence and wealth,
either actively engaged in the imperial service or in a life of comfortable and
affluent leisure. Cultured and critical dilettantes, many of them toyed with the
art of poetry, dabbled in philosophy and spent their wealth in creating or
acquiring objects of beauty.' 1 It was, in many ways, an unreal, exotic world.
On these privileged denizens of Roman society Statius relied for support and
encouragement. Nothing improper, vulgar or proletarian was permitted to
intrude into the gilded and glittering Silvae.
Of the Neapolitans, the most prominent was the millionaire Epicurean
Pollius Felix, owner of extensive estates in Campania. To him the second book
of Silvae was dedicated. 2.2 and 3.1 immortalize the architectural and visual
splendours of his property at Surrentum. 4.8 is a congratulatory poem addressed
to his son-in-law Julius Menecrates on the birth of a third child. Menecrates
had been granted the ius trium liberorum by Domitian (4.8.20—2) and his brother
had held a military tribunate in Africa (4.8.12). Even if Pollius Felix, for
dogmatic reasons, abstained from political activity, his kin had no such scruples :
Statius predicts a senatorial career for Menecrates' sons (4.8.59—62).
Some of Statius' patrons were men of power and standing in public life. The
first book of Silvae was dedicated to L. Arruntius Stella. This moneyed patrician
was progressing rapidly through the cursus honorum under Domitian; a suffect
consulship awaited him in Trajan's principate. He was also an elegiac poet. He
extended his patronage to Martial as well as to Statius. His marriage to the rich
and beautiful Violentilla — of Neapolitan ancestry — is celebrated in 1.2.
C. Rutilius Gallicus (1.4) had been praefectus urbi and twice consul. Vitorius
Marcel Ius had political aspirations — as well as a fondness for literature. Statius
dedicated Book 4 to him and he was the recipient of an epistle in it (4.4); the
same Vitorius was dedicatee of Qyintilian's Institutio oratorio. C. Vibius Maximus
(4.7), already in Domitian's day a man of consequence, eventually attained
the prefecture of Egypt. M. Maecius Celer (3.2) was to end a career successfully
inaugurated under the last Flavian with a suffect consulship in 101. The youth
Vettius Crispinus, panegyrized on the occasion of his appointment to a military
tribunate (5.2), was son of the patrician Vettius Bolanus, consular, sometime
propraetorial legate in Britain and proconsul of Asia. Though nothing further
is know of Crispinus, his twin brother was consul in 111.
Other patrons eschewed the pursuit of power in favour of more tranquil
occupations: philosophy, literature, connoisseurship. Statius offered Book 2
of his Silvae to the elegant and generous Atedius Melior. Within it, the death
of Melior's slaveboy Glaucias is fittingly lamented (2.1). In more humorous
vein, the passing of his parrot is bewailed (2.4). Also included is an aetiological
1
Vessey (1973) 27.
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