Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

STATIUS
quality of his verse. To the ancients, all the arts were in sympathy. In an
ecphrasis, dumb stones were given the power of speech, the ability to explain
themselves — just as sculptors and painters represented for the human eye
incidents from poetry. Whether specific or secondary (as in formalized descriptions
of gods, heroes, buildings, landscapes and the like in his epic),
ecphrasis was for Statius a natural part of composition. Few poets have more
successfully exploited the mode.
Panegyric was an element unavoidable in any epideictic kind. Statius was
adept at telling his patrons what they wished to hear, cunningly interweaving
laudatio with his central themes. In the hands of a skilled poet, generic patterns
and the commonplaces (topoi) associated with them were a valuable asset. It
was part of the decorum of eulogy not to stint one's praise. Not least in
addressing the emperor: to expect moderation there, would be to have
honey sour. Many of the themes in the Silvae had long been conventionalized.
The problem for the conscientious artist was not to escape the
dictates of tradition and maxim, but to remould inherited material in a fresh,
but still recognizable, manner. If ars implied a knowledge of and respect for
regulae, ingenium had to provide the original approach which tempered rigidity
and triteness.
Genres could be used in an unusual way. The genethliacon for Lucan (2.7)
has some of the characteristics of a funeral laudation: for Lucan was dead.
3.4 embodies elements from the propempticon: it is not a human being who is
setting out on a voyage, but the locks of Earinus. 2.4, on the death of Melior's
parrot, is a parody of the epicedium. Of the two gratulationes, one, for Vibius
Maximus, is written in sapphic stanzas under the patronage of Pindar (4.7.5-9)
and is therefore allowed to stray over diverse themes; the other, for Julius
Menecrates, is more solemn and formal, in Statius' customary hexameters
(4.8). A few of the Silvae cannot be assigned to fixed genera. 1.6, the Kalendae
Decembres, is cast in lively hendecasyllables, as befits its purpose. The poem on
Melior's tree (2.3), though a kind of ecphrasis, is, like the lament for his parrot,
termed by Statius in the preface a light-hearted work, akin to epigram. 3.5 is
a suasoria addressed by Statius to his wife, urging retirement from Rome to
Naples. We find too an epistle for Vitorius Marcellus (4.4), some jesting verses
for Plotius Grypus (4.9) and an alcaic ode for Seprimius Severus (4.5). Standing
on their own for brevity are 2.5, on Domitian's tame lion, and 5.4, an exquisite
nineteen-line call to Sleep.
The principle of variety (poikilia) is observed genetically and thematically in
Books 1—4. It may be added that there is order in diversity. Just as Statius
expend ed great effort on the inner structure of all his work, so the disposition
of the poems in each book of Silvae is elaborately organized.
In Book 1, the first and last poems (1, 6) are both laudations of Domitian.
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