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

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FLAVIAN EPIC<br />

impius <strong>and</strong> saeuus: or totally erase his greatness from record. Lucan had faced<br />

a similar problem with Caesar. In both the Bellum civile <strong>and</strong> the Punica, the<br />

axial polarization of good <strong>and</strong> evil, virtue <strong>and</strong> vice, painstakingly affirmed,<br />

has failed to persuade because the poets protested too much, too often <strong>and</strong><br />

too stridently: perilous is the path of those 'who mythicize in verse the documents<br />

of history.<br />

Statius, Valerius, Silius. Three poets with three distinct styles, purposes, attainments.<br />

Only the Silvae <strong>and</strong>, even more positively, the Thebaid can be accounted<br />

successful: within their limitations. Dante placed Statius in purgatory, where he<br />

freely acknowledges the supremacy of Virgil (Purgatorio, Canto 21); he names<br />

his cardinal sin on earth as prodigality (Canto 22.). A not unfitting fancy:<br />

Statius 'was lavish in all his •works of the ars <strong>and</strong> ingenium with which he 'was<br />

unquestionably dowered. Critically, the modern world has lodged him in a<br />

more straitened confinement than did Dante: 'with small hope of heaven. Silius<br />

is more justly damned. As Pliny saw, he had little else than cura: a literary<br />

Attis, who emasculated himself before the shrine of his gods. Valerius remains<br />

an enigma. Lacking the virtues of Statius <strong>and</strong> the vices of Silius, he reveals<br />

a mediocrity that, if not golden, has appeared to some at least well-burnished<br />

silver. A tribute from Quintilian: reward enough, perhaps, for the Argonautica.<br />

596<br />

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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