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Silvae 3.1 and Statius' Poetic Temple*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Carole Newlands
Carole Newlands
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Extract

In the preface to each book of his collected poems, the Silvae, Statius writes in the apologetic mode. Addressing his friend Arruntius Stella in the preface to Book 1, he claims that his poems are mere impromptu productions, ‘qui mini subito calore et quadam festinandi voluptate fluxerunt’, and he worries that by the time they reach publication they may have lost their only charm, that of speed, ‘celeritas’. Statius makes the same claims for impromptu production with the poem I will be discussing in this article, Silvae 3.1, which celebrates the remodelling of the temple of Hercules on the private Campanian estate that belonged to Statius' friend Pollius Felix: ‘nam primum limen eius Hercules Surrentinus aperit, quern in litore tuo consecratum, statim ut videram, his versibus adoravi’ (praef. 3).

Type
Articles
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , December 1991 , pp. 438 - 452
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

1 All quotations of Statius' Silvae are from the Oxford text of Courtney, E., P. Papini Stati Silvae (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar; all quotations of Vergil's Georgics are from the Oxford text of Mynors, R. A. B., P. Vergili Maronis Opera (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar. Recent bibliographic surveys on the Silvae appear in ANRW 32.5 (1986), in the consecutive articles of Cancik, H., ‘Statius, “Silvae” Ein Bericht über die Forschung seit Friedrich Vollmer (1898)’, 2681–726Google Scholar, and van Dam, H-J., ‘Statius, “Silvae” Forschungsbericht 1974–1984’, 2727–53.Google Scholar

2 For Pollius Felix see D'Arms, J. H., ‘Puteoli in the Second Century’, JRS 64 (1974), 104–24, p. 111Google Scholar; Nisbet, R. G. M., ‘Felicitas at Surrentum’, JRS 68 (1978), 1–12, pp. 1–4Google Scholar; Hardie, A., Statius and the ‘Silvae‘ (Liverpool, 1983), pp. 67–8Google Scholar, hereafter cited as Hardie only.

3 Statius has received bad press ever since Juvenal, Sat. 7.87 accused him of prostituting his art. But Newmyer, S. T., The Silvae of Statius: Structure and Theme, Mnemos. Suppl. 53 (Leiden, 1979)Google Scholar, sensibly points out that ‘Statius' repeated emphasis upon the speed with which the poems were written, and the likelihood of unfavourable criticism levelled against the Silvae in the poet's lifetime, have caused critics to overlook the possibility that Statius' claims of hasty workmanship may be a reflection of a commonplace prevalent in Roman poetry whereby an author makes light of the effort which he has put into his compositions and accordingly minimizes their value’ (p. 8).

4 Catullus refers to his poetry book as ‘libellus’ twice in the ten lines of his opening poem (1 and 8) and calls his poems ‘nugas’ (4).

5 Coleman, K. M., Statius ‘Silvae’ IV (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar, rightly sees Statius' modesty as ‘feigned’, and his apologies for his speed of composition as containing ‘deliberate irony’ (p. xxvi). Hereafter cited as Coleman only.

6 See Coleman, pp. xvi–xvii for a succinct discussion of this problem.

7 Hardie, p. 74.

8 In this article my remarks pertain strictly to the first three books of the Silvae which I see as evolving in an experimental fashion, with certain thematic concerns culminating in Book 3. Books 1–3 may well have been published as a unit (see Coleman, op. cit. (n. 6)); Book 4 was published later, and although the chief stylistic features of the Silvae continue in Book 4, thematically it is divergent in directing its first three poems to the emperor, compared to four in the previous three books. The first three books mark a process of increasing disengagement from Rome and imperial concerns; Book 4 in part reverses that process. See Coleman, pp. xix–xxii. Ahl, F., ‘Politics and Power in Roman Poetry’, ANRW 32.1 (1984), 40–124, pp. 88–91Google Scholar, doubts that Statius in Book 4 had undergone any significant change of attitude towards the emperor; as always, the poet counsels us to read between the lines.

9 Thomas, R. F., ‘Callimachus, the “Victoria Berenices”, and Roman Poetry’, CQ 33 (1983), 92–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hereafter cited as Thomas only. Thomas draws upon the important article of Parsons, P. J., ‘Callimachus: Victoria Berenices’, ZPE 25 (1977), 1–50.Google Scholar

10 Thomas, pp. 94–5.

11 The name appears as an adjective, ‘Molorcheis‘, in Panegyricus Messallae 13, with clear reference to Callimachean aesthetic principles. As a proper noun Molorchus occurs three times in Statius, all connected with Hercules, Theb. 4.159–64; Silvae 3.1.29, and 4.6.51.

12 Thomas, p. 105.

13 On the topic of broken or interrupted ritual practices see Pfeiffer on fr. 91, with reference to the ending of the sacrifice of a newborn child at the Isthmian games; also on frr. 98 and 667.

14 Silvae 1.2.252–5. Note that Statius does not here set his poetry in a tradition that includes Callimachus (cf. Thomas, p. 103); in Silvae 1.2 he associates Callimachus and the others only with epithalamia, ‘carmina festis / digna toris’ (251–2).

15 Williams, G., ‘Statius and Vergil: Defensive Imitation’, Vergil at 2000 (New York, 1986), pp. 207–24Google Scholar, translates ‘magni magistri’ as ‘my greater master’ (220), and thus lends false support to his view of Statius as an anxious emulator of Vergil, obsessively suffering from an inferiority complex.

16 Bright, D., Elaborate Disarray: the Nature of Statius' Silvae (Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie 108, Meisenheim an Glan, 1980), pp. 37–9Google Scholar. In Georgics 3.40 Vergil uses ‘silvae’ as a metaphor of his present poetry. See n. 20, below.

17 No false modesty here, as he couples Vergil's Culex with Homer's supposed Batrachomyomachia.

18 Parsons, op. cit. (n. 9), p. 39.

19 Putnam, M. C. J., Artifices of Eternity: Horace's Fourth Book of Odes (Ithaca, 1986)Google Scholar, interprets Odes 4.1 as ‘a leave-taking from the writing of private amatory lyric’ (p. 25). The fourth book of Odes mark a dramatic change in poetic and personal direction. ‘What changes, and changes most dramatically, is the poet's stance towards history, politics, and the wider public circumstances of his world’ (p. 307). Suetonius, Vita Horati, provides testimony early on of negative reaction, founded on the belief that Augustus ordered the poems in the fourth book of the Odes.

20 Silvae 3.5 takes the form of a letter urging his wife to leave the madness of Rome and join him in retreat at Naples. Hardie speculates that Statius' relationships with Domitian were none too good at the time of publication of the first three books of the Silvae, probably in a.d. 93 or 94, and that ‘the joint issue of Silvae 1–3 were intended as the parting shot of an ailing and, perhaps, disappointed Statius to Naples’ (p. 65). This is an attractive theory. Certainly Statius makes a strongly worded reference in Silvae 3.5 to the emperor as the cruel and ungrateful Jupiter who failed to recognise properly Statius' poetic talent (31–3). The exact dates for the departure to the Bay of Naples are, however, problematic, and it is not clear how long Statius in fact lived in Campania. Only the preface to book 4 and Silvae 4.4 were definitely written at Naples. (See Coleman, pp. xx–xxii.) Moreover, Statius is careful in all his poems to say nothing that would directly offend the emperor, so ‘parting shot’ may be too strongly worded. His position is defensive rather than aggressive. We can at least say that the general fluctuations of Statius' career, as well as the instability and danger of power politics in Domitian's Rome, help to some extent explain the specific thematic and poetic concerns found in Book 3.

21 My position towards Statius' ‘intertextuality’ then is somewhat different from that of Williams, op. cit. (n. 15), and of Vessey, D. W. T., who, in ‘Style and Theme in Statius' Silvae’, ANRW 32.5 (1986), 2554–802Google Scholar, sees the problem of imitation as germane to the Silvae and to ‘mannerist’, post-classical literature. He defines mannerism as ‘the disintegrating and disorienting renewal of artists whose attention, amounting almost to the obsessive, is concentrated on particular facets of the past rather than on any attempt – seen as certain of failure – to recreate it in all its details’ (2757). In an earlier work, Statius and the Thebaid (Cambridge, 1973)Google Scholar, he defined ‘mannerism’ as ‘a disease of classicism’ (p. 8).

22 It was important for Statius to acknowledge his extensive debt to Horace in Book 3 of the Silvae, although that debt is not expressed beyond the opening lines of 3.1. In his sensitive article Burck, E., ‘Retractatio: Statius an seine Gattin Claudia (Silv. 3.5)’, WS 100 (1987), 137–53Google Scholar, has demonstrated the pervasive influence upon this poem of Horace's Odes 2.6; Hardie, op. cit. (n. 2), pp. 156–64, has shown that the main model for Silvae 3.2 is Horace's propempticon, Odes 1.3.

23 Statius seems to have spent twelve years on the Thebaid, which was published about a.d. 92. The Silvae therefore were composed in the later stages of the epic or after its completion. The earliest references to his writing of his subsequent epic, the Achilleid, occur in Silvae 4.4.93f. and 4.7.23, a later book which contains more acknowledgement of the emperor than any other book and which perhaps with its publication in 95 marks a period of reconciliation with Domitian in 94–95. See Coleman, pp. xix–xxii.

24 See Silvae 3.5.12–13.

25 This was a version that Statius would undoubtedly have in mind as Archemorus' death is a central episode in the Thebaid.

26 The morbid association of Melicertes with child sacrifice seems to have been of particular fascination to Hellenistic poets. Thus Lycophron, Alexandra 229 calls Melicertes βρεϕοκτνος.

27 G. 3.40–1: ‘interea Dryadum silvas saltusque sequamur, / intactos’; Silvae 3.1.66–7: ‘assidue moresque viri pacemque novosque / Pieridum flores intactaque carmina discens.’ Note that ‘silvas’ in Vergil metaphorically refers to his poetry; through verbal linkage Statius associates peace, ‘pacemque’, with ’intactaque carmina’.

28 Fr. 190 Pf.; Servius ad Aen. 7.778. The topic fascinated another aetiological poet, Ovid, who in his Fasti refers to the myth at 3.263–6, and more fully at 6.739ff.

29 See Scullard, H. H., Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic (Ithaca and New York, 1981), pp. 171–3Google Scholar. The state festival for these days was probably held at the Ara Maxima where a heifer was sacrificed. Compare Statius' bloodless offering at lines 163–4.

30 For the comic Hercules in Hellenistic literature and the Roman moralisation of the god see G. K.|Galinsky, The Herakks Theme (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar; also Feeney, D., ‘Following after Hercules, in Virgil and Apollonius’, PVS 18 (1987), 47–85.Google Scholar

31 This story is perhaps the subject of Euphorion in Suppl. Hell. fr. 418.16–17.

32 Frr. 44–7 Pf.; Suppl. Hell. 252–3. Ovid pairs Busiris with king Phalaris (Ars. Am. l. 647–56; Trist. 3.11.39–54). The precedent for this linkage probably goes back to Callimachus. See Lehnus, L., ‘Callimaco Suppl Hell. 2.2’, ZPE 80 (1990), 16.Google Scholar

33 Thomas, pp. 94–101.

34 Cf. Quint. 11.3.42 and 11.3.99.

35 Thomas, p. 101.

36 At line lOof Silvae 3.1 Statius refers to Hercules in his unimproved temple as ‘agresti’. This derogatory sense of boorish, unsophisticated, approximates that of ‘rusticus’ in Vergil's Ecl. 2.56, and is not meant to be a negative reflection on the farmer's arts.

37 At the poem's end Hercules praises Pollius for imitating him in what is seen as a moral and religious act: ‘macte animis opibusque meos imitate labores / qui rigidas rapes infecundaque pudenda / naturae deserta domas et vertis in usum / lustra habitata feris foedeque latentia prefers / numina’ (166–70). With ‘infecundaque pudenda’, and ‘foedeque latentia’ Statius matches moral and physical terms. The juxtaposition too of ‘animis’ with ‘opibus’ suggests that wealth for Statius is a praiseworthy attribute, one to be equated with spiritual and moral riches. There is no mention here in this passage of any private pleasure principle at work.

38 Newmyer, S., ‘The Triumph of Art over Nature: Martial and Statius on Flavian Aesthetics’, Helios (1984), 1–7.Google Scholar

39 Ennius, Epigr. 18 V: ‘volito vivus per ora virum’.

40 On architectural metaphors see Thomas, pp. 96–9.

41 I do not agree with Hardie that ‘Statius could not write manifesto poems to introduce a collection which had been written for individual delivery’ (p. 182). Silvae 3.1 contains a poetic programme that would undoubtedly please Pollius, who was also a poet. Moreover, before publication Statius surely had time to deliberate over the placement of each poem. A poem to Pollius should begin Book 3, since the book is dedicated to him, but why could Statius not equally well have used Silvae 2.2, a more elaborate descriptive poem on Pollius' villa (assuming that the first three books of the Silvae were published as a collection)? Silvae 3.1 makes an important programmatic opening to a book that, as I argue in this article, was very carefully arranged.

42 E.g. lines 8–11: ‘…tune ille reclusi / liminis et parvae custos inglorius arae? unde haec aula recens fulgorque inopinus agresti / Alcidae? sunt fata deum, sunt fata locorum!’

43 Hardie, pp. 125–8.

44 Coleman, p. xxvi, sees speed of composition as constituting Statius' ‘audacia’ in opposition to Vessey, CPh 66 (1971), 274Google Scholar, who understands it to refer to ‘strained’ Latin usage. I interpret this concept more broadly as referring to his hyperbolic, improvisational, and innovative style. Newmyer, op. cit (n. 38), has argued that Statius' hyperbolic style is one of the hallmarks of an imperial aesthetic in the Silvae. But Newmyer derives this aesthetic from only three poems concerning Domitian in the first three books, 1.1., 1.6, and 2.5, and Statius' attitude towards the emperor in these poems is extremely problematic. F. Ahl, op. cit. (n. 8), pp. 91–102, interprets Silvae 1.1 as a masterpiece of ironic double-entendre that undercuts Domitian's heroic pretensions. Silvae 1.6 and Silvae 2.5 both concern Domitian's perversions of nature. The former, an account of the entertainments given by Domitian on the Saturnalia, emphasise the emperor's excess and decadence; these qualities are obviously far distant from the moderation Statius admires in Melior and Pollius. Silvae 2.5, an account of the death in the amphitheatre of a tame lion, harks on the pointlessness of making a pet out of this wild beast, in other words of perverting its nature for the sake of the emperor's pleasure in the amphitheatre. The poem ends ironically with Domitian, after so many animals killed for entertainment, shedding a tear for the lion, a conceit whose effect is undercut by the poet's reference to the numerous other animals killed for entertainment. This poem makes a sharp contrast with the preceding one on the death of Melior's pet parrot, Silvae 2.4. The bird, with its clever facility for speech, was clearly well treated and had no reason, unlike the lion, to regret its domestication. See Garvey, J. J., ‘Silvae 2.5 and Statius' Art’, Latomus 48 (1989), 627–31Google Scholar. The other poems in Books 1–3 do not concern state occasions. As Thomas has shown (pp. 109–10), the hyperbolic style expressing amazement and admiration at the magnificence of artistic achievements derives from the Hellenistic ecphrastic tradition. Silvae 3.1 is not itself an ecphrasis, but Statius' enthusings over the temple are in line with the expressions of ‘awe and wonder’ common to such descriptions of works of art.

45 In Silvae 2.2 Statius describes Pollius in terms of an Epicurean philosopher, aloof from the storms and troubles of the world in his cliff-top villa. Cf. particularly 131–2.

46 E.g. Vergil, Ecl. 6.4–5; Horace, Odes 4.2.53–60.

47 Thomas, p. 113 n. 120.

48 On Silvae 1.1 see Ahl, op. cit. (n. 8).

49 On the possible political implications of Statius' retreat to private poetry see Hardie, above note 20. The main conclusions we can draw from this study of Silvae 3.1, however, are that Statius' concerns were philosophical and aesthetic rather than political in a narrow sense, and that they evolve from an intimate dialogue with his major predecessors in the form of the rural encomiastic poem.