Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/115

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SILVAE, II. i. 1–16

I. GLAUCIAS, THE FAVOURITE OF ATEDIUS MELIOR


In this and the following Epicedia Statius shows the influence both of philosophic consolation such as we see it in Seneca, or the Consolatio ad Liviam, and also of the rhetorical schools with their ἐπιτάφιοι and παραμυθητικοί, divided into regular parts, such as Praise of the departed, description of the illness and death, description of the burial, welcome of the soul of the dead one in the under-world, etc. Statius’s treatment is free, as in the Epithalamium; mythological allusion is frequent, and was undoubtedly part of the poetic convention of the time, and therefore should not be condemned as frigid and implying a lack of true feeling. The reader may compare earlier poems of the same kind, e.g. Horace, C. i. 24; Propertius, iii. 18, iv. 11; Ovid, Am. iii. 9. Two poems of Martial (vi. 28, 29) were also written on the same occasion.


How can I begin to console thee, Melior, for thy foster-son untimely taken? How can I heartlessly sing before the pyre, while the ashes are still aglow? The lamentable wound gapes wide with sundered veins, and the dangerous path of the great gash lies open.[1] Even while I relentlessly compose my spells and healing words, thou dost prefer to beat the breast and cry aloud, and hatest my lyre and turnest away with deaf ear. Untimely is my song: sooner would a despoiled lioness or tigress robbed of her cubs give ear to me. Not if the triple chant of the Sicilian maidens[2] were wafted hither, or the harp that beasts and woodlands understood, would they soothe thy distracted wailing. Demented Grief hath his stand in thy heart; at a touch thy breast heaves and sobs.

Have thy fill of bitterness: none forbids thee. Overcome, by giving it rein, the malady of thy distress. At last is thy luxury of weeping sated? At last art thou wearied out and deignest to hear a

  1. ↑ i.e., the wound in all its length, a “path” leading to a vital spot.
  2. ↑ The Sirens, whose number is variously given as two or as three; in ii. 2. 1, Statius places them at Sorrento.

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