Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/13
INTRODUCTION
were extremely uncongenial to each other. Juvenal indeed, is the only Latin writer before Sidonius Apollinaris who does mention Statius, though his influence upon later poets was strong.
His relations with the Court were those of the humble aspirant to Imperial favour; his poems upon the colossal equestrian statue of Domitian, the Emperor’s 17th Consulship, the tresses of his favourite Earinus, and the banquet to which the Emperor invited him, are all marked by the flattery that the subservience of the times was eager to bestow; Domitian affected to be a patron of letters, even a poet himself: it was one of the stock compliments of the time to wonder whether he were more brilliant a poet or a commander.[1] Statius frequently mentions his campaigns, and follows the convention of pretending to be planning a great work on the Emperor’s wars, to which the actual epics are only preliminary.[2]
Statius flourished in the middle of the Silver Age of Latin literature, coming after Seneca and Lucan (though born about the same time as the latter), before Juvenal, Tacitus, and the younger Pliny, and contemporary with Martial, Valerius Flaccus, and Quintilian. The later part of his life was thus spent under the Flavian dynasty, which in spite of its faults did really encourage letters. He also lived at a time when the practice of recitation had become a popular rage; his pleasant voice.[3] his poetry, with its subtle
- ↑ See Achilleid, i. 15.
- ↑ See Thebaid, i. 32, Ach. i. 19.
- ↑ vocem iucundam, Juv. vii. 82: for the dulcedo which Juvenal also mentions (l. 84) see on Statius’s versification (below); the word was probably the origin of Dante’s line (put in Statius’s mouth), “Tanto fu dolce mio vocale spirto” (Purg. xxi. 88).
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