Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/15

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INTRODUCTION

with anything from astronomy to horse-breeding, while audiences probably relished such compliments to their culture.


The Silvae[1]

These are a collection of occasional poems, many of which were written hastily to order or just as the fancy seized the poet; some, on the other hand, like the lament for his father (v. 3), are more carefully constructed. Six of them are Poems of Consolation,[2] for the loss of a father, a wife or a favourite slave; this was a type of composition of which the Romans were very fond, in prose as well as in poetry. They cannot be said to be the most successful examples of Statius’s verse; to our taste, at any rate, they appear artificial and exaggerated in tone, and lacking in real sentiment,[3] also for the most part much too long. It should be said, however, that he was following the rules laid down for that type of poem by the schools of rhetoric and obeyed by the poets. This applies also to other literary forms, for example, the

  1. ↑ The word means literally “pieces of raw material,” from silva = Gk. ὕλη, i.e. pieces ready to be worked up into shape, or impromptu pieces; cf. Quint. x. 3. 17 “diversum est eorum vitium, qui primum decurrere per materiam stilo quam velocissimo volunt, et sequentes calorem atque impetum ex tempore scribunt; hance silvam vocant.” “Their fault is different, who wish to run over their material first with as rapid a pen as possible, and write impromptu, following the inspiration of the moment: such work they call silva.” Cf. also Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. Pref. 6.
  2. ↑ Epicedion, or Ἐπικήδειον, from κῆδος, mourning, funeral lamentation.
  3. ↑ Exceptions are v. 3, v. 5 and the passage at the end of ii. 1 (208–end).

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