Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/281

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SILVAE, IV. v. 57—vi. 12

themes in the words and measures that move unfettered, but remembering me at times strike anew the lyre that lies hid in some shy grotto.

VI. THE HERCULES STATUETTE OF NOVIUS VINDEX


The poem consists chiefly of the description of the Hercules, a statuette (epitrapezios = statue to be put on a table) belonging to Novius Vindex, a connoisseur in art, who is mentioned by Martial (vii. 72. 7) in addition to the two epigrams in which the same statuette is described (ix. 43, 44). The statue was a bronze, and represented the god as seated, with a goblet in one hand and the club in the other; the type is a common one (see Roscher’s Lexicon der Mythol. i. 2176). It is clear that both Statius and Martial, as well as Novius, took it for a genuine work of Lysippus.


One day when putting aside my tasks with heart unburdened by Phoebus I was wandering aimlessly at sundown in the broad spaces of the Enclosure,[1] kind Vindex took me off to dine. That feast sank deep into the recesses of my soul,[2] and remains unconsumed. For it was no wanton dainties of the belly that we devoured, no sweetmeats sought under distant suns, no wines whose ages rival our continuous Annals. Unhappy they whose delight is to know how the bird of Phasis[3] differs from a crane of wintry Rhodope,[4] what kind of goose has the largest liver, why a Tuscan boar is richer than an Umbrian, on what seaweed the slippery shell-fish most comfortably recline: as for us, real affection and discourse fetched from the heart of Helicon and merry jests

  1. ↑ The Saepta Julia was a much frequented public place in the Campus Martius, with some of the best shops in Rome; see Mart. ii. 14, ix. 59.
  2. ↑ The dinner has passed into the soul, and becomes a precious memory. Vollmer quotes Cic. Tusc. v. 100, “vestrae quidem cenae non solum in praesentia, sed etiam postero die iucundae sunt,” “your dinners delight not at the time only, but also on the morrow”; also Epicurus, who praises “plain living and high thinking.”
  3. ↑ The pheasant.
  4. ↑ Or, with more point in “hiberna,” “a crane caught on Rhodope in winter,” i.e. a rarity, as cranes always flew south in winter.

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