is not to be despised as a master of metre. And whether for picturesqueness of expression or for beauty of sound, lines such as (iii. 596)
rursus Hylan et rursus Hylan per longa reclamat avia; responsant silvae et vaga certat imago,
'Hylas', and again 'Hylas', he calls through the long wilderness;the woods reply, and wandering echo mocks his voice.
or (i. 291)
quis tibi, Phrixe, dolor, rapido cum concitus aestu respiceres miserae clamantia virginis ora extremasque manus sparsosque per aequora crines!
Phrixus, what grief was thine when, swept along by the swirling tide, thou lookedst back on the hapless maiden's face as she cried for thine aid, her sinking hands, her hair streaming o'er the deep.
are not easily surpassed outside the pages of Vergil. But it is above all on his descriptive power that his claim to consideration rests.[507] For it is there that he finds play for his most remarkable gifts, his power of suggestion of mystery, and his keen sense of colour. These gifts find their most striking manifestation in his description of the Argonauts' first night upon the waters. They
were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.
All is strange to them. Each sight and sound has its element of terror:
auxerat hora metus, iam se vertentis Olympi ut faciem raptosque simul montesque locosque ex oculis circumque graves videre tenebras. ipsa quies rerum mundique silentia terrent astraque et effusis stellatus crinibus aether. ac velut ignota captus regione viarum noctivagum qui carpit iter non aure quiescit, non oculis, noctisque metus niger auget utrimque campus et occurrens umbris maioribus arbor, haud aliter trepidare viri (ii. 38).
The dark hour deepened their fears when they saw heaven's vault wheel round, and the peaks and fields of earth snatched from their view, and all about them the horror of darkness. The very stillness of things and the deep silence of the world affright them, the stars and heaven begemmed with streaming locks of gold. And as one benighted in a strange place 'mid paths unknown pursues his devious journey through the night and finds rest neither for eye nor ear, but all about him the blackness of the plain, and the trees that throng upon him seen greater through the gloom, deepen his terror of the dark—even so the heroes trembled.
There are few more vivid pictures in Latin poetry than that of the benighted wanderer lost on some wide plain studded with clumps of trees that seem to throng upon him in the gloom, seen greater through the darkness. Not less imaginative, though less clear cut and precise, is his picture of the underworld in the third book:
est procul ad Stygiae devexa silentia noctis Cimmerium domus et superis incognita tellus, caeruleo tenebrosa situ, quo flammea numquam Sol iuga sidereos nec mittit Iuppiter annos. stant tacitae frondes inmotaque silva comanti horret Averna iugo; specus umbrarumque meatus subter et Oceani praeceps fragor arvaque nigro vasta metu et subitae post longa silentia voces (iii. 398).
Far hence by the deep sunken silence of the Stygian night lies the Cimmerians' home, a land unknown to denizens of upper air, all dark with gloomy squalor. Thither the sun hath never driven his flaming car nor Jupiter sent forth his starry seasons. Silent are the leaves of its groves, and all along its leafy hill bristles unmoved Avernus' wood: thereunder are caverns, and the shades go to and fro; there Ocean plunges roaring to its fall, there are plains with dark fear desolate, and after long silences sudden voices thunder out.
It is a more theatrical underworld than that of Vergil, and the picture is not clearly conceived, but its very vagueness is impressive. The poet gives us, as it were, the scene for the enactment of some dim dream of terror. He is equally at home in describing the happy calm of Elysium. Though the picture lacks originality, it has no lack of beauty:
hic geminae infernum portae, quarum altera dura semper lege patens populos regesque receptat; ast aliam temptare nefas et tendere contra; rara et sponte patet, siquando pectore ductor volnera nota gerens, galeis praefixa rotisque cui domus aut studium mortales pellere curas, culta fides, longe metus atque ignota cupido; seu venit in vittis castaque in veste sacerdos. quos omnes lenis plantis et lampada quassans progenies Atlantis agit. lucet via late igne dei, donec silvas et amoena piorum deveniant camposque, ubi sol totumque per annum durat aprica dies thiasique chorique virorum carminaque et quorum populis iam nulla cupido (i. 833).
Here lie the twin gates of Hell, whereof the one is ever open by stern fate's decree, and through it march the peoples and princes of the world. But the other may none essay nor beat against its bars. Barely it opens and untouched by hand, if e'er a chieftain comes with glorious wounds upon his breast, whose halls were decked with helm and chariots, or who strove to cast out the woes of mankind, who honoured truth and bade farewell to fear and knew no base ambition. Then, too, it opens when some priest comes wearing sacred wreath and spotless robe. All such the child of Atlas leads along with gentle tread and waving torch. Far shines the road with the fire of the god until they come to the groves and plains, the pleasant mansions of the blest, where the sun ceases not, nor the warm daylight all the year long, nor dancing companies of heroes, nor song, nor all the innocent joys that the peoples of the earth desire no more.
Many lines might be quoted that startle us with their unforeseen vividness or some unexpected blaze of colour; when the fleece of gold is taken from the tree where it had long since shone like a beacon through the dark, the tree sinks back into the melancholy night,
tristesque super coiere tenebrae (viii. 120).
At their bridal on the desolate Isle of Peuce under the shadow of approaching peril, Jason and Medea gleam star-like amid the company of heroes (viii. 257):
ipsi inter medios rosea radiante iuventa altius inque sui sternuntur velleris auro.
Themselves in their comrades' midst, bright with the rosy glow of youth, above them all, lie on the fleece of gold that they had made their own.
This characteristic is most evident in the similes over which Valerius, like other poets of the age, would seem to have expended particular labour. He scatters them over his pages with too prodigal a hand, and they suffer at times from over-elaboration and ingenuity.[508] Desire for originality has led him to such startling comparisons as that between a warrior drawn from his horse and a bird snared by the limed twig of the fowler,[509] surely as inappropriate a simile as was ever framed. More distressing still is the maudlin pathos of the simile which likens Medea to a dog on the verge of madness.[510] But such gross aberrations are rare; against them may be set some of the freshest and most beautiful similes in the whole range of Latin poetry. The silence that follows on the wailing of the women of Cyzicus is like the silence of Egypt when the birds that wintered there have flown to more temperate lands. 'And now they had paid due honour to their ashes; with weary feet, wives with their babes wandered away and the waves had rest, the waves long torn by their wakeful lamentation, even as when the birds in mid-spring have returned to the north that is their home, and Memphis and their yearly haunt by sunny Nile are dumb once more'—
qualiter Arctosad patrias avibus medio iam vere revectisMemphis et aprici statio silet annua Nili (iii. 358).
The beauty of Medea among her Scythian maidens is likened to that ofProserpine leading her comrades over Hymettus' hill or wandering withPallas and Diana in the Sicilian mountains—
altior ac nulla comitum certante, prius quam palluit et viso pulsus decor omnis Averno (v. 346).
Taller than all her comrades and fairer than them all or ever she turned pale, and at the sight of Hell all beauty was banished from her face.
The relief of the Argonauts, when at last they reach haven after their fearful passage of the Symplegades, is like that of Theseus and Hercules, when they have forced a way through the gates of hell to the light of day once more.[511] Most remarkable of all is the strange accumulation of similes that describe the meeting of Jason and Medea. Medea is going through the silent night chanting a song of magic, whereat all nature trembles. At last, when she has come 'to the shadowy place of the triune goddess', Jason shines forth before her in the gloom, 'as when in deepest night panic bursts on herd and herdsman, or shades meet blind and voiceless in the deep of Chaos; even so, in the darkness of the night and of the grove, the two met astonied, like silent pines or motionless cypress, ere yet the whirling breath of the south wind has caught and mingled their boughs'[512]—
obvius ut sera cum se sub nocte magistris inpingit pecorique pavor, qualesve profundum per chaos occurrunt caecae sine vocibus umbrae; haut secus in mediis noctis nemorisque tenebris inciderant ambo attoniti iuxtaque subibant, abietibus tacitis aut immotis cyparissis adsimiles, rapidus nondum quas miscuit Auster (vii. 400).
These similes suffer from sheer accumulation.[513] Taken individually they are worthy of many a greater poet.
In his speeches Valerius is less successful, though rarely positively bad. But with few exceptions they lack force and interest. At times, however, his rhetoric is effective, as in the speech of Mopsus (iii. 377), where he sets forth the punishment of blood-guiltiness, or in the fierce invective in which the Scythian, Gesander, taunts a Greek warrior with the inferiority of the Greek race (vi. 323 sqq.). This latter speech is closely modelled on Vergil (A.ix. 595 sqq.), and although it is somewhat out of place in the midst of a battle, is not wholly unworthy of its greater model. But it is to the speeches of Jason and Medea that we naturally turn to form the estimate of the poet's mastery of the language of passion. These speeches serve to show us how far he falls below Vergil (A.iv) and Apollonius (bk. iii). They offer a noble field for his powers, and it cannot be said that he rises to the full height of the occasion. On the other hand, he does not actually fail. There is a note of deep and moving appeal in all that Medea says as she gradually yields to the power of her passion, and the thought of her father and her home fades slowly from her mind.
quid, precor, in nostras venisti, Thessale, terras? unde mei spes ulla tibi? tantosque petisti cur non ipse tua fretus virtute labores? nempe, ego si patriis timuissem excedere tectis, occideras; nempe hanc animam sors saeva manebat funeris. en ubi Iuno, ubi nunc Tritonia virgo, sola tibi quoniam tantis in casibus adsum externae regina domus? miraris et ipse, credo, nec agnoscunt hae nunc Aeetida silvae. sed fatis sum victa tuis; cape munera supplex nunc mea; teque iterum Pelias si perdere quaeret, inque alios casus alias si mittet ad urbes, heu formae ne crede tuae.
'"Why,"' she cries (vii. 438), '"why, I beseech thee, Thessalian, camest thou ever to this land of ours? Whence hadst thou any hope of me? And why didst thou seek these toils with faith in aught save thine own valour? Surely hadst thou perished, had I feared to leave my father's halls—aye, and so surely had I shared thy cruel doom. Where now is thy helper Juno, where now thy Tritonian maid, since I, the queen of an alien house, have come to help thee in thy need? Aye, even thyself thou marvellest, methinks, nor any more does this grove know me for Aeetes' daughter. Nay, 'twas thy cruel fate overcame me; take now, poor suppliant, these my gifts, and, if e'er again Pelias seek to destroy thee and send thee forth to other cities, ah! put not too fond trust in thy beauty!"' Yet again, before she puts the saving charms into his hands, she appeals to him (452):
si tamen aut superis aliquam spem ponis in istis, aut tua praesenti virtus educere leto si te forte potest, etiam nunc deprecor, hospes, me sine, et insontem misero dimitte parenti. dixerat; extemploque (etenim matura ruebant sidera, et extremum se flexerat axe Booten) cum gemitu et multo iuveni medicamina fletu non secus ac patriam pariter famamque decusque obicit. ille manu subit, et vim conripit omnem. inde ubi facta nocens, et non revocabilis umquam cessit ab ore pudor, … … … … … … … pandentes Minyas iam vela videbat se sine. tum vero extremo percussa dolore adripit Aesoniden dextra ac submissa profatur: sis memor, oro, mei, contra memor ipsa manebo, crede, tui. quando hinc aberis, die quaeso, profundi quod caeli spectabo latus? sed te quoque tangat cura mei quocumque loco, quoscumque per annos; atque hunc te meminisse velis, et nostra fateri munera; servatum pudeat nec virginis arte. hei mihi, cur nulli stringunt tua lumina fletus? an me mox merita morituram patris ab ira dissimulas? te regna tuae felicia gentis, te coniunx natique manent; ego prodita obibo.
'"If thou hast any hope of safety from these goddesses, that are thine helpers, or if perchance thine own valour can snatch thee from the jaws of death, even now, I pray thee, stranger, let me be, and send me back guiltless to my unhappy sire." She spake, and straightway—for now the stars outworn sank to their setting, and Bootes in the furthest height of heaven had turned him towards his rest—straightway she gave the charms to the young hero with wailing and with lamentation, as though therewith she cast away her country and her own fair fame and honour.' And then, 'when her guilt was accomplished and the blush of shame had passed from her face for evermore,' she saw as in a vision (474) 'the Minyae spreading their sails for flight without her. Then in truth bitter anguish laid hold of her spirit, and she grasped the right hand of the son of Aeson and humbly spake: "Remember me, I pray, for I, believe me shall forget thee never. When thou art hence, where on all the vault of heaven shall I bear to gaze? Ah! do thou too, where'er thou art, through all the years ne'er let the thought of me slip from thy heart. Remember how thou stood'st to-day, tell of the gifts I gave, and feel no shame that thou wast saved by a maiden's guile. Alas! why stream no tears from thine eyes? Knowest thou not that the death I have deserved waits me at my father's hand? For thee there waits a happy realm among thine own folk, for thee wife and child; but I must perish deserted and betrayed."'[514]
All this lacks the force and passion of the corresponding scene in Apollonius. This Medea could never have cried, 'I am no Greek princess, gentle-souled,'[515] nor have prayed that a voice from far away or a warning bird might reach him in Iolcus on the day when he forgot her, or that the stormwind might bear her with reproaches in her eyes to stand by his hearth-stone and chide him for his forgetfulness and ingratitude. The Medea of Apollonius has been softened and sentimentalized by the Roman poet. Valerius knows no device to clothe her with power, save by the narration of her magic arts (vii. 463-71; viii. 68-91). Yet she has a charm of her own; and it needed true poetic feeling to draw even the Medea of Valerius Flaccus.
In no age would Valerius have been a great poet, but under happier circumstances he would have produced work that would have ranked high among literary epics. As it is, there is no immeasurable distance between theArgonauticaand works such as theGerusalemme liberata, or much ofThe Idylls of the King. He is a genuine poet whose genius was warped by the spirit of the age, stunted by the inherent difficulties besetting the Roman writer of epic, overweighted by his admiration of his two great predecessors, Ovid and Vergil. He is obscure, he is full of echoes, he staggers beneath a burden of useless learning, he overcrowds his canvas and strives in vain to put the breath of life into bones long dry; in addition, his epic suffers from the lack of the reviser's hand. And yet, in spite of all, his characters are sometimes more than lay-figures, and his scenes more than mere stage-painting. He has the divine fire, and it does not always burn dim. Others have greater cunning of hand, greater force of intellect, and have won a higher place in the hierarchy of poets. He—though, like them, he lacks the 'fine madness that truly should possess a poet's brain'—yet gives us much that they cannot give, and sees much that they cannot see. With Quintilian, though with altered meaning, we too may saymultum in Valerio Flacco amisimus.
Our information as to the life of P. Papinius Statius is drawn almost exclusively from his minor poems entitled theSilvae. He was born at Naples, his father was a native of Velia, came of good family,[516] and by profession was poet and schoolmaster. The father's school was at Naples,[517] and, if we may trust his son, was thronged with pupils from the whole of Southern Italy.[518] He had been victorious in many poetic contests both in Naples and in Greece.[519] He had written a poem on the burning of the Capitol in 69 A.D., had planned another on the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., but apparently died with the work unfinished.[520] It was to his father that our poet attributed all his success as a poet. It was to him he owed both education and inspiration, as theEpicedion in patrembears pathetic witness (v. 3. 213):
sed decus hoc quodcumque lyrae primusque dedisti non volgare loqui et famam sperare sepulcro.
Thou wert the first to give this glory, whate'er it be, that my lyre hath won; thine was the gift of noble speech and the hope that my tomb should be famous.
TheThebaiswas directly due to his prompting (loc. cit., 233):
te nostra magistro Thebais urgebat priscorum exordia vatum; tu cantus stimulare meos, tu pandere facta heroum bellique modos positusque locorum monstrabas.
At thy instruction my Thebais trod the steps of elder bards; thou taughtest me to fire my song, thou taughtest me to set forth the deeds of heroes and the ways of war and the position of places.
The poet-father lived long enough to witness his son well on the way to established fame. He had won the prize for poetry awarded by his native town, the crown fashioned of ears of corn, chief honour of the Neapolitan Augustalia.[521] Early in the reign of Domitian he had received a high price from the actor Paris for his libretto on the subject of Agave,[522] and he had already won renown by his recitations at Rome,[523] recitations in all probability of portions of theThebais[524] which he had commenced in 80 A.D.[525] But it was not till after his father's death that he reached the height of his fame by his victory in the annual contest instituted by Domitian at his Alban palace,[526] and by the completion and final publication in 92 A.D. of his masterpiece, theThebais.[527] This poem was the outcome of twelve years' patient labour, and it was on this that he based his claim to immortality.[527] He had now made himself a secure position as the foremost poet of his age. His failure to win the prize at the quinquennial Agon Capitolinus in 94 A.D. caused him keen mortification, but was in no way a set-back to his career.[528] By this time he had already begun the publication of hisSilvae. The first book was published not earlier than 92 A.D.,[529] the second and third between that date and 95 A.D. The fourth appeared in 95 A.D.,[530] the fifth is unfinished. There is no allusion to any date later than 95 A.D., no indication that the poet survived Domitian (d. 96 A.D.). These facts, together with the fragmentary state of his ambitiousAchilleis, begun in 95 A.D.,[531] point to Statius having died in that year, or at least early in 96 A.D. He left behind him, beside the works already mentioned, a poem on the wars of Domitian in Germany,[532] and a letter to one Maximus Vibius, which may have served as a preface to theThebais.[533] He had spent the greater portion of his life either at Rome, Naples, or in the Alban villa given him by Domitian. In his latter years he seems to have resided almost entirely at Rome, though he must have paid not infrequent visits to the Bay of Naples.[534] But in 94 A.D., whether through failing health or through chagrin at his defeat in the Capitoline contest, he retired to his native town.[535] He had married a widow named Claudia,[536] but the union was childless; towards the end of his life he adopted the infant son of one of his slaves,[537] and the child's premature death affected him as bitterly as though it had been his own son that died. Of his age we know little; but in theSilvaethere are allusions to the approach of old age and the decline of his physical powers.[538] He can scarcely have been born later than 45 A.D., and may well have been born considerably earlier. His life, as far as we can judge, was placid and uneventful. The position of his father seems to have saved him from a miserable struggle for his livelihood, such as vexed the soul of Martial.[539] There is nothing venal about his verse. If his flattery of the emperor is fulsome almost beyond belief, he hardly overstepped the limits of the path dictated by policy and the custom of the age; his conduct argues weakness rather than any deep moral taint. In his flattery towards his friends and patrons his tone is, at its worst, rather that of a social inferior than of a mere dependent.[540] And underlying all the preciosity and exaggeration of his praises and his consolations, there is a genuine warmth of affection that argues an amiable character. And this warmth of feeling becomes unmistakable in theepicediaon his father and his adopted son, and again in the poem addressed to his wife. The feeling is genuine, in spite of the suggestion of insincerity created by the artificiality of his language. No less noteworthy is his enthusiasm for the beauties of his birthplace, which shines clear through all the obscure legends beneath which he buries his topography.[541] These qualities, if any, must be set against his lack of intellectual power; his mind is nimble and active, but never strong either in thought or emotion: of sentiment he has abundance, of passion none. Considering the corruption of the society of which he constituted himself the poet, and of which there are not a few glimpses in theSilvae, despite the tinselled veil that is thrown over it, the impression of Statius the man is not unpleasing: it is not necessary to claim that it is inspiring.
Of Statius the poet it is harder to form a clear judgement. His masterpiece, theThebais, from the day of its publication down to comparatively recent times, possessed an immense reputation.[542] Dante seems to regard him as second only to Vergil; and it was scarcely before the nineteenth century that he was dethroned from his exalted position. Before the verdict of so many ages one may well shrink from passing an unfavourable criticism. That he had many of the qualifications of a great poet is undeniable; his technical skill is extraordinary; his variety of phrase is infinite; his colouring is often brilliant. And even his positive faults, the faults of his age, the crowding of detail, the rhetoric, the bombast, offend rather by their quantity than quality. Alone of the epic[543] writers of his age he rarely raises a derisive laugh from the irreverent modern. Again, his average level is high, higher than that of any post-Ovidian poet. And yet that high level is due to the fact that he rarely sinks rather than that he rises to sublime heights. His brilliant metre, always vivacious and vigorous, seldom gives us a line that haunts the memory; and therefore, though its easy grace and facile charm may for a while attract us, we soon weary of him. He lacks warmth of emotion and depth of colour. In this respect he has been not inaptly compared to Ovid. Ovid said of Callimachusquamvis ingenio non valet, arte valet.[544] Ovid's detractors apply the epigram to Ovid himself. This is unjust, but so far as such a comprehensive dictum can be true of any distinguished writer, it is true of Statius.
Scarcely inferior to Ovid in readiness and fertility, he ranks far below the earlier writer in all poetic essentials. Ovid's gifts are similar but more natural; his vision is clearer, his imagination more penetrating. 'The paces of Statius are those of themanège, not of nature';[545] he loses himself in the trammels of his art. He lacks, as a rule, the large imagination of the poet; and though his detail may often please, the whole is tedious and disappointing. Merivale sums him up admirably:[546] 'Statius is a miniature painter employed on the production of a great historic picture: every part, every line, every shade is touched and retouched; approach the canvas and examine it with glasses, every thread and hair has evidently received the utmost care and taken the last polish; but step backwards and embrace the whole composition in one gaze, and the general effect is confused from want of breadth and largeness of treatment.'
He was further handicapped by his choice of a subject.[547] The Theban legend is unsuitable for epic treatment for more reasons than one. In the first place the story is unpleasant from beginning to end. Horror accumulates on horror, crime on crime, and there are but three characters which evoke our sympathy, Oedipus, Jocasta, and Antigone. These characters play only subsidiary parts in the story of the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, round which the Theban epic turns. The central characters are almost of necessity the odious brothers Eteocles and Polynices: Oedipus appears only to curse his sons. Antigone and Jocasta come upon the scene only towards the close in a brief and futile attempt to reconcile the brothers. The deeds and deaths of the Argive chiefs may relieve the horror and at times excite our sympathy, but we cannot get away from the fact that the story is ultimately one of almost bestial fratricidal strife, darkened by the awful shadow of the woes of the house of Labdacus. The old Greek epic assigned great importance to the character of Amphiaraus[548] persuaded by his false wife, Eriphyla, to go forth on the enterprise that should be his doom; it has even been suggested that he formed the central character of the poem. If this suggestion be true—and its truth is exceedingly doubtful—we are confronted with what was in reality only a false shift, the diversion of the interest from the main issues of the story to a side issue. TheIliadcannot be quoted in his defence; there we have an episode of a ten years' siege, which in itself possesses genuine unity and interest. But the Theban epic comprises the whole story of the expedition of the seven chieftains, and it is idle to make Amphiaraus the central figure. In any case the prominence given to the fortunes of the house of Labdacus by the great Greek dramatists, and the genius with which they brought out the genuinely dramatic issues of the legend, had made it impossible for after-comers to take any save the Labdacidae for the chief actors in their story. And so from Antimachus onward Polynices and Eteocles are the tragic figures of the epic.
To give unity to this story all our attention must be concentrated on Thebes. The enlistment of Adrastus in the cause of Polynices must be described, and following this the gathering of the hosts of Argos. But when once the Argive demands are rejected by Thebes, the poet's chief aim must be to get his army to Thebes with all speed, and set it in battle array against the enemy. Once at Thebes, there is plenty of room for tragic power and stirring narrative. First comes the ineffectual attempt of Jocasta to reconcile her scarce human sons; then comes the battle, with the gradual overthrow of the chieftains of Argos, the turning of the scale of battle in favour of Thebes by the sacrifice of Menoeceus, and last the crowning combat between the brothers. There, from the artistic standpoint, the story finds its ending. It could never have been other than forbidding, but it need not have lacked power. Unfortunately, precedent did not allow the story to end there. The Thebans forbid burial to the Argive dead; Antigone transgresses the edict by burying her brother Polynices, and finds death the reward of her piety; Theseus and the Athenians come to Adrastus' aid, defeat the Thebans, and bury the Argive dead, while as a sop to Argive feeling they are promised their revenge in after years, when the children of the dead have grown to man's estate. If it were felt that the deadly struggle between the two brothers closed the epic on a note of unrelieved gloom and horror, there was perhaps something to be said for introducing the story of Antigone's self-sacrifice, and closing on a note of tragic beauty. Unhappily, the story of Antigone involved the introduction of material sufficient for one, if not two fresh epics in the legend of the Athenian War and the triumphant return of Argos to the conflict. Antimachus[549] fell into the snare. His vastThebaistold the whole story from the arrival of Polynices at Argos to the victory of the Epigoni. Nor was he content with this alone, but must needs clog the action of his poem with long descriptions of the gathering of the host at Argos, and of their adventures on the march to Thebes. And so it came about that he consumed twenty-four books in getting his heroes to Thebes!
The precedent of Antimachus proved fatal to Statius. He did not, it is true, run to such prolixity as his Greek predecessor; he eliminated the legend of the Epigoni altogether, only alluding to it once in vague and general terms; he succeeded in getting the story, down to the burial of the Argive dead, within the compass of twelve books of not inordinate length. But it is possible to be prolix without being an Antimachus, and the prolixity of Statius is quite sufficient. The Argives do not reach Thebes till half-way through the seventh book,[550] the brothers do not meet till half-way through the eleventh book. The result is that the compression of events in the last 300 lines of the eleventh book and in the last book is almost grotesque; for these 1,100 lines contain the death of Jocasta, the banishment of Oedipus, the flight of the Argives, the prohibition to bury the Argive dead, the arrival of the wives of the vanquished, the devotion of Antigone and Argia, the wife of Polynices, their detection and sentencing to death, the arrival of the Athenians under Theseus, the defeat and death of Creon, and the burial of the fallen. The effect is disastrous. As we have seen, this appendix to the main story of the feud between the brothers cannot form a satisfactory conclusion to the story. Treated with the perfunctory compression of Statius, it becomes flat and ineffective; even the reader who finds Statius at his best attractive is tempted to throw down theThebaisin disgust.
It is perhaps in his concluding scenes that we see Statius at his worst, but his capacity for irrelevance and digression is an almost equally serious defect. That he should use the conventional supernatural machinery is natural and permissible, though tedious to the modern reader, who finds it hard to sympathize with outworn literary conventions. But there are few epics where divine intervention is carried to a greater extent than in theThebais.[551] And not content with the intervention of the usual gods and furies, on two occasions Statius brings down frigid abstractions from the skies in the shape of Virtus[552] and Pietas.[553] Again, while auguries and prophecies play a legitimate part in such a work, nothing can justify, and only the passion of the Silver Age for the supernatural can explain, the protraction of the scenes of augury at Thebes and Argos to 114 and 239 lines respectively. Equally disproportionate are the catalogues of the Argive and the Theban armies, making between them close on 400 lines.[554] Nor is imitation of Vergil the slightest justification for introducing a night-raid in which Hopleus and Dymas are but pale reflections of Nisus and Euryalus,[555] for expending 921 lines over the description of the funeral rites and games in honour of the infant Opheltes,[556] or putting the irrelevant history of the heroism of Coroebus in the mouth of Adrastus, merely that it may form a parallel to the tale of Hercules and Cacus told by Evander.[557] Worst of all is the enormous digression,[558] consuming no less than 481 lines, where Hypsipyle narrates the story of the Lemnian massacre. And yet this is hardly more than a digression in the midst of a digression. The Argive army are marching on Thebes. Bacchus, desirous to save his native town, causes a drought in the Peloponnese. The Argives, on the verge of death, and maddened with thirst, come upon Hypsipyle, the nurse of Opheltes, the son of Lycurgus, King of Nemea. Hypsipyle leaves her charge to show them the stream of Langia, which alone has been unaffected by the drought, and so saves the Argive host. She then at enormous length narrates to Adrastus the story of her life, how she was daughter of Thoas, King of Lemnos, and how, when the women of Lesbos slew their mankind, she alone proved false to their hideous compact, and saved her father. After describing the arrival of the Argonauts at Lemnos, and her amour with Jason, to whom she bore two sons, she tells how she was banished from Lesbos on the discovery that Thoas, her father, still lived, how she was captured by pirates, and twenty long years since sold into slavery to Lycurgus. This prodigious narration finished, it is discovered that a serpent sacred to Jupiter has killed Opheltes. Lycurgus, hearing the news, would have slain Hypsipyle, but she is protected by the Argives whom she has saved. Then follows the burial of Opheltes—henceforth known as Archemorus—and his funeral games.
Now it is not improbable that the story of Opheltes and Hypsipyle occurred in the old cyclic poem.[559] But that scarcely justifies Statius in devoting the whole of the fifth and sixth books and some 200 lines of the fourth to the description of an episode so alien to the main interest of the poem. But if we cannot justify these copious digressions and irrelevances we can explain them. TheThebaiswas written primarily for recitation; many of these episodes which are hopelessly superfluous to the real story are admirably designed for the purpose of recitation. The truth is that Statius had many qualifications for the writing ofepyllia, few for writing epic on a large scale. He has therefore sacrificed the whole to its parts, and relies on brilliance of description to catch the ear of an audience, rather than on sustained epic dignity and ordered development of his story. But although he cannot give real unity to his epic, he succeeds, by dint of his astonishing fluency and his mastery over his instrument, in giving a specious appearance of unity. The sutures of his story are well disguised and his inconsistencies of no serious importance. He fails as an epic writer, but he fails gracefully.
It is, however, possible for an epic to be structurally ineffective and yet possess high poetic merit. Statius' episodes do not cohere; how far have they any splendour in their isolation? The answer to the question must be on the whole unfavourable. The reasons for this are diverse. In the first place the characters for the most part fail to live. Statius can give us a vivid impression of the outward semblance of a man; we see Parthenopaeus and Atys, we see Jocasta and Antigone, we see the struggle of Eteocles and Polynices vividly enough. But we see them as strangers, standing out, it is true, from the crowd in which they move, but still wholly unknown to us. We cannot differentiate Polynices and Eteocles save that the latter, from the very situation in which he finds himself, is necessarily the more odious of the two; Polynices would have shown himself the same, had the fall of the lot given him the first year of kingship. Jocasta and Antigone, Creon and Menoeceus, Hypsipyle and Lycurgus, play their parts correctly enough, but they do not live, nor people our brain with moving images. We are told that they behaved in such and such a way under such and such circumstances; we are told, and admit, that such conduct implies certain moral qualities, but Statius does not make us feel that his characters possess such qualities. The reason for this lies partly in the fact that they all speak the same brilliant rhetoric,[560] partly in the fact that Statius lacks the direct sincerity of diction that is required for the expression of strong and poignant emotion. Anger he can depict; anger suffers less than other emotions from rhetoric. Hence it is that he has succeeded in drawing the character of Tydeus, whose brutality is redeemed from hideousness by the fact that it is based on the most splendid physical courage, and fired by strong loyalty to his comrade and sometime foe Polynices. His accents ring true. When he has gone to Thebes to plead Polynices' cause, and his demands have been angrily refused by Eteocles, who concludes by saying (ii. 449),
nec ipsi, si modo notus amor meritique est gratia, patres reddere regna sinent,
Nor will the fathers of the city, if they but know the loveI bear them or if they have aught of gratitude, allow me togive back the kingship.
Tydeus will hear no more, but breaks in with a cry of fury (ii. 452):
'reddes,' ingeminat 'reddes; non si te ferreus agger ambiat aut triplices alio tibi carmine muros Amphion auditus agat, nil tela nec ignes obstiterint, quin ausa luas nostrisque sub armis captivo moribundus humum diademate pulses. tu merito; ast horum miseret, quos sanguine viles coniugibus natisque infanda ad proelia raptos proicis excidio, bone rex. o quanta Cithaeron funera sanguineusque vadis, Ismene, rotabis! haec pietas, haec magna fides! nec crimina gentis mira equidem duco: sic primus sanguinis auctor incestique patrum thalami; sed fallit origo: Oedipodis tu solus eras, haec praemia morum ac sceleris, violente, feres! nos poscimus annum; sed moror.' haec audax etiamnum in limine retro vociferans iam tunc impulsa per agmina praeceps evolat.
'Thou shalt give it back,' he cries, 'thou shalt give it back. Though thou wert girdled with a wall of bronze, or Amphion's voice be heard and with a new song raise triple bulwarks about thee; fire and sword should not save thee from the doom of thy daring, and, struck down by our swords, thy diadem should smite the ground as thou fallest dying, our captive. Thus shouldstthouhave thy desert; buttheseI pity, whose blood thou ratest lightly, and whom thou snatchest from their children and their wives to give them over to death, thou virtuous king. What vast slaughter, Cithaeron, and thou, Ismenus, shalt thou see whirl down thy blood-stained shallows. This is thy piety, this thy true faith! nor marvel I at the crimes of such a race: 'twas for this that thou hadst such an author of thy being, for this thy father's marriage-bed was stained with incest. But thou art deceived as to thine own birth and thy brother's; thou alone wast begotten of Oedipus, that shall be the reward for thy nature and thy crime, fierce man. We ask but for a year! But I tarry over long.' These words he shouted back at him while he still lingered on the threshold; then headlong burst through the crowd of foemen and sped away.
As he is here, so is he always, unwavering in decision, prompt of speech and of action. Caught in ambush, ill-armed and solitary, by the treacherous Thebans, as he returns from his futile embassy, he never hesitates; he seizes the one point of vantage, crushes his foes, and when he speaks, speaks briefly and to the point. He spares the last of his fifty assailants and sends him back to Thebes with a message of defiance, brief, natural, and manly (ii. 697):
quisquis es Aonidum, quem crastina munere nostro manibus exemptum mediis Aurora videbit, haec iubeo perferre duci: cinge aggere portas, tela nova, fragiles aevo circum inspice muros, praecipue stipare viros densasque memento multiplicare acies! fumantem hunc aspice late ense meo campum: tales in bella venimus.
Whoe'er thou art of the Aonides, whom to-morrow's dawn shall see saved from the world of the dead by my boon, I bid thee bear this message to thy chief: 'Raise mounds about the gates, forge new weapons, look to your walls that crumble with years, and above all be mindful to marshal thick and multiply thine hosts! Behold this plain smoking with the work of my sword. Such men are we when we enter the field of battle.'
On his return to Argos he bursts impetuously into the palace, crying fiercely for war.[561] When Lycurgus would slay Hypsipyle for her neglect of her nursling, he saves her.[562] She has preserved the Argive army, and Tydeus, if he never forgives an enemy, never forgets a friend. He alone defeats the entreaties of Jocasta[563] and launches the hosts of Argos into battle; and when his own doom is come, he dies as he had lived,impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis; he has no thought for himself; he cares nought for due burial (viii. 736):
non ossa precor referantur ut Argos Aetolumve larem; nec enim mihi cura supremi funeris: odi artus fragilemque hunc corporis usum, desertorem animi.
I ask not that my bones be borne home to Argos or Aetolia; I care not for my last rites of funeral; I hate these limbs and this frail tenement, my body, that fails my spirit in its hour of need.
His one thought is for vengeance on the dead body of the man who has slain him[564] and for the victory of his comrades in arms.
Only one other of the heroes has any real existence, the prophet Amphiaraus. Statius does not give him the prominence that he held in the original epic, and misses a noble opportunity by almost ignoring the dramatic story of Eriphyla and the necklace that won her to persuade her husband to go forth to certain death. But the heroic warrior priest of Apollo, who knows his doom and yet faces it fearlessly, could not fail to be a picturesque figure, and at least in the hour of his death Statius has done him full justice. Apollo, disguised as a mortal, mounts the chariot of Amphiaraus and drives him through the midst of the battle, dealing destruction on this side and that (vii. 770):
tandem se famulo summum confessus Apollo 'utere luce tua longamque' ait, 'indue famam, dum tibi me iunctum mors inrevocata veretur. vincimur: immites scis nulla revolvere Parcas stamina; vade, diu populis promissa voluptas Elysiis, certe non perpessure Creontis imperia aut vetito nudus iaciture sepulcro.' ille refert contra, et paulum respirat ab armis: 'olim te, Cirrhaee pater, peritura sedentem ad iuga (quis tantus miseris honor?) axe trementi sensimus; instantes quonam usque morabere manes? audio iam rapidae cursum Stygis atraque Ditis flumina tergeminosque mali custodis hiatus. accipe commissum capiti decus, accipe laurus, quas Erebo deferre nefas. nunc voce suprema, si qua recessuro debetur gratia vati, deceptum tibi, Phoebe, larem poenasque nefandae coniugis et pulchrum nati commendo furorem.' desiluit maerens lacrimasque avertit Apollo.
At length Apollo revealed himself to his servant. 'Use,' he said, 'the light of life that is left thee and win an age of fame while thy doom still unrepealed shrinks back in awe of me. The foemen conquer: thou knowest the cruel fates never unravel the threads they weave: go forward, thou, the promised darling of the peoples of Elysium; for surely thou shalt ne'er endure the tyranny of Creon, or lie naked, denied a grave.' He answered, pausing awhile from the fray: 'Long since, lord of Cirrha, the trembling axle told me that 'twas thou sat'st by my doomed steeds. Why honourest thou a wretched mortal thus? How long wilt thou delay the advancing dead? Even now I hear the course of headlong Styx, and the dark streams of death, and the triple barking of the accursed guard of hell. Take now thine honours bound about my brow, take now the laurel crown I may not bear down unto Erebus: now with my last utterance, if aught of thanks thou owest thy seer that now must pass away, to thee I trust my wronged hearth, the doom of my accursed wife, and the noble madness of my son (Alcmaeon).' Apollo leapt from the car in grief and strove to hide his tears.
An earthquake shakes the plain; the warriors shrink from battle in terror at the thunder from under-ground; when (816)—
ecce alte praeceps humus ore profundo dissilit, inque vicem timuerunt sidera et umbrae. illum ingens haurit specus et transire parantes mergit equos; non arma manu, non frena remisit: sicut erat, rectos defert in Tartara currus respexitque cadens caelum campumque coire ingemuit, donec levior distantia rursus miscuit arva tremor lucemque exclusit Averno.
Lo! the earth gaped sheer and deep with vast abyss, and the stars of heaven and the shades of the dead trembled with one accord: a vast chasm drew him down and swallowed his steeds as they made ready to leap the gulf: he loosed not the grip on rein or spear, but, as he was, carried his car steadfast to Tartarus, and, as he fell, gazed up to heaven and groaned to see the plain close above him, till a lighter shock once more united the gaping fields and shut out the light from hell.
Here we see Statius at his highest level, whether in point of metre, diction, or poetic imagination.
Of the other characters there is little to be said. For all the wealth of detail that Statius has lavished on them, they are featureless. Adrastus is a colourless and respectable old king, strongly reminiscent of Latinus. Capaneus and Hippomedon are terrific warriors of gigantic stature and truculent speech, but they are wholly uninteresting. Argia and Jocasta are too rhetorical, Antigone too slight a figure to be really pathetic; Oedipus can do little save curse, which he does with some rhetorical vigour; but the gift of cursing hardly makes a character. Parthenopaeus, however, is a pathetic figure; he is an Arcadian, the son of Atalanta, a mere boy whom a romantic ambition has hurried into war ere his years were ripe for it. His dying speech is touching, though it errs on the side of triviality and mere prettiness (ix. 877):
at puer infusus sociis in devia campi tollitur (heu simplex aetas!) moriensque iacentem flebat equum; cecidit laxata casside vultus, aegraque per trepidos exspirat gratia visus, * * * * * ibat purpureus niveo de pectore sanguis. tandem haec singultu verba incidente profatur: 'labimur, i, miseram, Dorceu, solare parentem. illa quidem, si vera ferunt praesagia curae, aut somno iam triste nefas aut omine vidit. tu tamen arte pia trepidam suspende diuque decipito; neu tu subitus neve arma tenenti veneris, et tandem, cum iam cogere fateri, dic: "Merui, genetrix, poenas invita capesse; arma puer rapui, nec te retinente quievi, nec tibi sollicitae tandem inter bella peperci. vive igitur potiusque animis irascere nostris, et iam pone metus. frustra de colle Lycaei anxia prospectas, si quis per nubila longe aut sonus aut nostro sublatus ab agmine pulvis: frigidus et nuda iaceo tellure, nec usquam tu prope, quae vultus efflantiaque ora teneres. hunc tamen, orba parens, crinem"—dextraque secandum praebuit—"hunc toto capies pro corpore crinem, comere quem frustra me dedignante solebas. huic dabis exsequias, atque inter iusta memento, ne quis inexpertis hebetet mea tela lacertis dilectosque canes ullis agat amplius antris. haec autem primis arma infelicia castris ure, vel ingratae crimen suspende Dianae."'
But the boy fell into his comrades' arms and they bore him to a place apart. Alas for his tender years! As he died, he wept for his fallen horse: his face drooped as they unbound his helmet, and a fading grace passed faintly o'er his quivering visage….
The purple blood flowed from his breast of snow. At length he spake these words through sobs that checked his utterance: 'My life is falling from me; go, Dorceus, comfort my unhappy mother: she indeed, if care and sorrow can give foreknowledge, has seen my woeful fate in dreams or through some omen; yet do thou with loving art keep her terrors in suspense and long hold back the truth; and come not upon her suddenly, nor when she hath a weapon in her hands; but when at last the truth must out, say: "Mother, I deserved my doom; I am punished, though my punishment break thy heart. I rushed to arms too young, and abode not at home when thou wouldst restrain me: nor had I any pity for thine anguish in the day of battle. Live on then, and keep thine anger for my headstrong courage and fear no more for me. In vain thou gazest from the Lycaean height, if any sound perchance may be borne from far to thine ear through the clouds, or thine eye have sight of the dust raised by our homeward march. I lie cold upon the bare earth, and thou art nowhere nigh to hold my head as my lips breathe farewell. Yet, childless mother, take this lock of hair"— and in his right hand he stretched it out to be cut away—"take this poor lock in place of my whole body, this lock of that hair which thou didst tire in my despite. To it shalt thou give due burial and remember this also as my due; let no man blunt my spears with unskilful cast, nor any more drive the hounds I loved through any caverned glen. But this mine armour, whose first battle hath brought disaster, burn thou, or hang it to be a reproach to Dian's ingratitude."'
When we have said that Parthenopaeus is almost too young to have been accepted as a leader, or have performed the feats of war assigned to him, we have said all that can be said against this beautiful speech. Parthenopaeus is for theThebaiswhat Camilla is for theAeneid, though he presents at times hints both of Pallas and Euryalus. But he is little more than a child, and fails to carry the conviction or awaken the deep emotion excited by the Amazon of Vergil.[565]
Statius then, with a few striking exceptions, fails in his portrayal of life and character. On the whole—one says it with reluctance in view of his brilliant variety, his boundless invention, his wealth of imagery—the same is true of his descriptions. The picture is too crowded; he has not the unerring eye for the relevant or salient points of a scene. Skilful and faithful touches abound, but, as in the case of certain pre-Raphaelite pictures, extreme attention to detail causes him to miss the full scenic effect. He is not sufficiently the impressionist; he cannot suggest—a point in which he presents a strong contrast to Valerius Flaccus. And too many of his incidents, in spite of ingenious variation of detail, are but echoes of Vergil. The foot-race and the archery contest at the funeral games of Archemorus, together with the episode of Dymas and Hopleus,[566] to which we have already referred, are perhaps the most marked examples of this unfortunate characteristic. We are continually saying to ourselves as we read theThebais, 'All this has been before!' We weary at times of the echoes of Homer in Vergil, and the combats that stirred us in theIliadmake us drowsy in theAeneid. Homer knew what fighting was from personal experience, or at least from being in touch with warriors who had killed their man. Vergil had come no nearer these things than 'in the pages of a book '. Statius is yet one remove further from the truth than Vergil. He is tied hand and foot by his intimate acquaintance with previous poetic literature. If he is less the victim of the schools of rhetoric than many post-Augustan writers, he is more than most the victim of the poetic training of the schools. But with all these faults there are passages which surprise us by their effectiveness. It would be hard to imagine anything more vigorous and exciting than the fight of Tydeus ambushed by his fifty foes. The opening passage is splendidly successful in creating the requisite atmosphere (ii. 527):
coeperat umenti Phoebum subtexere palla Nox et caeruleam terris infuderat umbram. ille propinquabat silvis et ab aggere celso scuta virum galeasque videt rutilare comantes, qua laxant rami nemus adversaque sub umbra flammeus aeratis lunae tremor errat in armis. obstipuit visis, ibat tamen, horrida tantum spicula et inclusum capulo tenus admovet ensem. ac prior unde, viri, quidve occultatis in armis?' non humili terrore rogat. nec reddita contra vox, fidamque negant suspecta silentia pacem.
Night began to shroud Phoebus with her humid pall and shed her blue darkness o'er the earth. He drew nigh the forest, and from a high knoll espied the gleam of warriors' shields and plumed helmets, where the boughs of the wood left a space, and in the shadow before him the quivering fire of the moonbeam played o'er their brazen armour. Dumbstruck at what he saw, he yet pursued his way, only he made ready for the fight his bristling javelins and the sword sheathed to its hilt. He was the first to speak: 'Whence come ye?' he asked, in fear, yet haughty still. 'And why hide ye thus armoured for the fray?' There came no answer, and their ominous silence told him no peace nor loyalty was there.
The fight that follows, though it occupies more than 160 lines, is intensely rapid and vigorous; indeed it is the one genuinely exciting combat in Latin epic, and forms a refreshing contrast to the pseudo-Homeric or pseudo-Vergilian combats before the walls of Thebes. In no other portion of theThebaisdoes Statius attain to such success, with the exception of the passage already quoted descriptive of the death of Amphiaraus. But there are other passages of sustained merit, such as the vigorous description of the struggle of Hippomedon with the waters of Ismenus and Asopus.[5671] While it is not particularly interesting to those acquainted with the corresponding passage in theIliad, it would be unjust to deny the gifts of vigour and invention to the Latin poet's imitation.
It is, however, rather in smaller and more minute pictures that Statius as a rule excels. The picture of the baby Opheltes left by his nurse is pretty enough (iv. 787):
at puer in gremio vernae telluris et alto gramine nunc faciles sternit procursibus herbas in vultum nitens, caram modo lactis egeno nutricem plangore ciens iterumque renidens et teneris meditans verba inluctantia labris miratur nemorum strepitus aut obvia carpit aut patulo trahit ore diem nemorisque malorum inscius et vitae multum securus inerrat.
But the child, lying face downward in the bosom of the vernal earth, now as he crawls in the deep herbage lays low the yielding grass; now cries for his loved nurse athirst for milk, and then, all smiles again, with infant lips frames words in stumbling speech, marvels at the sounds of the woods, gathers what lies before him, or open-mouthed drinks in the day; and knowing naught of the dangers of the woods, with ne'er a care in life, roams here and there.
Fine, too, in a different way is the sinister picture of Eteocles left sole king in Thebes (i. 165):
quis tunc tibi, saeve, quis fuit ille dies, vacua cum solus in aula respiceres ius omne tuum cunctosque minores et nusquam par stare caput?
Ah! what a day was that for thee, fierce heart, when, sitting alone amid thy courtiers, thy brother gone from thee, thou sawest thyself enthroned above all men, with all things in thy power, without a peer.
Less poetical, but scarcely less effective, is the description of the compact between the brothers (i. 138):
alterni placuit sub legibus anni exsilio mutare ducem. sic iure maligno fortunam transire iubent, ut sceptra tenentem foedere praecipiti semper novus angeret heres. haec inter fratres pietas erat, haec mora pugnae sola nec in regem perduratura secundum.
It was resolved that in alternate years the king should quit his throne for exile. Thus with baneful ordinance they bade fortune pass from one to the other, that he who held the sceptre on these brief terms should ever be vexed by the thought of his successor's coming. Such was the brothers' love, such the sole bond that kept them from conflict, a bond that should not last till the kingship changed.
But far beyond all other portraits in Statius is the description of Jocasta as she approaches the Argive camp on her mission of reconciliation (vii. 474):
ecce truces oculos sordentibus obsita canis exsangues Iocasta genas et bracchia planctu nigra ferens ramumque oleae cum velleris atri nexibus, Eumenidum velut antiquissima, portis egreditur magna cum maiestate malorum.
Lo! Jocasta, her white hair streaming unkempt over her wild eyes, her cheeks all pale, her arms bruised by the beating of her anguished hands, bearing an olive-branch hung with black wool, came forth from the gates in semblance like to the eldest of the Eumenides, in all the majesty of her many sorrows.
In this last line we have one of the very few lines in Statius that attain to real grandeur. In the lack of such lines, and in the lack of real breadth of treatment lies Statius' chief defect as a narrator. All that dexterity can do he does; but he lacks the supreme gifts, the selective eye and the penetrating imagination of the great poet.
Of his actual diction and ornament little need be said. Without being precisely straightforward, he is not, as a rule, obscure. But his language gradually produces a feeling of oppression. He can be read in short passages without this feeling; the moment, however, the reader takes his verse in considerable quantities, the continued, though only slight, over-elaboration of the work produces a feeling of strain. Throughout there runs a vein of artificiality which ultimately gives the impression of insincerity. He can turn out phrases of the utmost nicety. Nothing can be more neatly turned than the description of the feelings of Antigone and Ismene on the outbreak of the war (viii. 614):
nutat utroque timor, quemnam hoc certamine victum, quem vicisse velint: tacite praeponderat exsul;
Their fears incline this way and that: whom would they have the conqueror in the strife, whom the vanquished? All unconfessed the exile has their prayers.
or than the line describing the parting of the Lemnian women from the Argonauts, their second husbands (v. 478):
heu iterum gemitus, iterumque novissima nox est.
Alas! once more the hour of lamentation is near, once more is come the last night of wedded sleep.
But this neatness often degenerates into preciosity,bellator campusmeans a field suitable for battle (viii. 377). Nisus, the king of Megara, with the talismanic purple lock, becomes asenex purpureus(i. 334); an embrace is described by the wordsalterna pectora mutant(v. 722); a woman nearing her time is oneiustos cuius pulsantia menses vota tument(v. 115). We have already noted a similar tendency in Valerius Flaccus; such phrase-making is not a badge of any one poet, it is a sign of the times. In the case of Statius there is perhaps less obscurity and less positive extravagance than in any of his contemporaries, but whether as regards description or phrase-making, there is always a suspicion of his work being pitched—if the phrase is permissible—a tone too high. This is, perhaps, particularly noticeable in his similes. They are very numerous, and he has obviously expended great trouble over them. But, with very few exceptions, they are failures. The cause lies mainly in their lack of variety. There are, for instance, no less than sixteen similes drawn from bulls, twelve from lions, six from tigers.[568] None of these similes show any close observance of nature, and in any case the poetic interest of bulls, lions, and tigers is far from inexhaustible. It is less reprehensible that twenty similes should be drawn from storms, which have a more cogent interest and greater picturesque value. But even here Statius has overshot the mark. This lack of variety testifies to a real dearth of poetic imagination, and this failing is noticeable also in the execution. There is rarely a simile containing anything that awakens either imagination, emotion, or thought. Still, to give Statius his due, thereareexceptions, such as the simile comparing Parthenopaeus, seen in all his beauty among his comrades, to the reflections of the evening star outshining the reflections of the lesser stars in the waveless sea (vi. 578):
sic ubi tranquillo perlucent sidera ponto vibraturque fretis caeli stellantis imago, omnia clara nitent, sed clarior omnia supra Hesperus exsertat radios, quantusque per altum aethera, caeruleis tantus monstratur in undis.
So when the stars are glassed in the tranquil deep and the reflection of the starry sky quivers in the waves, all the stars shine clear, but clearer than all doth Hesperus send forth his rays; and as he gleams in the high heavens, even so bright do the blue waters show him forth.
The comparison is. a little strained and far-fetched. The reflection of stars in the sea is not quite so noticeable or impressive as Statius would have us believe. But there is real beauty both in the conception and the execution of the simile. Of more indisputable excellence is the comparison in the eleventh book (443), where Adrastus, flying from Thebes in humiliation and defeat, is likened to Pluto, when he first entered on his kingdom of the underworld, his lordship over the strengthless dead—
qualis demissus curru laevae post praemia sortis umbrarum custos mundique novissimus heres palluit, amisso veniens in Tartara caelo.
Even as the warden of the shades, the third heir of the world, when he entered on the realm that the unkind lot had given him, leapt from his car and turned pale, for heaven was lost and he was at the gate of hell.
The picture is Miltonic, and Pluto is for a brief moment almost an anticipation of the Satan ofParadise Lost.
The metre, like that of Valerius Flaccus, draws its primary inspiration from Vergil, but has been strongly influenced by theMetamorphosesof Ovid. There are fewer elisions in Statius than in Vergil, and more dactyls.[569] He is, however, less dactylic than Valerius Flaccus and Ovid. In his management of pauses he is far more successful than any epic writer, with the exception of Vergil. As a result, he is far less monotonous than Ovid, Lucan, or Valerius. The one criticism that can be levelled against him is that his verse, while possessing rapidity and vigour, is not sufficiently adapted to the varying emotions that his story demands, and that it shows a consequent lack of nobility and stateliness. For theSilvaehis metre is admirably adapted. It is light and almost sprightly, and the poet can let himself go. He was not blind to the requirements of the epic metre even if he did not satisfy them, and in his lighter verse there is a notable increase of fluency and ease.
TheThebaisis a work whose value it is difficult to estimate. Its undeniable merits are never quite such that we can accord it whole-hearted praise; its cleverness commands our wonder, while its defects are not such as to justify a sweeping condemnation. But it must be remembered that epic must be very good if it is to avoid failure, and it is probable that there are few works on which such skill and labour have been expended without any proportionate success. An attempt has been made in the preceding pages to indicate the main reasons for the failure of theThebais. One more reason may perhaps be added here. Over and above the poet's lack of originality and the highest poetic imagination, over and above his distracting echoes and his artificiality, there is a lack of moral fire and insight about the poem. Statius gives us but a surface view of life. He had never plumbed the depths of human passion nor realized anything of the mystery of the world. His reader never derives from him the consciousness, that he so often derives from Vergil, of a 'deep beyond the deep, and a height beyond the height'. He has neither the virtues of the mystic nor of the realist. Ultimately, life is for him a pageant with intervals for sentimental threnodies and rhetorical declamation.
The same qualities characterize theAchilleisand still more theSilvae. TheAchilleiswas to have comprised the whole life of Achilles. Only the first book and 167 lines of the second were composed. They tell how Thetis endeavoured to withhold Achilles from the Trojan War by disguising him as a girl and sending him to Scyros, how he became the lover of Deidamia, the king's daughter, was discovered by the wiles of Ulysses, and set forth on the expedition to Troy. The fragment is not unpleasant reading, but contains little that is noteworthy.[570] The style is simpler, less precious, and less rhetorical than that of theThebais. But it lacks the vigour as well as many of the faults of the earlier poem. There is nothing to make us regret that the poet died before its completion; there is something to be thankful for in the fact that he did not live to challenge direct comparison with Homer.
TheSilvae, on the other hand, is a work of considerable interest. The meaning of the wordsilva, in the literary sense, is 'raw material' or 'rough draft'. It then came to be used to mean a work composed at high speed on the spur of the moment, differing in fact but little from an improvisation.[571] That these poems correspond to this definition will be seen from Statius' preface to book i: 'hos libellos, qui mihi subito calore et quadam festinandi voluptate fluxerunt…. Nullum ex illis biduo longius tractum, quaedam et in singulis diebus effusa.' There are thirty-two poems in all, divided into five books. The fifth is incomplete; and, if we may judge from the unfinished state of its preface, was published after the author's death. The poems are extremely varied in subject, and to a lesser degree in metre, hendecasyllables, alcaics, and sapphics being found as well as hexameters. They comprise poems in praise of the appearance and the achievements of Domitian,[572] consolations to friends and patrons for the loss of relatives or favourite slaves,[573] lamentations of the poet or his friends for the death of dear ones,[574] letters on various subjects,[575] thanksgivings for the safety of friends,[576] and farewells to them on their departure,[577] descriptions of villas and the like built by his acquaintances,[578] an epithalamium,[579] an ode commemorating the birthday of Lucan,[580] the description of a statuette of Hercules,[581] poems on the deaths of a parrot and a lion,[582] and a remarkable invocation to Sleep.[583] One and all, these poems show abnormal cleverness. These slighter subjects were far better suited to the poet's powers. His miniature painting was in place, his sprightly and dexterous handling of the hexameter and the hendecasyllable could be more profitably employed. Yet here, too, his artificiality is a serious blemish, his lamentations for the loss of thepueri delicatiof friends do not, and can hardly be expected to, ring true, and the same blemish affects even the poems where he laments his own loss. Further, the poems addressed to Domitian are fulsome to the verge of nausea;[584] the beauty of the emperor is such that all the great artists of the past would have vied with one another in depicting his features; his eyes are like stars; his equestrian statue is so glorious that at night (i. 1. 95)
cum superis terrena placent, tua turba relicto labetur caelo miscebitque oscula iuxta. ibit in amplexus natus fraterque paterque et soror: una locum cervix dabit omnibus astris.
When heaven takes its joy of earth, thy kin shall leave heaven and glide down to earth and kiss thee face to face. Thy son and sister, thy brother and thy sire, shall come to thy embrace; and about thy sole neck shall all the stars of heaven find a place.
The poem on the emperor's sexless favourite, Earinus, can scarcely be quoted here. Without being definitely coarse, it succeeds in being one of the most disgusting productions in the whole range of literature. The emperor who can accept flattery of such a kind has certainly qualified for assassination. The lighter poems are almost distressingly trivial, and it is but a poor excuse to plead that such triviality was imposed by the artificial social life of the day and the jealous tyranny of Domitian. Moreover, the tendency to preciosity, which was kept in check in theThebaisby the requirements of epic, here has full play. The death of a boy in his fifteenth year is described as follows (ii. 6, 70):
vitae modo cardine adultae nectere temptabat iuvenum pulcherrimus ille cum tribus Eleis unam trieterida lustris.
Come now to the turning-point where boyhood becomes manhood, he, the fairest of youths, was on the point of linking three olympiads (twelve years) with a space of three years.
Writers of elegiac verse are addressed as (i. 2. 250)
'qui nobile gressu extremo fraudatis opus'.
Ye that cheat the noble march of your verse of its last stride.
A new dawn is expressed by an astounding periphrasis (iv. 6. 15):
ab Elysiis prospexit sedibus alter Castor et hesternas risit Tithonia mensas.
Castor in turn looked forth from the halls of Elysium and Tithonus' bride made merry over yesterday's feasts. [Castor and Pollux lived on alternate days.]
There is, in fact, no limit in these poems to Statius' luxuriance in far-fetched and often obscure mythological allusions. In spite, however, of such cardinal defects as these, theSilvaepresent a brilliant though superficial picture of the cultured society of the day and contain much that is pretty, and something that is poetic.[585] Take, for instance, the poem in which the poet writes to console Atedius Melior for the death of his favourite Glaucias, apuer delicatus. The work is hopelessly clever and hopelessly insincere. Statius exaggerates at once the charms of the dead boy and the grief of Atedius and himself. But at the conclusion he works up an old commonplace into a very pretty piece of verse. He has been describing the reception of Glaucias in the underworld (ii. 1. 208):