Of Statius the poet it is harder to form a clear judgement. His masterpiece, the Thebais, 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 Callimachus quamvis 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 the manege, 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. The Iliad cannot 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 vast Thebais told 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 the Thebais in 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 the Thebais.[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. The Thebais was 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 of epyllia, 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 love I bear them or if they have aught of gratitude, allow me to give 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 shouldst thou have thy desert; but these I 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 the Thebais what Camilla is for the Aeneid, 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 the Thebais, 'All this has been before!' We weary at times of the echoes of Homer in Vergil, and the combats that stirred us in the Iliad make us drowsy in the Aeneid. 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 the Thebais does 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 the Iliad, 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 campus means a field suitable for battle (viii. 377). Nisus, the king of Megara, with the talismanic purple lock, becomes a senex purpureus (i. 334); an embrace is described by the words alterna pectora mutant (v. 722); a woman nearing her time is one iustos 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, there are exceptions, 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 of Paradise Lost.

The metre, like that of Valerius Flaccus, draws its primary inspiration from Vergil, but has been strongly influenced by the Metamorphoses of 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 the Silvae his 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.

The Thebais is 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 the Thebais. 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 the Achilleis and still more the Silvae. The Achilleis was 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 the Thebais. 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.

The Silvae, on the other hand, is a work of considerable interest. The meaning of the word silva, 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 the pueri delicati of 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 the Thebais by 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, the Silvae present 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, a puer 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):

hic finis rapto! quin tu iam vulnera sedas et tollis mersum luctu caput? omnia functa aut moritura vides: obeunt noctesque diesque astraque, nee solidis prodest sua machina terris. nam populos, mortale genus, plebisque caducae quis fleat interitus? hos bella, hos aequora poscunt; his amor exitio, furor his et saeva cupido, ut sileam morbos; hos ora rigentia Brumae, illos implacido letalis Sirius igni, hos manet imbrifero pallens Autumnus hiatu. quicquid init ortus, finem timet. ibimus omnes, ibimus: immensis urnam quatit Aeacus ulnis. ast hic quem gemimus, felix hominesque deosque et dubios casus et caecae lubrica vitae effugit, immunis fatis. non ille rogavit, non timuit meruitve mori: nos anxia plebes, nos miseri, quibus unde dies suprema, quis aevi exitus incertum, quibus instet fulmen ab astris, quae nubes fatale sonet.

Such is the rest thy lost darling has won. Come, soothe thine anguish and lift up thy head that droops with woe. Thou seest all things dead or soon to die. Day and night and stars all pass away, nor shall its massive fabric save the world from destruction. As for the tribes of earth, this mortal race, and the death of multitudes all doomed to pass away, why bewail them? Some war, some ocean, demands for its prey: some die of love, others of madness, others of fierce desire, to say naught of pestilence: some winter's freezing breath, others the baleful Sirius' cruel fire, others again pale autumn, gaping with rainy maw, awaits for doom: all that hath birth must tremble before death: we all must go, must go: Aeacus shakes the urn of fate in his vast arms. But this child, whom we bewail, is happy, and has escaped the power of men and gods, the strokes of chance, and the slippery paths of our dark life: fate cannot touch him: he did not ask, nor fear, nor deserve to die. But we poor anxious rabble, we miserable men, know not whence our last day shall come, what shall be the end of life, for whom the thunderbolt shall bring death from the starry sky, nor what cloud shall roar forth our doom.

There is nothing great about such work, but it is a neat and elegant treatment of a familiar theme, while the phrase non ille rogavit, non timuit meruitve mori has a pathos worthy of a better cause.[586] Far more suited, however, to the genius of Statius, with its lack of inspiration, its marvellous polish, and its love of minutiae, are the descriptions of villas, temples, baths, and works of art in which he so frequently indulges. The poem on the statuette of Hercules (ii. 6) is a wonder of cunning craftsmanship, the poems on the baths of Etruscus, the villa of Vopiscus at Tibur, and of Pollius at Surrentum, for all their exaggeration and affectation, reveal a genuine love for the beauties of art and nature. It is true that he shows a preference for nature trimmed by the hand of man, but his pleasure is genuine and its expression often delicate. Who would not delight to live in a house such as Pollius had built at Sorrento (ii. 2. 45)?—

haec domus ortus aspicit et Phoebi tenerum iubar; illa cadentem detinet exactamque negat dimittere lucem, cum iam fessa dies et in aequora montis opaci umbra cadit vitreoque natant praetoria ponto. haec pelagi clamore fremunt, haec tecta sonoros ignorant fluctus terraeque silentia malunt. * * * * * quid mille revolvam culmina visendique vices? sua cuique voluptas atque omni proprium thalamo mare, transque iacentem Nerea diversis servit sua terra fenestris.

One chamber looks to the east and the young beam of Phoebus; one stays him as he falls and will not part with the expiring light, when the day is outworn and the shadow of the dark mount falls athwart the deep, and the great castle swims reflected in the glassy sea. These chambers are full of the sound of ocean, those know not the roaring waves, but rather love the silence of the land.... Why should I recount thy thousand roofs and every varied view? Each has a joy that is its own: each chamber has its own sea, and each several window its own tract of land seen across the sea beneath.

We cannot, perhaps, share his enthusiasm in the minute description that follows of the coloured marbles used in the decoration of the house, and his panegyric of Pollius leaves us cold, but we quit the poem with a pleasant impression of the Bay of Naples and of the poet who loved it so well. It recalls in its way the charming, if over-elaborate and exaggerated, landscapes of the younger Pliny in his letters on the source of the Clitumnus and on his Tuscan and Laurentine villas.[587] But it is in two poems of a very different kind that the Silvae reach their high-water mark. The Genethliacon Lucani, despite its artificial form and the literary conventions with which it is overloaded, reveals a genuine enthusiasm for the dead poet, and is couched in language of the utmost grace and verse of extraordinary melody; the hendecasyllables of Statius lack the poignant vigour of the Catullan hendecasyllables, but they have a music of their own which is scarcely less remarkable.[588] The lament of Calliope for her lost nursling will hold its own with anything of a similar kind produced by the Silver Age (ii 7. 88):

'o saevae nimium gravesque Parcae! o numquam data longa fata summis! cur plus, ardua, casibus patetis? cur saeva vice magna non senescunt? sic natum Nasamonii Tonantis post ortus obitusque fulminatos angusto Babylon premit sepulcro. sic fixum Paridis manu trementis Peliden Thetis horruit cadentem. sic ripis ego murmurantis Hebri non mutum caput Orpheos sequebar sic et tu (rabidi nefas tyranni!) iussus praecipitem subire Lethen, dum pugnas canis arduaque voce das solatia grandibus sepulcris, (o dirum scelus! o scelus!) tacebis.' sic fata est leviterque decidentes abrasit lacrimas nitente plectro.

'Ah! fates severe and all too cruel! O life that for our noblest ne'er is long! Why are earth's loftiest most prone to fall? Why by hard fate do her great ones ne'er grow old? Even so the Nasamonian Thunderer's son like lightning rose, like lightning passed away, and now is laid in a narrow tomb at Babylon. So Thetis shuddered, when the son of Peleus fell transfixed by Paris' coward hand. So I, too, by the banks of murmuring Hebrus followed the head of Orpheus that could not cease from song. So now must thou—out on the mad tyrant's crime!—go down untimely to the wave of Lethe, and while thou singest of war and with lofty strain givest comfort to the sepulchres of the mighty,—O infamy, O monstrous infamy!—art doomed to sudden silence.' So spake she, and with gleaming quill wiped away the tears that gently fell.

But more beautiful as pure poetry, and indeed unique in Latin, is the well-known invocation to Sleep (v. 4):

crimine quo merui iuvenis,[589] placidissime divum, quove errore miser, donis ut solus egerem, Somne, tuis? tacet omne pecus volucresque feraeque et simulant fessos curvata cacumina somnos, nec trucibus fluviis idem sonus; occidit horror aequoris, et terris maria acclinata quiescunt. septima iam rediens Phoebe mihi respicit aegras stare genas; totidem Oetaeae Paphiaeque revisunt lampades et totiens nostros Tithonia questus praeterit et gelido spargit miserata flagello. unde ego sufficiam? non si mihi lumina mille quae sacer alterna tantum statione tenebat Argus et haud umquam vigilabat corpore toto. at nunc heus! aliquis longa sub nocte puellae bracchia nexa tenens ultro te, Somne, repellit: inde veni! nec te totas infundere pennas luminibus compello meis (hoc turba precetur laetior): extremo me tange cacumine virgae (sufficit) aut leviter suspenso poplite transi.

By what crime, O Sleep, most gentle of gods, or by what error, have I, that am young, deserved—woe's me!—that I alone should lack thy blessing? All cattle and birds and beasts of the wild lie silent; the curved mountain ridges seem as though they slept the sleep of weariness, and wild torrents have hushed their roaring. The waves of the deep have fallen and the seas, reclined on earth's bosom, take their rest. Yet now Phoebe returning gazes for the seventh time on my sleepless weary eyes. For the seventh time the lamps of Oeta and Paphos (i.e. Hesperus and Venus) revisit me, for the seventh time Tithonus' bride sweeps over my complaint and all her pity is to touch me with her frosty scourge. How may I find strength to endure? I needs must faint, even had I the thousand eyes which divine Argos kept fixed upon his prey in shifting relays (so only could he wake, nor watched he ever with all his body). But now—woe's me!—another, his arms locked about his love, spurneth thee from him all the long night. Leave him, O Sleep, for me. I bid thee not sweep upon my eyes with all the force of thy fanning pinions. That is the prayer of happier souls than I. Touch me only with the tip of thy wand—that shall suffice—or lightly pass over my head with hovering feet.

Here Statius far surpasses himself. Had all else that he wrote been merely mediocre, this one short poem would have given him a claim on the grateful memory of posterity. The note it strikes is one that has never been heard before in Latin poetry and is never heard again. We have wavered before as to Statius' title to the name of true poet; this should turn the balance in his favour. Great he is not for a moment to be called; Lucan, with all his faults, stands high above him; Valerius Flaccus, aided largely by his happier choice of subject, is in some respects his superior; but for finish, dexterity, and fluency, Statius is unique among the post-Augustans. Just as an actor who has acquired a perfect mastery of all the tricks and technique of the stage may sometimes cheat us into believing him to be a great actor, though in reality neither intellect, presence, nor voice qualify him for such high praise, so it is with Statius. His facility and cunning workmanship hold us amazed, and at times the reader is on the verge of yielding up his saner judgement before such charm. But the revulsion of feeling comes inevitably. Statius had not learned the art of concealing his art. The unreality of his work soon makes itself felt, and his skill becomes in time little better than a weariness and a mockery.



CHAPTER X

SILIUS ITALICUS

Titus Catius Silius Italicus[590] is best known to us as the author of the longest and worst of surviving Roman epics. But by a strange irony of fate we have a fuller knowledge of his life and character than is granted us in the case of any other poet of the Silver Age, with the exception of Seneca and Persius. His social position, his personal character, his cultured and artistic tastes, rather than any merit possessed by his verse, have won him a place in the picture-gallery of Pliny the younger.[591] We would gladly sacrifice the whole of the 'obituary notice' transmitted to us by the kindly garrulity of Pliny, for a few more glimpses into the life of Juvenal, or even of Valerius Flaccus, but the picture is interesting and even attractive, and awakens feelings of a less unfriendly nature than are usually entertained for the plodding poetaster who had the misfortune to write the seventeen books of Punica.

Silius was born in the year 25 or 26 A.D.[592]; of his family and place of birth we know nothing.[593] He first appears in the unpleasing guise of a 'delator' in the reign of Nero, in the last year of whose principate he filled the position of consul (68 A.D.).

In the 'year of the four emperors' (69 A.D.) he is found as the friend and counsellor of Vitellius;[594] his conduct, we are told, was wise and courteous. He subsequently won renown by his admirable administration of the province of Asia, and then retired from the public gaze to the seclusion of a life of study.[595] The amiability and virtue which marked the leisure of his later years wiped out the dark stain that had besmirched his youth. 'Men hastened to salute him and to do him honour. When not engaged in writing, he would pass the day in learned converse with the friends and acquaintances—no mere fortune-hunters—who continually thronged the chambers where he would lie for long hours upon his couch. His verses, which he would sometimes submit to the judgement of the critics by giving recitations, show diligence rather than genius. The increasing infirmities of age led him to forsake Rome for Campania; not even the accession of a new princeps induced him to quit his retirement. It is not less creditable to Caesar to have permitted than to Silius to have ventured on such a freedom. He was a connoisseur even to the verge of extravagance. He had several country houses in the same district, and often abandoned those which he already possessed, if some new house chanced to catch his fancy. He had a large library, and a fine collection of portraits and statues, and was an enthusiastic admirer of works of art which he was not fortunate enough to possess. He kept Vergil's birthday with greater care than his own, especially when he was at Naples, where he would visit the poet's tomb with all the veneration due to the temple of a god.' He died[596] in his Neapolitan villa of self-chosen starvation. His health had failed him. He was afflicted by an incurable tumour, and ran to meet death with a fortitude that nothing could shake. 'His life was happy and prosperous to his last hour; his one sorrow was the death of his younger son; the elder (and better) of his sons, who survives him, has had a distinguished career, and has even reached the consulate.' From Epictetus[597] we gather, what we might infer from the manner of his death, that he was a Stoic. From Martial,[598] who addresses him in the interested language of flattery as the leading orator of his day, and as the maker of immortal verse, we learn that he was the proud possessor of the Tusculan villa of Cicero, and that he actually owned the tomb of the poet whom he loved so well.

Silius' life is more interesting than his verse. Like Lucan, he elected to write historical epic, and in his choice of a subject was undoubtedly wiser than his younger contemporary. For instead of selecting a period so dangerously recent as the civil strife in which the republic perished, he went back to the Second Punic War, to a time sufficiently remote to permit of greater freedom of treatment and to enable him to avoid the peril of unduly republican ecstasies. In making this choice he was in all probability influenced by his reverence for Vergil. He, too, would sing of Rome's rise to greatness, would write a truly national epic on the great theme which Vergil so inimitably foreshadowed in the dying words of the Carthaginian queen, would link the most stirring years of Rome's history with the past, just as Vergil had linked the epic of Rome's founder to the greatness of the years that were to come. Ennius had been before him, but he might well aspire to remodel and develop the rude annalistic work of the earlier poet.[599] The brilliant history of Livy, with its vivid battle-scenes and its sonorous speeches, was a quarry that might provide him with the richest material. Unhappily, less wise than Lucan, he made the fatal mistake of adopting the principles set forth by Eumolpus, the dissolute poet in the novel of Petronius.[600]

The intrusion of the mythological method into historical epic is disastrous. It is barely tolerable in the pseudo-historical epic of Tasso. In the military narrative of Silius it is monstrous and insufferable. His reverence for Vergil led him to control, or attempt to control, every action of the war by divine intervention.

Juno reappears in her old role as the implacable enemy of Rome. It is she that kindles Hannibal's hatred for Rome, causes the outbreak of the war,[601] and, disguised as the lake-god Trasimenus, spurs him on to Rome.[602] It is at her instigation that Anna Perenna kindles him to fresh effort by the news that Fabius Cunctator is no longer in command against him,[603] that Somnus moderates his designs after Cannae.[604] It is Juno that conceals the Carthaginian forces in a cloud at Cannae,[605] and that rescues Hannibal from the fury of Scipio at Zama.[606] Against Juno is arrayed Venus, the protector of the sons of Aeneas. She persuades her husband Vulcan to dry up the Trebia, whose flood threatens the Romans with yet greater disaster than they have already suffered,[607] she unnerves and demoralizes the Punic army by the luxury of Capua.[608] Minerva and Mars play minor parts, the former favouring Carthage, the latter Rome.[609] Nothing is gained by this dreary and superannuated mechanism, while the poem is yet further hampered by the other encumbrances of epic commonplace.

The Thebais of Statius is full of episodes that only find a place because Vergil had borrowed similar episodes from Homer. But the Thebais is a professedly mythological epic, and Statius commands a light touch and brilliant colours. The reader merely groans when the heavy-handed Silius introduces his wondrously engraven shield,[610] his funeral games,[611] his Amazon,[612] his dismal catalogues,[613] his Nekuia.[614] In the latter episode, he even introduces the Vergilian Sibyl of Cumae; it is a redeeming feature that Scipio does not make a 'personally conducted tour' through the nether world; such a direct challenge to the Sixth Aeneid was perhaps impossible for so true a lover of Vergil as Silius. The Homeric method of necromancy is wisely preferred, and the Sibyl reveals the past and future of Rome as the spirits pass before them. But there are no illuminating flashes of imagination; the best feature of the episode is an uninspired and frigid appropriateness. Nothing serves better than the failure of Silius to show at once the daring and the genius of Vergil, when he ransacked the wealth of Homer and

from a greater Greek Borrowed as beautifully as the moon The fire o' the sun.

Apart from these unintelligent plagiarisms and vexatious absurdities, the actual form and composition of the work show some skill. The poet passes from scene to scene, from battle to battle, with ease and assurance in the earlier books. It is only with the widening of the area of conflict that the work loses its connexion. The earlier and less important exploits of the elder Scipios were wisely dismissed in a few words.[615] The poet avoided the mistake of undue scrupulosity in respect of chronology and makes no attempt to pose as a scientific military historian. But it is a serious defect that he should fail to show the significance of the successful 'peninsular campaign' of the younger Scipio. Here, as in the descriptions of the siege of Syracuse, the reader is haunted by the feeling that these great events are regarded as merely episodic. Even the thrilling march of Hasdrubal, ending in the dramatic catastrophe of the Metaurus, is hardly given its full weight. There is more true historical and dramatic appreciation in Horace's

Karthagini iam non ego nuntios mittam superbos: occidit, occidit spes omnis et fortuna nostri nominis Hasdrubale interempto

than in all the ill-proportioned verbiage of Silius. The task of setting forth the course of a conflict that flamed all over the Western Mediterranean world was not easy, and Silius' failure was proportionately great. Nay—if it be not merely the hallucination of a weary reader—he seems to have tired of his task. The first twelve books take us no further than Hannibal's appearance before the walls of Rome, and the war is summarily brought to a close in the last five books, although these, it should be noted, are by no means free from irrelevant matter. The last three books above all are jejune and perfunctory, and it has been suggested that they lack the final revision that the rest of the work had received. Be this as it may, the result of the inadequate treatment of the close of the war is that the reader lays down the poem with no feeling of the greatness of Rome's triumph.

Yet even with these faults of composition, a genuine poet might have wrought a great work from the rough ore of history. The scene is thronged with figures as remarkable and inspiring as history affords. There is the fierce irresistible Hannibal, the sagacious Fabius, the elder Scipios, tragic victims of disaster, the younger Scipio, glorious with the light of victory as the clouds of defeat are rolled away, Hasdrubal hurled to ruin at the supreme crisis of the war, Marcellus the victorious, beleaguered[616] and beleaguerer, the ill-starred Paulus, the Senate of Rome that thanked the fugitive Varro because he had not despaired of the republic,[617] and above all the gigantic figure of Rome herself, unshaken, indomitable, triumphant. These are no dry bones that the breath of the poet alone should make them live. They breathe immortal in the prose of Livy, in the verse of Silius they are vain 'shadows of men foredone'. The Hannibal of Silius is not the dazzling villain of Livy, the incarnation of military daring and 'Punic faith'. Mistaken patriotism does not lead Silius to blacken the character of Rome's great antagonist; he strives to do him justice; he is as true a patriot, as chivalrous[618] a warrior, as any of the Roman leaders. But he does not live; he is merely the stock warrior of epic, and his exploits fail to compel belief.

Fabius, the least romantic, though not the least interesting figure in the war, stands forth more clearly. The prosaic Silius is naturally most successful with his most prosaic hero. The younger Scipio is the embodiment of pietas, an historical Aeneas, without his prototype's most distressing weaknesses, but with all his dullness, and lacking the halo of legend and the splendour of the founder of the race to glorify him. Paulus has the merit of true courage, and his consciousness of his colleague's folly invests him with a certain pathos. He makes the best death of any Silian warrior, and deserves the eulogy passed on him by Hannibal. The rest are lay-figures, with even less individuality and life. Silius failed to depict character. He fails, too, to show any true sense of the political greatness of Rome. The genius of Rome and the genius of Carthage are never confronted or contrasted; the greatness of Rome in defeat, the scenes of Rome agonizing in the grip of unexpected disaster, are never brought home to the reader with the least degree of vividness. The great battles are described at tedious length[619] and rendered ridiculous by the lavish introduction of Homeric single combats. If Silius is rarely bombastic or rendered absurd by the grossness of his exaggeration, he yet fails to see what Lucan saw plainly—that for the author of a military historical epic, it is the issues of the war, big with the fate of generations to come, the temper of the combatants, the character of the chief actors, that are the really interesting elements. Almost alone of Silver Latin poets he shows no real gifts of rhetoric and epigram, no virtuosity of diction, no brilliance of description. We lack the declamation of Lucan, the apostrophes on the issues of the war, the vivid character-sketches of the generals, the political enthusiasm, the thunder of the oratory of general and statesman. The battle-speeches of Livy, whose glow and vigour half atone for their theatricality, have been made use of by Silius, but find only a feeble echo in his lifeless verse. Nothing stands out sharply defined; the epic lacks impetus and has no salient points; outlines are blurred in an unpoetic haze. The history of Tacitus has been described as history 'seen by lightning flashes'. Such should be the history of historical epic. In its stead Silius presents us with a confused welter of archaistic battle, learned allusion, and epic commonplace.

'Aequalis liber est, Cretice, qui malus est,' cries Martial[620] to a friend. The epigram would apply to the Punica. There is scarcely a passage in the whole work that reveals genuine poetic imagination. Silius is free from many of the faults of his contemporaries, the faults that spring from aspirations towards originality. He is content to be an imitator. In his style, as in his composition, Vergil is an obsession. But the echoes are muffled or unmusical. Gifted with ease and fluency and—for his age—comparative lucidity of diction, Silius has no true ear for music, nor true eye for beauty. His verse moves naturally but heavily. He is the most spondaic poet[621] of his age, and the spondaic rhythm is not alleviated by artistic variety of pause or judicious use of elision. Lucan is heavy, but he hits hard and is weighty in the best sense. Silius rolls on lumbering and unperturbed, never rising or falling. He has all the faults of Ovid, and, in spite of his laboured imitation, none of the merits of Vergil. Nothing can kindle him. The most heroic and the most tragic of all the stories of the struggle for the empire of the western world is that of Regulus, the famous captive of Carthage in the first Punic War.[622] The episode is skilfully and naturally introduced. The story is told by an aged veteran of the first Punic War to a descendant of Regulus, who has fled wounded from the rout of Trasimene. Silius succeeds in making one of the noblest stories in history lifeless and dull. The narration opens with the description of a melodramatic struggle between Regulus and a monstrous serpent in Africa, scarcely an harmonious prelude for the simple and solemn climax of the hero's life, his return to his home to fix 'the Senate's wavering will', his departure unmoved to Carthaginian captivity, with the certainty of death and torture before him. Silius treats this tragic episode simply and severely; there is nothing to offend the taste, but there is equally nothing to move the heart; the description is merely dull; it lacks the fire of life and the finer imagination. Here, again, we turn for relief to Horace with his brief but incomparable

atqui sciebat quae sibi barbarus tortor pararet, non aliter tamen dimovit obstantes propinquos et populum reditus morantem quam si clientum longa negotia diiudicata lite relinqueret, tendens Venefranos in agros aut Lacedaemonium Tarentum (iii. 5. 49).

Take the corresponding passage in Silius. Regulus concludes his speech to the Senate as follows (vi. 485):

exposcunt Libyes nobisque dedere haec referenda, pari libeat si pendere bellum foedere et ex aequo geminas conscribere leges. sed mihi sit Stygios ante intravisse penates talia quam videam ferientes pacta Latinos, haec fatus Tyriae sese iam reddidit irae, nec monitus spernente graves fidosque senatu Poenorum dimissa cohors. quae maesta repulsa ac minitans capto patrias properabat ad oras. prosequitur volgus, patres, ac planctibus ingens personat et luctu campus. revocare libebat interdum et iusto raptum retinere dolore.

'The Libyans ask whether you will cease from war on equal terms and draw up a treaty wherein each side keeps its own. They bid me bring back your reply. But may I sooner enter the gates of hell than see the Latins make such a compact!' He spake, and yielded himself back once more to the mercies of the Tyrian's hate: the Senate spurned not his words of weight, his loyal warning. The Punic embassy was dismissed. Cast down at their rebuff, and threatening their captive, they hastened homeward to their native shores. The people, the fathers, follow them: the whole vast plain resounds with weeping and beating of breasts, and ever and again they strove to recall the hero and with just grief to retain him as he was snatched away from them.

Criticism is needless. One passage is in the grand style, the other is not; one is mere verse-making, the other the purest poetry. Silius has nothing of curiosa felicitas or even of the more common gift of vague sensuous charm. Even on such hackneyed themes as the choice of Hercules, with Scipio playing the part of Hercules, he fails to rise to the conventional prettiness of which even a Calpurnius Siculus would have been capable. Virtue and pleasure are rendered equally unattractive, and we pity Scipio for having to make the choice. With the other poets of the age it is easy to select passages to illustrate their characteristic merits and defects. But from the dull monotony of Silius it is hard to choose. He does not read well even in selections. Apart from the general absurdity of the conception of the poem he is rarely grotesque. His taste is chastened by his love of Vergil, and the absence of genuine rhetorical power saves him from dangerous exuberance. The tricks of rhetoric are there, but the edge of his wit is dull, and he has no speed nor energy. For similar reasons he never attains sublimity. There are faint traces of the Romana gravitas in lines such as

iamque tibi veniet tempus quo maxima rerum nobilior sit Roma mails (iii. 584).

And the time shall come when Rome, the greatest thing in all the world, shall be yet more ennobled by her woes.

The idea that the trials of Rome shall be as a 'refiner's fire' has a certain grandeur, but the expression of the idea is commonplace. The same is true of the elaboration of the Vergilian parcere subiectis, where the poet describes Marcellus' clemency to the vanquished Syracusans, and makes brief allusion to the unhappy death of Archimedes (xiv. 673):

sic parcere victis pro praeda fuit et sese contenta nec ullo sanguine pollutis plausit Victoria pennis. tu quoque ductoris lacrimas, memorande, tulisti, defensor patriae, meditantem in pulvere formas nec turbatum animi tanta feriente ruina.

So mercy toward the conquered took the place of rapine, and Victory was content with herself and clapped her wings unstained by any blood. Thou, too, immortal sage, defender of thy country, didst win the meed of the conqueror's tears, thou whom ruin smote down, all unmoved, as thou broodedst o'er figures traced in the dust.

To find Silius at his best—not a very exalted best—we must turn to the passage where he depicts the feelings of Hannibal on finding the body of Paulus on the field of Cannae (x. 513):

quae postquam aspexit, geminatus gaudia ductor Sidonius 'Fuge, Varro,' inquit 'fuge, Varro, superstes, dum iaceat Paulus. patribus Fabioque sedenti et populo consul totas edissere Cannas. concedam hanc iterum, si lucis tanta cupido est, concedam tibi, Varro, fugam. at, cui fortia et hoste me digna haud parvo caluerunt corda vigore, funere supremo et tumuli decoretur honore. quantus, Paule, iaces! qui tot mihi milibus unus maior laetitiae causa est. cum fata vocabunt, tale precor nobis salva Karthagine letum.' * * * * * 'i decus Ausoniae, quo fas est ire superbas (572) virtute et factis animas. tibi gloria leto iam parta insigni. nostros Fortuna labores versat adhuc casusque iubet nescire futuros.' haec Libys, atque repens crepitantibus undique flammis aetherias anima exultans evasit in auras.

When this he saw, the Sidonian chief was filled with double joy and cried, 'Fly, Varro, fly and survive defeat; enough that Paulus lieth low! Go, consul, tell all the tale of Cannae to the fathers, to laggard Fabius, to the people. If so thou long'st to live, I will grant thee, Varro, to flee once more as thou fleest to-day. But let him, whose heart was bold and worthy to be my foe, and all aflame with mighty valour, be honoured with the last rites of burial and all the honour of the tomb. How great, Paulus, art thou in the death! Thy fall alone gives greater cause for joy than the fall of so many thousands. Such, when the fates shall summon me, such I pray be my fate, so Carthage stand unshaken.' ... 'Go, Ausonia's glory, where the souls of those whom valour and noble deeds make proud may go. Thou hast won great glory by thy death. For us, Fortune still tosses us to and fro in weltering labour and forbids us to see what chance the future hath in store.' So spake the Libyan, and straightway from the crackling flame the exulting spirit soared skyward through the air.

The picture of the soul of Paulus soaring heavenward from the funeral pyre, exultant at the honour paid him by his great foe, is the nearest approach to pure poetic imagination in the whole weary length of the Punica.[623] But the pedestrian muse of Silius is more at home in the ingenious description of the manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres of Fabius and Hannibal in the seventh book; the similes with which the passage closes are hackneyed, but their application is both new and clever:

(vii. 91) iam Fabius tacito procedens agmine et arte bellandi lento similis, praecluserat omnes fortunaeque hostique vias. discedere signis haud licitum summumquc decus, quo tollis ad astra imperil, Romane, caput, parere docebat * * * * * (123) cassarum sedet irarum spectator et alti celsus colle iugi domat exultantia corda infractasque minas dilato Marte fatigat sollers cunctandi Fabius, ceu nocte sub atra munitis pastor stabulis per ovilia clausum impavidus somni servat pecus: effera saevit atque impasta truces ululatus turba luporum exercet morsuque quatit restantia claustra. inritus incepti movet inde atque Apula tardo arva Libys passu legit ac nunc valle residit conditus occulta, si praecipitare sequentem atque inopinata detur circumdare fraude; nunc nocturna parat caecae celantibus umbris furta viae retroque abitum fictosque timores adsimulat, tum castra citus deserta relicta ostentat praeda atque invitat prodigus hostem: qualis Maeonia passim Maeandrus in ora, cum sibi gurgitibus flexis revolutus oberrat. nulla vacant incepta dolis: simul omnia versat miscetque exacuens varia ad conamina mentem, sicut aquae splendor radiatus lampade solis dissultat per tecta vaga sub imagine vibrans luminis et tremula laquearia verberat umbra.

Now Fabius advanced, leading his host in silence and—such was his cunning—like to a laggard in war; so closed he all the paths whereby fortune or the foe might fall on him. No soldier might quit the standards, and he taught that the height of glory, even that glory, Roman, that raises thine imperial head to the stars, was obedience.... Fabius sits high on the mountain slopes watching the foeman's rage and tames his impetuous ardour, humbles his threats, and, with skilful delay, postpones the day of battle and wears out his patience: as when through the darkness of the night a shepherd, fearless and sleepless in his well-guarded byre, keeps his flock penned within the fold: without, the wolf-pack, fierce and famished, howls fiercely, and with its teeth shakes the gates that bar its entrance. Baffled in his enterprise, the Libyan departs thence and slowly marches across the Apulian fields and pitches his camp deep in a hidden vale, if perchance he may hurl the Roman to ruin as he follows in his track and surround him by hidden guile. Now he prepares a midnight ambush in some dark pass beneath the shelter of the gloom, and falsely feigns retreat and fear; then, swiftly leaving his camp and booty, he displays them to the foe, and lavishly invites a raid. Even as on Maeonian shores Maeander with winding channel turns upon himself and wanders far and wide, now here, now there. Naught he attempts, but has some guile in it. He weighs every scheme, sharpens his mind for divers exploits, and blends contrivance with contrivance, even as the gleam of water lit by the sun's torch dances through a house quivering, and the reflected beam goes wandering and lashes the roof with tremulous reflection.

There is in this passage nothing approaching real excellence, but its dexterity may reasonably command some respect. It is dexterity of which Silius has little to show. He is well-read in history and its bastard sister mythology. At his best he can string together his incidents with some skill, and he makes use of his learning in the accepted fashion of his day.[624] The poem is deluged with proper names and learned aetiology, though he has no conception of that magical use of proper names and legendary allusions which is the secret of the masters of literary epic.[625]

But the absence of any true poetic genius makes him the most tedious of Latin authors, and his unenviable reputation is well deserved. For the poetry of the struggle with Carthage for the

plumed troops and the big wars That make ambition virtue,

for 'all quality, pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war', we must go to the inspired prose of Livy.

And yet it is well that the Punica should have been preserved. It is well to know that as France has its Henriade and England its Madoc, so Rome had its Punica. It is our one direct glimpse into the work of that cultured society, devastated by the 'scribendi caccethes', as Juvenal puts it, or, from the point of view of the facile Pliny, adorned by the number of its poets.[626] The Punica have won an immortality far other than that prophesied for them by Martial,[627] but they show us the work of a cultured Roman gentleman of his day, who, if he had small capacity, had a high enthusiasm for letters, who had diligence if he had not genius, and was possessed by a love for the supreme poet in whose steps he followed, a passion so sincere that it may win from his scanty readers at least a partial forgiveness for the inadequacy of his imitation and for the suffering inflicted on all those who have essayed the dreary adventure of reading the seventeen books that bear his name.



CHAPTER XI

MARTIAL

Marcus Valerius Martialis, like Quintilian, Seneca, and Lucan, was a Spaniard by birth, and, unlike those writers, never became thoroughly reconciled to life at Rome. He was born at Bilbilis,[628] a small town of Hispania Tarraconensis. The exact year of his birth is uncertain; but as the tenth book of his epigrams, written between 95 and 98 A. D., contains a reference (24) to his fifty-seventh birthday, he must have been born between 38 and 41 A. D. His birthday was the 1st of March, a fact to which he owes his name Martialis.[629] Of the position of his parents, Valerius Fronto and Flaccilla,[630] we have no evidence. That they were not wealthy is clear from the circumstances of their son. But they were able to give him a regular literary education,[631] although, unlike his fellow-countrymen whom we have mentioned above, he was educated in his native province. But the life of a provincial did not satisfy him. Conscious, perhaps, of his literary gifts, he went, in 64 A.D.,[632] like so many a young provincial, to make his fortune at Rome. There he attached himself as client to the powerful Spanish family of the Senecas, and found a friendly reception also in the house of Calpurnius Piso.[633] But fortune was against him; as he was congratulating himself on his good luck in starting life at Rome under such favourable auspices, the Pisonian conspiracy (65 A.D.) failed, and his patrons fell before the wrath of Nero.[634] His career must be commenced anew. Of his life from this point to the reign of Domitian we know little. But this much is certain, that he endured all the indignities and hardships of a client's life,[635] and that he chose this degrading career in preference to the active career of the Roman bar. He had no taste for oratory, and rejected the advice of his friend Gaius[636] and his distinguished compatriot Quintilian to seek a livelihood as an advocate or as a politician. 'That is not life!' he replies to Quintilian:

vivere quod propero pauper nec inutilis annis, da veniam: properat vivere nemo satis. differat hoc patrios optat qui vincere census atriaque immodicis artat imaginibus (ii. 90. 3).

His ideals and ambitions were low, and his choice had, as we shall see, a degrading effect upon his poetry. He chose rather to live on such modest fortune as he may have possessed, on the client's dole, and such gifts as his complimentary epigrams may have won from his patrons. These gifts must have been in many cases of a trifling description,[637] but they may occasionally have been on a more generous scale. At any rate, by the year 94 A. D., we find him the possessor of a little farm at Nomentum,[638] and a house on the Quirinal.[639] Although he must presumably have written a considerable quantity of verse in his earlier years, it is not till 80 A. D. that he makes an appearance on the stage of literature. In that year the Flavian amphitheatre was consecrated by the Emperor Titus, and Martial celebrated the fact by the publication of his first book, the Spectaculorum Liber. It is of small literary value, but it was his first step on the ladder of fame. Titus conferred on him the ius trium liberorum, although he seems not to have entered on the enjoyment of this privilege till the reign of Domitian.[640] He thus first came in touch with the imperial circle. From this time forward we get a continual stream of verse in fulsome praise of Domitian and his freedman. But his flattery met with small reward. There are many poems belauding the princeps, but few that thank him. The most that he acquired by his flattery was the honorary military tribunate and his elevation to the equestrian order.[641] Of material profit he got little,[642] save such as his improved social position may have conferred on him indirectly.