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The Poetry of Statius Mnemosyne Supplements Monographs on Greek and Roman Language and Literature Editorial Board G.J. Boter A. Chaniotis K. Coleman I.J.F. de Jong P.H. Schrijvers VOLUME 306 The Poetry of Statius Edited by Johannes J.L. Smolenaars Harm-Jan van Dam Ruurd R. Nauta LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data The poetry of Statius / edited by Johannes J.L. Smolenaars, Harm-Jan van Dam, Ruurd R. Nauta. p. cm. — (Mnemosyne. Supplements ; 306) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-17134-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Statius, P. Papinius (Publius Papinius—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Epic poetry, Latin—History and criticism. I. Smolenaars, Johannes Jacobus Louis. II. Dam, Harm-Jan van. III. Nauta, Ruurd R. PA6698.P59 2008 871’.01—dc22 2008033581 ISSN 0169-8958 ISBN 978 90 04 17134 3 Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints BRILL, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands CONTENTS Preface............................................................................................ vii Abbreviations.................................................................................. xi 1. ‘In pondere non magno satis ponderosae…’: Gronovius and the printed tradition of the Thebaid.................. 1 Valéry Berlincourt 2. Stones in the forest: epigraphic allusion in the Silvae.............. 19 Kathleen M. Coleman 3. Wandering woods again: from Poliziano to Grotius................ 45 Harm-Jan van Dam 4. The equine cuckoo: Statius’ Ecus Maximus Domitiani Imperatoris and the Flavian Forum......................... 65 Michael Dewar 5. Battle narrative in Statius, Thebaid.......................................... 85 Bruce Gibson 6. Statius and the Greek Tragedians on Athens, Thebes and Rome.............................................................................. 111 P.J. Heslin 7. Jupiter in Thebaid 1 again........................................................ 129 D.E. Hill 8. Statius in the Silvae.................................................................. 143 Ruurd R. Nauta 9. Statius, Domitian and acknowledging paternity: rituals of succession in the Thebaid.......................................... 175 Gianpiero Rosati 10. Dust, water and sweat: the Statian puer between charm and weakness, play and war..................................................... 195 Lorenzo Sanna 11. Statius Thebaid 1.72: is Jocasta dead or alive? The tradition of Jocasta’s suicide in Greek and Roman drama and in Statius’ Thebaid.................................................. 215 Johannes J.L. Smolenaars Bibliography................................................................................... 239 Index of passages discussed............................................................ 251 General index.................................................................................. 261 PREFACE After having organised a conference on Flavian poetry in Groningen in 2003 and edited the ensuing volume Flavian Poetry (Brill, 2006), we decided to devote a smaller-scale symposium to the most brilliant and versatile of the Flavian poets, P. Papinius Statius. This sympo- sium was held at the University of Amsterdam to mark the retirement of Hans Smolenaars from the Department of Classics at the University of Amsterdam, where he had taught Latin since 1969. The essays in this volume are the revised versions of the papers delivered at this symposium. Most aspects of the poetry of Statius, including its reception, are covered in this volume, although we regret that the Achilleid was somewhat underrepresented in the colloquium. Four essays are de- voted to Statius’ adaptation and transformation of traditional epic techniques and motifs in the Thebaid (Gibson, Hill, Rosati, and Sanna, who also discusses the Achilleid); two other contributions discuss Statius’ creative imitation of tragic and other texts in the Thebaid (Heslin and Smolenaars); a third group of essays is devoted to the Silvae (Coleman, Dewar, and Nauta); and two papers are concerned with the reception of Statius’ poems in European literature and schol- arship (Berlincourt and van Dam). We decided, however, that, given the relatively small amount of papers, it would be more satisfactory to retain the alphabetical order of the contributors, which also leaves readers more room to construe their own links between papers. Valéry Berlincourt writes about the pivotal role of Johann Frie- drich Gronovius as an editor and commentator of the Thebaid. He shows that modern assumptions about the relationship between text and commentary were not shared by earlier scholars, and that philol- ogical reputations may rest on coincidences and arbitrary choices: if Caspar Barth had printed his own text instead of adopting that of Gronovius, his monumental commentary might have drawn more attention, whereas the fame of Gronovius’ creditable but superficial work was enhanced by the adoption of his notes in a popular variorum edition. Kathleen Coleman, after surveying the use of (fictional) inscrip- tions in Roman imaginative literature, discusses the striking scarcity viii PREFACE of epigraphic quotation in the Silvae. She connects this with Statius’ strategy to transform and transcend the everyday reality of his pa- trons’ world, and demonstrates how in various ways Statius replaces an expected reference to an inscription by his own poetry. Harm-Jan van Dam discusses the fortunes of the Silvae in the Renaissance, concentrating on the reception and development of silva(e) as a literary genre or mode of writing. He draws attention to similarities between late 15th-century Italy and early 17th-century Hol- land in the great enthusiasm for the Silvae evidenced by philological work on the text, and by imitation and appropriation of the poems, with Angelo Poliziano and Hugo Grotius as protagonists. Michael Dewar argues that Statius’ poem on the colossal eques- trian statue of Domitian in the Forum Romanum (Silvae 1.1) articu- lates two themes crucial to the propagandistic message of the statue: its association with other Flavian monuments in the vicinity and its superiority to the monuments of Julius Caesar and Augustus in the midst of which it was positioned. Bruce Gibson examines various techniques of battle narrative in epic poetry from Homer to Silius and points at Statius’ desire for compression by foreshortening episodes and limiting the pictures of individual combat, in comparison with Homer and Vergil. Gibson argues that, following Lucan and Silius, Statius adds resonances of historical modes of warfare in his similes, and uses anachronistic ele- ments taken from historiography in his presentation of battle, in order to amplify the significance of war in his epic on a mythical heroic subject. Peter Heslin investigates how Statius in the final books of the Thebaid handles Greek tragedy. He argues that, by selecting and com- bining themes and views from the tragedians, Statius reconciles the plot(s) of Euripides with the spirit of Sophocles. By this use of themes from tragedy, and by thematizing Athens, home of the tragedians, as a refuge for the rest of Greece, Statius turns it into a paradigm for Rome in more than one sense, and infuses the end of the Thebaid with moral and political overtones. Donald Hill analyses Oedipus’ prayer to Tisiphone and Jupiter’s speech in the council of gods in Thebaid I. Oedipus’ prayer to wreak vengeance on his sons is logically if not morally defensible, but Jupi- ter’s diatribe about the failure of his previous punishments to improve mankind is, Hill argues, rather a rambling speech by an incompetent PREFACE ix rhetorician. The flaws in Jupiter’s speech should be attributed not to Statius’ possible carelessness, but rather to the weakness of Jupiter himself. Ruurd Nauta traces Statius’ self-presentation in the Silvae in terms of the roles the poet plays. The role of praise poet, employing the fictions of singing, lyre-playing and performance at the ceremony itself, needs to be combined with other roles more closely related to Statius’ position in Roman society: that of representative subject in poems addressed to the emperor, and that of amicus in poems to non- imperial addressees. These roles are variously articulated in accor- dance with the relationship between poet and addressee and with the speech act represented by the poem. Gianpiero Rosati identifies the theme of succession, literary and political, as informing both the opening and the close of the Thebaid: whereas in the prologue the poet handles the motif of Phaethon in such a way as to underscore the legitimacy of Domitian’s succession of his father, in the epilogue political power is confronted by literary power, as Statius stages the succession of Vergil’s Aeneid by his own Thebaid. Lorenzo Sanna examines ‘dust’, ‘sweat’ and ‘water’ as generic constituents in the descriptions of ephebic heroes in Statius. The deli- cate charm of Parthenopaeus in the Thebaid and the ambiguous beauty of Achilles in the Achilleid are fine examples of this mixture of femi- nine tenderness and male strength, a typical feature of Statius’ por- trayal of boy-heroes. Dust and water not only enhance the beauty of the puer delicatus, but are also characteristics of cruel warfare. The mixture of these elements in descriptions of ephebic beauty and im- mature death is typical of Statius’ style, but its origin can be traced back to Ovid’s sensual pictures of Narcissus and Hermaphroditus. Hans Smolenaars studies the different storylines developed since Stesichorus with regard to the timing and setting of Oedipus’ self- blinding and Jocasta’s suicide. Statius follows the version given by Euripides in his Phoenissae, as Seneca did in his play of the same name, according to which Jocasta stays alive long after Oedipus’ act of blinding himself, and commits suicide only when the war breaks out. Both Latin poets construct dramatic situations different from those found in their predecessors, in a constant process of creative emulation. Statius’ adaptations, moreover, demonstrate his skill at incorporating multigeneric models.

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