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Statius had, to a certain degree, gone back to Virgil; Quintilian goes back to Cicero without hesitation or reserve.
Virgil and Statius were already up; and all three, resuming their way to the mountain's top, stood upon it at last, and gazed round about them on the skirts of the terrestrial Paradise. The sun was sparkling bright over a green land, full of trees and flowers.
In the course of these somewhat wandering but at the same time urgent reflections upon the tragic sense of life, I have already alluded to the timor fecit deos of Statius with the object of limiting and correcting it.
I own, I have often thought, if Statius had ventured no farther than Ovid or Claudian, he would have succeeded better; for his Sylvae are, in my opinion, much better than his Thebais." "I believe I was of the same opinion formerly," said the author. "And for what reason have you altered it?" cries Booth.
The shrine of Athene lay doubtless at Campanella, whose crag is of sufficient altitude to justify Roman poets like Statius in their descriptions of its lofty site.
The Virgilian movement differs not more from the Homeric, than does the Horatian sapphic or alcaic from the same metres as treated by their Greek inventors. The success of Horace may be judged by comparing his stanzas with the sapphics of Catullus on the one hand, and the alcaics of Statius on the other.
Now if it may be permitted me to go back again to the consideration of epic poetry, I have confessed that no man hitherto has reached or so much as approached to the excellences of Homer or of Virgil; I must farther add that Statius, the best versificator next to Virgil, knew not how to design after him, though he had the model in his eye; that Lucan is wanting both in design and subject, and is besides too full of heat and affectation; that amongst the moderns, Ariosto neither designed justly nor observed any unity of action, or compass of time, or moderation in the vastness of his draught: his style is luxurious without majesty or decency, and his adventures without the compass of nature and possibility.
But all these incisions being not yet enough to make him die, he commanded Statius Anneus, his physician, to give him a draught of poison, which had not much better effect; for by reason of the weakness and coldness of his limbs, it could not arrive at his heart.
Statius had expiated his sins in the circle of Avarice, not for that vice, but for the opposite one of Prodigality.
If we except the Aeneid, this is the only Latin production extant which is epic in its form; and it likewise approaches nearest in merit to that celebrated poem, which Statius appears to have been ambitious of emulating.
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