United States or Haiti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A laughable surprise spread over the features of the little old man. He hastily wiped his spectacles. "What!" he finally cried. "It is indeed unfortunate, in this matter," Morhange continued imperturbably, "that we are not in possession of the curious dissertation devoted to this burning question by Statius Sebosus, a work which we know only through Pliny and which...."
In the Silver Age Latin literature, feeling a great past behind it, definitely tried to cut itself away from Greece and stand on its own feet. Quintilian's criticism implies throughout that the two literatures were on a footing of substantial equality; Cicero is sufficient for him, as Virgil is for Statius.
The exponent or symbol held forth by metrical language must, in different ages of literature, have excited very different expectations; for example, in the age of Catullus, Terence, or Lucretius, and that of Statius or Claudian; and in our own country, in the age of Shakespeare and Beaumont and Metcher, and that of Donne and Cowley, or Pope. And then, in a kind of vexed way, Wordsworth goes on to explain that he himself can't and won't do what is expected from him, but that he will write his own words, and only his own words.
All the more surprising is it that it receives no mention from Vasari, who merely states that the master worked at Castelfranco. Statius: Theb. iv. 730 ff. See p. 135. Aen. viii. 306-348. Fry: Giovanni Bellini, p. 39. ii. 214.
Statius was fortunate enough on three separate occasions to win the prize, his subject being in each case the praises of Domitian himself. But at the great quinquennial Capitoline contest, in which apparently the subject was the praises of Jupiter, Statius was not equally successful.
For the artist, it must be noted, does not attempt to illustrate a passage of an ancient writer; very probably, nay, almost certainly, he had never read the Thebaid of Statius, whence comes the story of Adrastus and Hypsipyle; the subject would have been suggested to him by some friend, a student of the Classics, and Giorgione thereupon dressed the old Greek myth in Venetian garb, just as Statius had done in the Latin.
The Romans then proceeded to Postumius's station, where the two victorious armies falling upon the enemy, already dismayed by the news of what had passed, routed and dispersed them: twenty-six military standards were taken here, and the Samnite general, Statius Gellius, with a great number of other prisoners, and both the camps were taken. Next day Bovianum was besieged, and soon after taken.
The story is known to us only at second hand, and we are at liberty to choose Giorgione's version in preference to that of the Roman poet; each is an independent translation of a common original, and certainly Giorgione's is not the less poetical. He has created a painted lyric which is not an illustration of, but a parallel presentation to the written poem of Statius.
Another senator, Sp. Servilius, being soon after arraigned, as soon as he went out of office, a day of trial having been appointed for him by the tribunes, L. Cædicius and T. Statius, at the very commencement of the year, in the consulship of C. Nautius and P. Valerius, did not, like Menenius, meet the attacks of the tribunes with supplications from himself and the patricians, but with firm reliance on his own integrity, and his personal influence.
Statius had a high opinion of his own merits, especially when he compared himself with the poet fraternity of his day; but his careful study of Homer and Virgil had shown him that there was a domain into which he could not enter, and so even while vaunting his claims to immortality, he is careful not to aspire to be ranked with the poet of the Aeneid:
Word Of The Day