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It is needless to dwell on the Odyssean novelties in vocabulary, which were naturally employed by a poet who had to sing of peace, not of war, and whose epic, as Aristotle says, is "ethical," not military. The poet's rich vocabulary is appropriate to his novel subject, that is all. Leaf assigning to his original Achilleis "the kernel" the very same religious ideas as Mr.
Statius, as we have seen, adds the one element that was wanting, namely the abstraction of the heroic altogether; nevertheless, in small effects of this kind, he must be pronounced superior to both Virgil and Lucan. The Achilleis is a mere fragment, no doubt left as such owing to the author's early death.
Commentators are of opinion, that the Achilleis was left incomplete by the death of the author; but this is extremely improbable, from various circumstances, and appears to be founded only upon the word Hactenus, in the conclusion of the poem: Hactenus annorum, comites, elementa meorum Et memini, et meminisse juvat: scit caetera mater.
The supposed additions, therefore, though they may have given to the poem a somewhat wider scope, have not at any rate changed its primitive character of an Achilleis. To my mind they seem even called for by the original conception of the consequences of the wrath.
The product, after standing long enough, mantled over with the rich Goethean cream, from which a butter could be churned, if not precisely classic, quite as good as the ancients could have made out of the same material. But who has ever read the Achilleis, correct in all unessential particulars as it probably is?
Grote thinks it probable that these books, with the exception of the ninth, were subsequently added by the poet, with a view to enlarging the original Achilleis into a real Iliad, describing the war of the Greeks against Troy. With reference to this hypothesis, I gladly admit that Mr.
The significance of the poem is not in the incidents surrounding the "Achilleis"; the whole significance is centred in the Wrath of Achilles, and thence made to impregnate every part. Life is short; we must make the best of it. How trite that sounds! But it is not trite at all really.
For, taught by you, with steadfast care I trim my "Song of Thebes," and dare With generous rivalry to share The glories of the Mantuan bard. The Achilleis relates to the same hero who is celebrated by Homer in the Iliad; but it is the previous history of Achilles, not his conduct in the Trojan war, which forms the subject of the poem of Statius.
Some have conjectured that he maintained himself by writing for the stage, but of this there is no sufficient evidence; and if ever he composed dramatic productions, they have perished. The works of Statius now extant, are two poems, viz. the Thebais and the Achilleis, besides a collection, named Silvae.
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