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Updated: May 16, 2025
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.
This, though included in the last book of the Silvae, must have been written in earlier life; it shows that had Statius not been entangled in the composition of epics by the conventional taste of his age, he might have struck out a new manner in ancient poetry. The poem is so brief that it may be quoted in full:
If anything, it must be of the "paullo majora." "Silvae sint consule dignae." Let us have a brand-new poem or none. Yours as on the preceding page. The next letters which I find as having passed between the two friends are dated in the year 1851, and it must have been about this period that their relations began to grow closer.
The Silvae is a collection of poems almost entirely in heroic verse, divided into five books, and for the most part written extempore. Statius himself affirms, in his Dedication to Stella, that the production of none of them employed him more than two days; yet many of them consist of between one hundred and two hundred hexameter lines.
But his release did not come until the morning; and of that release, and its event, and how it came about, I will now tell you. How Sir John went again to the cell: and of what he saw there Ecce audivimus eam in Ephrata: invenimus eam in campis silvae. Behold we have heard of it in Euphrata: we have found it in the fields of the wood. Ps. cxxxi. 6.
Had Statius been content with trifles such as are sketched in the Silvae he might have been to this day a favourite and widely-read poet. As it is, the minute beauties of his epic lie buried in such a wilderness of unattractive learning and second-hand mythological reminiscence, that few care to seek them out.
Ultro quin etiam erupere: et fuit atrox in ipsia portarum angustiis proelium, donec pulsi hostes; utroque exercitu certante, his, ut tulisse opem, illis, ne eguisse auxilio viderentur. Quod nisi paludes et silvae fugientes texissent, debellatum illa victoria foret.
At various times after the publication of the Thebaid appeared the five books of Silvae, miscellaneous and occasional poems on different subjects, often of a personal nature. Another epic, on the campaign of Domitian in Germany, has not been preserved. The Thebaid became very famous; later poets, like Ausonius or Claudian, constantly imitate it.
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