United States or Denmark ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is a Phrygian marble, and was known to the ancients under the name of Marmor Docimenum. The poet Statius notices the legend that it was stained with the blood of Atys. It was a favourite marble of the emperor Hadrian, who employed it to decorate his tomb. It was brought to Rome when Phrygia became a Roman province, after the establishment of Christianity in Asia Minor.
But at last Statius began to see the folly of all this.
The two other epic poets contemporary with Statius whose works are extant, Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus, belong generally to the same school, but stand on a much lower level of excellence. The former is only known as the author of the Argonautica.
He and Statius were indisputably the chief poets of the day. One or other must hold the first place. We have no means of knowing how this quarrel, if quarrel it was, arose. Among Martial's other friends were Quintilian, Valerius Flaccus, and Juvenal.
In splendid extravagance of expression no Latin author comes near him. The miniature painting of Statius, the point of Martial, are both feeble in comparison; for Lucan's language, though often tasteless, is always strong. Some of his lines embody a condensed trenchant vigour which has made them proverbs.
From this source of entertainment, they reaped more pleasure during the present reign, than they had done since the time of Augustus. The poets of this period were Juvenal, Statius, and Martial. JUVENAL was born at Aquinum, but in what year is uncertain; though, from some circumstances, it seems to have been in the reign of Augustus.
Vergil was then twenty-one years of age nearing his twenty-second birthday and we may perhaps assume in Donatus' attribution of the Culex to Vergil's sixteenth year a mistake in some early manuscript which changed the original XXI to XVI, a correction which the citations of Statius and Lucan favor.
But with his mind full of the deep and intricate questions of metaphysics and theology, and his poetical taste always owing allegiance to Vergil, Ovid, and Statius keen and subtle as a schoolman as much an idolater of old heathen art and grandeur as the men of the Renaissance his eye is yet as open to the delicacies of character, to the variety of external nature, to the wonders of the physical world his interest in them as diversified and fresh, his impressions as sharp and distinct, his rendering of them as free and true and forcible, as little weakened or confused by imitation or by conventional words, his language as elastic and as completely under his command, his choice of poetic materials as unrestricted and original, as if he had been born in days which claim as their own such freedom and such keen discriminative sense of what is real in feeling and image as if he had never felt the attractions of a crabbed problem of scholastic logic, or bowed before the mellow grace of the Latins.
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.
T. What are the Latin and Greek books you propose to be examined in? C. Homer, Lucian, Demosthenes, Xenophon, Virgil, Horace, Statius, Juvenal, Cicero, Analecta, and Matthiæ. T. No; I mean what are the books I am to examine you in? C. is silent. T. The two books, one Latin and one Greek: don’t flurry yourself. C. Oh, … Xenophon and Virgil. T. Xenophon and Virgil. Very well; what part of Xenophon?
Word Of The Day