10. the SILVAE and EPIC Bruce Gibson Introduction This

10. THE SILVAE AND EPIC

Bruce Gibson

Introduction

This paper explores the relationship between the Silvae and epic poetry.1 The fact that most of the Silvae are written in hexameters should indicate the value of considering how the Silvae draw on epic, even when there are differences in tone and content.2 Various scholars have pointed to epic influence in the Silvae: Gabriel Laguna has discussed such features as similes and athletic games,3 and Donka Markus has treated Statius’ self-presentation as an epic poet within the Silvae through reference to his recitations of epic,4 while Ombretta Pederzani has argued, in her reading of Silvae 1.2, that we can speak of a “pri- vate” kind of epic in the Silvae.5 Carole Newlands has pointed to oc- casions where the Silvae might be said to be in dialogue with Statius’ epic work,6 while I have previously attempted to show how in Silv. 5.4, the short poem on insomnia, epic allusions are fused with a first person voice far removed from the conventionally distant voice of epic narration.7 And Harm-Jan van Dam, in this volume, shows the importance of multiple imitation of epic models. This paper will at- tempt to consider further possible approaches to the Silvae and epic. I shall begin by considering the generic status of the Silvae, particularly how this may be affected by Statius’ treatment of Domitian, before considering types of overlap between the Silvae and epic poetry. Of

1 I am very grateful to the editors, and would like to thank Kathleen Coleman, Harm-Jan van Dam, Frederick Jones, and Stephen Heyworth for their valuable com- ments on earlier drafts of this paper. For quotations from the Silvae (and the numera- tion of the prefaces) I have used E. Courtney’s Oxford Classical Text (Oxford, 1990). The translations are my own. 2 For the hexameter in the Silvae, and antecedents in Greek praise poetry, see Hardie 1983, 85–91. 3 Laguna 1998, 45. On Statius’ games in the Thebaid, see Lovatt 2001. 4 Markus 2000, 163–8. 5 Pederzani 1993. 6 See e.g. Newlands 2002, 26–7, 147–9, 200–1, 203–4, 211–26, 253–4. 7 Gibson 1996, 460–1. 164 BRUCE GIBSON course, I do not wish to imply that epic is the only genre relevant to the Silvae; instead, the aim is to show that epic elements are a signifi- cant and continuing feature of the poems, existing in counterpoint to Statius’ better-known statements about the lower generic status of the Silvae. In particular, I wish to consider how content can be shaped by genre, and perhaps how genre too can be shaped (or modified) by content. For though metre has a large part to play in ancient concepts of genre, it is worth recollecting that content must surely contribute to generic status as well.8 That presumably would be the implication of a passage like Prop. 3.3.1–24, where the poet imagines himself on the point of writing an epic on the Roman and Italian past before Apollo tells him to have nothing to do with epic (3.3.15–6), quis te / carminis heroi tangere iussit opus?, “who told you to get involved in the task of heroic song?” Even more important is the opening of Virgil, Ecl. 6, also modelled on the opening of the Aetia of Callimachus (Call. Aet. fr. 1 Pf.).9 Here, however, the refusal to write epic takes place in prac- tice on the level not of form (Virgil is after all writing hexameters in the Eclogues), but of content. After Virgil’s account of Apollo’s warn- ing, cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem / uellit et ad- monuit, “When I was about to sing of kings and battles, Cynthian Apollo tweaked my ear and warned me …” (Ecl. 6.3–4), the resulting learned poem on cosmological and mythological subjects is still in the metre of epic, the hexameter. But when Virgil asks the Sicilian Muses associated with bucolic in Ecl. 4.1 for paulo maiora, “things a little greater”, the fourth Eclogue, a poem worthy of a consul (Ecl. 4.3), could certainly be said to include material fairly close to reges et proelia. Indeed, it may be the case that, when the form of the hexameter is combined with moments of epic content, we are even more con- scious of affiliations with epic in non-epic texts. The tendency to regard the Silvae as a lesser kind of writing is partly generated from Statius’ prefaces. Thus in Book 1 Statius asks why he is troubling with the Silvae when he has the Thebaid to con-

8 See e.g. Fantuzzi 2000 on Theocritus, and Hinds 1992 on Ovid’s Fasti. 9 Space precludes detailed examination of these passages: on Callimachus in Ro- man literature, see Wimmel 1960; Clausen 1964; Hutchinson 1988, 277–354; Hey- worth 1994; Cameron 1995, 454–83; Nauta in this volume. On Callimachus and Sta- tius, see Thomas 1983, 103–5 and Newlands 1991 on Silv. 3.1; see also Myers 2000, 135–7; Newlands 2002, 54, 140–2, 214–6.