Chapter XLVII: Book I: Statius is not at his best in the opening poem, on the

equestrian statue of Domitian, where he strikes an exaggerated note in suggesting that the work has come down complete from heaven, that the rider is a greater than Julius, and that the burden of divinity makes Earth pant beneath the statue. The long epithalamium which follows, on Stella’s marriage to Violentilla, who was a Neapolitan like Statius, is pleasanter, though modern taste wearies of its Venus, Cupids, Apollo and Bacchus. More concrete and engaging is the third poem, on a visit to Vopiscus’s cool retreat at Tivoli where the natural beauty of the scenery makes a genuine impression on the poet,[1413] and compensates for the attendant artificialities. Then the recovery of Rutilius Gallicus is celebrated in polished lines, which, however they suited the first century, read rather frigidly when they introduce a rescue by Apollo and Aesculapius. Statius holds us more in describing his friend’s considerate conduct as a judge[1414] and his premature breakdown owing to the strain of official duty. The lines appear to argue in their author maturity of years, and bear on the question of his birth-date: to him in this poem sixty is not old age:

’Twas not the fault of years (for they had scarce
O’ertaken twice six lustres) but the toil
Incessant and the vigorous mind’s control
Over the body, all the watchful care
For his own emperor—a task beloved.
So stole upon the core of that tired frame
Ensnaring ease, slow disregard of life.[1415]

In the fifth poem his sportive theme is the decoration of Claudius Etruscus’s baths and his task to celebrate not Greek springs but the Latin waters of the aqueducts Virgo and Marcia. Having struck this Roman note, however, he returns to Greek mythology: it is our Lady of Cythera, Venus and her husband, the Fire-God, who with the aid of the Loves’ torches are responsible for heating the bath furnaces! Everything there is costly (_nil ibi plebeium_); for Statius had aristocratic tastes: the water is fit to be Cytherea’s birthplace, Narcissus’s mirror, Diana’s bath! And after these mythological conceits comes the prosaic assurance that not even a visitor from the seaside would despise those bathing facilities.[1416] The book closes with the praises of the emperor’s carnival, memorable for a fair-weather rain of delicacies and fruits, a lavish bounty surpassing the Golden Age, Domitian’s condescension in sharing the feast, spectacular features like women combatants and dwarf warriors, and the cosmopolitan crowd at the theatre—buxom Lydian damsels clapping their hands, the jingling musicians of Cadiz, noisy Syrians, and those who barter common sulphur for broken glass.

The consolatory poem sent to Melior on the death of a slave-boy adopted by him has touches of real feeling, and is less overloaded with mythology. Closeness of blood, he argues in excuse for the adoptive father’s frantic grief, does not always make the strongest tie:

Sons we beget perforce—adopt at will.[1417]

But there is comfort in regarding death as freedom from anxiety:

We all must go, must go; and Aeacus
Shaketh the urn amid the boundless shades (_umbris_, v. l. _ulnis_).
Yet he we mourn is happy in th’ escape
From men and gods and hazards unforeseen
And life’s dark instability; for him
Fate may not touch. He never asked nor feared
Nor yet deserved (_meruit_, v.l. _renuit_) to die; but we, a crowd
Distressed and wretched, know not whence may come
Our final day or what shall end our time.[1418]

The poem on the mansion of Pollius and Polla at Sorrento shows how the effects of nature and of art compete in the poet’s mind. To adjudicate between the charms of a crescent bay outside and the architectural amenities of the villa itself is embarrassing.[1419] Characteristically he divides his praises among aesthetic treasures and the view from different rooms, with his eye now on Naples in the distance, now on the variety of marbles around him. He draws from nature in his picture of the seaside villa in the gloaming,

When day is wearied and the shadow falls
Upon the water from the hill at dusk,
And mirrored mansions float upon the bay;[1420]

or he indulges in a purely fanciful picture:

Oft when the grape is ripe with autumn-down,
A sea-nymph climbs the cliff, who, canopied
’Neath the dark night, with full-grown tendril clears
Of brine her dripping eyes, and from the slopes
Snatches the clusters sweet. The spindrift oft
Splashes the vintage from the neighbouring waves.
The Satyrs seaward dive and ’mid the surf
The Hill-gods long to seize the naked nymph.[1421]

Three short pieces follow, each touching on a possession of Atedius Melior—his plane-tree by the garden pool concerning which Statius daintily relates the legend of a nymph’s escape from Pan; his parrot for whose sudden death a train of mourning birds is invited to chaunt a dirge; and his tame lion slain in the amphitheatre to the just indignation of his fellow-lions, but with the consolation of having roused the emotion of people, senate and emperor! Of the dead slave of Flavius Ursus, commemorated in the next poem, he affirms that his fine qualities of soul justify the free display of grief which Statius in such consolations takes pains to emphasize. The book closes with the _Genethliacon Lucani_, whose neat hendecasyllabics congratulate Spain, land of the west, on its gift of Lucan to the world, and extravagantly claim that Homer and Virgil are outrivalled by him. But we are grateful for the light thrown by the Muse’s prophecy on the subjects of Lucan’s writings. Nor are the exclamatory lines on a young life cut short unnatural:

Ah! Fates too cruel and severe!
Ah! Brief the span of high career!
Why round the peak must perils rage?
Why may not greatness reach old age?[1422]