Happy Birthday, Dead Lucan: (P)Raising the Dead in Silvae 2.7

Abstract

In the conclusion to his ground-breaking study of the relationship between Latin literature and politics in the age of Nero, J.P. Sullivan looked forward to the literature of the Flavian period, offering a broad survey of the leading writers and their political and literary affiliations. His portrait of Statius, written with his typical wit, is distinctly unappealing: But it is to Statius'Silvaeand to ten books of Martial's epigrams that the fastidiously curious turn to discover the sort of praise that the latest and last heir of the Flavian house, though not the modern reader, would find congenial. The longest piece of this kind is Statius' ecphrastic poem on the great equestrian statue of Domitian erected in the Forum Romanum. It was, like the statue, a commissioned piece and was dashed off in less than fortyeight hours …. This poem and theEucharisticon(Silv.4.2) on the great splendour of Domitian's lavish feast to which the poet was invited are adequate illustrations of how far poets were prepared to go in their presumably acceptable adulation. G.W.E. Russell once remarked to Matthew Arnold, ‘Everyone likes flattery; and when it comes to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.’ Statius seems to have anticipated the advice.

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