STATIUS IN THE SILVAE 147
reasons this is highly improbable.^14 Again, we have no ceremony, but
the fiction of ceremonial recitation: Statius describes the events as
they unfold, sometimes addressing Domitian (46–8, 96), but he alter-
nates present tenses and words like “look” (28 ecce) with past tenses,
which shows that the text was composed after the event. The clearest
indication of this comes at the end, where Statius mentions that he
falls into a drunken stupor (96–7), but after that is sufficiently sober
and awake to add another five lines. Statius’ inebriation may seem an
individualising detail,^15 but it is quite the contrary: it marks him as an
ideal subject, behaving in perfect accordance with the occasion, which
is defined at the beginning of the poem as “a happy day and a drunken
?night” (7–8).^16 Even where Statius appears as an ‘I’, he is representa-
tive of the ‘we’ in whose name he speaks elsewhere in the poem (27,
48).
Unlike 1.1, this poem begins with an invocation of inspiring dei-
ties, but Statius avoids a conflict of authority between these and
Domitian by determining the subject of the poem not as the emperor
himself, but as a merry festival, a kind of Saturnalia (which was cele-
brated later in December). This licenses him to play with the conven-
tions: he sends Phoebus, stern Pallas and the Muses on holiday, and in
their place invokes Saturn (the presiding deity of the Saturnalia) and
the cheerfully deified December, Fun (Iocus) and Jokes (Sales). But
he adds that on the first of January, when the festive season is over, he
will resume his customary poetic work, which—as he must assume his
audience to know—was the composition of the Thebaid.^17 But even in
his present lighter vein, his aim is to “relate” (7 dum refero) and to
“sing” (93–5 quis ... canat ...?), and he is still a master of tradition: in
the same way that he defies prior fama in 1.1, here he challenges
Vetustas, “Antiquity”, to compare the Golden Age under the reign of
14 Vollmer 1898, 213; Frère 1961, 1.13; Nagle 2004, 36, 185; but see Nauta 2002a,
36 2–3.
15 Newlands 2002, 255 even reads it as a sign of Statius’ self-assertion with respect
to the emperor: according to her, “the poet draws the line ... He decides what and
when is enough.”
16 The word I have represented by “?night” has been corrupted in the transmission,
and may have been something meaning “feast”, but what matters is that ebriam (8)
recurs in ebrius (97), and that Statius’ ebriety is an appropriate response to the largi
flumina ... Lyaei mentioned immediately before (95).
17 At the date of the poem, the Thebaid was probably not yet published, but Sta-
tius’ recitations from his work in progress were exceedingly popular, according to
Juvenal (7.82–7).