STATIUS IN THE SILVAE 151
but in the non-imperial poems he could use a far greater variety of
situations in which he and his addressees participated together.
The soteria for Rutilius Gallicus
The importance of amicitia is thematised by Statius a number of
times, most interestingly perhaps in the poem on the recovery from
illness of Rutilius Gallicus (1.4), which is otherwise close to the impe-
rial poems, because Gallicus was praefectus Vrbi and as such the dep-
uty of the Emperor in the City of Rome. The poet starts off with ex-
cited apostrophes to the gods and Domitian, commands fama to be
silent (14)—although this time not fama in the sense of the poetical
tradition, but of rumours about Gallicus’ health— and rejects his cus-
tomary inspiring deities in favour of a more appropriate one, in this
case the addressee himself: ipse ueni uiresque nouas animumque min-
istra / qui caneris, “come yourself and grant new forces and spirit,
you whom I sing” (22–3). The wording here recalls well-known invo-
cations of the emperor (or his intended successor) in earlier poetry,
and thus serves to associate Gallicus with the emperor.^25 This associa-
ti on is continued in the immediately following lines, where Statius
describes the solicitude, during Gallicus’ illness, of the entire City,
senators, knights and plebs (38–40), thus invoking the same universal
consensus as in the imperial poems. After a mythological story about
Gallicus’ recovery, in which a career review is put into the mouth of
Apollo, Statius returns to the theme of consensus, but now he also
brings in himself (115–20):
quis mihi tot coetus inter populique patrumque
sit curae uotique locus? tamen ardua testor
sidera teque, pater uatum Thymbraee, quis omni25 Cf. Manil. 1.9–10 ipse ..., / das animum uiresque facis ad tanta canenda (to
Augustus); Ov. F. 1.17 dederis in carmina uires (to Germanicus); Luc. 1.66 tu satis
ad uires Romana in carmina dandas (to Nero); in Lucan Apollo and Bacchus are
rejected (64–5) as Apollo, the Muses, Mercury and Bacchus are in Statius (16–8).
Silv. 5.3 applies the formula to Statius’ father: Ipse malas uires et lamentabile carmen
/ ... / da (1–3), and continues to reject Apollo and Bacchus, likewise as in Lucan. The
invocation of the addressee in the Laus Pisonis is similar to what Statius does in 1.4,
but more restrained through the substitution of fauor and spes for the patron himself,
and through the connection with future efforts rather than the present poem: forsan
meliora canemus / et uires dabit ipse fauor, dabit ipsa feracem / spes animum (216–
7).