STATIUS IN THE SILVAE 167
Campania to Rome, to find Marcellus, to render him the customary
salutation (10 salutem), and to address him in metrical form. The
verse letter proper which then follows is still partially conceptualised
as song, at least in the formula with which it is brought (or rather
seems to be brought) to a conclusion: haec ego Chalcidicis ad te,
Marcelle, sonabam / litoribus, “this I sing to you Marcellus, on Chal-
cidian [i.e. Neapolitan] shores” (78–9). The ‘epistolary’ imperfect,
together with the indication of the location of the writer (which is then
expanded by a description of the effects of the eruption of the Vesu-
vius), suggests that we have reached the end of the letter,^71 as does the
re miniscence of the end of Virgil’s Georgics (perhaps the more easily
recognised because of the earlier allusion in 3.2):^72 haec ... canebam,
with localisation in Naples.^73 Like Virgil, Statius in this concluding
section mentions his poetic works, the Thebaid and the Achilleid, and
sets them in relation to the achievements of the emperor. In doing so,
he continues the letter, which reaches its uale only some twenty lines
later (101). This uale is then expanded, as sometimes happens in let-
ters, by an appeal to the addressee’s love (101 amorem) and friendship
(103 amicitia), ending with the word amico (105).^74
In the body of the verse letter the friendship is expressed by a con-
tinuous oscillation between passages in which Statius inquires about,
exhorts or praises Marcellus and passages in which he talks about
himself. He first appears in the poem to stress that he too loves Mar-
cellus’ best friend Gallus and is sure of this love being reciprocated
(20–5). Then, while pressing upon Marcellus the advantages of tem-
porary otia (34), he adduces himself as an example: “my lyre, too,
sometimes grows tired and its strings are relaxed” (32–3), which im-
plies that he enjoys otium when he does not write. This is somewhat at
odds with the picture he subsequently draws of his poetry as the sol-
ace of his otium, in contrast to the oratorical, administrative and an-
ticipated military activities of his addressee (49–55):
71 Cf. Hor. Ep. 1.10.49 haec tibi dictabam post fanum putre Vacunae (at the con-
clusion of a poetical letter likewise contrasting the addressee’s life in Rome with the
poet’s life in the country).
72 See above, 156.
73 On the epistolary imperfect, as well as on the allusion to the Georgics, see
Coleman 1988, 153 ad loc.
74 Amorem is Calderini’s correction for honorem, rejected by Courtney 1990, but
epistolary parallels of the type uale et nos ama (see Cugusi 1983, 64, with references
in n. 97bis) support the emendation.