STATIUS IN THE SILVAE 171
This beginning combines allusion to the beginnings of two of
Horace’s satires: 2.8, where the Nasidieni ... cena beati is announced
as the theme, and 1.9, where the poet happens to wander (forte) along
the Via Sacra, when he is accosted by an acquaintance. But whereas
Horace is meditating over some poetry, Statius is “relieved of Phoe-
bus”. We have here an ingenious variation on the motive that Statius
interrupts his epic work to write a smaller poem, and rather than on
Phoebus calls on other, more appropriate deities for inspiration: here
there is no other deity, and indeed the poem nowhere represents itself
as being sung: like Horace’s satires, it is a sermo, to be thought of as
being spoken. In the beginning the tone remains light as Statius de-
scribes the dinner party,^82 stressing the uerus amor, “true affection”
(12) reigning at Vindex’s board. But the invitation has the same func-
tion as that in Silvae 2.2 (which has a similar narrative introduction)
and the symposium as that in Silvae 1.5 and 2.4: they provide the con-
text for witnessing and describing a possession of the host, in this case
a statuette, to which the larger part of the poem is then devoted.
After these more or less Horatian pieces (4.4–7), Book 4 continu-
ous with a poem that more closely resembles those in the earlier
books, a congratulation to Julius Menecrates, son-in-law of Pollius
Felix, on the birth of a third child (4.8). Statius begins in his wonted
quasi-ceremonial manner with pande fores superum, “throw open the
doors of the gods [i.e. of the temples]”^83 , and continues with a volley
of apostrophes. But the singing and lyre-playing is presented as coex-
isting with writing, in that Statius complains of not having received a
letter of commission from his addressee (35–41):
cumque tibi uagiret tertius infans
protinus ingenti non uenit nuntia cursu
littera, quae festos cumulare altaribus ignes
et redimire chelyn postesque ornare iuberet
Albanoque cadum sordentem promere fumo
et cantu signare diem, sed tardus inersque
nunc demum mea uota cano?
When your third child was wailing, did no letter come straightaway
posthaste to bring me word, telling me to heap my altar with festal fire
and wreathe my lyre and decorate my doorway and bring out a jar be-82 The dinner party is itself a setting for medio ... Helicone petitus / sermo (13), of
which Statius’ poem may be conceived of as an instance.
83 Cf. the same phrase pande fores in 1.2.17 (above, 153).