180 GIANPIERO ROSATI
proud affirmation of survival after the emperor’s death, that is to say,
the superiority of his own literary authority compared with the politi-
cal authority which wields its control over the poet and his artistic
activity.
But there is also another aspect which makes the homage to Domi-
tian in the epilogue of the Thebaid seem particularly restrained, that is
to say, the fact that the poet’s hopes of future fame are based on spe-
cifically literary grounds, and are totally unconnected with political
power (the fact that Caesar “deigns” to read the poem is proof of the
success that Statius’ work already enjoys, and the emperor himself
must acknowledge this). Durare defines the chronological extension
of the poet’s fame, its projection into the future (an idea reinforced by
procul, whether its meaning here is spatial, or, as appears more likely,
temporal), but it is a striking fact that the writer’s poetic glory is com-
pletely independent of the emperor. In this way, Statius appears to
push to its extreme consequences a process that had already been
started off by Augustan poets in similar famous anticipations of liter-
ary glory. Virgil and Horace had anchored their future fame to the
duration of the power of Rome (an eternal duration, according to the
Augustan ideology: cf., respectively, A. 9.448f. and Carm. 3.30.8f.),
but Ovid releases it from this condition, and mentions the empire only
as a paradigm of the maximum geographical extension (Met.
15.877).^18 That is to say, Ovid had introduced a distinction (and a
potential conflict, especially with his reference to Iouis ira) between
the political authority and the literary authority, thus freeing the latter
from the relationship of subordination which it had until then been
forced to accept. In Statius, we see that the process is completed: not
only is the literary authority freed from the political one, but he states
his own autonomy, and in a certain sense proclaims his own superior-
ity (as Dominik puts it, “it is Statius rather than Domitian who appears
to be destined to be honoured in the memories of future ages”).^19
What we see here is a comparison and a (potential) conflict of
powers, a hostility that the literary authority must combat: the liuor,
which accumulates ‘clouds’ against the poet’s work, is an abstract
entity personifying the enemies of poetry, from Callimachus on-
18 No reference to any political guarantee in Lucan 9.984–6 also.
19 Dominik 1994, 174.