STATIUS, DOMITIAN AND ACKNOWLEDGING PATERNITY 193
as is confirmed by the astonishing phrase of v. 23: “as you take on
your aged father’s enterprises anew”. The direct succession from
Vespasian to Domitian cuts off the principate of Titus, and Domitian
is the immediate, legitimate heir of his father. It is striking indeed, at
the opening of a poem whose subject is the deadly fight between two
brothers for power, this ‘removal of the brother’^60 – a real damnatio
memoriae, which could hardly displease the new emperor who was
intolerant of praises of the old one (cf. Cassius Dio 67.2.5 “Some,
however, would praise Titus, though not in Domitian's hearing (for to
do that would have been as grave an offence as to revile the emperor
in his presence and within his hearing)...”). Domitian therefore is
anything but a usurper: he is not just a legitimate son of the Sun-god,
but is his appointed successor.^61
A clear correspondence thus emerges between the opening and the
closing of the Thebaid, which symmetrically enact two ceremonies of
succession and legitimation: the political one of Domitian in the pro-
logue, and then in the epilogue the literary one of Statius, who suc-
ceeds his ‘father’ Virgil. Anyway, the poet’s homage to the emperor is
hardly disinterested: it is a sample of a more general negotiation Sta-
tius is proposing to political power: he is suggesting a political role for
himself, as celebrator of the emperor, in exchange for imperial patron-
age. In its programmatic spaces, prologue and epilogue, the Thebaid
symbolically stages this mutual exchange between the poet conferring
the honour and the imperial recipient. On this point, in the common
interest in obtaining a legitimacy (and an official succession), political
power and literary power could for once agree.
would [...] prefer as president [...] a childless prince to a father, since the very best
security for peace lies in a legitimate succession to the throne”.
60 A significant (contrastive) connection with the final scene, about which cf.
Hardie 1997, 158: “This little narrative of pious obeisance to a poetic monarch
(Virgil) and orderly inheritance from a poetic master (Statius) is the complete oppo-
site of the Theban tale that we have just read”.
61 By an irony of destiny, the fortunes of Domitian, like those of Phaethon, as we
learn from Suetonius, were believed to have been decided by a series of thunderbolts
that fell on the places and symbols of his power during the last few months of his life
(Dom. 15.2 Continuis octo mensibus tot fulgura facta nuntiataque sunt, ut exclamaue-
rit: ‘feriat iam, quem uolet’).