STONES IN THE FOREST 31
honored, buildings dedicated, roads constructed, deaths mourned, are
indissolubly associated with epigraphic commemoration in the Roman
world. And yet, Statius hardly ever mentions an inscription, let alone
quotes one. This is in stark contrast with his contemporary, Martial,
whose chosen genre of epigram affords him manifold opportunities to
acknowledge his epigraphic debt.^32 Granted, the metre of epigram is
predominantly elegiac couplets, whereas, of the 32 poems in the Sil-
vae, 26 are in hexameters, four in hendecasyllables, and one each in
alcaics and sapphics. Yet, far from inhibiting Statius, the lack of ele-
giacs should have put him on his mettle. Metrical ingenuity was one
of his hallmarks, in the sense of employing metre as a vehicle of tone
and meaning;^33 fitting epigraphic formulae into a metrical scheme
should have been just up his street.
Statius does, however, mention the category of inscription in one
very telling context: this is in the poem to Novius Vindex celebrating
his new treasure, a miniature statuette of Hercules “for the table”
(Epitrapezios), a poem that has been aptly said to “[present] itself as
an elaborate substitute for an epigraphic inscription on a statue”.^34
Statius remarks that Vindex can identify unattributed works of art:
quis namque oculis certauerit usquam / Vindicis artificum ueteres
agnoscere ductus / et non inscriptis auctorem reddere signis? “For
who could ever compete with Vindex’ eye in recognizing the traces of
the old masters and restoring their maker to statues that lacked a sig-
nature?” (Silv. 4.6.22–4). In insisting that Vindex’ connoisseurship
dispenses with epigraphic assistance, Statius is supporting the impres-
sion that the Silvae celebrate knowledge, instinct, and taste; this is not
a culture of writing, but of the senses. What makes it very likely that
we are indeed to take this poem as a substitute for an epigraphic epi-
gram is the fact that one of Martial’s pair of epigrams on the same
statuette explicitly mentions that Lysippus’ craftsmanship is recorded
on the base (Mart. 9.44.6): Λυσίππου lego, Phidiae putaui (“I read ‘by
32 For a study of the epigraphic nature of the epitaphs in Martial, see Henriksén
20 06. Their presence in his epigrams, and contrasting absence from the Silvae, may
perhaps be compared to the pattern observed in the Greek novels, where inscriptions
are central to the plots of the “popular” novels (the Ephesiaka of Xenophon of Ephe-
sus, or the Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre), but absent from more sophisticated
works (such as Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoë): see Sironen 2003.
33 Amply demonstrated for the hendecasyllabic poems in the Silvae by Morgan
2000.
34 Chinn 2005, 258.