The Poetry of Statius

STONES IN THE FOREST 33

But not without glory is he sent to the shades. His ashes burn with As-

syrian spice and his slender feathers are fragrant with Arabian incense

and Sicanian saffron, and the phoenix, wearied by sluggish old age,

shall not mount his perfumed pyre more happily.^37

On one level one might say that Statius’ entire poem constitutes the
bird’s epitaph, although in strictly formal terms that is not true. Statius
himself does refer to this poem as an “epigram”, but it is important to
see what he actually says:

in arborem certe tuam, Melior, et psittacum scis a me leuis libellos

quasi epigrammatis loco scriptos. eandem exigebat stili facilitatem leo

mansuetus, quem in amphitheatro prostratum frigidum erat sacratissimo

imperatori ni statim tradere.

(Silv. 2 praef. 14–6)

You assuredly know, Melior, that I wrote the trifling items on your tree

and your parrot like epigrams, as it were. The same facility of pen was

required by the Tame Lion; if I had not presented him to our most sa-

cred Emperor as he lay prostrate in the amphitheatre, the piece would

have fallen flat.

So, in calling the parrot poem an “epigram”, Statius simultaneously
applies the same term to the previous poem (77 lines long), which
supplied an aetiological myth to account for the curious shape of a
tree on Melior’s estate. At the very least, however, by calling the par-
rot poem an “epigram”, Statius is drawing attention to its form. The
absence of any epitaph for it is deliberate, and would surely have
struck Statius’ audience as remarkable, since his entire poem is predi-
cated on the assumption that they knew Ovid’s (itself, of course, a
reminiscence of Catullus’ poems on Lesbia’s passer) and could appre-
ciate Statius’ reworking of it.
In the first poem of Book 5, an epicedion for Abascantus’ wife,
Priscilla, whose tomb survives on the Via Appia, the poem reaches a
climax with a description of the tomb and the statues of Priscilla dis-
played there in the guise of various deities:

est locus ante Vrbem qua primum nascitur ingens

Appia ...

... nil longior aetas

37 Trans. Shackleton Bailey 2003, adapted to accommodate the interpretation of
the last line by van Dam 1984, 365–7, whereby the subject of senio ... fessus inerti /
scandet is the phoenix, rather than the parrot. For the topos of “eternal youth”, cf. Silv.
2.1.154–7 (with van Dam 1984, 144), 5.3.258–9.