34 KATHLEEN M. COLEMAN
carpere, nil aeui poterunt uitiare labores:
sic ca<u>tum membris, tantas uenerabile marmor
spirat opes. mox in uarias mutata nouaris
effigies ...
accipiunt uultus non indignata decoros
numina; circumstant famuli consuetaque turba
obsequiis, tunc rite tori mensaeque parantur
assiduae.
(Silv. 5.1.222–3, 228–32, 234–7)
There is a place outside the City where the great Appian Way begins ...
Nothing will the long years wear away, nothing will the toils of time be
able to harm: such care has been taken with your body, the noble mar-
ble breathes out such opulence. Next, changed into various images you
are made new ... The goddesses do not disdain to put on your beautiful
face; slaves and the throng assigned to memorial duties stand around,
then couches and assiduous tables are duly prepared.The consolatory motif of the ageless deceased, freed from troubles, is
present;^38 but nothing even faintly resembling the form and expression
of an epitaph. So, at least in this instance, one cannot explain the ab-
sence of an epitaph on the grounds that when Statius composed his
epicedion the tomb has not yet been built, and that speed was of the
essence in conveying his sentiments; even if that had been the case,
there would have been nothing to prevent him from quoting an epitaph
prospectively. In fact, immediately afterwards he goes on to say that
all these signs of devotion would prompt someone to attribute the
tomb to a minister of Domitian; as with Vindex’ skill at attributing an
unlabelled work of art, so it is the innate properties of the tomb, in the
absence of an explicit inscription, which bespeak its identity:
... hac merito uisa pietate mariti
pr otinus exclames: “est hic, agnosco, minister
illius, aeternae modo qui sacraria genti
condidit inque alio posuit sua sidera caelo.”
(Silv. 5.1.238–41)
Anyone who saw this display of a husband’s devotion would straight-
way deservedly exclaim, “Here, I can tell, is a servant of the lord who
recently founded temples for his eternal family and set his own stars
amid another heaven.”Where we expect an epitaph, we get a compliment to the widower and
to the regime. Hence, Statius’ epicedia somehow compensate for the
38 Tolman 1910, 87–90.