46 HARM-JAN VAN DAM
author of the first printed commentary on Statius’ Silvae,^3 Poliziano
defined a silva as a genus scriptionis for which keywords are speedy
composition, a certain occasion and various or arbitrary content. His
chief witness was Quintilian with his famous description of what oth-
ers call a silva.
Diuersum est huic eorum uitium qui primo decurrere per materiam stilo
quam uelocissimo uolunt, et sequentes calorem atque impetum ex tem-
pore scribunt: hanc siluam uocant. Repetunt deinde et componunt quae
effuderant: sed uerba emendantur et numeri, manet in rebus temere
congestis quae fuit leuitas.
(Quint. Inst. 10.3.17)
An opposite fault is committed by people who elect to make a draft of
the whole subject as rapidly as possible, and write improvisations, fol-
lowing the heat and impulse of the moment. They call this draft their
“raw material”. They then revise their effusions and give them rhythmi-
cal structure. The words and the rhythms are thus corrected, but the
original triviality of the hastily accumulated material is still there.^4At the outset of his commentary on Statius, Poliziano explicitly stated
that Quintilian’s definition is relevant for the genre to which Statius’
poems belong.^5 He could find some support for this view in statements
by Statius himself, such as subito calore et quadam festinandi uolup-
tate (“in the heat of the moment, a sort of pleasurable haste” 1 praef.
3–4) and libellorum temeritatem (“the temerity of these little pieces” 3
Praef 2–3).^6 The importance attached to Statius’ Silvae by Poliziano is
evident from the fact alone that he chose them as the subject of his
first course as a professor, and he connected them with Quintilian in
the first place by making both the subject of his 1480 inaugural lec-
ture.^7 I shall gladly sidestep the much-debated question what the title
of Statius’ collection “really” means, or what it meant to Statius’ con-
temporaries.^8 Rather we should notice that with Poliziano uelox, calor,
3 The first manuscript commentary is an unfinished one by Niccolo Perotti dating
from 1469–70, see Galand-Hallyn 1998, 11–2, n. 7 (I owe my first knowledge of its
existence to J.-L. Charlet).
4 Translation by D.A. Russell (Loeb 1991).
5 Cesarini Martinelli 1978, 8 line 13 – 9 line 5: “... hic scriptionis genus ... de quo
ita Quintilianus ... [quotation]. Atque eius generis ii sunt Statii libelli ...” (8.24 ff.).
6 All translations of Statius are taken from Shackleton Bailey’s Loeb edition; text
of the Silvae from Courtney’s OCT.
7 On the importance of Quintilian, or indeed of rhetorical theory, for Poliziano as
a poet, see Godman 1991, 131–55.
8 Discussed most recently in Gibson 2006a, xviii (with n. 8) – xxviii.