PREFACE
After having organised a conference on Flavian poetry in Groningen
in 2003 and edited the ensuing volume Flavian Poetry (Brill, 2006),
we decided to devote a smaller-scale symposium to the most brilliant
and versatile of the Flavian poets, P. Papinius Statius. This sympo-
sium was held at the University of Amsterdam to mark the retirement
of Hans Smolenaars from the Department of Classics at the University
of Amsterdam, where he had taught Latin since 1969. The essays in
this volume are the revised versions of the papers delivered at this
symposium.
Most aspects of the poetry of Statius, including its reception, are
covered in this volume, although we regret that the Achilleid was
somewhat underrepresented in the colloquium. Four essays are de-
voted to Statius’ adaptation and transformation of traditional epic
techniques and motifs in the Thebaid (Gibson, Hill, Rosati, and Sanna,
who also discusses the Achilleid); two other contributions discuss
Statius’ creative imitation of tragic and other texts in the Thebaid
(Heslin and Smolenaars); a third group of essays is devoted to the
Silvae (Coleman, Dewar, and Nauta); and two papers are concerned
with the reception of Statius’ poems in European literature and schol-
arship (Berlincourt and van Dam). We decided, however, that, given
the relatively small amount of papers, it would be more satisfactory to
retain the alphabetical order of the contributors, which also leaves
readers more room to construe their own links between papers.
Valéry Berlincourt writes about the pivotal role of Johann Frie-
drich Gronovius as an editor and commentator of the Thebaid. He
shows that modern assumptions about the relationship between text
and commentary were not shared by earlier scholars, and that philol-
ogical reputations may rest on coincidences and arbitrary choices: if
Caspar Barth had printed his own text instead of adopting that of
Gronovius, his monumental commentary might have drawn more
attention, whereas the fame of Gronovius’ creditable but superficial
work was enhanced by the adoption of his notes in a popular variorum
edition.
Kathleen Coleman, after surveying the use of (fictional) inscrip-
tions in Roman imaginative literature, discusses the striking scarcity