The Poetry of Statius

THE EQUINE CUCKOO 67

palace petered out. Rome has been restored to herself, and under your

protection, Caesar, the delights that once belonged to a master are now

the property of the people.^3

Similarly, two major extensions were made by the Flavian emperors
to the general Forum area. The first of these was the great Temple of
Peace begun after the capture of Jerusalem and completed by
Vespasian in A.D. 75. The other was the Forum Transitorium; begun
by Domitian and completed by Nerva, who gave it its other name, this
architectural triumph monumentalized the old Argiletum, contained a
particularly beautiful temple to Domitian’s patron goddess Minerva,
and filled in the space between the Roman Forum, the Fora of Caesar
and Augustus, and the Temple of Peace itself. Indeed, the overarching
theme of Flavian propaganda in this nexus of buildings was peace,
albeit peace in the traditional Roman sense of peace established and
guaranteed by imperial victory. The most famous formulation of this
idea in Latin in poetry is, of course, found in the words of Anchises’
ghost in the sixth book of the Aeneid:

tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento

(h ae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem,

parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.

(Verg. A. 6.851–3)

Roman, do you remember with authority to rule the nations (these will

be your arts), and to impose custom upon peace, to spare the conquered

and to war down the proud.

Examples of literary treatments of this ideological position, however,
can easily be multiplied, and in the context of the Flavian period one
might therefore compare Statius’ description of the careers being fol-
lowed by his father’s former pupils:

et nunc ex illo forsan grege gentibus alter

iura dat Eois, alter compescit Hiberos,^4

alter Achaemenium secludit Zeugmate Persen,

hi dites Asiae populos, hi Pontica frenant,

hi fora pacificis emendant fascibus, illi

castra pia statione tenent; tu laudis origo.

(Stat. Silv. 5.3.185–90)

3 All translations from the Latin are the author’s.
4 I read Hiberos with ω (accepted by Shackleton Bailey 2003) against the Hiberas
of the codex Matritensis (accepted by Courtney 1990, 138).