PREFACE ix
rhetorician. The flaws in Jupiter’s speech should be attributed not to
Statius’ possible carelessness, but rather to the weakness of Jupiter
himself.
Ruurd Nauta traces Statius’ self-presentation in the Silvae in
terms of the roles the poet plays. The role of praise poet, employing
the fictions of singing, lyre-playing and performance at the ceremony
itself, needs to be combined with other roles more closely related to
Statius’ position in Roman society: that of representative subject in
poems addressed to the emperor, and that of amicus in poems to non-
imperial addressees. These roles are variously articulated in accor-
dance with the relationship between poet and addressee and with the
speech act represented by the poem.
Gianpiero Rosati identifies the theme of succession, literary and
political, as informing both the opening and the close of the Thebaid:
whereas in the prologue the poet handles the motif of Phaethon in
such a way as to underscore the legitimacy of Domitian’s succession
of his father, in the epilogue political power is confronted by literary
power, as Statius stages the succession of Vergil’s Aeneid by his own
Thebaid.
Lorenzo Sanna examines ‘dust’, ‘sweat’ and ‘water’ as generic
constituents in the descriptions of ephebic heroes in Statius. The deli-
cate charm of Parthenopaeus in the Thebaid and the ambiguous beauty
of Achilles in the Achilleid are fine examples of this mixture of femi-
nine tenderness and male strength, a typical feature of Statius’ por-
trayal of boy-heroes. Dust and water not only enhance the beauty of
the puer delicatus, but are also characteristics of cruel warfare. The
mixture of these elements in descriptions of ephebic beauty and im-
mature death is typical of Statius’ style, but its origin can be traced
back to Ovid’s sensual pictures of Narcissus and Hermaphroditus.
Hans Smolenaars studies the different storylines developed since
Stesichorus with regard to the timing and setting of Oedipus’ self-
blinding and Jocasta’s suicide. Statius follows the version given by
Euripides in his Phoenissae, as Seneca did in his play of the same
name, according to which Jocasta stays alive long after Oedipus’ act
of blinding himself, and commits suicide only when the war breaks
out. Both Latin poets construct dramatic situations different from
those found in their predecessors, in a constant process of creative
emulation. Statius’ adaptations, moreover, demonstrate his skill at
incorporating multigeneric models.