144 RUURD R. NAUTA
an investigation is to take it as concerned with the personae the poet
adopts, and in what follows I shall regularly speak of ‘roles’ and ‘role-
playing’ (but not of ‘masks’).^4 A brief but valuable survey of Statius’
various personae in the Silvae has been given by Alex Hardie,^5 and
my own contribution claims nothing else for itself than being more
systematic and comprehensive, although the price for that, inevitably,
is a certain length. I have however tried to be as succinct as possible,
and have also omitted discussion of two components of the text of the
Silvae that in themselves are highly relevant to my theme, but in dif-
ferent ways have a special character: the posthumously published
‘personal’ poems 5.3–5 mentioned above, and the prefaces to the pub-
lished books (although I will occasionally use the information they
provide on individual poems).^6 For reasons that will become clear, I
discuss poems for the emperor separately from those for non-imperial
addressees, and in the latter group organise my discussion according
to the main speech act represented by the poem (consolation, con-
gratulation, etc.). I shall, however, set apart a group of poems from
Book 4 (4.4–9), which show Statius experimenting with other forms
of self-presentation than he had used theretofore.
Poems honouring the emperorThe first poem in the Silvae, on the colossal equestrian statue of
Domitian erected in the Forum,^7 will serve as a good introduction to
St atius’ self-presentation in the majority of the imperial poems. In the
preface to Book 1, Statius declares that he had dared to offer the poem
to the emperor on the day following that on which the statue had been
dedicated (1.ep.18–9), which implies that the poem had played no
ceremonial role. Yet even without a ceremony we find ceremonial
speech: the poet repeatedly addresses both an audience (17, 87–8) and
the emperor or his statue (5, 25–40, 94–107), and at the end he even
offers the statue to the emperor in the name of the senate and people
of Rome: “Enjoy for ever the gift of the people and the great senate”
4 Cf. Nauta 2002b.
5 See Hardie 1983, 138–45. More recently Statius’ authority in the Silvae has been
discussed by Zeiner 2005, esp. 45–54, 72–4; it would lead too far afield to engage
with her (Bourdieuian) approach here, but I hope to do so elsewhere.
6 On the prefaces see now Johannsen 2006.
7 On this poem see the contribution of Dewar to this volume.