148 RUURD R. NAUTA
Saturn with the Saturnalia now celebrated by Domitian (39–42). And
also similarly to what happens in 1.1, the closural assurance of endur-
ing fame for the day (98–102) recalls Virgil’s claim of immortalising
those he sings (A. 9.446–9), so that the suggestion is made that it is
Statius’ poem itself that bestows that fame.^18
The next imperial poem, Silvae 2.5, is likewise set in the amphi-
theatre, but in this case we do have the text of Statius’ preface, in
which he says that he handed it to the emperor immediately after the
event it commemorates (2.ep.16–8). This presumably means that he
offered the poem when still in the amphitheatre, but again it is im-
probable that he recited there. The poem consoles Domitian for the
loss of a lion that was unexpectedly killed, but avoids presumptuous-
ness by overtly consoling not the emperor, but the lion, by telling it
that the emperor mourned its death (27–30).^19 Statius adds that Domi-
ti an’s sorrow was shared by the people and the senators (25), which of
course includes himself, so that he again acts as the spokesperson of
the community. He does not appear as an individual at all, but he does
manifest himself as a poet from the very first line, by using the figure
of apostrophe.
Of the three imperial poems that open Book 4, two (4.1 and 4.3)
conform more or less to the pattern of the earlier books, although Sta-
tius makes more extensive use of the figure of the mythological
spokesperson. In 4.1, on Domitian’s seventeenth consulate, the poet
starts off by exhorting the laws and magistracies and the entire City of
Rome to rejoice, and by apostrophising Domitian (13), but soon the
god Janus takes over, whose speech fills out the poem almost to its
end: it is Janus who now addresses the emperor, challenges Vetustas
(28–34) to produce historic precedent, and acts as a representative of
all the orders in Rome (25–7, 34–7); the poet reappears only to con-
firm, in a renewed apostrophe to Domitian (46), that Janus’ good
wishes have been ratified by the other gods and especially by Jupiter
himself. In 4.3, on the Via Domitiana constructed by the emperor in
Campania, Statius employs two mythological spokespersons: first the
river Volturnus, who praises Domitian for canalising and bridging
him, and then the Cumaean Sibyl of Cumae. In introducing the latter,
18 Cf. Gibson 2006b, 167. A similar use of the passage in Virgil, as well as of Hor.
Carm. 3.30, is to be found at the end of a further imperial poem, Silv. 4.3: see Cole-
man 1988, 134–5 ad 160–1; Smolenaars 2006, 242–4.
19 Statius explicitly uses the word solacia (24); cf. below, n. 40.