170 RUURD R. NAUTA
and is to be thought of as being sung in Alba Longa, where Severus
does not seem to be present. Statius’ Alban estate, which in the previ-
ous books was mentioned only once, and that briefly,^81 is now fore-
grounded as the setting of the poet’s Horatian life of modest content-
ment, and also of his victory in the Alban Games (1–28). This fact
from his career as a poet is specific, but the details of his life as a per-
son are conventional: he owns a small plot of land, has no cattle, etc.
Statius does, however, introduce a further autobiographical element,
by writing that Alba comes first in his affections post patriam, “after
his fatherland” (21), assuming, apparently, that this requires no further
explication for Severus (or for the reader of the published book, who
knows of Statius’ Neapolitan identity from the earlier books or from
poem 4.4). In Silvae 4.7, Statius likewise introduces his birthplace,
and in a similar off-hand manner, when in the course of remonstrating
with Vibius Maximus for not returning to Latium from Dalmatia, he
contrasts his own practice, although “born in a nearer land” (17). Oth-
erwise Statius’ self-presentation here is exclusively that of the epic
poet: at the beginning he prays to the Muse Erato and Pindar to help
him in the unwonted genre of lyric (1–12), and later on he recalls
Maximus’ help with the publication of the Thebaid and with the
newly-started Achilleid (21–28). In this review of his work, the ode is
close to the letter to Vitorius Marcellus, as in the declaration that his
epic poetry is motivated by the “joys of fame”; here he even boasts
that the Thebaid “with bold lyre essays the joys of Mantuan [i.e. Vir-
gilian] fame” (28 temptat audaci fide Mantuanae / gaudia famae).
Apart from the verse letter and the ode, Statius also experimented
with a further Horatian genre, satire, although here the formality of
Statian panegyric is even more obtrusive than in the other genres. His
poem on a statuette of Hercules owned by Novius Vindex (4.6) begins
as follows:
Forte remittentem curas Phoeboque leuatum
pe ctora, cum patulis tererem uagus otia Saeptis
iam moriente die, rapuit me cena benigni
Vindicis.
It happened as I wandered idly at sunset in the spacious Enclosure [the
Saepta Julia in the Campus Martius], my tasks put by and my mind re-
lieved of Phoebus, that kindly Vindex took me off to dinner. (tr. SB)81 See above, 164.