178 GIANPIERO ROSATI
opened up a favourable route, a benignum iter, for the poem. The em-
peror’s appreciation and popular success are the two requisites that are
cited by another Flavian poet, Martial, who is likewise engaged in a
difficult negotiation with Domitian in order to obtain his protection
and economic support: the approval from power is the best form of
publicity with the reading public, and success with the readers is the
guarantee of effectiveness that the poet presents, in proposing his
work as a means for the celebration of the emperor, and as the instru-
ment of a literary and cultural policy in favour of the political author-
ity.^11 As is well known, the poetry of the Flavian Age cultivates the
myth of Augustan patronage as an ideal model, as a paradigm of the
relationship between political power and intellectuals (the famous Sint
Maecenates, non derunt, Flacce, Marones),^12 and this model appears
to be implied, to a certain extent, also in this passage, apparently in an
attempt to create a close analogy between the Aeneid and the Thebaid.
Firstly, Statius claims for his poem the same approval from political
power that Augustus had actually granted to the Aeneid, and secondly,
he attributes to the Thebaid a role of education on a national level
(Itala), thus likening it, also in this respect, to the Aeneid (which had
rapidly become a ‘text book’ in schools of rhetoric).^13
Also from this point of view, therefore, Statius is preparing his own
succession to Virgil in the canon of epic poetry. While, on the one
hand, the texts that are selected by grammarians as canonical are usu-
ally those of dead poets,^14 the Aeneid represents an exception, because
its ‘classic’ status was already celebrated during the composition of
the poem (no need to recall the words of Propertius announcing its
completion);^15 and it is this exception – and not the norm – that Statius
apparently wishes to emulate, because the series of iam announces a
list of recognitions that the Thebaid already receives today, during the
poet’s lifetime. On the other hand, an essential requisite for inclusion
11 Rosati 2006, 47f.
12 Cf. Nauta 2007a, 9–15.
13 Vessey 1973, 44.
14 Cf. Most 1990, 50.
15 On Virgil’s early success cf. Suet. Poet. 102f. bucolica eo successu edidit, ut in
scaena quoque per cantores crebro pronuntiarentur; 116ff.; Rhet. 16.3 (Q. Caecilius
Epirota, a grammarian coeval with the poet, primus dicitur ... Vergilium ... praelegere
coepisse); Tac. Dial. 13.2 testis ipse populus, qui auditis in theatro Vergilii uersibus
surrexit uniuersus et forte praesentem spectantemque Vergilium ueneratus est sic
quasi Augustum.