36 KATHLEEN M. COLEMAN
sed mortalis honos, agilis quem dextra laborat:
nos tibi, laudati iuuenis rarissima coniunx,
longa nec obscurum finem latura perenni
temptamus dare iusta lyra, modo dexter Apollo
quique uenit iuncto mihi semper Apolline Caesar
adnuat: haud alio melius condere sepulchro.
(Silv. 5.1.10–5)
But mortal is the commemoration fashioned by a skilled hand: I am try-
ing with my immortal lyre to give you, most excellent wife of a distin-
guished husband, lasting obsequies that will not end in obscurity, pro-
vided that Apollo gives me his favourable assent, and Caesar, who al-
ways comes to me in company with Apollo. In no other tomb will you
be laid to rest so well.^40The consolatio to Claudius Etruscus on the death of his father is
predicated on a similar conceit: Statius conceives of his poem outlast-
ing burnt offerings and testifying to Claudius’ grief throughout the
coming generations, nos non arsura feremus / munera, uenturosque
tuus durabit in annos / me monstrante dolor (“I shall bear gifts that do
not burn and your grief shall endure through years to come as I por-
tray it”, 3.3.37–9), and the sphragis with which the poem ends em-
ploys the metaphor of the poetic tomb, nostra, quoque, exemplo meri-
tus, tibi carmina sancit, / hoc etiam gaudens cinerem donasse sepul-
chro (“My song too that he has earned by his example he dedicates to
you, happy to have given this sepulchre also to your ashes”, 3.3.215–
6).^41
Epitaphs may be the most common epigraphic form, and epicedia
may predominate in the Silvae, but the living receive epigraphic
commemoration too, and they are celebrated in these poems, even if—
as in the case of Rutilius Gallicus—they had died in the period be-
tween the composition of the poem and its publication in the collec-
tion. In Gallicus’ case, this is a particular irony, since the original
poem was conceived as a thank-offering for his recovery from illness;
in the preface to Book 1, Statius is frank about Gallicus’ change of
status from living to dead: sequitur libellus Rutilio Gallico conuales-
centi dedicatus, de quo nihil dico, ne uidear defuncti testis occasione
mentiri, “There follows a piece dedicated to Rutilius Gallicus upon his
40 For the pedigree of the notion of a poem as a metaphorical tomb, see Gibson
20 06a, 85–6 (on 5.1.15) and van Dam 1984, 485 (on 2.7.70–2). For the immortality of
poetry more generally, see van Dam 1984, 328 (on 2.3.62–3).
41 Trans. Shackleton Bailey 2003.