THE EQUINE CUCKOO 77
of the equestrian statue and the interpretation of it offered by Statius
related to wider questions of Flavian ideology and Domitian’s great
project of stamping upon the monumental heart of Rome a unified
vision of his dynasty’s role as guarantors of peace. The case can, of
course, also be put in reverse: the ideological aspects of Statius’ en-
comium reinforce the suggestion that the placing of the statue at the
end of a sightline from the Forum Transitorium to the Forum Ro-
manum would help unite the new constructions of the Flavians with
the ancient centre of the city under the protection of Minerva and
Domitian themselves. For the central purposes of this paper, as for
Thomas’ argument, it is enough that Statius talks loosely of the
statue’s being surrounded by the many buildings of the Forum Ro-
manum.^18 Statius thus succeeds in suggesting that the statue stood,
roughly speaking, in the centre of the Forum rather than troubling to
be utterly precise in a way that might only serve to undermine his
rhetoric: and that is merely what we should expect, since his poem is
an encomium concerned with ideology, not a guide book for a walk-
ing tour.
The second point identified above was that concerning direction,
and here it should be noted that we are told unambiguously that the
statue faced not towards the Capitol, the traditional heart of the Ro-
man state, but to the east. That is, it faced the Temple of the Divine
Julius:
... hinc obuia limina pandit
qu i fessus bellis adscitae munere prolis
primus iter nostris ostendit in aethera diuis
(Silv. 1.1.22–4)
Here to face it he that, weary of wars, first showed our divinities the
way to heaven by the gift of his adopted son, opens wide his threshold.Statius continues, indicating more clearly that the statue looked out
towards the upper Via Sacra:
at laterum passus hinc Iulia tecta tuentur,
illinc belligeri sublimis regia Pauli;
terga pater blandoque uidet Concordia vultu.
(Silv. 1.1.29–31)18 Thomas 2004, 31.