virgil statius and dante

8/12/2019 Virgil Statius and Dante

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Virgil, Statius and Dante

W. R. Hardie

The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 6. (1916), pp. 1-12.

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VIRGIL STATIUS AND DAN'FE.

m71len Virgil died at Brundisium nineteen vears before the birthof Christ, the Aeneid was unpublished and lacked the poet s finalrevision. Rut it was not unknown. His occupation with it hadexcited wide interest and great expectation. He had read parts of itto friends. Three books of it , ii, iv, and vi, he had read to Augustus,whose sister Octavia also was present at the reading of the sixthbook and fainted when the poet read the passage at the end whichis a tribute to her son 3flarcellus. Marcellus died in 23 B.C. Sixyears before that , in 29, the year of Octavian s triple triumph, Virgilhad read to him at Atella thk four books of the Georgics And muchearlier still, in 4 B.C. he had foretold in an eclogue the coming of agolden age. So later ages thought of Virgil as the court poet ofAugustus, though the historian may be inclined to deny thatthe word court can be justly applied to Augustus household.Certainly for these later ages he was the poet of the empire ratherthan of the republic. The hope and expectation of his contemporarieswas that he would be the poet of Rome and I tah . The moreextravagant hope was that he would surpass Home;, expressed inthe well-known lines of Propertius :cedire , Rom ani scr iptores, cedite , G rai ,nescio quid mains nascitur I l iade .

The more sober expectation was that T irgil s poem would surpassand supersede the Annals of Ennius, which i t undoubtedlv did.Ennius was not without advantages in the competition. ~ e n e a swas a foreigner compared with Ennius hero Kon~ulus. But theconnexion between Troy and Rome had been a matter of generalbelief for more than two centuries, and the plan of Ennius poemcaused Romulus to disappear a t the end of the first book. Further,T irgil s treatment of Rome and Roman history, if less extensive,was more poetic and impressive. The Aenezd affords glimpses of

Th is paper is published. wi th few sl ight I, xxxiv, 65alterations, as i t l r a s le f t by the au thor . I t n e ve rreceived from him the f inal revision which he hadhoped to give it.-R. P. H.


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V I R G I L STATIUS A N D D A N T E .Rome and Roman heroes in the remote future, through the predic-tions and debates of gods, or the compartments on the shield made byVulcan, or the review by Anchises of the souls that are one dayto appear on earth as Roman warriors and statesmen.Virgil died leaving instructions that his unrevised epic shouldnot be published, or even that it should be destroyed. Traditionis somewhat obscure and confused about the nature of this interdict.What seems the most authentic version is that he bequeathed hiswritings to Varius and Tucca under the condition that they shouldnot publish anything which he had not published himself. Itwas an interdict to which Rome and Augustus could not submit.The Princeps relieved the legatees from their legal obligation byordering or authorising them to publish the poem. No great delaytook place. The Aeneid had probably been published by the timewhen Horace wrote his Carmen sneculare, in 17 e.c. with its allusionto the clarus Anchisae Venerisque sanguis, who can overthrowthe foe in battle, but shows clemency to the vanquished, bellanteprior, iacentem lenis in hostem.So far as his contemporaries allude to his writings, Virgil wasfor them the author of Bucolics, Georgics and Aeneid, and of nothingelse. I t is these three that Propertius describes. Virgil himself,in a personal passage at the close of the fourth Georgic, signalisesthe Bz~colici and Georgics as his, attaching his name to them,and tells us that he was living at Naples when he wrote thelatter

ill0 Vergiliuln m e tempore dulcls alebatP a r t h e n o p eand it is probable that he placed at the beginning of the Aeneid,or drafted for that place, four lines in which he again signalisedthe Bucolici and Georgics as his, lines which Varius and Tucca aresaid to have removed. Was there anything else In taking theseprecautions, and in drawing up the clause of his will, was he guardingagainst the publication of immature pieces which lay in his desk orof which friends possessed copies A recent editor of the collectionof short pieces called Catnl~ptonwould have us believe that thiscollection was published by I7arius and Tucca from Virgil s manu-scripts shortly after the Aeneid, in 16 or 5 B.C. ; and that Variusor Tucca authenticated them by appending four elegiac lines inwhich they are described as the divini elementa poetae, pieces inwhich Virgil was learning the A B C of his art. I t is difficultto accept this ~heory. The intervention of Augustus to save theAeneid was a conspicuous fact. Would it not be a deterrent againstslighter things, some of them perhaps not speciallycreditable to Virgil I doubt whether anything b a t the Aexeidcould be published while Varius or Tucca or Augustus himself wasstill living. My private belief, founded on nothing that can be


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I R G I L , STATIUS A N D DANTE.called direct evidence, is that it was under Tiberius that minorpoems began t o att ac h themselves to th e nam e of Virgil. First(or perhaps a fter some of th e pieces in th e Catalepton ha d com e tolight), a poem called ' th e G n at or Culex was unearthed. Perhapsa copy of it was among th e papers left by Augustus. Fo r two thingsabout it are fairly probable (I) that it was addressed to him whenhis nam e was still Octavius, no t Octavianus, i.e. before th e de athand the will of his great-uncle Iulius, (2) that it was connectedwith his stay at Apollonia, for the scene of it was laid in Epirus.Qctavius was at Apollonia in the autumn and winter 45-44 B CIt would follow th a t Virgil was 26 years of age when he w ro te it,if Virgil did write it. Bu t, if i t was fou nd among Augustus papers,neither Livia nor Tiberius would necessarily know much about it ;for it had been addressed to him several years before he marriedI,ivia, and before Tibe rius was born. W e all know how a rumourspreads. W he n half a dozen people knew of th e Culex, the y wouldsay ' qu ite possibly Virgil s ; when a hundred knew it , i t w ouldbe ' probab ly Virgil s ; and when it was more widely current still,th e rum our would be one of th e recovery of an early poem ofVirgil s. Virgil an d his writings were a subject of very generalinterest. His poems had been th e subject of m uch stu dy and ofmuch controversy. As early as th e days of th e Bucolics th ere were' obtrec tatores, tw o of whom h e himself names, Bavius andMaevius. An othe r is said t o have w ritte n an ' anti-bucolica.An d there were two aspects of t h e ma tter w hich would inclinepeople to accept t h e Culex : I) it established a still earlier relationbetween Augustus and the great poet of his principate, and (2) itrounded off a parallel between Homer and Virgil : for had notHomer, presumably in his youth, composed a ' Batrachomyomachiaor ' Battle of the Frogs and Mice lHowever this may be, the belief that Virgil wrote a Culex hadbecome curren t by th e age of Nero. Luc an, th e grea t epic poetof that principate, exclaimed in a preface to one of his early workset quantum mihi restat ad Culicem ' What he meant is perhapsuncertain. Perhaps he mean t ' these a tte m pts of mine fall farshort of th e merit of th e Culex. Bu t th e words may be under-stood as meaning and I am still much younger than Virgil waswhen he wro te th e Culex. Statius, one of th e prominent epicpoets of Dom itian s reign, was an adm irer of Luc an , and a friend ofLucan s widow. H e probably took th e words in this latte r sense,or chose to put that meaning into them because it was complimen-tary to Lucan. H e composed a poem for one of th e anniversariesof Lucan s death. Lu can died in A.D. 65, a t the early ageof 26. So his many works, the great harsalia included, were

cf Statius,Silwae prefatory l e t t e r to bk. i.


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4 VIRGIL STATIUS A N D D A N T E .written at an earlier age than Virgil s C d e x ante annos CulicisMaroniani. 1

Statius was a boy when Lucan died. The main facts of hisnot very eventful life are known to us from his own poems. Hisfather was a native of Velia, a Greek city on the coast of southernItaly, but he migrated to Naples, and father and son spent mostof their lives in that city, the Parthenope, where Virgil wrote theGeorgics and where he was buried. The elder Statius was a teacherand a good poet. As a teacher he lectured on the Greek poets,Homer, Hesiod, Pindar :

qua lege r ecur ra tPindar icae vox f lexa lyrae : 2

( by what rule the sinuous music of Pindar s lute recurs orrepeats itself, a reference to strophic responsion in Pindar) :Stesichorus, Ibycus, Alcman, Sappho, and also Alexandrian poetssuch as Callimachus and Lycophron. His pupils were numerousand belonged to distinguished families ; they came from quitedistant parts of Italy, and many of them afterwards rose to highpositions in public life. And of that band to-day, one it may beis governing the peoples of the East, another controls the tribesof Spain, another holds the Bridge of the Euphrates against theParthian ; some sway the rich peoples of Asia, others the Ponticrealms. Some with the fasces of the magistrate uphold peace andjustice in the courts, others have their post of devotion in thecamp (at Rome). And the poet adds in his filial enthusiasm tulaudis origo, you are the source of their glory.' ^ a writer,th e elder Statius appears to have written a prose version of H ~ m e r , ~which, according to his son,. preserved all the spirit and majestyof the original, he won prizes in various poetic contests, and he wrotea poem on the burning of the Capitol in the war of A.D. 69. cwas meditating a poem on the great eruption of Vesuvi~zs A.D.79),but did not live to carry out the design. So his death probal;lytook place in the short principate of Ti tus. His son s poetic careerbelongs mainly to the reign of Domitian. Statius probably did notsurvive Domitian. As a poet, he is intermediate in time betweenhis contemporaries Valerius Flaccus and Silius. Valerius Flaccusbegan his Argonautica under Vespasian, Silius probably completedhis Punica under Ner~la nd Trajan.Th e younger Statius does not appear to have taken over hisfather s Academy for the sons of gentlemen, though it must havebeen a prosperous concern, but he did follow in his poetic footsteps'Si lvae 11 ~ i i 4. Si lvae v iii, 185- 190.ibid. v, iii, 5 1 ibid. I jg.castrapzastat iol le tene nt , ' i .e . they are off icersof the Praeto r ian Guard .


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IRGIL S T A T I C S AKD D A N T E .and was encouraged by him to attempt still more ambitious projects.He began the Thebais with his father s guidance and encouragement.Successful in Xeapolitan contests in his father s lifetime, he wonafter his death th e prize in the Alban contest, instituted by Domitian,but he was not snccessful in the Capitoline Agon. His recitationsfrom the TFebais wcre highly popular in Rome, according to Juvenal

currl tur ad vocem iucundam et carmcn rcrnicaeTheba idos l ae tam fec i t cum Sta t iu s u rbemprotnis i tque diem.When Statius has made Rome happy by fixing the day for a

reading, there is a rush to hear his pleasant voice recitinq t he favouriteSebaid s lines ; so strong the spell with which he holds their minds

capti\-e, so strong is the pleasure of the attending crowd (]eyes7translation). But i t brings no grist to the mill, there is no profitin it. T he poet starves, Juvenal proceeds, unless he sells his virginAgave to the actor Paris :

esuri t in ta ctam Parid i n isi ven dat Agaven.T h e virgin Agave is a newly-written burlesque for the stage,

for which al; actor or actor-manager high in the imperial favourwill give a substantial sum. Esurit is an exaggeration of thesatirist, whose thesis is that the t rade of letters is a very unprofitableone. There is no evidence that Statius was ever in danger ofstarvation ; he seems to have had sufficient or even ample means,and besides a house at Naples he owned a villa on the Alban hills,which by the favour of Domitian drew its water-supply from animperid aqueduct. Probably he inherited from his father at ieasta moderate competence, tile proceeds of the Academy. Manyof the Silvae or occasional pieces are addressed to men of wealthand high position, and sometimes they describe a country-seat ora work of ar t owned by these patrons : others are on the occasionof a bir th, a marriage, or a death. But they are not written in aspirit of degrading or obsequious flattery, as is sometimes asserted(e.g. by Tyrrell, who is corrected by Mr. Slater in his introductionto his translation of the Silvae). Statius cannot be acquitted of atone of subservient flattery towards the emperor, bu t neither canQuintilian or Martial or other writers of the time. Statius sharesthe tastes of his wealthy friends and is on terms of enlightened andindependent friendship with them. Sometimes he seems to feelthe contrast between the active part played by them in militaryor civic duty and his own tranquil and studious career. Happyin your tasks, he writes to M a r c e l l u ~ , ~you that are not devotedto the garlands oi Helicon and the unwarlike bays from the crestof Parnassus, bu t whose nature is robust and whose mind, girded

Siluae v ii 233 Siluae rv iv 46.Sat. vii 82.


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V I R G I L , STATIUS A N D DANTE.as in armour for great services, endures every turn of fortune. Asfor me, I find in song the opiate of life s idle hours and pursue theevanescent joys of poetic fame :nos otia vitaesolamur cantu ventosaque gaudia famaequae r imus .

Here am I , yielding to the spell of slumber and the genial shorewhere Parthenope coming from far lands found shelter in a havenof Italy ; I strike the slender strings with the thumb of indolence,and seated on the steps of h/Iaro7s shrine I take courage to sing bythe grave of my great master :tenues ignal.0 pollice chordas

pulso Maroneique sedens in inargine templisumo an im um e t magni tumul is adcanto magis t r i .Next he forecasts for Marcellus high achievements in warfare, andagain draws the contrast : I sing of the deeds of others and drifton to languid age ; you in the glory of your own arms will yourselfachieve deeds for song :

nos facta aliena canendovergimu r in senium ; propriis tu pulcher in armisipse canenda geres.In a passage like this, and in the impression which the Silvaegenerally leave with us, Statius has drawn his own portrait as thatof the studious and scholarly poet, wholly devoted to his art. Hisconcern is with the music of words : resolute action and practicalenergy are not for him. Vi7e observe further a kind of religiousveneration for Virgil, feelings of homage and adoration which heshared with his contemporary Silius. Silius, too, paid homage toVirgil s tomb as to a shrine or temple, and celebrated the birthdayof Virgil with more solemnity than his own. In his enthusiasmfor Lucan, Statius seems to think of the Pharsalia s a serious rivalto the Aeneid, a rival whom the Aeneid must regard with greatrespect

ipsa te La t in isAeneis venerabitur canentem.He feels that this is a bold thing to say, and he does not claim anysuch position for his own epic. It is highly venturous to enterat all the field occupied by the poet of Mantua, and in the epilogueto his Thebais he bids his poem abstain from any at tempt t o challengecomparison with Virgil ; it i s to follow at a distance, with reverenceand adoration, the footsteps of the master

nec tu d iv inam Aene ida temp ta ,sed longe sequere e t vestigia sem per adorn.A studious and scholarly poet, inspired by Virgil and full ofcuiusnata lem re ligiosius quam suum celebrat Silzae 111 vii, 79Pliny, Epp. III vii, 8 Martia l , Fpigr XII lxvii ;

XI, xlviii, xlix.


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7I R G I L S T A TI U S A N D D A N T E .reverence for his master-this was the current and q~zite orrectconception of Statius. In later centuries, new features were addedto the picture, features which were out of relation to reality. TheSilvae, which throw sonie light on Statius real life and his personalinterests, ceased to be read. They were still known at the end ofthe fourth century ; Claudian, Ausonius and Sidonius knew them.But after the sixth century they were no longer in common circulation.For the middle ages, Statius was the poet of the Bhebais andAchilleis. By the time of Dante, whose life extended from 1265to 1321, the figures of Virgil and Starius alike had undergone atransformation. T o the mediaeval mind, lacking a clear appreciationof poetry as such, the poet was a sage or man oi learning, and learningincluded a mastery of magic. For the populace of Naples Virgilwas a powerful magician, who had been the chief minister ofMarcellus when Marcellus was made by Augustus governor orduke of Naples. His magic had done much for the city. He hadfixed on one of the gates a bronze fly which had the effect of drivingaway all other flies he had banished all serpents from the placeand had shut them up under one of the gates ; he had protectedthe city from eruptions of Vesuvius by setting up the figure of anarcher, with an arrow on the string ever pointed towards them0untain.l T o the minds of the more educated and to men ofletters Virgil appeared in truer proportions. He was the greatestmaster of Latin verse, the greatest poet of Italy, the poet of Augustusand of imperial Rome. He was a poet of immense knowledge andinsight, and there were many sayings in his writings which coincidedwith, or could be quoted in support of, the highest spiritual teachings.Further, though born too early to have a chance of becoming aChristian, he had in some strange way been inspired to foretell inan eclogue the coming of Christ, the advent of the blessed Virgin( iam redit et Virgo ) and the overthrow of the serpent or thetempter ( occidet et serpens ). This belief about the fourtheclogue had been current for long. I t was in vogue as early as thefour th century, accepted by Constantine and by St. Augustine,though still denied by others such as St. Jerome. In the middleages doubts about it had ceased. But, if this was the teaching of theeclogue, what effect would it have on the mind of an ardent discipleof Virgil like Statius, a poet moreover who lived at such a timethat he may have actually seen St. Peter or St. Paul Thus,though ~reciselyhow or when we do not know, it came to bebelieved that Statius was a convert to Christianity. I t followed,since there was no record of ~er sec ution r martyrdom, that he haddissembled or concealed his new belief. He had shrunk fromdeclaring it , and for this fault of deceit or timidity his spirit had

See Comparet t i irgil i n t h e M i d d l e A g e s p rt 11 c ii.


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8 V I R G I L , STATIUS A N D D A N T E .to pay atonement. So Dante with his guide Virgil encountersStatius in Purgatory. Beyond Purgatory Virgil cannot pass, forhe had never been a Christian at all. Statius will pass to Paradisewhen the penalty has been paid.

In his pilgrimage through this world of spirits, Dante meetsVirgil at the outset, expresses his reverence for the Master whoseworks he has studied so long, and gladly avails himself of his guidanceIn ferno, canto i). I t is at a much later stage that he encountersStatius, in cantos xxi and xxii of the Purgatorio. Statius revealshimself before he knows that Dante s guide is no other than Virgil :

f rom Tolosa , RomeT o herself drew me, where I m erited'4 myrtle gar land to inwreathe my brow.Sta tius they na me me st i ll . Of T h e b e s I sangAn d ne xt of g reat Achilles ; b u t i t h e w ayFe l l wi th the second bur then . f my f lameThose sparkles were the seeds, which I derivedFrom the br ight founta in of ce lest ia l f ireT h a t f e ed s u n n u mb e r d l amp s ; the song I meanM7hich sounds Aeneas wande rings.

When Dante tells him that the spirit beside them is Virgil,Statius is ready to prostrate himself a t the Master s feet, but Virgilforbids him :

Th ou a r t a shadow, and behold s t a shade .In the next canto the two poets converse. Virgil asks Statiushow he came to be a Christian, for in beginning his Bhebais he hadappealed to the goddess Clio as a pagan would1

W h a t s u nRose on thee or what candle pierced the dark,T h a t thou d ids t a f te r see to ho is t the sai l,And follow where the Fisherman had ledStatius replies that it was Virgil s fourth eclogue that led him tothe truth :

By thee conducted f irstI cnter d the Parnassian grots , a nd quaff dOf the c lear spr ing: i l lumined f irst by thee ,Open d mine eyes to G od. Thou d ids t , a s oneW ho journeying thro ugh th e darkness bears a l ightBehind, that prof i ts not himself , but makesHis followers wise, when thou exclaimedst, ' L o.4 renovated world, Justice re turned,Times of primeval innocence restored,And a new race descended from above.Poe t and C hr is t ian bo th to thee I owed.

Per te poeta fui,.per te cristiano. He then describes how thenew faith diffused Itself in his time and how after at first admiringits adherents and sympathising with them he came to join them :Before I led the Greeks,I n tune fu l f ic t ion , to the s t reams of Thebes ,I was baptised: b u t secre tly, throu gh fear ,Remained a Christ ian, and conform d long t imeT o pagan r ites .

I h eb . i, 4 quem prius heroum, Clio, dabis '


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9I R G I L , STATIUS AND D A K T E .The current interpretation of the words before led the Greeksto the streams of Thebes was that they meant simply beforewrote my Thebaid. But it will be observed that the conversationbegins with Virgil s saying that when he began the lhebaid Statiusdid not seem to be a Christian. The late Dr. Verrall suggestedthat Dante meant the words to be taken in a more definite sense :before the Greeks, in the course of my poem, arrived at thestreams of Tbebes ; and this they do in the seventh b0ok.lStatius dwells long on preliminary incidents, and the host led bythe seven chiefs does not reach its goal and begin actual warfaretill after the middle point of the poem-a thing for which the Aeneidsupplied a precedent. Were there things in the poems of Statiuswhich could be taken to indicate conversion to Christianity Thingswhich readers in the middle ages would be likely to take as indica-tions of it Dr. Verrall dealt with this question in two article^, whichhave been reprinted among his collected essays. Among theingenious speculations of that distinguished scholar, they may becounted as among the less improbable. will conclude with abrief account of the question. There is no good ground whateverfor supposing that Statius was a convert to Christianity. But it is amatter of curious interest for the literary historian t o consider whatpassages could give rise to such a belief, and the attempt to answerit will bring to our notice several notable passages of the Thebais.In the earlier of the two essays2 Dr. Verrall suggested hisinterpretation of Dante s words and found a source of the legendthat Statius was a convert to Christianity in a difference which hepointed out between the prelude to the lhebazs and the preludeto the 4chilleis. In the former the divinity of Domitian isexplicitly proclaimed, in the latter there are compljments to theemperor, but no hint that he is a god. What indications in thepoem caused the Italians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuriesto think that Statius was converted while he was composing theThebais r In the later essay3 Dr. Verrall supplied an answer. Hefound in the hesitation of the allied chiefs to cross the swolleliAsopus what Dante s contemporaries would take for an adkm-bration or covert confession of S ta t i~~swn reluctance to declarehis new faith. Stat triste pecus, * the poet writes, in his simileof a herd of cattle at a ford. Stat - Statius --was his surnamereally a nickname, given to mark his shrinking from an open a~7owalof his belief

This is the substance of Dr. Verrall s two essays. summariseit in order to make clear the bearing of what propose to add toit. There are passages in the earlier part of the eighth book in4 4 :T O ollo Boeotaque ven tu m flumina.w t h e Fisherman in t h e Independent DanteReview 1908 on the Baptism of Statius, AlbanyReuiew 903 1 437


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I V I R G I L , S 'l A T II J S A N D D A N T E .

which an ingenious reader in the middle ages, once embarked onthe search for hidden meanings, would have no great difficultyin finding them.The seventh book closes with the vanishing of Amphiaraus,the blameless and enlightened seer of whom Aeschylus had written

; ~ O K ? V Z p L ~ 7 ~ ?vCLL 0th~He does not die, but passes under earth with his chariot and horses.The eighth book opens with his advent in the world below andthe perturbation of its ruler1

Tumidusne meas regnator Olympiexplo rat vires . . quid me otia maestasaevus et implacidam pr ohibe t perferre quiete mamissumque odisse diem(Pluto of course ' lost the light of the world above when thelots were drawn bv the three brothers ; but the words might bethose of a fallen angel.) But Amphiaraus is no turbulent orrefractory spirit, and his speech appeases the lord of the shades2 :crimine no n ullo subeo nova fata, nec almasic merui de luce rapi.

Then the scene changes to the field of battle, and, with the fallof night, to the Argive camp. We hear the lamentations o the hostfor their lost prophet and prince. He had made common causewith them, though he knew their doom and his own :110s quoque bellorum casus nobisque tibiquepraescieras, et (quanta sacro sub pectore virtus )ven ~st iamcn et miseris comes additus armis.What has become of him Will he be able to return to theworld above

poterisne revert;sedibus a Stygiis altaque erumpere terraThen follows a remarkable passage, which could easily be misread,about the silence of oracles. What Statius means is that theanniversary of his disappearance will be marked each year by thesilence of the oracles of Apollo. But there are only two worh whichmake this meaning unavoidable :

quidqu id es, aetern us Phoebo dolor e t nova cladessemp er eris mutisq ue diu plorabere Delphis.hic Tenedon Chrysenque dies partuque l igatamDelon e t intonsi claudet penetralia Branchi,nec Clarias hac luce fores Didymaeaque quisqunmlimina nec Lyciam supplex consultor adibit.quin et curnigeri vatis nemus atque Moloasiquercus anhela Iovis Troianaque Th ym bra tacebit .ipsi amnes ipsaeque volent arescere laurus,ipse nihil certu m sagis clangoribus aet he rpraecinet e t nul la fe rientu r ab al i te nubes.iamq ue eri t i lle dies, quo te quoq ue conscia iat itempla colant reddatq ue tuus responsasacerdos.Aeternus Phoebo dolor ' is ambiguous. The two words are ' hac' I 41 4 1.189.21. 101 . 1951. 182.


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V I R G I L STATIUS .4N D L ANTE.

luce in the fifth line. The third and fourth lines could be takento mean (for the initiated) that the oracles would be permanentlysilent, but ex hac luce would be necessary to give this sense inthe sentence that follows. Shrines of Apollo are to be silent, themediaeval reader would reflect, but why th e shrine of AmmonWhy the oracle of Dodona Had not Statius some deeper andlarger meaning in his mind T h e modern critic, of course, cangive a different answer to the question Why the shrine of AmmonIt is a double answer. Apollo is the son of Zeus and the interpreterof his will (ALAS .rrpo 7jrrls E mt AofLas n-arpds) and therhetorical poet of the silver age, when he has occasion to speak oforacles, looks up oracles in his commonplace-book and produceshis materials 6 ~ f j ~ ~ p in profusion, 7 6 v k a ~ 4 hk' C T T E I ~ W VWitness Lucan s treatment of the snakes of Libya in Phars ix. Thepassage ends with the suggestion that Amphiaraus will be worshippedar a god (templa colant), though the oracles of Amphiaraus andTiresias and Trophonius were by the common tradition of antiquityonly v e ~ v o ~ a v ~ ~ ? a . Statius had mind another prophetrgo inor prince or deliverer, whose sojourn on earth and descent beneathit would bring confusion to all the oracles of pagamism.

Peor and Baa l lmForsake the i r t emples d m -A pollo fr om h ~ sh r lneC a n n o m o r e d i v i n eW ~ t h ollow sh r~ ek he s teep of Delphos leavlng.

Milton did not invent this silencing of the oracles. I t is probablethat the belief could be traced in writers before his time, and inItaly. I have not been able to pursue the search very far ; inthea1,atin poems of Vida and Sannazaro I found nothing definite-nothing that could help to prove that this passage of Statius w smisunderstood in the way in which I think it might be misunderstood.A successor has to bg found for Amphiaraus, and the unanimousvoice of the allied host summons Thiodamas to take his place.Tlliodamas is at first overwhelmed by the greatness of the honourthrust upon him l :

i l lunl ingens confundit honos.But he enters upon his new duties, and worship is paid to theEarth-goddess. T h e prayer uttered by Thiodamas contains theoften-quoted words :

omne homin i na ta le so lum :and it ends with a striking address, or apostrophe, to Amphiaraus2 :

hilaris des oro precatusnosse tuos caeloque et Vera monentibus arisconci lies e t quae populis proferre parabasme doceas : t ib i sacra feram praesaga tu iqu enumin is in te rp res t e Phoebo absen te vocabo .i ll e mih i Delo C i r r haque po ten t io r omniqu o ruis ille ady tis melior locus.


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I V I R G I L , ST TIUS N D D A N T E .

T he se are strange words. vera mo nentibus aris, qua e populisproferre par ab as (had Am phiaraus any mission or message forp o p u l i I But for th e reservation Phoebo absente, th e speakerseems to p u t Anlph iaraus in Apollo s place ; an d in t he las t sentenceindeed he puts him above Apollo without any reservation at al l .I t is only th e exaggerated way of putt ing things that is habitualw ith the rhetorician and th e rhetorical poet of th e silver age. R uta reader in the middle ages might be excused for supposing thatwhile Statius spoke of Thiodamas he was thinking of St. Peter .

virgil statius and dante

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