Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal Part 19

heu iterum gemitus, iterumque novissima nox est.

Alas! once more the hour of lamentation is near, once more is come the last night of wedded sleep.

But this neatness often degenerates into preciosity, _bellator campus_ means a field suitable for battle (viii. 377). Nisus, the king of Megara, with the talismanic purple lock, becomes a _senex purpureus_ (i.

334); an embrace is described by the words _alterna pectora mutant_ (v.

722); a woman nearing her time is one _iustos cuius pulsantia menses vota tument_ (v. 115). We have already noted a similar tendency in Valerius Flaccus; such phrase-making is not a badge of any one poet, it is a sign of the times. In the case of Statius there is perhaps less obscurity and less positive extravagance than in any of his contemporaries, but whether as regards description or phrase-making, there is always a suspicion of his work being pitched--if the phrase is permissible--a tone too high. This is, perhaps, particularly noticeable in his similes. They are very numerous, and he has obviously expended great trouble over them. But, with very few exceptions, they are failures. The cause lies mainly in their lack of variety. There are, for instance, no less than sixteen similes drawn from bulls, twelve from lions, six from tigers.[568] None of these similes show any close observance of nature, and in any case the poetic interest of bulls, lions, and tigers is far from inexhaustible. It is less reprehensible that twenty similes should be drawn from storms, which have a more cogent interest and greater picturesque value. But even here Statius has overshot the mark. This lack of variety testifies to a real dearth of poetic imagination, and this failing is noticeable also in the execution. There is rarely a simile containing anything that awakens either imagination, emotion, or thought. Still, to give Statius his due, there _are_ exceptions, such as the simile comparing Parthenopaeus, seen in all his beauty among his comrades, to the reflections of the evening star outshining the reflections of the lesser stars in the waveless sea (vi. 578):

sic ubi tranquillo perlucent sidera ponto vibraturque fretis caeli stellantis imago, omnia clara nitent, sed clarior omnia supra Hesperus exsertat radios, quantusque per altum aethera, caeruleis tantus monstratur in undis.

So when the stars are gla.s.sed in the tranquil deep and the reflection of the starry sky quivers in the waves, all the stars shine clear, but clearer than all doth Hesperus send forth his rays; and as he gleams in the high heavens, even so bright do the blue waters show him forth.

The comparison is. a little strained and far-fetched. The reflection of stars in the sea is not quite so noticeable or impressive as Statius would have us believe. But there is real beauty both in the conception and the execution of the simile. Of more indisputable excellence is the comparison in the eleventh book (443), where Adrastus, flying from Thebes in humiliation and defeat, is likened to Pluto, when he first entered on his kingdom of the underworld, his lordship over the strengthless dead--

qualis demissus curru laevae post praemia sortis umbrarum custos mundique novissimus heres palluit, amisso veniens in Tartara caelo.

Even as the warden of the shades, the third heir of the world, when he entered on the realm that the unkind lot had given him, leapt from his car and turned pale, for heaven was lost and he was at the gate of h.e.l.l.

The picture is Miltonic, and Pluto is for a brief moment almost an antic.i.p.ation of the Satan of _Paradise Lost_.

The metre, like that of Valerius Flaccus, draws its primary inspiration from Vergil, but has been strongly influenced by the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid. There are fewer elisions in Statius than in Vergil, and more dactyls.[569] He is, however, less dactylic than Valerius Flaccus and Ovid. In his management of pauses he is far more successful than any epic writer, with the exception of Vergil. As a result, he is far less monotonous than Ovid, Lucan, or Valerius. The one criticism that can be levelled against him is that his verse, while possessing rapidity and vigour, is not sufficiently adapted to the varying emotions that his story demands, and that it shows a consequent lack of n.o.bility and stateliness. For the _Silvae_ his metre is admirably adapted. It is light and almost sprightly, and the poet can let himself go. He was not blind to the requirements of the epic metre even if he did not satisfy them, and in his lighter verse there is a notable increase of fluency and ease.

The _Thebais_ is a work whose value it is difficult to estimate. Its undeniable merits are never quite such that we can accord it whole-hearted praise; its cleverness commands our wonder, while its defects are not such as to justify a sweeping condemnation. But it must be remembered that epic must be very good if it is to avoid failure, and it is probable that there are few works on which such skill and labour have been expended without any proportionate success. An attempt has been made in the preceding pages to indicate the main reasons for the failure of the _Thebais_. One more reason may perhaps be added here.

Over and above the poet's lack of originality and the highest poetic imagination, over and above his distracting echoes and his artificiality, there is a lack of moral fire and insight about the poem.

Statius gives us but a surface view of life. He had never plumbed the depths of human pa.s.sion nor realized anything of the mystery of the world. His reader never derives from him the consciousness, that he so often derives from Vergil, of a 'deep beyond the deep, and a height beyond the height'. He has neither the virtues of the mystic nor of the realist. Ultimately, life is for him a pageant with intervals for sentimental threnodies and rhetorical declamation.

The same qualities characterize the _Achilleis_ and still more the _Silvae_. The _Achilleis_ was to have comprised the whole life of Achilles. Only the first book and 167 lines of the second were composed.

They tell how Thetis endeavoured to withhold Achilles from the Trojan War by disguising him as a girl and sending him to Scyros, how he became the lover of Deidamia, the king's daughter, was discovered by the wiles of Ulysses, and set forth on the expedition to Troy. The fragment is not unpleasant reading, but contains little that is noteworthy.[570] The style is simpler, less precious, and less rhetorical than that of the _Thebais_. But it lacks the vigour as well as many of the faults of the earlier poem. There is nothing to make us regret that the poet died before its completion; there is something to be thankful for in the fact that he did not live to challenge direct comparison with Homer.

The _Silvae_, on the other hand, is a work of considerable interest.

The meaning of the word _silva_, in the literary sense, is 'raw material' or 'rough draft'. It then came to be used to mean a work composed at high speed on the spur of the moment, differing in fact but little from an improvisation.[571] That these poems correspond to this definition will be seen from Statius' preface to book i: 'hos libellos, qui mihi subito calore et quadam festinandi voluptate fluxerunt....

Nullum ex illis biduo longius tractum, quaedam et in singulis diebus effusa.' There are thirty-two poems in all, divided into five books.

The fifth is incomplete; and, if we may judge from the unfinished state of its preface, was published after the author's death. The poems are extremely varied in subject, and to a lesser degree in metre, hendecasyllables, alcaics, and sapphics being found as well as hexameters. They comprise poems in praise of the appearance and the achievements of Domitian,[572] consolations to friends and patrons for the loss of relatives or favourite slaves,[573] lamentations of the poet or his friends for the death of dear ones,[574] letters on various subjects,[575] thanksgivings for the safety of friends,[576] and farewells to them on their departure,[577] descriptions of villas and the like built by his acquaintances,[578] an epithalamium,[579] an ode commemorating the birthday of Lucan,[580] the description of a statuette of Hercules,[581] poems on the deaths of a parrot and a lion,[582] and a remarkable invocation to Sleep.[583] One and all, these poems show abnormal cleverness. These slighter subjects were far better suited to the poet's powers. His miniature painting was in place, his sprightly and dexterous handling of the hexameter and the hendecasyllable could be more profitably employed. Yet here, too, his artificiality is a serious blemish, his lamentations for the loss of the _pueri delicati_ of friends do not, and can hardly be expected to, ring true, and the same blemish affects even the poems where he laments his own loss. Further, the poems addressed to Domitian are fulsome to the verge of nausea;[584] the beauty of the emperor is such that all the great artists of the past would have vied with one another in depicting his features; his eyes are like stars; his equestrian statue is so glorious that at night (i. 1. 95)

c.u.m superis terrena placent, tua turba relicto labetur caelo miscebitque oscula iuxta.

ibit in amplexus natus fraterque paterque et soror: una loc.u.m cervix dabit omnibus astris.

When heaven takes its joy of earth, thy kin shall leave heaven and glide down to earth and kiss thee face to face.

Thy son and sister, thy brother and thy sire, shall come to thy embrace; and about thy sole neck shall all the stars of heaven find a place.

The poem on the emperor's s.e.xless favourite, Earinus, can scarcely be quoted here. Without being definitely coa.r.s.e, it succeeds in being one of the most disgusting productions in the whole range of literature.

The emperor who can accept flattery of such a kind has certainly qualified for a.s.sa.s.sination. The lighter poems are almost distressingly trivial, and it is but a poor excuse to plead that such triviality was imposed by the artificial social life of the day and the jealous tyranny of Domitian. Moreover, the tendency to preciosity, which was kept in check in the _Thebais_ by the requirements of epic, here has full play. The death of a boy in his fifteenth year is described as follows (ii. 6, 70):

vitae modo cardine adultae nectere temptabat iuvenum pulcherrimus ille c.u.m tribus Eleis unam trieterida l.u.s.tris.

Come now to the turning-point where boyhood becomes manhood, he, the fairest of youths, was on the point of linking three olympiads (twelve years) with a s.p.a.ce of three years.

Writers of elegiac verse are addressed as (i. 2. 250)

'qui n.o.bile gressu extremo fraudatis opus'.

Ye that cheat the n.o.ble march of your verse of its last stride.

A new dawn is expressed by an astounding periphrasis (iv. 6. 15):

ab Elysiis prospexit sedibus alter Castor et hesternas risit t.i.thonia mensas.

Castor in turn looked forth from the halls of Elysium and t.i.thonus' bride made merry over yesterday's feasts. [Castor and Pollux lived on alternate days.]

There is, in fact, no limit in these poems to Statius' luxuriance in far-fetched and often obscure mythological allusions. In spite, however, of such cardinal defects as these, the _Silvae_ present a brilliant though superficial picture of the cultured society of the day and contain much that is pretty, and something that is poetic.[585] Take, for instance, the poem in which the poet writes to console Atedius Melior for the death of his favourite Glaucias, a _puer delicatus_. The work is hopelessly clever and hopelessly insincere. Statius exaggerates at once the charms of the dead boy and the grief of Atedius and himself.

But at the conclusion he works up an old commonplace into a very pretty piece of verse. He has been describing the reception of Glaucias in the underworld (ii. 1. 208):

hic finis rapto! quin tu iam vulnera sedas et tollis mersum luctu caput? omnia functa aut moritura vides: obeunt noctesque diesque astraque, nee solidis prodest sua machina terris.

nam populos, mortale genus, plebisque caducae quis fleat interitus? hos bella, hos aequora posc.u.n.t; his amor exitio, furor his et saeva cupido, ut sileam morbos; hos ora rigentia Brumae, illos implacido letalis Sirius igni, hos manet imbrifero pallens Autumnus hiatu.

quicquid init ortus, finem timet. ibimus omnes, ibimus: immensis urnam quat.i.t Aeacus ulnis.

ast hic quem gemimus, felix hominesque deosque et dubios casus et caecae lubrica vitae effugit, immunis fatis. non ille rogavit, non timuit meruitve mori: nos anxia plebes, nos miseri, quibus unde dies suprema, quis aevi exitus incertum, quibus instet fulmen ab astris, quae nubes fatale sonet.

Such is the rest thy lost darling has won. Come, soothe thine anguish and lift up thy head that droops with woe. Thou seest all things dead or soon to die. Day and night and stars all pa.s.s away, nor shall its ma.s.sive fabric save the world from destruction. As for the tribes of earth, this mortal race, and the death of mult.i.tudes all doomed to pa.s.s away, why bewail them?

Some war, some ocean, demands for its prey: some die of love, others of madness, others of fierce desire, to say naught of pestilence: some winter's freezing breath, others the baleful Sirius' cruel fire, others again pale autumn, gaping with rainy maw, awaits for doom: all that hath birth must tremble before death: we all must go, must go: Aeacus shakes the urn of fate in his vast arms. But this child, whom we bewail, is happy, and has escaped the power of men and G.o.ds, the strokes of chance, and the slippery paths of our dark life: fate cannot touch him: he did not ask, nor fear, nor deserve to die. But we poor anxious rabble, we miserable men, know not whence our last day shall come, what shall be the end of life, for whom the thunderbolt shall bring death from the starry sky, nor what cloud shall roar forth our doom.

There is nothing great about such work, but it is a neat and elegant treatment of a familiar theme, while the phrase _non ille rogavit, non timuit meruitve mori_ has a pathos worthy of a better cause.[586] Far more suited, however, to the genius of Statius, with its lack of inspiration, its marvellous polish, and its love of minutiae, are the descriptions of villas, temples, baths, and works of art in which he so frequently indulges. The poem on the statuette of Hercules (ii. 6) is a wonder of cunning craftsmanship, the poems on the baths of Etruscus, the villa of Vopiscus at Tibur, and of Pollius at Surrentum, for all their exaggeration and affectation, reveal a genuine love for the beauties of art and nature. It is true that he shows a preference for nature trimmed by the hand of man, but his pleasure is genuine and its expression often delicate. Who would not delight to live in a house such as Pollius had built at Sorrento (ii. 2. 45)?--

haec domus ortus aspicit et Phoebi tenerum iubar; illa cadentem detinet exactamque negat dimittere lucem, c.u.m iam fessa dies et in aequora montis opaci umbra cadit vitreoque natant praetoria ponto.

haec pelagi clamore fremunt, haec tecta sonoros ignorant fluctus terraeque silentia malunt.

quid mille revolvam culmina visendique vices? sua cuique voluptas atque omni proprium thalamo mare, transque iacentem Nerea diversis servit sua terra fenestris.

One chamber looks to the east and the young beam of Phoebus; one stays him as he falls and will not part with the expiring light, when the day is outworn and the shadow of the dark mount falls athwart the deep, and the great castle swims reflected in the gla.s.sy sea. These chambers are full of the sound of ocean, those know not the roaring waves, but rather love the silence of the land.... Why should I recount thy thousand roofs and every varied view? Each has a joy that is its own: each chamber has its own sea, and each several window its own tract of land seen across the sea beneath.

We cannot, perhaps, share his enthusiasm in the minute description that follows of the coloured marbles used in the decoration of the house, and his panegyric of Pollius leaves us cold, but we quit the poem with a pleasant impression of the Bay of Naples and of the poet who loved it so well. It recalls in its way the charming, if over-elaborate and exaggerated, landscapes of the younger Pliny in his letters on the source of the c.l.i.tumnus and on his Tuscan and Laurentine villas.[587]

But it is in two poems of a very different kind that the _Silvae_ reach their high-water mark. The _Genethliacon_ _Lucani_, despite its artificial form and the literary conventions with which it is overloaded, reveals a genuine enthusiasm for the dead poet, and is couched in language of the utmost grace and verse of extraordinary melody; the hendecasyllables of Statius lack the poignant vigour of the Catullan hendecasyllables, but they have a music of their own which is scarcely less remarkable.[588] The lament of Calliope for her lost nursling will hold its own with anything of a similar kind produced by the Silver Age (ii 7. 88):

'o saevae nimium gravesque Parcae!

o numquam data longa fata summis!

cur plus, ardua, casibus patetis?

cur saeva vice magna non senesc.u.n.t?

sic natum Nasamonii Tonantis post ortus obitusque fulminatos angus...o...b..bylon premit sepulcro.

sic fixum Paridis manu trementis Peliden Thetis horruit cadentem.

sic ripis ego murmurantis Hebri non mutum caput Orpheos sequebar sic et tu (rabidi nefas tyranni!) iussus praecipitem subire Lethen, dum pugnas canis arduaque voce das solatia grandibus sepulcris, (o dirum scelus! o scelus!) tacebis.'

sic fata est leviterque decidentes abrasit lacrimas nitente plectro.

'Ah! fates severe and all too cruel! O life that for our n.o.blest ne'er is long! Why are earth's loftiest most p.r.o.ne to fall? Why by hard fate do her great ones ne'er grow old? Even so the Nasamonian Thunderer's son like lightning rose, like lightning pa.s.sed away, and now is laid in a narrow tomb at Babylon. So Thetis shuddered, when the son of Peleus fell transfixed by Paris' coward hand. So I, too, by the banks of murmuring Hebrus followed the head of Orpheus that could not cease from song. So now must thou--out on the mad tyrant's crime!--go down untimely to the wave of Lethe, and while thou singest of war and with lofty strain givest comfort to the sepulchres of the mighty,--O infamy, O monstrous infamy!--art doomed to sudden silence.' So spake she, and with gleaming quill wiped away the tears that gently fell.

But more beautiful as pure poetry, and indeed unique in Latin, is the well-known invocation to Sleep (v. 4):

crimine quo merui iuvenis,[589] placidissime divum, quove errore miser, donis ut solus egerem, Somne, tuis? tacet omne pecus volucresque feraeque et simulant fessos curvata cac.u.mina somnos, nec trucibus fluviis idem sonus; occidit horror aequoris, et terris maria acclinata quiesc.u.n.t.

septima iam rediens Phoebe mihi respicit aegras stare genas; totidem Oetaeae Paphiaeque revisunt lampades et totiens nostros t.i.thonia questus praeterit et gelido spargit miserata flagello.

unde ego sufficiam? non si mihi lumina mille quae sacer alterna tantum statione tenebat Argus et haud umquam vigilabat corpore toto.

at nunc heus! aliquis longa sub nocte puellae bracchia nexa tenens ultro te, Somne, repellit: inde veni! nec te totas infundere pennas luminibus compello meis (hoc turba precetur laetior): extremo me tange cac.u.mine virgae (sufficit) aut leviter suspenso poplite transi.