Statius (Classics)

Acrostics and other letter-plays are almost automatically linked to the rather suspect notion of "virtuosity". In Statius' Epicedion ad patrem suum, a complex letter-play calls for a renewed conception of what an acrostic can do. I suggest than the author is less a master showing his skills off, than a sometime startled reader of his "own" text. Similarly,  writing should not be automatically conceived as the author's instrument, but sometimes as a medium that welcomes other voices.

This paper focuses on Stat. Silu. 1.5: textual problems are re-examined and the meta-poetic aspects are fully discussed. The uninhibited Clio at the party (ll. 12-13) is a key-character in representing the relationships between the epic poet Statius and the occasional poetry of the Siluae; the Naiads are not simply Muses’ substitutes, but natural elements evocated by the uates (together with Vulcan ‘the fire’) in order to create in front of the readers the scenario of Etruscus’ thermae. From the beginning on (in spite of the commonly alleged bipartition of the poem) Statius plays on the paradoxical idea of a ‘symposium in honor of the waters (nymphae)’: this is the frame in which we have to re-consider the whole gesture of including or excluding not only waters, but also fire, marbles, glass, and so on. Catullus 27 (a poem on a symposium governed by drunken Postumia and forbidden for lymphae, waters) is an important and yet unobserved poetical model; it also had a special influence on Stat. Silu. 1.6, on Lygdamus (3.53-64), and on several Martial’s poems (exp. on 11.6 and 11.16).
La struttura di Stat. Silv. 1,5 è unitaria. Il poeta/vates Stazio chiama a raccolta (o esclude) le forze e gli elementi (le ninfe/acque personificate, il fuoco, ma anche il vetro e i marmi) che vanno sia a ‘costruire’ il balneum di Etrusco, sia a ‘partecipare’ al convito in suo onore. Il simposio, con la figura emblematica di Clio procax che folleggia, richiama alla memoria del lettore non solo precedenti oraziani, ma anche Catull. 27, ove il gesto era quello di allontanare le lymphae/acque personificate, in osservanza della lex imposta da una misteriosa e allegra figura femminile (la magistra Postumia, quasi sicuramente una personificazione allegorica). L’influsso di Catull. 27 è ancora ben visibile in Stat. Silv. 1,6, nonché nel contemporaneo Marziale (cfr. almeno 11,6 e 16).