INTRODUCTION

Most of the poems in the Silvae have a personal addressee, usually a senator or an equestrian; sometimes the emperor. Depending upon the status of the recipient and the relative gravity of the topic, Statius may adopt a more – or less – jocular tone. Short parenthetical remarks that are characteristic of colloquial language usually lend an air of informality when they are employed in literary works. Hence we would expect to find them in a poem such as Statius' hendecasyllables to Plotius Grypus, complaining about the unsuitable present that Statius received from him for the Saturnalia; indeed, the climax of the long list of items that Statius would have preferred to Grypus' gift contains two colloquial parentheses within a sentence of four lines (4.9.42–5):

Parenthetic formulae of request (rogo, 42) are characteristic of colloquial speech, which favours parataxis over hypotaxis (H–S 472; Hofmann 1951: 129–30, 199).