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REWRITING THE THEBAID: PIETAS AND THE FURIES IN SILVAE 3.3 (AND 5.2)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2023

Giulio Celotto
Giulio Celotto*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
*
gc4fw@virginia.edu
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Abstract

This paper argues that in Silvae 3.3, written to console Claudius Etruscus on the death of his beloved father, Statius reverses his own account of the contentious relationship between Tisiphone and Pietas in Thebaid Books 1 and 11 to present his patron's affectionate bond with his father as antithetical to Oedipus’ resentful relationship with his sons. In the Thebaid, Oedipus summons Tisiphone from the Underworld to punish his own children by stirring up civil war, and the Fury promptly obeys, banishing Pietas from earth to prevent her from stopping the conflict. In Silvae 3.3, on the other hand, the poet asks Pietas to come back to earth, and urges the Furies to stay away from the deceased. The return of Pietas, also portrayed in Silvae 5.2, shows that in his collection of occasional poetry Statius rewrites his own epic to restore cosmos: while in the chaotic narrative universe of the Thebaid all fundamental values, including filial devotion, are turned upside down, the Silvae describe a more conventional and reassuring world, founded on virtue rather than vengeance.

Keywords

StatiusThebaidSilvaePietasFuriesClaudius EtruscusCrispinusDomitian
Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 73 , Issue 1 , May 2023 , pp. 304 - 310
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

Scholarship on Statius has contributed valuable studies on the relationship between the Thebaid and the Silvae,Footnote 1 whose first book appeared only one year after the publication of the Theban epic. Arguing against Cancik's formalist analysis, which highlighted the continuity between these two works,Footnote 2 Vessey suggested that Statius was eager to differentiate between the Thebaid and the Silvae in order to comply with the principles of the classical theory of genres.Footnote 3 Shifting the focus from the style to the tone of the two works, Newlands has persuasively theorized that in the Silvae, a collection of ‘safe and joyful poetry’, Statius often reverses themes and images used in the Thebaid, ‘a poem of pain and suffering’.Footnote 4 More specifically, she shows that in Silvae 1.5, addressed to Claudius Etruscus, Statius alludes to his epos to contrast the everlasting friendship between himself and his patron with the undying enmity between Eteocles and Polynices.Footnote 5 In this paper I argue that Statius uses the same technique in Silvae 3.3, also addressed to Claudius Etruscus. There he reverses his own description of the contentious relationship between Tisiphone and Pietas in Thebaid Books 1 and 11 to present his patron's affectionate bond with his father as antithetical to Oedipus’ resentful relationship with his children.Footnote 6

Silvae 3.3 is a consolation for Claudius Etruscus on the death of his beloved father. The poem meets generic expectations by focussing on the deceased, who had an exceptionally long and distinguished career, culminating in his appointment as secretary a rationibus. He held this position for a few years, until he was banished by Domitian for some not well-defined reason. Only the intercession of his son with the emperor, Statius emphasizes, allowed him to return from exile not long before his death.Footnote 7 The poem features the conventional structure of Statius’ consolationes, typically divided into exordium, laudatio, lamentatio and solacia.Footnote 8 In the exordium, the section where the poet can more easily break away from the constraints of the genre and explore different avenues,Footnote 9 Statius addresses Pietas and begs her to console Etruscus (3.3.1–7):

summa deum, Pietas, cuius gratissima caelo,
rara profanatas inspectant numina terras,
huc vittata comam niveoque insignis amictu,
qualis adhuc praesens nullaque expulsa nocentum
fraude rudes populos atque aurea regna colebas,   5
mitibus exsequiis ades et lugentis Etrusci
cerne pios fletus laudataque lumina terge.
Devotion, power most dear to heaven and god
supremely high, who rarely now regards
this desecrated world—be present here
with fillets in your hair and snow-white cloak,
just as you were when still you lived on earth
among a golden race of simple folk
before the wicked drove you off; attend
these touching rites and see devoted grief,
applaud Etruscus’ tears and wipe them dry.Footnote 10

The prominent role played by pietas here, anticipated and underlined by its mention in the praefatio to Book 3 as the main theme of the poem (merebatur et Claudi Etrusci mei pietas aliquod ex studiis nostris solacium, 14–15), is discussed by White, who points out that, although the occasion calls for a reference to pietas, ‘the care which Statius has taken to ornament and enlarge it reveals a more than perfunctory interest’.Footnote 11 This focus on Etruscus’ filial devotion was probably due to his lack of remarkable public distinctions: persuading Domitian to reinstate his father after the banishment was his most outstanding achievement.Footnote 12 I suggest that Statius makes this emphasis on pietas even more prominent by alluding to the Thebaid and, more specifically, by reversing both Oedipus’ invocation to Tisiphone in Book 1Footnote 13 and the subsequent clash between the Fury and Pietas in Book 11.Footnote 14

At the beginning of Thebaid Book 1, Oedipus curses his sons for having mistreated him, and summons Tisiphone from the Underworld so that she may punish them by instigating a fratricidal war. The Fury promptly carries out the order. Although in distress on account of the fraternal strife and quite hopeless about the future, at 11.457–96 Pietas makes one last attempt to delay the conflict: she comes down from the heavens to instil a sudden sense of peace into the soldiers’ hearts. Tisiphone, however, immediately intervenes to drive her away by threatening her with snakes and torches. Terrified by her rival, Pietas flees, returning to her celestial abode.Footnote 15 Silvae 3.3 overturns this narrative pattern: having left the earth at the end of the Thebaid, Pietas is now called back by Statius, whereas the Furies are exhorted to stay away.

In the first line of Silvae 3.3 Pietas is called summa deum, and her divinity is defined as gratissima caelo. This description reverses the portrait that opens the scene at Theb. 11.457–60, where Pietas withdraws from the gods and sits in a remote region of the heavens:Footnote 16

iamdudum terris coetuque offensa deorum
aversa caeli Pietas in parte sedebat,
non habitu quo nota prius, non ore sereno,
sed vittis exuta comam.

Long time had Piety been sitting in a secluded part of heaven, offended by earth and the company of the gods, not in her old familiar guise nor with face serene; but with the fillets stripped from her hair.

The connection between these two texts is strengthened by the clarification at 3.3.2 that Pietas rarely regards the world: she did so in the narrative universe of the Thebaid, and she is doing it again now. The lands looked upon by Pietas are significantly defined as profanatas (2) so as to evoke the opening lines of the Thebaid, where Statius reveals that the objects of his song are ‘alternate reigns fought for an unnatural hate’ (alternaque regna profanis | decertata odiis).

Statius’ reworking of his own portrait of Pietas also concerns her outfit. At 3.3.3 the deity is depicted as a priestess, as befits her role as the ideal officiant of Etruscus’ father's funeral rites.Footnote 17 While at Theb. 11.460 she took off her headbands as a display of grief, she is now vittata comam. Furthermore, at Theb. 11.459 she was not wearing her usual dress, whereas she now appears wrapped in a white cloak (niveoque insignis amictu), which echoes the ‘snow-white trail’ that she left behind when she crossed the sky at Theb. 11.472–3 (niveus sub nubibus atris | quamquam maesta deae sequitur vestigia limes, ‘beneath the dark clouds a snow-white trail follows the goddess's footsteps, sad though they were’).Footnote 18

Most importantly, Pietas is invited to be praesens (4), just as she was before she was driven off by the depravity of wicked men. The phrase nocentum fraude (4–5) reverses another passage of Thebaid Book 11, where the goddess is accused of treachery by Tisiphone for trying to protect guilty Thebes (11.482–7):Footnote 19

nonnihil impulerat dubios, ni torva notasset
Tisiphone fraudes caelestique ocior igne
adforet increpitans: ‘quid belli obverteris ausis,
numen iners pacique datum? cede, improba: noster 485
hic campus nosterque dies; nunc sera nocentes
defendis Thebas.’

Somewhat had she pushed them wavering, but that grim Tisiphone had marked her deceit and swifter than celestial fire was upon her, upbraiding: ‘Why do you oppose enterprises of war, sluggish deity, made over to peace? Begone, shameless! This is our battlefield, our day. Too late you now defend guilty Thebes.’

In Silvae 3.3 Statius rewrites his own epic to restore the natural order of the world: while in the narrative universe of the Thebaid, dominated by chaos and characterized by a complete upheaval of all values, Pietas’ attempted intervention to stop civil war was regarded as a trick, in the Silvae, where traditional morals are revived, fraus defines the banishment of Pietas instead.

At Silv. 3.3.6 Statius addresses Pietas with the typical invocation of kletic hymns,Footnote 20 ades, also used by Oedipus to summon Tisiphone at Theb. 1.81 (huc ades; note huc in the same line-position at Silv. 3.3.3).Footnote 21 The hellish world described in the Thebaid provides the perfect setting for Fury's ascent to earth,Footnote 22 which relegates Pietas to a marginal role; in the Silvae, on the other hand, Pietas is finally recalled, and the Furies are urged to stay away (3.3.26–8):

longe Furiarum sibila, longe
tergeminus custos, penitus via longa patescat
manibus egregiis.
Far off be hissing hair
of Furies, far, the triple-headed guard,
and let the lengthy road lie open wide
for such outstanding shades.

The wish that the Furies leave the deceased alone is a topos of Statius’ consolations.Footnote 23 However, only in Silvae 3.3 does Statius address the Furies directly, reversing Oedipus’ summoning of Tisiphone in Thebaid Book 1. In addition, the language used by Statius here is reminiscent of that employed at Theb. 11.492–5 by Tisiphone to drive Pietas away:

sic urguet, et ultro
vitantem aspectus etiam pudibundaque longe
ora reducentem premit astridentibus hydris
intentatque faces.

So she urges, and as the other shrinks from her very aspect and draws her own modest countenance far back, presses her with hissing serpents and brandishes her torch.

The same adverb longe occurs in the two texts with reference to the banishment of two different characters: Pietas in Thebaid Book 11 and the Furies in Silvae 3.3 (where the adverb occurs twice, once in the same line-position as Theb. 11.493). Furthermore, in Thebaid Book 11 Tisiphone sends Pietas away by means of her ‘hissing snakes’, whereas in Silvae 3.3 Statius wishes that the ‘hissing of the Furies’ may not disturb Etruscus’ father.Footnote 24

An analogous reworking of the epic contrast between Pietas and Tisiphone is found in the Laudes Crispini of Silvae 5.2,Footnote 25 which features the only other reference to Pietas’ visit to earth in the collection. The return to earth of personifications of virtues is a recurring motif in panegyrics, and the Silvae are no exception: at 1.4.2 earth is visited by Astrea, whereas at 5.3.89–90 by Pietas and Iustitia together. Commenting on these figures, Gibson argues that ‘Statius is quite inconsistent in the names he employs’.Footnote 26 Rather, I suggest that by mentioning Pietas alone in 3.3 and 5.2 Statius deliberately differentiates the only two scenes that directly allude to Thebaid Book 11.

Among the several qualities of Crispinus, Statius cites his forgiveness, which enabled him to pardon his stepmother after she attempted to poison him. At lines 91–6 the addressee himself comments on this episode by pointing out that Domitian's reign has finally allowed Pietas to come back:

exegit poenas, hominum cui cura suorum,
quo Pietas auctore redit terrasque revisit,
quem timet omne nefas. satis haec lacrimandaque nobis
ultio. quin saevas utinam exorare liceret
Eumenidas timidaeque avertere Cerberon umbrae 95
immemoremque tuis citius dare manibus amnem.
She has been made to pay by him who has
concerns for all his people, him whose reign
at last permits Devotion to return
and visit earth again, him who is feared
by every wickedness. This vengeance is
enough and ought to make us weep. But no,
I wish I were allowed to intercede
and stop the brutal Furies, turn away
Cerberus from your frightened shade, and give
your ghost a quicker drink from Lethe's stream.

Bernstein has persuasively argued that the return of Pietas at line 92 reverses her banishment in Thebaid Book 11. By means of this allusion Statius praises Crispinus and Domitian, implying that they are able to contain the violence of the Thebaid.Footnote 27 In addition, in these lines, as also in Silvae 3.3, the return of Pietas is followed and complemented by a reference to the Furies, whom Crispinus wishes to keep away from his stepmother's shade. The link between these two passages appears even stronger if one considers that the three characters mentioned at 5.2.95–6—namely, the Furies, Cerberus and the manes—are cited in the same order at 3.3.26–8.Footnote 28

In conclusion, I suggest that in Silvae 3.3 Statius reverses the narrative pattern of Thebaid Books 1 and 11. In the Thebaid Oedipus summons Tisiphone to punish his own children by stirring up civil war, and the Fury promptly obeys, banishing Pietas from earth to prevent her from stopping the conflict. On the other hand, in Silvae 3.3, which celebrates Claudius Etruscus’ loving relationship with his now departed father, the order is re-established, as Pietas returns, and the Furies are urged to stay away from the deceased. While in the Thebaid all fundamental values, including filial devotion, are turned upside down, in the Silvae Statius describes a more conventional and reassuring world, in which a son obtains distinction by helping his father be reinstated by the emperor, whose fair reign is further contrasted—although one might question how genuinely—in Silvae 5.2 with the horrifying narrative universe of the Thebaid, founded on vengeance.

Footnotes

I am indebted to Professor S. Myers for advice on this article. I am also grateful to the anonymous referee for their constructive feedback.

References

1 More generally on the influence of epic poetry on the Silvae, see Baumann, H., Das Epos im Blick: Intertextualität und Rollenkonstruktionen in Martials Epigrammen und Statius’ ‘Silvae’ (Berlin and Boston, 2019)Google Scholar.

2 Cancik, H., Untersuchungen zur lyrischen Kunst des P. Papinius Statius (Hildesheim, 1965), 38–43Google Scholar.

3 Vessey, D., Statius & the Thebaid (Cambridge, 1973), 7–14, 41–4Google Scholar. Statius’ generic concerns are further discussed by Dietrich, J.S., ‘Dead parrot society’, AJPh 123 (2002), 95–110Google ScholarPubMed, at 105, who interprets the death of the parrot in Silvae 2.4 as the symbol of the poet's wish to leave epic behind and approach a different type of poetry.

4 Newlands, C., Statius’ Silvae and the Poetics of Empire (Cambridge, 2002), 201Google Scholar. This study has paved the way for a number of contributions aimed at explaining how similar motives, ideas and poetic techniques are used differently in the two works. See especially Augoustakis, A., ‘Vnius amissi leonis: taming the lion and Caesar's tears (Silvae 2.5)’, Arethusa 40 (2007), 207–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 213–21; Bernstein, N.W., ‘Fashioning Crispinus through his ancestors: epic models in Statius Silvae 5.2’, Arethusa 40 (2007), 183–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 193–6; Malamud, M., ‘A spectacular feast: Silvae 4.2’, Arethusa 40 (2007), 223–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 239–42.

5 Newlands (n. 4), 199–226. Vessey (n. 3), 41 had already noted, although only in passing, that the opening lines of Silvae 1.5 may allude to Statius’ transition from epic to occasional poetry.

6 On fathers’ spiteful attitude towards their sons in the Thebaid, see Bernstein, N.W., In the Image of the Ancestors: Narratives of Kinship in Flavian Epic (Toronto, 2008), 85–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 On the life and career of Etruscus’ father, see especially Weaver, P.R.C., ‘The father of Claudius Etruscus: Statius, Silvae 3.3’, CQ 15 (1965), 145–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar and White, P., ‘The friends of Martial, Statius, and Pliny, and the dispersal of patronage’, HSPh 79 (1975), 265–300Google Scholar, at 275–9. More specifically on his exile, see Carradice, I., ‘The banishment of the father of Claudius Etruscus: numismatic evidence’, LCM 4 (1979), 101–3Google Scholar.

8 See K.L. Baucom, ‘Four consolationes of Statius’ (Diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1963), 23. Although A. Hardie, Statius and the Silvae: Poets, Patrons and Epideixis in the Graeco-Roman World (Liverpool, 1983), 104 proposes a slightly different partition for Silvae 3.3, he ultimately agrees that all epicedia in the Silvae show a movement from encouragement and lamentation at the start to consolation at the end. More in general on the structure of consolationes and epicedia in Latin literature, see Redonet, F. Lillo, Palabras contra el dolor: La consolación filosófica latina de Cicerón a Frontón (Madrid, 2001), 93–4Google Scholar.

9 See Baucom (n. 8), 24; Newmyer, S., The Silvae of Statius: Structure and Theme (Leiden, 1979), 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 The Latin text is Courtney, E., P. Papini Stati Silvae (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar. This and all subsequent translations are from B.R. Nagle, The Silvae of Statius (Bloomington, 2004).

11 White (n. 7), 279.

12 See White (n. 7), 279–80; Zeiner, N.K., Nothing Ordinary Here: Statius as Creator of Distinction in the Silvae (London, 2005), 222Google Scholar.

13 B. Gibson, Statius, Silvae 5 (Oxford, 2006), 343 notes that the intervention of Tisiphone in Thebaid Book 1 is evoked and reworked by Statius at Silv. 5.3.195–7, where the breaking out of the Civil War of 68–9 c.e. is portrayed as the result of the action of a Fury (subitam civilis Erinys | Tarpeio de monte facem Phlegraeaque movit | proelia).

14 This parallel has been entirely neglected by previous scholarship, with the exception of Vollmer, F., P. Papinii Statii Silvarum libri (Leipzig, 1898), 258Google Scholar, who has a passing note on the influence of Thebaid Book 11 on Silv. 3.3.3, and Laguna, G., Estacio, Silvas III. Introducción, Edición Crítica, Traducción y Comentario (Madrid, 1992), 257Google Scholar, who restricts himself to pointing out that in both Silvae 3.3 and Thebaid Book 11 Pietas appears as the ‘alegoría de la virtud de su nombre’.

15 On the defeat of Pietas (and pietas) in the Thebaid, see especially Lewis, C.S., The Allegory of Love. A Study in Medieval Tradition (Oxford, 1936), 54Google Scholar; Schetter, W., Untersuchungen zur epischen Kunst des Statius (Wiesbaden, 1960), 57Google Scholar; Venini, P., ‘Furor e psicologia nella Tebaide di Stazio’, Athenaeum 42 (1964), 201–13Google Scholar, at 201–3; Vessey (n. 3), 74–6; F.M. Ahl, ‘Statius’ Thebaid: a reconsideration’, ANRW 2.32.5 (1986), 2804–912, at 2840; Feeney, D.C., The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition (Oxford, 1991), 352–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dominik, W.J., The Mythical Voice of Statius: Power and Politics in the Thebaid (Leiden, 1994), 38–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hershkowitz, D., The Madness of Epic: Reading Insanity from Homer to Statius (Oxford, 1998), 261CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ripoll, F., La morale héroïque dan les épopées latines d’époque Flavienne: Tradition et innovation (Louvain, 1998), 329–30Google Scholar; R.T. Ganiban, Statius and Virgil: The Thebaid and the Reinterpretation of the Aeneid (Cambridge, 2007), 152–75; McNelis, C., Statius’ Thebaid and the Poetics of Civil War (Cambridge, 2007), 145–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Text and translation of the Thebaid are D.R. Shackleton Bailey, Statius: Thebaid; Achilleid (Cambridge, MA, 2003).

17 Laguna (n. 14), 258.

18 Vollmer (n. 14), 408.

19 The participle nocens seems especially fitting for the Thebans (see P. Venini, P. Papini Stati Thebaidos liber undecimus. Introduzione, testo critico, commento e traduzione [Florence, 1970], 127). At Theb. 1.215–16 Jupiter complains that he must continuously punish the guilty: quonam usque nocentum | exigar in poenas? (‘how much longer shall I be driven to punish the guilty?’; note the use of the same case as Silv. 3.3.4 in the same line-position). In addition, in Silvae 1.5, which—according to Newlands (n. 4), 203—reverses the horror of the Thebaid, the epic is referred to by means of the periphrasis arma nocentia (8).

20 Laguna (n. 14), 257.

21 On the hymnic style of Theb. 1.81, see Heuvel, H., Publii Papinii Statii Thebaidos liber primus (Groningen, 1932), 92Google Scholar; W.J. Dominik, Speech and Rhetoric in Statius’ Thebaid (Hildesheim, 1994), 102–4; S. Briguglio, Fraternas acies: Saggio di commento a Stazio, Tebaide, 1, 1–389 (Alessandria, 2017), 175; Gibson, B., ‘Hymnic features in Statian epic and the Silvae’, in A. Augoustakis (ed.), Ritual and Religion in Flavian Epic (Oxford, 2013), 127–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 137–8; Hubert, A., ‘Malae preces and their articulations in the Thebaid’, in A. Augoustakis (ed.), Ritual and Religion in Flavian Epic (Oxford, 2013), 109–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 111–13.

22 On the domination of Hell in the Thebaid, see especially Feeney (n. 15), 345–64; Hershkowitz (n. 15), 260–8; Ganiban (n. 15), 117–51.

23 Vollmer (n. 14), 333 points out that the ‘derselbe Gedanke’ is expressed at 2.1.185–6, 5.1.192 and 5.3.278–9.

24 Theb. 11.494 is also evoked in the consolation for Glaucias on the death of his beloved puer delicatus Philetus, whose shade, Statius assures, will not be terrified by the hissing Furies (nulla soror flammis, nulla adsurgentibus hydris | terrebit, 185–6).

25 The connection between 5.2.91–6 and 3.3.1–7 has been noted by Gibson (n. 13), 226, who, however, restricts himself to pointing out that these are two of Pietas’ rare visits to earth.

26 Gibson (n. 13), 226.

27 Bernstein (n. 4), 195–6. The importance granted by Statius to Crispinus’ incident with his stepmother, undermined by Nauta, R.R., Poetry for Patrons: Literary Communication in the Age of Domitian (Leiden, 2002), 307CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is highlighted by Zeiner (n. 12), 203–4, who argues that it serves to stress Crispinus’ pietas, and so to connect him with Domitian, who is endowed with the same virtue.

28 In all the other scenes in which Statius expresses the wish that the Furies may leave the deceased alone (see n. 23 above), the goddesses of vengeance are accompanied by different characters: at 2.1.85 they are cited with Cerberus and Charon, in a combination that Cancik (n. 2), 31–2 would define as a ‘Mythologemtriade mit wachsenden Gliedern’ (see H.-J. van Dam, P. Papinius Statius: Silvae Book II, A Commentary [Leiden, 1984], 162); at 5.1.192–3 they appear by themselves, and are mentioned along with Tartarus and Elysium; finally, at 5.3.277–87 Statius includes them in a long Virgilian ‘collection of mythical creatures’: Gibson (n. 13), 371.