{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.0354972817396866, 'fraction_numerical': 0.017908538535337384, 'mean_word_length': 4.969465648854962, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
A STUDY OF STATIUS

N. has established herself as an influential voice in the criticism of Statius and is especially well known for her work on the Siluae, particularly Statius’ Silvae and the Poetics of Empire (2002), a ‘Green and Yellow’ commentary on Book 2 of the Siluae (2011) in addition to a large body of articles on Statius’ occasional poetry published between 1988 and 2012. The present volume, however, cuts across generic boundaries and is to be welcomed as a thought-provoking and wide-ranging assessment of Statius’ poetic œuvre in its entirety, embracing the epics as well as the Siluae. The introductory chapter serves to orientate the reader by outlining the book’s methodological framework. By providing helpful historical and cultural contextualisation of Statius’ work, this chapter is likely to be particularly useful to non-specialist readers approaching his poetry for the first time. Although explored most obviously in the book’s final chapter, the central thesis of N.’s study is that ‘the poetry of Statius, an author whose identity mediated between the two significant cultural centres in Italy, Rome and Naples, brings an important bicultural vision to Flavian society and literature’ (p. 8). Here in her methodological chapter N. sketches a portrait of Statius which reflects the rehabilitation of his poetry in the last decade. Far from being the ‘mannerist’ poet of stylistic excess, Statius emerges as an innovative rather than a derivative poet engaged in a rich and complex intertextual dialogue with his literary predecessors and contemporaries. For N. all three of Statius’ works stand together as a unified and cohesive body of poetry; this intratextual approach to reading Statius’ poetry recurs throughout and is a major strength of the volume. Chapter 2, ‘Misconceptions about Statius’, confronts and refutes a number of traditional assumptions and stereotypes surrounding the poet and his work. In particular, the idea of the Siluae being defined as the literature of leisure is confronted and challenged (pp. 16–20). N. teases out very well the complex concept of leisure (otium), as distinguished from luxury, against the backdrop of intellectual culture in the first century. The treatment of Domitian within Statius’ work, while occupying a fairly small proportion of the poems (Silu. 1.1, 1.6, 2.5, 4.1–3, Theb. 1.17–35, 12.814, Achil. 1.14–19), has arguably attracted a disproportionate amount of critical attention. The bulk of this chapter (pp. 20–36) focuses on the rejection of the traditional view of Statius as a ‘court poet’ who enjoyed a close familiarity with the emperor. N. offers a balanced and nuanced assessment of the thorny problem of imperial panegyric, exploring the highly-wrought and figurative character of praise poetry which by its very nature ‘invites multiple levels of reception’ (p. 28). The chapter concludes with a useful section on Statius and his contemporaries. Here N. outlines the patterns of creative engagement between Statius and his Flavian contemporaries, particularly Martial (whose epigrams often overlap with the THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 149