Part 17 (1/2)
The relief of the Argonauts, when at last they reach haven after their fearful pa.s.sage of the Symplegades, is like that of Theseus and Hercules, when they have forced a way through the gates of h.e.l.l to the light of day once more.[511] Most remarkable of all is the strange acc.u.mulation of similes that describe the meeting of Jason and Medea.
Medea is going through the silent night chanting a song of magic, whereat all nature trembles. At last, when she has come 'to the shadowy place of the triune G.o.ddess', Jason s.h.i.+nes forth before her in the gloom, 'as when in deepest night panic bursts on herd and herdsman, or shades meet blind and voiceless in the deep of Chaos; even so, in the darkness of the night and of the grove, the two met astonied, like silent pines or motionless cypress, ere yet the whirling breath of the south wind has caught and mingled their boughs'[512]--
obvius ut sera c.u.m se sub nocte magistris inpingit pecorique pavor, qualesve profundum per chaos occurrunt caecae sine vocibus umbrae; haut secus in mediis noctis nemorisque tenebris inciderant ambo attoniti iuxtaque subibant, abietibus tacitis aut immotis cyparissis adsimiles, rapidus nondum quas miscuit Auster (vii. 400).
These similes suffer from sheer acc.u.mulation.[513] Taken individually they are worthy of many a greater poet.
In his speeches Valerius is less successful, though rarely positively bad. But with few exceptions they lack force and interest. At times, however, his rhetoric is effective, as in the speech of Mopsus (iii.
377), where he sets forth the punishment of blood-guiltiness, or in the fierce invective in which the Scythian, Gesander, taunts a Greek warrior with the inferiority of the Greek race (vi. 323 sqq.). This latter speech is closely modelled on Vergil (_A._ ix. 595 sqq.), and although it is somewhat out of place in the midst of a battle, is not wholly unworthy of its greater model. But it is to the speeches of Jason and Medea that we naturally turn to form the estimate of the poet's mastery of the language of pa.s.sion. These speeches serve to show us how far he falls below Vergil (_A._ iv) and Apollonius (bk. iii). They offer a n.o.ble field for his powers, and it cannot be said that he rises to the full height of the occasion. On the other hand, he does not actually fail. There is a note of deep and moving appeal in all that Medea says as she gradually yields to the power of her pa.s.sion, and the thought of her father and her home fades slowly from her mind.
quid, precor, in nostras venisti, Thessale, terras?
unde mei spes ulla tibi? tantosque petisti cur non ipse tua fretus virtute labores?
nempe, ego si patriis timuissem excedere tectis, occideras; nempe hanc animam sors saeva manebat funeris. en ubi Iuno, ubi nunc Tritonia virgo, sola tibi quoniam tantis in casibus adsum externae regina domus? miraris et ipse, credo, nec agnosc.u.n.t hae nunc Aeetida silvae.
sed fatis sum victa tuis; cape munera supplex nunc mea; teque iterum Pelias si perdere quaeret, inque alios casus alias si mittet ad urbes, heu formae ne crede tuae.
'”Why,”' she cries (vii. 438), '”why, I beseech thee, Thessalian, camest thou ever to this land of ours? Whence hadst thou any hope of me? And why didst thou seek these toils with faith in aught save thine own valour? Surely hadst thou perished, had I feared to leave my father's halls--aye, and so surely had I shared thy cruel doom. Where now is thy helper Juno, where now thy Tritonian maid, since I, the queen of an alien house, have come to help thee in thy need? Aye, even thyself thou marvellest, methinks, nor any more does this grove know me for Aeetes'
daughter. Nay, 'twas thy cruel fate overcame me; take now, poor suppliant, these my gifts, and, if e'er again Pelias seek to destroy thee and send thee forth to other cities, ah! put not too fond trust in thy beauty!”' Yet again, before she puts the saving charms into his hands, she appeals to him (452):
si tamen aut superis aliquam spem ponis in istis, aut tua praesenti virtus educere leto si te forte potest, etiam nunc deprecor, hospes, me sine, et insontem misero dimitte parenti. dixerat; extemploque (etenim matura ruebant sidera, et extremum se flexerat axe Booten) c.u.m gemitu et multo iuveni medicamina fletu non secus ac patriam pariter famamque decusque obicit. ille manu subit, et vim conripit omnem. inde ubi facta nocens, et non revocabilis umquam cessit ab ore pudor, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... pandentes Minyas iam vela videbat se sine. tum vero extremo percussa dolore adripit Aesoniden dextra ac submissa profatur: sis memor, oro, mei, contra memor ipsa manebo, crede, tui. quando hinc aberis, die quaeso, profundi quod caeli spectabo latus? sed te quoque tangat cura mei quoc.u.mque loco, quosc.u.mque per annos; atque hunc te meminisse velis, et nostra fateri munera; servatum pudeat nec virginis arte. hei mihi, cur nulli stringunt tua lumina fletus? an me mox merita morituram patris ab ira dissimulas? te regna tuae felicia gentis, te coniunx natique manent; ego prodita obibo.
'”If thou hast any hope of safety from these G.o.ddesses, that are thine helpers, or if perchance thine own valour can s.n.a.t.c.h thee from the jaws of death, even now, I pray thee, stranger, let me be, and send me back guiltless to my unhappy sire.” She spake, and straightway--for now the stars outworn sank to their setting, and Bootes in the furthest height of heaven had turned him towards his rest--straightway she gave the charms to the young hero with wailing and with lamentation, as though therewith she cast away her country and her own fair fame and honour.'
And then, 'when her guilt was accomplished and the blush of shame had pa.s.sed from her face for evermore,' she saw as in a vision (474) 'the Minyae spreading their sails for flight without her. Then in truth bitter anguish laid hold of her spirit, and she grasped the right hand of the son of Aeson and humbly spake: ”Remember me, I pray, for I, believe me shall forget thee never. When thou art hence, where on all the vault of heaven shall I bear to gaze? Ah! do thou too, where'er thou art, through all the years ne'er let the thought of me slip from thy heart. Remember how thou stood'st to-day, tell of the gifts I gave, and feel no shame that thou wast saved by a maiden's guile. Alas! why stream no tears from thine eyes? Knowest thou not that the death I have deserved waits me at my father's hand? For thee there waits a happy realm among thine own folk, for thee wife and child; but I must perish deserted and betrayed.”'[514]
All this lacks the force and pa.s.sion of the corresponding scene in Apollonius. This Medea could never have cried, 'I am no Greek princess, gentle-souled,'[515] nor have prayed that a voice from far away or a warning bird might reach him in Iolcus on the day when he forgot her, or that the stormwind might bear her with reproaches in her eyes to stand by his hearth-stone and chide him for his forgetfulness and ingrat.i.tude.
The Medea of Apollonius has been softened and sentimentalized by the Roman poet. Valerius knows no device to clothe her with power, save by the narration of her magic arts (vii. 463-71; viii. 68-91). Yet she has a charm of her own; and it needed true poetic feeling to draw even the Medea of Valerius Flaccus.
In no age would Valerius have been a great poet, but under happier circ.u.mstances he would have produced work that would have ranked high among literary epics. As it is, there is no immeasurable distance between the _Argonautica_ and works such as the _Gerusalemme liberata_, or much of _The Idylls of the King_. He is a genuine poet whose genius was warped by the spirit of the age, stunted by the inherent difficulties besetting the Roman writer of epic, overweighted by his admiration of his two great predecessors, Ovid and Vergil. He is obscure, he is full of echoes, he staggers beneath a burden of useless learning, he overcrowds his canvas and strives in vain to put the breath of life into bones long dry; in addition, his epic suffers from the lack of the reviser's hand. And yet, in spite of all, his characters are sometimes more than lay-figures, and his scenes more than mere stage-painting. He has the divine fire, and it does not always burn dim.
Others have greater cunning of hand, greater force of intellect, and have won a higher place in the hierarchy of poets. He--though, like them, he lacks the 'fine madness that truly should possess a poet's brain'--yet gives us much that they cannot give, and sees much that they cannot see. With Quintilian, though with altered meaning, we too may say _multum in Valerio Flacco amisimus_.
CHAPTER IX
STATIUS
Our information as to the life of P. Papinius Statius is drawn almost exclusively from his minor poems ent.i.tled the _Silvae_. He was born at Naples, his father was a native of Velia, came of good family,[516] and by profession was poet and schoolmaster. The father's school was at Naples,[517] and, if we may trust his son, was thronged with pupils from the whole of Southern Italy.[518] He had been victorious in many poetic contests both in Naples and in Greece.[519] He had written a poem on the burning of the Capitol in 69 A.D., had planned another on the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., but apparently died with the work unfinished.[520] It was to his father that our poet attributed all his success as a poet. It was to him he owed both education and inspiration, as the _Epicedion in patrem_ bears pathetic witness (v. 3. 213):
sed decus hoc quodc.u.mque lyrae primusque dedisti non volgare loqui et famam sperare sepulcro.
Thou wert the first to give this glory, whate'er it be, that my lyre hath won; thine was the gift of n.o.ble speech and the hope that my tomb should be famous.
The _Thebais_ was directly due to his prompting (loc. cit., 233):
te nostra magistro Thebais urgebat priscorum exordia vatum; tu cantus stimulare meos, tu pandere facta heroum bellique modos positusque locorum monstrabas.
At thy instruction my Thebais trod the steps of elder bards; thou taughtest me to fire my song, thou taughtest me to set forth the deeds of heroes and the ways of war and the position of places.
The poet-father lived long enough to witness his son well on the way to established fame. He had won the prize for poetry awarded by his native town, the crown fas.h.i.+oned of ears of corn, chief honour of the Neapolitan Augustalia.[521] Early in the reign of Domitian he had received a high price from the actor Paris for his libretto on the subject of Agave,[522] and he had already won renown by his recitations at Rome,[523] recitations in all probability of portions of the _Thebais_[524] which he had commenced in 80 A.D.[525] But it was not till after his father's death that he reached the height of his fame by his victory in the annual contest inst.i.tuted by Domitian at his Alban palace,[526] and by the completion and final publication in 92 A.D. of his masterpiece, the _Thebais_.[527] This poem was the outcome of twelve years' patient labour, and it was on this that he based his claim to immortality.[527] He had now made himself a secure position as the foremost poet of his age. His failure to win the prize at the quinquennial Agon Capitolinus in 94 A.D. caused him keen mortification, but was in no way a set-back to his career.[528] By this time he had already begun the publication of his _Silvae_. The first book was published not earlier than 92 A.D.,[529] the second and third between that date and 95 A.D. The fourth appeared in 95 A.D.,[530] the fifth is unfinished. There is no allusion to any date later than 95 A.D., no indication that the poet survived Domitian (d. 96 A.D.). These facts, together with the fragmentary state of his ambitious _Achilleis_, begun in 95 A.D.,[531] point to Statius having died in that year, or at least early in 96 A.D. He left behind him, beside the works already mentioned, a poem on the wars of Domitian in Germany,[532] and a letter to one Maximus Vibius, which may have served as a preface to the _Thebais_.[533] He had spent the greater portion of his life either at Rome, Naples, or in the Alban villa given him by Domitian. In his latter years he seems to have resided almost entirely at Rome, though he must have paid not infrequent visits to the Bay of Naples.[534] But in 94 A.D., whether through failing health or through chagrin at his defeat in the Capitoline contest, he retired to his native town.[535] He had married a widow named Claudia,[536] but the union was childless; towards the end of his life he adopted the infant son of one of his slaves,[537]
and the child's premature death affected him as bitterly as though it had been his own son that died. Of his age we know little; but in the _Silvae_ there are allusions to the approach of old age and the decline of his physical powers.[538] He can scarcely have been born later than 45 A.D., and may well have been born considerably earlier. His life, as far as we can judge, was placid and uneventful. The position of his father seems to have saved him from a miserable struggle for his livelihood, such as vexed the soul of Martial.[539] There is nothing venal about his verse. If his flattery of the emperor is fulsome almost beyond belief, he hardly overstepped the limits of the path dictated by policy and the custom of the age; his conduct argues weakness rather than any deep moral taint. In his flattery towards his friends and patrons his tone is, at its worst, rather that of a social inferior than of a mere dependent.[540] And underlying all the preciosity and exaggeration of his praises and his consolations, there is a genuine warmth of affection that argues an amiable character. And this warmth of feeling becomes unmistakable in the _epicedia_ on his father and his adopted son, and again in the poem addressed to his wife. The feeling is genuine, in spite of the suggestion of insincerity created by the artificiality of his language. No less noteworthy is his enthusiasm for the beauties of his birthplace, which s.h.i.+nes clear through all the obscure legends beneath which he buries his topography.[541] These qualities, if any, must be set against his lack of intellectual power; his mind is nimble and active, but never strong either in thought or emotion: of sentiment he has abundance, of pa.s.sion none. Considering the corruption of the society of which he const.i.tuted himself the poet, and of which there are not a few glimpses in the _Silvae_, despite the tinselled veil that is thrown over it, the impression of Statius the man is not unpleasing: it is not necessary to claim that it is inspiring.
Of Statius the poet it is harder to form a clear judgement. His masterpiece, the _Thebais_, from the day of its publication down to comparatively recent times, possessed an immense reputation.[542] Dante seems to regard him as second only to Vergil; and it was scarcely before the nineteenth century that he was dethroned from his exalted position.