Hypertext and Hypermedia

Editing and Commenting on Statius' <i>Silvae</i>

“…73 Meanwhile, the last decades have seen the appearance of partial commentaries, which offer analyses of poems 1.1 (Geyssen); 1.2, 2.3, 3.4 (Pederzani); and 4.6 (Bonadeo). 74 Few sole-authored monographs have been devoted to the Silvae over recent decades, but they have begun to appear more frequently during the past half century.75 Among the monographs that have appeared are Cancik's Untersuchungen zur lyrischen Kunst des P. Papinius Statius (1965), Newmyer's The Silvae of Statius: Structure and Theme (1979), Bright's Elaborate Disarray: The Nature of Statius' Silvae (1980), Hardie's Statius and the Silvae: Poets, Patrons, and Epideixis in the Graeco -Roman World (1983), Carole Newlands ' Statius' Silvae and the Poetics of Empire (2002), and Zeiner's Nothing Ordinary Here: Statius as Creator of Distinction (2005).76 Moreover, several collections of essays on Statius have been published that have contributed immensely to an understanding of the poems.77 However, only Statius' Silvae and the Poetics of Intimacy, edited by Augoustakis and Newlands in 2007, was entirely dedicated to the Silvae. 78 The present volume presents itself as an endeavour in the footsteps of that of Augoustakis and Newlands.…”

“…Recent re-evaluations, however, have called this judgement into question, arguing that Humanist modes of inquiry, including techniques of textual editing and commentary, paved the way for later advances in knowledge. 74 Poliziano's attentiveness to the particularities of socio-cultural change, a core feature of his scholarly and aesthetic temperament, implies an openness to the unknown and unforeseen, the preludic anticipation, at once fraught with foreboding and hope, of what comes next.…”

“…But now, in the name of that merit acquired on the 'battlefield' , and of the compassion of Venus and her family, he asks his mother to make an exception and be merciful to a man who has long suffered (67-68). The target in question is a handsome youth of noble lineage who has already paid a heavy tribute to the goddess of love: in fact, Cupid had already pierced him with scores of arrows (74)(75), and he had long devoted his elegiac seruitium to a powerful domina that thwarted his hopes (76-78). His beloved Violentilla, on the other hand, on orders from the same goddess (who evidently wished there to be no corresponding love, but only a mild fondness), had barely been grazed by Cupid's standard weapons, the torch and the bow (79-80).…”

“…But there is at least one other Ovidian hypotext that emerges compellingly from Statius' epithalamium (and I will obviously limit myself to the section of Cupid's speech, although others could be cited, beginning with the story of Alpheus and Arethusa at 1.2.203-208, with a meaningful 'reprise with variations'). When Cupid notes the disparity with which the two components of the nuptial pair were treated-an entire quiver of arrows launched at Stella (74)(75) compared with an all but innocuous, loose-bowed flick of an arrow for Violentilla, which protects her from the fires of passion (79-80)-, the reader cannot help but recall the archetypal story of 'one-sided' love, that of Apollo and Daphne in the first book of the Metamorphosis. In fact, this is where the idea appears of a different-actually, in that case opposite-effect produced by the god's intervention on the two components of the couple, the subject and the object of desire.…”

“…After 1475 Calderini's printed commentary guaranteed a large circulation of the Silvae and allowed Poliziano to feel free to entitle Silvae a collection of his poems and to take this genre of poems finally back home on the Parnassus. 74…”