LOWERING ONE'S STANDARDS—ON STATIUS, SILVAE 4.2.43

Abstract

HULLS LOWERING ONE' STANDARDS-ON STATIUS, SILVAE 4.2.43 LOWERING ONE'S STANDARDS-ON STATIUS, SILVAE 4.2.43Statius' Silvae 4.2 describes a banquet, hosted by the emperor Domitian and attended by the poet Statius. The divine majesty of the emperor is plain to see. However, one strand of thought in Statius' description of the emperor is intriguing: the use, perhaps surprising, of military language in the description of the emperor in a private space and a social context. The description is created from imagery that is militaristic, triumphalistic, and an overt display of imperial power and authority. The language used is not only jarring in this social context but also in itself unusual.In particular, the phrase summittentemque modeste fortunae vexilla suae will be analysed in this article as something that requires careful decoding if it is to be understood properly. Domitian's banquet is presented as a religious event (sacrae, 4.2.5; cf. sacratissimis, Silv. 4 praef. 6) and Statius imagines himself as though he were reclining in the heavens with Jupiter (mediis videor discumbere in astris / cum Iove, 4.2.10-11). The setting of the feast is Domitian's vast palace (18-31) 1 and the feast itself is both monumental (mille … mensis, 33) and portrayed as a divine feast with Ceres and Bacchus as the serving staff (34-7). Domitian's palace rivals the neighbouring temple of Jupiter Tonans which is itself amazed at the scale of the adjacent building (21-2). The palace acts as a quasi-temple of Domitian, who, god-like, weighs it down with his divine presence (ille penates / implet et ingenti genio gravat, 25-6). Statius' address to Domitian evokes hymnic utterances (tene … te … te, 14-15) 2 and iacens (16) might suggest a position of subjection before a god. 3 In the preface to Book 4, Statius refers to his emperor's numen (invocato numine, 4 praef. 2). Statius also makes a more direct comparison between Domitian and Jupiter (53-6). Statius observes Domitian as though he were a statue in a temple (cerno … tueri, 16), and Newlands sees Statius portraying Domitian as a god very much in a literal sense: 'immobile, inscrutable, the emperor is, in a sense, the culminating point of the palace's architecture'. 4 But Domitian's portrayal as a divine force contains one further twist: this is a god at whom it is permitted to gaze (datur haec iuxta, datur ora tueri … / et non assurgere fas est?, 16-17). 5 Statius is now able to admire the divine majesty of the emperor from close at hand, just as the ghost of Marcus Curtius was in the opening poem of the entire 198 1 The scale and especially the height of Domitian's palace was remarkable, see P. Zanker, 'Domitian's palace on the Palatine and the imperial image,' in A. K. Bowman, H. M. Cotton, M. Goodman and S. Price (edd.), Representations of Empire: Rome and the Mediterranean World