Statius, P. Papinius
A Roman poet born at Neapolis about A.D. 61. He was the son of a distinguished grammarian,
and accompanied his father to Rome, where the latter acted as the preceptor of Domitian, who
held him in high honour. Under the skilful tuition of his father, the young Statius speedily
rose to fame, and became peculiarly renowned for the brilliancy of his extemporaneous
effusions, so that he gained the prize three times in the Alban contests; but having, after a
long career of popularity, been vanquished in the quinquennial games, he retired to Neapolis,
the place of his nativity, along with his wife Claudia, whose virtues he frequently
commemorates. He died about A.D. 96. His chief work is the
Thebaïs, an
heroic poem, in twelve books, on the expedition of the Seven against Thebes. On the
composition of this poem Statius spent twelve years. There is also extant a collection of his
miscellaneous poems (thirty-two in number, mostly in hexameters) in five books, under the
title of
Silvae; and an unfinished poem called the
Achilleïs. Statius may justly claim the praise of standing in the
foremost rank among the heroic poets of the Silver Age; and in the Middle Ages he was much
read (cf. Dante,
Purg. xxi.). The
editio princeps of the
epics appeared in 1470; that of the
Silvae in 1472. The best editions of the
Thebaïs are those of Kohlmann
(1844) and O.
Müller
(bks. i.-vi., 1870); of the
Achilleïs by
Kohlmann
(Leipzig, 1884); of the
Silvae by Markland
(1728), Hand
(Leipzig, 1817), and Bährens
(Leipzig,
1876).
