VIII. STATIUS.
40-95 A.D.
Statius, whose father before him was a poet, was born at Naples. His works consist of the Thebais, an epic in imitation of the Aeneid and having for its subject the story of the Seven against Thebes; the Achilleis, intended to celebrate the deeds of Achilles, but never completed; and the Silvae, a collection of thirty-one miscellaneous poems, of which our selection is one.
For Reference: Fr. Vollmer, Silvae, Leipzig, 1898.
Metre: Dactylic Hexameter, B. 368; A. & G. 615.
1. 1. placidissime divum: cf. Statius, Thebais, 10. 126, 127: mitissime divum, Somne; Ovid, 11. 623-625-.
Somne, quies rerum, placidissime Somne deorum, pax animi, quem cura fugit, qui corda diurnis fessa ministeriis mulces reparasque labori;
and Shakspere, Macbeth, II. 2. 37 ff.:
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,…
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
4. simulant…somnos: rounded tree-tops take the semblance of tired sleep. cacumina might mean mountain tops, but the parallelism of the passage with Aeneid, 4. 522-528 favors the interpretation as tree-tops. The trees, their rounded outline no longer broken by the winds, seem to sleep as if exhausted by their tossing. 6. terris…adclinata: we are reminded of those Elgin marbles which represent Thalassa, the personified sea, as resting in the lap of Gaea, the personified land. Cf. with lines 3-7 Goethe, Wanderer's Nachtlied, 1-6: 'Über allen Gipfeln Ist Ruh, In allen Wipfeln Spürest du Kaum einen Hauch; Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.' 7. Septima…Phoebe: the seventh moon-lit night. 8, 9. totidem…lampades: a second expression of the thought that it is the seventh night since he has slept. Oetaeae Paphiaeque: the planet Venus is called Oetaean since poetical tradition pictures it as shining from above Oeta, a mountain of Thessaly; and Paphian because the goddess Venus, whose star it is, was worshipped with especial devotion at Paphos in Cyprus. lampades: each nightly appearance of the star is poetically thought of as the kindling of a new torch. Tithonia: Aurora, the dawn, wife of Tithonus, to whom she had been able to give immortality, but not eternal youth. She is thought of as sprinkling the dew from the lash with which she drives her chariot team. 13. Argus: Io's thousand-eyed custodian, who was sacer, devoted to death, since he was doomed to be slain by Hermes, her liberator. 18. leviter…transi: pass lightly hovering above me.
Wordsworth's three sonnets To Sleep should all be compared. The best is as follows:
A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by,
One after one; the sound of rain and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds, and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water and pure sky;
I have thought of all by turns and still do lie
Sleepless! and soon the small birds' melodies
Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees;
And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry.
Even thus last night and two nights more I lay,
And could not win thee, Sleep, by any stealth;
So do not let me wear to-night away:
Without thee what is all the morning's wealth?
Come, blessed barrier between day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!