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) cum 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 quocumque loco, quoscumque 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 goddesses, that are thine helpers, or if perchance thine own valour can snatch 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 passed 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 passion 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 ingratitude. 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 circumstances 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 entitled 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 quodcumque 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 noble speech and the hope that my tomb should be famous.
The Thebais was directly due to his prompting (loc. cit., 233):