Poets

Statius was a Latin poet, born in Naples in 45 AD. His father, a Greek and a teacher of rhetoric, immigrated to Naples in the first half of the first century. Statius was something of a child prodigy, quicking rising to fame as a poet. Since his father taught members of the senatorial class, his skills became known to the upper classes.

From his boyhood he had won many poetic contests in Naples, three times in Alba, where he received the golden crown from the hand of the emperor Domitian. But, in 94 AD at the great Capitoline competition Statius failed to win the coveted chaplet of oak leaves. No doubt the extraordinary popularity of his Thebais had led him to regard himself as the supreme poet of the age, and when he could not sustain this reputation in the face of rivals from all parts of the empire he accepted the judges verdict as a sign that his day was past, and retired to Naples. In a poem he addressed to his wife on this occasion there are hints that Statius was suffering from a loss of the emperors favor. He may have felt that a word from Domitian would have won for him the envied garland, and that the word ought to have been given. In the preface to the Silvae there is mention of detractors who hated Statius' style, and these may have succeeded in inducing a new fashion in poetry at court. He appears to have relished thoroughly the role of court-poet.

Statius' poetic expression is, with all its faults, richer on the whole and less forced and more buoyant..