The Poetic World of Statius Silvae

In the essays of this volume, Michael Putnam shows how seriously Statius pays homage to his canonical predecessor, Virgil, how thoroughly he interprets the complexities of Virgilian poetry, and how he often, by placing a Virgilian reference in a different social and cultural context, boldly turns Virgil to new and more positive purposes. He focuses particularly, though not exclusively, on those Silvae which deal with the architectural world of Statius’ society, the private villas, the gardens, and the imperial palace. He also writes of the Roman equivalent of the ’Grand Tour, ’ a young man’s educational journey through the monuments of Egypt, Greece, and Asia Minor. The essays offer valuable insight into the cultural and social identity of late first-century imperial Rome. Statius’ reverential but also heuristic engagement with Virgil emerges more distinctly across the interrelated essays. Putnam’s collected essays display the pioneering nature of Statius’ Silvae in the development of ecphrasis as an important social and literary mode in Roman poetry.

Michael Putnam, Professor Emeritus of Classics, Brown University

Michael Putnam holds a PhD from Harvard University. He joined the Brown faculty in 1960 after teaching for a year at Smith College. He was Acting Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies 1961-62 and a Senior Fellow from 1971-1986. In 1963-64 he held a Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome where he was later a Resident and Mellon Professor in Charge of the Classical School. He has been a Life Trustee since 2010, and has received its Centennial Medal Trustees’ Medal. He was elected a director of the American Philological Association in 1972 and has since served the Association in several capacities, and has received its Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit in 1971 and its Distinguished Service Award in 2013. In 2009 he inaugurated the Amsterdam Virgil Lectures at the University of Amsterdam. From 2013-16 he was Trustee of the Vergilian Society of America, receiving the Alexander G. McKay Prize in 2009. He is a member of the editorial boards of Arion and Vergilius.

Antony Augoustakis is the author of Silius Italicus, Punica 3 (Oxford, 2022), Statius, Thebaid 8 (Oxford, 2016), Motherhood and the Other: Fashioning Female Power in Flavian Epic (Oxford, 2010) and Plautus’ Mercator (Bryn Mawr, 2009). He has edited and co-edited several volumes on Flavian Epic, Roman Comedy, and Late Antiquity.

Carole Newlands has a PhD in Comparative Literature from Berkeley. Her current principal areas of research are Augustan and post Augustan poetry; she has also strong interests in late Antique and Medieval poetry, and in the reception of classical texts. Her first book was Playing with Time: Ovid and the Fasti (1995), and she continues to publish on Ovid’s poetry. Her recent work on Statius includes two monographs, Statius’ Siluae and the Poetics of Empire (2002), and Statius: Poet between Rome and Naples (2012); a commentary on Statius Siluae Book 2 for the Cambridge Greek and Latin series (2011); and she has co-edited with William J. Domink and Kyle Gervais the Brill Companion to Statius (2015). Among her current projects is a book in progress entitled Scotland and the Classics: Poetics, Translation, and Cultural Identity.