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HARMONIOUS INTRUSION: MANKIND AND NATURE IN STATIUS’ SILVAE 1.3
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 February 2024
Abstract
There are three conventionally held views about the relationship between mankind and nature in the Roman villa: man is master over the natural landscape; villas were positioned at vantage points so that the downward gaze of a dominus reinforced his domination; gardens offered opportunities to bring order upon nature. This article argues to the contrary that Manilius Vopiscus’ villa in Statius’ Siluae 1.3 presents a harmonious relationship between key natural features, the villa architecture and the villa proprietor himself. Nature sometimes takes precedence, while the villa complements and integrates with the environment. This allows us to appreciate the nuances in Statius’ overall presentation of the relationship between mankind and nature in Book 1 and in other poems in the Siluae.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Footnotes
This article had its genesis in an MPhil at Cambridge. My gratitude to Mary Beard who supervised my work then, Emily Gowers who led a seminar on the Siluae, seminar colleagues and the anonymous CQ reader. The responsibility for remaining faults is mine alone.
References
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19 Noted by Håkanson, L., Statius’ Silvae: Critical and Exegetical Remarks with Some Notes on the Thebaid (Lund, 1969), 37Google Scholar and B. Reitz, ‘Nature's helping hand: cooperation between builder and nature as a rhetorical strategy in Vitruvius, Statius and Pliny the Younger’, in J. Klooster and J. Heirman (edd.), The Ideologies of Lived Space in Literary Texts, Ancient and Modern (Ghent, 2013), 125–40, at 130. Pace Newlands (n. 1), 119–53, 305–65, who argues that nature is tamed but magically cooperates with human needs. Following Newlands is Putnam, M.C.J., ‘Statius Silvae 1.3: a stream and two villas’, ICS 44 (2019), 66–100Google Scholar, at 75.
20 D. Wray, ‘Wood: Statius’ Silvae and the poetics of genius’, Arethusa 40 (2007), 127–43, at 138 recognizes that Statius stresses ‘collaboration [rather] than a contest’. Similarly, Spencer (n. 2), 105 and Reitz (n. 19), 130.
21 Such combative language is used in 2.2.52–62; 3.1.117–38; 4.3.40–94, 124–38. For this theme, see Rosati (n. 14), 123–4. Outside the Siluae, nature is uictrix in Hor. Epist. 1.10.24–5, for which see Newlands, C.E., ‘Horace and Statius at Tibur: an interpretation of Silvae 1.3’, ICS 13 (1988), 95–111Google Scholar.
22 Newlands (n. 1), 145 notes that this competition is not adversarial. For the Latin, I use the OCT edition by Courtney, E. (ed.), P. Papini Stati Silvae (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar.
23 Newlands (n. 1), 132. Cancik, H., ‘Tibur Vopisci. Statius, Silvae I 3: villa tiburtina Manili Vopisci’, Boreas: Münstersche Beiträge zur Archäologie 1 (1978), 116–34Google Scholar, at 123–4 and Newlands (n. 21), 99 posit that the Anio is actually a canal or artificial channel.
24 Courtney's tectum is controversial. MS M transmits nec te mitissimus amnis. As discussed by Håkanson (n. 19), 38–9 and by Courtney, E., ‘Further remarks on the Silvae of Statius’, BICS 18 (1971), 95–7Google Scholar, nec te appears unsatisfactory because a personal object for diuidit is not expected, te cannot refer to the villa, and the second-person pronoun jars with the third-person Vopisci (22). However, if nec te [Vopisce] is not corrupt, the combination of villa, villa owner and the river in this single line encapsulates the harmony between the three for which I argue.
25 Pace Newlands (n. 21), 100 and Newlands (n. 1), 145–6 that ‘nature [is put] strictly into the service of Vopiscus’. Similarly, B. Campbell, Rivers and the Power of Ancient Rome (Chapel Hill, NC, 2012), 124.
26 Newlands (n. 1), 140 instead reads fear.
27 As Newlands (n. 1), 140, who continues as follows: ‘the servitude of nature in a sense substitutes for and occludes the system of slavery that underpinned the villa's economy’.
28 Newlands (n. 1), 134–5, whereas Putnam (n. 19) translates simply as ‘joined’, which works well. Only at 2.2.58 is the image of the yoke employed in relation to nature: nunc cerne iugum discentia saxa.
29 Statius speaks of how chilly the Anio is elsewhere too in the Siluae (4.4.17 Tiburis hi lucos Anienaque frigora captant).
30 N.K. Zeiner, Nothing Ordinary Here: Statius as Creator of Distinction in the Silvae (New York and London, 2005), 91 rightly notes that the floor's ‘visual impact was created by the sun's rays’.
31 Pliny the Elder speaks of an unknown Sosus, who at Pergamus laid a mosaic known as the asarotos oecos which featured representations of remnants of a dinner that would usually have been swept away and cleaned up.
32 As Newlands (n. 1), 133.
33 See Zeiner (n. 30), 79–81 on the value of the prospectus, the view from within a villa.
34 A phrase from B. Bergmann, ‘Painted perspectives of a villa visit: landscape in Statius and metaphor’, in E.K. Gazda (ed.), Roman Art in the Private Sphere: New Perspectives on the Architecture and Decor of the Domus, Villa and Insula (Ann Arbor, 1991), 49–70, at 57. This is not to suggest that Vopiscus intended to hide his villa by design, but rather that nature takes centre stage as Statius admires the views. By contrast, in 2.2.275 we are actively encouraged to imagine how the vistas are literally framed and figuratively controlled by the architecture (diuersis seruit sua terra fenestris).
35 By contrast, Pollius Felix's villa in Siluae 2.2 is explicitly celsa (3). This recalls Lucr. 2.1–2 (see Seo [n. 14], 61), the first words of which are found as graffiti in the House of Maius Castricius in Pompeii, which faces the sea; see Benefiel, R.R., ‘Dialogues of ancient graffiti in the House of Maius Castricius in Pompeii’, AJA 114 (2010), 59–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
36 Newlands (n. 1), 135.
37 Newlands (n. 1), 132. Hartswick (n. 11), 77 states that ‘Manilius’ villa must have included extravagant gardens, but Statius draws our attention not to these planted, formal gardens.’
38 S.E. Hinds, ‘Landscape with figures: aesthetics of place in the Metamorphoses and its tradition’, in P. Hardie (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ovid (Cambridge, 2002), 122–49, at 135–6. See also Volk, K., Ovid (Chichester, 2010), 71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who notes that ‘culture improves upon nature’ in Ov. Medic. 1–50 and Ars am. 3.101–28. Such a framing suggests nature's inferiority, but there is no like suggestion in Siluae 1.3.
39 As recognized by F. Vollmer, P. Papinii Statii Silvarum libri (Leipzig, 19712 [1898]), 265.
40 For the control of water in other contexts, see Purcell (n. 8), 199–209 and I. Östenberg, ‘Defeated by the forest, the pass, the wind: nature as an enemy of Rome’, in J.H. Clark and B. Turner (edd.), Brill's Companion to Military Defeat in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Leiden, 2018), 240–61, at 257.
41 Ancient trees also appear in 1.2.154–5 excludunt radios siluis demissa uetustis | frigora, a connection missed by Newlands (n. 1), 99–100.
42 In Siluae 2.3, a plane tree takes centre stage. On trees’ general significance, see Hartswick (n. 11), 85–6.
43 A. Cucchiarelli, ‘Come Orazio a Tivoli, ma senza pensieri (Stazio, Silv. I 3)’, Aevum Antiquum 18 (2018), 159–203, at 170.
44 A. Hardie, Statius and the Silvae: Poets, Patrons and Epideixis in the Graeco-Roman World (Liverpool, 1983), 177 recognizes through an Epicurean lens that ‘Vopiscus must accommodate the house and its artifices to the splendour of its natural environment’.
45 Newmyer, S.T., The Silvae of Statius: Structure and Theme (Leiden, 1979), 113CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Newlands (n. 21), 97; Zeiner (n. 30), 79; Marshall, A.R., ‘Statius and the veteres: Silvae 1.3 and the Homeric house of Alcinous’, Scholia 18 (2009), 78–88Google Scholar, at 84–8; Seo (n. 14), 61; Rosati (n. 14), 123.
46 Marshall (n. 45), 88. On the contrary, nature's imitation is explicit in 2.2.26–9. P.R. Hardie, ‘Statius’ Ovidian poetics and the tree of Atedius Melior’, in R.R. Nauta, H.-J. van Dam and J.J.L. Smolenaars (edd.), Flavian Poetry (Leiden, 2006), 207–21, at 214 explores equipoise in Siluae 2.3, where there is a ‘careful balance of opposites’.
47 Newlands (n. 21), 108–9 argues that the silence is ‘less peaceful than deadening’. However, the text does not suggest that Vopiscus’ ability to rest impinges on his literary productivity (1.3.90–104).
48 Cucchiarelli (n. 43), 160.
49 For example Hor. Epist. 2.2.65–86; Carm. 1.1.29–32, 2.19.1–4, 3.4.21–4, 3.25.1–8. See Harrison, S.J., ‘Town and country’, in S.J. Harrison (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Horace (Cambridge, 2007), 235–47, at 244–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
50 Edwards (n. 1), 137–72 provides a long-term perspective on the moral discourse. On Flavian society in particular, see Myers (n. 3); Myers (n. 15), 108–11; Spencer (n. 2), 111–13; Newlands (n. 15), 68–9. On wealth, see Hardie (n. 44), 174–6; Gibson, B., ‘Negative stereotypes of wealth in the works of Statius’, in W.J. Dominik, C.E. Newlands and K. Gervais (edd.), Brill's Companion to Statius (Leiden, 2015), 123–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 128–31; Seo (n. 14) on Philodemus’ pro-wealth Epicureanism.
51 Wray (n. 20), 139 notes that here ingenium as ‘native wit takes the lead over artistic craft’.