Chapter 6 - Dante’s Statius
The stranger who joined Virgil and Dante on the fifth cornice of Purgatory presently revealed himself to be Statius. He told them that Virgil had been his master in poetry, that his besetting sin had been prodigality, that his thoughts had been first turned to Christianity by Eclogue IV (5–7) and that he had been baptized before he wrote the Thebaid. All this may have been regarded by Dante as a bella menzogna. If Statius was to appear at that point he would have to have been baptized; and since Dante wanted us to like him there was good reason for attributing to him the most amiable of the vices. On the other hand Statius was a poet very well known in Dante’s time. He was not a mere name, a Simonide or Agatone, whom one could make what one pleased of. Dante would probably have expected his more learned readers to compare the character he gave of Statius with that which they might infer from their own copies of the Thebaid. It is therefore reasonable to suppose either that he found in the poem elements which convinced him that Statius was not far from the Christian faith, or else that he thought it could be so interpreted with plausibility enough for his purpose.
Besides a hidden Christianity Dante attributes to Statius an intense gratitude to Virgil, and the sin of prodigality. The first, he has certainly got out of the text. The discipleship of Statius to his great predecessor is obvious, and his humble reverence is expressed in the concluding lines of his poem. The prodigality is harder to explain. I have sometimes entertained the fancy—it is little more—that the origin might be Juvenal, VII, 82–7. Statius is there presented as one whose poem, when recited, fregit subsellia (I suppose this means ‘brought the house down’), but who still doesn’t know where his next meal is to come from (esurit). Juvenal’s point, I take it, is that epic poetry, like virtue, laudatur et alget: fortune does not follow fame. It is just conceivable that some medieval commentator, missing that point, and assuming that largesse and patronage would result from the successful recitation, drew the conclusion that, if Statius hungered still, he must have been a foolish spender.
This, however, is the merest conjecture. I believe we are on surer ground when we examine the poem as a whole for traits which might have seemed to Dante Christian or closely sub-Christian. We must remember of course that he would have read both Lucan and Statius more seriously than most do now. The fatal words ‘silver’ and ‘rhetoric’ have done harm and modern ears are deaf. Perhaps Dante was here wiser than we. I think Lucan, Statius and the tragedies of Seneca are to be taken as if they really had something to say. I think the horrors they relate are a vehicle whereby to express their sincere reaction to the terrible period in which they lived. No honest man’s comment on that age could be made in plain terms. History and satire could safely deal only with those criminals who were already dead or disgraced; and even then, the satire had little commerce with laughter; it was tragic satire (satira sumente cothurnum). But the enormities of history and myth provided a medium through which men could still express their horror, amazement and despair. At all events, whether this was how it came about or not, I think the Thebaid itself will explain why Dante put Statius in Purgatory and left Virgil in Limbo. The lesser poem does in fact contain more that a Christian can accept and less that he need reject.
That he was steeped in the text of the Thebaid is obvious. Ugolino gnaws for ever the head of Ruggieri as Tydeus for ever gnaws that of Melanippus. The two-headed flame in which Ulysses and Diomede are tormented reminds Dante of the diviso vertice flammae on the pyre of Eteocles and Polynices. Every major character in the poem of Statius finds a mention in the Comedy: Amphiaraus, Antigone, Argia, Capaneus, Deipyle, Eriphyle, Hypsipyle, Ismene, Jocasta, Manto, Oedipus, Teiresias and Tydeus. In the Convivio three examples are taken from Stazio, lo dolce poeta. A re-examination of the Thebaid may show what Dante thought he found, or even what he really found, in it.
He would have found, first of all, something that would, in his day, have appeared modern, but not too modern, an image with which he was familiar: the great figure of Natura. Something that might almost be called an accident—the loss of Plato’s other works and the partial survival of the Timaeus (interprete Chalcidio)—had concentrated attention on the cosmogonic elements in Plato. Nature, not made much of in the Timaeus itself, had been personified on a large scale by Bernardus Silvestris and after him by Alanus ab Insulis; thence to pass, with much enrichment, into the work of Jean de Meung. Dante did not know Lucretius. Of the ancients Statius would have given him the fullest anticipations of this medieval Natura. He would have found her there as princeps and creatrix. He would have found her again as princeps, appealed to almost against the heathen gods—heu princeps Natura! Ubi numina?—and acclaimed as ducem in what is almost the Pagan equivalent of a Crusade. This of course is not explicitly Christian: if we press creatrix it is anti-Christian. But it is nearer the medieval picture of the world than most of Virgil.
What would have mattered more, I think, would have been the Statian conception of man. There are, to be sure, ethical emphases in Statius to which he would hardly have responded. After opening his poem with some pitiful flattery of Domitian (the detested corvée to which all poets were then subject) Statius reimburses himself by praising defiance of kings, vividly painting the degradation which boundless power works in its possessor, and rendering courtiers contemptible. This was not much in Dante’s line perhaps. But he would also have found in Statius’s Stoic doctrine of human brotherhood something he must accept—
Mitto genus, clarosque patres: hominum, inclite Theseu,
Sanguis erant, homines.
(XII, 555–6)
And still more, in the darker traits of Statius’s anthropology, he would have found perhaps the only ancient authority he knew which seemed to endorse the doctrine of the Fall. For Statius the human race are so evil that it would be better if Earth had never been re-peopled after the deluge—Quam bene post Pyrrham tellus pontusque vacabant. In Hades the accursed souls far outnumber the pii. The very bent or nature of man is inexhaustibly evil—nec exsaturabile Diris ingenium mortale. We are as miserable as we are wicked, for care follows sin; and as silly as we are miserable—if you told us there were two suns in the sky we should not only believe you but believe we had seen them ourselves. One notable instance of our continual folly and sin is the art of divination. On this Statius and Dante are fully agreed:
unde iste per orbem
Primus venturi miseris animantibus aeger
Crevit amor? . . .
. . . quid crastina volveret aetas
Scire nefas homini. Nos pravum et flebile vulgus
Scrutari penitus superos: hinc pallor et irae,
Hinc scelus insidiaeque et nulla modestia voti.
Accordingly the typical sinners in this kind whom we meet in Inferno, XX include Amphiaraus, Teiresias, and Manto, all from the Thebaid.
The over-all picture of humanity in Statius is indeed darker than that we get from the Comedy, but they are logically consistent. Exceptional mercies might raise a Trajan or a Rhipeus to heaven, or Cato to an official position on the staff of Purgatory; and the Divine purpose might work through the imperial history of Rome. But in general the Pagan world was for Dante a world of the damned; almost the first thing we are told about Hell is that we shall there meet the antichi spiriti. Statius would seem to him to have understood better than Virgil the world both had lived in.
Dante would also have found in the Thebaid a recognition that humanity, bad in itself, is further assisted in evil by diabolical agents. Preternatural help is never sought in vain by those who seek it for bad purposes. Such help, like the ‘murdering ministers’ who tend on Lady Macbeth’s thoughts, comes almost before it is asked—Stygiaeque . . . ante preces venere deae. Curses are always granted: justo magis exaudita. Those rulers whom the dead will meet below regard them with impartial malice, and the king of ghosts is hostile to ghosts as such—nil hominum miserans, iratusque omnibus umbris. All this is by no means peculiar to Statius among the ancients, but it is in him, perhaps, unusually stressed. It would of course fit in with Dante’s picture of the universe.
But even more significant than the fiends of Statius are his gods. There are inconsistencies in his treatment of them to which I shall have to return; but more often than not his poem might well have seemed to be the work of one who already knew that the Olympians were really devils. In an important passage they can be lumped together with the human criminals: immitesque deos regemque cruentum. Hypsipyle, I am sure with the poet’s sympathy, calls them sontes. A few lines later, in his own person, he says ironically Ecce fides superum. Jupiter, in a passage unintentionally comic, refers to the reticenda deorum crimina. As part of the scenery of Hades, Styx flows by bearing witness to the perjuries of the gods. At the very climax of the poem Pietas, that ‘rebel passion’, protests that she was born saevis animantum ac saepe deorum obstaturam animis. But perhaps the most striking instance is the scene between Coroebus and Apollo in Book I. Apollo has seduced the daughter of Crotopus. The girl bears a child which she successfully hides till it is unfortunately killed by dogs. Her grief betrays the secret to her father who kills her in a fit of parental virtue. Apollo at this stage (sero memor thalami, as Statius justifiably observes) interests himself to the extent of producing a monster which goes about the country killing babies until it is itself killed by Coroebus. Apollo retorts with a pestilence which will not cease unless the culprit gives himself up. Coroebus at once visits the god in his temple. ‘I’m not here as a suppliant’, he says. ‘Pietas and conscia virtus are my incentives. I did kill your monster. Are brutes like that so dear to you gods? Is the death of men a jactura vilior? Very well. Don’t let all Argos suffer. Kill me.’ Apollo was completely overawed. Reverentia seized him. He was stupefactus (‘stupidly good’ for a moment like that later Devil in Milton), and
tristemque viro submissus honorem
Largitur vitae.
(I, 663–4)
Coroebus leaves the temple exoratus, not having appeased the god but having been himself appeased, having accepted, from his superior position, the submissive god’s tender of tristis vita. Of course, if Apollo were to be a devil in the strict Christian definition he would not have felt reverentia (though he might have been stupefactus). But the unambiguous inferiority of Olympian to mortal has been proclaimed.
Over against these diabolic, or nearly diabolic, gods stand the great ethical personifications, Virtus, Pietas and Clementia. If the first two are the more active, the third is given the most eloquent praise. The passage is one in which Dante might well be pardoned if he found Christian feeling.
I have already warned the reader that the theology (so to call it) of Statius is not fully consistent; but its very inconsistencies bring it, or seem to bring it, closer to Christianity. The great exception among his Olympians is, as we should expect, Jupiter. This Jupiter, if I mistake not, comes far closer than that of the Aeneid to the god of strict monotheism, the transcendent Creator. It would not, of course, have shocked or surprised Dante if Statius should speak of the true God under the Pagan name. He does so himself; he for poetic adornment, why not Statius because he dared not speak plainly? For this Jove is clearly the Creator of the universe, sator astrorum. A grave et immutabile pondus belongs to his words and the Fates follow his voice (though elsewhere, I must admit, he himself says immoto deducimur orbe Fatorum). Though the vindicator of the moral order, he is also a god who delights to show mercy—
Nam cui tanta quies irarum aut sanguinis usus
Parcior humani? Videt axis et ista per aevom
Mecum aeterna domus, quotiens jam torta reponam
Fulmina, quam rarus terris hic imperet ignis.
(VII, 199–202).
Perhaps the most monotheistic touch of all (it almost reminds one of Hebrews vi. 13) is his oath; he swears not only, in the traditional manner, by Styx but by arcem hanc aeternam mentis sacraria nostrae.
It would also (and justly) have impressed Dante that the soul of a good man can be wafted to the throne of this Jupiter at the moment of death. The apotheosis of certain heroes in Pagan story is, no doubt, familiar, but it is a rather different conception. The apotheosis of Hercules in Ovid is due not only to his great deeds but to his divine origin; there are in fact two natures in Hercules,
Nec nisi materna Vulcanum parte potentem
Sentiet: aeternum est a me quod traxit et expers
Atque immune necis.
As the burning goes on, Hercules looks less and less like Alcmena and more and more like Jove. He is not so much deified after death as saved from death by his semi-deity—parte sui meliore viget—and snatched to heaven in a celestial chariot. The Christian parallels here would be Incarnation (as regards his nature) and Assumption (as regards his destiny). The death of Menoeceus is represented in terms far closer to Christian hope. It is in fact strangely like Morz est Rollant, Deus en ad l’anme es cels. As his body reached the ground, spiritus olim ante Jovem, his soul already, long since, stood before the throne.
In one passage (possibly more) by another inconsistency ‘The gods’ are clearly referred to as good powers. This inconsistency is unimportant, for the god really concerned is not an Olympian but the personification Virtus. The passage is, however, of great interest for it brings us as near as anything I know in Pagan poetry to something like a doctrine of Grace. Menoeceus is just about to incur certain death for the sake of Thebes. What is the impulse which drives and enables men to do such deeds? Already in the Aeneid a character had raised this question, suggested two alternative answers and refused to decide between them:
Dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt,
Euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?
That is typically Pagan in its doubt whether the cupido is not dira, its fundamental, though reverent, suspicion. (Hope itself is usually a dangerous thing before St Paul, and ἐλπίς in ancient writers would often be best translated ‘wishful thinking’.) Statius knew his Aeneid very well indeed. He must have known exactly what he was doing when, speaking in his own person about Menoeceus, he answered precisely this question with no shadow of doubt—
neque enim haec absentibus umquam
Mens homini transmissa deis.
(X, 629–30)
The human race is bad, yet examples of high virtue occur. When they do, some superhuman influence has always been at work. Haec mens—this ‘frame’, as our ancestors called it—it never merely human and natural.
Finally, Dante would have found in the Thebaid an attitude to the sexual life which he would not easily have found in any other ancient text. He had alluded in the Convivio to the extreme bashfulness of Argia and Deipyle, of course with approval. That passage does not go beyond the traditional Pagan picture of maidenly behaviour. But the extreme embarrassment with which Ismene relates her dream in Book VIII, the assurance that she would never think about that sort of thing even if there weren’t a war on, is a little remarkable, and the degree of pudor which she displays to her unhappy lover on his deathbed is, not unjustly, described by the poet himself as saevus. Stranger still, to me, are the following. Or Argia and Deipyle, just before their wedding, we are told
tacite subit ille supremus
Virginitatis amor, primaeque modestia culpae
Confundit vultus.
(II, 232–4)
Is the act, then, even within marriage, a culpa? Not many lines later we learn how Argive brides, with certain ceremonies,
Virgineas libare comas primosque solebant
Excusare toros.
(II, 255–6)
Did marriage, then, need to be excused? It may be that the resemblance between Statius and some medieval moralists at this point is a mere accident. He may be thinking of some purely ritual obligation to Diana and Pallas, and culpa and excusatio may carry no meaning which we should recognize as ethical. But Dante would inevitably have read his words in a different spirit. Statius would seem to him to have written as a medieval moral theologian of the more rigorous type.
It seems to me therefore that Dante had very good grounds for feigning (if he feigned) and no contemptible grounds for believing (if he believed) that Statius had known the truth: or, at the very least, that his ignorance, if presented with the truth, would have been by no means invincible. Even the modern reader (if he does not put down everything in Statius to ‘rhetoric’) will find in him impressive evidence of the degree to which a Roman of his age, helped by Stoicism, could anticipate some elements of Christianity. It was not perverse of Dante to save Statius and damn Virgil; especially as it never led him to forget for a moment that Virgil is far the greater poet, and even, as Statius was not, a prophet. He was the lantern-bearer, but it was Statius who profited by the lantern’s light.