Statius Siluae 3.2: Reading Travel

This essay offers a close examination of Statius’s Silvae 3.2, a propempticon for Maecius Celer. Using earlier Latin farewell poems as intellectual background, I illustrate the poet’s originality. In particular I watch how he makes use of different genres, such as lyric and epic, and especially of the Aeneid, as he crafts a meditation on a series of curricula vitae that illuminate Celer’s own voyage. Figures involved include Cleopatra and Alexander the Great as well as Virgil himself and his characters, Aeneas and Dido.