AERIAE GRUES: CRANE MIGRATIONS FROM VIRGIL TO STATIUS

This essay scrutinizes the topos of crane migration in Roman martial epic to illustrate the ideological and meta-poetical development of this motif in its home genre. Each poet's adaptation of his predecessors' crane motifs alludes to the characters, themes, and ideological underpinnings of his own epic. The identification of cranes as carriers of meaning contributes to established links between Virgil, Lucan, and Statius, reinforces the relatively recent case for Lucan's influence on the Thebaid, illustrates the heuristic value of migration as a cultural and literary experience and furthers discussion about the textualization of the natural world into Roman poetry.