Statius, PUBLIUS PAPINIUS, Roman poet, was born at Naples 40 to 45 A.D., son of a poet and schoolmaster at Naples and at Rome. From early youth addicted to poetry, he gained prizes in the contests at Naples, won the Alban olive-wreath three times, and flourished as a court poet in the favour of Domitian, whom he flattered almost as shamelessly as his rival Martial himself. He lost the wreath of oak-leaves at the Capitoline competition in 94, and thereafter retired to Naples with his wife Claudia, where he died about 96. His chief work is the Thebais, an epic in twelve books on the famous theme of the struggle between the brothers Eteocles and Polynices of Thebes. The poem took twelve years to write, yet its construction is slovenly enough—one episode alone occupying one-sixth of the whole poem. It is tedious as a whole, and marred by over alliteration and allusiveness, but is redeemed by passages of exquisite art. Of another epic, the Achilleis, only a fragment consisting of one book and part of another remains. His Silvæ, or occasional verses, apparently half improvisations, are thirty-two in number, extending to nearly 4000 lines, mostly in hexameters. They have the freshness and vigour, together with the artistic imperfections, of unpremeditated effort, but, putting aside the flatteries to the emperor, they show not seldom a spark of the right Promethean fire. The quick touches of pathos, on separation and death, and on the sweet charm of childhood, would alone preserve some of these slight poems from oblivion.
The editio princeps of the epics appeared in 1470, of the Silvæ in 1472. Throughout the middle ages the fame of Statius was great, as readers of Dante (Purg. xxi.) will remember. The best editions of the Thebais are by O. Müller (books i.-vi. only, 1870) and Ph. Kohlmann (1844); of the Achilleis, by Kohlmann; of the Silvæ, by Jeremiah Markland (1728) and by Baehrens (1876).