Dead Parrots Society

Abstract

Statius' Silvae 2.4 is ostensibly written as a consolation poem to the poet's friend and benefactor Atedius Melior on the death of his pet parrot. But Statius also uses the opportunity provided by the poem's subject matter to engage in a dialogue with his literary predecessors. I will argue here that Statius both inserts himself into and distinguishes himself from the Latin literary tradition through the use of two catalogues of birds, the first at 2.4.16-23 and the second at 2.4.26-28. Statius plays these catalogues off several stories in Ovid's Metamorphoses that also feature birds in order to comment on his own work, to locate it within the Latin tradition (particularly the poetry of Ovid), and to com? ment on the changing role of the poet under the emperors. Statius uses the form of, or at least certain elements of, the consolatio or epicedion1 for many of the Silvae (1.4,2.1,2.4,2.5,2.6,2.7,3.3, 5.1,5.3, 5.5), but these poems are concentrated in the second book whose overarching theme is death.2 Two of the poems in book 2 are explicitly marked by Statius as consolationes: Silvae 2.1 (on the death of Melior's slave boy Glaucias) and 2.6 (on the death of Ursus' slave boy Philetus) are strikingly similar in form and content.3 Although Silvae 2.4 is not specifically called a consolatio or epicedion by Statius in the preface, many scholars classify it as a consolatio because of its similarity to 2.1 and 2.6.4 The poem begins with the poet's address to the parrot and a