Engendering the house:Silvae1.2 and 3.4

Abstract

Her snowy neck like to a marble tower, And all her body like a palace fair, Ascending up, with many a stately stair, To honor's seat and chastity's sweet bower. Edmund Spenser, Epithalamion Silv . 1. 1 and 4. 6 stand at opposite ends of the poetic and political spectrum in Statius' poetry book. Statius' poetry of praise, however, contains a variety of negotiatory positions. This chapter will consider two poems that once again structurally and thematically complement one another, Silv . 1. 2 and Silv . 3. 4. They are admittedly addressed to people of very different social status – in Silv . 1. 2 the aristocratic Stella and his new wife Violentilla, in Silv . 3. 4 Domitian's court eunuch Earinus. Yet both poems explore social and sexual identity through the domestic space of a grand house and palace respectively. Gender and architecture are here integral to both the reinforcement and the questioning of traditional values in the Flavian age. Indeed, the literary construction of a woman and a eunuch through their houses implicitly raises the question of what constitutes ‘Romanness’ at the end of the first century ad . Silv . 1. 2 celebrates the marriage of a couple who were fairly prominent figures within Roman society, Arruntius Stella and his wife Violentilla. Stella is the subject of several poems by Martial. Silv . 1. 2 tells us that at the time of his marriage Stella was one of the quindecimviri (176–7), hoping, it seems, for further speedy advancement (174–81).