sic ubi tranquillo perlucent sidera ponto vibraturque fretis caeli stellantis imago, omnia clara nitent, sed clarior omnia supra Hesperus exsertat radios, quantusque per altum aethera, caeruleis tantus monstratur in undis.
So when the stars are glassed in the tranquil deep and the reflection of the starry sky quivers in the waves, all the stars shine clear, but clearer than all doth Hesperus send forth his rays; and as he gleams in the high heavens, even so bright do the blue waters show him forth.
The comparison is. a little strained and far-fetched. The reflection of stars in the sea is not quite so noticeable or impressive as Statius would have us believe. But there is real beauty both in the conception and the execution of the simile. Of more indisputable excellence is the comparison in the eleventh book (443), where Adrastus, flying from Thebes in humiliation and defeat, is likened to Pluto, when he first entered on his kingdom of the underworld, his lordship over the strengthless dead--
qualis demissus curru laevae post praemia sortis umbrarum custos mundique novissimus heres palluit, amisso veniens in Tartara caelo.
Even as the warden of the shades, the third heir of the world, when he entered on the realm that the unkind lot had given him, leapt from his car and turned pale, for heaven was lost and he was at the gate of hell.
The picture is Miltonic, and Pluto is for a brief moment almost an anticipation of the Satan of _Paradise Lost_.
The metre, like that of Valerius Flaccus, draws its primary inspiration from Vergil, but has been strongly influenced by the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid. There are fewer elisions in Statius than in Vergil, and more dactyls.[569] He is, however, less dactylic than Valerius Flaccus and Ovid. In his management of pauses he is far more successful than any epic writer, with the exception of Vergil. As a result, he is far less monotonous than Ovid, Lucan, or Valerius. The one criticism that can be levelled against him is that his verse, while possessing rapidity and vigour, is not sufficiently adapted to the varying emotions that his story demands, and that it shows a consequent lack of nobility and stateliness. For the _Silvae_ his metre is admirably adapted. It is light and almost sprightly, and the poet can let himself go. He was not blind to the requirements of the epic metre even if he did not satisfy them, and in his lighter verse there is a notable increase of fluency and ease.