_Crimine quo merui iuvenis, placidissime divom, Quove errore miser, donis ut solus egerem, Somne, tuis? Tacet omne pecus, volueresque, feraeque, Et simulant fessos curvata cacumina somnos; Nec trucibus fluviis idem sonus; occidit horror Aequoris, et terris maria inclinata quiescunt. Septima iam rediens Phoebe mihi respicit aegras Stare genas, totidem Oeteae Paphiaeque revisunt Lampades, et toties nostros Tithonia questus Praeterit et gelido spargit miserata flagello. Unde ego sufficiam? Non si mihi lumina mille Quae sacer alterna tantum statione tenebat Argus, et haud unquam vigilabat corpore toto. At nunc, heu, aliquis longa sub nocte puellae Brachia nexa tenens, ultra te, Somne, repellit: Inde veni: nec te totas infundere pennas Luminibus compello meis: hoc turba precatur Laetior; extremae me tange cacumine virgae, Sufficit, aut leviter suspenso poplite transi._
Were the three lines beginning _Unde ego sufficiam_ struck out--and one might almost fancy them to have been inserted later by an unhappy second thought--the remainder of this poem would be as perfect as it is unique. The famous sonnet of Wordsworth on the same subject must at once occur to an English reader; but the poem in its manner, especially in the dying cadence of the last two lines, recalls even more strongly some of the finest sonnets of Keats. "Had Statius written often thus," in the words Johnson uses of Gray, "it had been vain to blame, and useless to praise him."
The two other epic poets contemporary with Statius whose works are extant, Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus, belong generally to the same school, but stand on a much lower level of excellence. The former is only known as the author of the _Argonautica_. An allusion in the proem of his epic to the recent destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70, and another in a later book to the great eruption of Vesuvius in 79, fix the date of the poem; and Quintilian, writing in the later years of Domitian, refers to the poet's recent death. From another passage in the _Argonautica_ it has been inferred that Flaccus was one of the college of quindecemvirs, and therefore of high family. The _Argonautica_ follows the well-known poem of Apollonius Rhodius, but by his diffuse rhetorical treatment the author expands the story to such a length that in between five and six thousand lines he has only got as far as the escape of Jason and Medea from Colchos. Here the poem breaks off abruptly in the eighth book; it was probably meant to consist of twelve, and to end with the return of the Argonauts to Greece. In all respects, except the choice of subject, Valerius Flaccus is far inferior to Statius. He cannot indeed wholly destroy the perennial charm of the story of the Golden Fleece, but he comes as near doing so as is reasonably possible. His versification is correct, but without freedom or variety; and incidents and persons are alike presented through a cloud of monotonous and mechanical rhetoric.