suited the purpose of the poet, admitted of no incidents which required description or recital: and after the voyagers had reached the Grecian camp, it is reasonable to suppose, that the action of the Iliad immediately commenced. But that Statius had no design of extending the plan of the Achilleis beyond this period, is expressly declared in the exordium of the poem:
> Magnanimum Aeaciden, formidatamque Tonanti
> Progeniem, et patrio vetitam succedere coelo,
> Diva, refer; quanquam acta viri multum inclyta cantu
> Maeonio; sed plura vacant. Nos ire per omnem
> (Sic amor est) heroa velis, Scyroque latentem
> Dulichia proferre tuba: nec in Hectore tracto
> Sistere, sed tota juvenem deducere Troja.
Aid me, O goddess! while I sing of him,
Who shook the Thunderer’s throne, and, for his crime,
Was doomed to lose his birthright in the skies;
The great Aeacides. Maeonian strains
Have made his mighty deeds their glorious theme;
Still much remains: be mine the pleasing task
To trace the future hero’s young career,
Not dragging Hector at his chariot wheels,
But while disguised in Scyros yet he lurked,
Till trumpet-stirred, he sprung to manly arms,
And sage Ulysses led him to the Trojan coast.The Silvae is a collection of poems almost entirely in heroic verse, divided into five books, and for the most part written extempore. Statius himself affirms, in his Dedication to Stella, that the production of none of them employed him more than two days; yet many of them consist of between one hundred and two hundred hexameter lines. We meet with