Grecia e Roma nell'Achilleide

Greece is at the centre of Statius’ poetry and thought. The Achilleid continues the political reflection of the Thebaid, looking at Greek myth, history, and culture from a Roman imperial perspective. An extraordinary simile compares the Greeks gathered in Aulis to fight Troy together, under a single rex, to diverse animals restricted little by little by a hunting net, amazed to find themselves living together in peace, the ferocious with the weak, joined by the shared fear of a greater strength (1, 459-466). Through the animal analogy and the ‘body politic’ language, the narrator reflects on the birth of a state organism and a one-ruler form of government, recalling philosophical and political theories on the origins of civilisation, as well as poetic traditions on the formation of an empire as a harmonisation of conflicting elements. As a Graeco-Roman intellectual of the Flavian age looking back to Greek history, Statius suggests that the political unity repeatedly attempted by the Greeks has been finally accomplished by the Roman empire, and thus anticipates a view that will be shared by the Second Sophistic. The animal apologos illustrates a political process whereby an act of coercion results in the suspension of internal conflict and obtains the consent of the subjects. However, peace is always threatened by a return to chaos, as Achilles’ clash with Agamemnon will prove. Here, a hint at the myth of the Golden Age, and of the Emperor as a miracle worker, combines with a keen consciousness of power relations in imperial Rome.