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 one
of two hundred and sixteen lines; one, of two hundred and thirty-four;
one, of two hundred and sixty-two; and one of two hundred and
seventy-seven; a rapidity of composition approaching to what Horace
mentions of the poet Lucilius. It is no small encomium to observe, that,
considered as extemporaneous productions, (504) the meanest in the
collection is far from meriting censure, either in point of sentiment or
expression; and many of them contain passages which command our applause.

The poet MARTIAL, surnamed likewise Coquus, was born at Bilbilis, in
Spain, of obscure parents. At the age of twenty-one, he came to Rome,
where he lived during five-and-thirty years under the emperors Galba,
Otho, Vitellius, the two Vespasians, Domitian, Nerva, and the beginning
of the reign of Trajan. He was the panegyrist of several of those
emperors, by whom he was liberally rewarded, raised to the Equestrian
order, and promoted by Domitian to the tribuneship; but being treated
with coldness and