Fashioning Crispinus through his Ancestors: Epic Models in Statius Silvae 5.2

Silvae 5.2 is an encomium addressed to Crispinus upon the occasion of his appointment as tribunus militum. This paper investigates how Statius employs epic intertexts in order to address potentially negative judgments of Crispinus caused by the young man's inexperience and the memory of his mother's crime. Allusions to Virgil's Aeneid affirm Crispinus's ability to emulate his father, exclude his criminal mother as a formative influence, and specify the roles of the young man's preceptors. Recollections of Statius's Thebaid, meanwhile, highlight the emperor's successful resolution of Crispinus's familial conflict through contrast with the epic's fratricidal violence.