This paper examines Statius' depiction of landscape in comparison with Ovid's. Three landscapes that illustrate Statius' important and complex debt to Ovid are discussed: the sacred grove of Diana (Book 4), the Nemean grove (Books 4-6), and the river landscape of the Ismenos (Book 9). The analysis concludes that the landscapes of the Thebaid are disconnected from the gods and provide a vivid canvas on which Statius displays the spreading evil of a civil war that burst beyond the bounds of the warring parties. Humans are held accountable for the destruction of the state as much as for the loss of a paradise described in Ovidian terms as a locus amoenus.

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The third book of the Tristia is the first to have been written in Tomis, Ovid's place of exile. The long journey from Rome, the subject of the first book of the Tristia, is over. The distractions of the journey can no longer sustain him, and his only pleasure is to weep, in other words to write the elegy of lament: dum tamen et uentis dubius iactabar et undis,fallebat curas aegraque corda labor:ut uia finita est, et opus requieuit eundi,et poenae tellus est mini tacta meae,nil nisi flere libet…(Tr. 3.2.15-19)But while in turmoil I was being tossed around by winds and waves, my worries and sad heart were distracted by the battle for survival. Now that the journey is over, the effort involved in travel is spent, and the land of my punishment has been reached, weeping is my only pleasure.

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In the preface to each book of his collected poems, theSilvae, Statius writes in the apologetic mode. Addressing his friend Arruntius Stella in the preface to Book 1, he claims that his poems are mere impromptu productions, ‘qui mini subito calore et quadam festinandi voluptate fluxerunt’, and he worries that by the time they reach publication they may have lost their only charm, that of speed, ‘celeritas’. Statius makes the same claims for impromptu production with the poem I will be discussing in this article,Silvae3.1, which celebrates the remodelling of the temple of Hercules on the private Campanian estate that belonged to Statius' friend Pollius Felix: ‘nam primum limen eius Hercules Surrentinus aperit, quern in litore tuo consecratum, statim ut videram, his versibus adoravi’ (praef. 3).