The Geography of the Roman World in Statius' Silvae

This dissertation examines the poetic construction of geography in Statius' Silvae. As poems composed by Statius to praise his patrons, the Silvae are shaped by the social relationships of first-century Rome and reflect in many ways the worldview of contemporary Roman elites. In the Flavian era, political, military, technological, and commercial developments contributed to an increasingly important ideology of spatial control; the Empire was seen as encompassing the inhabited world, which was subject to Roman dominion and knowledge. Statius' treatment of geography in the Silvae, often dismissed as rhetorical embellishment, in fact presents a vision of the Empire and the world related to but distinct from this "official" geographical ideology.