The attempt to be concise and full[503] at one and the same time fails, and fails inevitably. But for all these faults Valerius Flaccus offends less than any of the Silver Latin writers of epic. He rants less and he exaggerates less; above all, he has much genuine poetic merit. He has been strangely neglected, both in ancient[504] and modern times, and unduly depreciated in the latter. There has been a tendency to rank him with Silius Italicus, whereas it would be truer criticism to place him close to Statius, and not far below Lucan. He is more uneven than the former, has a far less certain touch, and infinitely less command of his instrument. He has less mastery of words, but a more kindling and penetrating imagination. His outlines are less clear, but more suggestive. He has less rhetoric; beneath an often obscure diction he reveals a greater simplicity and directness of thought, and he has been infinitely more happy in his theme. Only the greatest of poets could achieve a genuine success with the Theban legend, only the worst of poets could reduce the voyage of the Argonauts to real dullness. On the other hand, in an age of _belles-lettres_ such as the Silver Age, and by the majority of scholars, whose very calling leads them to set a perhaps abnormally high value on technical skill, Statius is almost certain to be preferred to Valerius. About the relative position of Lucan there is no doubt. He is incomparably the superior of Valerius, both in genius and intellect. But Valerius never sins against taste and reason to the same extent, and though he has less fire, possesses a finer ear for music and rhythm, and more poetic feeling as distinct from rhetoric. Vergil was his master; it has been said with a little exaggeration that Valerius stands in the same relation to Vergil as Persius to Horace. This statement conveys but a half-truth. Valerius is as superior to Persius in technique as he is inferior in moral force and intellectual power. He is, however, full of echoes from Vergil,[505] and if his verse has neither the 'ocean roll' of the greater poets, nor the same tenderness, he yet has something of the true Vergilian glamour. But he has weakened his hexameter by succumbing to the powerful influence of Ovid. His verse is polished and neat to the verge of weakness. Like Ovid, he shows a preference for the dactyl over the spondee, shrinks from elision, and does not understand how to vary his pauses.[506] Too many lines close with a full-stop or colon, and where the line is broken, the same pause often recurs again and again with wearisome monotony. In this respect Valerius, though never monotonously ponderous like Lucan, compares ill with Statius. As a compensation, his individual lines have a force and beauty that is comparatively rare in the _Thebais_. The poet who could describe a sea-cave thus (iv. 179)-- non quae dona die, non quae trahat aetheris ignem; infelix domus et sonitu tremibunda profundi,