the Capitoline contest, he retired to his native town.[535] He had married a widow named Claudia,[536] but the union was childless; towards the end of his life he adopted the infant son of one of his slaves,[537] and the child's premature death affected him as bitterly as though it had been his own son that died. Of his age we know little; but in the _Silvae_ there are allusions to the approach of old age and the decline of his physical powers.[538] He can scarcely have been born later than 45 A.D., and may well have been born considerably earlier. His life, as far as we can judge, was placid and uneventful. The position of his father seems to have saved him from a miserable struggle for his livelihood, such as vexed the soul of Martial.[539] There is nothing venal about his verse. If his flattery of the emperor is fulsome almost beyond belief, he hardly overstepped the limits of the path dictated by policy and the custom of the age; his conduct argues weakness rather than any deep moral taint. In his flattery towards his friends and patrons his tone is, at its worst, rather that of a social inferior than of a mere dependent.[540] And underlying all the preciosity and exaggeration of his praises and his consolations, there is a genuine warmth of affection that argues an amiable character. And this warmth of feeling becomes unmistakable in the _epicedia_ on his father and his adopted son, and again in the poem addressed to his wife. The feeling is genuine, in spite of the suggestion of insincerity created by the artificiality of his language. No less noteworthy is his enthusiasm for the beauties of his birthplace, which shines clear through all the obscure legends beneath which he buries his topography.[541] These qualities, if any, must be set against his lack of intellectual power; his mind is nimble and active, but never strong either in thought or emotion: of sentiment he has abundance, of passion none. Considering the corruption of the society of which he constituted himself the poet, and of which there are not a few glimpses in the _Silvae_, despite the tinselled veil that is thrown over it, the impression of Statius the man is not unpleasing: it is not necessary to claim that it is inspiring.