Born in Naples, the Statii were of Graeco-Campanian origin, and were of gentle extraction, though impoverished, and the family records were not without political distinctions. The poet's father taught with marked success at Naples and Rome. He is remembered today not only for his poetry, but also for his appearance as a character in the work of Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy.

Of events in the life of Statius we know little. From his boyhood he was victorious in poetic contests many times at his native city Naples, thrice at Alba, where he received the golden crown from the hand of the emperor Domitian, of whom he was a favorite, but later was an unsuccessful competitor at the Capitoline contest in Rome.

There are hints in this poem which naturally lead to the surmise that Statius was suffering from a loss of the emperor's favour; he may have felt that a word from Domitian would have won for him the envied garland, and that the word ought to have been given.

His surviving works include two epics in the manner of Vergil - the Thebaid, on the Seven against Thebes, and the Achilleid (incomplete), on the early life of Achilles - and the Silvae, a collection of poems, some displaying careful craftsmanship, others apparently hastily composed improvisations.

Statius is one of the principal epic and lyric poets of the silver age of Latin literature. He was much esteemed during his own time and through the Middle Ages. Some considered him second only to Virgil among Latin writers, while others have criticized him for the degree at which he imitates Virgil.

Statius was a younger contemporary of Petronius; his Silvae is unique in Latin poetry. It is an elegy in which Statius expresses his sympathy for his friend Flavius Ursus, who has suffered the loss of a beloved slave boy.

It shows that such slaves were not always pretty darlings, for the fifteen-year-old Philetus is compared, not to Ganymede but to Theseus and Achilles, and his love for his master is assimilated to the heroic tradition of Greek pederasty; Statius characterizes Ursus' love as Cecropian, that is, Athenian. With Virgil's Nisus and Euryalus, this poem stands alone as an instance of this kind of Hellenizing love in Latin literature.