 Taught by his educated father, Statius was familiar with the breadth of classical literature and displayed his learning in his poetry which is densely allusive and has been described as elaborate and mannerist.He was able to compose in hexameter, hendecasyllable, Alcaic and Sapphic meters, to produce deeply researched and highly refined epic and polished impromptu pieces, and to treat a variety of themes with the dazzling rhetorical and poetic skill that inspired the support of his patrons and the emperor.Some of Statius' works, such as his poems for his competitions, have been lost; he is recorded as having written an "Agave" mime, and a four line fragment remains of his poem on Domitian's military campaigns, the "De Bello Germanico" composed for the Alban Games in the scholia to Juvenal 4.94.