The Search for the Self in Statius' ›Thebaid‹: Identity, Intertext and the Sublime 9783110717990, 9783110717785, 9783111265865

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Jean-Michel Hulls The Search for the Self in Statius’ Thebaid

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Volume 116

Jean-Michel Hulls

The Search for the Self in Statius’ Thebaid Identity, Intertext and the Sublime

ISBN 978-3-11-071778-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-071799-0 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-071804-1 ISSN 1868-4785 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021936237 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Editorial Office: Alessia Ferreccio and Katerina Zianna Logo: Christopher Schneider, Laufen Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com



For Victoria and Nathaniel

Contents Acknowledgements  IX Introduction  XI  . . . . . .

Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self  1 The Αbsent Self: Polynices  1 Theorising the Self: Reflexivity and the Search for Difference  17 Polynices and the Search for the Self  22 Mirroring the Self: Polynices at Thebes  31 Destroying the Self: The Construction of Identity  35 ecce iterum fratres: On Burying Polynices  44

 . . . . .

Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid  47 Exemplarity, persona and Identity  47 The Rhetorical Tyrant  51 Repetitive Tyranny: Problems with Being Evil  58 Dissimulation, Dissent and the Disarming of Tyranny  85 More Dissenting Voices: Suicide as Political Opposition or Erasure of Identity?  91 Elegiac Enervation and the Love-Sick Tyrant  110 Reading Statius’ Tyrants in the Roman World  117

. .  . . . . .

Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity  121 An Excessive Identity: Oedipus as Over-Determined Hero  123 Appearances Matter: Fury as ecphrasis  131 Role Reversal and Literary History: Oedipus and Tantalus  141 Emerging from the Darkness  146 Emicuit per mille foramina sanguis impius: Theseus as Political Alternative  151

 . .

Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity  164 Dead Wood: Encoding Authorial Identity  171 Muddying the Waters: Identity and persona in and around Thebes  179 Amphion’s Walls: Constructing the Poet  183 A Confused House: Oedipal Models in the Proem  196 meriti post me referentur honores: Poet and Poem in the sphragis  203

. . .

VIII  Contents  . . . . .

Afterword? Per te poeta fui: Dante’s Statius and the Re-Writing of Literary History  214 Climbing the Mountain again: Statius in Purgatory  215 conosco i segni: Statius the Poet in Dante’s Commedia  218 The Road to Emmaus: Different Patterns of Following  230 Vernacular and Latin Traditions and the Notion of Renaissance Succession  234 uestigia semper adora: Reading Statius Reading Virgil through Reading Dante  236

Bibliography  239 Index Rerum et Nominum  255 Index of Sources  261

Acknowledgements This book has been twenty years in the making. It began its life as a PhD thesis at UCL which was submitted after a fair degree of filing and torturing in 2006. That project was brilliantly supervised throughout by Rhiannon Ash, in its early stages by Gerard O’Daly, and latterly by Matthew Robinson, before being examined by Bruce Gibson and Alessandro Schiesaro. Thoughts, ideas and text from that PhD project are visible throughout this project, but chapter 2 on Statius’ tyrants is in particular very closely derived from what I wrote then. All involved in my thesis deserve my heartfelt thanks for improving it and me, but I am especially grateful to Rhiannon and Bruce, who have been such valuable supporters and sources of advice over the years. Inevitably, my thoughts on Statius have evolved in the time that has since passed. I have been fortunate to be invited to speak at a number of seminars and conferences over the years and I am very grateful to all who have helped to shape my better ideas and gently persuaded me to abandon some of the worse ones. In particular, I should give thanks to Helen Lovatt for her invitation to speak on Dante at a conference on ‘The Influence and Impact of post-Augustan Epic’ way back in July 2010, which finally metamorphosed into the final chapter of this book. Thanks are also due to Mariusz Zagorski for allowing me to present a nascent version of the first part of chapter 1 at a conference on ‘Flavian Epic and the World of Ideas’ in Warsaw in May 2012. In a broader sense, I am grateful to have picked a research area that has such a tightly-knit and supportive community. It seems churlish to select any individuals and ignore others, but I should take this opportunity to thank Antony Augoustakis and Gesine Manuwald for so many small and frequent acts of academic kindness over the years. Putting together this book has been especially challenging in the year of coronavirus, and I am incredibly grateful to Marco Acquafredda, Kerstin Haensch, Katerina Zianna and all at de Gruyter for their calm professionalism and often remarkably rapid work on this book in such difficult times. Thanks too are owed to de Gruyter’s anonymous referees, all of whom have made this book better in all sorts of ways. The flaws of course remain my own. As one who works at an institution without a large research library, finalising footnotes and bibliography during regular lockdowns has been tricky at times (alert readers will note my infidelity in the matter of dictionaries, for example; it often came down to whichever one I happened to be locked down with) and I would like to thank Helen Lovatt, who helped me to navigate online bibliography, Federica Bessone, who was kind enough to email me some of her own

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110717990-203

X  Acknowledgements work, Victoria Yorke-Edwards, for her indefatigable assistance with online resources when she had better things to be doing, and especially to the marvellously efficient and helpful Paul Fletcher and his team in the Wodehouse Library at Dulwich College. Publius Papinius Statius, himself both insider and outsider, seems, as this extraordinary year come to its close, more personally relevant than ever to one who teaches Classics in a British public school, that embodiment of so many white male privileges, but who is also the son of a European, and born in another country. It is great to know that this book will form some small part of my identity at least. I conclude with personal thanks to my parents, Anthony and Claudette, whose support over the years has been incalculable, and to my own family, Victoria and Nathaniel, for knowing precisely when to leave me alone and when to distract me! J-M.H. Christmas Eve, 2020.

Introduction Statius’ Thebaid is a poem about identity. It is a work obsessed with its own identity, status and belated place within the literary canon. The opening words fraternas acies alternaque regna (1.1) are not only a summary of the poem’s contents, but also a violent challenge to the poet’s predecessors; his brothers in literature will be fought against and new poetic kingdoms will be established only to crumble; the lines of battle that the poet draws up also act as intertextual sight-lines down which we can see Statius’ omnipresent scholarly back-stories. Statius’ first authorial intervention, unde iubetis / ire, deae? (1.3–4), is a cry for help, as much ‘where is there left for me to go?’ as it is ‘where do you want me to go?’. It is also an acknowledgment of his own lack of ability to carve out a space for himself and an astonishing relinquishing of his own autonomy so early in the poem.1 The poem drips with instances of characters going where they have gone so many times before and who are horribly self-conscious of their repetitions.2 It is also a poem that examines the heart of characterization in Roman epic. At one level, it pits the exemplary world against the identity of the individual.3 It

 1 The opening invocations of Muses in classical epic poetry generally allow the poet to assume a commanding position in relation to the inspiring deity: both Homer Il. 1.1 and Od. 1.1 begin with imperatives instructing the Muse to ‘sing’ or ‘tell’ his narrative; Apollonius Argo. 1.1–2 is, if anything, more authoritative, starting with a participle (ἀρχόμενος, 1.1) and then shifting to a first person verb (μνήσομαι, ‘I shall recall’, 1.2); Catullus 64 is reluctant to provide an authoritative narratorial voice, 64.2 dicuntur; Lucretius is similarly self-effacing, labelling Venus a sociam … scribendis uersibus, DRN 1.24, before commanding her to banish martial poetry, effice, DRN 1.29; Virgil makes himself the primary mover of his epic narrative (Aen. 1.1, arma uirumque cano), before engaging his Muse at 1.8 (Musa, mihi causas memora). Lucan (BC 1.2 canimus) and Valerius Flaccus (Argo. 1.1 canimus) do much the same. Ovid’s animus is the driving force of the Metamorphoses (1.1) and he commands the gods to breathe on his enterprise (di, coeptis … adspirate meis, 1.2–3). Silius Italicus, if anything, ups the ante by asserting control not only of his Muse (Pun. 1.3, da, Musa), but also of his Virgilian intertext (Pun. 1.1, ordior arma). Statius’ deferential position gives the poem a much more lyric feel, like that of Horace Odes 1.12 (1–3, quem uirum aut heroa lyra uel acri / tibia sumes celebrare, Clio, / quem deum?), itself an imitation of Pindar Ol. 2 (1–2, ἀναξιφόρμιγγες ὕμνοι, / τίνα θεόν, τίν᾽ ἥρωα, τίνα δ᾽ ἄνδρα κελαδήσομεν;). See Clay 2011, 339 for the programmatic importance of these lines. For an exploration of Statius’ aesthetic autonomy in the Silvae, see Roman 2014, 270–300. On Statius’ Jupiter’s failed imitation of the Virgilian and Lucanian openings, see below, ch. 2.3. 2 For self-conscious intradiegetic repetition, cf. e.g. Theb. 1.101–2, 216–17, 3.175–6, 10.81, 11.109 with Micozzi 2009; and 2015. 3 For intertextuality shaping character, see Seo 2013; for a sociological study of Roman historical exempla, see Roller 2018. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110717990-204

XII  Introduction asks the question: should the author build a character from the dozens or even hundreds of previous and parallel examples to create a self that is momentary and contingent, flat because it is only good for this one moment in the text and inconsistent with the exemplarity adduced in other places in the text? Is the epic subject nothing more than a name therefore? Or can subjects construct their own identities and build something not simply determined by literary-historical convenience? This leads the poet to the individual’s place within a social and cultural world. The ancient world is not, as we shall see shortly, a place which is comfortable or even capable of internalizing thoughts of selfhood.4 The self is performed externally and when a poet like Statius wishes to explore constructions of selfhood he can only engage through external media. The identity of the ancient subject is thus performed through the mechanisms of the social and cultural world, but it is also only to be explored and identified through those same mechanisms: ‘the Subject is always already related to some heterogeneous substantial context, it always comes second.’5 Thus the poem explores the way in which its characters exist within their socio-cultural environments, either embracing or rejecting the opportunities, those possible selves, which the world around them offers. This externalized engagement is part and parcel of our understanding of the identity of the poet as it is of his poem and its characters. Statius is, in my view, as much a man for the 21st century as he was for the first. He comes after the ‘modernist’ golden age of Augustan Rome, where the rules of the game were established and after the racy, ‘post-modern’ fireworks of Ovid, Seneca and Lucan where all those rules were laughed at and re-written. The son of a grammaticus born in the Greek colony of Naples, yet trying to make his way in Rome as a Latin poet, Statius is the classic ‘outsider’; his lowly status, need for patronage, and his ethnic identity, which was neither one nor the other, mark him out as Other.6 An extended reflection on identity and selfhood is as relevant to the historical Statius as it is to the poet of the Thebaid. The poem begins by staging its engagement in, yet simultaneously shying away from, Domitianic Rome in an elaborate recusatio

 4 Gill 1996; and 2006. 5 Žižek 2012, 379. 6 For a general overview of Statius and his geographical otherness, see Newlands 2012. Naturally, he shares status issues with some of the big names of Augustan poetry. Virgil’s Mantua had only recently been granted citizenship when Virgil was born in 70 BC and he, unable to cope with the pressures of a career in Rome, moved to Naples (Geo. 4.563–6). Horace constantly vaunts his status as the son of a freedman and regularly proclaims his gratitude to Maecenas and Augustus for the financial patronage.

Introduction  XIII

(1.17–33) which lists Domitian’s victories in Germany and Dacia and the emperor’s emerging sense of divinity whilst rejecting the opportunity to engage fully with such topics, citing weakness and a lack of daring (nondum … ausim, 1.17–18; cum … fortior, 1.32). The complex relationship with ‘Rome’ as a literary-historical environment is adumbrated in the poem’s final lines (12.810–19) where the poet famously warns his poem not to get too close to the Aeneid. The complexities of identity in the Thebaid are best introduced in a scene which has burned itself into the minds of many of its readers. At the end of the eighth book, the dying hero Tydeus loses the chance of immortality when his patron goddess Athene finds him eating the head of Melanippus, the man who dealt him a fatal wound:7 erigitur Tydeus uultuque occurrit et amens laetitiaque iraque, ut singultantia uidit ora trucesque oculos seseque agnouit in illo, imperat abscisum porgi laeuaque receptum spectat atrox hostile caput gliscitque tepentis lumina torua uidens et adhuc dubitantia figi. infelix contentus erat: plus exigit ultrix Tisiphone. iamque inflexo Tritonia patre uenerat et misero decus inmortale ferebat. ecce illum effracti perfusum tabe cerebri aspicit et uiuo scelerantem sanguine fauces Theb. 8.751–61 Tydeus raises himself and turns his face to meet him. He is wild with joy and anger as he sees the gasping visage, the fierce eyes, and recognizes himself in the other. He orders that his enemy’s head be cut off and brought to him. Holding it in his left hand, he glares at it savagely and swells as he sees it still warm and the eyes, grim and still uncertain grow fixed. The wretch was content, but avenging Tisiphone exacts more. And now Tritonia had come; she had swayed her father and was bearing immortal glory to the unhappy warrior. She looks at him, sees him wet with the issue of the broken brain and polluting his jaws with living blood […]8

For Tydeus at least, identity is cannibalism. The final moment of introspection, of self-examination, is externalized (agnouit … imperat … spectat). Tydeus looks at the dying face of the enemy who is his twin. He finds himself in otherness  7 On this passage, see Augoustakis 2016, xxx–xlii and ad loc. 8 Text of the Thebaid and Achilleid is based on Hall et al. 2007, although I have added punctuation for direct speech for clarity. Occasionally I am more conservative in my readings of the text, but have included their emendations for comparison. Translations of Statius throughout are taken from Shackleton Bailey 2003, sometimes lightly and occasionally heavily adapted.

XIV  Introduction (seseque agnouit in illo, 8.753) and is content (contentus erat, 8.757). Yet that moment of identification, where Tydeus becomes the subject he was always meant to be, is also a moment of obscene violence. The search for the self in this poem is never a comfortable or a reassuring process.

Identity Crisis: Historiographic Interplay in the Argive Invasion Before we plunge into the complexities of identity formation in the Thebaid, we need to clear some methodological ground by exploring two literary reasons why the self is so much at issue in this poem. In particular, we need to think about Statius’ authorial persona and his intertextual method within the poem. The extent of Statius’ intertextual reach can have disconcerting effects upon his narrative. As a test case, we can explore the ways in which Greek historiographical narratives suffuse the Thebaid and push our reading of individual and collective identities in surprising directions.9 An illustration of this is provided when the Argive and Theban armies are fighting in book 8. There, the quantities of arrows and other missiles fired are so dense that it shuts out the sun: exclusere diem telis, stant ferrea caelo nubila nec iaculis artatus sufficit aer. hi pereunt missis illi redeuntibus hastis, concurrunt per inane sudes et mutua perdunt uulnera, concurrunt hastae, stridentia fundae saxa pluunt, uolucres imitantur fulgura glandes et formidandae non una morte sagittae. Theb. 8.412–18 They shut out the day with missiles, iron clouds stand in the sky, the crowded air does not suffice for the darts. Some die by spears discharged, others by spears returning, stakes clash in the void, losing the wounds each carries, spears too, slings rain whistling stones, swift bullets and arrows threatening double death imitate lightning.

The image of the sun blocked out by the quantity of arrows is a very familiar one, taken from the build-up to the Thermopylae narrative in Herodotus’ Histories:10

 9 On the close interaction between historiography and poetry in imperial literature see Miller & Woodman 2010 passim, esp. their introduction, 1–7. For Statius and Greek literature in book 8, for example, see Augoustakis 2016 passim, esp. xxiv–xxvii, xxx–xxxiii. 10 On the passage, see Augoustakis 2016 ad loc. He suggests a further connection in the imagery to Pindar Isth. 5.50. Cf. also Enn. Ann. 266 Sk, hastati spargunt hastas, fit ferreus imber.

Introduction  XV

πυθόμενον πρός τευ τῶν Τρηχινίων ὡς ἐπεὰν οἱ βάρβαροι ἀπίωσι τὰ τοξεύματα, τὸν ἥλιον ὑπὸ τοῦ πλήθεος τῶν ὀιστῶν ἀποκρύπτουσι: τοσοῦτο πλῆθος αὐτῶν εἶναι. τὸν δὲ οὐκ ἐκπλαγέντα τούτοισι εἰπεῖν ἐν ἀλογίῃ ποιεύμενον τὸ Μήδων πλῆθος, ὡς πάντα σφι ἀγαθὰ ὁ Τρηχίνιος ξεῖνος ἀγγέλλοι, εἰ ἀποκρυπτόντων τῶν Μήδων τὸν ἥλιον ὑπὸ σκιῇ ἔσοιτο πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἡ μάχη καὶ οὐκ ἐν ἡλίῳ. Hdt. 7.226.1–2 He [Dienekes] had learned from a Trachinian that there were so many of the barbarians that when they shot their missiles, the sun was hidden by the multitude of their arrows. He was not at all disturbed by this and made light of the multitude of the Medes, saying that their Trachinian foreigner brought them good news. If the Medes hid the sun, they could fight them in the shade instead of in the sun.

Although the central image is the same, the version in the Thebaid has been extensively developed according to the tastes of the time. Herodotus’ story of Dienekes is a joke and a light-hearted, hypothetical response to the Trachinian’s (apparently) exaggerated statement which is designed to provoke fear among the Spartans; if the Medes really do block out the sun, it will be easier for us to fight. Statius’ version makes a reality of the Trachinian’s story: missiles from both armies really do blot out the sun. However, Statius takes an image that is, at best, implicit in Herodotus, that of the storm.11 The arrows form iron clouds (ferrea nubila), stones rain down (saxa pluunt) and the weapons imitate lightning (imitantur fulgura). This process may be the result of Statius reading Herodotus through an intermediary text, that of Lycophron’s Alexandria.12 Statius certainly tells us that his father taught Lycophron’s poetry to him (tu pandere doctus / … latebrasque Lycophronis atri, Silv. 5.3.156–7, ‘you were skilled to teach … the hidden places of dark Lycophron’)13 and the Alexandria, which relates the cryptic, oracular speech of the prophetess Cassandra, includes a brief allusion to Xerxes’ invasion of Greece in 479–8 BC (Alex. 1412–34). Lycophron’s Cassandra consistently re-works Herodotus in her re-telling of that invasion:14 κύφελλα δ᾽ ἰῶν τηλόθεν ῥοιζουμένων ὑπὲρ κάρα στήσουσι, Κίμμερός θ᾽ ὅπως, σκιὰ καλύψει πέρραν, ἀμβλύνων σέλας.

Lyc. Alex. 1426–8

 11 See Ash 2015, 217. 12 On this poem, see Hornblower 2015; and McNelis & Sens 2016. 13 On poetic instruction and the relationship with his father in Silvae 5.3, see Holford-Strevens 2000; McNelis 2002; and 2007, 22. 14 Text and translation are taken from Hornblower 2015.

XVI  Introduction They will raise clouds of whizzing arrows from afar over their heads; and like Kimmerian gloom, the shadow will hide the sun, and dim its brightness

Lycophron’s more extended imagery of clouds, gloom and a darkened sun provides a neater link to the better-known story in Herodotus. Statius’ later allusion to dark Lycophron’s hiding places may even conflate a very accurate description of Cassandra’s magnificently obscure utterance with the more specific intertextual connection to Persian arrows blotting out the sun.15 This would be an interesting if perhaps obscure moment of intertextuality in the Thebaid were it not the case that there are other occasions where the text is ‘Medized’. Already in book 8, the new Argive seer Thiodamas is compared to a youthful Persian king in a simile that seems surprisingly inappropriate for the context:16 sicut Achaemenius solium gentesque paternas excepit si forte puer, cui uiuere patrem tutius, incerta formidine gaudia librat, an fidi proceres, ne pugnet uulgus habenis, cui latus Euphratae, cui Caspia limina mandet: sumere tunc arcus ipsumque onerare ueretur patris equum, uisusque sibi nec sceptra capaci sustentare manu nec adhuc inplere tiaran. Theb. 8.286–93 So if a boy of Achaemenes’ line, for whom it were safer had his father lived, happened to take over the paternal throne and peoples, he balances joy with doubtful fear: are his nobles loyal, will the people not fight the reins, to whom shall he entrust Euphrates’ bank or the Caspian threshold? Then he fears to take the bow and mount his father’s own horse, thinks his hand still too small to wield the sceptre and his head to fill the diadem.

The longest simile in the eighth book is initially arresting for its anachronism (the Achaemenids must ‘come after’ the mythical invasion of Thebes). While the simile is too generic in content to point specifically to Xerxes any more than any other Achaemenid king, it also seems quite wrong for Thiodamas’ situation, at once making him seem childlike and also turning him from a Greek substitute prophet into a barbarian monarch. The simile focalizes these problems from a Persian point of view, making Thiodamas seem like an outsider to the Greek world. The

 15 On the (un)reliability of Cassandra, see McNelis & Sens 2016, 7–8. 16 On Thiodamas, see Augoustakis 2016 ad loc.; Rebeggiani 2018, 114–16; Hulls forthcoming b.

Introduction  XVII

use of excipio for taking over from a predecessor may also suggest intertextual appropriation as well as political or religious succession.17 However, the invocation of Persian models is not confined to book 8.18 When the Argive army is delayed in Nemea in book 4, it is because the god Bacchus persuades Nemea’s water nymphs to cause the rivers to run dry: dixerat: ast illis tenuior percurrere uisus ora situs uiridisque comis exaruit umor. protinus Inachios haurit sitis ignea campos: diffugere undae, squalent fontesque lacusque et caua feruenti durescunt flumina limo. aegra solo macies tenerisque in origine culmis inclinata seges; deceptum margine ripae stat pecus atque amnes quaerunt armenta natatos. Theb. 4.697–704 [Bacchus] spoke. A thin mould seemed to spread over [the nymphs’] faces and the green moisture dried out from their hair. Straightaway fiery thirst drains the Inachian fields. The waters disperse, the springs and lakes are encrusted, the riverbeds harden with hot mud. The soil is sick with drought and the grain bends at the base of the tender stalk. The flock stands disappointed at the bank’s edge, the herds seek in vain for the rivers they once swam.

This is, of course, a passage replete with metaliterary implications,19 but for the reader looking back for Persian imagery, this passage also fits the equally famous image of Xerxes’ army being so big that it drank rivers dry (Hdt. 7.43, 58, 108; Xerxes’ baggage train alone drinks a lake dry near Pistyrus, 7.109). The drying up of the rivers is explicitly articulated in terms of thirst (sitis ignea). Later on, when they discover the Langia with the help of Hypsipyle, the Argive army will charge into the river and drink its waters (Theb. 4.804–30).20 Having briefly turned this little stream into a muddy torrent, the Langia will be much reduced in size by the Argive troops (pulsa sitis fluuio, populataque gurgitis alueum / agmina linquebant ripas amnemque minorem, 5.1–2, ‘thirst quenched by the river, the army was leaving its ravaged bed and banks – a smaller stream’). The colour change which Statius’ depicts as the river being muddied by men and horses may also evoke Lycophron’s enigmatic re-working of Herodotus as black thirst (ἅπας δ᾽ ἀναύρων  17 On this and on possible contemporary resonances for the simile, see Augoustakis 2016 ad loc. with OLD s.v. excipio 15. 18 For the intertextual range of book 4, see Micozzi 2007 passim, esp. 3–15; Parkes 2012 passim, esp. xxix–xxxiii. 19 See McNelis 2007, 78–9; Antoniadis 2018, 932–6. 20 On this passage, see below, ch. 4.2.

XVIII  Introduction νασμὸς αὐανθήσεται, / χανδὸν κελαινὴν δίψαν αἰονωμένων, Alex. 1424–5, ‘The waters of every torrent will be dried up as the troops quench their black thirst with gaping mouths’). Similarly, the decision by Mars to send the personification Pauor into the Argive army in order to get them moving again after their sojourn in Nemea (7.108–44) may suggest the assistance of the god Pan at the battle of Marathon and the Panic he is able to create in the Persian ranks (Hdt. 6.105, 112). These Persian images create problems for identities which might be comfortably established. The sun blotted out by arrows in Herodotus creates a clear order of ‘us and them’. Laconic wit shows Hellenic defiance in the face of the absurd multi-ethnic scale of Xerxes’ army. But in Statius’ Thebes, the blotting out of sun serves to erase any distinction between an Argive ‘us’ and Theban ‘them’ (or vice versa). The scene simply dissolves into a carefully ordered confusion where the poet neatly anonymizes both sides. It is difficult to know which army should play the Spartan role when both come from polities which Medized during Xerxes’ invasion. In a similar vein, it deeply complicates the depiction of this poem as one of fraternal and pseudo-civil conflict (fraternas acies, 1.1, suggests not only ‘brother against brother’ but also ‘Greek against Greek’) when the invading Argive force is made to seem so much like a barbarian, both by drinking rivers dry and by being the army that Panic acts against.21 The search for possible identifications is further confused when we consider that the Theban native Bacchus, who instigates drought in Nemea, is also potentially playing the part of a Xerxes. It is he, after all, who has descended on the Peloponnese from northern Thrace with an army (marcidus edomito bellum referebat ab Haemo / Liber, 4.652–3, ‘in exhaustion, Bacchus was bringing back his army from conquered Haemus’). However, to complicate matters further, Statius’ narrative of the Argives finding the Langia also contains a second Persian narrative, that of Xenophon’s Anabasis. The Xenophontic comparison is much more overt. When the Argives find water they send up a repeated cry of joy (‘aquae!’ longusque uirum super ora cucurrit clamor, ‘aquae!’, 4.811–12, ‘water!’ and over the warriors’ mouths ran the long clamour, ‘water!’) which can only be in imitation of Xenophon’s most famous line (καὶ τάχα δὴ ἀκούουσι βοώντων τῶν στρατιωτῶν θάλαττα θάλαττα καὶ παρεγγυώντων, Xen. Anab. 4.7.24, ‘and in a moment they heard the soldiers shouting, ‘The Sea! The Sea!’ and passing the word along’) both in the repetition

 21 The resemblance of the Argive army to that of Xerxes may also be found in the presence of the gigantic Hippomedon and Capaneus, who may ape Lycophron’s depiction of Xerxes as a giant: ἀλλ᾽ ἀντὶ πάντων Περσέως ἕνα σπορᾶς / στελεῖ γίγαντα, Alex. 1413–14.

Introduction  XIX

of aquae and in the way word is passed along the line (παρεγγυώντων).22 The total disorder with which the Argives enter the water (incubuere uadis passim discrimine nullo / turba simul primique, 4.816–17, ‘everywhere common soldiers and officers plunge indiscriminate into the stream’) mimics the way in which the 10000 lose all sense of hierarchy when they finally reach the Black Sea (ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀφίκοντο πάντες ἐπὶ τὸ ἄκρον, ἐνταῦθα δὴ περιέβαλλον ἀλλήλους καὶ στρατηγοὺς καὶ λοχαγοὺς δακρύοντες, Xen. Anab. 4.7.25, ‘and when all had reached the summit, then indeed they fell to embracing one another, and generals and captains as well, with tears in their eyes’). The passage in Xenophon is important as it recalls how he came to be in the army in the first place (Anab. 3.1.2–4) and that, following the betrayal and execution of Clearchus and their other original leaders by Tissaphernes, the Greeks have had to elect new leaders for their march to the coast. For the Argives, who have not had to endure anything like so arduous a march and whose leaders are all still living, the breakdown in hierarchy seems infinitely more worrying and anticipates their ignominious retreat from Thebes at the end of book 11 (nulli sua signa suusque / ductor, 11.758–9, ‘none have their own standard and their own leader’).23 A further Xenophontic moment may be visible towards the end of the chariot race in book 6. Polynices, hurled from his chariot, is narrowly missed by the other competitors in the race: at hunc praeter putri tellure iacentem Taenarii currus et Thessalus axis et heros Lemnius obliqua, quantum uitare dabatur, transabiere fuga. tandem caligine mersum erigit adcursu comitum caput aegraque tollit membra solo, et socero redit haud speratus Adrasto. Theb. 6.507–12 As for him, as he lies on the sandy earth the Taenarian car and the wheels of Thessaly and the Lemnian hero fly past him, swerving to avoid him as best they could. At last his companions run up, he raises his head, sunk in darkness, and lifts his injured limbs from the ground, and returns unhoped-for to Adrastus his wife’s father.

Polynices as charioteer bears strong resemblances to Ovid’s Phaethon and, in being thrown by his horse after Apollo terrifies him with a monstrous vision (6.491–

 22 On the intertext, see Parkes 2012 ad loc. On the afterlife of this moment of the Anabasis, see Rood 2005. 23 On the Argives as unworthy of the comparison to the 10000, see Parkes 2012 ad 4.809–12.

XX  Introduction 504), also to Euripides’ Hippolytus.24 However, by getting up from his accident unharmed, the text redirects itself towards Xenophon’s narrative of the battle of Cunaxa: τὰ δ᾽ ἅρματα ἐφέροντο τὰ μὲν δι᾽ αὐτῶν τῶν πολεμίων, τὰ δὲ καὶ διὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων κενὰ ἡνιόχων. οἱ δ᾽ ἐπεὶ προΐδοιεν, διίσταντο: ἔστι δ᾽ ὅστις καὶ κατελήφθη ὥσπερ ἐν ἱπποδρόμῳ ἐκπλαγείς: καὶ οὐδὲν μέντοι οὐδὲ τοῦτον παθεῖν ἔφασαν, οὐδ᾽ ἄλλος δὲ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ μάχῃ ἔπαθεν οὐδεὶς οὐδέν. Xen. Anab. 1.8.20 As for the enemy’s chariots, some of them plunged through the lines of their own troops, others, however, through the Greek lines, but without charioteers. And whenever the Greeks saw them coming, they would open a gap for their passage; one fellow, to be sure, was caught, like a befuddled man on a race-course, yet it was said that even he was not hurt in the least, nor, for that matter, did any other single man among the Greeks get any hurt whatever in this battle.

Miraculously, none of the Greek mercenaries is killed (Xenophon reports that one man is wounded by an arrow, 1.8.20) in a battle against a vastly larger loyal Persian army under Artaxerxes (1.8.13) when the rest of Cyrus’ rebel force is wiped out. Polynices fills the role of the one Greek at Cunaxa who is hit by a chariot; both men are at a race course, both lose their wits (ἐκπλαγείς, caligine mersum), both are astonishingly without serious injury. Like the interweaving of Herodotean narrative into the Thebaid, the allusion to key moments of the Anabasis serves to complicate, rather than elucidate the thrust of Statius’ story. Again, there is a sense of anachronism in likening mythical characters to 5th century Greeks. The Argives’ imitation of Xenophon’s survivors only serves to highlight the ways in which the Argives are not like the 10000. Polynices eschews the opportunity to become a second Phaethon or a second Hippolytus by not dying on the race-track. Instead, the intertextual reconfiguration through the Anabasis is intensely belittling; Polynices is, temporarily at least, transformed into an anonymous Greek mercenary who carelessly gets himself run over during an utterly disastrous defeat. We should make two broader conclusions concerning Statius’ epic voice. Firstly, the density and range of intertextual affiliation in the Thebaid is remark-

 24 On the importance of Phaethon, see Lovatt 2005, 23–40. For a reading of Polynices’ as a charioteering double of Nero, see Rebeggiani 2018, 110–15. The image of Phaethon is important for Lagière’s reading of the sublime in the poem, 2017, 77–84, which also links it to the charioteering Nero.

Introduction  XXI

able. While readers of Statius may tend (not unreasonably) to focus their attention on 1st century AD intertexts, especially those written in the epic and tragic genre, it is clear that 5th and 4th century BC Greek historiography alongside relatively obscure Hellenistic narrative poetry can exert an equally intense pressure upon Statius’ text at one and the same time.25 Secondly, we should affirm that the weight of this intertextual inheritance is oppressive and causes the text to run in directions contrary to readers’ initial expectations. We do not need to make a biographical point here; rather, we can see the text of the Thebaid being pulled away from its normative track by the gravitational pull of the intertextual networks within which it operates. It might make sense, for example, to compare an invading Argive army with Xerxes’ Persians or Cyrus’ mercenary Greeks. Yet these parallels also serve to close off other potential intertextual attachments (Polynices stops being Phaethon and starts being an anonymous Greek) or to blur the boundaries between different sides of the conflict (Bacchus becomes an invading Xerxes, both sides become Persians and Spartans simultaneously). When the arrows blot out the sun, no one can tell which side is which.

Statius’ Flea: Reading Authorial Anxiety in Nemea In addition to the disconcerting effects of Statius’ intertextual practice, we need to consider his authorial self-presentation. The earliest receptions of the Thebaid come from Statius’ own pen. As the poet produced the Silvae in the late 80s and early 90s AD, we can see an obsessive concern for the fate of his epic poem, but also an increasing confidence in its success.26 Bound up in that concern is an interest in his own literary career and how that career is projected as a transition from one literary project to the next. Virgil, not least through his fixated early readers Propertius and Ovid, constructed a normative model of the poetic career as one which began with smaller scale poetry before moving onto bigger projects and finished with a full-scale martial epic. It is a career path that is apocryphally inscribed into his work in the incipit recorded in Donatus’ life of the poet:  25 Modern commentaries on the Thebaid have been especially good at teasing out the astonishing intertextual richness of the poem, see e.g. Micozzi 2007; Parkes 2012; Augoustakis 2016; and Gervais 2017. For further elucidation of Statius’ intertextual technique, see e.g. Micozzi 2002; 2009; 2015; and Gervais forthcoming. 26 On dating the Thebaid, see Coleman 1988, xvi–xvii; Dewar 1991, xvii-xviii; Gibson 2006, xvii– xviii; Hulls 2014, 349–351; and Gervais 2017, xviii–xix who unpacks the various doubts about the 12–year composition process. On dating the Silvae, see Hardie 1983, 64–5; Coleman 1988, xvi– xix; and Gibson 2006, xxviii–xxx.

XXII  Introduction ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus auena carmina et egressus siluis uicina coegi, ut quamuis auido parerent arua colono, gratum opus agricolis, at nunc horrentia Martis arma uirumque cano. Donatus Vit. Virg. 42 I am that man who once sang on a slender reed and coming out of the woods forced the neighbouring fields to obey their owner, however greedy for gain, a work pleasing to farmers, but now of Mars’ bristling arms I sing and the man.

The pseudo-Virgilian opening shows us clearly the path from the light pastoral Eclogues, through the meatier didactic Georgics, culminating with the epic Aeneid. In the opening preface of the first book of the Silvae, Statius professes his concern that the Thebaid, published in about AD 92, should pre-date these poems which are so clearly smaller in scale and lighter in theme:27 quid enim quoque auctoritate editionis onerari, quo adhuc pro Thebaide mea, quamuis me reliquerit, timeo? sed et Culicem legimus et Batrachomachiam etiam agnoscimus, nec quisquam est inlustrium poetarum qui non aliquid operibus suis stilo remissiore praeluserit. Silv. 1 praef. For why be burdened with the authority of publication when I am still anxious for my Thebaid, although it has left my hands? But we read The Gnat and even recognise The Battle of the Frogs; and there is none of our illustrious poets who has not preluded his works with something in a lighter vein.

Publication is, of course, a tricky concept in the 1st century. Individual poems from the Silvae had undoubtedly circulated in various forms before being gathered together (probably at first in individual books before being re-re-issued, as it were, in the three-book collection which we know as Silvae 1–3)28 and published very soon after the Thebaid. Likewise, if we (and most modern critics do) take Statius at his word and assume a 12–year composition process for the Thebaid,

 27 For a more conventional reading of the preface, see Newlands 2011, 4; and Bonadeo 2017. On the prefaces tout court, see Newlands 2009. On the use of epistolary prefaces more generally, see Pagán 2010; on Statius’ prefaces as paratexts, see Parker 2014. The ille ego qui preface is a regular and important intertext in the Thebaid, see below, ch. 4.5. 28 On the stages of publication, see Newlands 2009, 229–30. For the possibility of the first three books of the Silvae being published separately, see van Dam 1984, 3; I imagine the possibility that the individual books were published before being re-published as a three-book collection in c. AD 93–4, see also Hulls forthcoming.

Introduction  XXIII

then we must also assume that parts of the whole circulated in various forms and in various contexts between AD 80 and 92.29 That said, Statius clearly sees the Silvae in its final form as chronologically second to the Thebaid (adhuc … timeo).30 Furthermore, he evidently wishes one of his poems be viewed as a second Culex. The Culex is a hexameter poem which poses as a project from Virgil’s youth (i.e. pre-Eclogues), but which was in all likelihood written by an anonymous author posing as Virgil early in the 1st century AD. Indeed, the Culex bases its own poetic structure on the Virgilian career path. The poem tells of a shepherd who fell asleep while pasturing his flock. A gnat sees a snake about to attack the sleeping shepherd and wakes him up by biting him. Unaware of the gnat’s motive, the shepherd squashes him, but sees the snake and kills it. That night, the ghost of the gnat returns to the shepherd to tell him what had happened before describing the Underworld to him. The shepherd then builds a garden memorial to the gnat. Readers generally see a tripartite structure to the poem. The morning scene of the flock grazing (Culex 42–97) is pastoral; the afternoon where the shepherd kills the snake is didactic, especially evoking Georgics 3 (Culex 98–201); the night time scene where the gnat’s ghost describes the Underworld is epic in subject matter, clearly imitating Aeneid 6 in particular (Culex 202–414). This poem both presents itself as the start of Virgil’s career and structures itself as his actual career. The Culex is a doubly appropriate poem to invoke when thinking about one’s own poetic career therefore. Our earliest ancient attestations of the Culex as a Virgilian poem come from Statius and Martial, although I am unconvinced that either poet really thought the poem to be genuine.31 In the preface to Silvae 1, most commentators would assume that the Silvae, as a collection of shorter poems mainly in hexameters, would make the more obvious stand-in for the Culex in Statius’ own career. In

 29 On recitation by Statius, see Juv. 7.82–7; Markus 2000; and 2003. On recitation in the younger Pliny, who comments inter alia on Silius’ recitation process, see Johnson 2010, 42–62. Pliny also probably read Statius, although he does not mention him by name, see Guillemin 1929, 125–7. For the complexities of the intertextual relationship between Statius and Silius, see Hulls 2013; and Soerink 2013. 30 However, references to the Thebaid at Silvae 1.5.8–9, 3.2.40–1, 142–3 all suggest that the epic is unfinished when some of the shorter poems are first produced, see Nauta 2002, 196 and n.8. 31 See Mart. 8.55; Silv. 2.7.73–4; Suet. Vit. Luc.; Seelentag 2012, 9–11. See also Peirano 2012, 59– 69 who is similarly unconvinced. She suggests, 2012, 65–6, that both legimus and agnoscimus: ‘introduce an element of distance and ironically present the two works as being integrated into the canon because of some philological discussion.’ For agnosco as a bilingual parallel for ἀναγιγνώσκω and the Culex in Martial’s Apophoreta, see Bonadeo 2017, 160 and 162–3 respectively.

XXIV  Introduction other words, although the collection was published shortly after the Thebaid, individual poems were published earlier, and these shorter poems should be seen as trifling and youthful. If Statius knew the poem to be apocryphal, then the idea of retrojecting the Culex-like Silvae to the beginning of Statius’ career path makes good sense. Given that Statius is highly self-deprecating about the quality of the poems, whose speed of composition is their only positive attribute (sed apud ceteros … gratiam celeritatis, Silv. 1 praef.), remodeling them as Culices also seems a sensible strategy.32 However, I am not so sure. Statius’ professed concern (if Shackleton Bailey’s conjecture is correct, and for quo to work this must give the sense if not the original wording as well) is that the Thebaid and Silvae are being published more or less simultaneously ( … quo). One of the texts needs to be seen in a less serious light for the other to find its own literary audience and be appreciated for its quality. Given that it is the Silvae which are to be released, it makes much better sense for Statius to be privileging them by re-purposing the Thebaid as a youthful prelude.33 As an artfully constructed collection of shorter hexameter (and hendecasyllable) poems, the Silvae fit the model of a Virgilian first collection (i.e. as Eclogues) much better than the Thebaid. The extemporaneous quality may also work better with the pastoral conceit of shepherds in a spontaneous singing competition than the much belaboured Thebaid. Reading the epic poem as a gnat-like prelude to Statius’ proper career fits equally well. The syntax of Statius’ preface does not preclude his taking the Thebaid, which he had referred to in the previous sentence by name, as a second Culex. The katabasis and Underworld descriptions of the Culex have much more in common with the Thebaid, as would the battle scenes of the Batrachomyomachia. It is tempting to see Statius dismissing his recently published poem as a ‘prelude’ and announcing the Silvae in his preface as the start of his career proper. This thesis would be plausible but for the evidence we have of other poetry by Statius. Juvenal tells us of a pantomime Agave which was sold to the actor Paris (Juv. 7.82–7). Even if we do take Juvenal at his word, we might comfortably discount this work from Statius’ literary career as one commissioned rather than published in his own name (nisi vendit Agaven, Juv. 7.87). Statius must have sold any such pantomime to Paris before the latter’s murder in AD 83. Although it is possible that Statius had begun recitations of the Thebaid by this date, the chronology looks unlikely. However, it makes more sense to view Juvenal’s attestation  32 On this apologetic strategy, see Cucchiarelli 2017. 33 On ludus and praeludere, see Lovatt 2005, 8–10. For praeludere as indicating an axiological, not chronological meaning, see Aricò 2008.

Introduction  XXV

as spurious.34 Elsewhere, a scholion preserves four lines of a de Bello Germanico which Juvenal parodied in his catalogue of members of Domitian’s concilium (Juv. 4.72–118).35 This poem is most likely to have treated Domitian’s campaign against the Chatti in AD 82–3. The existence of such a poem would throw a serious spanner in the works of a poet trying to construe his occasional collection as the starting point of a Virgilian career. However, I think it unlikely that the de Bello Germanico is by our Statius. It seems far more likely that the poem was written by Statius’ father, who almost certainly had the same name as his son and enjoyed a successful career as a poet and an orator.36 If they did share a name it would be no surprise to find that a scholiast had confused the two. Such a poem seems well within the compass of a poet who, according to his son, had mastered a full variety of genres (Silv. 5.3.100–3) and had composed poems on the fighting on the Capitol in AD 69 and the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 (Silv. 5.3.195–208).37 The contemporary subjects of these poems seem much closer to what we think the de Bello Germanico may have included. The confusion between the poet of this fragment and ‘our’ Statius is probably further caused by his acknowledgement in a later poem that he sang of Domitian’s German and Dacian campaigns when he won a poetry competition at Alba: Troianae qualis sub collibus Albae, cum modo Germanas acies modo Daca sonantem proelia Palladio tua me manus induit auro. Silv. 4.2.65–7 […] when under Trojan Alba’s hill your hand invested me with Pallas’ gold as I sang now of German battles, now of Dacian.

Given that this (probably extemporized) poetic composition must have celebrated Domitian’s double triumph in AD 89, for his campaign against the Chatti who had supported Saturninus’ revolt and his second campaign in Dacia, Statius’ success

 34 This is the conclusion of Courtney 1980 ad Juv. 7.87; and Newlands 2011, 2. 35 Morel-Büchner, FPL3 333–4 = schol. ad Juv. 4.94. See Courtney 1980; Braund 1996b ad loc.; and Nauta 2002, 330 n.11. 36 See Hardie 1983, 6–7 with Silv. 5.3.134–45. Statius’ father first competed in the Neapolitan Augustalia, winning in several subsequent festivals and travelled to Greece to win victories in the Pythia, Nemea and Isthmia. There is a statue base at Eleusis (IG II2 3919), restored by Clinton 1972 with the name Poplion Papinion St[ation]. This may have been awarded to Statius’ father in honour of his poetic victories, see Holford-Strevens 2000. 37 Although one might object that Statius nowhere attests the de Bello Germanico to his father, he nowhere claims it as his own either.

XXVI  Introduction at Alba took place in AD 90.38 Thus this poetry is not the same as the de Bello Germanico. Moreover, it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that Statius gave a project which he started in the early 80s chronological priority over a competition entry made nearly a decade later. Statius in the Thebaid, by contrast, is a poet who refuses to contemplate Domitianic subject matter (Theb. 1.17–33); the recusatio makes much more sense if Statius had not previously written such a poem (cf. nondum, 1.17). Statius’ father is now generally considered to have died in c. AD 90 at the age of about 65, which would have given him ample time to compose a poem dedicated to Domitian’s exploits.39 If we discount the Agave and reattribute the de Bello Germanico to Statius’ father, then the Thebaid becomes the earliest work of ‘our’ Statius. Nonetheless, Statius might now be a little too old to consider his Silvae to be an equivalent to Virgil’s Culex. In the Silvae, Statius portrays himself on the verge of old age (patria senium componere terra, Silv. 3.5.13; cf. 4.4.70; 5.2.158–9) whereas he claims that Lucan had already written his Bellum Civile by the age when Virgil was writing his Culex (haec primo iuuenis canes sub aeuo / ante annos Culicis Maroniani, Silv. 2.7.73–4, ‘all this you shall sing as a young man in early life before the age of Maro’s Gnat’). Although the Suetonian-Donatan life records Virgil as being sixteen when he wrote the poem, this is generally emended to twenty-six, the age at which Lucan died.40 If we date Statius’ birth to around AD 50, then he would not be too much older when he began composing the Thebaid in about AD 80. Statius seems to play pretty fast and loose with his age (his claims of senility seem rather premature) and the chronology can just about be stretched to fit the model, which is put forward only semi-seriously at any rate. However, what really sells the notion of the Thebaid being prefigured in the preface to Silvae 1 as a second Culex is the attention which Statius pays to the pseudo-Virgilian poem in the Thebaid itself. Specifically it is the Nemean narra-

 38 See Hardie 1983, 61; Coleman 1988, xvii and 101. 39 See Hardie 1983, 13–14; Coleman 1988, xviii–xix; and Gibson 2006, 262–6. There is an apparent contradiction in Silv. 5.3.29–33, 225–38 in that Statius claims to be writing after three months of mourning during which time he composed no poetry, but also claims to have won victory at the Alban Games and suffered defeat at the Capitoline games since his father’s death. Most editors now assume that lines 225–38 were a later addition to the poem as it was originally composed. Although Hardie 1983, 134–40 suggests that the topics for these poetry competitions were only given out at the last minute, it may also be that Statius used or adapted existing compositions in competition. 40 VSD 18 with Newlands 2011 ad Silv. 2.7.73–4.

Introduction  XXVII

tive in books 4–6 of the poem which shows a consistent connection with the Culex, amongst a range of other intertexts.41 Book 5 of the poem in particular engages with that amorphous and tricky ‘genre’ the epyllion.42 The Nemean books clearly play with the structure of the Culex and in particular with the notion of converting playful epyllion into large-scale epic: Opheltes, the tiny child who receives the ludicrously overblown funeral, clearly mimics the gnat who receives the remarkable funeral monument from the shepherd; Statius’ snake brings a true sense of epic scale to the pastoral environment while its destruction by the seven up-scales the mock-epic clash between shepherd and serpent in the Culex. We might be tempted to overlook this particular connection in such a densely allusive environment were it not for the explicit mention of the pseudo-Virgilian poem in the Silvae, but that early reception of both poems makes for a significant shift in the way in which the poet invites us to read his poem. Any comparison at the beginning of the Silvae between his epic poetry and the Culex must be one which Statius made with his tongue firmly in his cheek. We have already suggested that Statius was not being serious in his attribution of the Culex to Virgil and Statius’ attitude to his own poetry varies enormously from selfdeprecation to utter confidence. Moreover, although the pseudo-Virgilian text is an important touchstone for the Thebaid’s Nemean books in particular, the scale and tone of the two poems is too markedly different for a sustained comparison to be taken too seriously. Rather, it seems we should read the preface to Silvae 1 as saying that, ‘if these poems are my Eclogues, then the Thebaid was my Culex.’ However, this jocular position statement does contain some more serious undertones. There are a number of important conclusions we can draw from this brief, early exploration of poetic identity. To begin with, the Thebaid is constantly reassessing its own identity at a generic level. The poem is consistently fraught with the tension between the extravagant and unrestrained poetics of full-scale,

 41 See Soerink 2014b ad loc.; and Soerink 2015, 7–9 on the Nemean episode’s engagement with Georgics 3 and the Culex. On the episode generally, see Frings 1996; Nugent 1996; Gibson 2004; Soerink 2014; and Soerink 2015. See Heslin 2016, esp. 95–100 for Statius’ engagement with Callimachus Hecale and the Molorchus narrative in the Aetia. Cf. McNelis 2007, 84–100 on Nemea’s Callimacheanism with Soerink 2015, 3–6 on the ways in which a Callimachean, pastoral world is destroyed by epic poetics. Heslin 2016, 111–12 is relatively dismissive of the Culex’s importance; see also Soerink 2014b, 67. 42 For a sceptical view of epyllion as genre, see Trimble 2012. Heslin 2016, 91 is more positive.

XXVIII  Introduction martial epic and the finer and more subtle dynamics of poetry which we might label, for want of a better term, ‘Callimachean’.43 The ludic qualities of the Culex, its lightness, its small scale, its careful construction, can be seen as complimentary to a sufficient degree that Statius was tendentiously willing to label it ‘Virgilian’. Yet the comparison between Thebaid and Culex, however frivolous, also reveals a deeper anxiety in the poet about his own status and the criticism his poems receive: lusimus, Octaui, gracili modulante Thalia atque ut araneoli tenuem formauimus orsum. lusimus: haec propter culicis sint carmina docta, omnis et historiae per ludum consonet ordo notitiaeque ducum uoces. licet inuidus adsit: quisquis erit culpare iocos musamque paratus, pondere uel culicis leuior famaque feretur. [Virg.] Culex 1–7 We have played, Octavius, while slender Thalia beat time, and like a little spider I have shaped my fine-spun task. We have played; let this song of the gnat be erudite, such that the whole structure is playfully consistent with tradition and the known voices of the leaders. Let a hostile critic be present: may anyone who is ready to blame my jokes and my Muse be held lighter in weight and reputation even than the gnat.

Despite the childish and flippant overtones of re-labelling his poem a Culex, Statius is invoking a model which associates its jokey playfulness with the slender and fine-spun qualities appropriate to a poem which kicks off a poetic career.44 Moreover, the opening of the Culex is also heavily invested in the process of reception and criticism of a new poem; it imagines hostile criticism and the discourse of blame being attached to it. The poet posing as Virgil comes up with a  43 The exact meaning of this term ‘Callimachean’ is one which I leave largely unexplored, but could easily be substituted with ‘neoteric’ or ‘Alexandrian’. Statius’ work combines specific allusion to Callimachean texts with more general poetic self-positioning. There is a tension here: Callimachus’ aesthetics were largely processed through Roman poetry written before the accession of Octavian to sole power in the late 30s BC. As such, this Roman Callimacheanism largely filters out the interaction between the Alexandrian poet and his Ptolemaic benefactors and moreover adopts a particular position on scale of poetic work which may not have precisely been Callimachus’ own. See Acosta-Hughes & Stephens 2012, 204–269, esp. 212–245. Statius’ own position may have shifted back towards a more ‘authentic’ Callimacheanism given the political realities of writing under Domitian compared to writing in the late Republic. Cf. Rebeggiani 2018, 213–19. 44 Culex 1–12 itself re-works Virgil Eclogue 6.1–12 which in turn becomes a key intertext for the Thebaid in book 11. See below, ch. 4.5.

Introduction  XXIX

simple solution (‘my critics are even more lightweight than my gnat’) which is seemingly unavailable to the poet of the Thebaid. Instead, the poet makes a complex generic position statement which suggests a deep-seated anxiety about the poem’s own status. The preface to the Silvae therefore provides two problems around poetic identity: firstly, the poem has clear issues with framing its own identity in terms of genre. Categories of genre in the Thebaid seem so fluid, contingent and arbitrary that the poem’s status as ‘epic’ is constantly in question. Secondly, the poet himself is so insecure about his own position that he is prepared to align himself in the Thebaid with a pseudepigraphic version of Virgil. The gnat symbolizes the inability of the epic poet to assert his own identity in the literary world.

Limits of Theory: Selves Ancient and Modern Already it will be obvious that I am using terms such as ‘self’, ‘identity’ and even ‘character’ as though they were interchangeable, so here I make a tentative attempt at defining subject and terminology. Rather than construct my own definition of ‘self’, we can begin with that established by A.A. Long: ‘Self is an especially difficult concept to analyse because, like consciousness, it is what each of us has when we are awake, and extends beyond waking consciousness into our dreams. We can never get sufficiently distant from our particular selves to ask exactly what our selfhood (or anyone else’s) consists in because, by asking the question, we already embody an answer. Perhaps the clearest approach to the concept of selfhood is to take it as a name for one’s individual and temporal identity from two distinct but necessarily overlapping perspectives – one objective and the other subjective. I am (or have) a unique human body of determinate age, ethnicity, parentage, and gender; these are objective facts about who (or what) I am and over which I have no control. But I am a unique centre of agency and consciousness, with a particular intentionality, temperament, and range of attitudes, beliefs, likes, and dislikes. I call this second aspect of selfhood subjective, not because it is strictly private or interior, or completely voluntary, or detachable from my bodily and objective identity, but because my subjectivity is at least to some extent up to me, and to that extent represents what I choose to identify with and what other persons typically take me to be.’45

This combination of objective and subjective is of central importance to many recent studies of ancient ideas of self, particularly those of Roman thought in the 1st century AD. The crucial difference between ancient and modern conceptions of the self was construed by Descartes, who, with his famous statement cogito

 45 Long 2006, 265–6, his italics. Cf. Searle 1992, xi.

XXX  Introduction ergo sum, first explicitly posited a truly self-conscious ego, an ‘I’ with a reflective consciousness, a subject with an interior existence. Some scholars have seen the seeds of this sort of radical reflexivity in earlier, classical and Hellenistic thought, not only in St. Augustine’s consistent desire to search inside himself, but also, and more pertinently for our purposes, in the Stoic notion of prohairesis which was developed and made fundamental to the concept of the self by Epictetus in particular. Thus Charles Taylor comments: ‘The singling out of this power of choice or assent [prohairesis] is one source of the developing notion of the will, and there is already an important change in moral outlook in making this the central human faculty. What is morally crucial about us is not just the universal nature or rational principle which we share with others, as with Plato or Aristotle, but now this power of assent, which is essentially in each case mine.’46

This notion of a shift in Stoic thought towards a more individualist and subjective conception of the self is not uncontroversial; Christopher Gill has drawn a distinction between what he terms ‘objective-participant’ and ‘subjective-individualist’ conceptions of personality in the ancient world,47 and argues against a movement in Roman thought towards more subjective conceptions of the self. Instead he describes what he terms the ‘structured self’, a combination in Stoic and Epicurean philosophy of holistic, ethical and naturalistic ideas which result in a novel concept of personality, but one which is very much at the objective end of the spectrum. When it comes to the possibility of subjective selfhood in the Roman world, Gill is dismissive: ‘I am highly sceptical about this idea. It seems to me much more plausible that HellenisticRoman thought represents a continuation of earlier Greek thinking in this respect. … Scholarly accounts [which suggest a shift towards subjective concepts of personality] are informed by certain prevalent modern ways of thinking about selfhood and personality. More precisely, the assumption is that if, as is sometimes supposed, there is a new or heightened awareness of the concept of self in this period, this will take a subjective-individualist form.’48

Two things are worth noting in this analysis, however; Gill does not dismiss the notion of an increased philosophical and literary interest in selfhood in the 1st century (indeed, he goes on to explore the self in Virgil, Seneca, Epictetus and  46 Taylor 1989, 137. See also Long 1996; and 2006. 47 Gill 1996. For application of Gill’s ideas in Greek tragedy, see Thumiger 2007, esp. 3–57; for a summary of how this analysis of subject affects gender in Roman imperial epic, see Pyy 2014, 17–22. 48 Gill 2006, 326–7. Cf. also Fine 2003.

Introduction  XXXI

Plutarch),49 instead he emphasises that the subjective self is a long way in the future. On Gill’s way of looking at ancient notions of self, it seems that, when an ancient viewer looked at the Delphic maxim γνῶθι σεαυτόν, he would have understood something rather different from that which we as modern viewers would think. I am prepared, however, to rescue Long’s notion of a subjective element of selfhood, at least in so far as it pertains to the exterior performance of identity and as it relates to the objective identity. Those subjective elements of personality, intentionality, temperament, belief, and so on, do exist in the classical world. The difference is that 1st century AD Greeks and Romans would articulate and comprehend these qualities (which are for us subjective) through entirely objective means.50 Ancient writers would have been, it seems to me, quite happy to infer an individual’s intentionality, temperament and attitudes from external manifestations of self, that is, appearance, genealogy and especially behaviour. As far as our readings of Flavian epic are concerned, we may leave aside for one moment self-conscious reflection and even Epictetus’ prohairesis. This comprehension of the subjective through modes which are entirely objective fits neatly with the increasing recognition of exemplarity as a defining feature of the way in which Roman authors perform characterisation. In this mode of reading, character becomes essentially imitative (as ‘character’ is built up from many recognisable stereotypes and exempla) and imitable (as ‘character’ becomes in turn an ethical example to follow or avoid): ‘what possibilities might open up for texts, however, if we read characterisation as a mode of communication, a process of becoming over the course of the work, if we track the pieces as they fit together, and tease apart the elements of composition – that is, if we regard characters themselves as functional elements of composition? … Therefore character, like genres, can be established through reference to literary models. A character synthesises many different sources to create a whole. The composite character, like the codes of genre, has its own logic and consistency that the audience’s familiarity validates.’ 51

The role that exemplarity plays in Roman modes of characterisation ties these ways of reading self together rather neatly. Whilst Gill is rightly sceptical about the relevance of Cartesian subjectivity in Roman conceptions of identity, we need not throw baby out with bath water and ignore the increasing interest in selfhood in the 1st century. We will demonstrate that this is a central interest of Statius in

 49 Gill 2006, 408–61. For a reading of Propertius using this notion of the ‘structured self’, see Gibson 2018, esp. 13–18 for a summary of Gill’s work and its relevance for Virgil in particular. 50 See below, esp. chs. 1 and 3. 51 Seo 2013, 2, 4.

XXXII  Introduction his Thebaid. Moreover, I am prepared to countenance modern ways of thinking about identity and selfhood in order to aid our understanding of what is happening in the Thebaid. There is good reason for this: while we should undermine the relevance of the individualistic, free-thinking, autonomous Cartesian cogito to the ancient world, we can see a parallel process happening in the post-modern world as the independent ego becomes increasingly undermined in modern thought on selfhood. Thus Slavoj Žižek begins The Ticklish Subject: ‘A spectre is haunting Western academia … the spectre of the Cartesian subject. All academic powers have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: the New Age obscurantist (who wants to supersede the ‘Cartesian paradigm’ towards a new holistic approach) and the postmodern deconstructionist (for whom the Cartesian subject is a discursive fiction, an effect of decentred textual mechanisms); the Habermasian theorist of communication (who insists on a shift from Cartesian monological subjectivity to discursive inter-subjectivity) and the Heideggerian proponent of the thought of Being (who stresses the need to ‘traverse’ the horizon of modern subjectivity culminating in current ravaging nihilism); the cognitive scientist (who endeavours to prove empirically that there is no unique sense of the Self, just a pandemonium of competing forces) and the Deep Ecologist (who blames Cartesian mechanist materialism for providing the philosophical foundation for the ruthless exploitation of nature); the critical (post-)Marxist (who insists that the illusory freedom of the bourgeois thinking subject is rooted in class division) and the feminist (who emphasises that the allegedly sexless cogito is in fact a male patriarchal formation).’52

It strikes me that Žižek’s postmodern deconstructionist and Habermasian communication theorist would find a great deal in common with modern readers of ancient identity who privilege objective and exemplary models of selfhood in readings of classical literature. Yet his haunting spectre might prove to be helpful for classicists who want new ways to explore ideas of selfhood without the handicap of (extreme) subjectivity. Žižek’s work sees the erosion in 21st-century thought of the self that is truly self-sufficient, independent and free to do as it wills, but reasserts the Cartesian self as an empty space to be filled by the process of subjectivisation, where the subject is given an identity and where that identity is changed by the self. Descartes’ vision of a radically subjective self was especially undermined by post-structuralist thought, which sees selfhood as an effect of the structure of discourse where competing discourses intersect and speak through the subject; the decentred subject is little more than something determined and impelled by these discourses:

 52 Žižek 1999/2008, xxiii. For a similar set of concerns, see also Žižek 2012, 180. On revisionist materialism, see Searle 1992, 5–57.

Introduction  XXXIII

‘in post-structuralism, the subject is usually reduced to so-called subjectivation, he is conceived as an effect of a fundamentally non-subjective process: the subject is always caught in, traversed by the pre-subjective process (of ‘writing’, of ‘desire’ and so on), and the emphasis is on individuals’ different modes of ‘experiencing’, ‘living’ their positions as ‘subjects’, ‘actors’, ‘agents’ of the historical process.’ 53

This is a process which runs parallel to the experience of selfhood in the ancient world and is even more emphatically the case in the Roman literary world of the 1st century AD where authors lacked the intellectual machinery to construct identity in subjective ways. Selves are always construed through objective terms such as (to repeat Long’s list) age, ethnicity, parentage, gender and especially through social position and social status. Like the post-structuralist self, it becomes little more than a puppet, therefore, for the discourses which construct it. Žižek’s philosophy uses the process of Cartesian doubt, the process by which Descartes himself arrived at his famous cogito, to bridge the gap between existence in an objective world (the world of nature) and performance as a subjective individual (the world of culture). Cartesian doubt becomes Žižek’s answer to the question posed by the German Idealists, particularly Kant and Heidegger, as to how we transform ourselves from beings immersed in nature and objectivity to being supported by culture and subjectivity, the state which Žižek terms logos. It is my contention that, whilst hampered by its entirely objectivist baggage, the Thebaid does something similar by looking at the ways in which his overdetermined characters attempt, and frequently fail, to enter new fields of culture and subjectivity within the poem. Moreover, Statius maps this process of (failed or self-negating) subject formation onto his own status as (highly belated) epic poet. As much as it is a narrative about Thebes, his poem is also a narration of his attempt to find his own place in a crowded Greco-Roman literary landscape. I do not wish to employ this post-modern, Lacanian, Marxist philosophy in anything like an absolutist way, but rather see it as something ‘good to think with’, providing parallels for the psychology and journey towards self-awareness undertaken by Statius’ characters and by the poet himself.54 To continue with modern parallels for a moment, I would like to unpack some of the processes which Žižek identifies in his own multiple, complex and often difficult accounts of subject formation. For him, Descartes’ withdrawal into himself and systematic cutting off of himself from the external world is an act of madness where the world is only experienced as loss and absolute negativity. Žižek  53 Žižek 1989, 174. 54 I am aware that the application of post-modern theory to classical texts is an act which some readers can find off-putting, see e.g. Fontaine 2017, for a potent example.

XXXIV  Introduction consistently reconstructs the subjective self through constant and obsessive rereading of two important passages he found in Hegel and by using Schelling’s conception of the subject to inform his own radical reading of Hegelian identity formation.55 While the campaign against global capitalism is, for obvious reasons, of lesser interest to this project (although the political implications of this mode of identity formation do have important parallels in ancient texts, not least in the parallels one can draw between his narrative of concrete universalism and ancient accounts of the individual’s role in state formation), I would like to give a brief summary of Žižek’s theorisation of the Hegelian subject before working out why this might be important for a classicist reading Flavian epic. Žižek’s book The Ticklish Subject takes three themes which he finds in Hegel, the ‘Night of the World’, the concept of ‘abstract negativity’ and the ‘pre-synthetic imagination’, and uses these to create his own model of the subject. The first part of The Ticklish Subject, entitled ‘the Night of the World’, provides perhaps Žižek’s most comprehensive account of his psychoanalytically reconfigured Hegelian subject. The work explores the ‘focus on transcendental imagination’ which resulted in Heidegger’s famous Kehre, his turn away from the concept of subjectivity. We see combined a dizzying array of concepts which allows a reassertion of the ‘radicality of the Cartesian subject’ and a development of the notion of radical negativity within subjectivity.56 Žižek begins by exploring Kant’s account of cognition: ‘Žižek’s point of departure is to show that the fundamental ambiguity in Kant’s account of imagination lies in its relationship with the discursive understanding. In Kant’s considered account of cognition, we begin with the diversity of pure intuition; this diversity is synthesised by the pure imagination, and the resulting pure synthesis is then unified by means of concepts supplied by the understanding. The question thus arises: Is “pure synthesis” the work of the imagination, with understanding intervening only after the imagination has done its work? Or is “pure synthesis” the work of the understanding, such that the imagination is merely a lower level application of the synthetic power of the understanding at a precognitive level?’ 57

 55 See Žižek 2012, 379–86. Žižek’s project is, of course, much bigger, aiming to re-read Lacanian psychoanalysis through Hegelian idealism (and rejecting the Kantian) and Marxist dialectic. For Žižek’s re-reading of Lacan, particularly through Hegelian dialectic and his Logic, see J. Butler et al. 2000; Kay 2003; Sharpe 2004; and R. Butler 2005. 56 Žižek 1999/2008, 3–141, quoting xxv; see also Sinnerbrink 2008, 2–6. 57 Sinnerbrink 2008, 3, with my italics, reading Žižek 1999/2008, 29, reading Kant 1988, 84.

Introduction  XXXV

On this reading, Žižek then synthesised two passages found in Hegel; the first is ‘the Night of the World’ where Hegel describes the unconscious production of violent and destructive images which forms the basis of self-conscious subjectivity.58 The pre-ontological subject is located in this pre-rational, unconscious interiority. The pure, dark realm of phantasmagorical representation is where the natural being traumatically enters the world of the social and cultural subject. Žižek meanwhile ties Hegel’s frightening vision both to Cartesian withdrawal from external stimulus and Schelling’s related concepts of the subject as ‘pure night of the Self’, ‘infinite lack of Being’ and the ‘violent gesture of contraction’ which underpins Hegel’s account of madness as the cutting of all links with external reality.59 This process of withdrawal is specifically the madness encapsulated in Hegel’s ‘night of the world’. Once reality has been experienced through this ‘night of the world’, as an absolute negativity or void, one is able to construct a symbolic universe: ‘Hegel explicitly posits this ‘night of the world’ as pre-ontological: the symbolic order, the universe of the Word, logos, emerges only when this inwardness of the pure self “must also enter into existence” … This, finally, brings us to madness as a philosophical notion inherent to the very concept of subjectivity. When Hegel determines madness as withdrawal from the actual world … he all too quickly conceives of this withdrawal as a ‘regression’ to the level of the ‘animal soul’ still embedded in its natural surroundings.’60

In concert with the ‘Night of the World’, Žižek also regularly invokes the ‘Tarrying with the Negative’ passage from the preface to Hegel’s later Phenomenology of Spirit.61 Here Hegel explores the tremendous power of the negative and gives it the capacity to attain an independent existence of its own. Hegel posits the

 58 Hegel 1974, 204, quoted in Verene 1985, 7–8 : ‘The human being is this night, this empty nothing, that contains everything in its simplicity—an unending wealth of many representations, images, of which none belongs to him—or which are not present. This night, the interior of nature, that exists here—pure self—in phantasmagorical representations, is night all around it, in which here shoots a bloody head—there another white ghastly apparition, suddenly here before it, and just so disappears. One catches sight of this night when one looks human beings in the eye—into a night that becomes awful […]’. It is a passage Žižek frequently returns to: 1992, 50–52; 1994, 145; 1996, 78; 1997, 8–10; 1999, 29–30; 2006, 44; and 2014, 151, 183. 59 Sinnerbrink 2008, 6: ‘This Hegelian-Schellingian moment of radical negativity and symbolic reconstruction will remain a consistent feature not only of Žižek’s account of subjectivity but also, as we shall see, of his analysis of the historico-political experience of revolutionary violence.’ 60 Žižek 1999/2008, 35–6, quoting Hegel 1974, 204. 61 On these two passages, see also Kay 2003, 22–4.

XXXVI  Introduction finitude of the subject, a creative negativity which both makes possible and delimits autonomous subjectivity.62 In this passage, experiences of death, negativity, absence and, in Hegel’s terms, ‘utter dismemberment’ construct the subject. Subjectivity is thus established through negative self-relation.63 This primordial repression is what must occur before the subject may make its traumatic passage from the Hegelian ‘Night of the World’ (a space which finds its psychoanalytic counterpart in the Lacanian Real) to the ‘spiritual daylight of the present’.64 From this empty space, however, devoid of all content, Žižek locates the self; subjectivity is constructed out of this void therefore.65 Furthermore, the gap between nature and the beings immersed within it is the subject and, for him, the subject is the vanishing mediator between nature and culture. The subject is, in a fundamental way, also always constituted by a loss, by an expulsion of the basis of reality from which it is made. Furthermore, this basis of reality from which the subject comes must always remain outside the subject itself. The subject must, therefore, externalise itself in order to remain a subject. The subject has a perspective on reality which cannot be understood in itself, but can only be mirrored in reality: ‘in the (verbal) sign, I – as it were – find myself  62 Hegel 1977, 19, with my italics: ‘Death, if that is what we want to call this non-actuality, is of all things the most dreadful, and to hold fast to what is dead requires the greatest strength. Lacking strength, Beauty hates the Understanding for asking of her what it cannot do. But the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive, which closes its eyes to the negative, as when we say of something that it is nothing or is false, and then, having done with it, turn away and pass on to something else; on the contrary, Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being. This power is identical with what we earlier called the Subject […]’. On Hegelian negativity, see Žižek 2012, 378: ‘there is no substantial One, but Nothingness itself; every One comes second, emerges through the self-relating of this Nothingness.’ 63 See Sinnerbrink 2008, 6–7. 64 See Žižek 1999/2008, 29–57. On intersubjectivity, see Žižek 1999/2008, 90–3. 65 Žižek 2012, 27–33 also identifies as crucial Hegel’s concept of the negative linking substance and subject. See Hegel 1977, 21: ‘The disparity which exists in consciousness between the I and the substance which is its object is the distinction between them, the negative in general. This can be regarded as the defect of both, though it is their soul, or that which moves them. This is why some of the ancients conceived the void as the principle of motion, for they rightly saw the moving principle as the negative, though they did not yet grasp that the negative is the self. Now, although this negative appears first as a disparity between the I and its object, it is just as much a disparity of the substance with itself. Thus what seems to happen outside of it, to be an activity directed against it, is really its own doing, and substance shows itself to be essentially subject.’

Introduction  XXXVII

outside myself, I posit my unity outside myself, in a signifier which represents me.’66 In Lacanian terms, selfhood is both Real and Symbolic: although we exist in nature as our bodies, we are more than that; we are able to relate to our bodies through the medium of language. It is with language that we will fill the void of the subject and it is this process that he labels subjectivisation. Unlike the poststructuralist concept of selfhood, Žižek’s filling of the void of the subject with language is a two-way process; seemingly concrete and objective ways of constituting self, such as age, family, gender, ethnicity, religion, socio-economic position and so on, can be narrated by the subjective self into a new construction of identity. I have, more or less, elided the other dominant model in Žižek’s conception of subjectivity, that of Lacanian psychoanalysis.67 However, we should see Žižek picking up the unspoken but undeniable Hegelian aspects of Lacan’s writing and running them hard: ‘Taken in conjunction, these two excerpts [the ‘Night of the World’ and ‘Tarrying with the Negative’ passages] represent two ways of approaching the conundrum of the real: as a lack in the logic of our being (‘Tarrying with the Negative’) and as the traumatic horror of the drive (‘the night of the world’). So when Žižek asks himself what Hegel and Lacan have in common, the short answer is as follows: “for both of them, the ‘free’ subject, integrated into the symbolic network of mutual recognition, is the result of a process in which traumatic cuts, ‘repressions’, and the power struggle intervene, not something primordially given.” That is, both envisage the subject as an effect of lack and/or as the resistant kernel of the real, around which symbolisation turns. What unites them is the ‘coincidence of the real’, expressed as a ‘coincidence of lack’ and a ‘coincidence of trauma’.’ 68

Finally, this way of construing subjectivity has powerful implications for historical and political experience. Žižek’s unorthodox reading of Hegel is that the transition from abstract to concrete universality cannot be achieved without a passage through madness, violence and terror.69 He takes this notion as the basis for his  66 Žižek 1996, 43. This process of subjectivisation can be usefully compared to the processes of subject formation which we will encounter in the Thebaid, especially for Polynices (see ch.1 passim), but also Oedipus (sections 3.1–3.4), Creon (sections 2.3 and 2.5), Theseus (section 3.5), and is implicit in character formation for generally (for Eteocles, see section 2.3). 67 On Lacan and Hegel, see Kay 2003, 17–48. 68 Kay 2003, 23–4. 69 Žižek 2006. For Hegel’s analysis of the Terror in post-revolutionary France as a necessary step towards the modern state, see Hegel 1977, 355–63. The passage through violence as implicit in state-formation can also be usefully compared to the process which Thebes undergoes throughout the poem, although it will never be clear whether Theseus actually constructs a stable, rational state following his defeat of Creon (see sections 2.3 and 3.5).

XXXVIII  Introduction idea of ‘individualism’ through secondary identification, where an individual asserts her autonomy by breaking associations with her primary, ‘organic’ community (e.g. family, local community) and identifying with a secondary, ‘artificial’ community (e.g. profession, social role, nation, etc.). His conclusion is that the only way to pass from abstract to concrete universality is to assert fully this power of radical negativity. The political dimension of this is formidable: the journey through the abstract negativity of violence and conflict is the only way to arrive at the historically ‘right’ conclusion of a stable, rational, democratic state. Furthermore, this sets up another tension in the individual’s experience of ethical life and morality – the immersion of the individual in the concrete, social world versus the abstract individual’s moral opposition to the concrete universe: ‘The moral individual, acting on behalf of a larger universality, acts so as to challenge and undermine the inherited determinate ethical mores of his/her community (Socrates versus the Greek polis; Christ versus the Jewish people).’70 This also finds its dialectical opposite when the moral subject clings onto her moral convictions despite the needs of the ethical community; so Evil can be created from this passage through violence as well as good.71 So what does this re-booting of subjective identity have to do with Flavian poetry? After all, if Gill is in any way correct, Statius cannot possibly be writing or thinking in terms which have any bearing on Žižek’s radical appropriation of Hegel. The answer comes in the difference between the mechanics and the content of the poet’s thought. We can map this process of subjectivisation onto an objective framework and observe identity as the poet would have, that is through its external, objective, social and cultural manifestations. Here we should invoke sociological theory of selfhood, such as that of Anthony Giddens. His theory of reflexivity, ‘the process whereby self-identity is constituted by the reflexive ordering of self-narratives’72 and his connection of the reflexive project of the self with the notion of shame are both helpful here. Giddens is an economist and social theorist whose work on the self in social analysis in the 1990s can have powerful applications in the objective world of classical Roman identity formation. Reflexivity is a self-defining process which depends on observing and reflecting upon social information about potential trajectories in life. The interaction between individual and the cultural world they inhabit constitutes what people do and how they do it. Although the reading of cultural signs feels very unstable and  70 Sinnerbrink 2008, 13. 71 See Žižek 1999/2008, 98 n.10. This process of evil affecting the wider community is particularly important for our understanding of tyrannical figures in Statius’ poem. See below, ch.2. 72 Giddens 1991, 244.

Introduction  XXXIX

postmodern, it is a practice which goes beyond the subjective in that it is deeply rooted in the institutions of social existence. More pertinently, perhaps, it is a process of identity formation which fits elegantly with the objective model of selfhood which we have seen to be prevalent in the ancient world. In addition to viewing subjects through objective, social, cultural models, Statius regularly invokes the notion of the sublime as a category for comprehending identity formation. Simply put, Statius (as a Classical, pre-Cartesian poet) lacks the intellectual machinery to articulate identity formation in anything like the (Cartesian, Hegelian, Lacanian) terms which Žižek uses. Instead, Statius has recourse to a species of aesthetic experience which has been the focus of much recent scholarship on classical literature, namely the sublime.73 The sublime is the focus of Anne Lagière’s major new study of the Thebaid and we will see the language of sublimity in play at crucial moments throughout the poem;74 it is active during Polynices’ first moments of self-definition in his exilic journey from Thebes to Argos; the language of sublimity also underpins key moments for Statius’ tyrannical leaders, Eteocles, Jupiter and Creon; the sublime is also in operation when Oedipus summons the Fury Tisiphone from the Underworld to infect his sons with madness; sublimity is also an important mode for understanding the Athenian king Theseus and the way in which he brings resolution to conflict at Thebes; finally, the sublime is also an important feature for the poet’s projection of his own identity within the poem. Žižek himself states that the sublime happens whenever:

 73 The bibliography is already vast, but the comprehensive study which focuses on Longinus and classical literature is Porter 2016. Specific studies include, for example, on Homer’s Iliad, Porter 2010, 476–9; on Lucretius, Conte 1994; Most 2003; and Porter 2007; on Catullus, Miller 2004, 31–59; on Virgil’s Aeneid, Conte 2007; and Hardie 2009, 67–135, 153–79; on Horace, Hardie 2009, 180–228; on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Barchiesi 2009; on Seneca’s Thyestes, Schiesaro 2003, 128–32; on Hercules Furens, Chaudhuri 2014, 138–44; on Lucan, Day 2013; and Chaudhuri 2014, 181–92; on Petronius, Conte 1996; on Pliny, Hutchinson 2011; on Flavian epic, see Hardie 2013; on the Thebaid, Leigh 2006; and Lagière 2017; on Silius’ Punica, Schrijvers 2006; and Chaudhuri 2014, 234–7. 74 See Lagière 2017, whose thesis is heavily based on Longinus’ ancient concept of sublimity; see 31–73 for her much fuller history of the sublime and its influence on Statius. Although her readings can be ‘overly schematic’ (so Gervais 2020), they remain extremely useful throughout this study. For a modern take on the sublime, see Žižek 1989, 131–6; 1998/2008, 42–8; and Kay 2003, 53–4.

XL  Introduction ‘a positive, material object [is] elevated to the status of [an] impossible Thing.’75

More importantly, we need to understand that sublime as something which happens to us is: ‘a particular kind of subjective experience … any experience in which we encounter an object which exceeds our everyday categories of comprehension.’76

Indeed, sublimity is notoriously difficult to define and covers language, mind, natural phenomena and aesthetic experience. For James Porter, it is: ‘defined most broadly as a sense of absolute structural impossibility and of total deadlock, the sublime produces profound mental or spiritual disruption, be this momentary or lasting – it is like a shock of the Real. Only, the Real one experiences is that of the structure of belief and thought that underpin one’s sense of reality, in all their fragile coherence.’77

In classical literature, it is an experience most familiar to us from its description in Longinus’ treatise, Peri hupsous. Although we cannot say with absolute certainty that Statius was aware of this work, it is now dated with increasing confidence to the middle of the 1st century AD,78 and sublimity was clearly an idea which did much to inform Roman literature of that period. Indeed, Lagière positively dates the work to the 50s AD and asserts a literary relationship between Longinus, Seneca and Lucan.79 Sublimity is something associated ideas of liberation (so Longinus’ assertion that the true sublime naturally elevates us, φύσει γάρ πως ὑπὸ τἀληθοῦς ὕψους ἐπαίρεταί τε ἡμῶν ἡ ψυχὴ, de Sub. 7.2)80 and with tyranny, violence and totalitarianism; so Edmund Burke asserts: ‘terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently the ruling principle of the sublime’.81 Longinus’ work of literary theory is a rhetorical manual built around quotation of great works of literature. Through a series of case studies, Longinus illustrates the ways in which great writers transport, elevate and uplift an  75 Žižek 1989, 71. For broader definition and understanding, see Porter 2016, 5–17; and Lagière 2017, 31–54. 76 Day 2013, 30. 77 Porter 2016, 5. Difficulty of definition has long been a defining trait. Lagière 2017, 31 begins with Boileau’s elegant, late-17th-century explanation: ‘un je ne sais quoi qu’on peut beaucoup mieux sentir que dire.’ 78 See Day 2013, 12 and n.25; and Porter 2016, 4 and n.6. Advocates for a mid to late 1st century date include Russell 1964, xxii–xxx; Häussler 1995; and Innes 2002, 259. 79 Lagière 2017, 25–30. 80 On this and related passages, see Lagière 2017, 44–5. 81 Burke 1990, 54.

Introduction  XLI

audience. Following publication of translations of Longinus’ work in the 17th century, Burke was the most important of a number of English writers in the 18th century who resurrected and theorised about the sublime. Burke creatively read (and misread) both Longinus and Lucretius in constructing his own appreciation of the sublime: ‘a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquillity tinged with terror.’82 Longinus shows a similar sense of pleasure mixed with terror in his analysis of a passage of Homer’s Iliad where Hector’s terrified opponents are described in a simile as sailors caught in a storm:83 ὅνπερ οἶμαι καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν χειμώνων τρόπον ὁ ποιητὴς ἐκλαμβάνει τῶν παρακολουθούντων τὰ χαλεπώτατα. […] ὁ δὲ Ὅμηρος πῶς; ἓν γὰρ ἀπὸ πολλῶν λεγέσθω: ἐν δ’ ἔπες᾿, ὥς ὅτε κῦμα θοῇ ἐν νηῒ πέσῃσι λάβρον ὑπαὶ νεφέων ἀνεμοτρεφές, ἡ δέ τε πᾶσα ἄχνῃ ὑπεκρύφθη, ἀνέμοιο δὲ δεινὸς ἀήτης ἱστίῳ ἐμβρέμεται, τρομέουσι δέ τε φρένα ναῦται δειδιότες: τυτθὸν γὰρ ὑπὲκ θανάτοιο φέρονται. […] ὁ δὲ ποιητὴς οὐκ εἰς ἅπαξ παρορίζει τὸ δεινόν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἀεὶ καὶ μόνον οὐχὶ κατὰ πᾶν κῦμα πολλάκις ἀπολλυμένους εἰκονογραφεῖ. καὶ μὴν τὰς προθέσεις ἀσυνθέτους οὔσας συναναγκάσας παρὰ φύσιν καὶ εἰς ἀλλήλας συμβιασάμενος ῾ ὑπὲκ θανάτοιὀ τῷ μὲν συνεμπίπτοντι πάθει τὸ ἔπος ὁμοίως ἐβασάνισεν, τῇ δὲ τοῦ ἔπους συνθλίψει τὸ πάθος ἄκρως ἀπεπλάσατο καὶ μόνον οὐκ ἐνετύπωσε τῇ λέξει τοῦ κινδύνου τὸ ἰδίωμα ῾ὑπὲκ θανάτοιο φέρονται.᾿ Longinus de Subl. 10.3, 5, 6 (on Homer Il. 15.624–8) Similarly Homer in his descriptions of tempests always picks out the most terrific circumstances. […] Now let us turn to Homer. One passage will suffice to show the contrast: “But Hector … leapt into their mass falling upon them like a violent wave, wind-nurtured by storm-clouds, that crashes onto a swift ship; it is covered all over in foam, and the wind’s fearful blast roars in its sail, and the sailors tremble in their hearts in terror, only just being carried out of the way of death.” […] But Homer does not set any fixed limit to the danger, but gives us a vivid picture of men a thousand times on the brink of destruction, every wave threatening them with instant death. Moreover, by his bold and forcible combination of prepositions of opposite meaning he tortures his language to imitate the agony of the scene, the constraint which is put on

 82 Burke 1990, 123. 83 On this passage in Longinus, see Porter 2016, 148–55.

XLII  Introduction the words accurately reflecting the anxiety of the sailors’ minds, and the diction being stamped, as it were, with the peculiar terror of the situation.

Both Longinus and Burke identify language as the ultimate source of sublimity; it is Homer’s unwillingness to dismiss the possibility of danger too quickly, says Longinus, but to force us as audience to face the possibility of death many times, which creates the conditions for sublimity. However, it is his abuse of language, crushing words together (τῇ δὲ τοῦ ἔπους συνθλίψει), which transforms our experience into something sublime. At the end of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant’s analysis of the sublime concretises the thinking of Longinus and Burke by describing the sublime as the experience of any incomprehensibly great object which confounds our imagination, terrifying objects which might include: ‘threatening cliffs, thunderclouds towering up into the heavens, bringing with them flashes of lightning … volcanoes with their all-destroying violence, hurricanes with the devastation they leave behind, the boundless ocean set into a rage.’84 Kant is at pains to point out that these objects are not sublime in themselves, but it is our experience of them which creates the effect and, moreover, that this terror is an uplifting occurrence: ‘sublimity is not contained in anything in nature, but only in our mind, insofar as we can become conscious of being superior to nature within us and thus also to nature outside us.’85 In her study of the sublime in Statius, Lagière defines poetic sublimity thus: ‘L’ὕψος caractérise donc l’expression d’un écrivain genial, enthousiaste et téméraire, qui se hisse à de dangereuses hauteurs, porté par le πάθος. Il est la qualité d’une expansion grandiose, vertigineuse, surhumaine qui donne à voir l’extraordinaire, provoquant chez l’auditoire la stupeur, l’admiration, mais aussi un ravissement qui l’élève.’ 86

Like many Roman writers in the 1st century AD, Statius is expressing an increasing interest in the question of subject, self and identity. Indeed, I would go much further and claim that the Thebaid is inextricably and obsessively bound up in questions of selfhood. What Statius cannot do is express his thinking about identity in terms which are properly interior, that is, subjective in a strong sense. Instead, the poet, as a result of the necessary limitations placed upon any pre-Cartesian writer, thinks through problems and issues of subjectivity through  84 Kant 2003, 144. Porter 2016, 51–4 provides a much more comprehensive list of markers of sublimity; the storm in Thebaid 1 shows the majority of these. Comprehending the vastness of creation is central to analyses of the sublime in Lucretian poetry, see Hardie 2009, 65–228; Day 2013, 42–8; and Porter 2016, 445–54. 85 Kant 2003, 147. 86 Lagière 2017, 54.

Introduction  XLIII

objective terminology (where I gently invoke Giddens’ theory of reflexivity) and aesthetic experience (the sublime). In terms which are overtly and strongly objective, he is able to discuss ideas around Long’s ‘soft’ definition of subjectivity, which we discussed above: ‘I call this second aspect of selfhood subjective […] because my subjectivity is at least to some extent up to me.’87 We can invoke Žižek’s ideas on subjectivisation if we are prepared to explore them through a 1st century, objective lens. As we shall see, the arrival at subject through radical negativity seems remarkably appropriate and apposite when we explore the ways in which Oedipus, Polynices and Theseus construct identities from themselves within the text of the poem. In each character we can trace ancient parallels with the ‘Night of the World’, the passage through madness, the subject’s self-constitution through loss and the ethical problems inherent in reaching concrete universality. The passage through violence and its consequent impact upon the wider community is crucial for our understanding of the way in which the concept of tyrannical rule operates within this poem. The ethical dimension is also foregrounded through the twin failures of the Theban half-brothers, Oedipus and Polynices, who are also father and son and fail to achieve a ‘right’ identity within their secondary, social universes. The brutal morality of their Athenian counterpart again suggests that this creed of radical negativity in subject formation is especially suitable for understanding identity in the Statian universe. Furthermore, these intradiegetic dramatisations of subjectivity symbolise the multi-faceted nature of the poet’s own selfhood. Each character in the Thebaid is, at least in part, a contemplation of the problems of individualisation in the face of the twin oppressive forces of literary inheritance and exemplarity. The poem repeatedly asks the question of how to form characters which are in any real sense individual and stages the dramatic loss of independence and literary control necessitated by the poet’s subject-matter and literary belatedness. This absence of individuality is arguably most visible when dealing with characters who threaten to become little more than stereotypes or perfunctory enactions of an exemplary norm. Finally the poem stages the subjectivisation of the poet himself (with the danger of blurring the basic distinctions between the historical Statius and his epic persona), his own symbolic passage through madness and his own ultimate emergence as an individuated, creative subject.

 87 Long 2006, 265–6; see above, xxix–xxx.

XLIV  Introduction

The Thing Itself With these preliminary considerations in mind, we can now embark on our search for selves in the Thebaid. Chapter 1 pursues an investigation of Polynices both for his particular sense of identity and as a wider test case for Statius’ interest in selfhood. A central theoretical move will be to apply Žižek’s notions of identity formation to Polynices whilst maintaining an objective perspective on that character. The invocation of the sublime will be key to this process and Polynices’ passage through a storm on his way to Argos will form a crucial element in his sense of self. The storm is a sublime, metaphysical event which represents Polynices’ symbolic birth in the social universe at Argos and the beginning of his search for an identity separate from his identical twin brother. Polynices’ stay in Argos is a beginning for him, but it also represents a series of journeys not taken as he eschews possible new identities in favour of an obsessive return to Thebes and his twin. The Argive campaign completely unpicks anything Argive in Polynices’ identity. Only in the final moments of reunification with his brother does the absence of identity in Polynices transform itself momentarily into doubleness. Ultimately, Polynices is never able to resolve himself into a stable, cultural subject. His conflict with his brother will continue in the afterlife and Thebes will continue its path through violence. In Chapter 2, we explore the role of the tyrant within the poem and the tyrant’s relationship with his exemplary models. The use of exempla has become increasingly important in modern scholarship’s understanding of characterisation in Roman imperial literature, but renders characters flat and, at times, inconsistent. We see the intertwined forces of exemplarity and intertextuality brought to bear upon the characters of Eteocles, Jupiter and Creon to the point where they are no longer able to fulfil the roles allotted to them in the structure of the narrative. Tyranny results in a peculiar sense of powerlessness for all three characters who are, meanwhile, opposed in ways which also highlight mythological epic’s inability to fit comfortably within the discourse of 1st-century AD Roman history and politics. Language itself becomes disrupted as the poet resorts to tropes and metaphors which might seem at first to be deeply unsuitable for their tyrannical subjects. Having panned out to view social and political leadership in the poem, we focus again in Chapter 3 on two peripheral yet influential characters within the poem, Oedipus and Theseus. The poem’s concerns about identity and status are magnified by Oedipus, who mimics Polynices’ problems with absence of self with problems of exemplarity. Oedipus possesses such a superfluity of identity that his own sense of self is effectively erased. Instead, selfhood is transplanted symbolically onto the Fury Tisiphone whom he summons to enact his ‘curse’ upon

Introduction  XLV

his progeny. When Oedipus re-appears following the deaths of his sons, he remains ‘caught between two deaths’ and remains an inchoate subject not yet physically dead, but sent by Creon into the spiritual and cultural death of exile in the wilderness. By contrast, Theseus is able to provide a stable identity for himself but struggles to impose a political solution upon Thebes. The passage through violence and madness which identity formation requires underpins the disquieting force of the Athenian king’s power, which often borders on the tyrannical and has a profoundly destructive impact upon the societies he controls. Chapter 4 focuses more tightly on Statius again and finds violent metaphors for the poet’s interaction with his predecessors in the funeral pyres of book 6, the waters of the river Langia in book 4 and in the construction and destruction of Amphion’s walls throughout. The figure of Hypsipyle is also an important parallel for Statius’ own poetic process and identity. Amphion is a key mythic touchstone for Statius which sets up his relationship with Propertius’ first book of poetry. Set against these aggressive poetics is the poet’s own attitude of deference and self-deprecation, visible in his apostrophe to the Argive warriors Hopleus and Dymas and in the sphragis which completes the poem. Both the sphragis and Statius’ apostrophe to Eteocles and Polynices also suggest Virgil’s Eclogues as another poetic model text. The sphragis itself and the multiple ‘endings’ which the poem offers suggest a radical split between poet and poem, one which offers a future for the Thebaid. Statius the poet seems to be an individual as much subject to the disquieting, sublime effects of his poem as his protagonists. In a final chapter teasingly described as ‘afterword’, we explore Dante’s reception and re-writing of Statius’ identity in the Commedia. We reveal Dante as a thorough and careful reader of Statius who uses Flavian poetics to enrich his own self-presentation. In particular, Statius’ warning to the Thebaid not to follow in the Aeneid’s footsteps too closely is repeatedly re-worked as an exemplar for Dante’s own poetic affiliations. The freshly Christianised Statius offers an alternative poetic model for Dante’s Christian vernacular poetry. For Dante, belatedness becomes a positive value rather than a source of insecurity. For Dante’s Statius, a new and powerful poetic identity is constructed which re-writes the poet of the Thebaid.

 Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self In this chapter I would like to construct a test case for Statius’ dominant interest in identity and suggest that the Thebaid is a poem intimately concerned with issues of selfhood; furthermore a central figure in this discursive, poetic exploration of the notion of self is Statius’ character Polynices. In parallel to this discussion, I would like to explore ways in which the philosophical theories of self we explored in the introduction help us to elucidate these issues as they appear in Statius’ poem. Ultimately our exploration of Polynices will allow us to suggest that consideration of the nature of self was crucial for Statius at a level beyond the narratological, that Statius was concerned with exploring these ideas for his own sake as much as for the sake of his audience. As a reading of the Thebaid this may seem tendentious, but there is much to be won from examining the establishment of Polynices as a character, from looking at the remarkable malleability of that sense of character and the ways in which hero and poet establish and contest a sense of identity for Polynices. The notion which we explored in the introduction of an empty space to be filled through subjectivisation is extremely important for Statius’ Polynices, although this is something which Statius, being a poet of the 1st century, is only able to articulate through objective means. In Polynices we will see the constant tension between subject and objectivity as Statius’ epic hero travels through a mythical Greek landscape in search of his own identity. He too will find himself in a two-way process of subjectivisation, having his identity constructed for him by external, objective factors and trying (and often failing) to construct his own identity by moulding the objective choices of identity-formation which are presented to him.

. The Absent Self: Polynices With such philosophical and methodological considerations in mind, we can get down to the business of reading identity and ideas of self within the poem. We will make a number of bold claims about the identity of Polynices and his character development (or rather, his character stasis) throughout the poem. Our first contention is that Polynices is almost entirely devoid of any identity before his arrival at Argos half way through the first book of the poem. It has long since been

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110717990-001

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self noted that the brothers are almost interchangeable in their roles;1 in other words, had Polynices won the right to be the first ruler of Thebes, he would have performed exactly the same role as Eteocles does in the poem.2 When the Fury Tisiphone comes to Thebes to infect the brothers with madness, they are indistinguishable. Statius pointedly avoids using names (and even pronouns) at first3 so that there is an odd sense of unity in the brothers’ discord: atque ea Cadmeo praeceps ubi culmine primum constitit adsuetaque infecit nube penates, protinus attoniti fratrum sub pectore motus gentilisque animos subiit furor aegraque laetis inuidia atque parens odii metus, inde regendi saeuus amor ruptaeque uices iurisque secundi ambitus impatiens et summo dulcius unum stare loco sociisque comes discordia regnis. Theb. 1.123–30 At first she stayed her headlong course at the Cadmean citadel and tainted the dwelling with her wonted mist, shock stirred the brothers’ hearts. The family madness invaded their minds, envy sick at another’s good fortune and fear, parent of hate, then fierce love of rule, breach of give and take, ambition intolerant of second place, hankering to stand at the top alone, strife the companion of shared sovereignty.

Without our prior knowledge of this myth, we would not yet know which brother was which;4 they are, according to the simile which follows, identical bulls, yoked together but pulling apart (1.131–6, esp. delectos … iuuencos, aequis … uiribus).5 The lack of a distinguishable identity and interchangeability is made  1 See Ganiban 2007, 185–95. For the instability of identity in the Theban myth, see Zeitlin 1990, 139–41. For the theme of unity-through-difference in this part of Theban myth, see Henderson 1998, 223–5 and his quotations of Barthes 1977, 61–3; and Zeitlin 1982, 25–6. 2 On the identity of the brothers, see Frings 1992, 40–5; and O’Gorman 2005, 32–3; cf. Gervais 2017 ad 2.306–74. Here I disagree to an extent with Lagière 2017, 198–200, 234–44, esp. 199: ‘aussi Étéocle est-il l’objet d’une detestation qui le distingue nettement de Polynice’. However, the depth of characterisation she reads in Polynices and the relative lack of individuation in Eteocles is a function partly of the extent of the former’s presentation in the poem and, as we shall see in chapter 2, the effect of tyrannical status upon individuation. 3 While Statius names some of the Seven against Thebes in his prologue, 1.42–5; the brothers are, by contrast, elements in a confusa domus, 1.16. See below, ch. 4.4. 4 On identity and doubling throughout the poem, see Korneeva 2011. For the myth’s popularity in antiquity, see Ganiban 2007, 47. 5 See Feeney 2014, esp. 233; and Briguglio 2017, 211–15. On the Homeric and Virgilian intertextualities in this simile, see Bessone 2020, 149–52. For the Aeolic, political overtones of 1.133, illi indignantes, see Stover 2012, 85–6; and Rebeggiani 2018, 169–70.

The Absent Self: Polynices  

clearer by the speech of an (anonymous!) Theban citizen who criticises the arrangement of alternating rule (1.173–96). The Theban picks up the themes of Statius’ bull simile, casting the people in the lot of animals under a constantly shifting servitude (alternoque iugo dubitantia subdere colla, 1.175, ‘bow doubting necks under an alternating yoke’), questioning Jupiter’s role in imposing such a regime upon the brothers (tibi, summe deorum / terrarumque sator, sociis hanc addere mentem / sedit? 1.178–80, ‘did you resolve, supreme creator of heaven and earth, to make the partners so will?’),6 and likens the brothers to the North and East winds pulling against one another.7 The citizen sums up the lack of individualised identity with two phrases which play on the interchangeability of pronouns (hicne umquam priuatus erit? tamen ille precanti / mitis et affatu bonus et patientior aequi, 1.189–90, ‘Will he ever be a private citizen? Ah, but the other was gentle to the suppliant, kind of speech and more tolerant of justice’; hic imperat, ille minatur, 1.196, ‘the one commands, the other threatens’).8 Were it not for the only use of Polynices’ name in the first book (1.165), and it is a name whose Greek etymology (‘many-strifes’) implies plurality and unstable identity, we would not, without our prior and exterior knowledge of Statius’ mythical subject, know the name of the exiled brother. (Eteocles is unnamed throughout the first book and here is simply accorded the epithet saeue):9 iam sorte carebat dilatus Polynicis honos. quis tunc tibi, saeue quis fuit ille dies uacua cum solus in aula

 6 For sociis referring to Eteocles and Polynices, see Shackleton Bailey 2000, 463; the word picks up on both sociis at 1.130 and sociare at 1.132. 7 For the political import of this simile, see Rebeggiani 2018, 170. 8 The critic’s simile, 1.193–4, not only recalls the narrator’s bull simile, 1.131–6, but also the authorial interjection which contrasts the scale of the brothers’ nefas with the poverty of the kingdom over which they are fighting, 1.144–63, esp. 160–1. Cf. Korneeva 2011, 74; Briguglio 2017, 253–6. There is an easy slippage between the voice of the narrator and the voice of the Theban citizen therefore, but the anonymity that is his only defining characteristic other than his lowly status (humili veneno, 1.171) makes him oddly parallel to the soon-to-be exile Polynices. 9 Eteocles is only named 16 times in the whole poem and only twice in the first half, see 2.384, 3.214. Polynices is mentioned by name only twelve times. By contrast Aeneas is named 240 times in the Aeneid. The exception is Book 2 of the Aeneid where Aeneas is mentioned by name once, in the second line, but where he is, of course, the internal narrator. Even in poems with multiple protagonists, names tend to be used more frequently. Lucan refers to Pompey by name more than 100 times while Silius refers to Scipio by name more than 50 times. On the epithets used of Eteocles and Polynices, see Ripoll 1998, 37–8.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self respiceres ius omne tuum cunctosque minores, et nusquam par stare caput! Theb. 1.164–8 Already Polynices’ royalty lay low, deferred by the lot. What a day that was for you, cruel monarch, when alone in empty palace you saw authority all yours, every man your inferior, nowhere a head standing as high!

As the now-exiled Polynices travels through mainland Greece towards Argos and is crossing the Corinthian isthmus, he is assailed by a storm which has a crucial symbolic value in establishing his identity (1.312–89). The process of exile has helped to establish, if not an independent identity, then at least some kind of individuation, for while he is now the long-suffering exile he is also merely a ‘son of Oedipus’.10 Moreover, in his own fantasy, Polynices plays both brotherly roles, that of exile and of proud king: interea patriis olim uagus exul ab oris Oedipodionides furto deserta pererrat Aoniae. […] nunc queritur ceu tarda fugae dispendia, sed mox attollit flatus ducis et sedisse superbus deiecto iam fratre putat: spes anxia mentem extrahit et longo consumit gaudia uoto. Theb. 1.312–14, 320–3 Meanwhile, long now a wandering exile from his native land, the son of Oedipus stealthily strays over lonely reaches of Aonia […] One moment he complains of the dragging stretch of exile, but soon the arrogance of a ruler lifts him up and he thinks he sits proudly, his brother already cast down. Anxious hope drags out his soul and in prolonged desire exhausts his joy.

Crucially, Polynices imagines himself in both brotherly roles simultaneously. In mental terms, this brother struggles to distinguish an independent identity for himself. This is summed up by the paradoxical phrase, longo consumit gaudia uoto, where a joy that can only be illusory is vanquished by his prayers that this state of exile come to an end, which would bring him further joy.11  10 On the epithet, see Briguglio 2017, 331 ad 1.313. For, and by contrast, the notion of the ‘victorious exile’ in the Punica, see Schroer forthcoming. 11 The verb consumo has persistent association with Polynices: he uses it in reaction to Tydeus’ death, Tydea consumpsi, 9.60. See Ahl 1986, 2882; Dewar 1991 ad loc.; and Ganiban 2007, 126. On 1.316–19, especially on the Virgilian connotations of the verb pacisci, see Bessone 2020, 146–

The Absent Self: Polynices  

The storm is a key moment after which Polynices is able to construct an identity for himself.12 Much of the narrative of the storm seems commonplace, especially the opening sequence (1.345–57), the stuff of epic re-worked in a new, Flavian context.13 Yet certain elements of the traditional epic storm are lacking: not only does this storm affect someone travelling by land, but we also miss that traditional divine motivation to assault and punish the hero. This epic hero makes a journey which is the mirror-image of the odyssean journey undertaken by Aeneas, a connection powerfully emphasised by the allusion to the opening lines of the Aeneid.14 The poet is even uncertain as to what motivates Polynices to travel to Argos in the first place (1.326–8),15 let alone why a storm should come.16 Instead, the climax of the storm focuses on its paradoxical aspects and on the mental state of the hero trapped within it:17 puluerulenta prius calcandaque flumina nullae aggeribus tenuere morae stagnoque refusa est funditus et ueteri spumauit Lerna ueneno. frangitur omne nemus, rapiunt antiqua procellae bracchia siluarum nullisque aspecta per aeuum

 8. For a parallel reading of these lines as taking Polynices ‘hors du temps présent’, see Lagière 2017, 234–6, 241. 12 On the storm in Thebaid 1 and its use of sublime imagery, see Lagière 2017, 154–8. The storm scene is a topos of Roman epic in particular, cf. Virg. Aen. 1.50–156; Ov. Met. 11.474–569; Luc. BC 5.504–96; Val. Fl. Argo. 1.574–642; and Theb. 5.363–411. In general, see Morford 1967, 20–36; and Burck 1978. On Valerius, see Zissos 2006; and Stover 2012, 79–112. For the storm as the locus classicus for exploring the interaction between epic and rhetoric, see Peirano Garrison 2019, 135– 73, esp. 155–71. 13 The mention of claustra rigentis / Aeoliae percussa sonant (1.346–7) clearly evokes Aeolus’ kingdom (Aen. 1.55–7) and nox atra (1.346) is a fairly common phrase which might evoke the storm sent by Juno against Aeneas (Aen 1.89) or the darkness of the Underworld (e.g. Aen. 6.272, 866). Cf. Briguglio 2017, 351–3. 14 See Aen. 1.1–2, primus ab oris … profugus, with Lovatt 2020, 32–4. For further moments where Polynices imitates Aeneas, see Ganiban 2007, 191–2; McNelis 2007, 147; Parkes 2012 ad 4.74–5, 80–3, 92. 15 See Briguglio 2017, 341 ad 1.326–8 on Polynices’ possible motivations. 16 On the storm itself, see Briguglio 2017, 33–47, 352–79. 17 On the cosmic and political implications of Statius’ storm scene and its symbolic value within a narrative of civil war, See Briguglio 2017, 33–47. On the sublimity of the storm and its impact upon Polynices’ psyche, see the diagram of Lagière 2017, 158. The language of Statius’ description shares much with Quintilian’s description of the grand or strong rhetorical style: 12.10.61, at ille, qui saxa deuoluat et pontem indignetur et ripas sibi faciat, multus et torrens iudicem uel nitentem contra ferret cogetque ire, qua rapiet. Polynices is like a judge swept away on a torrent of oratory.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self solibus umbrosi patuere aestiua Lycaei. ille tamen modo saxa iugis fugientia ruptis miratus modo nubigenas e montibus amnes aure pauens passimque insano turbine raptas pastorum pecorumque domos, non segnius amens incertusque uiae per nigra silentia uastum haurit iter: pulsat metus undique et undique frater. ac uelut hiberno deprensus nauita ponto, cui nec Temo piger nec amico sidere monstrat Luna uias, medio caeli pelagique tumult stat rationis inops, iam iamque aut saxa malignis expectat submersa uadis aut uertice acuto spumantes scopulos erectae incurrere prorae Theb. 1.358–75 366 cauens Hall

368 per sentaque et aspera Hall

No restraint of dykes held back the rivers that had been dusty tracks. Lerna’s swamp surged from its depths, foaming with ancient venom. Every forest is shattered; gusts snatch aged branches, the summer stations of shady Lycaeus, seen by no suns in history, are laid open. Now he wondered at rocks fleeing from ruptured heights, now his ears feared cloudborne rivers coursing from the mountains and the dwellings of the shepherds and flocks swept everywhere away in the mad whirl. Distraught and doubtful of his way, no less swiftly did he devour his desolate route through the black silences. Terror strikes from every side, terror and his brother. As a mariner caught in a winter sea, to whom neither lazy Wain nor Moon with friendly radiance shows directions, stand without reason in mid commotion of land and sea, expecting every moment rocks sunk in treacherous shallows, or foaming cliffs with spiky tops to run upon the rearing prow.

As rivers burst their banks, dry pathways become raging torrents; as the violence of the wind fells trees, shady groves become open spaces. The sense that the world’s logic is being undermined increases at the heart of the storm, where rocks fall from heaven and rivers are carried by the clouds. The storm itself now becomes a phenomenon characterised by madness (insano turbine, 1.366).18 As Polynices makes his way through Greece (and the journey appears to be one of extraordinary rapidity: non segnius … haurit iter, 1.367–9), he matches the madness of the storm (amens, 1.367) and the storm itself become a paradoxical event likened to an empty void.19 Geographical space and narrative space become compressed and identified  18 For the intertextual connections to Virgil Georgics 1 (and also Seneca’s Phoenissae) in this phrase, see Briguglio 2017, 38–42. 19 See Lagière 2017, 156–8. Cf. Briguglio 2017, 366: ‘l’aggettivo suggerisce anzitutto il terrore che rende Polinice fuori di sé’.

The Absent Self: Polynices  

with one another as Polynices travels through central Greece in the matter of a few lines of verse. The storm which flattened woods and caused rivers to break their banks is, paradoxically, a silent and empty space (per nigra silentia uastum / haurit iter, 1.368–9). The storm thus becomes a black void which apparently lies outside the normal laws of space and time.20 The reversal of ‘normal’ tropes of the epic storm is underlined by the simile which likens Polynices to a helmsman in a stormy sea (1.370–5).21 The tenor and vehicle of the simile appear to be back to front. The sailor of the simile shares the storm’s and Polynices’ madness (stat rationis inops, 1.373). What is more, the absence of reason that strikes him here does not manifest as fear of the natural phenomena to which he is subject but instead as a repetitive and universal fear of his brother (pulsat metus undique et undique frater, 1.369). The storm is, in other words, as much metaphysical as it is physical, if not more so: ‘le poète offre l’image d’une lutte des éléments … qui projette dans le macrocosme les fantasmes de Polynice.’22 The process of analysing Polynices’ nascent sense of identity, one which is predicated solely upon obsessive mirroring of his brother, remains externalised, and articulated through the narrative of the storm. He is caught, as it were, in a mirror-stage of development, apparently whole yet riven by division between himself and the image of himself, constantly trying to reconcile the other to the same. Given our earlier exploration of Žižek’s theory of subjectivisation, it should be obvious that there are parallels between that process and what is happening to Polynices in this passage which are extremely important. But it also seems that there is a further, intermediate layer of symbolic meaning in this passage which is crucial to understanding the means by which Statius articulates Polynices’ metaphysical journey through the storm. We noted earlier that Statius lacks the discourse of subjectivity to discuss selfhood in Žižek’s subjective terms. Here he draws on the Longinian language of aesthetic experience and puts identity formation in the realm of the sublime. The storm through which Polynices passes at the beginning of the Thebaid certainly fits neatly the models of the sublime which we sketched out earlier.23 Both Longinus and Statius use storms as exemplars of the sublime experience. Nearly all of Kant’s schema of natural phenomena are in evidence here: cliffs

 20 The sense of paradox here evoked is the mirror-image of the paradox in the storm at the beginning of the Aeneid (cf. Aen. 1.105–7), where a gigantic wave becomes a mountain and the Trojans can see the land in the troughs of the waves. 21 Cf. Feeney 2014, 233. 22 Lagière 2017, 156. 23 See above, xxxix–xliii.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self break apart and threaten to engulf him (saxa iugis fugientia ruptis, 1.364), lightning literally shatters the air (nec non abrupta tremescunt / fulgura et attritus subita face rumpitur aether, 1.353–4), trees are flattened by the wind (rapiunt antiqua procella / bracchia siluarum, 1.361–2) and the simile comparing Polynices to a sailor caught in a storm brings the notion of the raging ocean (medio caeli pelagique tumultu, 1.372). The terror which experience of sublime creates is evident throughout: Polynices is driven out of his mind (amens, 1.367), his listening out for unexpected waterfalls and cataracts is described in terms of fear (aure pauens, 1.366) and fear, both of the storm and of his brother, drives him on (pulsat metus undique et undique frater, 1.369). Ultimately, contemplation of this titanic storm renders Polynices incapable of reason (stat rationis inops, 1.373). The breakdown in language which Longinus identifies in Homer is also visible in Statius:24 rivers become cloud-born (nubigenas … amnes, 1.365), fear becomes a product of the sense of hearing (aure pauens, 1.366) and Polynices does not complete his journey so much as drink it dry (haurit iter, 1.369). This externalised, aesthetic experience which Statius describes stands in for the subjective one which Žižek constructs. His modern, radically Cartesian theory of identity helps us to determine the process of Polynices’ self-definition and to comprehend his sublime experience of the storm. Prior to his journey through the storm, Polynices is an unfashioned being, lacking any sense of individual identity. The storm is externalised as a sublime experience which represent Polynices’ ‘night of the world’. As an expression of withdrawal into self, the storm fits this model very nicely, not least in its removal of rational boundaries, but also the world’s becoming a void and the emphasis on the madness of Polynices as he travels through an uncompromisingly wild space. Furthermore, the emergence of our hero at Argos represents his entry into the Symbolic universe (in the Lacanian sense), his arrival at ‘normal’ subjectivity. When the hero arrives drenched on Adrastus’ doorstep in Argos, it is as if he has gone through a second and traumatic birth. What then happens in Argos is Polynices’ quest to define himself as different from his twin brother in Thebes. The first stage in that process is the unarmed duel with Tydeus (1.401–46). As several commentators have noted, this combat scene proleptically anticipates the (not so) final duel between Eteocles and Polynices in book 11 of the poem.25 Sandwiched in between the storm sequence and Polynices’ appearance at Argos is a short passage which also displays significant programmatic value:  24 It also mirrors Žižek’s concept of the ‘torture-house of language’ in subject formation, see Žižek 2012, 869–78. 25 Bonds 1985; cf. Frings 1992, 47–54; and Korneeva 2011, 99–103.

The Absent Self: Polynices  

talis opaca legens nemorum Cadmeius heros adcelerat, uasto metuenda umbone ferarum excutiens stabula, et prono uirgulta refringit pectore (dat stimulos animo uis maesta timoris) donec ab Inachiis uicta caligine tectis emicuit lucem deuexa in moenia fundens Larisaeus apex. Theb. 1.376–82 379 tumoris Hall So the Cadmaean hero traversing the dark forest quickens pace, shaking out the perilous lairs of wild beasts with his huge shield, and with thrusting breast bursts open the thickets (grim force of fear spurs him on), until the darkness was overcome by the dwellings of Inachus and Larisa’s pinnacle flashes out.

Polynices’ journey through the wilds of Greece seems very similar to the journeys through the wilderness of Virgil’s Gallus in Eclogue 10 and Milanion (a mythological lover of Atalanta who is a stand-in for Virgil’s Gallus) in Propertius 1.1:26 certum est in siluis inter spelaea ferarum malle pati tenerisque meos incidere Amores arboribus : crescent illae, crescetis, Amores. interea mixtis lustrabo Maenala Nymphis, aut acris uenabor apros. non me ulla uetabunt frigora Parthenios canibus circumdare saltus. iam mihi per rupes uideor lucosque sonantis ire Virgil Eclogue 10.52–9 I would rather suffer in the woods, amid the caves of wild beasts, and carve my loves on young trees. They will grow and you will grow, my love. Meanwhile, I will roam among the nymphs on Meanalus, or hunt fierce wild boar. No frosts will prevent me from surrounding the glades of Parthenius with my dogs. Already I see myself travelling through rocks and echoing groves.

 26 The standard interpretation is that both passages refer to a lost text by Gallus, see Ross 1975, 61–4, 89–92; Pincus 2004, 188–93; and Cairns 2006, 110–11. While it may be that Statius, too, is looking back at a Gallan text which we do not have, I, like Heslin 2018, 55–72 (quote at 56), will assume that: ‘Virgil and Propertius do not provide independent testimony about Gallus.’ The association with Propertius and erotic elegy is further intensified by Polynices’ disordered mental state, which likens him to an elegiac lover: ‘ma amens può rimandare significativamente anche al linguaggio erotico, designando l’innamorato fuori di sé che vaga per le selve in cerca di solitudine’, Briguglio 2017, 366.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self Milanion nullos fugiendo, Tulle, labores saeuitiam durae contudit Iasidos. nam modo Partheniis amens errabat in antris, ibat et hirsutas ille videre feras; ille etiam Hylaei percussus uulnere rami saucius Arcadiis rupibus ingemuit. Propertius 1.1.9–14 Milanion, by fleeing no labours, Tullus, conquered the savagery of hard Atalanta. Recently, distraught, he wandered the caves of Parthenius and went to watch the long-haired beasts. Stunned by that blow from Hylaeus’ branch he even groaned in pain on Arcadian crags.

Polynices exhibits similarities to both Gallus and Milanion in his own journey through the wild. He is characterised from the start as a wandering exile (uagus exul … pererrat, 1.312–13).27 He too groaned aloud (stare gemit, 1.316) and hunted wild beasts (1.377–8; cf. Ecl. 10.52, 57; Prop. 1.1.12). The competition between pastoral and elegiac poets for Gallus’ poetic soul is of lesser importance to us here. These particular texts seem to be of foundational importance for Statius’ Thebaid precisely because (if we believe the preface to the Silvae) it, like they, is the first text in this poet’s career. The Thebaid thus poses as an opening alternative to the Eclogues and the Monobiblos. Moreover, both these Augustan intertexts will continue to have a crucial programmatic role to play in the Thebaid’s conclusion.28 Initially, Polynices’ journey seems to be a re-assertion of haughty epic values over the small-scale poetics of pastoral and elegy. Polynices’ thrusting chest screams the aggressive masculinity of epic (prono uirgulta refringit / pectore), while pastoral-elegiac wandering (lustrabo, Ecl. 10.55; errabat, Prop. 1.1.11) is replaced by energetic acceleration (adcelerat, 1.377). Meanwhile, as he takes refuge, Polynices discovers another exile likewise taking shelter. Both men are so filled with bloody rage (rabiem … cruentam 1.408) that they wrestle and fight for the right to stay in the porch: ecce autem antiquam Fato Calydona relinquens Olenius Tydeus (fraterni sanguinis illum conscius horror agit) tum eadem, sub nocte sonora, lustra terit […] paulum alternis in uerba minasque cunctantur, mox ut iactis sermonibus irae

 27 Lagière 2017, 238–9 makes the comparison with Bellerophon at Hom. Il. 6.200–2 for an Aristotelian reading of Polynices’ alienation. 28 See below, ch. 4.5.

The Absent Self: Polynices  

intumuere satis, tum uero erectus uterque exertare umeros nudamque lacessere pugnam. celsior ille gradu procera in membra simulque integer annorum, sed non et uiribus infra Tydea fert animus, totosque infusa per artus maior in exiguo regnabat corpore uirtus. Theb. 1.401–4, 410–417 But see! Fate makes Olenian Tydeus leave ancient Calydon, driven by guilty terror of a brother’s blood, and in the stormy night tread the selfsame wild […] for a brief while they delay, exchanging verbal threats; presently, when their wrath had swelled enough with hurling of speech, each rose and bared his shoulders and challenged to naked combat. The one walked taller, long of limb and in prime of years; but no lesser strength backs Tydeus’ bold spirit, and valour instilled through every member reigned all the greater in his small frame.

The passage sets up a series of associations which are consistently exploited throughout Tydeus’ involvement in the Thebaid. Alternation is a key concept in this conflict, as Tydeus briefly acts as a substitute for Eteocles.29 Tydeus’ uirtus is constantly linked with extreme emotion (especially, though not exclusively, with rabies) and also with physical prowess and strength (413–7 above).30 Statius’ introduction to Tydeus is informed by a series of intertextual references to Greek literature. Tydeus’ small size (Shackleton Bailey calls him ‘a mythical James Cagney’)31 is mentioned by Athene at Iliad 5.801, the ignoble nature of the fight mirrors the fight between Odysseus and Irus (Odyssey 18.1–117), although this fight is far more violent (Theb. 1.418–27).32 Yet the difference in stature is also a feature of single combat narrative in historiography; despite being the smaller of the two, Tydeus will win and his prowess reflects his greater uirtus at the expense of Polynices.33 The violence of the fight, which is only forestalled by Adrastus’ intervention (Theb. 1.428–34), is also mirrored in the violence of emotion in the two men.  29 See Bonds 1985, especially for similarities between this fight and the duel between Eteocles and Polynices. Cf. Ganiban 2007, 126. 30 On the link between ira, martial prowess and extremes of emotion, see Braund & Gilbert 2003, 275–8. On rabies, see Lagière 2017, 119–21; cf. Dewar 1991, on 9.1–2. Note also regnabat which introduces the idea of self-control, and in particular that virtus controls the body. 31 See Shackleton Bailey 2003 ad loc. 32 The ultimate source for the fight may be Eur. Phoen. 415–21; Supp. 130–40. On this aspect of the fight, see Bonds 1985, 226. 33 On single combat in historiography see Oakley 1998, 113–48 on the single combat between Manlius and the Gaul at Livy 7.9.6–10.14; 1998, 230–51 on the duel of Valerius Corvus at Livy 7.25.3–26.15; and 2005, 216–17 on Livy 9.17.12. On the inequality of combatants see esp. 1998, 124. For bibliography on single combat see 1998, 125.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self Polynices will not have this depth of emotion again until he fights his brother.34 Tydeus is similarly consumed by ‘bloody rage’ (rabiem cruentam 1.408, cf. 9.1) and motivated to kill Polynices by anger (sic ira ferebat 1.428).35 The imagery of athletic competition is used to illustrate the nature of this fight: non aliter quam Pisaeo sua lustra Tonanti cum redeunt crudisque uirum sudoribus ardet puluis, at hinc teneros caueae dissensus ephebos concitat exclusaeque expectant praemia matres, sic alacres odio nullaque cupidine laudis accensi incurrunt Theb. 1.421–6 Even as when the five-year term comes round for the Pisaean Thunderer and the dust warms with the crude sweat of men – but on this side the discord of the crowd spurs on the tender youths and their excluded mothers wait for the prizes; so, lively with hate not inspired by any desire of glory, they rush in.

The simile compares the fight to wrestling at the Olympic games, but this fight is not one taking place in the arena but a fight between hot-blooded (alacres … accensi) young men (teneros ephebos) outside normal boundaries. At hinc provides a sudden disjunction between the ‘proper’ wrestling match in the simile and the one to which this fight is compared; there is something inherently wrong about this combat. The sense of spectacle is provided by caueae; despite the displacement of the fight outside the proper boundaries of wrestling, and despite the fact that in reality Tydeus and Polynices have no audience, they are surrounded and impelled by an audience, metonymically represented as the voidlike auditorium itself.36 This emphasis on audience is another typical feature of single combat narratives in both epic and historiography.37 The young men in the simile are struck (note the equally discordant metaphorical use of concidat) by the dissensus of the audience, an arresting term, unusual in epic poetry and used

 34 See Bonds 1985, 227 n.4. 35 Indeed, Tydeus is characterised by anger, see Braund & Gilbert 2003, 270–4. Rabies again anticipates Tydeus’ cannibalism at 8.751–66. 36 OLD s.v. cavea 4. For the metonymic use, cf. Theb. 6.654; Silv. 1.6.28; for the more literal use, cf. Silv. 2.5.12. 37 See Oakley 1998, 120. Cf. in poetry Eur. Phoen. 1370–1, 1388–9, 1395, 1398–9; Ap. Rhod. Argo. 2.36, 96–7; Virg. Aen. 5.451–2; Ov. Met. 7.120–1, 133, 142–3; Val. Fl. Argo. 4.257, 292; Sidon. Carm. 7.287–9; and in historiography Thuc. 7.71.1–6; Polybius 1.44.5; 3.43.8; Sall. Jug. 60.3–4; Livy 1.25.1–14; 7.10.2–12; 23.47.3; Dio 74.13.4; and Procop. Bell. 1.13.32, 38; 7.31.16. Cf. also Solodow 1979, 257–8.

The Absent Self: Polynices  

elsewhere to refer to the extreme state of discord within a city, especially one wracked by civil conflict.38 Tydeus and Polynices fight the equivalent of civil war. There is no glory to be gained in this fight, just as the mothers in the simile will wait in vain for praemia. Tydeus fulfils the role of fraternal substitute, a role which will be reframed when they marry into Adrastus’ family, yet there are moments where the scrap between Tydeus and Polynices reverses the roles of the duel between Eteocles and Polynices. The poet suggests that, had not Adrastus interrupted the conflict, Polynices would have been killed in single combat by an exiled prince (meliusque hostilibus armis / lugendus fratri, iuuenis Thebane, iaceres, 1.429–30). Tydeus is himself in exile for murdering his brother (1.402–3). Given that in book 11 Polynices is the one who deals Eteocles a mortal wound, there is a sense of role-reversal in this passage of book 1.39 Is he trying to play his own part, or that of his brother? Yet before any more serious conclusion can be reached, Adrastus interrupts the fight, calms the combatants down and responds to their introductions. His analysis of their emotions and choice of words is revealing: ‘quae causa furoris, externi iuuenes (neque enim meus audeat istas ciuis in usque manus), quis nam implacabilis ardor exturbare odiis tranquilla silentia noctis?’ Theb. 1.438–41 Why this madness, young strangers? For no countryman of mine would dare violence such as this. What is this implacable urge to disrupt night’s tranquil silence with your brawls?

Adrastus’ opening words (quae causa furoris) mimic the programmatic utterances of epic poets. The search for causae is mentioned at the beginning of Virgil’s Aeneid (Musa, mihi causas memora 1.8) and Lucan’s Bellum Civile (fert animus causas tantarum expromere rerum 1.67).40 Yet the question is highly evocative of

 38 The word does not occur in Ennius, Ovid Met., Lucan, Silius or Valerius Flaccus, and only once in Virgil, at Aen. 11.455 to refer to the state of panic and confusion in the city as opposing armies prepare to renew hostilities. Statius uses the word twice elsewhere to refer to Lemnos prior to the women’s slaughter of their husbands (5.148) and Thebes in panic prior to Menoeceus’ suicide (10.558). Cf. also seu dissensuros seruauerat Eumenis ignes, 12.423 as Statius ascribes possible reasons why Eteocles’ pyre was the only one still burning. 39 Role reversal also has an important part to play in Oedipus’ invocation of the Fury in book 1, see below, ch. 3.2. 40 These utterances clearly evoke Horace Epode 7.1–2 quo, quo scelesti ruitis? aut cur dexteris | aptantur enses conditi? See Ginsburg & Krasne 2018, introduction; Bessone 2018, 90–5; and Hulls

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self Lucan’s earlier question quis furor, o cives? (BC 1.8).41 Adrastus’ instant reaction to this fight is to relocate it into the context of epic civil war narrative. This may anticipate things to come in the poem, given that Tydeus and Polynices will soon be brothers-in-law and given the carefully described similarities between this fight and the duel between Polynices and Eteocles in book 11.42 Yet more revealing is the desire for Adrastus to fit Tydeus and Polynices allusively into the context of beginnings of epic poetry; for Polynices is only now becoming an individual and the point in the poem marks the first in a series of (failed) beginnings for his own character formation. The sense that he is projected from the void of a sublime, metaphysical storm continues in the fight. The absent presence of the crowd in the Olympic simile only serves to amplify the empty space in which Tydeus and Polynices wrestle, especially in its use of the word caueae (1.423); the crowd is metonymically represent as the curved void into which it gathers. The emotional focus throughout is on Tydeus, driven to Argos by his own conscius horror (1.403, a word which further emphasises the sublimity of the situation)43 and he displays a greater level of virtus in his smaller body (sed non et uiribus … corpore uirtus, 1.415–17). Yet in other respects their emotions and displays of quality are shared and the narrator emphasises the ways in which the combatants are identical (similesque Notos dequestus et imbres, 1.404; hic vero ambobus rabiem Fortuna cruentam / attulit, 408–9; tum uero erectus uterque / exsertare umeros, 412–13; iam crebros ictus ora et caua tempora circum / obnixi ingeminant, 418–19). Polynices is once again not mentioned by name (he is simply referred to by a pronoun, ille celsior (1.414), or addressed by the narrator as iuuenis Thebane (1.430)) and it is as if Polynices is mirroring his opponent rather than producing his own set of individual, emotional responses. The uncertainty about identity is made more explicit when Polynices tries and fails to introduce himself to Adrastus. Polynices’ first attempt to introduce

 2018, 329–30. Such direct addresses have their origin in early Greek poetry, cf. Archilochus fr. 109W; Callinus fr. 1W; and Solon fr. 4W. See Mankin 1995 ad loc.; Watson 2003 ad loc. 41 Comparisons are perhaps complicated further by Adrastus’ insistence that these men are externi, behaving like foreigners rather than ciues. The picture is complicated enormously by the multi-national nature of the Argive army (whose ciues set the norm against which this behaviour is measured? How do we know how Argive ciues behave?). However, the tensions and dynamics within the ‘Argive’ force is too large a subject for this chapter. 42 See Bonds 1985, 227–33. 43 For the importance of horror for the sublime, see Hardie 2013, 130–2. On these lines, see Lagière 2017, 245–7.

The Absent Self: Polynices  

himself immediately after Adrastus has broken up the fight results only in an embarrassed aposiopesis; in contrast to Tydeus’ clear and well-ordered introduction (orsus in ordine, 1.451), Polynices cannot bring himself to speak of his family: ‘nec nos animi nec stirpis egentes—’ ille refert contra, sed mens sibi conscia fati cunctatur proferre patrem.

Theb. 1.465–7

‘Nor do I lack courage and race …’ but his heart, conscious of fate, hesitates to announce his father.

Adrastus does not press the point here, but after offering Polynices and Tydeus hospitality, he asks his guest to introduce himself again. After a long silence again provoked by embarrassment and a prevaricating explanation for his avoidance of the question, Polynices can only bring himself to relate his ancestry through his distant ancestors and his mother: deiecit maestos extemplo Ismenius heros in terram uultus taciteque ad Tydea laesum obliquare oculos; tum longa silentia mouit: ‘non super hos diuum tibi sum quaerendus honores, unde genus, quae terra mihi, quis defluat ordo44 sanguinis antiqui: piget inter sacra fateri. sed si praecipitant miserum cognoscere curae, Cadmus origo patrum, tellus Mauortia Thebe, est genetrix Iocasta mihi.’ Theb. 1.673–81 Forthwith the Ismenian hero cast sad eyes down to earth and silently looked askance at the injured Tydeus. Then he broke a lengthy silence: ‘Not at this divine worship should you ask whence my lineage, what my country, what line of ancient blood flows down. I am ashamed to confess it amid the ritual. But if you must know an unfortunate man, my ancestry stems from Cadmus, my land is Martian Thebes, Jocasta is my mother.’

Neil Bernstein has quite rightly read Polynices as: ‘[presenting] himself to Adrastus as a figure of shame … twice unable or unwilling to mention the name of his

 44 Polynices’ hesitation to speak of his ancient bloodline neatly picks up on Tydeus’ ordered and forthright explanation of his own identity, 1.451.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self father Oedipus, he communicates shame through his non-verbal behaviour.’45 If anything, this analysis underplays the extent of Polynices’ problems with selfidentification. It is not simply that he feels more shame at his ancestry than Tydeus does at his exile (Tydeus’ introduction cleverly skates over the reason for his exile, fratricide, by emphasising his relationship with his father Oeneus and their shared descent from Mars, 1.452–65); his familial relationships are especially difficult for him to define; Oedipus is, in a sense, his half-brother as well as his father. Mother and distant ancestors are the only secure ties Polynices has and thus his avoidance of the ‘normal’, androcentric mode of self-identification is understandable. One wonders if, during the storm when he saw undique et undique frater, Polynices is thinking as much of Oedipus as Eteocles. The Theban exile may simply be incapable of saying who he is. Adrastus offers Polynices a way out of this by suggesting that at Argos he has an opportunity to construct a new identity for himself. Initially, the king suggests that Polynices’ identity is impossible to conceal (hospitiis (agnouit enim) quid nota recondis? 1.682), but that he can, by marrying his daughter, construct a new family identity for himself (2.152–72).46 Adrastus is completely and tragically wrong in this belief, of course. Many commentators have noted the tremendous irony that underpins his compassion and optimism in the early books and the inappropriateness of Adrastus’ interpretation of the Linus and Coroebus myth and the blindness towards his own flawed ancestry.47 We the external audience are never fooled by Adrastus’ rhetoric of remodelled identity, for we know that this story can only ever end in mutual fratricide. Yet there is something surprising in the rapidity and the comprehensive way in which Polynices consciously rejects Adrastus’ idea: postquam regales epulas et gaudia uulgi bisseni clausere dies, Ismenius heros respicere ad Thebas iamque et sua quaerere regna.  45 Bernstein 2008, 69–72, quotations from 69, 70. Contrast the confidence of Eteocles in professing his familial identity to Tydeus at Theb. 2.435–6; on the confidence of Hypsipyle in her introduction to the Argives, see below, ch. 4, introduction. 46 See Bernstein 2008, 72–7; cf. Augoustakis 2010, 35–7. 47 On the Linus and Coroebus narrative, see Vessey 1970; 1973, 101–7; Caviglia 1973 ad loc.; Kytzler 1986; Hill 1989, 113–15; Taisne 1994, 238–47; Ripoll 1998, 294–5, 302–4; Franchet-D’Espèrey 1999, 84–5, 376–82; Ganiban 2007, 9–23; McNelis 2007, 25–49; Coffee 2009, 215–17; Gervais 2015, 221–6; and Rebeggiani 2018, 197–233. Adrastus makes light of his own ancestry, 1.689– 90, although he is not at that moment explicit about his descent from Tantalus, a motivation for Jupiter to punish Argos, 1.247, and something Eteocles praises sarcastically in his confrontation with Tydeus, 2.436.

Theorising the Self: Reflexivity and the Search for Difference  

[…]

exedere animum dolor iraque demens et, qua non grauior mortalibus addita curis spes ubi longa uenit. talem sub pectore nubem consilii uoluens Dircen Cadmique negatas apparat ire domos. Theb. 2.306–8, 319–21 Twice six days ended the royal feasting and the people’s celebration. Now the Ismenian hero turns his eyes to Thebes and seeks his own kingdom as well. […] Grief and mad wrath devoured his soul, and hope, heaviest of mortal cares when long deferred. Revolving such a cloud of counsel in his breast, he makes ready to go to Dirce and the forbidden home of Cadmus.

As soon as the twelve days of celebration of his marriage are complete, Polynices begins retracing the metaphysical journey he made in the first book of the poem. It is as though Polynices has not developed in any way since he left Thebes and went into exile. The madness that was the leitmotif of his journey to Argos is again visible (demens, 2.319) while the image of the cloud in his heart alludes to the storm through which he travelled (seb pectore nubem, 2.321).

. Theorising the Self: Reflexivity and the Search for Difference Why is it that marriage does not, as Adrastus had hoped, have any impact upon Polynices’ conception of himself?48 Certainly, Anthony Giddens’ theory of reflexivity can help us to understand the competing narratives of self which we see in Polynices at Argos and their relationship to the shame he feels at his own familial identity. Such a theoretical basis ought to be particularly apt for an individual so predicated upon mirroring and doubling, yet Polynices cannot use reflexivity to construct a sense of self; he is stuck with the belief that his restoration to the throne of Thebes will allow him to transcend both the shame at his rejection by his own society and the inherent, genetic shame caused by his parents.49 His ideal ego is predicated solely upon supplanting his brother. Therefore the construction of his identity is flawed, as it fails to recognise the change in his social status

 48 On the marriage of Argia and Polynices seen especially in elegiac terms, see Newlands 2016, 151–65. 49 On shame, see Giddens 1991, 64–8; Bernstein 2008, 65–104.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self caused by his marriage to Argia; he fails to play the normalised social role of husband and reconfigure his identity accordingly. In Gill’s terms, Polynices’ rejection of the roles of husband, father, guest and Argive prince represent an absence of the second half of the ‘objective-participant’ model. The inability to perform proper social roles denotes a failure of proper subjectivity. Polynices cannot acknowledge the fluidity in the individual’s relationship with society and refuses to engage in the vital processes of negotiation, change and development which underpin reflexivity.50 It is Polynices’ irrational and fantastic desires which remove his ability to fit comfortably into Argive society. Within the context of Roman epic, this Greek hero has the opportunity to become another Aeneas.51 He has left his former home city behind him, he has found a new home and, by marrying a local princess, has an opportunity to found a new race. When Polynices struggles for a second time to announce himself, Adrastus asks him why he hides what is well known with a verb, recondis (1.682), which suggests an inversion of the theme of foundation so important to Virgil’s Aeneid (cf. e.g. Aen. 1.5, 1.33, 12.886);52 Adrastus senses Polynices’ unwillingness to integrate into society. Whereas for Virgil’s Aeneas, Lavinia could replace her absent double Creusa, there is no adequate substitution for Polynices in marriage. The failure of Polynices to perform or reflect upon his new social role is made evident by his interaction with Argia, his new bride: sed fida uias arcanaque coniunx senserat utque toris primo complexa iacebat aurorae pallore uirum, ‘quos, callide, motus quamue fugam moliris?’ ait ‘nil transit amantes. sentio, peruigiles acuunt suspiria questus, numquam in pace sopor. quotiens haec ora natare fletibus et magnas latrantia pectora curas admota deprendo manu!’ Theb. 2.332–9 But his faithful wife sensed his secret urge to be away. Lying on their bed at the first pale of dawn, her arms around him: ‘Trickster’ she said ‘what moves, what flight are you plotting? Nothing escapes a lover. I feel it, sighs sharpen your sleepless complaints, never do you slumber in peace. How often when I touch you do I catch your face awash with tears and your breast barking grievous cares!’

 50 Giddens 1991, 52–5, 85–8, 214–15. 51 Polynices regularly imitates, or fails to imitate, Aeneas; see in this chapter, passim. 52 On Virgil’s use of condere, see Rimell 2015, 39–62, esp. 57–62.

Theorising the Self: Reflexivity and the Search for Difference  

Argia’s use of the epithet callide suggests a comparison between Polynices and Odysseus.53 Yet Polynices is a kind of inverted Odysseus; he has already completed an epic journey and survived a tremendous storm (a kind of land-based shipwreck narrative), but instead of rejoicing in the construction of a new and alternative oikos, he decides, in a moment of debased nostos, to return to his starting point by making a quasi-Iliadic journey to Thebes. The notion of Polynices as a mirror-image of Odysseus is confirmed by the rather bizarre image of his heart barking great cares, one which Statius has taken from Odyssey 20:54 τοῦ δ᾽ ὠρίνετο θυμὸς ἐνὶ στήθεσσι φίλοισι: πολλὰ δὲ μερμήριζε κατὰ φρένα καὶ κατὰ θυμόν, ἠὲ μεταΐξας θάνατον τεύξειεν ἑκάστῃ, ἦ ἔτ᾽ ἐῷ μνηστῆρσιν ὑπερφιάλοισι μιγῆναι ὕστατα καὶ πύματα, κραδίη δέ οἱ ἔνδον ὑλάκτει. Homer Odyssey 20.9–13 But the heart was stirred in his breast, and much he debated in mind and heart, whether he should rush after them and deal death to each, or suffer them to lie with the insolent suitors for the last and latest time; and his heart growled within him.

The quoted passage is immediately followed by a simile comparing Odysseus to a bitch defending her puppies (20.14–16). In the Odyssey, Odysseus is moved to anger by the sight of the suitors and can only calm himself after some considerable effort and the intervention of Athene. The comparison highlights Polynices’ failure to reflect on his new social status: Odysseus’ act of revenge takes place in the context of the reconstitution of his family after his twenty-year absence. Polynices has already completed his own ‘odyssey’ in reaching Argos and hopes to abandon that in favour of what will ultimately be a failed act of vengeance. Statius externalises the process by which Polynices affirms a regressive and self-destructive nature. Argia, by her observation of Polynices’ mental state and by her telling re-appropriation of the language of the Odyssey, highlights her husband’s failure to embrace the new identity offered to him by Adrastus. Seen in these terms, Polynices’ rejection of a new identity is a symbolisation of the competition  53 For Odysseus as callidus, see Sen. Tro. 522–3; Stat. Ach. 1.846–7; cf. Quint. IO 6.3.96; Porphyrio Commentum in Horati Carmina 1.6.7.2–3. For Polynices’ return to ‘elegiac’ wandering, see Lagière 2017, 239. 54 Although the reading of latrantia at 2.338 is uncertain: it is the reading in the usually reliable manuscript P and my reading in connection with Odyssey 20 is also supported by Ennius Ann. 481 Skutsch, animusque in pectore latrat. Hall et al. 2007, ad 2.338 read iactantia with ω and Hershkowitz 2016, 133 n.12 reads this as an allusion to Jupiter’s emotional state at Aen. 1.227. See Gervais 2017, ad loc.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self between two social structures: the kingship at Thebes and married life as a member of the royal family at Argos. Even at the moment of marriage and incorporation into a new family, Polynices refuses to let go of the fundamental madness upon which identity is predicated and he returns obsessively to the moment of exile: tum quos excedens hilares quis cultus iniqui praecipuus ducis et profugo quos ipse notarat ingemuisse sibi, per noctem ac luce sub omni digerit. exedere animum dolor iraque demens et qua non grauior mortalibus addita curis spes ubi longa uenit. Theb. 2.316–21 Every day and night he makes the count; whom had he himself noted rejoicing as he left, who paid particular court to the unrighteous ruler, and who had a tear for the fugitive? Grief and mad wrath devoured his soul and hope, heaviest of mortal cares when long deferred.

And therein lies the cause of Polynices’ problems with identity. He focuses on the only point at which he can see a distinction between himself and his brother which he interprets as his only moment of self-definition. The point of exile decides which brother he is going to be;55 the construction of identity is therefore a repetitive process which one twin cannot understand without the other. Yet the very existence of this supposed point of definition precludes the possibility of identity formation. Notions of reflexivity illustrate what Polynices does not do in terms of constructing a proper sense of self – he refuses to define himself by the institutions of marriage and family which are given him in Argos (indeed Eteocles also, albeit sarcastically, makes a similar suggestion, 2.430–9). Similarly, the theory of subjectivisation shows Polynices caught permanently at the point of self-conception, caught at the moment of loss but unable and unwilling to fill that existential space with Argive Culture and instead clinging haplessly onto his Theban, Oedipal Nature. René Girard’s early essay ‘Symmetry and Dissymmetry’ interrogates the Oedipus myth and charts his first moves towards his ideas of mimetic desire, mimetic rivalry and scapegoat mechanisms.56 The idea of difference is constructed out of readings of the Oedipus myth in Greek tragedy, but Girard’s theory  55 Here I disagree with Coffee 2009, 241–6, who highlights differences between the brothers; the difference is, in my reading, simply the toss of a coin. 56 Girardean ideas of sacrificial crisis have been hugely influential in readings of Flavian epic, see especially Hardie 1993, 20–2; for a contrasting interpretation, see Coffee 2009, 47–9, 242–6.

Theorising the Self: Reflexivity and the Search for Difference  

applies equally well to tragedy’s re-inscription by Statius in the codes of Roman epic. Eteocles and Polynices are: ‘those Sames whom nothing separates but mythical difference which provokes and transfigures the convergence of desires. Each of them sees himself turn by turn as sole heir or disinherited depending on the position of the Other.’57

Difference becomes an illusion which is established only by positioning relative to one another and maintained constantly. Desperate to create an identity independent of Eteocles, Polynices sees his return to Thebes and killing of his brother as the only way to establish his own uniqueness. The twin brothers collapse into a single structure. The result is mutual fratricide at the poem’s climax and the reduction of Eteocles and Polynices and all the conflict they symbolise into a double flame rising from the funeral pyre and twisting in on itself. Polynices’ journey into the wilderness, to acculturation and socialisation at Argos only represents self-deceit and not self-definition; as the brothers attempt to distinguish themselves from one another, the illusion of difference serves only to make them more and more similar: ‘The elements of the structure are mutually reinforcing. Conflict feeds on symmetry and it renders symmetry ever more exact. As identity between the partners in conflict becomes more perfect, the illusory difference never ceases to widen. One ends up with a line-by-line and point-by-point opposition between the object and its mirror image. Accusations become ever more obstinate and ever more earnest at the same time that non-difference and uniformity become more glaring at the level of the collectivity. Henceforth everyone perceives non-difference as the truth of the structure.’58

Yet Polynices’ inability to establish for himself an independent identity is further emphasised at an intertextual level. Debra Hershkowitz has thoroughly examined the way in which this bedroom scene with Polynices and Argia and the subsequent scene in book 3 where Argia implores her father to start a war with Thebes (of which more in a moment) represent a failed intertextual repetition of the famous ‘parce metu’ scene in Aeneid 1 between Venus and Jupiter.59 hic breue tandem risit Echionius iuuenis tenerumque dolorem

 57 Girard 2004, 71. 58 Girard 2004, 77. 59 Hershkowitz 2016, esp. 131–9, who also explores this scene’s affiliation to Luc. 5.734–8. For Argia’s pose as an abandoned elegiac heroine in this scene, see Bessone 2002, 191–9. See also Bernstein 2008, 94–7.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self coniugis amplexu solatus et oscula maestis tempestiua genis posuit lacrimasque repressit: ‘solue metus animo […]’ Theb. 2.352–6 352 tantum Hall Here at length the young Echionian briefly laughed and comforted his wife’s tender grief with an embrace, planting timely kisses on her sad eyes and checking her tears: ‘Loose fears from your heart […]’

Polynices plays the role of Jupiter in his attempt to placate his wife and Argia plays Venus. Yet this is another role which Polynices is ill-suited to play. Not only is he unable to see into his own future (being mortal), he overplays the role of ‘big strong male comforting weak hysterical female’ by ‘[laughing] a laugh ringing hollow with nervous overcompensation.’60 Despite Polynices’ assurances that all will be well, we and Argia can see that he is merely playing the role of Jupiter (whose message that all will be well is essentially genuine) and playing it badly. Polynices is constantly holding back his real emotions (magna lacrimas incluserat ira, 2.315; exedere animum … ubi longa uenit, 2.319–21), but fails even to keep this from his new wife, as Argia herself comments (nil transit amantes, 2.335).61 Polynices’ inability to fulfil the expectations placed upon him by Statius’ careful intertextual play mirror his inability to fulfil the socio-genetic expectations placed upon him as husband and member of a different royal family in Argos. Instead it is that essential incompleteness in him, the lack of identity-formation that we saw played out in his journey from Thebes to Argos that undermines his ability to play the role of a Virgilian Jupiter adroitly or to be a royal spouse in Argos.

. Polynices and the Search for the Self This overwhelming lack of self-awareness is also apparent in Polynices’ reaction to the spectacular failure of his companion’s embassy on his behalf to his brother in Thebes. Tydeus returns to Argos bloodied but unbowed, having indulged himself in a fruitless shouting match with Eteocles and then having defeated the fifty

 60 Hershkowitz 2016, 131, 134 – although perhaps an over-reading of breve risit. 61 Hershkowitz 2016, 135–6 also shows how the eroticisation of the scene is an inappropriate re-working of Polynices’ role as a ‘Jupiter’ figure. Argia, by contrast, plays two roles, that of Venus and that of the abandoned lover, rather well.

Polynices and the Search for the Self  

men the Theban king sent to ambush him. Tydeus gives an emotional speech inspiring the Argives to war as he staggers though the palace doors (3.348–64), but this is marvellously undercut as Polynices indulges himself with masterful moment of misinterpretation:62 trepidi de sedibus adstant Inachidae, cunctisque prior Cadmeius heros accurrit uultum deiectus et ‘o ego diuis inuisus uitaeque nocens qui haec uulnera cerno integer. hosne mihi reditus, germane, parabas? in me haec tela dabas? pro uitae foeda cupido! infelix fratri facinus tam grande negaui. at nunc uestra quidem maneant in pace serena moenia nec uobis tanti sim causa tumultus hospes adhuc. scio, nec me adeo res dextra leuauit, quam durum natis, thalamo quam triste reuelli quam patria. non me ullius domus anxia culpet respectentue truces obliquo lumine matres. ibo libens certusque mori, licet optima coniunx auditusque iterum reuocet socer: hunc ego Thebis hunc, germane, tibi iugulum et tibi, maxime Tydeu, debeo.’ Theb. 3.365–81 The sons of Inachus start from their seats towards him in agitation and before them all the Cadmean hero runs up with countenance downcast: ‘Oh hated of the gods and guilty in my life that I am, do I see these wounds myself unscathed? Was this the return you prepared for me, my brother? Were you aiming these weapons at me? Oh hideous lust of living! Wretch that I am, I denied my brother so great a crime. But now, friends, let your walls at least rest in tranquil peace, nor let me be the cause for you of such commotion. I am still but a guest. I know (or has good fortune raised me up so far) how hard it is and sad to be torn from children and wife and fatherland. Let no man’s home blame me for its distress, no angry mothers eye me askance. I shall go willingly to certain death, though my best of wives and her father, whom I heard before, call me back a second time. I owe this throat to Thebes, to you, brother, and to you, great Tydeus!’

The substance of the speech is that Polynices, feeling guilty that Tydeus has risked his life for him, offers himself as a substitute for Tydeus, willing to sacrifice his own life so that Argos may have peace with Thebes. However, Polynices is clearly attempting to elicit sympathy from his Argive audience and encourage them to fight a war on his behalf (sic uariis praetemptat pectora dictis / obliquat preces, 3.381–2). Furthermore, there still seems to be fluidity in his social status;  62 On Tydeus’ own mental ‘blindness’ at the end of book 2, see Georgacopoulou 1996.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self Polynices regards himself at one moment as a guest (hospes adhuc, 3.374), then is willing to go to Thebes in spite of his wife and father-in-law (licet optima coniunx / auditusque iterum reuocet socer, 3.378–9). Polynices empathises with the Argives who will destroy their own families for his war (scio … / quam durum natis, thalamo quam triste reuelli / quam patria, 3.373–5), yet one wonders whether he is blurring in his own mind the wife he has in Argos, with the fatherland he lost in Thebes. At one level, this is certainly Polynices manipulating his audience’s emotions much as he tried and failed to do with his wife in the previous book. Yet given how recently Polynices was fighting Tydeus as a fraternal substitute, his reaction to his brother’s assault upon his new brother-in-law is surprising in its heightened emotion. The play of sameness and difference and the instability of Polynices’ understanding of identity come to the fore here. Polynices takes the ambush against Tydeus very personally, almost as an assault upon his own person (hosne mihi reditus, germane, parabas? / in me haec tela dabas?, 3.369–70). Should Polynices play the Theban tyrant, or act as a double for Tydeus, or play his own part in Argos? The confusion of identity and substitutions is played out in the speech’s conclusion as the first person pronouns he deployed in the opening lines are replaced by second person ones; Polynices owes his throat both to his twin and to Tydeus (hunc ego Thebis / hunc, germane, tibi iugulum et tibi, maxime Tydeu, / debeo, 3.379–81). Adrastus is not immediately persuaded to go to war by Tydeus and Polynices, but is finally convinced at the end of book 3 by his daughter, as Argia participates in a second ‘parce metu’ scene, this time playing Venus to her father’s Jupiter.63 Adrastus, carried along by fate rather than being its guarantor, will succeed no more in this intertextual repetition than Polynices did, but it is the way in which Argia reveals the failure of her marriage that we shall explore here: ‘nescis, pater optime, nescis quam sit onus castae misero nupsisse marito. et nunc maesta quidem graue et inlaetabile munus ut timeam doleamque rogo; sed cum oscula rumpet maesta dies, cum rauca dabunt abeuntibus armis signa tubae saeuoque genas fulgebitis auro, ei mihi, care parens, reditum fortasse rogabo!’ Theb. 3.704–10 You know not, excellent father, you know not how great a burden it is for a chaste wife to have married an unhappy husband. In sadness now I ask a heavy, joyless gift – to fear and  63 See Hershkowitz 2016, 136–9. Again, she also plays the role of the abandoned elegiac lover, see Bessone 2002, 199–206.

Polynices and the Search for the Self  

grieve. But when the sorrowful day shall break our kisses and the trumpets shall give their harsh signals to the departing host and your faces shall gleam with cruel gold, then, alas, perhaps, dear father, I shall ask for their return.’

Argia persuades Adrastus because of the parlous state of her marriage: ‘[she] is a wretched mortal with an infant and an insomniac husband keeping her up all night.’64 Furthermore, she now understands the difficulty of her situation in geographical terms: ‘the opposition between uxorilocal residence in Argos and virilocal residence in Thebes now structures Argia’s perceptions of her marriage with Polynices.’65 This is, however, subtly different to the way in which her husband views the situation, that is, in terms of exile or nostos (i.e. not in terms of marriage at all!). As Argia’s complaint reaches its climax, the anaphora of nescis (3.704) ties her marriage in intertextual terms to some odd predecessors. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Apollo tries to convince Daphne not to run away by emphasising his status and divine credentials: ‘nescis, temeraria, nescis, quem fugias, ideoque fugis: mihi Delphica tellus et Claros et Tenedos Patareaque regia seruit; Iuppiter est genitor; per me, quod eritque fuitque estque, patet; per me concordant carmina neruis. certa quidem nostra est, nostra tamen una sagitta certior, in uacuo quae uulnera pectore fecit! inuentum medicina meum est, opiferque per orbem dicor, et herbarum subiecta potentia nobis. ei mihi, quod nullis amor est sanabilis herbis nec prosunt domino, quae prosunt omnibus, artes!’ Ovid Met. 1.514–24 ‘You do not know – you flee, you fearful girl, because you do not know. I am the lord of Delphi; Tenedos and Patara and Claros are my realms. I am the son of Jupiter. By me things future, past and present are revealed; I shape the harmony of song and strings. Sure are my arrows, but one surer still has struck me to my heart, my carefree heart. The art of medicine I gave the world and all men call me ‘healer’; I possess the power of every herb. Alas! That love no herb can cure, that skills which help afford to all mankind now fail to help their lord!’

Apollo tries to make himself more attractive by engaging in a powerful process of reflexivity; he states the lands he owns (Delphi, Tenedos, Patara and Claros), his  64 Hershkowitz 2016, 137. On 3.705–6, see Bessone 2002, 201; and 2018b, 20–1, who reads Argia against Propertius’ Arethusa, 4.3.11–12, 49; cf. also Ovid Her. 13.30; Luc. 5.727–8; and Sil. 3.113. 65 Bernstein 2008, 96.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self lineage (as son of Jupiter) and his accomplishments (prophecy, music, medicine). He constructs a new, potential identity for himself and for Daphne which is predicated upon his divine heritage. However over-aggressively or misguidedly, Apollo is trying to make himself a lover of Daphne. Almost the exact opposite is true in Argia’s case; she is now trying to unpick a bond which was ill-omened from the start (mouitque infausta sinistram / Iuno facem, 3.691–2).66 Paradoxically, Argia asks her father for the one thing which will certainly end her marriage (permanently, as it turns out, although she does not anticipate this): for Argos to go to war against Eteocles’ Thebes (da bella, pater, 3.696). The intertextual repetition highlights the way in which Argia deconstructs her and her husband’s socially constructed identity, thus undermining the stability of Polynices’ sense of self in its entirety. Similar processes are also visible in Polynices’ appearance in the catalogue of Argive forces in book 4:67 proxima longaeuo profert Dircaeus Adrasto signa gener cui bella fauent cui commodat iras cuncta cohors : huic et patria de sede uolentes aduenere uiri, seu quos mouet exul et haesit tristibus aucta fides seu quis mutare potentes praecipuum, multi melior quos causa querenti conciliat; dederat nec non socer ipse regendas Aegion Arenenque et quas Theseia Troezen addit opes ne rara mouens inglorius iret agmina neu raptos patriae sentiret honores. idem habitus eadem arma uiro quae debitus hospes hiberna sub nocte tulit: Teumesius inplet terga leo et gemino lucent hastilia ferro, aspera uulnifico subter latus ense riget Sphinx. iam regnum matrisque sinus fidasque sorores spe uotisque tenet, tamen et de turre suprema attonitam totoque extantem corpore longe respicit Argian: haec mentem oculosque reducit coniugis et dulces auertit pectore Thebas. Theb. 4.74–92

 66 Her marriage was also foretold by Apollo, 3.700. The other important intertext is Luc. 8.557– 8, nescis, puer improbe, nescis / quo tua sit fortuna loco. Here Lucan’s narrator rants at the boyking Ptolemy for his audacity in preparing to kill Pompey. The epanalepsis occurs elsewhere at Cic. Parad. 2.17; Mart. 1.3.3. 67 On this passage, see Vessey 1973, 198; Micozzi 2002, 62–4; Bessone 2002, 205–6; Lovatt 2002, 80–2; Micozzi 2007 ad loc.; Parkes 2012 ad loc.

Polynices and the Search for the Self  

Next to aged Adrastus his Dircaean son-in-law displays his standards, he in whose support they fight, to whom the whole army lends its wrath. To him come also volunteers from his native land. Some the exile moves and their loyalty has held, strengthened by misfortune, some chiefly want a change of ruler, many are won to his complaint by his better cause. Moreover, the father-in-law himself had given him Aegion and Arene to rule and the power that Theseus’ Troezen brings, lest he march inglorious leading a scanty force and be conscious of his country’s ravished honours. His dress and arms were those he wore as a destined guest that winter’s night. A Teumesian lion fills his back and the points of two javelins gleam. At his side a threatening Sphinx sits rigid on his wound-dealing sword. Already in hope and prayer he possesses his realm and his mother’s bosom and his faithful sisters, yet he looks far back to Argia as she stands out with all her body from a turret-edge distraught. She calls back her husband’s mind and eyes and turns sweet Thebes from his heart.

This description reflects all of the troubling processes of identity formation which Polynices has undergone thus far. The text constantly flits back and forth from Theban to Argive modes of self-determination. Again, Polynices is not named explicitly, but by an epithet which ties him firmly to his Theban origins (Dircaeus, 4.74), yet also as a son-in-law (gener, 4.75).68 He has a small number of Theban troops who are explicitly motivated to follow him because he is an exile (movet exul, 4.77) and Adrastus, here identified as the father-in-law (socer, 4.80), allots men from the Peloponnesian towns of Aegion, Arene and Troezen (7.80–3)69 in an effort to counterbalance the sense of loss which Polynices feels as an exile, here externally and objectively portrayed as a lack of renown (inglorius, 4.82) and a loss of honours (neu raptos patriae sentiret honores, 4.83). Polynices feels the twin pull of his homeland, possession of his kingdom and an almost sexualised reunification with his mother and sisters (iam regnum matrisque sinus fidasque sorores / spe uotisque tenet, 4.88–9),70 and his wife and new life in Argos. The sense of paradox is renewed as Polynices performs a kind of reverse teichoscopy, staring up at Argia as she leans out of a tower (respicit Argian, 4.91), who turns him away from thoughts of Thebes even as he leaves the city.71 Describing Thebes as sweet (dulces auertit pectore Thebas, 4.92) also seems paradoxical and the focalisation from Polynices’ point of view gives dulces almost the sense of a transferred epithet. Here again, the hero fails to live up to the model of Aeneas; looking back is precisely what Aeneas failed to do in his escape from Troy (nec prius  68 Parkes 2012 ad loc. suggests that: ‘this phrase hints at divided loyalties.’ 69 Parkes 2012 ad 4.80–3: ‘a catalogue oddity which highlights the warped circumstances surrounding the war.’ 70 See Hershkowitz 1998, 278 with Adams 1982, 90–1 on the sexual overtones of matris … sinus. Polynices is at his most Oedipal when remembering his mother and sisters. 71 See Lovatt 2013, 225–32.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self amissam respexi, Aen. 2.741), but what precisely enables him to cement an alliance through marriage to Lavinia in Italy. Polynices instead imitates Virgil’s Orpheus (uictusque animi respexit, Geo. 4.491) whose backward glance at Eurydice proved so destructive.72 Furthermore, the constant shift between Theban and Argive in Polynices’ self-presentation centres around his physical appearance in the catalogue, which is identical to his appearance during the storm (habitus … quae … / hiberna sub nocte tulit, 4.84–5). In re-appearing exactly as he had first appeared in Argos following the sublime and metaphysical storm sequence in book 1, Polynices shows that he has been thus far unable to construct any kind of identity for himself. Polynices’ fundamental inability to play the roles which he might reflexively have constructed for himself in Argos is brought out most powerfully after his death, when Argia journeys to Thebes to bury his body. Her guilt and passion for her dead husband is reflected in visions of Polynices which haunt her. But this is very much the vision of a man who failed to materialise in real life: ipse etiam ante oculos omni manifestus in actu, nunc hospes miserae primas nunc sponsus ad aras nunc mitis coniunx nunc iam sub casside torua maestus in amplexu multumque a limine summo respiciens, sed nulla animo obuersatur imago crebrior Aonii quam quae de sanguine campi nuda uenit poscitque rogos. Theb. 12.187–93 He himself is plain before her eyes in his every act: now, alas, as guest, now her betrothed before the primal altar, now a gentle husband, now under his grim helmet sad in her embrace and often looking back from the outermost threshold; but no image comes to her mind more often than the naked ghost from the blood of the Aonian battlefield demanding burial.

Argia clearly recognises in Polynices all the roles which he seems unable to fulfil; he is guest, groom and husband. As her husband had when he left Argos, Argia

 72 Further play on the comparison with Aeneas is emphasised by the quintessentially Virgilian allusion in arma uiro, 4.84. Cf. Landrey 2014. Virgil compares Orpheus to another Theban, Pentheus, Geo. 4.520–2; both are torn apart by Maenads. The extended comparison between Polynices and Argia, on the one hand, and Aeneas and his series of partners (Creusa, Dido, Lavinia) has implications for the end of the Thebaid and the poem’s relationship with the Aeneid, see below ch. 4.5. For Polynices failing to live up to the example of Hercules, see Rebeggiani 2018, 136–8. Like Ginsberg 2019, I am not totally sold on the Neronian ramifications of this identification.

Polynices and the Search for the Self  

focuses in on the Orphic moment of looking back. Her vision suggests that, this time, the roles are reversed. Although Polynices is again the man looking back at his wife, it is he who has died and is looking for consolation in his afterlife (here through the act of burial) and he who is the vision produced before Argia’s eyes (ante oculos … manifestus). Polynices once again provides us with an instance of failed intertextual imitation; he gets his part as Orpheus all wrong. What is more, the way in which Argia fools herself about who her husband is combined with his awkward failure to follow a literary exemplum underlines the instability of his identity. This absence of stable identity is equally visible in the much longer horse race depicted in the games celebrated for the death of the infant Opheltes as the Argive army passes through Nemea (6.296–549). Both Helen Lovatt and Stefano Rebeggiani have very thoroughly analysed this passage,73 unpicking in particular Statius’ multiple intertextualities, assessing the especial correspondence between Polynices and Ovid’s Phaethon and the political implications of such an identification, but there are a number of issues surrounding his identity to consider. We have already witnessed the way in which the intertextual comparison with Xenophon destabilizes Polynices’ identity.74 Furthermore, Polynices is constructed by Adrastus in terms of his familial relationship; he is his son-in-law (this epithet frames the narrative: genero 6.316, generum 549) and he his father-in-law (socero … Adrasto, 6.512), yet Adrastus’ horse Arion clearly sees Polynices’ identity in Theban terms (senserat adductis alium praesagus Arion / stare ducem loris, dirumque expauerat insons / Oedipodioniden, 6.424–6): ‘the weight of Oedipodioniden, taking up half a line, emphasises the inevitability of Polynices’ inheritance.’75 As in the opening book, Polynices is never named, but only accorded epithets which identify him as Theban (Labdacides, 6.451; Echionides, 6.467; exul / Aonius, 6.504–5; Thebane 6.513) and link this moment back to the issue of his confused identity in the first book (cf. exul … Oediponionides, 1.312–13). Tellingly, Polynices himself is unable to provide his (internal) audience with any guidance on the subject of his identity; he remains silent throughout book 6, even when his chariot is out of control (solus Echionides errante silentia curru / maesta tenet, 6.467–8).76 As the fiery model which Phaethon provides starts to spill over

 73 Lovatt 2005, 23–40, esp. 32–9; Rebeggiani 2018, 103–14; cf. also Georgacopoulou 1996b. 74 See above, xviii–xxi. 75 Lovatt 2005, 34 and n.34. 76 Again we are reminded of Polynices as ‘elegiac’ wanderer, errante curru, as his chariot wanders out of control; see Lagière 2017, 240. I am less convinced by the reading of Polynices as a ‘poet figure’, see Lovatt 2005, 36–40.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self into the text and Polynices’ horses are depicted by Statius as literally burning with flaming eyes, smoking noses and burning bridles in their eagerness to run (6.396–9), the aesthetic of the sublime again emerges. This fiery vocabulary certainly fits notions of sublimity as much as the storm-drenched language of the opening book, but the comparison is made more explicit by the simile which underpins Statius’ description of the chariot team:77 amnibus hibernis minor est minor impetus igni, tardius astra cadunt, glomerantur tardius imbres, tardius e summo decurrunt flumina monte. Theb. 6.407–9 Not so swift the rush of winter rivers, not so swift the rush of fire. More slowly fall stars, more slowly rain clouds gather, more slowly run torrents down from a mountaintop.

The swiftness of the horses is compared to a series of sublime, meteorological phenomena which can only evoke the metaphysical storm of the opening book. Polynices’ own silent and terrified reaction to the impending disaster mimics the awed reaction of the individual to the sublime object (trepidaque timet se uoce fateri, 6.468). The forced collision of man and beast (Nature and Culture?) in the narrative of the games reinforces at its heart the essential and consistent problem of Polynices’ identity. It is not simply a case of contesting his state of being, where Adrastus tragically misreads as son-in-law while his horse instinctively comprehends him as dirum (6.425). Rather, the sense of self remains void, entirely undetermined, unfilled as yet, in Žižek’s language, by any coherent process of subjectivisation. Polynices’ silence evokes the lack at the heart of his selfhood and, as he raises himself from the ground where he left his chariot and was narrowly missed by those pursuing him, his companions find him submerged in darkness (tandem caligine mersum / erigit adcursu comitum caput, 6.511–12); the extraordinary turn of phrase picks out through external and objective characterisation (Polynices is in dark mood because he has just lost a chariot race and will be in need of consolation, generum famula solatur Achaea, 6.549) the internal absence at the heart of his sense of self.

 77 The triple repetition of tardius makes for a marked contrast with the acceleration of Polynices’ first appearance, 1.377.

Mirroring the Self: Polynices at Thebes  

. Mirroring the Self: Polynices at Thebes Given the consistency with which Polynices is portrayed both at Argos and in his return journey to Thebes, it is no surprise to see similar ideas depicted in the ‘Iliadic’ half of the poem as he builds towards his fateful, final duel with his brother. His first confrontation is with his mother who emerges, like a Fury (Eumenidum velut antiquissima, 7.477), from the city, in the company of her daughters, to persuade her son and the Argive army not to fight against Thebes. The manner in which Jocasta depicts her son is once again telling for his identity formation:78 uenit attonitae Cadmeius heros obuius et raptam lacrimis gaudentibus inplet solaturque tenens, atque inter singula, ‘matrem, matrem’ iterat, nunc ipsam urgens nunc cara sororum pectora. cui mixta fletus anus asperat ira: ‘quid molles lacrimas uenerandaque nomina fingis, rex Argiue, mihi? quid colla amplexibus ambis inuisamque teris ferrato pectore matrem? tune ille exilio uagus et miserabilis hospes?’ Theb 7.492–500 The Cadmean hero comes to the distracted woman and takes her, filling her with tears of joy, comforting as he holds her and repeating between this and that: ‘Mother, mother’ now pressing her to his breast, now his dear sisters. But the old woman sheds harsh tears mixed with anger: ‘Argive king, why do you feign tender tears and reverend names for me? Why circle my neck with embraces and hug your hated mother with iron-clad breast? Are you the wandering exile, the pitiable guest?’

i mecum patriosque deos arsuraque saltem tecta uide, fratremque (quid aufers lumina?) fratrem adloquere et regnum iam me sub iudice posce Theb. 7.507–9 Come with me and at least look upon your country’s gods and the dwellings you’re about to burn and your brother (why do you look away?), speak to your brother and claim the throne with me now as arbiter.

Initially it seems as if this is the homecoming for which Polynices has been searching since the opening of the poem; the tearful reunion with his family suggests that the Theban hero (as he is identified here, 7.492) has finally found the

 78 On Jocasta in book 7, see Smolenaars 2008; and Dietrich 2015, 307–13.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self coherent identity which has been lacking throughout. There are worries, as always, with this family’s sense of cohesion; the repeated cry matrem, / matrem (7.494–5) would be unexceptionable in any other, but one wonders quietly if Polynices is having trouble distinguishing mother and sisters at this point (the mother-son relationship being one of the few secure familial ties in Oedipal Thebes).79 More powerfully, Jocasta begins her plea for peace by thoroughly rejecting the markers which her son might have used for his own identity formation. For her, he is not a Cadmeius heros but an Argive king (rex Argivi, 7.498); a series of rhetorical questions instantly undermine his potential status as dutiful Theban son; she accords him a very much Argive identity, as exile and guest (tune ille exilio vagus et miserabilis hospes, 7.500); the double elision at the beginning of the line (tun(e)ill(e)exilio = tu nil exilio) suggests that nothingness lies at the heart of Polynices’ sense of self.80 Her son’s reaction to her request to come to Thebes and negotiate with his twin brother is telling (quid aufers lumina? 7.508); he instinctively looks away at this point and his emotional reaction only illustrates his desire to avoid mirroring his double. Nonetheless, Jocasta’s imprecations to her son and his army do have the desired effect, albeit temporarily. Desire for the throne of Thebes is put aside for one second as the exiled brother embraces his mother and sisters once again, yet the absence of desire is troubling in itself: ipse etiam ante oculos nunc matris ad oscula uersus nunc rudis Ismenes nunc flebiliora precantis Antigones, uariaque animum turbante procella exciderat regnum Theb. 7.534–7 He himself before their eyes turns to kiss his mother, now innocent Ismene, now Antigone as she entreated with yet more copious tears. A conflicting tempest confused his mind and the throne was forgotten.

The absence of desire for rule of Thebes does not produce calm in his mind, but a further storm, again evoking the metaphysical tempest which clouded Polynices  79 For the sexual overtones of teris, see Smolenaars 1994 ad loc., citing Adams 1982, 183; Bessone 2018b, 23–4 with Prop. 3.20.6, 4.7.93–4. See above for Polynices’ disconcerting reactions to his mother. 80 The phrase evokes Dido’s surprised reaction to Aeneas appearance at Troy, tune ille Aeneas quem… Aen. 1.618. Like Polynices, Aeneas is a wandering exile and (soon to be) an unhappy guest; the contrast comes in that Dido is able to identify the Trojan by his well-known family connections, Anchises and Venus, whereas Jocasta rejects those of Polynices. A similar double elision is used by the Argonauts of Phineus (tune ille Odrysiae Phineus rex … Val. Fl. Argo. 4.467) who has also lost everything he once had.

Mirroring the Self: Polynices at Thebes  

at the beginning of the poem. The moment of potential peace is immediately shattered by Tydeus, who reminds the Argives of the treachery with which he was received at Thebes (7.539–59). The ending of his speech is telling, illustrated by a simile which likens the wavering resolve of the Argive forces to a storm: ‘finge autem pactis euictum excedere regnis, nempe iterum reddes?’ rursus mutata trahuntur agmina consiliis: subito ceu turbine caeli obuius aduersum Boreae Notus abstulit aequor. arma iterum furiaeque placent: fera tempus Erinys arripit et primae molitur semina pugnae. Theb. 7.558–63 ‘But suppose he gives way, suppose he vacates the throne as agreed: will you give it back again?’ Once more the army changes, swayed by his counsel; as with a sudden revolution in the sky the South Wind meets North Wind and takes the adverse sea. Once again arms and madness are in favour. The fierce Erinys seizes her moment and sets in place the seeds of the first battle.

The simile further underlines the point that the momentary desire to avoid conflict is not like calm as opposed to storm, but rather is two conflicting storm winds meeting one another and providing a moment’s pause. The language links neatly with the metaphysical storm which underpins Polynices’ character in this poem. Yet perhaps more disconcerting is the way in which Tydeus ends his own harangue to the Argive troops. He concludes his speech by addressing Polynices directly and asking, if the process of annual alternation is renewed, whether he might return Eteocles to power (nempe iterum reddes? 7.559). Whilst Tydeus’ martial logic is clear – we might as well have done with this conflict here and now rather than defer it for another year – the understanding which underpins the question reflects that, even for Polynices’ new ‘brother’ and for the individual who mirrored his own brother when they first met, he is indistinguishable from his twin; if negotiations were to be successful, it would only end up with an exile Eteocles returning at the head of a foreign army to besiege Thebes next year. Nothing could make clearer the point that these brothers are interchangeable. A similar sense of nihilism is produced when Polynices hears of the death of Tydeus at the beginning of book 9. His closest ally’s death reduces him to despair and an attempt at suicide and he gives a speech which makes reference to their initial confrontation in Argos in book 1 and Tydeus’ failed embassy in book 3.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self Indeed this speech has clear parallels with the one which Polynices made in the third book on his substitute brother’s return from Thebes:81 ‘hasne tibi, armorum spes o suprema meorum, Oenide, grates haec praemia digna rependi, funus ut inuisa Cadmi tellure iaceres sospite me? nunc exul ego aeternumque fugatus quando alius misero ac melior mihi frater ademptus. nec iam sortitus ueteres regnique nocentis periurum diadema peto: quo gaudia tanti empta mihi aut sceptrum quod non tua dextera tradet? ite, uiri, solumque fero me linquite fratri: nil opus arma ultra temptare et perdere mortes. ite, precor: quid iam dabitis mihi denique maius? Tydea consumpsi! quanam hoc ego morte piabo? o socer o Argi o primae bona iurgia noctis alternaeque manus et longi pignus amoris ira breuis, non me ense tuo tum, maxime Tydeu, cum poteras, nostri mactatum in limine Adrasti! quin etiam Thebas me propter et inpia fratris tecta libens, unde haud alius remeasset, adisti, ceu tibimet sceptra et proprios laturus honores.’ Theb. 9.49–67 ‘Is this the thanks, last hope of my arms, son of Oeneus, this the worthy reward I have repaid, that you lie a corpse on the hated earth of Cadmus while I survive? Now indeed I am an exile, banished forever, since my other and better brother has been taken from me. Alas! I no longer seek the old lottery and the perjured crown of a guilty royalty. What do I care for joys so dearly bought or a sceptre that your hand shall not deliver? Go, warriors, and leave me alone to my savage brother. No need to try arms further and waste deaths. Go, I pray. What greater thing will you give me now? I have consumed Tydeus. With what death shall I atone for this? O father-in-law, O Argos, O the healthy brawl of that first night, the blows we traded and the brief anger, pledge of long affection! Why was I not slain then by your sword, great Tydeus, on our father Adrastus’ threshold – you could have done it. No, on my account you went willingly to Thebes and my brother’s impious dwelling, whence no other would have returned, as though to win the sceptre for yourself and honours of your own.

The instability of identity is again visible in Polynices’ grief. The land to which he has returned is now hated (inuisa Cadmi tellure, 9.51); indeed, this is the way in

 81 For the parallels with Mezentius’ speeches at Aeneid 10.846–56, 861–6, see Dewar 1991 ad Theb. 9.49–76. For the psychological complexity generated in this speech, see Lagière 2017, 244.

Destroying the Self: The Construction of Identity  

which he himself is so often identified by the narrator (as Cadmeius heros).82 Polynices now designates himself as a permanent exile (exul ego aeternumque fugatus, 9.52). Line 53 is quite possibly spurious, but, if it is an explanatory interpolation, it clearly illustrates the way in which he sees Tydeus as his substitute brother.83 This is certainly the emotional force when Polynices imagines Tydeus winning the throne of Thebes for himself (ceu tibimet sceptra et proprios laturus honores, 9.67).84 In an interesting play on the constant theme of absent identity and nihilism, Polynices imagines his death at various moments of the narrative, including Tydeus killing him on Adrastus’ doorstep (non me ense … in limine Adrasti, 9.63–4), perhaps also his own death (now as substitute for Tydeus!) in the ambush following his embassy (unde haud alius remeasset, 9.66) and now at the hands of his actual brother (ite, uiri, solumque fero me linquite fratri, 9.57); Polynices would willingly remove himself entirely from the Theban narrative to facilitate Tydeus’ return. Instead, he sees himself as Tydeus’ destroyer in an extraordinary phrase (Tydea consumpsi, 9.60) which evokes Tydeus’ own act of cannibalism85 and, perhaps, more mercantile imagery,86 but more potently provides us with a sense of Tydeus’ total annihilation.87 He has become, for the individual with an empty sense of identity, the perfect substitute, one who is now entirely absent himself.

. Destroying the Self: The Construction of Identity In a sense, the whole of the Thebaid has been an extended series88 of narrative pauses which have delayed89 the process of identity formation which began during the storm through which Polynices travelled in book 1 and his reunification  82 See Theb. 1.376; 3.366; 7.492. 83 Most manuscripts omit 9.53 although all editors continue to include it, see Dewar 1991 ad loc. 84 These acts of substitution predicated upon Polynices’ unstable sense of identity become infectious during the night missions of book 10. When Thiodamas (himself already a substitute prophet for Amphiaraus) leads a night mission against the Thebans, he and his companions take on the accoutrements of various of the three surviving Seven against Thebes, Adrastus, Capaneus and Polynices, 10.249–61. In the half light of nocturnal combat, Thiodamas, clad in Polynices’ armour (oblatam Polynicis munere grato / loricam galeamque subit, 10.256–7), becomes an indistinguishable double, another unstable brother. 85 So Ahl 1986, 2882 reads these words. 86 I find this reading by Dewar 1991 ad 9.60 less convincing. 87 L&S s.v. consumo 1. 88 L&S s.v. series 1A & B. Cf. Theb. 1.7. 89 On the theme of delay, see Parkes 2012, xvii–xx.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self with his brother in book 11, their duel and mutual fratricide (11.387–573). Although there have been any number of retardations and accelerations in the narrative as family, friends and Furies fight for the brothers’ souls, it is the confrontation between the two, when they actually see each other for the first time since Polynices went into exile, which sets events in rapid and irrevocable motion.90 The twisted logic of identity formation is again visible as Polynices taunts Eteocles: nec mitior ille, ‘tandem,’ inquit, ‘scis, saeue, fidem et descendis in aequum. o mihi nunc primum longo post tempore frater, congredere: hae leges, haec foedera sola supersunt.’ Theb. 11.392–5 No gentler is the other: ‘At last, savage,’ he says ‘you know the meaning of good faith and come down onto a fair field. Now for the first time in so long you are my brother: fight me. These are the only terms, the only covenants that remain.’

Only at this moment does he consider his opponent to be truly his brother (o mihi … frater, 11.394); the act that has separated them throughout the poem, whereby one ruled and the other was in exile, has prevented Eteocles from being, in a literal sense, a ‘brother’. What does Polynices mean by this? At one level, these twins are defined solely and exclusively by their fratricidal action; they cannot be brothers except in death. This can only reinforce the sense that Polynices has not been a brother throughout the poem; but we can go beyond this: Polynices has consistently shown an inability to ‘be’ in any real sense throughout his journey. The heavily-qualified vocative frater (11.394) suspends the verb until the enjambed imperative congredere in the following line; as so often at a key moment of identity formation, the expected sense of being is elided and replaced by a verb which in its essence means ‘come together’. The brothers are enjoying identity for the first time (primum, 11.394) and it is a radically deconstructed sense of self, one which exists only (sola, 11.395) at this moment of mirror-imaging, of reunification, of brother-killing; that is what brotherhood means here and now. The other elements of external, objective identity formation remain problematic. Polynices envies his brother even though he is apparently equal in status: sic hostile tuens fratrem, namque uritur alto corde quod innumeri comites, quod regia cassis

 90 Antigone attempts to stop the duel, 11.354–87, as do Adrastus, 11.424–46, and Pietas, 11.457– 81; the Furies set events in motion, 11.387–423, especially by driving off Pietas, 11.482–96, but they themselves need only stand back and watch, see 11.537–8.

Destroying the Self: The Construction of Identity  

instratusque ostro sonipes, quod fulua metallo parma micet, quamquam haud armis inhonorus et ipse nec palla uulgare nitens: opus ipsa nouarat Maeoniis Argia modis ac pollice docto stamina purpureae sociauerat aurea telae. Theb. 11.396–402 Thus he speaks, eyeing his brother in enmity. For in the depth of his heart he chafes at the other’s countless retinue, his regal helmet, and purple-covered horse, his shield flashing with gold, even though he himself well-accoutred, shining in no common cloak; Argia herself had worked it in Maeonian fashion, wedding golden thread to purple cloth with skilful thumb.

The brother burns to see the differences in his twin, in particular those which mark his status as monarch: the entourage, the regal helmet, the purple gear on his horse, the gold embossed on his shield. These are precisely the sorts of wealthy objects we were told this conflict would not be about (1.144–51, esp. 144, fulua metallo). The act of looking (tuens, 11.396) creates a kind of flawed mirrorstage for Polynices; again he is unable to create an ego for himself because when he looks at his brother he sees difference and not identity. The brief ecphrasis of his cloak (11.400–2), woven by Argia, is an important moment in this final phase of Polynices’ identity. The cloak clearly marks him as equal in status to his brother; both are kings, both are wearing symbols of their equality (quamquam haud armis inhonorus, 11.399; he also has a shield inlaid with gold, clipei … alto … auro, 11.501–2). Polynices ignores some of these symbols (i.e. the ones he himself is bearing) and burns in his heart to look at those of his brother (uritur alto / corde, 11.396–7). Once again, this is an explicit rejection of the thing which externally marks his own identity – the cloak which denotes him as heir to the throne of Argos and husband to Argia (who made it). However, the detail about the weaving of the cloak has unmistakeably metapoetic implications.91 Not only is the connection between weaving and poetry a commonplace of Roman poetry, the description uses language equally appropriate to acts of literary creation (opus … Maeoniis modis … pollice docto … stamina aurea).92 A work produced in Maeonian modes would certainly suggest Homeric epic: a favourite Roman sobriquet for Homer was ‘the Maeonian’. Roman poets, including Statius, frequently refer to Homer as Maeonius or Maeonides.93 However, the phrase pollice docto has a sol-

 91 Compare Opheltes’ woven funeral pyre, 6.54–78. See below, ch. 4.1. 92 On opus as literary and artistic work, see L&S s.v. opus 2.B.2–3. 93 See below, ch. 2.5, on this epithet used of Maeon.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self idly Ovidian ring to it; Ovid uses the same phrase in the Metamorphoses to describe Apollo in his singing competition against Pan plucking the strings of his lyre with an expert thumb (tum stamina docto / pollice sollicitat, Met. 11.169–70); similar language is also used to describe Arachne’s expertise in weaving (siue leui teretem uersabat pollice fusum, / seu pingebat acu; scires a Pallade doctam, Met. 6.22–3).94 Both intertexts make for disconcerting comparisons: Apollo’s sophisticated lyre will defeat Pan’s more rustic, pastoral pipe-playing in the eyes of Tmolus, but not Midas, who is duly punished by Apollo with ass’s ears. Arachne denies her tutelage by Athene and will be transformed into a spider after their contest. The theme of unmerited divine punishment central to the Ovidian narratives seems peculiarly inappropriate for Polynices given the way in which all divine forces abdicate responsibility in book 11 of the Thebaid for the undeniably guilty fratricides. The theme of weaving in conjunction with a Homeric allusion suggests Andromache, who weaves a cloak as she hears of Hector’s death (Il. 22.440–1); more powerfully perhaps, we can also read Penelope as a comparand for Argia at this point, not least given the comparisons drawn between her husband and Odysseus in the first books of the poem. Again, the comparison marks the dissonance between the epic of nostos and familial reunification after twenty years and the poem where these values are corrupted and reduced to a single act of fratricide and Polynices abandons his marriage. As Alessandro Barchiesi has pointed out, Penelope is, in Latin literature, the heroine of elegiac verse as much as epic.95 Where Penelope’s long wait for Odysseus is summarised by her weaving of the shroud, an act which fools her suitors and serves to while away the nights without her husband, Argia weaves a cloak which is differently deceptive. The cloak is a symbol of the conscious disruption of the marriage bonds between Argia and Polynices, of her persuading her father to go to war, it is an object which symbolically created the nights which Argia will spend apart from her husband. Furthermore, it is a sign which Polynices himself cannot read, but marks his resting place when his wife comes to bury him; in effect in becomes the real shroud which Penelope only pretended to weave (Theb. 12.312–15). The cloak also symbolises Argia’s failed attempts to weave Polynices into a nexus of social relations in Argos, that very sense of self which he consistently rejects. The language used for the way in which Argia creates the cloak (nouarat, 11.400) and interweaves purple cloth and gold thread (sociauerat, 11.402) suggests her failed attempt to write for Polynices a new identity and an alternative set of relations and alliances.  94 Cf. also the use of opus at Met. 6.20. 95 See Barchiesi 2001, 34–6.

Destroying the Self: The Construction of Identity  

Throughout the narrative of the duel it becomes increasingly difficult for the observers within the text and, at times, the reader, to distinguish one brother from another. Already when the Furies are arming the brothers they are presented as mirror images of one another: iamque in puluereum Furiis hortantibus aequor prosiliunt, sua quemque comes stimulatque monetque: frena tenent ipsae phalerasque et lucida comunt arma manu mixtisque iubas serpentibus augent. stat consanguineum campo scelus, unius ingens bellum uteri, coeuntque pares sub casside uultus. Theb. 11.403–8 And now at the Furies’ prompting they leap forth into the dusty plain, each with his companion to goad and guide. These themselves hold the reins and order the trappings and shining arms, mingling snakes to enlarge the crests. Kindred crime stands in the field, the mighty battle of a single womb; beneath their helmets twin faces meet.

Even at the moment when Polynices might most easily distinguish himself or assume an identity, he becomes indistinguishable from his brother. Neither is named; the crime of two men is linked by consanguinity (consanguineum … scelus); the faces, obscured by helmets, are undifferentiated (coeunt pares sub casside uultus; cf. again the language of ‘coming together’). Furthermore, they also become hard to separate from the Furies who act as squires and add snakes to the crests on their helmets (mixtisque iubas serpentibus). The whole gigantic battle narrative becomes subsumed within a single womb (unius ingens / bellum uteri) in an extraordinary phrase which brilliantly evokes their unity. Adrastus’ final failed attempt to prevent the mutual fratricide also uses social markers rather than names to distinguish the pair: ‘spectabimus ergo hoc, Inachidae Tyriique, nefas? ubi iura deique? bella ubi? ne perstate animis. te deprecor, hostis (quamquam, haec ira sinat, nec tu mihi sanguine longe), te, gener, et iubeo: sceptri si tanta cupido est, exuo regales habitus, i, Lernan et Argos solus habe.’ Theb. 11.429–35 431 Mars Hall

434 tu Lernan Ppc

‘Sons of Inachus and Tyrians, shall we then watch this wickedness? Where are the laws and the gods, where is war? Persist not in your passion. I pray you desist, my enemy – though did this anger permit, you too are not far from me in blood; you, my son-in-law, I also

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self command. If you so much desire a sceptre, I put off my royal raiment, go, have Lerna and Argos to yourself.’

Adrastus marks Eteocles as hostis and Polynices as gener, but their passions are marked out by a single pluralised prohibition (ne perstate animis). Adrastus here gives Polynices an explicit opportunity to take up the social position as king of Argos which would allow him to construct an alternative identity for himself in a formulation which emphasises the possibility of Polynices’ enjoying an individual sense of self (solus habe). Ironically it is an identity which Adrastus immediately abandons once he sees his attempts at persuasion fail: ut periisse preces geminoque ad proelia fusos puluere cornipedes explorarique furentum in digitis ammenta uidet, fugit omnia linquens, castra uiros generum Thebas, ac Fata monentem conuersumque iugo propellit Ariona Theb. 11.439–42 When he sees his prayers are wasted and the horses galloping to battle in double dust and the madmen fingering their javelin straps, he flees, leaving it all behind: camp, men, sonin-law, Thebes – and drives Arion as he turns in the yoke and warns of Fate.

Adrastus can now only see double trails of dust left by the horses of two interchangeable madmen. His abandonment of the narrative is almost presented as the abandonment of any concept of Polynices as son-in-law (omnia linquens … generum). This inability to separate one brother from another is also true for both armies (who are described as spectators at 11.453–6): bis cassae periere uiae, bis comminus actos / auertit bonus error equos (11.449–50, ‘twice they rode in vain, twice a kindly error made the horses swerve in collision course’). Once all possibility of delay has been put to one side, the brothers’ duel quickly descends into a confusing melee. The combat itself is very much focalised through the armies, whose role as spectators has been heavily emphasised throughout the passage (uersaeque uolunt spectare cohortes, 11.498).96 Initially, the narration maintains distinctions between the two; each brother is identified by social markers (rex impius … tunc exul … exul, 11.499, 503, 516), but already some ‘identifiers’ could apply to either brother (equitis … sedentis … exultat fratris credens hunc ille cruorem, 11.509, 510, 515). However, the distinctions start to break down; when Polynices wounds Eteocles’ horse, both brothers think the  96 For the duel as a gladiatorial spectacle, see Lovatt 2005, 271–3; Ganiban 2007, 176–95; for this spectacle as a sublime image which horrifies its audience, see Lagière 2017, 142–7.

Destroying the Self: The Construction of Identity  

blood spilt is human (credit et ipse metu, 11.516) and are confused about individual bodily integrity. As the fight progresses the brothers, who once again are unnamed, become entirely indistinguishable:97 miscentur frena manusque telaque et ad terram turbatis gressibus ambo praecipitant. ut nocte rates, quas nubilus Auster implicuit frangunt tonsas mutantque rudentes luctataeque diu tenebris hiemique sibique sicut erant imo pariter sedere profundo: haec pugnae facies. coeunt sine more sine arte, tantum animis iraque, atque ignescentia cernunt per galeas odia et uultus rimantur acerbo lumine. nil adeo mediae telluris et enses impliciti innexaeque manus, alternaque saeui murmura ceu lituos rapiunt aut signa tubarum. […] fratris uterque furens cupit adfectatque cruorem et nescit manare suum. Theb. 11.518–30, 39–40 Bridles, hands, weapons mingle, steps are confused and both come crashing to the ground. Even as at night ships that the cloudy South Wind has interlocked with each other break their oars and entangle their rigging and after long struggle with darkness and storm and themselves sink together even as they are onto the ocean floor: such is the shape of the fight. They clash without rule or skill, only with passionate anger; through their helmets they see fiery hate and search faces with hostile glare. There is no ground between them, their swords are interlocked, their hands entwined, and in their rage they catch each other’s sounds like signals of trumpet or bugle. […] Each furiously desires and seeks his brother’s blood and knows not that his own is flowing.

We watch this through the eyes of the spectators and are as confused as they are about which brother is which. There are no names or markers of identity to help us here. There is here an extraordinary density of language of coming together and mixing (miscentur … coeunt … implicit innexae, 11.518, 524, 528, cf. 11.408) as neither brother is individuated (ambo … pariter, 11.519, 523) and the duel takes on the confused identity of its participants (haec pugnae facies, 11.524). The central simile, of two ships colliding in a storm and sinking together intertwined (11.520– 3; cf. turbatis, 11.519) brings us back once more the sublime opening moment of failed identity formation in book 1, but this time there is a sense of fracture and  97 On this aspect, see also Ganiban 2007, 188–90.

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self transformation (frangunt … mutant, 11.521). A second simile likens the brothers to two indistinguishable wild boars fighting one another while a hunter watches in fear: fulmineos ueluti praeceps cum comminus egit ira sues strictisque erexit tergora saetis, igne tremunt oculi lunataque dentibus uncis ora sonant: spectat pugnas de rupe propinqua uenator pallens canibusque silentia suadet. sic auidi incurrunt Theb. 11.530–5 Even as a rush of anger drives boars like thunderbolts against each other, raising their backs in spiky bristles; their eyes quiver with fire, their crescent faces resound with their hooked tusks; the hunter watches the fight from a nearby rock, paling and bids his dogs be silent: so avidly do they run at one another

There is a sense that, as they are about to die, the brothers are becoming something new. As the fight becomes bloodier, the brothers themselves lose track of where they end and the other begins; the notion of bodily integrity again becomes paramount as each mistakes his own flowing blood for that of his twin (11.539– 40). It is only at this point, when Polynices deals a fatal blow to Eteocles, that we get a clear indication of who is wounding whom (tandem inruit exul … alte ensem germani in corpore pressit, 11.540, 542, ‘at last the exile rushes in … and plunges his sword deep into his twin’s body’). After his first, gloating speech (on which more in a moment), the brothers become near impossible to separate once more: Eteocles is described as nefando … duci (11.552–3) which could apply to either, while Polynices is simply frater (11.556). Randall Ganiban, in his discussion of this passage, has noted the ways in which the poet rejects the detail of the duel as presented in the Greek tragic tradition, despite signalling allusion to Euripides by using the simile comparing the brothers to wild boar (cf. Eur. Phoen. 1379–80).98 Polynices also gives us one last failed imitation of Aeneas when he killed trying to strip the armour from his brother (11.560–73; cf. Aen. 12.940–52).99 These pointed failures to imitate literary antecedents accurately underline what these brothers are not: they are not their counterparts in Aeschylus or Euripides; they are not Achilles and Hector, nor Aeneas and Turnus. The final moment of the twins emphasises the confusion we

 98 See Ganiban 2007, 187–189 with Aes. Sept. 888–90; Eur. Phoen. 1412–24. 99 See Ganiban 2007, 190–5.

Destroying the Self: The Construction of Identity  

face as readers of this scene. Once Polynices believes that his brother is truly defeated, he finally accepts not one but both identities for himself and tries to become both exile and monarch: ‘quo retrahis, germane, gradus? o languida somno, hoc regnis effeta quies longaque sub umbra imperia! exilio rebusque exercita egenis membra uides: disce arma pati nec fidere laetis.’ […] ‘bene habet! non inrita uoui, cerno graues oculos atque ora natantia leto. huc aliquis propere sceptrum atque insigne comarum, dum uidet.’ […] ille autem: ‘uiuisne an adhuc manet ira superstes, perfide, nec sedes umquam meriture quietas? i mecum ad manes: illic quoque pacta reposcam, si modo Agenorei stat Cnosia iudicis urna qua reges punire datur.’ nec plura locutus concidit et totis fratrem grauis obruit armis. Theb. 11.548–51, 557–60, 568–73 ‘Where are you retreating to, brother? How languid from sleep and softened by ruling is your idleness! Sovereignty in a long shadow of peace! Here you see limbs hardened by exile and want. Learn to bear privations and not to trust happy times.’ […] ‘It is good. My prayers were not in vain. I see his eyes heavy, his face swimming in death. Here, someone, quick – the sceptre and the badge on his head while he sees!’ […] But the other: ‘Do you live? Or does your anger still remain, surviving you, traitor, who shall never deserve the abodes of peace? Come with me to the shades! There too I shall demand what was agreed, if but stands the Cnosian urn of the Agenorean judge, whereby kings may be punished.’ Saying no more, he fell and covered his brother with the weight of all his arms.

Polynices’ final three speeches to his brother portray the sudden shift from absent identity to a double identity. In the first he taunts his now wounded opponent by suggesting that he lacks the toughness that one acquires in exile; in the second, he intends to put on the symbols of kingship before his brother’s dying eyes; as he dies, Polynices suggests his desire to replay their conflict in the underworld. The continuing play on the idea of identity reflects the uncertainty we have seen in Polynices’ make-up throughout the poem. When he first wounds his twin he vaunts his exile as a source of strength, but any suggestion that he might at last be accepting the identity forged for himself in exile is belied by his eagerness to

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self assume to crown when his brother feigns a more fatal injury (note the urgent, almost ungrammatical staccato of his command, huc propere aliquis, 11.559). As the duel began, the gates of Tartarus were opened and even ghosts sit and watch the brothers fight one another (11.420–4), suggesting a temporal and spatial continuity between the duel outside Thebes and the afterlife of the brothers. As he dies, Polynices confirms what we have long suspected, that his absent identity will continue even in death.

. ecce iterum fratres: On Burying Polynices The ways in which Statius expressed his deep-seated interest in identity formation are undeniably shaped by the absence of subjective, exemplary and individualist ways of considering selfhood. Instead, the poet must rely upon more objective means of describing identity formation. Throughout the poem, Polynices’ potential modes of identity are symbolised through concrete forms: his dress and appearance, his familial connections and his marriage, his potential role as monarch of two different Greek cities. Similarly, a number of intertextual examples are offered to us as readers: will Polynices be a new Odysseus, a Hector, an Aeneas, an elegiac lover or a tragic hero? Our radical reading of this character is that he fulfils none of these possible roles and instead sits outside conventional identity formation. Again, the process of subjectivisation that begins more or less as the poem begins, but is never properly fulfilled, is not one which the poet can discuss in properly metaphysical or idealist terms. Instead he symbolises the absence at the heart of Polynices most powerfully through the sublime imagery of the storm through which he travels but from which he cannot ever emerge fully formed. All these missed opportunities are summarised in the final book of the poem when Argia, with the help of Antigone, finally provides her husband with a proper burial.100 She recognises his body from the cloak she wove, but all the intertextual, exemplary possibilities which that cloak suggested have been hidden (quamquam intexta latent, 12.314). As she addresses the corpse, Argia recalls all of the possibilities for Polynices’ sense of self which she helped to construct and later helped him to reject: ‘dicebam: “quo tendis iter? quid sceptra negata poscis? habes Argos, soceri regnabis in aula: hic tibi longus honos, hic indiuisa potestas.”

 100 On this episode, see Manioti 2016.

ecce iterum fratres: On Burying Polynices  

quid queror? ipsa dedi bellum maestumque rogaui ipsa patrem ut talem nunc te complexa tenerem.’ Theb. 12.333–7 ‘I used to say: “Where are you going? Why demand a sceptre denied you? You have Argos, you will reign in your father-in-law’s palace. Here you have long-lasting dignity, here you have undivided power.” Why do I complain? It was I that gave you war, I that besought my sad father – only to clasp you thus!’

Her recollections provide the poem with an elegant sense of ring-composition. Once again, this husband and wife cannot play their normative roles; Argia takes on the manly role of creating war (dedi bellum, 12.336) and the failure of Polynices to live up to his role as husband is exemplified in the fact that his wife can only embrace him as a corpse (12.337). Whether she realises this or not, it is Argia’s use of adjectives to describe power which reveal the problematic nature of her husband. He could not ever accept an identity which was undivided (indiuisa, 12.335), but instead needed to pursue an identity which would always be denied (negata, 12.333) to him. One last, extraordinary moment is afforded Polynices; as Antigone and Argia complete the burial they find a smouldering pyre on which to burn his corpse (12.420–8). Unfortunately, they choose that of Eteocles, and the flame bursts back into life as one corpse tries to reject the other; twin flames spurt out and swirl around one another (12.429–36) and an earthquake shakes Thebes, finally alerting Creon’s guards to Argia and Antigone’s subterfuge (12.447–51). The moment when the pyre suddenly bursts into flame once more rekindles a familiar theme: ecce iterum fratres. primos ut contigit artus ignis edax, tremuere rogi et nouus aduena busto pellitur: exundant diuiso uertice flammae alternique apices abrupta luce coruscant. pallidus Eumenidum ueluti commiserit ignes Orcus, uterque minax globus et conatur uterque longius: ipsae etiam commoto pondere paulum secessere trabes. conclamat territa uirgo […] Theb. 12.429–36 See, once more the brothers! As soon as the consuming fire touched the limbs, the pile shook and the new arrival is driven from the pyre. The flames gush up divided at the top, flashing two tips in broken light. As though pale Orcus had set the torches of the Furies in conflict, each mass of fire threatens and tries to outstrip the other. The very logs shifted their weight and moved a little way apart. The maiden cries in terror […]

  Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self As the bodies are consumed we see another example of a sublime poetics being used; this fiery destruction acts as a mirror to the stormy ‘creation’ scene in book 1. The violent earthquake (tremuere, 12.430; cf. subitus tremor, 12.447) is a sign of the sublime in action, but more pertinent is the suddenness with which the barely smouldering pyre is transformed into a raging fire (exundant, 431; abrupta luce coruscant, 432), Antigone’s terrified reaction (territa uirgo, 436) and the unnatural character of this occurrence, which provokes the brief simile on the Furies (433–4). The attempt to assert a combinatory identity upon the brothers, here in its most basic physical form as two bodies being cremated together, results in a radical disruption of the natural world. The flame creates an empty space at the centre of the discordant pyre (rogi discordis hiatus, 12.448), a void which mimics the void at the heart of the storm in the first book. At the last, therefore, the shattering experience of sublimity objectifies the void at the heart of Polynices’ sense of self. Polynices’ inability to emerge into a social universe suggests that there is something powerfully disruptive in Statius’ interest in and depiction of selfhood in the Thebaid. As a(n often absent) protagonist in a cast of many characters, Polynices has a vitally programmatic value to an epic poem about Thebes. Yet I would also suggest that his absence of identity throughout the poem reveals something about the nature of politics in the Thebaid. Polynices’ inability to complete the journey through the abstract negativity of violence and conflict and instead indulge himself in an endlessly repetitive duel with his identical twin is precisely why Statius’ Thebes cannot arrive at the proper conclusion of the stable and rational political state.

 Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid . Exemplarity, persona and Identity Our detailed exploration of Polynices’ character was one which revolved around essentially psychological concepts of self, even if these are expressed by the poet in terms which are objective and reflected in ‘character’.1 Yet the main thrust of recent scholarship on characterisation in classical literature has underlined the way in which exemplarity, the use of models for emulation, dominates Roman writing.2 Statius’ densely allusive poetic environment constructs a seemingly endless array of poetic and ethical models for his characters to emulate: ‘The Thebaid provides a rich synthesis of allusive, generic and literary historical concerns … Statius’ self-conscious conventionality in characterization enables particularly original epic effects within the venerable tradition of mythological hexameter poetry. The essentialized character types of the Thebaid impose their own narratives and seem to distort or even hijack the plot of the poem; at times these character-driven narratives trade on their very familiarity to mislead and surprise. These narrative effects reveal the poet’s collusion with the audience in allusive characterization. In yet another sense, these allusions provide a record of the scholarly poet’s intellectual environment and that of his ideal audience.’3

The poetics of characterisation in Roman poetry is built out of the use of exemplary models in Roman historiography and the writing of personae as an exercise in Roman oratory.4 On this kind of reading, characters within literature are constructed out of a series of allusive references to exempla, each of which has a

 1 Livy provides us with an important cross-over from historical to literary exemplarity. In a similar way, Levene 2010, 164–87 explores inconsistency of character in Livy as explained by a focus on ‘character viewpoints’ as opposed to ‘personality view points’. This distinction explains inconsistency in characterisation as a function of character constructed by external, social observation, according to whichever exemplary feature that character is required to portray at any given moment. 2 On historical and ethical exemplarity, see Roller 2018; and Langlands 2018. On Livy, see Feldherr 1998; Chaplin 2000; Roller 2004; 2009; and Levene 2010. On the periochae and the differences between this and Livy’s surviving books, see Levene 2015. On Horace, see Freudenburg 2010. On Valerius Maximus, see Langlands 2011. On Seneca, see Mayer 1991. On Silius, see Tipping 2010; and Stocks 2014. In general on Latin literature after Ovid, see Seo 2013. 3 Seo 2013, 20–1. 4 See Seo 2013, 8–16 with Bloomer 1997 on persona writing and Roller 2004 on historiography. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110717990-002

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid strictly limited referential horizon.5 Thus the inconsistent, sometimes psychologically flat, nature of Roman literary characters is a product of a series of exempla from which they are built. This peculiar feature of Roman characterisation is perhaps most visible in the historiography of Livy, the miscellany writing of the likes of Valerius Maximus and the biographies of Cornelius Nepos. Of great importance to the modern discussion of exemplary characterisation has been the Stoic philosopher Panaetius’ theory of a character built of four personae (the image of theatrical masks is important for the notion of performance), which is given to us by Cicero at de Officiis 1.93–151.6 While Panaetius’ theory as presented by Cicero seems to reflect an increased interest in selfhood (which I would argue reaches a peak in the latter part of the 1st century AD), readings of this passage have emphasised that it presents a socially constructed view of the individual whose identity is held to an externally-comprehended standard of what is right and proper.7 The theatrical metaphor which lurks in the term persona (literally a theatrical mask) suggests that identity is a species of performance; a character built in the manner of a historiographical exemplum or an oratorical, Panaetian persona, performs according to the literary (and/or ethical) models provided for her.8 Thus the act of constructing an individual within a Roman literary text is one which involves using exemplary building blocks to create a highly allusive literary character whose behaviour is appropriate for that particular moment in any given narrative context.

 5 See e.g. Seo 2013, 9: ‘the figure remains singularly associated with both the significant deed and the ethical message.’ 6 See Gill 1988; 2008; and 2010. Langlands 2011, 107 provides the following outline: ‘Cicero outlines and discusses the aspects of an individual’s character and situation that need to be analysed, grasped and taken into account in moral decision-making; these he divides into four personae or roles. The first consists in the essential role common to everyone of being a human being (1.107), the second the specific nature and qualities with which an individual has been endowed (1.107), the third the various social attributes with which chance (casus) or circumstance (tempus) has endowed the individual, such as wealth and rank (1.115), and the fourth the role that he has chosen to take up in his life, such as the career of philosopher, lawyer or orator (1.115). All of these, taken together, form an interlocking framework within which an individual must make his moral choices.’ 7 In addition to the works by Gill cited above, see Sorabji 2006, 157–71; and Langlands 2011, esp. 105–110. 8 Novelty in character is thus constructed in new combinations or the confounding of especially generic expectations, see Seo 2013, 122–85 on Parthenopaeus and Amphiaraus in the Thebaid. This runs in parallel to the notion of a mythical character within the poem providing a powerfully felt, but temporary, allusion to a historical figure, see Rebeggiani 2018, 1–3.

Exemplarity, persona and identity  

The flip side of this sort of reading of character is the way in which a character like Polynices, who failed to live up to his exemplary, literary antecedents (especially Odysseus and Aeneas),9 provides the poet with an anxious, Bloomian poetics which fails to live up to its literary antecedents (especially Homer and Virgil) and the reader with an equally overwhelming model of a poem so dense in its allusivity that even the most sensitive reader cannot hope to encompass all the intertextual possibilities afforded to her.10 ‘Exempla … can replicate themselves like computer viruses, and have a new lease of life as small portable narratives units or as modes of expression adaptable to various contexts or rather as thicker units of form and content, expressing ethical and political imitation.’11

Furthermore, the issues of exemplarity and persona-theory which we can see at work in Roman prose writing are also especially prominent in Flavian epic’s construction of the character of the tyrant. Whereas in the first chapter we explored issues of identity formation in relation to one particular individual (Polynices, who himself has a range of character traits which I would very much regard as ‘tyrannical’), in this chapter we will explore the difficulties in identity formation presented to a class of character. Polynices’ difficulties with identity formation were emblematic of the poem’s identity politics as a whole. Here, we will see the political middle ground of this interaction between character and poem focalised through Polynices’ twin, Eteocles, his uncle, Creon, and the sometime ruling deity of the Thebaid’s universe, Jupiter. Furthermore, (most) other characters within the poem are capable of playing tyrant or displaying tyrannical characteristics at times without actually becoming autocratic rulers themselves. However, Statius takes this process of identity formation one step further. The adoption of the tyrannical persona is, as the metaphor implies, very much presented as the donning of a mask. This mask erases any pre-existing sense of identity which the character may have had either intratextually, that is, if that character, like Creon, were presented in a non-tyrannical role earlier in the poem, or intertextually, that is, if a character, as most of Statius’ characters do, had appeared in earlier literary presentations of the same myth. The role as tyrant takes over.12 Here we are less interested in the process of identity formation than we

 9 For Polynices failing to live up to the example of Hercules, see Rebeggiani 2018, 136–8. 10 Bloom 1973. 11 Barchiesi 2009b, 41. 12 Although this reading presents exemplarity as the ‘bad guy’ of epic poetics, that is, partly at least, because the obviously negative exemplum of the tyrant suggests an authoritarian and topdown creative process where exempla are imposed upon the poet and his characters. For a much

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid were with Polynices, although I would contend that similar processes are implied, if not always actively worked out, in Statius’ tyrants. Rather, we are interested in the political aspect of the identity of the tyrant as he affects the community around him: the individual’s journey through the abstract negativity of violence and conflict has a profound impact upon the polities of Thebes, Argos and Athens. Crucially, each tyrannical individual qua moral subject clings to a morality that is fundamentally flawed. This confounds the possibility of the polis’s becoming a stable, rational, democratic state at least (and perhaps not even then) until Theseus’ intervention provides some form of political closure. Throughout the poem, Statius returns consistently to the notion of tyranny as role to be performed. As we shall see, his tyrants rarely perform the role well; we are constantly presented with a sense of the tyrannical persona as a mask which does not fit terribly well. The tyrants, in this poem at least, do not also succeed in following the exemplary tradition which is presented to them. There are two further conclusions to be drawn from this: firstly, the character of the tyrant is, for Statius, also a meditation on the way in which exemplarity (and its closely related concept, allusive intertextuality) destabilises literary character. Statius’ tyrants struggle to fulfil the exempla which Roman political history provides for them. In its broadest sense, this awkwardness of fit is a function of staging peculiarly 1st-century Roman exemplarity within the literary confines of Greek mythology.13 Secondly, the violent struggle to make the ill-fitting mask of tyranny suitable for these individuals is symptomatic of the wider struggle which the poet undergoes in trying to make his poem fit into its own cultural universe. To begin with, we will explore the concept of ‘tyrant’ as it was presented to the Flavian poet; we will then look closely at how Eteocles, Jupiter and Creon all act as tyrants, but fail to fulfil the exemplary models with which they are presented; we will then explore the ways in which others oppose tyranny within the

 more nuanced reading of exemplarity (although one which, by its own admission, does not much discuss negative exempla) as a dynamic process, see Langlands 2018, esp. 67–85. 13 In this I read somewhat against Rebeggiani 2018, who sees tyrannical characters in the Thebaid as a literary reframing of tyrannical characters and political attitudes in Neronian literature, Seneca and Lucan in particular, which in turn function as literary reframings of the tyrannical and theatrical emperor Nero, who liked to play a lot of these parts himself. He also sees Statius’ tyrants as a warning to Domitian, who is still a positive political force in AD 92, of a political road not to follow. I am not at all averse to the profitable juxtaposition of Statius’ tyrants and Nero, or indeed (less positive readings of) Domitian, but here I highlight the ways in which Eteocles, Creon and Jupiter do not perfectly fit the models established by their historiographical counterparts.

The Rhetorical Tyrant  

poem and how ‘tyranny’ is a mask which any character can adopt or discard; finally, we will see how the very language of tyranny is destabilised within Statius’ poetic programme.

. The Rhetorical Tyrant In March 49 BC, Cicero wrote a letter to Atticus (ad Att. 9.4) in which he claimed that the political situation was so bad that he felt he had run out of material for writing. Caesar had crossed the Rubicon, caused panic in Rome and the flight of much of the senatorial opposition. Cicero was considering how he might oppose him, if at all:14 ego etsi tam diu requiesco quam diu aut ad te scribo aut tuas litteras lego, tamen et ipse egeo argumento epistularum et tibi idem accidere certo scio. quae enim soluto animo familiariter scribi solent ea temporibus his excludentur, quae autem sunt horum temporum ea iam contriuimus. sed tamen, ne me totum aegritudini dedam, sumpsi mihi quasdam tamquam θέσεις, quae et πολιτικαὶ sunt et temporum horum, ut et abducam animum a querelis et in eo ipso de quo agitur exercear. eae sunt huius modi: εἰ μενετέον ἐν τῇ πατρίδι τυραννουμένης αὐτῆς. εἰ παντὶ τρόπῳ τυραννίδος κατάλυσιν πραγματευτέον, κἂν μέλλῃ διὰ τοῦτο περὶ τῶν ὅλων ἡ πόλις κινδυνεύσειν. εἰ εὐλαβητέον τὸν καταλύοντα μὴ αὐτὸς αἴρηται. εἰ πειρατέον ἀρήγειν τῇ πατρίδι τυραννουμένῃ καιρῷ καὶ λόγῳ μᾶλλον ἢ πολέμῳ. εἰ πολιτικὸν τὸ ἡσυχάζειν ἀναχωρήσαντά ποι τῆς πατρίδος τυραννουμένης ἢ διὰ παντὸς ἰτέον κινδύνου τῆς ἐλευθερίας πέρι. εἰ πόλεμον ἐπακτέον τῇ χώρᾳ καὶ πολιορκητέον αὐτὴν τυραννουμένην. εἰ καὶ μὴ δοκιμάζοντα τὴν διὰ πολέμου κατάλυσιν τῆς τυραννίδος συναπογραπτέον ὅμως τοῖς ἀρίστοις. εἰ τοῖς εὐεργέταις καὶ φίλοις συγκινδυνευτέον ἐν τοῖς πολιτικοῖς κἂν μὴ δοκῶσιν εὖ βεβουλεῦσθαι περὶ τῶν ὅλων. εἰ ὁ μεγάλα τὴν πατρίδα εὐεργετήσας δι' αὐτό τε τοῦτο ἀνήκεστα παθὼν καὶ φθονηθεὶς κινδυνεύσειεν ἂν ἐθελοντὴς ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος ἢ ἐφετέον αὐτῷ ἑαυτοῦ ποτε καὶ τῶν οἰκειοτάτων ποιεῖσθαι πρόνοιαν ἀφεμένῳ τὰς πρὸς τοὺς ἰσχύοντας διαπολιτείας. in his ego me consultationibus exercens et disserens in utramque partem tum Graece tum Latine et abduco parumper animum a molestiis et τῶν προὔργου τι delibero. sed uereor ne tibi ἄκαιρος sim. si enim recte ambulauit is qui hanc epistulam tulit, in ipsum tuum diem incidit. Cic. Ad Att. 9.4 Although any feeling of repose is for me confined to the time I spend in writing to you or reading a letter from you, yet I am myself at a loss for a subject for my letters, and I feel certain that the same is the case with you. For the topics usually filling familiar letters, written with an easy mind, are excluded by the critical nature of these times; while those connected with the crisis we have already worn threadbare. Nevertheless, not to surrender myself wholly to sorrowful reflexions, I have selected certain theses, so to speak, which have  14 For a discussion of the letter as a way of ‘living’ a declamation, see Gunderson 2003, 104–10.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid at once a general bearing on a citizen’s duty, and a particular relation to the present crisis: Ought one to remain in one’s country when under a tyrant? If one’s country is under a tyrant ought one to labour at all hazards for the abolition of the tyranny, even at the risk of the total destruction of the city? Or ought we to be on our guard against the man attempting the abolition, lest he should rise too high himself? Ought one to assist one’s country when under a tyrant by seizing opportunities and by argument rather than by war? Is it acting like a good citizen to quit one’s country when under a tyrant for any other land, and there to remain quiet, or ought one to face any and every danger for liberty’s sake? Ought one to wage war upon and besiege one’s native town, if it is under a tyrant? Even if one does not approve an abolition of a tyranny by war, ought one still to enroll oneself in the ranks of the loyalists? Ought one in politics to share the dangers of one’s benefactors and friends, even though one does not think their general policy to be wise? Should a man who has done conspicuous services to his country, and on that very account has been shamefully treated and exposed to envy, voluntarily place himself in danger for his country, or may he be permitted at length to take thought for himself and those nearest and dearest to him, giving up all political struggles against the stronger party? By keeping myself at work on questions such as these, and discussing both sides both in Greek and Latin, I at once distract my mind for a time from its anxieties, and at the same time attempt the solution of a problem now very much to the point. But I fear you may find me unreasonable; for if the bearer of this keeps up the proper pace, it will reach you exactly on your age day.

The terms in which Cicero’s letter considers a question that was both contemporary (temporum horum) and political (πολιτικαὶ) are surprising. The central element of his letter is written in Greek (tum Graece tum Latine); Cicero has engaged in hypothetical propositions (θέσεις) which he intends to consider without reference to the present situation. He engages with his pressing problem in a form of declamatory exercise;15 the questions which Cicero asks himself are written in Greek and couched in abstract terms that seem very ‘un-Roman’. Indeed, Cicero’s self-positioning in terms of his identity splits between the ‘Greek self’ who is able to theorise in abstract terms and the ‘Roman self’ immersed in the Roman political environment of 49 BC.16 Even here we see a process of self-negation, however temporary, which allows Cicero to function within an extreme political situation. However, the notion of personae allows us to square this circle; by adopting different masks, Cicero is able to contemplate the problem of tyranny in abstract and specific terms at one and the same time. The shift between the two is highlighted  15 The letter combines elements of suasoriae and controversiae: see Gunderson 2003, 108. 16 Gildenhard 2006, analyses a series of Cicero’s letters about Caesar from this period and their connection both to the more theoretical approaches to tyranny in Plato’s Republic and the more personal and practical responses in Plato’s Letters. The use of Greek in Cicero’s letters of 50 and 49 BC mark the adoption of a ‘Platonic’ self in contrast, say, to his invocation of historical exempla like that of Sulla.

The Rhetorical Tyrant  

to Atticus and his other readers by the shift in language from Greek to Latin and back again. Cicero asks the question so familiar in later declamatory literature: ‘what to do about a tyrant?’. His reaction to tyranny is surprising precisely because of how he responds to his situation in this letter. He abstracts himself, considering the character of a Greek rhetorical model of tyranny and his possible responses to that tyranny in a way that (for the most part) ignores the local context. Yet as Gunderson notes: ‘the un-Roman tyrant found in so many later declamations here cannot but allude to a very specific Roman ruler. But the flow of generalities verges ever closer to the ineluctably specific. Cicero’s final proposition is long, complicated, and undisguisedly autobiographical.’17 Cicero’s letter illustrates a key development in Roman thought and literature. Caesar’s assumption of autocratic power was a watershed in Roman history; after him the abstract image of the tyrant must have seemed more real. The typical Greek tyrant became a stockin-trade of Roman rhetorical invective in the late Republic; accusations of regnum, dominatio or tyrannis were informed by the Greek stereotype in Roman political invective, and the terminology of uis, superbia, libido, and crudelitas, the most characteristic vices of tyranny, was adopted and almost formed a shorthand for wider accusations of tyrannical behaviour.18 The tyrant held a dominant position in rhetorical teaching throughout the first century AD; there are seven of the elder Seneca’s controversiae in which the tyrant plays a dominant role.19 The conventional tyrant became the stock villain in a wide variety of spoken and written literature, moving from the earliest Roman tragedy to rhetoric and the controversiae of the rhetorical schools and thence into historiography, satire, epic and back into tragedy.20 In the first century AD, the stereotype developed;

 17 Gunderson 2003, 107. 18 See Dunkle 1967; on Seneca’s de Clementia in particular, see Braund 2009, s.vv. ‘crudelitas’; ‘feritas’; ‘rabies’; ‘saevitia’. Antony above all became the subject of such accusations, cf. Dunkle 1967, 164; 1971, 13–14; and Corbeill 1997, 110–12. 19 1.7, 2.5, 3.6, 4.7, 5.8, 7.6, 9.4. See Winterbottom 1974, index 3, ‘tyrants’; cf. Gunderson 2003, s.v. ‘tyranny’. 20 On Seneca’s Lycus as a tragic tyrant informed by rhetorical tradition, see Dunkle 1967, 154– 5 and n.10; on Roman historiography, see Walker 1952, 204–34; Syme 1958, 429; and Dunkle 1971; important epic models for the Flavians include Ovid’s Jupiter and Tereus, and, of course, Lucan’s Caesar. Rebeggiani 2018 reads tyranny in the Thebaid through Lucan as an examination of Nero in particular, 196: ‘The Thebaid turns on Lucan to use civil war as a commentary on the experience of life under an evil emperor.’ My intention here is not to overwrite his powerful and provocative set of readings, but to widen our field of view and explore the poem in the context of a broader cultural phenomenon.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid crudelitas was gradually replaced by saeuitia as the buzzword for describing tyrants.21 Moreover, both crudelitas and saeuitia were seen as antonyms of clementia, the quality with which the benevolent autocrat is identified.22 The use of this vocabulary became formulaic and the tyrant of the controversiae became an increasingly important literary resource in the first century AD as emperors came to resemble cruel tyrants. Increasing emphasis was placed on the tyrant’s greed (auaritia) as an expression of his desire to dominate his people. The tyrant’s desire for that domination (libido) reflects his insatiable sexual appetites. Suetonius makes this pattern a defining system or rubric that governs his biographical accounts of tyrannical emperors, organising their lives through the categories of saeuitia, auaritia, and so on.23 While the stereotypical tyrant may possess all of these character traits, these typical features are used in two interrelated ways by ancient authors. Firstly, authors can attribute tyrannical behaviour to those who are not autocratic rulers and will never properly become tyrants. Cicero turns Verres’ governorship of Sicily into a localised tyranny, while Tacitus presents Sejanus (esp. Ann. 4.1) with all the tyrannical traits, despite the fact that technically he is not a tyrant. Secondly, ancient authors present these character traits selectively; tyrants do not always display all the possible features of a tyrannical character. Often one feature dominates. So Tacitus’ Tiberius is characterised above all by his dissimulation, his Nero by sexual deviation, while Vitellius is characterised by greed. Despite the gaps in chronology, genre and political context, Cicero’s letter shows a strong affinity with Statius’ Thebaid. Both consider the problem of tyranny through a Greek lens, both invoke the rhetorical paradigm of the tyrant in their literature,24 both present their discussion of responses to tyranny in allusive terms (Cicero through a declamatory exercise, Statius through mythology), both situate their presentation of tyranny in a context that in many ways can only respond to their contemporary political situations. Statius’ epic poem takes an undeniably Roman problem, one that can only have become even more important under Domitian, and situates it in a mythical Greek context. Even if we accept  21 See Dunkle 1971, 14. As in other literature, the Thebaid links tyrannical saeuitia and wild animal imagery. OLD s.v. saeuitia 1b; cf. Quint. Inst. 1.1.1. On wild beast imagery in the Thebaid, see Franchet-D’Espèrey 1999, 171–205. For the tyrant as a wild animal, see Cic. Off. 3.32; Rep. 2.48; 3.45; Sen. Clem. 1.25.1; 1.26.4; Rebeggiani 2018, 135. Pliny portrays Domitian as an inmanissima belua, Pan. 48.3. 22 Cf. Cic. Verr. 2.5.115; Deiot. 43; Part. Or. 11. Cf. Konstan 2005. 23 E.g. Suet. Dom. 10–12 = saeuitia, 12.1–12.2 = auaritia, 12.3–13 = superbia. On Suetonius’ use of rubrics, see Hurley 2014, esp. 30–1 on the Domitian. 24 On the dramatic overtones of Cicero’s letter, see Gunderson 2003, 105–6.

The Rhetorical Tyrant  

(and I essentially do!) that Domitian’s reign was in no way as dreadful or tyrannical as it was painted by those who survived him, we must still accept that this was an emperor who wore his exceptional status much more prominently than had his brother and father and who took much more nakedly autocratic control of the state than they had.25 Statius’ Thebaid is a poem dominated by tyranny. With the exceptions of Adrastus and possibly Theseus, every autocrat in the poem can be accused of tyranny. Eteocles and Creon are the two tyrants who receive the most detailed exposition in the poem, Polynices is generally viewed as a tyrant-in-waiting, Jupiter is, like his Ovidian predecessor, a divine tyrant and there are a number of minor characters in the poem who are undoubtedly tyrannical, including Crotopus and Lycurgus.26 Yet Statius does not create an uncomplicated acceptance of the rhetorical model. Most, if not all, of the other non-autocratic characters in the poem exhibit characteristics that might be termed tyrannical, particularly excessive anger, pride, cruelty, savagery, paranoia, excessive use of force, love of power, dissimulation (although this is often a classic response to tyranny as well) and manipulation of silence. For all the richness of their portrayal, tyrants in Roman literature lack individuation as characters; so generic is their sense of identity that their selves are marked by an absence rather than a presence. In a similar way, many characters

 25 Rebeggiani 2018, esp. 49–55, sees Domitian’s rule as essentially benign, even libertarian, until the crisis of AD 93. For broader rehabilitation of Domitian, see Augoustakis et al. 2019, especially Szoke’s contribution on the ‘reign of terror’. Domitian had already declared himself Censor Perpetuus by AD 85, see Jones 1992, 106–7; Gering 2012, 214–22; for trials of Vestals in the 80s AD, see Jones 1992, 101–2. Vespasian was keen to reform and maintain good relations with the Senate, Suet. Vesp. 9; Dio 66.10.5, and this seems to have been a policy maintained by Titus, although the evidence is skewed by obvious bias against his brother, Suet. Tit. 8; Dio 66.19.1. Domitian, by contrast, was much more content to rule in absentia and make more use of his consilium, see Jones 1994. Again the evidence is not straightforward, but Dio speaks of a number of executions of men of senatorial rank before AD 93, see 67.3.3, 4.5, 9.6, 11.2–3, 12.1–5; Suet. Dom. 10. Cf. the suggestive but vague note in the Acts of the Arval Brethren for AD 87, AFA 55, column 2, 62–4. For the execution of Flavius Sabinus in AD 82 and the exile of Dio of Prusa, see Philostratus Vit. Apol. 7.7; Dio of Prusa Or. 13.1–2. Under such an autocratic environment, the stock-type of the tyrant must have been a live issue. 26 Dominik 1994, 130–80; and McGuire 1997, 147–84 are the most important discussions. Statius holds this overwhelming interest in tyranny in common with the other Flavian epicists; Pelias, Amycus, Laomedon, Cyzicus and Aeetes are all examples of tyrants in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica while Hasdrubal, Hieronymus and Hannibal all exhibit the same tyrannical characteristics in Silius’ Punica. On these two poems, see McGuire 1997, 147–84.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid in the Thebaid display a lack of individualised identity by their tyrannical behaviour. Of the typical characteristics of the stock tyrant, only sexual lust and sexual deviance seem to be entirely absent, although Eteocles and Polynices are products of the unnatural union between Oedipus and Jocasta.27 Yet we notice that this is a common trait for all Statius’ characters. As we shall see, certain aspects of the rhetorical paradigm are avoided throughout the poem. So the adoption and adaptation of a political stereotype provides the poet with possibilities and problems. The invocation of the rhetorical tyrant allows the Thebaid to explore an important feature of contemporary politics, but the exemplary nature of the tyrannical persona means that the individualised identity of tyrannical characters becomes effaced. Employing mythical narrative as a vehicle for exploring current political debate was a common feature of Roman literature and performance from its earliest times, especially where accusations of tyranny were concerned. The earliest Roman tragedies establish an enduring connection between mythical narratives and contemporary politics; mythical plays attacked real individuals and the stereotypes of republican tragedy informed the rhetorical stereotypes used in political invective.28 Cicero tells of the Apollinarian games of 59 BC where the audience applied the line nostra miseria tu es magnus to Pompey, causing uproar, and of the performance of Accius’ Tereus in 44 BC, during which the audience was inspired by references in the play to tyranny to applaud M. Brutus as a tyrannicide.29 The latter example confirms that old plays and old plots were constantly reinvigorated with new, contemporary, political meanings and these meanings were constructed not by authors or producers but by audiences. With regard to our discussion of the Thebaid, a number of important features about the presentation of tyrants become apparent. ‘Triggering vocabulary’ is a key element in the stereotypical depiction, since the tyrant displays a restricted range of character traits, and Roman authors in all genres use the same limited vocabulary to describe these traits. This vocabulary aids in identifying tyrants but also reduces their individuality as characters. Identity is, in one sense, well defined; in another it is sorely lacking. As we shall see, the language of the Thebaid  27 For these characteristics as typical of tyrants in ancient literature, both Greek and Roman, see Dunkle 1967; and 1971; on the tyrant in Herodotus and the distinction between objective writing and conventional depiction, see Gammie 1986. For an example of a historical tyrant not characterised by sexual lust but by gluttony, cf. Tacitus’ portrait of Vitellius in his Histories, see Ash 1999, 95–125, esp. 96–8. 28 Dunkle 1967, 153–4 argues that the first contact came through the medium of tragedy, where the earliest Roman adaptations of Greek tragedies brought the stereotype into Roman thought. 29 Cic. Att. 2.19.3; 16.2.3; Phil. 1.36. For further examples and discussion, see Bartsch 1994, 71–82.

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is surprisingly novel at key moments and links the rhetorical paradigm of tyranny with the themes and vocabulary of Roman elegy. Authors frequently use facial features and expressions as a prominent element in descriptions;30 facial features reveal innate tyrannical natures. When tyrants display expressions that are contradictory or difficult to read we can see their dissimulative nature.31 Such a heavy and consistent reliance on conventional norms makes objective distinctions between characters difficult. Roman authors also rely on the most memorable stories about individuals not only to provoke emotional responses from their audience but also to differentiate between one character and another; normally it is the memorable wrongdoings that distinguish one tyrant from another. Mythology has a crucial role to play in the depiction of tyrants; well-worn mythological stories were used to attack contemporaries. Finally, the interpretation of the mythological tyrant as a reflection of a contemporary figure of authority was often made by the audience; both republican theatre audiences and emperors could impose the apparently unchanging depiction of the tyrant on figures from their own eras. Cicero explores a full range of possible responses to tyranny which find their expression in Statius’ poem; all of Cicero’s hypothetical examples have parallels in the Thebaid except for his final question (‘should a nation’s servant voluntarily place himself in danger for his country?’), which concerns his own particular position in Roman society (although Maeon in Thebaid book 3 might be said to be in a comparable situation). Yet the major difference between Statius and Cicero is that for Cicero, the autocratic rule of the tyrant is not an inevitable feature of political life and Cicero seeks to eliminate autocratic rule in Rome. For Statius, the political map is transformed. After a century of imperial rule, Rome had obvious parallels with Statius’ Thebes, where one tyrannical ruler is rapidly succeeded by another often equally bad, equally short-lived, and equally difficult to distinguish from his predecessor. Good rulers are rare exceptions. For Statius’ Rome, there is no obvious escape from autocracy, and this has clear implications for the responses that one can have to tyranny in such circumstances. Like Cicero, Statius cannot escape from dealings with autocratic and tyrannical rulers. All that is negotiable in imperial Rome is one’s response. Which of Cicero’s theses should we accept?

 30 Cf. Edwards 1993, 63–97. 31 Dissimulation as a central feature of tyrant informs Tacitus’, Suetonius’, and Dio’s accounts of Tiberius: see e.g. Syme 1958, 422–3; Zecchini 1986; Martin & Woodman 1989, 28–9; Woodman & Martin 1996 ad Ann. 3.2.3. It is also an important feature in all subsequent accounts of Domitian: see e.g. McGuire 1997, 150–1. Dissimulation is an important theme in Flavian literature generally: see esp. Hershkowitz 1998b, 242–74.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid

. Repetitive Tyranny: Problems with Being Evil Tyrannical imagery permeates the Thebaid so completely that an examination of each individual instance would prove both superfluous and invidious. We will confine ourselves to a brief examination of three prominent tyrannical figures in the Thebaid, Eteocles, Jupiter and Creon, and to some more general comments about the appropriation of tyrannical characteristics by other characters in the poem. We will see that these tyrants, rather like Polynices, lack a proper sense of individuation, have selves which centre on a recurrent passage through madness, who ignore the ethical concerns of their wider communities in order to pursue their own beliefs and whose identities are explored through moments of sublimity. Having established the character of the Statian tyrant, we can examine the way in which the epic examines the possible responses to tyrannical rule and the important part that dissimulation and suicide play in dealings with and oppositions to tyranny. Finally, we will examine the importance of elegiac language in describing the tyrant’s love of power and how the generic ‘contamination’ in Statius’ poem affects our reading of tyranny in the poem and the possible responses to it. Statius’ depiction of tyranny in the Thebaid is broadly consistent with the conventions of rhetorical tyrants elsewhere in Roman literature; but Statius’ epic (as is the case with all Flavian epic) has its own peculiar version of the rhetorical stereotype of tyranny, one which selects certain aspects of the tyrannical paradigm and applies them to its characters with great consistency. Suffice to say that Statius boils the depiction of tyranny down to its barest essentials. The language of saeuitia dominates the poem; there are 151 instances of saeuus, saeuire and their cognates in the poem and Statius tends to employ one of these at all the key moments in the epic. The sexual excess that forms such a prominent part of so many Augustan, Neronian and post-Flavian depictions of tyranny (often indicated by use of the term libido) and the desire to acquire wealth (indicated by auaritia) have diminished importance.32 Greed in the Statian concept of tyranny is the desire for power alone; despite a few hints that wealth may be a future issue for Thebes’ rulers, the Thebaid’s tyrants are only ever hungry for the right to rule. Moreover, sexual lust is re-configured as lust for power; the Thebaid uses the language and generic expectations of erotic elegy to inform his tyrants’ lust for  32 No cognate of libido occurs in Statius, and there is one use of the adjective auarus, at Theb. 1.339. Nor is this merely a rejection of ‘unpoetic’ vocabulary; cf. Ovid’s Tereus’ libido, Met. 6.458, 562.

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power. Statius’ epic allows us an uncluttered view of the tyrannical pursuit of power: ‘by examining the Roman experience in the laboratory of a materially deprived Thebes, Statius strips bare the moving cause of the imperial epic, the desire for power, fuelled by the basic epic emotion anger.’33 The sense that the tyrannical Statian protagonists are motivated by a singular and simple desire is further expressed in what follows the famous simile of the bulls describing Eteocles and Polynices in Book 1 (131–6).34 Thebes is not a kingdom worth fighting for. Instead, the brothers are fighting for power pure and simple.35 The poet illustrates the nature of Thebes by informing the audience that it lacks wealth, specifically gold, marble and jewels:36 et nondum crasso laquearia fulua metallo, montibus aut alte Grais effulta nitebant atria congestos satis explicitura clientes, non impacatis regum aduigilantia somnis pila nec alterna †ferri statione gementes† excubiae nec cura mero committere gemmas atque aurum uiolare cibis, sed nuda potestas armauit fratres Theb. 1.144–51 And not yet did panelled ceilings shine golden with thick metal nor were lofty halls propped upon Greek marble with space to spread assembled clients. There were no spears watching over the restless slumbers of monarchs or steel-bearing sentinels in alternating station, nor were they at pains to trust jewels to wine and pollute gold with victuals: naked power armed the brethren.

Commentators have often focused on the end of this passage.37 Nuda potestas motivates the conflict. However, it is interesting to note the possibilities for conflict against which nuda potestas is opposed; Statius’ Thebes lacks the very things that  33 Hardie 1993, 95. 34 See above, ch. 1.1. 35 For the way in which Statius avoids Greek literary precedent going all the way back to the Cyclic Thebaid, see Hulls 2014, 199–201. We have already seen how Polynices makes his fraternal enmity about wealth in his duel with Eteocles, 11.396–402; see above, ch. 1.6. Rebeggiani 2018, 178–81 provides a Lucanian reading of this passage as parallel to Romulus and Remus’ fight over Roman asylum. 36 The passage evokes Sen. Thy. 446–70, where Thyestes praises his simple and humble life in contrast to the fearful state of the autocratic ruler. Here Statius plays on the contrast; tyranny is rife even in this humble kingdom. Contrast also the conflict between Lucan’s Caesar and Pompey, for whom the entire world’s wealth is insufficient (BC 1.109–11), see Schiesaro 2003, 108–9. 37 Although for a balanced set of readings, see Briguglio 2017, 220–5.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid one would expect the stereotypical tyrant of Roman rhetoric to get excited about; there is no motivation for auaritia (both Vespasian and Domitian were notorious for auaritia). Yet this absence is expressed in terms which may key the alert reader into realising that Statius makes more than a point of political theory. The word nondum often has a metapoetic effect in Statius’ epic,38 and beginning the passage with nondum has a striking double effect, indicating a story from an uncivilised age, while creating the impression that Statius’ narration of events somehow has priority over earlier versions of the myth and fights against its secondary status.39 Nondum may also indicate that wealth may be a reward for the victor in the future, but what follows suggests that the conflict between Eteocles and Polynices is precisely what will prevent Thebes from accruing wealth (dumque uter ... et uitae mortisque pudor, 1.152–5). Statius’ asserts his poem’s independence by providing a stark account of the motivation for conflict within the poem. Statius’ epic asserts its authority to create its own vision of Thebes and more importantly, its own vision of tyranny; Statius reduces the conflict to its most basic element, nuda potestas. This is a novel move on Statius’ part; his is a depiction and discussion of tyranny without many of its juicier attendant trappings. Eteocles may gain wealth by being king of Thebes (and Tydeus hints at this, satis ostro diues et auro | conspicuus tenuem germani pauperis annum | risisti, 2.406–8, ‘rich in purple and conspicuous in gold, you have mocked the lean year of your penniless brother long enough’, although there may be an element of rhetorical exaggeration in this, given that Polynices is now prince of Argos), but emphasis on this point is avoided. Statius’ approach is not entirely unique, of course; both Silius and Valerius Flaccus make similar moves, although neither gives their novel depictions of tyranny the programmatic force that it has in the Thebaid.40 Yet in a rhetorical and philosophical

 38 Cf. 12.1 where nondum marks the Thebaid’s lack of closure with reference to the end of the Aeneid; 12.529 where it introduces a sense of generic conflict in the ‘civilisation’ of Hippolyte. Ovid plays a similar game in his depiction of another man with a ‘sinful’ table, Lycaon. quae pater ut summa uidit Saturnius arce, | ingemit et, facto nondum uulgata recenti | foeda Lycaoniae referens conuiuia mensae, Met. 1.163–5. The story is not yet famous within the poem because it has only just happened but it is known well enough by the external audience that Ovid need only make this oblique reference to it until Jupiter relates the story to the divine council, 1.209–43. 39 Nondum also resonates awkwardly with Tisiphone’s adsueta ... nube at 1.124. Statius acknowledges the secondariness of his poem by referring to the Fury’s countless efforts to arouse furor in Roman epic. On secondary epic, see Hinds 1998, 91–8. 40 Cf. Kleywegt 2005, 28: ‘Valerius Flaccus’ view of the world is decidedly not as pessimistic as that of Statius or the one presented in Seneca’s tragedies.’

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sense, the shift away from libido and auaritia as central aspects of tyranny is rather bold, as it takes away from the tyrannical character of rhetoric the most appealing elements of: ‘a colourfully evil personality imbued with immorality.’41 Statius’ tactic of reducing his tyrants’ motivations to a saeuus amor regendi means that he loses the biggest opportunity to make his tyrants into entertaining and memorable evildoers.42 This is precisely the point for a poem whose central theme is the struggle to find identity. As a character, Eteocles’ most prominent attribute is that he lacks individuation. We have already seen this process from the other side of the divide with his twin brother, Polynices. Eteocles’ misdeeds in his time as tyrannical ruler of Thebes are rarely memorable and indeed are glossed over by Statius. Moreover, Creon becomes virtually a carbon copy of Eteocles when he rules Thebes; his character is transformed suddenly and thereafter repeats what we have seen in Eteocles. Nor should we place too strong a distinction between Eteocles and his brother. They are different because of circumstances, not through differences in character.43 Polynices shares his brother’s tyrannical attributes, especially furor, arrogant pride, and an overwhelming obsession with power (cf. 1.316–23; 2.313– 32; 3.365–82; 6.316–26; 11.97–112, 497–573). Eteocles displays most of his tyrannical characteristics in the episode describing Tydeus’ diplomatic mission to Thebes, the failed ambush that Eteocles sets for him, and Maeon’s return to Thebes and suicide before the king (2.383–3.113).44 When Tydeus comes before Eteocles, the latter is every inch the tyrant of rhetoric: ibi durum Eteoclea cernit sublimem solio saeptumque horrentibus armis. iura ferus populo trans legem ac tempora regni iam fratris de parte dabat: sedet omne paratus in facinus queriturque fidem tam sero reposci. Theb. 2.384–8

 41 Dunkle 1967, 158. For Domitian as ‘a disgusting, psychotic, if slightly boring, villain’, see Zadorojnyi 2006, quotation from 352. 42 This reductive narrative form is all the more ironic given the rich Virgilian inheritance embodied in the phrase, see Bessone 2020, 152–4. 43 Cf. esp. Dominik 1994, 79–83. 44 Cf. Frings 1991, 27–39, 44–8. On Eteocles as tyrant, see Dominik 1994, 83–8; McGuire 1997, 157.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid There he sees hard Eteocles aloft on his throne, fenced in with bristling lances. Beyond the lawful period of his reign, the fierce ruler already governs the people out of his brother’s portion. He sits ready for any crime and grumbles that his promise is claimed so late.

This is the very first time in the poem where we see Eteocles as an individual, focalised through the eyes of Tydeus. Eteocles certainly has his identity clearly defined for him by Tydeus – he is a tyrant. Yet what is remarkable is that this identity never quite seems to be ‘his own’; it is as if Eteocles wears the theatrical persona, but, as we shall see, it does not fit particularly well. Statius packs in a number of tyrannical commonplaces. Eteocles is harsh in character (durum), sits apart from his people, surrounded by weapons, and high (sublimem) on his throne.45 While we have not seen the ‘process’ of identity formation which was explored, in Polynices’ case, in such detail in book 1, Eteocles’ sublime throne suggests the externalised, aesthetic process which his brother underwent. His harsh rule activates the link between wild animals and tyranny (ferus again suggests his twin’s journey through the wild) and he is ‘ready for every crime’ (omne paratus | in facinus). Yet despite insistence on his harshness, Statius gives no details of Eteocles’ misdeeds. Tydeus’ speech (2.393–409) angers Eteocles, but he hides his feelings with a classic piece of tyrannical dissimulation (ast illi tacito sub pectore dudum | ignea corde fremunt, 2.410–11) and makes a very long and rhetorically powerful speech of his own (2.415–51).46 Yet this subtlety fails to get the better of (the equally angry) Tydeus who interrupts Eteocles and continues to shout even as he leaves the palace (2.452–69). One suspects that Eteocles’ dissimulation was not all that difficult for Tydeus to read. Even before Eteocles’ speech, Tydeus identifies with unerring precision the reason for Eteocles’ refusal to abandon Thebes (dulcis amor regni blandumque potestas, 2.399, ‘love of royalty is sweet and power seduces’; cf. 1.127–8, 150; 11.655–6) and the epithet with which Tydeus’ second speech ends suggests that he guesses Eteocles’ intent (violente, 2.466, ‘man of violence’).47 Eteocles’ failure to dissimulate successfully is not unusual, but it is the ability of Tydeus and, subsequently, Maeon to see

 45 Statius may also be playing with the topos that tyrants live in high places while democracies are more suited to the plains, Arist. Pol. 1330b17–20; cf. Ogilvie 1965, ad Livy 2.9.1–3; Kraus 1994, ad Livy 6.18.14; 40.10. For the tyrannical implications of a bodyguard, cf. Tacitus’ Tiberius, who first rejects a bodyguard, Ann. 6.2, but then requests one, Ann. 6.15; cf. also Suet. Tib. 65; Dio 58.10, 13. Cf. Frings 1991, 29–39. 46 On the phrase tacito sub pectore, cf. Frings 1991, 38 and n.87. 47 Although Hall et al. 2007 have the conjecture uir lente, ‘you immovable man’.

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through the tyrant and prevent him from achieving what he intends that is surprising.48 By contemporary standards, Tydeus’ performance seems improbable while Eteocles is something of a weakling. Whatever else, Tydeus certainly outdoes Eteocles at the game of ‘playing tyrant’. A similar process occurs soon after, when Maeon brings news to Eteocles that Tydeus outfoxed his ambush party, slaughtering all but the messenger himself (3.58–77).49 This time Eteocles’ facial expression reveals his typically tyrannical anger and he uses the henchmen who surround him: iam mouerat iras rex ferus et tristes ignescunt sanguine uultus. inde ultro Phlegyas et non cunctator iniqui Labdacus (hos regni ferrum penes) ire manuque proturbare parant Theb. 3.77–81 The fierce king had already moved to anger, his scowling face fires up with blood. Phlegyas and Labdacus, no loiterer he at mischief, custodians of the realm’s weaponry, make ready to go unbidden and thrust him forth by force.

The same epithet (ferus) indicates Eteocles’ tyrannical nature. In addition, he is surrounded by evil men, another feature typical of tyrants.50 Again, the tyrant reveals himself too soon; Maeon commits suicide before Eteocles’ men have a chance to capture him (3.81–91). Again, we should not be surprised by Eteocles’ failure to dissimulate successfully, but rather by the fact that his dissimulation does not allow him to achieve his evil intentions.51 Denied an opportunity to exercise his tyrannical wrath, Eteocles commits the worst deed still available to him and forbids Maeon’s burial (3.96–8, esp. sed ducis infandi rabidae non hactenus irae | stare queunt, ‘but the wild wrath of the infamous leader cannot halt there’),

 48 On the frequency with which dissimulation fails, see Hershkowitz 1998b, 264–70; on Valerius’ Jason seeing through Pelias but abiding by his demands all the same, Argo. 1.64–6, see Hershkowitz 1998b, 246–7. 49 Further discussion of Maeon’s suicide follows below, ch. 1.5. Cf. Frings 1991, 44–8. 50 For the tyrant typically removing good men around him and surrounding himself with men of similar character, see Plato Rep. 567b-c; Xen. Hiero 5.2; Arist. Pol. 1314a4–5; Vell. Pat. 2.88 with Woodman 1983 ad loc.; and Tac. Ann. 3.7.1 with Woodman & Martin 1996 ad loc.; 4.1.2 with Martin & Woodman 1989 ad loc. For fire imagery associated with Statius’ tyrants, cf. 2.411, 9.12, 11.525; for Polynices portrayed as Phaethon, cf. Lovatt 2005, 32–9. 51 By comparison, Valerius’ Jason sees through Pelias’ dissimulation, Argo. 1.38–9, but not that of Aeetes, Argo. 5.532–3. In both instances, the tyrant gets what he wants: see Hershkowitz 1998b, 245–9.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid just as Creon will forbid the burial of the Argive dead at the end of the poem (12.94–102).52 The young king is angry because the nature he would like to display has been denied to him. Just as his brother is failing to live up to the roles of husband, father and prince, Eteocles is failing to be a proper tyrant. Ironically, Eteocles is so ‘tyrannical’ that it costs him opportunities to display his character by committing evil deeds; Tydeus and Maeon both confound their tyrannical opponent because they read Eteocles well and are able to resist him. Yet the embassy of Tydeus in books 2 and 3 reveals another aspect of Eteocles’ tyranny, the absence of really scandalous stories about his reign. Indeed, there is an emptiness or absence to Eteocles’ tyranny which, I would suggest, mimics the radical sense of negativity we saw at the core of his brother’s identity. The ambush ought to be an opportunity for Eteocles to excel himself as tyrant. Instead it is Tydeus who covers himself in glory and Maeon who earns the narrator’s respect through his noble suicide. The opening of book 3 exposes another aspect of Eteocles’ tyrannical nature that he might have kept hidden: at non Aoniae moderator perfidus aulae nocte sub ancipiti, quamuis umentibus astris longus ad auroram superet labor, otia somni accipit: inuigilant animo scelerisque parati supplicium exercent curae; tum plurima uersat, pessimus in dubiis augur, timor. ‘ei mihi’ clamat, ‘unde morae?’ [...] uario sic turbidus aestu angitur ac sese culpat super omnia qui non orantem in mediis legatum coetibus ense perculerit foedasque palam satiauerit iras. Theb. 3.1–7, 18–21 But the treacherous governor of the Aeonian palace does not receive the rest of sleep in the doubtful night, even though the dewy stars have long to labour before the dawn. Cares keep vigil in his mind and wreak punishment for the plotted crime, and fear (in times of doubt the worst of prophets) turns over many things. ‘Woe is me!’ he cries, ‘Why the delay?’ […] Thus he agonizes, in a tumult of shifting passion, blaming himself above all for that he had not cut down the envoy as he spoke in mid assembly and sated his foul fury in the open.

 52 For Tacitus’ criticism of the Flavian army for leaving bodies unburied after the battle and sack of Cremona, see Ash 1999, 63–5.

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Eteocles displays all the paranoia, cowardice and fear that proverbially plague tyrants and is often exemplified in their inability to sleep.53 Yet further irony is apparent. It is Eteocles’ tyrannical desire to dissimulate and to keep things hidden that confounds him. He castigates himself for his failure to kill Tydeus openly (palam). The psychological conflict that keeps Eteocles awake (uario sic turbidus aestu | angitur) mirrors the conflict between his need for secrecy and his need for slaughter. Ultimately, Eteocles will fail at open expression of his anger a second time, when Maeon kills himself publicly. Instead of a tyrant who horrifies and entertains in equal measure through his deeds, Statius presents us with an implausible tyrant who struggles to tyrannise because of his own tyrannical nature. In terms of social reflexivity, Eteocles never even rejects the markers of social status such as ‘husband’ or ‘father’ as his brother does. It is as if he adopts an empty tyrannical persona so completely that there is nothing behind the mask; Eteocles consistently fails to live up to the identity we would like him to assume. Despite his efforts to tyrannise, Eteocles also displays characteristics that sit uneasily with the rhetorical model. Twice in the poem, Eteocles demonstrates a concern for religious ritual that goes entirely against the standard ancient vision of the hubristic, irreligious tyrant.54 In book 4, Eteocles is terrified by a portentous speech made by the queen of the Bacchanals predicting the civil conflict with his brother (4.377–405). Eteocles’ response is to beg Teiresias to reveal the will of the gods to him. Teiresias informs Eteocles that the quickest way to discern divine will is to summon the spirits of the dead (4.406–14). Eteocles has little part to play in a profoundly intertextual necromancy scene that is dominated by Teiresias, his daughter Manto and the ghost of Laius (4.414–645),55 but he is mentioned again after the initial sacrifices and Teiresias’ first, terrifying prayer (4.461–86, esp. 472

 53 Paranoia is the quality that perhaps best typifies Domitian’s tyranny, cf. e.g. Suet. Dom. 14– 16, esp. 14.4 on the polished palace walls that enabled Domitian to see anyone behind him; see Hulls 2014b. Sleeplessness is a quality which is shared by the poet, especially the Callimachean poet, see below ch. 4.4. 54 By contrast Domitian is, after AD 96, presented as a tyrannical figure who emphasises his religiosity. For Domitian’s religious policy, see Jones 1992, 101–2; and Galimberti 2016, 99–101; for his veneration of Minerva, see Suet. Dom. 15.3; Dio 67.1.2; 67.16.1; on his mania for temple building, see Hulls 2019; for the protection of the gods through his role as censor, see Suet. Dom. 8.3. On Domitian’s religious role in the Silvae, see Seager 2010; and Gibson 2013, 131–6. 55 To peel back the intertextual layers of the necromancy, see Parkes 2013; cf. Dee 2013, 182–7.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid tremuere rogi et uox terruit ignem, ‘the pyres shuddered, his voice terrified the flame’):56 dixerat, et pariter senior Phoebeaque uirgo erexere animos. illi formidine nulla, quippe in corde deus: solum timor obruit ingens Oedipodioniden, uatisque horrenda canentis nunc umeros nunc ille manus et uellera prensat anxius inceptisque uelit desistere sacris. qualis Gaetulae stabulantem ad confraga siluae uenator longo motum clamore leonem expectat firmans animum et sudantia nisu tela premens: gelat ora pauor gressusque tremescunt quis ueniat quantusque sed horrida signa frementis accipit et caeca metitur murmura cura. atque hic Tiresias nondum aduentantibus umbris Theb. 4.488–500 He spoke. The old man and Phoebus’ maiden were all attention. They had no fear, for the god was in their breasts. Only the son of Oedipus is overwhelmed by a mighty dread. In his agitation he grasps now the shoulders, now the hands, now the fillets of the seer as he intones the fearsome chant and he wanted to abandon the rites they had begun. Even as a hunter waits for a lion that with long roaring wakes from his den in the rough of a Gaetulian forest, steeling his courage and gripping his weapon that sweats with the effort; fear freezes his face and his steps tremble as he wonders what creature approaches, how big it is – but he hears the roaring, dread sign, and measures the sound in blind trepidation. Then Tiresias, since the ghosts were not yet approaching, said…

Statius paints an incongruous picture of the terrified young king next to the steadfast old man and his daughter. Moreover, the picture of Eteocles cowering behind Teiresias and clutching at him is undeniably comical, while the simile of the hunter and lion reverses the expectation that the tyrannical Eteocles will show bestial characteristics. The roles are reversed, Teiresias playing lion while Eteocles (who presumably has his eyes closed in terror) blindly measures the seer’s chanting (caeca metitur murmura cura).57 However, the punch line to this

 56 Several manuscripts read inpulit for terruit, see Hall et al. 2007. Both verbs suggest that Teiresias has extraordinary power; I retain terruit as it fits with the terrifying atmosphere which frightens Eteocles. 57 The choice of murmura and the pronounced alliteration of ‘m’ and ‘c’ in these words might even suggest that Teiresias is not speaking very loudly. Eteocles’ blindness may also anticipate the fact that Eteocles seems to misread all the augury that Tiresias’ ritual produces, see Lovatt 2013b, 59–60. Cf. also Rebeggiani 2018, 187–8.

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comedy appears in line 500, where we discover that the spirits have not yet appeared; Teiresias must deliver another eighteen lines of prayer before the dead appear (4.501–18). Eteocles has been hiding merely from the sound of the seer’s voice. While fear is undeniably a strong element in the presentation of the tyrant in ancient literature, Eteocles seems ridiculous here; he is scarcely a figure to elicit fear from the audience. Eteocles encounters similar problems as he sacrifices to Jupiter in book 11 of the poem (11.205–38). The Theban king offers thanks to Jupiter for the thunderbolt that killed Capaneus, but Jupiter is not present and Tisiphone redirects his prayer to ‘the Jupiter of the Underworld’ (Tisiphone... | inferno praeuertit uota Tonanti, 11.208–9). Eteocles offers an apparently immaculate prayer but black fire leaps from the altar, consumes his crown and the bull being sacrificed breaks free and scatters the worshippers (11.226–30). Teiresias consoles Eteocles: diffugiunt famuli et regem solatur haruspex. ipse instaurari sacrum male fortis agique imperat et magnos ficto premit ore timores Theb. 11.231–3 The servants scatter and the soothsayer consoles the king. He himself, too steadfast, orders the rite renewed and carried through, hiding dire misgivings with a feigned countenance.

The seer’s reaction continues the role-reversal visible in book 4. Here it is Teiresias who turns the tables against Eteocles and dissimulates (ficto ore), by hiding his true emotions (magnos timores premit), beginning the sacrifices again and lying about the (rather obvious) evil portents. It is not that Teiresias chooses dissimulation as a response to tyranny that is remarkable but rather that he succeeds so easily.58 The Theban tyrant is not doing his job terribly well; his concern for religious observance in the midst of battle is extraordinarily pious, as the messenger Aepytus notes when he informs the king of his brother’s challenge outside the walls (rumpe pios cultus intempestiuaque, rector, | sacra deum, 11.242–3, ‘Ruler, break off your pious worship and these ill-timed rites of religion’). Eteocles fails to live up to his billing. Eteocles is not consistently presented in such a dismal light; at the beginning of book 9 he leads his troops to good effect, capturing the body of Tydeus (9.1– 95). Yet in the battle between Thebes and Argos, Eteocles has only a cameo role until his duel with Polynices. Statius focuses his attentions upon the Argive heroes and not the Theban tyrant. Ultimately, it is only in fighting his brother that  58 Again, see Hershkowitz 1998b, 264–70 on the failure of dissimulation.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid Eteocles finds his strongest affiliation to the tyrannical character. Yet, as we saw in our exploration of Polynices’ identity, it is at this point that any sense of Eteocles qua individual dissipates. Between the initial challenge by Polynices and the acceptance by Eteocles, there is a long chain of encouragement and dissuasion for the brothers; Creon and especially the Furies succeed in impelling an act that Eteocles’ courtiers, Antigone, Jocasta, Adrastus and the goddess Pietas can only delay (11.257–536). Yet at the climax of the duel, the essential nature of Eteocles and Polynices takes over and the Furies need only stand back and watch in admiration: nec iam opus est Furiis: tantum mirantur et astant laudantes hominumque dolent plus posse furores. fratris uterque furens cupit adfectatque cruorem et nescit manare suum. Theb. 11.537–40 There is no more need of the Furies; they only marvel and stand by applauding, and grieve that men’s madness is mightier than their own. Each furiously desires and seeks his own brother’s blood and knows not that his own is flowing.

We have already explored the absence of individuation in this scene. However, the natural ferocity and savagery of the tyrannical character has been redirected towards a different end. The evil of mutual fratricide eventually proves far more threatening, destructive and horrifying than Eteocles’ rather ineffective tyranny. Creon’s speech of encouragement to Eteocles to fight his brother (11.262–96) lays bare the destruction that Eteocles’ reign has brought upon Thebes; Eteocles has not been an evil ruler for Thebes because of his tyrannical character but because his conflict with Polynices has cost so many lives. Further irony is born of that fact that it is Creon’s overwhelming grief for Menoeceus that motivates him to urge Eteocles onto death (11.264–7, esp. urit fera corda Menoeceus). Even more paradoxical is Eteocles’ apparent inability to understand the concept of dissimulation in others. Creon’s speech (11.269–96) is brazen and uncompromising in its condemnation of Eteocles as ruler; it surely could not be misunderstood. Yet Eteocles does misunderstand, assuming that Creon feels no grief for his son and instead aims for the throne: sic pater infrendens, miseraque exaestuat ira. ille sub haec, ‘non fallis’ ait ‘nec te incluta nati fata mouent – canere illa patrem et iactare decebat – sed spes sub lacrimis, spes atque occulta cupido, his latet: insano praetendis funera uoto, meque premis frustra uacuae ceu proximus aulae.’ Theb. 11.297–302

Repetitive Tyranny: Problems with Being Evil  

So spoke the father, gnashing his teeth, boiling with rage and misery. To this the king said: ‘You deceive me not. Your son’s glorious death is not what moves you. As a father such canting and ranting became you, but hope lurks under these tears, hope and hidden desire. You make death a pretext for your mad ambition and press me vainly as though next in succession to the vacant throne.’

Eteocles unwittingly predicts the change that Creon will undergo when he accedes to the throne, but for the moment his own tyrannical paranoia leads him to misjudge Creon. Eteocles accuses Creon of a trick (non fallis) that his uncle has simply not intended. Eteocles’ response to Creon recalls the opening of Menoeceus’ dissimulative speech to his father in book 10: quin et monstrantibus illis fraude patrem tacita subit auertitque timorem: ‘falleris heu uerosque metus, pater optime, nescis.’ Theb. 10.720–2 No, at their prompting he plays a silent trick on his father, turning his fear aside: ‘Alas, good father, you are mistaken, you know not what is truly to fear.’

The reversal accentuates the irony in Eteocles’ misunderstanding. Menoeceus deflected his father’s fear by use of a dissimulative speech that begins with falleris. Eteocles deceives himself when Creon’s emotion should be obvious (infrendens, miserque exaestuat ira) and begins his speech of self-delusion with non fallis. The exchange produces further irony; claiming to have seen through Creon’s dissimulation, Eteocles goes ahead with the duel that, so he believes, Creon wants so that he can claim the throne (non ita Sidoniam Fortuna reliquerit urbem, | in te ut sceptra cadant ... sed arma, | arma prius, famuli!, 11.303–4, 305–6, ‘not so utterly shall Fortune have abandoned the Sidonian city that the sceptre should fall to you … but arms first, arms, my men!’).59 Moreover, he commits another act of dissimulation to restrain his own anger (ensem quem iam dabat ira repressit, 11.309, ‘he repressed the sword that anger was already putting in his hand’). Creon aims not for power but for revenge for his son’s suicide. Menoeceus’ suicide, whatever its shortcomings, and the mutual fratricide are placed in stark contrast both by Creon’s emotional speech and by Eteocles himself (tanto indignissime nato,

 59 On the repetition of arma, see Landrey 2014.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid 11.304, ‘most undeserving of so great a son’). Eteocles’ misguided ‘decoding’ of Creon’s dissimulation leads him towards the very act that he should avoid.60 Eteocles’ character presents us with a doubled sense of absence. At one level, by taking on the mantle of the stereotypical tyrant, he undoes any sense of individuality precisely because he adopts a character which is informed solely by exemplarity and by a persona comprehensively defined by literary, historical and political precedent. However, Statius’ Eteocles doubles down on the notion of absent identity, by failing in his quest to become a proper tyrant. Instead the theatrical persona consistently slips whenever he attempts to embody the stereotype. The process of failed identity formation is much less explicit than that which we saw in Polynices, because the narrative’s focus is much more on the Argive side of the conflict, but also because the twins are such complete doubles that it would be redundant for the poet to repeat the process. Instead, Statius centres his characterisation of Eteocles on dissimulation and the inability of dissimulation to fool its intended audiences. Like his brother, Eteocles never emerges from the passage through madness, violence and terror into a world of concrete universality. He cannot align himself to the moral and ethical demands of the wider community (which as king he represents) and instead clings to his own singular trait of opposition to a brother who is his double. His inability to find a proper political role within the Theban community (not even that of tyrant!) results in the evil of a war with Argos and mutual fratricide. Eteocles displays many standard tyrannical traits, but his character is more strongly defined by the sense that he fails to be an effective tyrant. Eteocles fails to live up to the rhetorical paradigm of tyranny that he imitates; he regularly shows anger or even regret that he cannot achieve all tyrannical ends available to him; in many ways his tyrannical behaviour is self-defeating. The nature of Statius’ presentation of Eteocles also elicits surprising responses; the Theban tyrant is incompetent and occasionally even comical and most unlike the deadly tyrants of Rome. It is this difference that limits the possibility of a character like Eteocles being identified too tightly with his historical or historiographical forebears. It is not his tyranny which horrifies but the duel with his brother. Eteocles is not the only ruler to display tyranny in this form. In the divine sphere, Jupiter is another tyrannical ruler who might be charged with a measure

 60 Compare this exchange with that of Jason and Pelias in book 1 of Valerius’ Argonautica, where Jason sees through Pelias’ deceit but accepts his mission anyway. See Hershkowitz 1998b, 246–7.

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of incompetence and this was the focus of two penetrating articles by D.E. Hill.61 Statius delays the introduction of the king of the gods into his narrative until Oedipus’ curse, Tisiphone’s intervention and the brothers’ natural predisposition all combine to set in motion the events that will lead to the mutual fratricide, only to present a full council of the gods (1.197–302) in which Jupiter announces his intentions to create war between Thebes and Argos. It is interesting to note that Jupiter mentions nothing of fraternal conflict, and his inability to anticipate that event (11.496) is telling. Clearly, Jupiter is characterised as a tyrant,62 but also as a weak figure whose actions are unable to match the power implied by his speech. He evokes his tyrannical counterpart in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (although Statius’ scene lacks many of the more explicit allusions to contemporary politics that one sees in Ovid’s passage),63 and his speech is shot through with Ovidian allusions (Met. 1.163–261).64 In the Metamorphoses, Ovid portrays Jupiter in command of the Fates (1.209–43, esp. 240–3), decreeing that all humanity must suffer (1.242). The Ovidian gods and minor deities give their assent either by rapturous approval or stony silence (1.199–206, 244–5) and none dare to disagree (1.167, 177–80, 205– 8).65 Statius’ Jupiter matches his Ovidian counterpart in bombast, but lacks his authority. Ovid’s Jupiter had already destroyed Lycaon and his house before the Ovidian council had begun (Met. 1.230–9) while Statius’ Jupiter has achieved nothing. Moreover, Statius’ Jupiter does not command the unswerving consent of the other gods; most of the council is taken up with the protests of Juno (Theb. 1.248–83),66 and Bacchus later complains as the war begins (7.145–92). He implies that the Fates are at his command, but nowhere is this made explicit. Statius’ Jupiter is less effective than his Ovidian counterpart and the differences between them emphasise this. His ambitions are rather more limited, only desiring the de-

 61 Hill 1989; and 1996; also Hershkowitz 1998, 260–6; Chinn 2013, 324–6; and Lagière 2017, 184–98. What follows is a supplement to Hill’s analysis of Jupiter, especially as regards his power to motivate the conflict at Thebes. Statius’ presentation of Jupiter as tyrannical and incompetent closely follows Ovid’s presentation of Jupiter in the Metamorphoses: see Anderson 1989. 62 See Caviglia 1973, 112–113; Feeney 1991, 353–7; and Dominik 1994, 7–16. 63 However, the council scene does have political resonance: see Schubert 1984, 76–7, 99, 102– 3, 296–7. 64 See Feeney 1991, 353–4; Dominik 1994, 4–16, 164; cf. Anderson 1989, esp. 93–4. 65 For the political overtones of Jupiter’s restraint of the winds at 1.205–8, see Rebeggiani 2018, 170. Although Ovid’s Jupiter is powerful, he is also incompetent. See Anderson 1989, 96–8 on Met. 1.231–2, and below on Jupiter’s inability to use thunderbolts effectively. 66 Juno’s speech maintains the intertextual play by alluding to various Ovidian episodes (Argis and Io, Danaë, Semele), see Dominik 1994, 11–13; and Hubert 2013, 116.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid struction of two houses on earth (nunc geminas punire domos quis sanguinis auctor | ipse ego descendo, Theb. 1.224–5, ‘now I descend to punish twin houses, my own blood’).67 Note also how Statius’ Jupiter figures his tyrannical destruction of Thebes and Argos as self-destructive; these are, literally, his houses. Jupiter is as much participant in civil war as he is instigator and, ironically, he indicates his blending of participation with instigation with the word auctor. Statius’ king of the gods demonstrates his relative weakness with a subtler allusion to Ovid’s work: taedet saeuire corusco fulmine: iam pridem Cyclopum operosa fatiscunt bracchia et Aeoliis desunt incudibus ignes. Theb. 1.216–8 I am tired of raging with flashing bolt, the busy arms of the Cyclopes have long been faint and the Aeolian anvil’s out of fire.

Beyond the obvious language of tiredness and enervation,68 these lines remind us of the Ovidian Jupiter’s unwillingness to use thunderbolts (Met. 1.253–65) in case the heavens should catch fire. His fear is caused by a decree of Fate that the heavens would be consumed by fire and forces Jupiter to flood the earth instead. Statius’ Jupiter is unaware of Fate’s decrees and is unable to do the thing that characterises Jupiter best, to hurl a thunderbolt. He thus avoids the sublime power that lies at the heart of traditional portrayals of Jupiter. Moreover, his weakness is expressed as an inability to tyrannise because he cannot act savagely, that is, in the most basic tyrannical manner (taedet saeuire). His weakness and inability to affect the events in the narrative culminates in book 12, when it is Theseus who takes Jupiter’s place as the figure most likely to effect some form of resolution in the narrative.69 Jupiter almost undergoes a reversal of the process of identity formation that we saw Polynices undertake; instead the king of the gods regresses into a radical negativity and becomes entirely absent from the narrative of the poem in book 11.

 67 The inevitable logic of Jupiter punishing ‘twin houses’ in a poem of war between twin brothers is nicely balanced by the intertextual play with Ovid’s Jupiter speaking on his destruction of Lycaon’s one house as a prelude to destruction on a much grander scale, occidit una domus, sed non domus una perire | digna fuit, Met. 1.240–1. 68 Cf. Hershkowitz 1998, 247–301. 69 See especially Theb. 12.650–5 and Feeney 1991, 357. See also Briguglio 2017, 270–4 on Jupiter’s attempt to engage with the discourse of clementia here.

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Statius’ Jupiter appropriates the discourse of the prologues of Lucan’s Bellum Civile and Virgil’s Aeneid, using the same terminology (shunned in Statius’ own prologue) that both earlier epicists use to list the causes of the conflicts in their poems.70 Aeneid 1.1–34 briefly explains Juno’s anger with Aeneas in answer to the poet’s request (Musa, mihi causas memora, Aen. 1.8, ‘Muse, remind me of the causes’) and Aeneid 7.37–40 also requests Erato’s help for the causes of conflict in Italy (and is quite historiographical in tone). Lucan’s exposition (fert animus causas tantarum expromere rerum, BC 1.67, ‘my mind drives to explore the causes of such great events’) is much longer and more complex, linking the main cause of civil war, the breakdown of the triumvirate (BC 1.68–158 esp. hae ducibus causae, 1.158, ‘these reasons for the leaders’), to the underlying causation that was the breakdown of moral value in Roman society itself (suberant sed publica belli | semina, BC 1.158, ‘in public the seeds of war had taken hold’). Lucan’s exposition of causes in his historical epic follows the model of Thucydidean historiography by pairing a central cause with underlying factors. Statius’ Jupiter is clearly influenced by these programmatic moments in Roman epic and key phrases in his two speeches are tinged with the vocabulary of earlier epic prologues. In his first speech he claims that Polynices’ marriage to Adrastus’ daughter will sow the seeds of war. At the end of the scene he declares that these events will be the causes of anger, which he will shape:71 belli mihi semina sunto Adrastus socer et superis adiuncta sinistris conubia. Theb. 1.243–5 Let Adrastus’ gift of his daughter in a marriage unblessed by heaven be my seed of battle. hinc causae irarum, certo reliqua ordine ducam Theb. 1.302 Hence the causes of anger; the rest I will guide in sure process.

Jupiter is too late, however, and Oedipus, Tisiphone and human psychology have already set events in motion of which the king of the gods seems blissfully una-

 70 Franchet-D’Espèrey 2001, 190–2, 194. For commentary on the Statian passages, see Briguglio 2017, 292–3, 324. 71 Note also how certo reliqua ordine ducam appropriates the language of fate and destiny, although Jupiter’s claim to control fate is dubious at best.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid ware. Moreover, he seems to misread what happens in Argos; it is as much Polynices’ rejection of marriage which leads to war as anything else. There is irony in that the marriage of Polynices to Argia is not even a genuine cause of war. At worst, Jupiter has involved Argos in the war, but Polynices’ marriage is really only a condition of the enactment of war in a particular manner; the brothers would have fought anyway.72 The unusual future imperative sunto presages disaster, but the syntax of the sentence adds to the sense of randomness; Jupiter might have followed this with whatever he wanted.73 The personal pronoun mihi reflects Jupiter’s inadequacy. These events are only semina belli and causae in the eyes of Jupiter (literally ‘for him’). Statius and Oedipus have already given us the real ones and Jupiter has not realised this. The irony is heightened by Jupiter’s repetitious behaviour. He repeats themes from Oedipus’ speech (1.56–87): ille tamen superis aeterna piacula soluit proiecitque diem nec iam amplius aethere nostro uescitur: at nati, facinus sine more, cadentes calcauere oculos. iam iam rata uota tulisti, dire senex: meruere tuae meruere tenebrae ultorem sperare Iouem. Theb. 1.236–41 He, however, has paid an everlasting penalty to the high ones, casting the daylight away, and no longer does he feed upon our air; but his sons (outrageous deed!) trampled his eyes as they fell. Now, now your prayers are answered, dire old man. Your darkness has deserved, has deserved I say, to hope for Jove as its avenger.

Jupiter reiterates the complaints of Oedipus (at nati … cadentes | calcauere oculos; cf. 1.46–87) and claims that now his prayers have been fulfilled (Oedipus has already complained of Jupiter’s neglect, 1.79–80). Jupiter’s repetitions in his speech mimic the essentially repetitious nature of his actions. Moreover, Jupiter’s

 72 Franchet-D’Espèrey 2001, 195, 197. Marriage may also tap into a sense of Jupiter’s being too late or mistimed in any event; in the Aeneid, Aeneas’ future marriage to Lavinia dominates the latter half of the poem and is crucial to the end of the poem; in Lucan’s epic, Julia’s marriage to Pompey is depicted as the last possible bond that might avert civil war (BC 1.111–20) and her death before the poem begins removes a final obstacle to the poem’s progress. Statius’ Jupiter goes against the grain of epic poetry. 73 For sunto carrying a sense of impending doom in epic, cf. esp. Dido’s curse of Aeneas’ people, nullus amor populis nec foedera sunto, Virg. Aen. 4.624; Jupiter swearing an oath to Semele, Ov. Met. 3.290; Caesar’s rejection of peace as he crosses the Rubicon, procul hinc iam foedera sunto, Luc. BC 1.226; Dis’ later but seemingly more effective curse, nostrique haec omina sunto | prima odii, Stat. Theb. 8.69–70. Sunto also used at Virg. Aen. 6.153; Ov. Met. 5.222.

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over-use of rhetorical emphasis in his speech emphasises how little he has done; Jupiter is all talk. Iam, iam reminds us that Jupiter has not done anything yet; the repetition of meruere is highly rhetorical and both seem especially ironic now that Oedipus has already called up Tisiphone.74 Further irony can be found in Jupiter’s belief that Oedipus has atoned for his crimes (236). The phrase dire senex and the synecdochic reference to Oedipus as tenebrae unwittingly makes Oedipus appear to be an earthly Fury more than a humble old man;75 even Jupiter’s speech hints that Oedipus’ vengeance is carried out by chthonic, and not heavenly, forces. Following the council, Jupiter sends Mercury to fetch the ghost of Laius from the Underworld to plant semina belli in Eteocles. Human psychology and infernal forces undermine the independence of Jupiter’s plot. He freely admits that Eteocles will happily fight his brother (quod sponte cupit, 1.300, ‘which he desires of his own accord’, cf. 1.126–30) and that his innate predisposition towards nefas is already at work.76 Moreover, the convoluted method of inciting Eteocles’ anger77 suggests both Jupiter’s reliance on chthonic forces (he needs the ghost of Laius) and the unnecessary repetition embodied in this failed chain of causation. Statius involves Jupiter into the narrative of Theban history so as to suggest both his tyrannical nature and his inability to live up to the demands of that character type. In the same manner as Eteocles and Creon after him, his tyrannical intentions are met by instant dissent, here from Juno (1.250–92). Statius thus provokes a strong contrast between his Jupiter and those of Ovid and Virgil.78 Juno’s speech highlights Jupiter’s own sexual misdemeanours (1.251–8) and in particular his link to Thebes through Semele (illam odimus urbem | quam uultu confessus adis, ubi conscia magni | signa tori tonitrus agis et mea fulmina torques, 1.256–8, ‘but I hate that city where you go and do not hide your face, where you make thunder, the signal and accomplice of our mighty union, and hurl my bolts’). Juno suggests that in the past, Jupiter thundering in Thebes had a different meaning. Her accusation accentuates the essential difference between Statius’ vindictive yet incompetent Jupiter and his alter ego of literary precedent, Jupiter the adulterous lover. The irony is that we might expect sexual misdemeanours from a tyrannical Jupiter, but instead Statius creates a Jupiter who goes against type. We will see neither  74 See OLD s.v. iam 5. On repetition of iam, very common in Statius, see Wills 1996, 106–7; for the repetition of verbs as essentially rhetorical, see Wills 1996, 102–6, esp. 103. 75 See Hardie 1993, 62–3. 76 Cf. Franchet-D’Espèrey 2001, 197: ‘[Jupiter] s’appuie sur la psychologie humaine, sur une haine et un conflit préexistants.’ 77 Jupiter sends Mercury to Tartarus to fetch the ghost of Laius who then appears to Eteocles in dream, first as Teiresias, then as himself (Theb. 1.303–11, 2.1–70, 89–119). 78 Cf. Ahl 1986, 2837–41.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid sexual excess nor much in the way of competence from Jupiter. Other forces, notably the chthonic forces such as the ghost of Laius, Jupiter’s brother Dis and especially the Furies steal his thunder. Jupiter’s ability to keep things moving does not improve as the epic progresses; book 7 opens with an angry request for Mars to start war between Argos and Thebes no less than three years after Jupiter’s council (7.1–33);79 Jupiter displays his power in his destruction of Capaneus, but is unavailable to accept Eteocles’ prayer shortly after, a prayer which Tisiphone redirects to Hades (11.208–9). Jupiter has, by this point, already withdrawn himself from the narrative of the Thebaid (11.119–35). While much has been made of Jupiter’s inability to provide the poem with a proper moral compass or even to direct events at all, the manner of his leaving again suggests parallels with the way in which Polynices arrives at Argos in book 1: ‘nunc etiam turbanda dies: mala nubile, tellus, accipe secedantque poli. stat parcere mundo caelitibusque meis: saltem ne uirginis almae sidera neu uideant Ledaei talia fratres.’ sic pater omnipotens uisusque nocentibus aruis abstulit, et dulci terrae caruere sereno. Theb. 11.130–5 ‘Now too day must be disturbed. Earth, take evil clouds and let the heavens withdraw. I am resolved to spare the world and my celestials. At least let not the stars of the kindly Maiden or the Ledaean brethren see such sights.’ Thus the almighty father and took his eyes from the guilty fields; and the lands lacked the clear sky they love.

The disappearance of Jupiter is, perhaps ironically given that he is the god of storms, marked by the appearance of a storm. Although the description is brief, it certainly suggests a celestial repeat of the metaphysical storm of book 1 as day is thrown into confusion (turbanda dies, cf. 1.366, passimque insano turbine raptas) and the heavens are literally withdrawn from the narrative (secedantque poli, cf. 1.346, subtexit nox atra polos) above the cover of clouds which are literally evil (mala nubile). What we see in the poem, however, is the gradual withdrawal of Jupiter from his customary position of (tyrannical, in post-Augustan epic poetry) authority and power to a comprehensive state of absence. This dissolution of an established divine identity is, in effect, a mirror image of the process which Polynices undergoes in a similarly disturbed narrative space.

 79 See Smolenaars 1994 ad loc.

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With the absence of Jupiter and the death of Eteocles, the stage is clear for Creon to assume power. Yet Eteocles’ uncle is an identical replica of his nephew; the assumption of power entails an assumption of the mantle of tyranny, one which comes with its attendant problems. Eteocles’ moments of incompetence are seemingly brought about by the tyrannical condition, not by any innate facet of his identity. The successor to the Theban throne undergoes an identical process of transformation as his nephew: et iam laeta ducum spes eluisse duorum res Amphionias alio sceptrumque maligna transtulerat Fortuna manu, Cadmique tenebat iura Creon. miser heu bellorum terminus: illi pugnarant fratres illum et Mauortia clamant semina, et inpensus patriae paulo ante Menoeceus conciliat populis. scandit fatale tyrannis flebilis Aoniae solium. pro blanda potestas et sceptri malesuadus amor: numquamne priorum haerebunt documenta nouis? iuuat ecce nefasto stare loco regimenque manu tractare cruentum. quid, melior Fortuna, potes? iam flectere patrem incipit atque datis abolere Menoecea regnis. primum adeo saeuis imbutus moribus aulae indicium specimenque sui iubet igne supremo arceri Danaos nudoque sub axe relinqui infelix bellum et tristes sine sedibus umbras. Theb. 11.648–64 And now Fortune, happy to have cheated the hopes of the two chieftains, had in her malice transferred Amphion’s realm and sceptre to another: Creon held Cadmus’ power. Alas, sorry end to the war! For him the brothers had fought. The seed of Mavors make him illustrious and Menoeceus lately sacrificed for his country gains him favour with the people. Weep for him, he mounts Aonia’s throne, fatal to tyrants. Alluring power, ill-counselling love of the sceptre: will newcomers never keep in mind the examples of their predecessors? He is glad, see, to stand in the accursed place and handle the bloody helm. Powerful indeed is Fortune when she changes for the better! He now begins to turn aside his father’s heart and wipe out Menoeceus after the gift of monarchy. First, imbued with the cruel ways of a palace he gives an order as an indication and example of his quality that the Danai be barred from funeral fire and the luckless army and sad homeless shades left under the naked sky.

Creon’s assumption of power is marked by the sense of near-perfect repetition of the beginning of conflict in book 1. This is, in a sense, the process of identity formation as tyrant which we never got to see with Eteocles. Creon’s transformation from grieving parent into tyrannical maniac is almost instantaneous, and occurs the moment the sceptre comes to him, the moment he takes hold of ‘Cadmus’

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid laws’ (sceptrum, 11.649; tenebat, 11.650; cf. sceptra tenentem, 1.140) and the moment he ascends to the throne (11.654–5). The description of Creon’s absolute authority reworks the memorable phrases of book 1 and 2 (blanda potestas | et sceptri malesuadus amor, 11.655–6; cf. regendi | saeuus amor, 1.127–8; nuda potestas, 1.150).80 As Creon becomes king, he is instantly imbued with savage customs (saeuis imbutus moribus, 11.661). The transformation is extraordinary; Creon instantaneously forgets his grief and his son (iam flectere patrem | ...regnis, 11.659– 60).81 The major difference between Creon in book 11 and Eteocles and Polynices in book 1 is the absence of Tisiphone.82 Statius offers no supernatural explanation for Creon’s sudden descent into tyranny. Instead, Creon is simply putting on a mask, or, rather, swapping one mask, that of parent, for another, that of tyrant. Here the poet removes the theatrical metaphor of persona and replaces with a more literary sense of exemplarity, by invoking his characters’ unwillingness to pay attention to existing documenta, an image which also functions at a metaliterary level. Creon is unable to avoid the mistakes of his Theban literary predecessors (both inter- and intra-textual), but is also unable to avoid the extra-textual exempla provided by the tyrants of Roman history. Noting the similarity of both episodes in the poem and the repetitiousness of Statius’ Thebes is nothing new, but the consistency of the comparison between these moments in books 1 and 11 is remarkable even by Statian standards. Creon

 80 Malesuadus is rare in Latin; Plautus uses it in at Mostellaria 213, illa hanc corrumpit mulierem malesuada uitilena; Virgil makes an altogether more sinister use in describing Hunger in the Underworld at Aen. 6.276, malesuada Fames; both Statius and Silius use it of potentially more positive qualities, cf. Sil. Pun. 14.501, heu puero malesuada rudi noua gloria pugnae. 81 See Briguglio 2018 for the eroticisation of Creon’s assumption of power in particular. Although the corrupting influence of absolute power is a cliché, the transformation from a good character to one of unmitigated evil is all the more surprising when one considers the difficulty that Plutarch has in depicting a change from good to evil character, cf. Gill 1983, 478–81 with Plut. Arat. 51–3; Sulla 30.4–5; Sert. 10.3–4, and the emphasis that Tacitus places on the conscious choices that the tyrannical Tiberius makes towards evil, cf. esp. Gill 1983, 486: ‘Tacitus’ concern is rather to show that Tiberius’ vices express a mature consciousness, and reflect deliberate choice.’ Gill 1983 draws a distinction between ‘character’ and ‘personality’ where character reflects an evaluation of the person as the possessor of good or bad qualities while personality aims to evaluate the person psychologically in a morally neutral way. Gill notes that all the ancient authors whom he assesses more or less consistently analyse individuals according to a ‘character-viewpoint’, that is to say, through moral evaluation. It makes for an interesting comparison with Statius’ Creon whose ‘personality’ as grieving parent is utterly erased by the ‘character’ of tyrant. 82 Tisiphone will be discussed further in the following chapter, see ch. 3.2; 3.3.

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assumes tyranny almost as though donning the tragic tyrant’s mask. Creon becomes almost indistinguishable from his predecessors. His first action as king, forbidding burial to the Argive dead, is undertaken not simply for the sake of cruelty but as an example of his tyrannical nature (indicium specimenque sui, 11.662). Creon is almost depersonalised by becoming king, he is transformed into a walking exemplar of Theban tyranny, without any individual character of his own. Yet for all the obvious flatness of Creon’s characterisation as a tyrant, the essential emptiness at the core of his new persona mimics the emptiness we saw Polynices sustain in the previous chapter. The instantaneous adoption of tyranny makes better sense if we read his identity (re)formation as a sublime passage through trauma and violence which is displaced onto the narrative of his son Menoeceus’ suicide in book 10.83 Menoeceus is infected with a love of suicide by the personified Virtus in a passage replete with the language of sublimity: fulminis haud citius radiis adflata cupressus combibit infestas et stirpe et uertice flammas quam iuuenis multo possessus numine pectus erexit sensus letique inuasit amorem. Theb. 10.674–7 Not more quickly does the cypress tree blasted by lightning rays drink the angry fires with stem and crest than the youth, overwhelmed by supernatural power, exalted his spirit and rushed on love of death.

Menoeceus reacts as if he were a cypress tree struck by a lightning bolt (fulminis … radiis afflata cupressus), he is completely possessed by the supernatural power which overtakes him (possessus) and his senses are elevated (sensus erexit) by this experience. The sublime experience which overwhelms Menoeceus also transforms his appearance when he takes his places on the walls for his failed attempt at a devotio:84  83 Briguglio 2018, 20 adeptly demonstrates how Creon reverses the Virgilian exempla of Evander, grieving for Pallas, and Mezentius, grieving for and thus being humanised by Lausus. 84 See Vessey 1973, 239 for reminiscences of Livy 8.9.10 at Theb. 10.757–9; Heinrich 1999, 181. On devotio generally see Versnel 1981; Barton 1993, 40–6; Oakley 1998 ad Livy 8.8.19–11.1; and Cowan 2011. P. Decius Mus is said to have devoted himself at the battle of Veseris in 340 BC, his son at the battle of Sentinum in 295 BC and another Decius tried to devote himself at Ausculum in 279 BC. On this dubious (in the factual sense) tradition, see Oakley 1998, 477–80. The ritual features in Cicero, Virgil and Lucan, see Cic. Quir. 1; Sest. 48; Virg. Aen. 12.234 with Pascal 1990; and Leigh 1997, 128–43 on devotio imagery in Lucan. For Menoeceus’ suicide as a failed devotio, compare ancient accounts of Decius’ devotio: Cicero de Fin. 2.61; Seneca Ep. 67.9; Florus 1.14.3; Orosius 3.9.3 with Versnel 1981, 150; and Heinrich 1999, 183–4.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid at pius electa murorum in parte Menoeceus iam sacer aspect solitoque augustior ore, ceu subito in terras supero demissus ab axe, constitit Theb. 10.756–9 But pious Menoeceus took his stand on a chosen part of the walls. Sacred now his aspect, more august than his wonted countenance, as though he had suddenly been sent from heaven down to earth.

Here we see transference of the sublime experience from Menoeceus himself to those who gaze upon him. He is up high (murorum in parte), sacred and more august in appearance (sacer aspectu solitoque augustior ore) and seems as if sent from heaven (demissus ab axe). Crucially, the point of focalisation has changed. It is the armies beneath the walls and, implicitly, Creon himself (who mourns at 10.790–1), who now view Menoeceus as a sublime object. Given the pattern of identity formation which we saw established for Polynices, one might even suggest that the transformation of Creon’s son into a sublime object and the passage through violence marked by his suicide on the walls of Thebes become the traumatic moment which marks Creon’s conversion to tyranny. Once his character is freshly established, failure and repetitiousness haunt Creon during his brief reign. He repeats features of Eteocles’ interaction with Tydeus, Maeon and Teiresias as he sends Oedipus into exile. Creon attempts to hide his fear and anger, but Oedipus sees through Creon easily; his response to Creon’s sentence of exile is a speech that reveals Oedipus’ total comprehension of the nature of tyranny at Thebes: mox reducem Ogygiae congressus limine portae Oedipodem timuit paulum seseque minorem confessus tacite promptamque coercuit iram, sed redit in regem caecumque audentius hostem increpitans, ‘procul,’ inquit, ‘abi, uictoribus omen inuisum, et Furias auerte ac moenia lustra discessu Thebana tuo. spes longa peracta est. uade, iacent nati. quae iam tibi uota supersunt?’ horruit instinctu rabido steteruntque trementes ceu uisu praesente genae seniumque recessit. tunc natam baculumque manu demisit et irae innixus tumido uocem de pectore rumpit: ‘iamne uacat saeuire, Creon? modo perfida regna fortunaeque locum nostrae, miserande, subisti, et tibi iam fas est regum calcare ruinas?

Repetitive Tyranny: Problems with Being Evil  

iam tumulis uictos, socios iam moenibus arces? macte, potes digne Thebarum sceptra tueri. Theb. 11.665–81 Presently at the threshold of the Ogygian gate he encountered Oedipus returning. Briefly he quailed, silently confessing himself the lesser, and checked his ready anger. But soon he is the king again and boldly chides his sightless enemy. ‘Go far away,’ he says, ‘hateful omen to victors. Turn away your Furies and purge the walls of Thebes by your departure. Your long-cherished hope is accomplished. Go, your sons lie low. What now is left for you to pray for?’ Oedipus started in mad excitement, his cheeks stood quivering as though he saw, his old age fell away. Then he thrust aside his daughter and staff; leaning upon his anger, he lets words burst from his swelling breast: ‘Have you time for cruelty already, Creon? Only just now have you risen to perfidious royalty, my fortune’s place, you pitiable being, and already it is your right to trample on the ruin of kings? Already do you bar the vanquished from their tombs, your allies from the walls? Well done! You can worthily maintain the sceptre of Thebes.

The exchange between Creon and Oedipus repeats many of the features of Eteocles’ interactions with those around him. Creon is momentarily afraid, but hides this and, dissimulating, hides his anger. Yet the blind Oedipus plays Teiresias, rejecting the instruments of his old age and responding with such force that we are reminded of the seer’s swollen chest when he is literally ‘filled by Apollo’ (tumido uocem de pectore rumpit, 11.676; cf. quippe in corde deus, 4.490).85 Creon’s dissimulation is instantly exposed as Oedipus identifies all the commonplaces of his tyrannical nature (saeuire, perfide, Thebarum sceptra). Despite Oedipus’ angry response, Antigone makes a conciliatory speech (11.708–39) that mollifies Creon somewhat. He only banishes Oedipus as far as the wild lands around Thebes (11.748–54; an apt place for a wild man?) before returning to his throne. One last moment of irony occurs at this point; Creon fails to spot the dissimulation going on around him, as his courtiers and the Theban populace feign assent with his decisions (et ficto comitum uulgique gementis | adsensu tumidus limen regale petebat, 11.755–6, ‘and haughtily returns to his regal threshold amid the feigned assent of his attendants and the sorrowing populace’).86 Both as pro-

 85 Tumido is also suggestive of Oedipus having one last moment of puffed-up, tyrannical pride (cf. OLD s.v. tumidus 5, 6), especially as Creon is called tumidus as he returns to his throne, 11.756. On the confrontation between Oedipus and Creon, see also Hulls 2014, 202–8. 86 Eteocles also suffers similarly from his people when Tydeus leaves his court. The people curse Tydeus openly and Eteocles secretly, saeuoque infanda precantur | Oenidae tacitoque simul sub pectore regi, 2.480–1.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid ducer and reader of dissimulation, Creon is as poor as his predecessor. His incompetence in this regard is in strong contrast with the dissimulative emperors of Rome. Creon’s inability to control events around him by means of tyrannical behaviour is reflected in the cremation of Polynices by Argia and Antigone.87 We should reiterate in passing the extent to which wife and sister acquire characteristics that might in another individual be marks of tyranny (especially Antigone’s furor, ira and resemblance to a lion, 12.356–8). Thus do Argia and Antigone appropriate the language that one might expect to be adduced to Creon. The new tyrant’s failure to restrain the women from providing Polynices with a funeral is expected. What is startling is Creon’s further inability to execute the women even though that is what they desire (ambae hilares et mortis amore superbae | ensibus intentant iugulos regemque cruentum | despiciunt, 12.679–81, ‘both of good cheer and proud in their eagerness to die, they hold out their throats to the swords, disdaining the bloodthirsty king’); Argia certainly survives to the poem’s end (ut saeuos narret uigiles Argia sorori, 12.804, ‘how Argia tells her sister of the cruel sentinels’) and although Antigone’s fate is uncertain, she may also escape her traditional fate.88 Statius leaves open the possibility that, contrary to literary precedent, Antigone escapes death, courtesy of an incompetent tyrant.89 A further strand of tyrannical identity runs parallel to Statius’ presentation of inept tyrants and that is how far tyrannical characteristics are appropriated by other individuals in the Thebaid whose political status is never tyrannical. Monstrous behavior is the traditional preserve of the tyrannical figure in ancient rhetoric and literature. Statian heroes, who regularly behave monstrously or are compared to monsters themselves, are taking the tyrannical away from the tyrants. Tydeus is arguably the best example of this pattern. Throughout the epic he is consistently compared to various monstrous and bestial figures (a bull, which further likens him to Eteocles and Polynices, snake, eagle, wild boar, centaur and Briareus) and his defining moment in the poem is his cannibalistic feasting on the brains of his killer, an act which actualises the tyrannical ‘feasting with the eyes’ on the severed heads of enemies that delights historical figures such as

 87 See above, ch. 1.6. 88 See Hershkowitz 1998, 296 n.109. 89 Leaving people alive can, of course, be more cruel than killing them, cf. Lucan’s Caesar to Domitius, ‘uiue, licet nolis, et nostro munere’ dixit | ‘cerne diem.’, BC 2.512–13; Maeon laments his uita inerti, Theb. 3.695, see below, ch. 2.5; Hippomedon to Panemus, ‘uiue superstes’, Theb. 9.294, cf. Dewar 1991 ad loc; and Hulls 2006. Here, however, Creon clearly intends to kill and is interrupted, leto | admouet, 12.678–9.

Repetitive Tyranny: Problems with Being Evil  

Sulla.90 Similarly, Capaneus displays the hubristic qualities normally associated with tyrannical rule, and, like Tydeus, ultimately expresses his defining character trait by physically breaching the heavens.91 Both heroes exemplify a wider pattern, where the worst and most ‘tyrannical’ deeds in Statius’ epic are not performed by the tyrants themselves. Statius’ tyrants lack the interest value that is such a strong feature of tyrants elsewhere in Roman literature (for example, Virgil’s Mezentius is famed for horrible tortures and Seneca’s Atreus feeds Thyestes his children). The impression is of characters going through the required motions; Statius’ tyrants are filled with and fuelled by furor and ira, they (try to) commit dastardly deeds, are silent, paranoid, watching all their subjects and interacting by dissimulative means. Yet they hardly seem frightening. Rather they seem caricatures of the rhetorical stereotype of the tyrant, displaying rather ‘flattened’ characters that lack individuation and also undermining themselves by their incompetence. Eteocles’ audiences with Tydeus and Maeon are marked by his tyrannical behaviour; he stays in his citadel, hides his true emotions, is surrounded by evil henchmen and gets others to do his dirty work. Yet no one is fooled; both Tydeus and Maeon see through Eteocles. Eteocles plots the ambush of Tydeus, an undeniably evil act but one that goes disastrously wrong. Worse still, the ambush is memorable not for Eteocles’ tyrannical behaviour but for Tydeus’ superhuman performance in battle and for Maeon’s noble suicide. In the fighting against the Argive army, Eteocles can be seen leading his men in battle and organising what will ultimately be a victory for Thebes. Yet the poem’s focus on Argive warriors, the seven against Thebes and the noble suicides of Dymas and Menoeceus overshadows his leadership. The most hubristic character on display is not the tyrannical Eteocles but the irreligious Capaneus. It is ironic that the true tyrant displays great concern for the divine, constantly asking Teiresias for signs of divine will. Eteocles makes the greatest impact on the narrative by fighting his duel with Polynices, another instance where Eteocles fails to achieve what he intends, and it is somewhat ironic that his death in mutual fratricide is the true evil that the Thebaid depicts and not his tyrannical life. As a tyrant, Eteocles is something of a flop.

 90 For Sulla as a sadistic viewer of severed heads, see Val. Max. 9.2.1. Cf. also the theme of decapitation, displaying and looking at severed heads in civil war narratives. See Livy 3.5.9, legatique caput ferociter ostentantes; for Lucan on Pompey’s head being examined by Caesar, see Mayer 1981 ad 8.632–5; Leigh 1997, 297 and n.8; Plutarch Crassus with Braund 1993; Plutarch Antony 20.3–4 with Pelling 1988 ad loc; on the pervasive theme of decapitation in Plutarch Galba and Otho and the display of Galba’s impaled head, Galba 27.4, see Ash 1997, 197–200. 91 See Feeney 1991, 352, 358–9.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid Nor does Jupiter appear terribly competent in his direction of tyrannical affairs from heaven. He displays, like his Ovidian predecessor, all the trappings of tyrannical authority, yet he has none of the power. The war he desires seems rather unnecessary and Jupiter rarely seems capable of driving the action. He consistently seems one step behind Tisiphone, allows years of delay in starting his war, and fades into the background before its conclusion. In going against literary precedent, Statius’ Jupiter mimics his implausible tyrants. Creon apparently does little better. He is a carbon copy of Eteocles from the moment he becomes king and commits the terrible sin of leaving corpses unburied, a sin that Eteocles had already committed in leaving Maeon unburied. Yet the speed of Creon’s transformation into a tyrant is matched by the speed at which Statius’ narrative casts him aside. Theseus rapidly appears to slaughter Creon and restore order. Moreover, Creon matches Eteocles in incompetence; Statius omits Antigone’s fate after burying her brother which plays down the one order for which Creon is most famous. Statius leaves Argia and Antigone unpunished; we are meant to suspect that Creon never quite completed this tyrannical act before Theseus finishes him off. Displaying these tyrannical figures as caricatures may undermine them as individuals but it also deconstructs the rhetorical stereotype that they represent. Because we recognise Eteocles, Creon and Jupiter as representative of the rhetorical paradigm we can also discern an undermining of that paradigm. Statius’ poem does not disempower tyranny altogether; rather it redistributes tyrannical behaviour and power to other characters within the poem. The sense that Statius’ tyrants fail to display proper tyrannical behaviour is paralleled by how far character traits normally the preserve of the evil tyrant are displayed by virtually all of the major protagonists in the Thebaid. Polynices (himself a would-be tyrant, of course), Tydeus (who acts as a double for Eteocles in book 1), Hippomedon and Capaneus all display excessive ira, furor, saeuitia, monstrous characteristics, pride, bloodlust and excessive use of force. Like Eteocles and Creon, they lack the sexual proclivities and financial greed that one might expect of tyrants in other forms of literature but otherwise they are tyrants in every respect of their behaviour but not in status. As ever in the context of Theban civil war it is a quality that spreads itself throughout all the participants in the conflict; as we shall see in a moment, even a hero such as Menoeceus displays hints of tyrannical behaviour. The lack of individuation that the tyrants display is a cornerstone of tyranny as a characteristic in Statius’ poem; it contaminates all who fight for Thebes. All can become tyrants in some sense.

Dissimulation, Dissent and the Disarming of Tyranny  

Statius’ depiction of tyranny subtly but suggestively alters the standard rhetorical model. Statius bucks a strong literary trend in modifying the image of tyranny. He is not alone; all three Flavian epicists present tyranny in innovative ways, but Statius is perhaps the most radical of all.92 How far the alteration of the rhetorical model is peculiar to Flavian epic is demonstrated by how quickly the traditional model reasserted itself following Domitian’s death. Martial’s eleventh book of epigrams was produced for the Saturnalia in AD 96, that is, only three months after Domitian’s assassination on the 18th September of that year.93 Martial only mentions Domitian occasionally in the book, but his depiction of the previous emperor conforms to the traditional and not the Flavian epic model of tyranny. Domitian is noted for his sexual misdemeanours, especially hypocritical in the light of his tightening of the Lex Julia de adulteriis in 89/90 AD (Mart. 11.7; cf. Suet. Dom. 22), his execution of Vestals (Suet. Dom. 8), his jealous murder of the pantomimus Paris in 83 AD and the subsequent murder of many of his supporters (Mart. 11.13). Domitian is already remembered as a classic tyrant and not like the tyrannical rulers of Statius’ epic.

. Dissimulation, Dissent and the Disarming of Tyranny The presentation of tyranny in the Thebaid is unexpected and it underlines the instability of this political reality; it runs against the grain of imperial politics, especially the politics of Domitian’s reign and especially with regard to the dominant position dissimulatio appears to have held both within the discourse of Domitianic politics and within the historical record of Domitian’s reign.94 Life under such an emperor demanded not only that an individual be prepared to accept and understand an emperor’s dissimulation but also to dissimulate in return: ‘The emperors, especially Tiberius, Nero and Domitian, were expert dissimulators, and those living under them were forced into similar behavioural patterns as the growing need for politically expedient ‘friendships’, particularly with the emperor, resulted in a heightening of the dissimulation necessary for sustaining such pretences ... Being friends with an

 92 See McGuire 1997, 147–84. 93 See Kay 1985 ad Mart. 11.33. 94 On the centrality of dissimulation in imperial politics under Domitian, see Ahl 1984, 78, 82; Coleman 1986, 3115; Rudich 1993, xxii-xxiii; McGuire 1997, 159–60; and Hershkowitz 1998b, 264– 70. Cf. Bartsch 1994, 63–97 on the related notion of allusive doublespeak. Cf. also related discussion in Lendon 1997, esp. 107–75.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid emperor was a very difficult and not wholly enviable proposition, and one which required great dissimulative skill.’95

Yet the model of dissimulative relationships within the Thebaid does not match the realities of political life in the world for which Statius was composing. In both worlds, dissimulation is an everyday reality and an essential aspect of dealing with autocratic rulers. Yet unlike the Roman emperors, Statius’ tyrannical rulers lack a real understanding of the subtleties of dissimulative speech. Furthermore, the way in which inferiors deal with dissimulating rulers seems to be equally different from the Roman reality. Responses to dissimulation are marked by strong emotions. Tydeus’ angry reply to Eteocles sees him interrupting, repeating himself in his anger before storming out in mid-speech, grinding his teeth and throwing his olive branch away in disgust (et orsa | inecit mediis sermonibus improba: ‘reddes,’ | ingeminans ‘reddes’, 2.451–3, ‘while the king was still speaking he interjected discourteously, “You will hand it over,” repeating “you will hand it over”’; ‘nos poscimus annum. | sed moror.’ haec audax etiamnnum in limine retro | uociferans, 466–8, ‘“We demand our year! – But I tarry.” This still on the threshold he boldly shouts behind him’; talis adhuc trepidum linquit Calydonius heros | concilium infrendens ... ramumque precantis oliuae | abicit, 476–9, ‘Like to him the Calydonian hero leaves the still fearful council grinding his teeth … throwing aside the branch of suppliant olive.’). It is difficult to imagine someone behaving this way before a real tyrannical emperor and surviving; Tydeus’ response reads like a fantasy of how one might wish to respond to an autocratic ruler. In a sense, Tydeus’ blunt speaking is as excessive and heroic as his defeat of fifty warriors, and just as implausible. Maeon’s final words before his suicide mimic Tydeus’ disgust at delay and likewise break off in mid-speech (‘neque enim ipse moror’, 3.77, ‘for I myself delay not’; ‘te superis fratrique...’ et iam media orsa loquentis | absciderat, 3.87–8, ‘ “you to the gods and your brother” – and now his side plugged to the hilt cut short his speech midway’). Creon similarly abuses Eteocles in a long speech of recrimination (11.269–96) marked by his emotional state (ardens | ecce aderat luctu dicturusque omnia belli | libertate Creon, 11.262–4, ‘but see, here comes Creon passionate with grief and ready to speak his whole mind in the licence of war’; infrendens, miseraque exaestuat ira, 11.297, ‘gnashing his teeth, boiling with rage and misery’). He in turn is abused by Oedipus who rediscovers lost energy in his attack on the new tyrant (instinctu rabido, 11.673, ‘started in mad excitement’; abducit genitor saeuumque minatur | indignans ueniam.

 95 Hershkowitz 1998b, 268–70, citing Dio 57.2–5 on Tiberius’ dissimulation as a classic example of the difficulties involved.

Dissimulation, Dissent and the Disarming of Tyranny  

qualis leo rupe sub alta, 11.740–1, ‘her father leads her away, savagely threatening, scorning pardon: like to a lion under a high crag’). All these responses to dissimulative speeches from tyrants are linked by the heightened emotion that underpins them and the absence in these responses of any further dissimulation. A pattern emerges whereby the dissimulating tyrant is confounded by the lack of dissimulation and the unbridled release of emotion in the response. The angry and frank reply tends (improbably) not to provoke a violent response from the tyrant but rather elicits another classic tyrannical character trait, that of fear. Eteocles’ concilium is frightened by Tydeus (trepidum, 2.476), Maeon’s suicide provokes a fearful response from Eteocles’ court, if not explicitly from Eteocles himself (excussae procerum mentes, turbataque mussant | concilia, 3.92–3, ‘the lords are shocked, councillors mutter in consternation’), Eteocles fears for his power after Creon’s speech and Creon himself fears the very sight of Oedipus. Parallel to these responses to dissimulation are the broader criticisms of tyranny by Theban citizens, the unnamed critic in book 1 (168–96) and Aletes in book 3 (176–217). The ‘aliquis’ (1.171) of book 1, offers an analysis and condemnation of the system of alternating that mirrors Statius’ own exposition in previous lines (compare 1.125–63 with 1.168–96).96 Yet despite the similarity in their opinions, Statius’ presentation of the critic appears rather harsh: iam murmura serpunt plebis Echioniae, tacitumque a principe uulgus dissidet et, qui mos populis, uenturus amatur. atque aliquis, cui mens humili laesisse ueneno summa nec impositos umquam ceruice uolenti ferre duces Theb. 1.168–73 Already grumbling creeps among the Echonian commons and the crowd is at silent odds with the prince. As is the way of the populace, the man of the future is the favourite. Thus one of them whose bent it was to harm the highest with lowly venom nor ever to bear with a willing neck the rulers placed over him

We have an obvious difficulty in reconciling Statius’ apparently negative depiction of this critic with the fact that the critic’s views are so similar to that of the narrator. Statius’ negative implications are predicated on the consistency of the opposition to rule rather than the particular criticisms of Eteocles; there are some

 96 Ahl 1986, 2628–30. On these lines, see also Briguglio 2017, 239–40.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid who always criticise new rulers, no matter what their qualities.97 However, ‘aliquis’ appears to be using the only weapon available to him and his attack on Eteocles is undeniably powerful (nec impositos ... duces) and mimics other frank responses to tyranny. Statius may have a literary motivation, as the speech of ‘aliquis’ acts as a parallel to Oedipus’ speech at the very beginning of the poem (1.46–87). Oedipus’ curse merits an immediate divine response, the infection of Eteocles and Polynices by Tisiphone. The critic’s speech is also immediately followed, without any obvious link or break, by divine action, the council of the gods (cf. tibi, summe deorum | terrarumque sator, sociis hanc addere mentem | sedit? 1.178–80) which, in combination with the other determining forces in the narrative will move the critic’s cause forward. ‘Aliquis’ wants to see Polynices return (tamen ille precanti | mitis et adfatu bonus et patientior aequi, 1.189–90). We should be wary of his motivation; he wants Polynices purely because he is the exile; ‘aliquis’ seems unaware that Polynices has the potential to be as bad as his brother. His lowly venom is to be criticised both as a part of the over-determined pattern of causation in book 1 and as a piece of partisan criticism that misunderstands the nature of tyranny in Thebes. ‘Aliquis’ lacks intelligence and, moreover, his criticism appears to be futile. The populace grumble about their rulers throughout the Thebaid but never achieve change. Yet we should not dismiss his attack on Eteocles altogether; the unnamed man certainly displays a commendable spirit and, by virtue of his anonymity carries a certain everyman quality. However, the problem of authorial response to public criticism of Eteocles becomes even greater in book 3 when an old man named Aletes at the burial of the fifty who fought against Tydeus blames Eteocles for the undeserved deaths of his fellow citizens (nunc regis iniqui | ob noxam inmeritos patriae tot culmina ciues | extulimus, 3.206–8, ‘now by the guilt of a wicked king we have carried off so many innocent countrymen’; concern for wasted lives of the people is a topos of civil war).98 The name Aletes is richly suggestive. The old age of Statius’ Aletes (grandior aeuo, 3.176) is reminiscent of Aeneas’ companion of the same name (Aen. 1.121; 9.246, 307), but the Greek ἀλήτης has greater resonance.99 In Homer,

 97 See Rebeggiani 2018, 171–2. 98 For the relationship between Aletes and the anonymous critic of Lucan Bellum Civile 2 and Neronian Rome more generally, see Rebeggiani 2018, 177, 192–6. 99 Cf. Hershkowitz 1998b, 246–55. Hyginus has an Aletes as son of Agamemnon. Velleius cites the name Aletes for the founder of Corinth, 1.3.3. A scholion on Pindar (sch. Pind. Nem. 7.155a) tells the story of an Aletes who begged for food in Corinth and was given only a clump of earth and later became king of Corinth. Theb. 3.213 terraque insternar auita may be an oblique reference to this myth.

Dissimulation, Dissent and the Disarming of Tyranny  

the word is used (only in the Odyssey) only to refer to vagabonds or beggars (especially Odysseus himself, of course). In Greek tragedy, the word is used to refer to exiles (who, like Orestes or Oedipus, regularly return in disguise or with their identity uncertain).100 The name suggests Aletes’ lowly status but also, given the association of the Greek word, a possibility of a hidden identity. Statius’ response to Aletes’ public criticism of Eteocles is wonder and praise: haec senior, multumque nefas Eteoclis aceruat crudelem infandumque uocans poenasque daturum. unde ea libertas? iuxta illi finis et aetas tota retro seraeque decus uelit addere morti. Theb. 3.214–17 Thus the elder, piling Eteocles’ villainy high, calling him cruel and abominable and sure to pay. Whence such freedom? His end was near, his life all behind him; he would bring honour to death delayed.

Statius’ varied authorial comment on these dissenting voices seems inconsistent. Statius implies that Aletes’ age allows him the freedom to criticise, that Aletes has nothing to lose by attacking Eteocles publicly. Yet Statius’ comment is perhaps somewhat disingenuous; the suggestion is made that the punishment for criticism is death, even if, in Aletes’ case, that death would come so late in his life that it would not be much of a punishment. Ultimately, Aletes’ opposition to Eteocles achieves little; popular criticism of the tyrant never brings political change. At most it brings martyrdom. Aletes’ criticism is at least worthy of praise; he does not make the partisan comments of the anonymous critic in book 1, but his opposition is equally ineffective. Moreover, his own motivation for criticism seems a little cynical (seraeque decus ... morti), rather undercutting the authorial praise. The rather different reactions of the authorial voice to the critic and Aletes will merge in his reaction to the suicide of Maeon which, as we shall see below, merits both praise and criticism. Like Aletes, the unnamed critic is of lowly status (he is one of the uulgus) and both offer similar criticism of Eteocles, despite the apparently different responses to that criticism from the narratorial voice. Moreover, both the unnamed critic (aliquis) and Aletes carry some suggestion of a hidden identity. The similarity of the unnamed critic’s and Aletes’ criticism to that of the narrator suggests that both stand for Statius’ authorial voice; Statius stages his own criticism of Eteocles

 100 For Homeric usage, see LS s.v. ἀλητεία; for examples in tragedy, cf. e.g. Aes. Ag. 1282; Choe. 1042; Soph. OC 50, 746; Eur. Heracl. 224; Supp. 280.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid (a possible response to tyranny) within the narration of his poem and proceeds to dissect that criticism. Statius’ negative and positive reactions are both somewhat undermined; both are made to seem somewhat extreme. In reality, Statius stages two possible reactions to criticism from the populace and undercuts both. Both the critic and Aletes are remarkable for a further reason. While neither’s criticism of the monarch seems effective, neither one suffers punishment for their public condemnation of Eteocles. In this sense, their outspoken behaviour mimics the unrealistic success of frank oppositions to tyranny by Tydeus and Maeon. By criticising his own response to Eteocles, Statius effectively points up the sense in which his whole poetic project lacks realism; in order to produce a critical and open poetic response to tyrannical behaviour, Statius must situate his criticism within an epic mythological environment. Statius creates a world where honest responses to tyrannical dissimulation provide the best outcomes. As such, his depiction of tyranny differs even from that of the other Flavian epicists. Comparison with the contemporary historical and political context must therefore be guarded. Statius invites comparison with contemporary Rome through his description of Eteocles as a Roman princeps at odds with his people (tacitumque a principe uulgus | dissidet, 1.169–70, ‘the crowd is at silent odds with the prince’).101 Yet the nature of Eteocles’ quasi-principate differs from the Roman reality it reflects so that serious comparison becomes impossible. Making Eteocles a princeps not only invites comparison but also highlights the differences between Theban fiction and Roman reality. If we wish to read Statius’ Thebes as comparable to imperial Rome then we must also accept that Statius’ narrative is itself dissimulating, presenting us with a depiction of tyranny that does not fit comfortably with the realities of autocratic rule in Rome. A reader of Statius’ epic is confronted by the stark realisation that Roman tyranny is rarely as artless as its Theban counterpart and that the uncomplicated responses to tyrannical speech are rarely as successful or as free from danger. This awkwardness helps to explain the inconsistency of the narrator’s own comments. Statius’ own poetic voice is difficult to take seriously because it depicts an unrealistic world where the lone dissenting voice may challenge the tyrant successfully. Statius’ narrator is as much the receiver of implicit criticism as his anonymous critic receives explicit condemnation. Statius tries to have his cake and eat it. He depicts a world where opposition to tyranny is rarely fatal. However, Statius

 101 For the ‘Romanness’ of the term princeps, cf. Ahl 1986, 2832–4; and McGuire 1997, 151n.10 who see the use of principe as a covert allusion to Domitian. I note in passing that Martial 11.4 makes an express contrast between Nerva as princeps and dux and Domitian as dominus ac deus.

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also places his own dissenting voice within the text in the twin figures of the unnamed critic and Aletes. His apparently contradictory attitude to these dissenting voices points up the absence of realism in the depiction of tyranny that both characters oppose. Statius manages to satisfy all the demands of his audience, presenting a civil war epic and a view of tyranny that is palatable to all readers, including Domitian. Our analysis of his presentation of suicide will confirm and augment this point of view, that Statius can criticise both tyrant and his opponent.

. More Dissenting Voices: Suicide as Political Opposition or Erasure of Identity? Flavian epic, like so much literature of the 1st century AD, shows, to modern tastes, an unhealthy interest in suicide. In Silius’ Punica we see the mass suicide at Saguntum, two attempts at suicide by the younger Scipio, a Roman killing himself at Cannae, and a number of Capuans committing suicide.102 In Valerius’ Argonautica, much time is spent on the suicide of Jason’s parents.103 Statius reflects such interests with his depiction of the suicides of Dymas and Menoeceus in book 10 as well as the suicide of Maeon in book 3. Both Maeon’s and Dymas’ suicide scenes are Statian innovations, while Menoeceus’ suicide is moved to a later and more significant point in events and invested with greater import than in previous narrations of the Theban myth. Yet although suicide plays an apparently disproportionate role in Flavian epic, prominent depictions of suicide are not uncommon in Roman epic (we need think only of the Didos of Virgil and Ovid, for example), and such an excess of suicides was perhaps inevitable in the literature of the period that followed the reign of Nero, where suicide became almost a central aspect of Roman literature and Roman political life.104 The rate of suicides among the aristocratic elite in Rome leapt alarmingly from the accession of Tiberius in AD 14 until the death of Nero in AD 68.105 A ‘Roman cult of suicide’ emerged as a reaction to the crisis in social relations between

 102 Pun. 2.612–95; 4.457–9; 9.173–7; 11.186–8; 13.261–98; 13.374–80. Cf. Hulls 2018. 103 Argo. 1.767–851. 104 See Hill 2004, 1–31; and Edwards 2007, 113–160 for an overview of important issues in Roman suicide. See also Grisé 1982; Griffin 1986; 1986b; van Hooff 1990; Plass 1995; and Hill 2004 passim on all aspects of Roman suicide. On suicide in Flavian epic, see esp. McGuire 1990; 1997, 21–5, 185–229; and Ripoll 1998, 375–424. 105 Tac. Ann. 16.16; Dio 60.16; Hill 2004, 185.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid aristocratic elite and the Julio-Claudian emperors;106 suicide became widespread amongst the upper classes by Nero’s time: ‘it almost assumes the status of a regulated political institution of empire, and is committed virtually automatically under certain generally recognised conditions.’107 Timothy Hill establishes, building on the body of scholarly work on Roman suicide from the last thirty years of the 20th century, that Roman aristocratic suicide, characterised by ‘ostentation, ritualization, political protest, and philosophical allusion’, establishes a Roman’s status as a moral witness in the community. Those characteristics of Roman suicide are governed by a need for aristocratic honour and the assertion of the aristocracy’s right to govern the Roman state. The aristocratic desire to use suicide both to demonstrate an individual’s conformity to the concept of aristocratic honour and simultaneously to institute and define this concept creates the paradoxical sense that self-killing is a privileged form of execution in Julio-Claudian Rome.108 This superfluity of self-killing that developed amongst the aristocracy of Neronian Rome is reflected in its literature. Seneca displays an obsessive interest in suicide both in his prose writing and in his tragedies.109 Lucan’s epic poetry is dominated by both narratives and imagery of suicide; for Lucan civil war is suicide at a societal level;110 Lucan depicts the suicide of Vulteius and his company in book 4 as a misguided attempt to secure uirtus;111 Cato’s death is extensively foreshadowed in the work as an attack on Caesar’s clementia and an idealised example of Roman aristocratic suicide.112 Yet despite the prevalence of suicide in the highest echelons of Neronian society and the interest in the subject in Nero-

 106 The phrase is from Griffin 1986, 68. 107 Hill 2004, 183 citing Plass 1995, 84. 108 It also has a practical aspect, of course, allowing, in the case of an aristocrat expecting prosecution for a serious offence, one’s family to retain wealth and property that would be confiscated after an execution. The jurist Ulpian probably based his opinion that ostentatious philosophical suicide should not lead to confiscation of goods on evidence from the Trajanic and Hadrianic period, Dig. 28.3.6.7, see Hill 2004, 307n.8. On political suicide in Rome see esp. Griffin 1986; 1986b; Hill 2004, 183–212 which this paragraph summarises; and Edwards 2007, 121–31. The quote is from Hill 2004, 184, itself a summary of Griffin 1986, 65–6. Examples of such suicides include those of Seneca and Thrasea Paetus: see Tac. Ann. 15.62–4; 16.34–5. 109 See Hill 2004, 145–82. 110 Luc. 1.2–3; 8.556–7. 111 On Vulteius, in particular the analogy between him and Scaeva as illustrations of misdirected virtus in the context of civil war, see Saylor 1990; Leigh 1997, 182–3, 218–9, 259–64; Eriksen 2002; and Hill 2004, 218–21. 112 See Hill 2004, 222–30.

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nian literature, we can see strong scepticism regarding the effectiveness of suicide in the political sphere. It is this attitude that, as we shall see, dominates Statius’ presentation of suicide (both political and otherwise) in the Thebaid. Such a sceptical view regarding the power of suicide to alter the political landscape is inherent in Lucan’s presentation of suicide: ‘Cato, it seems, is without any peer, or near equal, in ethical perception. While his suicide might serve to demonstrate the illegitimacy and corruption upon which the Caesarian regime rests, then, it cannot, within a state seized by furor and under the sway of Caesar, single-handedly recreate the ethical understanding necessary to the reconstitution of the old forms of the Republic.’113 This questioning of the value of even the archetypal ideal suicide in Lucan is expanded upon by his contemporary Petronius, who depicts aristocratic suicide in Neronian Rome as a ridiculous, ethically empty action: ‘suicide for these characters [in Petronius’ Satyrica] acts on one level as it always does in aristocratic Roman literature, and serves to establish the agent within some particular social role. Because in the Satyrica social personae are always transitory and ephemeral, however, self-killing becomes for Petronius’ characters an essentially trivial undertaking ungrounded in any ethical reality.’114 Disquiet at the effectiveness of aristocratic suicide continued into the Flavian period, and was most famously articulated by Tacitus at Agricola 42.115 Suicide continues to be a prominent theme of Tacitus’ account of the civil war of AD 69, although perhaps without the dominance that it enjoys in Neronian writing and Lucan in particular.116 The writing of contemporary authors like Martial and Tacitus suggests that suicide within upper classes remained frequent in the Flavian period, especially under Domitian. Moreover, the connection between philosophy, suicide and political protest continued and motivated the expulsion of philosophers from Rome in AD 71 and AD 94. Furthermore, Arulenus Rusticus, promoted to consular rank by Domitian, was executed in AD 92 or 93 for his biography of another famous Neronian suicide, Thrasea Paetus, and Domitian had his books burned.117 Clearly, the Flavian emperors felt that the celebration of politically motivated suicide still constituted a serious threat to their authority.  113 Hill 2004, 230: see also 229–36. 114 Hill 2004, 238. Cf. also Petronius’ unconventional suicide at Tac. Ann. 16.19 with Hill 2004, 247–51. 115 See Edwards 2007, 125–7. 116 The most famous suicide from AD 69 is Otho: see Tac. Hist. 2.49; Mart. 6.32; Suet. Otho 12; Plut. Otho 17; Dio 64.15; Ash 1999, 34–5, 83–94. Cf. also the suicide of Julius Agrestis, Tac. Hist. 3.54 (discussed below). 117 See Tac. Agr. 2; Suet. Dom. 10.3; Dio 67.13. Arulenus and Thrasea form two ends of a quasidynastic opposition to the principate under Nero and the Flavians. Thrasea’s son-in-law

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid Yet the criticisms of politically motivated suicide that developed in the Neronian period are articulated much more fully and clearly in the literature of the post-Flavian period.118 Suicide did become less frequent in the Flavian period, and this process continued after Domitian’s assassination. In the aftermath of civil war, suicide no longer informed and reinforced the ethical stance of the aristocratic elite. Rather that ethical system collapsed into the civil conflict of AD 69 and the ostentatious suicides of the Neronian and Domitianic periods were denigrated as the products of a morally bankrupt system.119 The most important evidence for this attitude (indeed the only instance in Latin literature where political suicide as a concept is commented upon directly) comes in Tacitus’ account of ostentatious suicides at Agricola 42.120 Tacitus criticises those who seek ambitiosae mortes as: ‘no more than inflated attempts to acquire for oneself an exemplary moral stature … the practice of political suicide was no more than an empty senatorial pretension.’121 Tacitus’ remarks may have been personally motivated; he was implicated in the senatorial condemnation of both Arulenus and Senecio (Agr. 2–3); perhaps more important to Tacitus was the need to defend Agricola’s collaboration with a tyrannical regime by rejecting suicide and making himself useful to the state. Moreover, Tacitus’ accounts of the deaths of men like Thrasea Paetus and Seneca (paradoxically, given their normally austere image) reinforce the image of Neronian theatricality and decadence. There can be no question that Tacitus’ condemnation of ambitiosae mortes does reflect the attitude of the early 2nd century AD towards suicide. His attitude in the Agricola develops concerns

 Helvidius Priscus was executed in AD 75 by Vespasian for his protracted opposition, while Herennius Senecio, another man elevated to consular rank by Domitian, was also executed for his biography of Helvidius. Helvidius’ son of the same name was also executed with Arulenus and Herennius for writing a farce which subtly attacked Domitian’s separation from his wife, see Suet. Dom. 10.4. On the dating of these deaths: see Griffin 2000, 61n.292. Rebeggiani 2018 sees a sharp decline in imperial-senatorial relations immediately following the Thebaid’s publication. Whilst he is absolutely right to see AD 93–6 as especially fraught, I do not think it right to view the Flavian family’s relationship with the Senate in AD 69–92 as uncomplicatedly rosy. 118 Hill 2004, 255–9. 119 The process begins in the immediate aftermath of the civil wars of 69, where Flavian propaganda characterised Nero as an imperator scaenicus and his principate as utterly corrupted by a process of ‘theatricalisation’: see Ripoll 1999, 140–8. This idea was concretised by writers of the second century who describe Nero and Neronian Rome consistently in these terms: see Barton 1994; Edwards 1994; and Rubiès 1994. 120 On this passage and its implications, see Hill 2004, 8–11, 253–9. 121 Hill 2004, 255.

More Dissenting Voices: Suicide as Political Opposition or Erasure of Identity?  

that Seneca himself had, that suicide was committed in the foolish pursuit of an umbra uirtutis.122 Statius’ epic poetry is sandwiched between these two conflicting views of publicly performed, politically motivated suicide. At a historical level, Statius writes his epic in a period where ostentatious aristocratic self-killing is still frequent, but in decline after the excesses of the Neronian era. At a literary level, however, Flavian epic poetry maintained the disproportionate interest in suicide of Neronian literature. The influence of Senecan tragedy and Lucanian epic is highly visible in this regard. Statius investigates the possibilities of suicide within his mythological epic framework, and depicts some of the concerns that Tacitus would later articulate more directly in the Agricola. All three suicides in the Thebaid share many of the important features of contemporary aristocratic suicides in Rome; epic poetry’s capacity to remember mimics the need for a public audience for aristocratic suicides. Yet we shall see that the act of self-killing in the Thebaid, while worthy of remembrance, is ultimately regarded as futile and without effect.123 Indeed, Statius reverses the momentum of suicidal imagery in Lucan, where Rome’s self-destruction in civil war is figured as an act of suicide, and presents the context of civil war contaminating apparently worthy acts so that suicide becomes an act of questionable validity. Suicide on this formation can be read as a perverse act of identity formation, one which apes the journey through violence to create a stable political community, but also one which inevitably fails by being self-destructive. The suicides depicted in the Thebaid have attracted significant scholarly attention, in particular in studies of Flavian epic by François Ripoll and Donald McGuire.124 Both studies have revealed much about the importance of suicide in Flavian epic in general, but both have ignored individual aspects of the suicides in the Thebaid in order to expose patterns common to all three Flavian epicists. McGuire’s exploration of epic suicide exposes a number of important, common features.125 These suicides in Flavian epic have a political aspect, and indeed display suicide as an act of opposition to tyranny and as an act that asserts an individual’s self-control. However, in the Thebaid, while the deaths of Maeon, Dymas and Menoeceus all assert the individual’s self-control in the most extreme way possible, the political nature of suicide only applies directly to Maeon’s death and the two suicides in book 10 can only loosely be said to be political. Furthermore,  122 Sen. Ep. 74.21. 123 Cf. McGuire 1997, 21–5. 124 McGuire 1997, 185–229; and Ripoll 1998, 375–424. Cf. also McGuire 1990; Frings 1991, 44–8. 125 On the Thebaid, see esp. McGuire 1997, 21–5, 185–9, 197–205.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid Statius depicts suicide as an act of defiance that has questionable validity. Suicide is impressive (and all three are rewarded in the afterlife) but ultimately futile. Certainly it is true that all three suicides in the Thebaid are cast in a pessimistic light; suicide displays a capacity to silence the voice of opposition, a capacity most obvious in the case of Maeon, whose defiant speech to Eteocles is broken off in mid-sentence by his plunging of his sword deep into his stomach (Theb. 3.87– 8).126 Parallels can be drawn with Dymas’ death, where his suicide prevents his speaking to the enemy and revealing Argive plans (10.431–40).127 It is harder to involve the sense of silence in the death of Menoeceus, for whom speech is a weapon; he uses speech as trickery to deflect his father’s concerns (10.720–34) and silences the battlefield with his speech from the walls (10.756–73). Yet Menoeceus’ words and suicide are misplaced and do not achieve their desired effect of destroying the Argive attack. Finally, suicides can be seen as an occasion to demonstrate poetry’s commemorative power; both Maeon and Dymas are accorded extraordinarily fulsome praise by the poet for the manner of their deaths (3.99–113; 10.445–9). Yet Menoeceus’ suicide is followed not by a laudatory apostrophe from the poet, but by a long speech of lament by Menoeceus’ mother (10.793–814) that radically undercuts the nobility of her son’s death, questioning the value of his actions and of her own.128 She wonders what nefas she has done or offence to the gods (10.795); why Jocasta’s unnatural children can remain in power (796–800) and why her son came to love death (804). Although Menoeceus’ mother claims that she had no monster-bearing union (non ego monstrifero coitu reuoluta nouaui | pignora, 796–7), Menoeceus acquires a monstrous aspect in her speech; she emphasises the snake and the Spartoi as tainted elements in his ancestry:

 126 Maeon’s suicide follows the breaking off of his speech because he intends to deceive the executioners and ensure that he commits suicide. His act in itself is one of deception. Ripoll 1998, 384 and n.45 sensibly refutes the long-standing idea that breaking off the speech creates uncertainty in the audience as to whether Maeon has committed suicide or assassinated Eteocles, a possibility rendered highly unlikely by the general context of the poem (this is about fraternae acies after all) and the foreshadowing of Maeon’s death, 3.75–7, esp. quinquaginta animae. The assassination theory dates back to Barth’s commentary of 1664 and is mentioned by Ahl 1986, 2889; McGuire 1990, 32; and 1997, 201–2. 127 Amphion’s threat is scarcely tyrannical and Dymas’ reaction of instant suicide to the offer of his life and his master’s body in return for information might seem somewhat excessive. On that scene and the respective morality of the protagonists, see below, ch. 4.3. 128 This evokes the lament of Euryalus’ mother at Virg. Aen. 9.481–97 and points up the difference in that Euryalus is killed in a properly military context whereas Menoeceus withdrew from battle.

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nimirum Martius anguis, quaeque nouis proauum tellus effloruit armis – hinc animi tristes nimiusque in pectore Mauors, et de matre nihil. Theb. 10.806–9 Surely it was Mars’ snake and the earth flowering with our forebears’ newborn arms – hence that sinister courage, hence all too much of Mavors in your heart and nothing from your mother.

Meneoeceus has become a sword-devouring monster (uiden ut iugulo consumpserit ensem? 10.813, ‘Do you see how he devoured the sword with his throat?’); his ancestry as the heir of men who sprang from the earth becomes the impetus for his suicidal act (tellus ... hinc animi). His mother’s speech even exploits the association between suicide and silence; her own lament is broken off only because she is led away by her maids and companions: diceret infelix etiamnum et cuncta repleret questibus: abducunt comites famulaeque perosam solantes thalamoque tenent. sedet eruta multo ungue genas: non illa diem non uerba precantum respicit aut uisus flectit tellure relictos, iam uocis iam mentis inops. Theb. 10.815–20 The unfortunate woman would still be speaking and filling all things with her laments, but her companions lead her away and her maids comforting her loss keep her in her chamber, where she sits with cheeks torn by many a nail. She pays no heed to the daylight or to words of entreaty nor turns her abandoned gaze from the ground, bereft of voice and thought.

Menoeceus’ mother would continue, but she herself has been silenced by her son’s suicide and indeed reduced to a state of living death by her grief. Her condition horrifyingly resembles that of Oedipus at the beginning of the poem (1.46– 87): a living death marked by self-mutilation, a lack of daylight, where the victim is locked away, abandoned by their children, effectively silenced. The mother is left staring inconsolably at the earth that produced her son and his suicidal impulses. We might also compare Menoeceus’ mother staring at the ground with Oedipus’ striking of the ground before invoking the gods of the underworld (1.55) and her ironic complaint to Jupiter (placet hoc tibi, fulminis auctor? 10.800, ‘is this your pleasure, author of the thunderbolt?’) to a similar complaint by Oedipus (et uidet ista deorum | ignauus genitor? 1.79–80, ‘And does the sire of the gods see it and do nothing?’).

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid Menoeceus’ suicide on behalf of the people of Thebes is, or ought to be, a colossal act of pietas. The sense that Virtus acts outside her normal sphere of influence anticipates this, and when Menoeceus reaches the top of the walls where he kills himself, religious language indicates that this deed is a sacrifice to the gods. Let us look again at Menoeceus’ appearance on the walls of Thebes: at pius electa murorum in parte Menoeceus iam sacer aspectu solitoque augustior ore, ceu subito in terras supero demissus ab axe Theb. 10.756–8 But pious Menoeceus took his stand on a chosen part of the walls. Sacred now his aspect, more august than his wonted countenance, as though he had suddenly been sent from heaven down to earth.

Menoeceus’ suicide on the walls of Thebes is reminiscent of Astyanax flung from the walls of Troy by Neoptolemus in the Little Iliad and in Euripides’ Trojan Women, but resembles most closely Seneca’s depiction of Astyanax in his Trojan Women.129 Seneca’s Astyanax is led to his death by Ulysses but seemingly goes up the walls willingly (nec gradu segni puer | ad alta pergit moenia, Tro. 1090–1, ‘without hesitation the boy mounts the high walls’). Astyanax is compared in a simile to the cub of a wild beast (qualis ingentis ferae | paruus tenerque fetus et nondum potens | saeuire dente iam tamen tollit minas | morsusque inanes temptat atque animis tumet, 1093–6, ‘like the tiny young cub of some massive beast that’s not yet able to rage with its fangs, but still it bristles, tries toothless bites and swells in spirit’) as he gazes defiantly at the Greek spectators who surround the tower (1080–7). Finally, unlike the earlier Greek versions, where he is thrown from the tower by Neoptolemus, Seneca depicts the boy jumping of his own accord (sponte desiluit sua | in media Priami regna, 1102–3, ‘of his own will the boy leapt right into Priam’s kingdom’).130 The defiance behind this act of independence in death is crucial: ‘Astyanax’s suicide disrupts the rites, exposing the savage realities behind their [the Greeks’] irrelevant (and perverse) religious form.’131 Furthermore, Menoeceus refers to himself as a hostia (Theb. 10.769); the act of spattering the walls of Thebes with his blood is one of purification (arripit atque uno quaesitam uulnere rumpit. | sanguine tum spargit turres et moenia lustrat,  129 Little Iliad fr. 20W; Eur. Tro. 1133–9; Sen. Tro. 1088–1103. Cf. Ovid Met. 13.415–17. 130 The incongruous image of Astyanax as a wild animal is perhaps most strongly reminiscent of Statius’ Antigone: see above ch. 1.6, although all the Thebaid’s heroes are compared to wild animals. On the simile, see Boyle 1994, 187. Text and translations are from Boyle 1994. 131 Boyle 1994, 226–7.

More Dissenting Voices: Suicide as Political Opposition or Erasure of Identity?  

10.776–7). Menoeceus presents his suicide as a form of devotio.132 Indeed, Statius’ depiction of Menoeceus’ suicide is modelled upon the devotiones of the Decii as told by Livy.133 The self-sacrifice of the Decii involved self-consecration; in the closest parallel passage (Livy 8.9–11.1), the consul P. Decius Mus rode into the ranks of the enemy, inspiring his troops to win the battle and, as Livy comments, diverted all the dangers from heavenly and infernal gods onto himself (quorum alter omnes minas periculaque ab deis superis inferisque in se unum uertit, Livy 8.10.7, ‘one of them drew all the threats and dangers from the gods above and below on to himself alone’), becoming sacrum to the gods of the underworld in return for the destruction of Rome’s enemies. All three stories of Decii devoting themselves share many of the standard elements of substitutionary sacrifice; they sacrifice themselves for the good of the state in time of war, and as leaders of their citizens are appropriate substitutions for their state; their actions exemplify the tradition of unus pro omnibus, they are willing victims and are heroized by their people after their deaths. As such the Decii have much in common with other Romans famous for suicidal self-sacrifice (e.g. M. Curtius, see Livy 7.6.1–6) as well as the Menoeceus of Greek tragedy.134 The devotio clearly held a fascination for Romans, and the ritual features in the writings of Cicero, Virgil and Lucan.135 Yet Alan Heinrich has demonstrated that: ‘Menoeceus’ suicide represents a failed devotio, one distorted into a spectacle of pure self-destruction, a microcosm of Thebes itself.’136 Menoeceus’ breaks one of the key ‘rules’ of devotio by killing himself instead of being killed by the enemy (mactatio).137 Indeed, Menoeceus ignores his father’s imprecations that his son meet his death by rushing into the midst of the enemy (i proelia misce,| i Danaas acies mediosque per obuius enses, Theb. 10.713–14, ‘go, join battle, go through the Danaan ranks, through the midst of swords’). Following his suicidal sword thrust, Menoeceus attempts to throw

 132 A different and related rite, also known as devotio, is attested at Macrobius Sat. 3.9.9–13. See Oakley 1998, 380–3. The ritual in Macrobius is more likely to be primary and the devotio described in Livy may be a development of the ritual from Rome’s very earliest history, see Versnel 1976; and Oakley 1998, 481. 133 See above, 79 n.84. 134 See Versnel 1981, 143–63; Oakley 1998, 96–100, 482–3. Cf. Soph. OC 498–9; Eur. El. 1024– 6; fr.360 16–18. 135 See Cic. Quir. 1; Sest. 48; Virg. Aen.12.234 with Pascal 1990; Hardie 1993, 28–9; and Leigh 1997, 128–43 on devotio imagery in Lucan; on devotio in Silius, see Marks 2005. 136 Heinrich 1999, 182. See also Bernstein 2013, 239–44. Here, I read against Rebeggiani 2018, 254–9, who sees Menoeceus’ devotio as entirely successful. 137 Compare ancient accounts of Decius’ devotio: Cicero de Fin. 2.61; Seneca Ep. 67.9; Florus 1.14.3; Orosius 3.9.3 with Versnel 1981, 150; and Heinrich 1999, 183–4.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid himself as a weapon onto the Argive troops below, but this is prevented by Virtus and Pietas, who bring his body gently to earth: sanguine tunc spargit turres et moenia lustrat, seque super medias acies nondum ense remisso iecit et in saeuos cadere est conatos Achiuos. ast illum amplexae Pietas Virtusque ferebant leniter ad terras corpus, nam spiritus olim ante Iouem et summis apicem sibi poscit in astris. Theb. 10.777–82 Then he bespatters the towers with his blood and purifies the walls and throws himself upon the midst of the lines not yet letting go his sword, trying to fall against the fierce Achaeans. But Piety and Valour took him in their arms and bore his body gently to earth. For his spirit is long since before Jupiter, claiming for itself a pinnacle among the highest stars.

As Heinrich comments: ‘his attempts are foiled: Pietas and Virtus ensure that his suicide will be deprived of any military relevance … the ritually prescribed rush by the devoted in (or super) medias acies is displaced, rendering Menoeceus’ act one of pure self-immolation. Statius does not simply retail Meneoceus’ Euripidean suicide: he calls attention to it, representing mactatio as a replacement of devotio.’138 Furthermore, Statius’ own transformation of tragedy highlights the differences between Astyanax and Menoeceus. The Theban hero is no longer a child as he was in the Euripidean version, but an adult warrior and yet it is the small boy who comes closer to the Roman act of devotio plunging headlong and shattering his body on the rocks below (Sen. Tro. 1110–17) and causing recognition of nefas amongst his Greek audience (praeceps ut altis cecidit e muris puer | fleuitque Achiuum turba quod fecit nefas, Tro. 1118–19, ‘when the boy fell sheer from the lofty walls and the Achaean crowd had wept their own sin’). The manner of Astyanax’s death suggests the role of the Stoic sapiens, who, according to Seneca, stands above the abyss defiantly and leaps where he is due to fall (stabit super illam uoraginem intrepidus et fortasse quo debebit cadere desiliet, Sen. NQ 6.32.4, ‘he will stand above that abyss unflinching and perhaps will leap in where he will have to fall’).139 Menoeceus never quite succeeds in letting go; Virtus and Pietas prevent Stoic death as well as Roman devotio.

 138 Heinrich 1999, 185. 139 Offering oneself to fate is a Stoic ideal (praebere se fato, Sen. Prov. 5.8) and is also a characteristic of genuine gladiators, to whom the sapiens is compared (cf. Sen. Tran. 11.4–5; Ep. 30.8; 70.20–7).

More Dissenting Voices: Suicide as Political Opposition or Erasure of Identity?  

The suicide and sacrifice seem futile and without effect; it is Capaneus’ death on the same walls that provokes a rout amongst Argive troops, Capaneus’ death that provides the after-effects of a true devotio (Theb. 11.21–26; cf. Livy 8.9.10). Worse still, it is as a result of his son’s death that Creon becomes increasingly unstable, urging Eteocles to fight his brother (11.263–5), himself becoming a replacement tyrant (his popularity stems in part from his son’s suicide, 11.652–4) and ordering that Argive dead remain unburied whilst swearing an oath by the gods and by Menoeceus (per superos magnumque Menoecea, 12.103).140 The link between Capaneus and Menoeceus is a powerful one, achieved partly through the shift from the Euripidean pattern and juxtaposition at the climax of book 10, and partly through the shared themes of sacrifice and uirtus that both warriors share.141 Ironically, the suicidal Menoeceus acquires a tyrannical quality; his manipulation of speech and silence, his monstrous character and his apparently irreligious behaviour all identify him with the stereotype of the tyrant, but his success in that role separates him from Statius’ tyrannical rulers.142 So the capacity for suicide to silence and destroy is far more varied and wide-ranging than at first seemed possible. Indeed, Menoeceus’ suicide plays on the expectations created by the deaths of Maeon and Dymas and other suicides in Flavian epic. It conflates the commemorative power of poetry and the silencing power of suicide in an appalling act of self-destruction that harms others. François Ripoll’s study of suicide develops the political nature of self-killing and combines this with a distinctly Stoic reading of Maeon’s death in the Thebaid.143 Maeon becomes a hero of libertas (esp. 3.100–3), an exemplum who glorifies voluntary, Stoic death.144 In particular Ripoll emphasises the rationality behind Maeon’s suicide, that he is beloved by the gods with whom, as a seer of Apollo, he has a close affinity, Maeon’s trueness to his own nature, and the posthumous reward for a praiseworthy opponent of tyranny. However, this underestimates how far Statius invokes stereotyped depictions of Roman (or, as we have suggested, Neronian and  140 See Vessey 1973, 131; Heinrich 1999, 188–90. 141 Fantham 1995 suggests that the juxtaposition serves to undercut Menoeceus’ uirtus by placing it next to Capaneus’ uirtus egressa modum, while Heinrich 1999, 186–90 who notes the connection and implies that Capaneus acts as a replacement for Menoeceus in the act of devotio. 142 Cf. McGuire 1997, 148–61. 143 Interestingly, Ripoll’s chapter on suicide divides the act into three sub-headings: suicide before a tyrant, exemplified by Valerius’ Aeson and Maeon, suicide before the enemy, exemplified by Silius’ Taurea and Dymas, and mass suicide, exemplified by the Saguntines and Capuans in the Punica. The chapter almost entirely ignores Menoeceus. 144 Ripoll 1998, 226–8.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid philosophical) suicide in depicting Maeon’s death.145 In the remainder of this section we will explore Maeon’s death as a test case for this point of view. Maeon’s suicide follows Tydeus’ monomachy in book 2 of the Thebaid. Maeon is the only survivor of the fifty who left Thebes to ambush the Argive ambassador. Intriguingly, Maeon is only introduced after Athene restrains Tydeus from a suicidal solo expedition against Thebes itself (2.682–9). Tydeus sends Maeon back to Eteocles with a declaration of war (2.690–703). Maeon performs the role of a sacrificial substitute for Tydeus, introduced only as he takes the Argive hero’s place on the return journey to Thebes. Certain characteristics of Maeon are revealed. He is introduced as Haemonides (692, we are to assume therefore that he is Menoeceus’ nephew – suicide is clearly a family trait), that as a seer he had foreseen these events (692–3) and that his warnings were to no avail (694–5). Moreover, he is doomed to an unmanly or powerless life (uita inerti, 695),146 combining his powerlessness against Fate and the fact that he does not die with his comrades in battle. In book 3, Maeon returns alone to Thebes, prompting much lamenting before he gives an aggressive account of the night’s event to Eteocles (3.40–77). Maeon, facing the tyrannical king, indicates his intention to kill himself at the end of his long penultimate speech (te diro horrore uolantes | quinquaginta animae circum noctesque diesque | adsilient – neque enim ipse moror, 3.75–7, ‘fifty spirits flying around you with dire terror by night and day; for I myself tarry not’). In front of Eteocles’ court, Maeon pre-empts the assault of Eteocles’ guards and kills himself (3.77–98), even interrupting his own final defiant speech (note how violence overpowering speech is actualised by blood pouring from both Maeon’s wound and from his mouth: extremisque animae singultibus errans | alternus nunc ore uenit nunc uulnere sanguis, 3.90–1, ‘he falls and with the last sobbing breaths the blood goes this way and that, coming now from the mouth, now from the wound’). Eteocles forbids him burial (96–8), but Maeon is instead eulogised by the poet, who assures that no animal or bird will touch his corpse (99–113). The narrator’s final praise for Maeon contains its own ironies, in particular where the poet claims an inability to add to the hero’s fame: quo carmine dignam quo satis ore tuis famam uirtutibus addam, augur amate deis? Theb. 3.102–4  145 This is very much emphasised by Rebeggiani 2018, 68–70. 146 OLD s.v. iners 3 ‘unmanly’, 5 ‘powerless’. The sense of iners as ‘lazy’ or ‘sluggish’ seems inappropriate given Maeon’s action in book 3.

More Dissenting Voices: Suicide as Political Opposition or Erasure of Identity?  

What song, what utterance of mine shall suffice to add due lustre to your merit, augur beloved of the gods?

Such professions of poetic inadequacy are rhetorical and commonplace, but there is more to this particular rhetorical pose.147 Maeon’s suicide is, of course, Statius’ own invention and, as such, Maeon’s ‘fame’ is due exclusively to the poet. Earlier, we mentioned that Statius bases his account of the ambush against Tydeus very loosely on the parallel account in Homer’s Iliad, in which Maeon son of Haemon was the leader of the fifty and was spared by Tydeus. Indeed, the mention of Maeon as the survivor of the ambush is the one detail that survives from the Homeric account, although Statius’ Maeon (no longer the leader of the fifty) has become a seer. The irony in Statius’ eulogising of Maeon’s ‘fame’ is emphasised by obliquely identifying Maeon as augur amate deis, an aspect of his character that is original to Statius’ epic. The fame that Maeon enjoys is an entirely artificial poetic construct. The sense that Statius’ Maeon is a radical transformation of a Homeric intertext may even be implicit in the character’s name. The name Maeon is suggestive of a favourite Roman moniker for Homer as ‘the Maeonian’. Roman poets, including Statius, frequently refer to Homer as Maeonius or Maeonides.148 Indeed, there was a tradition as early as the fifth century BC that Homer’s father was called Maeon.149 Although the shift from Maeōn to Maeonius requires a change in vowel length, Roman poets are often free in their treatment of the prosody of Greek nouns, especially as regards geographical expressions and proper names.150 Given that the character is introduced as the one solidly Homeric detail in what is otherwise an utterly reworked episode, Maeon’s name may  147 An obvious point of comparison is Theb. 1.17–33 and the general topos is so widespread that a footnote cannot be comprehensive. See Hinds 1998, 34–47 for a general discussion. For a different interpretation of these lines, see Ripoll 1998, 226: ‘l’aveu par le poète de son incapacité d’ajouter de la fama au héros implique que sa magna mors Stoïcienne ne l’a pas seulement racheté de sa participation à l’embuscade nocturne, mais l’a auréolé d’une gloire véritable qu’il ne doit à aucune intervention extérieure, humaine ou divine.’ 148 As Maeonius: Hor. Carm. 1.6.2, 4.9.5–6; Prop. 2.28.29; Virg. Geo. 4.380; Ov. AA 2.4; Rem. Am. 373; Ciris 62; Laus Pisonis 232; Stat. Ach. 1.4; Anth. Lat. 1111.13. As Maeonides: Ov. Am. 1.15.9, 3.9.25; Persius 6.11. Maeon’s more frequent epithet, Haemonides (2.692, 3.42) is almost an anagram of Maeonides perhaps also subtly suggesting transformation of Homer. 149 See FGrH 4 F 5. 150 Cf. Virgil’s free variation of the first syllable of Sychaeus, with Servius ad Aen. 1.343 ea licentia quae est in propriis nominibus; Virgil’s habitual shortening of the second syllable of Aeneades (e.g. Aen. 1.565, 7.616) to fit dactylic metre; Kenney 1973, 127 on Ovidian practice; Sen. Tro. 931 for the Latin Sigeon for the Greek Sigeion with Fantham 1982 ad 926–37; and Ps.-Sen. Oct. 971 with Ferri 2003 ad loc. Statius only mentions Maeon’s name once before his death, at the end of 2.693.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid reinforce the link to Homer. In other words, Statius goes out of his way both when he introduces Maeon and when he eulogises his suicide to emphasise the extent to which his character is different from his literary predecessor. This Homeric construction goes hand in hand with Stefano Rebeggiani’s suggestion that Maeon may also evoke the suicide of Lucan (also a vates and a political suicide in the face of tyranny, of course).151 Statius implicates his own authorial voice in the depiction, presentation and characterisation of Maeon and his death. Praise and criticism of the action of suicide are directed not only at the character within the epic, but also at the narratorial voice that directs and describes the actions of the epic. We get the distinct impression that there is something modern and Flavian about Maeon’s suicide. In fact, Maeon’s suicide has all the classic hallmarks of publicly performed, Stoic suicides from the Julio-Claudian era. Maeon is as close as Statius’ Theban society can get to an aristocrat, and his descent from Haemon, and thus from Thebes’ royal family is emphasised. Statius certainly plays up the theatricality and social character of Maeon’s death. Maeon clearly seeks as public a death as possible; he desires an audience before Eteocles (ut primum inuisi cupido data copia regis, 3.58); he makes a long and rhetorically powerful speech of condemnation (3.59–77) before anticipating Eteocles’ desire to kill him with his own suicide and final words, rhetorically and enigmatically cut off in midline (3.83–7, esp. te superis fratrique…); Statius makes a point of noting that Maeon’s death is seen by the court of Eteocles (excussae procerum mentes turbataque mussant | concilia, 3.92–3); his wife and family remove the body (3.93–5). Maeon’s suicide and the manner of its performance seems remarkably similar to Tacitus’ depiction of the suicide of Julius Agrestis before Vitellius: notabili constantia centurio Iulius Agrestis post multos sermones, quibus Vitellium ad uirtutem frustra accendebat, perpulit ut ad uiris hostium spectandas quaeque apud Cremonam acta forent ipse mitteretur. nec exploratione occulta fallere Antonium temptauit, sed mandata imperatoris suumque animum professus, ut cuncta uiseret postulat. missi qui locum proelii, Cremonae uestigia, captas legiones ostenderent. Agrestis ad Vitellium remeauit abnuentique uera esse quae adferret, atque ultro corruptum arguenti ‘quando quidem’ inquit ‘magno documento opus est, nec alius iam tibi aut uitae aut mortis meae usus, dabo cui credas.’ atque ita digressus uoluntaria morte dicta firmauit. quidam iussu Vitellii interfectum, de fide constantiaque eadem tradidere. Tac. Hist. 3.54.2 Julius Agrestis, a centurion, exhibited notable courage. After many conversations, in which he tried in vain to rouse Vitellius to bold action, he persuaded the emperor to send him to  151 Rebeggiani 2018, 69–72.

More Dissenting Voices: Suicide as Political Opposition or Erasure of Identity?  

see in person the enemy’s forces and to observe what had happened at Cremona. He did not try to deceive Antonius [Primus] by any secret investigation, but frankly made known his emperor’s orders and his own purpose, and demanded to see everything. Men were despatched to show him the battle-ground, the ruins of Cremona, and the captive legions. Agrestis returned to Vitellius; and when the emperor denied the truth of his report, and even went so far as to charge him with having been bribed, he said, “since I must give you a convincing proof of my statements, and you can have no other advantage from my life or death, I will give you evidence that will make you believe.” With these words he left the emperor’s presence, and made good his words by suicide. Some have reported that he was put to death by the orders of Vitellius, but all agree as to his fidelity and courage.

Like Maeon, Agrestis is allowed to leave the battlefield by an enemy; Antonius Primus ensures that the centurion is shown every aspect of the defeat of the Vitellians at Cremona. Agrestis is disbelieved, much as Maeon’s story is difficult to believe (uix credo et nuntius, Theb. 3.62, ‘I even as messenger scarcely believe it’), when he returns with a story of astonishing and extreme slaughter.152 The second tradition that Vitellius killed Agrestis parallels Eteocles’ abortive attempt to kill Maeon. Both Maeon and Agrestis make bold speeches before they kill themselves in defiance of tyrannical rulers. Whether Maeon was in Tacitus’ mind as he recorded Agrestis’ death is a moot point; what is clear is that Maeon fulfils many of the requirements of a model Roman suicide. Suicide becomes an obvious point of comparison between Statius’ mythological epic and Roman historiography. Statius also ensures a further public audience for Maeon’s suicide by writing it in his epic, prompting comparisons with, for example, Seneca’s carefully chosen final words directed not only at the considerable group of friends he had gathered to watch his suicide, but also at a much wider literary audience.153 Furthermore, Maeon’s suicide imitates the philosophical overtones so important for Stoic suicides in the 1st century AD. Yet in place of Stoic philosophy Maeon’s actions throughout book 3 have strong religious overtones. His status as seer assures that he has long foreseen his fate (3.67–9); the poet waxes lyrical about his heavenly wisdom (3.104–5); his death ‘sanctifies’ a road for libertas (sancire uiam, 3.102); his penultimate speech before Eteocles carries with it a strong suggestion of prayer or even curse: ‘noctis uaga lumina testor et socium manes et te, mala protinus ales qua redeo, non hanc lacrimis meruisse nec astu

 152 On the horrors perpetrated by the Flavian army at Cremona, see Ash 1999, 64–6. 153 Cf. Griffin 1986, 65: ‘in Seneca’s case, the suitability of the whole for literary treatment had already been exploited by the victim, who clearly knew his last words would be published.’

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid crudelem ueniam atque inhonorae munera lucis. sed mihi iussa deum placitoque ignara moueri Atropos atque olim non haec data ianua leti eripuere necem. iamque ut mihi prodiga uitae pectora et extremam nihil horrescentia mortem aspicias, bellum infandum ominibusque negatam mouisti, funeste, aciem: dum pellere leges et consanguineo gliscis regnare superbus exule, te series orbarum excisa domorum planctibus adsiduis, te diro horrore uolantes quinquaginta animae circum noctesque diesque adsilient – neque enim ipse moror.’ Theb. 3.63–77 ‘Night’s wandering lights I call to witness and my comrades’ ghosts and the evil omen coming straight on my return: not by tears or cunning did I win this cruel favour, the gift of inglorious life. But the gods’ command and Atropos who knows not how to move from her decree and destruction by this door long ago refused to me, snatched death away. And now, so you may see my heart spendthrift of life, no whit afraid of final doom: murderer, it is an unholy war you have launched, battle by omens disapproved, as you itch to banish law and reign in pride with your kinsman in exile. A line of orphaned, extirpated homes shall haunt you with continual lament – fifty spirits flying around you with dire terror by night and day; for I myself tarry not.’

Maeon is for Ripoll an epic archetype of a Stoic suicide.154 In particular, the seer’s knowledge of Fate suggests that he is ending his life in accordance with divine will in the manner of a Stoic rationalis e uita excessus. Yet the model of Stoic suicide is also subtly subverted. Stoic thinking was very clear that death must occur ‘at the right time’, and Maeon is very clearly ‘playing catch-up’ and conscious that the appropriate time for his death was on the battlefield.155 Moreover, he is scarcely a model of Stoic calm, one feature crucial to the conception of aristocratic, Stoic suicide in the Julio-Claudian period.156 He arrives in Thebes a picture of high emotion (iratus fatis et tristis morte negata | Haemonides, 3.41–2, ‘angry at the Fates and sorrowful at death denied, Haemon’s son’; timet … questibus

 154 Cf. Ripoll 1998, 376–96. 155 On the need for self-killing to be opportune, see Cic. Fin. 3.61; and Hill 2004, 36–8. Maeon’s killing himself to avoid being murdered by a tyrant would surely be seen as appropriate in Stoic thought, cf. e.g. Diog. Laer. 7.130; Olym. Ad Plat. Phaed. 4.403. However, Maeon’s speech emphasises the inappropriateness of his survival, crudelem ueniam atque inhonorae munera lucis, 3.66, and his delay in joining his comrades, neque enim ipse moror, ‘nor do I delay any longer’, 3.77. 156 Grisé 1982, 205; Griffin 1986, 66.

More Dissenting Voices: Suicide as Political Opposition or Erasure of Identity?  

inplet agros … odit, 3.50–2, ‘he fears … he fills the fields with laments … he hates’), committing suicide before Eteocles as soon as possible, not even finishing his own angry speech. This action is not the product of calm, rational thought but that of an impulsive, emotional or even irrational man; Maeon’s facial features reveal his emotional state (seruantem uultus et toruum in morte peracta, 3.94, ‘his countenance unmoved and grim in death accomplished’).157 Maeon’s rush towards his own self-inflicted death lacks a certain amount of dignity.158 However, his death as the opponent of a tyrannical monarch appears to be cast by Statius’ eulogy as that of a Stoic hero of libertas, very much in the mould of Cato:159 tu tamen egregius fati mentisque nec umquam indignum passure situm, qui comminus ausus uadere contemptum reges quaque ampla ueniret libertas, sancire uiam Theb. 3.99–102 But you, splendid of fate and soul nor ever to suffer unmerited oblivion, who dared go flout monarchs face to face and hallow a path for ample freedom

Maeon’s libertas certainly combines a sense of political opposition with individual autonomy, the latter springing directly from the former.160 Comminus underscores Maeon’s bravery by suggesting that the typical way to deal with a tyrant was eminus, not confronting the tyrant at all; yet comminus also disingenuously and ironically suggests hand-to-hand combat. Of even more concern is the religious overtone in this process; sancire uiam suggests that Maeon, like Menoeceus, is aping religious sacrifice, his blood purifying a path for libertas. It is surely right to see Maeon’s death as a literary representation of Stoic suicide in opposition to tyranny, but crucially his death is self-defeating. Maeon’s death  157 Ripoll 1998, 382–5 reads Maeon’s suicide as motivated by ‘la choix de la raison’, claiming that his oracular knowledge recalls him to rational thought, that (386–7 and n.52) Maeon acquiesces serenely to his fate, and that (389–90) his suicide combines heroic morality with Stoic constantia. This argument seems unconvincing, especially given the angry, emotional content of Maeon’s speeches and that, as McGuire 1997, 203 notes, his face in death has an expression comparable to that of the tyrannical Eteocles. Maeon seems neither serene nor particularly rational and his heroic sensibility conforms to the debased sense of uirtus prevalent in the poem. 158 Speed and lack of dignity in suicide are also equated in Tacitus’ account of Sextus Papinius’ death, Ann. 6.49. 159 For Cato’s suicide as the highest expression of liberty and individual autonomy, see Cic. Tusc. 1.74; Sen. Ep. 24.3–4, Prov. 2.9–10. 160 These notions are complementary rather than mutually exclusive, cf. Vessey 1973, 114; Ahl 1986, 2831n.33; Dominik 1994, 154; and Ripoll 1998, 391–2.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid may elicit praise, but it is also ultimately pointless.161 Maeon’s quasi-Stoic opposition to tyranny results merely in his self-destruction. Eteocles is none the weaker for his actions.162 In terms of identity, this sense of futility is especially marked; Maeon erases his own identity but serves to reinforce the tyrannical identity of Eteocles by his actions. The comparison between Maeon and Cato is apposite in this regard also; Maeon’s suicide also conforms in its process to the suicides criticised by Statius’ contemporary Martial: quod magni Thraseae consummatique Catonis dogmata sic sequeris saluos ut esse uelis, pectore nec nudo strictos incurris in ensis, quod fecisse uelim te, Deciane, facis. nolo uirum facili redemit qui sanguine famam, hunc uolo, laudari qui sine morte potest. Martial 1.8 Decianus, in following the tenets of great Thrasea and consummate Cato but at the same time wishing to survive and not rushing bare-breasted upon drawn swords, you do as I would have had you do. I am not for the hero who buys fame with easy blood, I am for him who can win glory without dying.

Martial aims direct criticism at Cato, the figure whose death became the idealised model for suicide and at his biographer, Thrasea, himself a model for famous Flavian suicides.163 Martial’s poem and Statius’ Maeon are products of the same era; both depict similar models of suicide, where fama is bought through suicide. Maeon is in reality just another pale imitation of Cato, the exemplary and much emulated Stoic suicide.164 We can go further than McGuire in seeing more than a latent disquiet at the act of suicide in the isolated genre of mythological epic. Statius’ depiction of political suicide is deeply involved in the rapidly changing political landscape of Flavian Rome, undermining the assertion of individual aristocratic liberty through the act of self-killing. Fama is of central importance to aristocratic suicide and the public nature of Maeon’s death and Statius’ praise  161 Cf. Edwards 2007, 103: ‘The limitation of suicide, however, is that it can never make the same kind of statement on behalf of social justice that could be conveyed by a more active kind of resistance, such as an attack on the king.’ Note Statius’ praise for Aletes’ libertas, 3.216, following a speech that is equally ineffective. 162 Contrast the pronounced effect that Agrestis’ suicide has upon Vitellius, Tac. Hist. 3.55, esp. Vitellius ut e somno excitus. 163 On this poem and Martial 1.78, see Edwards 2007, 137–9. For the dating of this poem, see Vioque 2002, 1–8. Cf. Hill 2004, 253–4. 164 Griffin 1986, 68; 1986b, 194.

More Dissenting Voices: Suicide as Political Opposition or Erasure of Identity?  

impose extra fama on Maeon.165 The power of aristocratic suicide rests on the future reputation that suicide confers upon the individual. In a world where all responses to tyranny are unrealistically successful, the poetic voice that confers fame upon Maeon is destabilized. Statius’ account is not just one of a stereotypical Roman aristocratic death situated in a mythological epic poem, but the placing of an ethical system ill-suited to its intended purpose in its epic context. Statius’ portrayal of Maeon imitates Seneca’s depiction of Cato in Epistle 14.166 Seneca’s letter discusses the incompatibility of the life of the sapiens and a life in politics. Seneca constructs an argument between two interlocutors; the first (presumably representing Lucilius) suggests the younger Cato as an example of a political sapiens, the second questions Cato’s political impact despite his wisdom: ‘quid tibi uis, Marce Cato? iam non agitur de libertate: olim pessum data est. quaeritur utrum Caesar an Pompeius possideat rem publicam: quid tibi cum ista contentione? nullae partes tuae sunt. dominus eligitur: quid tua, uter uincat? potest melior uincere, non potest non peior esse qui uicerit.’ Sen. Ep. 14.13 “What do you mean, Marcus Cato? It is not now a question of freedom; long since has freedom gone to rack and ruin. The question is, whether it is Caesar or Pompey who controls the state. Why, Cato, should you take sides in that dispute? It is no business of yours; a tyrant is being selected. What does it concern you who conquers? The better man may win; but the winner is bound to be the worse man.”

Seneca does not explain what he means by libertas, nor does he invest the term with great importance or relevance in his own writing. He regards the quality as part of a departed Republican age and of little relevance to his own imperial world. This attitude is in stark contrast to that of Lucan who makes the loss of libertas a central theme of his epic. As Alain Gowing comments on Seneca: ‘the memory of Cato Seneca most wishes to preserve is that of a moral exemplum, not as an exemplary opponent of absolutism.’167 Like Seneca’s Cato, Maeon is an exemplary figure whose opposition is worthy of poetic memorialisation. Like Cato his suicidal opposition involves him in a conflict which he cannot affect. His death is ultimately as futile as Cato’s because the autocratic system of Thebes does not admit of any form of libertas other than the opportunity to kill oneself. Unlike Tacitus’ Agrestis,

 165 On Fama in the Thebaid, see Hardie 2012, 204–14 166 On Ep. 14, see George 1991, 243–5; Gowing 2005, 76–80. On Cato in Seneca, see Griffin 1976 passim; 2000b 545; and Narducci 2001. On libertas in Seneca, see Wirszubski 1968, 146–7; and Viansino 1979, 174–87. 167 Gowing 2005, 79.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid Maeon’s death changes nothing and his suicide is a self-destructive display of virtus much in the manner of Tydeus, who left him to his fate. Statius undermines the essential end-point of any ambitiosa mors. Both Statius’ and Martial’s poetic presentations of Roman suicide work to undo its cult in Roman society. They are both elements in a wider Flavian process of radical change in Roman society at large. The deaths of men like Arulenus Rusticus and Herennius Senecio, late in Domitian’s reign, suggest that the change in Roman attitudes towards suicide was a longer and slower process than Flavian emperors might have desired, but the similarity of Tacitus’ and Martial’s attitudes suggests that the process had a significant impact. Statius’ account acts at one remove from these direct assessments of suicide, situating Maeon’s death within the distinctively poetic and artificially constructed context of mythological epic. Statius does not actively dissuade the reader from fruitless and ostentatious suicide but praises that action. Yet his praise has much in common with the (not uncomplicated) praise of Aletes that follows and the apparently harsh reaction to the criticism of aliquis in book 1. These acts of defiance are all products of a poetic representation of tyranny that simplifies the historical reality it imitates; there is a gap between Statius’ poetic fictions and the grim reality they represent. Likewise, Statius’ own authorial comments are subject to that same gap between representation and reality; Maeon’s suicide is, despite its flaws, worthy of celebration within the epic universe of the Thebaid, but is ineffective in altering that universe because the value system that Maeon represents has no place in Thebes. Instead, Statius’ narrative of Maeon’s death removes much of the impetus for self-killing as its exemplary value is undermined by its futility.

. Elegiac Enervation and the Love-Sick Tyrant Donald McGuire has noted how Flavian epic tends to describe the tyrannical ruler’s behaviour and psychological state in terms more familiar from erotic elegy.168 More recently, Stefano Briguglio has noted the way in which desire for power is explicitly eroticised in the Thebaid.169 Love of and longing for power, silent obsessive behaviour, mental turmoil all characterise the tyrant and are all familiar poses struck by the love elegists of Augustan Rome. Tyrannical desire for power is framed in terms of erotic love (1.128; 2.399; 11.656); the alluring and se-

 168 McGuire 1997, 164–7. 169 Briguglio 2017, 48–62; Briguglio 2018 focuses in particular on Creon.

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ductive nature of power recalls Tibullus’ descriptions of Amor and Nemesis (blandus offers mihi uultus, Tib. 1.6.1; placido...uultu 2.4.59; cf. Theb. 2.399; 11.655);170 the silent turmoil of Eteocles (sub pectore, 1.125; tacito sub pectore, 2.410) as he struggles to contain his excessive emotions transforms the love-sickness of the elegist into something altogether darker and more violent; sickness is a metaphor that is appropriated by erotic elegy, but one that Statius re-directs towards more destructive ends.171 McGuire emphasises the power of erotic language to unmask the tyrant, although neither the Thebaid’s readers nor characters within the poem appear to have great difficulty in recognising tyranny for what it is. The old man in book 1 (1.186–96), Maeon (3.58–78) and Aletes (3.206–17) all recognise Eteocles as tyrant without difficulty and he is labelled explicitly as such (tyranni, 3.82), while Oedipus sees through Creon even as he is transformed into one and even as he dissimulates his true anger (Creon’s dissimulation, 11.666–7; Oedipus’ response, 11.673–707). These erotic characteristics are not necessarily a way of recognising tyranny but a transformation of the paradigm that Statius inherited. McGuire rightly acknowledges the absence of: ‘the usual and definitive sexual impulses of the stereotypical tyrant.’172 Statius compensates for the absence of the most recognisable feature of tyranny by eroticising what remains; the tyrant’s libido is re-directed towards an obsessive repetition of his love of power. The opening description of Eteocles and Polynices vying for the throne of Thebes lays the foundations for all the subsequent descriptions of tyranny in the poem. Tisiphone infects the brothers with a sudden tyrannical desire for power: atque ea Cadmeo praeceps ubi culmine primum constitit adsuetaque infecit nube penates, protinus attoniti fratrum sub pectore motus gentilisque animos subiit furor aegraque laetis inuidia atque parens odii metus, inde regendi saeuus amor ruptaeque uices iurisque secundi ambitus impatiens et summo dulcius unum stare loco sociisque comes discordia regnis. Theb. 1.123–30173

 170 Cf. Hor. Odes 4.3.2–3 Melpomene ... placido lumine; Tac. Hist. 2.12, blandiebatur coeptis fortuna. 171 McGuire 1997, 167. It seems that Statius’ appropriation of typically erotic and elegiac language acts as an indication of his poem’s authority to dominate and in this instance corrupt other generic forms. On the connection between mollitia and tyranny, see Edwards 1993, 63–97. 172 McGuire 1997, 164. 173 The passage is clearly inspired by Senecan tragedy, esp. Phoen. 295–302; Thy. 23–42: see Vessey 1973, 76–8. However, the Senecan passages lack the emphasis on the poverty of the Theban kingdom. In general on the simile, see Briguglio 2017, 205–11.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid When first she stayed her headlong course at the Cadmaean citadel and tainted the dwelling with her wonted mist, shock stirred the brothers’ hearts. The family madness invaded their minds, envy sick at another’s good fortune and fear, parent of hate, then fierce love of rule, breach of give and take, ambition intolerant of second place, hankering to stand at the top alone, strife, the companion of shared sovereignty.

There follows the simile describing the brothers as two bulls yoked together and pulling in opposite directions (131–6). Then the pact to alternate rule on an annual basis and its immediate failure is described (137–43) before the narrator explains that the kingdom of Thebes is poor; the brothers are not fighting over anything of value, merely power itself (144–64). Statius’ description of the brothers’ conflict is of course highly conventional and heavily informed by the imagery of the rhetorical tyrant. Statius uses a number of abstract nouns to describe his protagonists’ state of mind (furor, inuidia, metus, discordia). The animal nature of the brothers’ hatred for one another and their tyrannical desire for power is emphasised by the bull simile. The overwhelming and self-destructive desire for power is encapsulated in the idea of madness.174 The distillation of the nature of tyranny down to one essential characteristic, that of savagery, is visible in his (oxymoronic?) phrase regendi saeuus amor;175 Statius avoids figures involving another abstract noun such as libido and instead creates a rather more periphrastic expression involving saeuitia, an expression that reconfigures tyrannical obsession with power as a lover’s desire. Tydeus reworks this phrase in his encounter with Eteocles in book 2, calling his love of rule a dulcis amor regni and power an alluring thing, blandum potestas (2.399; cf. summo dulcius unum | stare loco, 1.129– 30). The elegiac love for the puella depicted as a form of madness is re-directed in Statius’ darker epic universe as an irrational love of power.176 Statius’ re-framing of tyrannical character in the terms of erotic elegy points to two features of tyranny in his epic. Firstly, we see how both Statius’ epic and elegy appropriate other discourses, such as the language of madness and sickness, in order to inform their own diverse narrations.177 Elegy and epic are also in constant dialogue with one another, re-directing and subverting the other genre’s

 174 See Hershkowitz 1998. 175 For the intertextual impact of this phrase, see Bessone 2020, 152–4. 176 Eteocles also plays the erotic lover as he spends a sleepless night waiting for news of the ambush against Tydeus, 3.1–7. Note esp. tum plurima uersat, 3.5; cf. Prop. 3.17.12; Ov. Am. 1.2.8; AA 3.718; Her. 12.211; and the pathetic, pseudo-tragic ei mihi, 3.6. 177 Cf. e.g. Prop. 1.1 incorporating ideas of disease (contactum, 1.1.2), madness (furor, 1.1.7; non sani pectoris, 1.1.26), and torture (1.1.27–8), with Kennedy 1993, 47–8.

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language. Secondly, the choice of erotic elegy as a touchstone for Statius’ depiction of tyranny provokes in his audience a comparison of the genre of Roman elegy on the one hand and Flavian epic depictions of tyranny on the other. Roman erotic elegy has unusual qualities that Statius’ epic clearly exploits, notably the fact that it was not a genre that had been much practised since Ovid’s time and that it was a genre with a fairly narrow and extremely well-defined range of expression (the latter helps to explain the former, of course). Elegy is a highly repetitive art form, reworking a small number of dramatic situations by means of a small and highly developed vocabulary and invoking a restricted range of metaphorical constructs.178 As such, erotic elegy had ossified both in generic terms and in terms of its production, becoming a relatively stable and historically determined category with which Statius could work.179 By framing his construction of tyranny in the discourse of erotic elegy, Statius exposes new elements in the nature of tyrannical discourse. Like Roman elegy, the depiction of tyranny has a very limited range of expression, exemplified by the repetitive use of vocabulary in describing tyrants (esp. crudelitas/saeuitia, superbia, uis and libido, now expressed only as lust for power),180 a limited number of dramatic situations in which the tyrant may be displayed (e.g. the sleepless and fearful tyrant, dissimulating speech, the lone ruler plotting on throne or in palace) further restricted by the absence of situations where tyrants display their hubris by sacking temples or the sexual perversion, and a limited range of imagery with which these characters are represented (the imagery of madness is complemented by the imagery of erotic elegy). Furthermore, the elegiac tyrants that Statius creates are themselves repetitious creatures and their limitations are visible in the way that individual tyrannical actions are repeated over and over (for example, the refusal of burial to Maeon and the Argive dead) and in the lack of individualised personalities invested in each character; the tyrannical Eteocles is much the same persona as the tyrannical Creon much as elegiac lovers ‘lose’ their personality as they worry

 178 See Kennedy 1993, esp. ‘Love’s Figures and Tropes’, 46–63. 179 For the ancient attitude to elegy, cf. schol. ad Hor. Od. 2.12; Apul. Apol. 10; Kennedy 1993, 83–100 for modern scholarship’s historicising and hermeneutical approach to elegy and problems inherent in such an approach. 180 Cf. Elegy’s use of similar vocabulary; Tib. 1.10.59–66 describes love in terms of uis and saeuitia, the legitimate limits of violence and the distinction between uis in love and in war; Ovid AA 1.673–4 on the legitimate use of uis. Kennedy 1993, 57 notes: ‘Elegy describes ‘love’ in terms also used to describe ‘war’ in a society frequently represented these days as obsessed with militarism.’ Cf. also Myerowitz 1985, 62–72; and Gamel 1989. Statius’ invocation of elegiac language highlights how far elegy’s militaristic language overlaps with language specifically associated with tyrannical behaviour.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid about the lack of attention they receive from their puellae. Finding innovative modes of expression as a tyrant becomes difficult to the point of impossibility; like the genre of erotic elegy before it, the genre of ‘tyrant’ will slowly stagnate. Statius’ mapping of his presentation of tyranny onto the genre of erotic elegy suggests that the nature of tyranny itself is subject to the pattern of enervation that Hershkowitz identifies at work in many aspects of Statius’ depiction of furor.181 Desire is what gives the tyrant energy, just as elegiac lovers can only exist while the objects of their desires are unobtainable. While elegiac lovers ‘die’ in a very figurative sense when they achieve success in love the tyrants of Statius’ epic die in a literal sense. What is more, the initial energy levels appear to be decreasing. Eteocles is ‘converted’ to tyranny in the first book of the poem and dies in the eleventh; Creon assumes the tyrannical mantle shortly after but fails to survive beyond line 781 of book twelve; Theseus never receives the opportunity to tyrannise; Statius’ epic runs out of energy to narrate ever-decreasing circles of tyranny (12.797–809).182 This gradual process of tyranny effectively wearing itself out is mirrored in the epic’s appropriation of another mode of discourse that is also used very heavily in erotic elegy. If we re-examine Thebaid 1.123–30, we can see that the more strident use of rhetorical imagery of tyranny and the language of madness to inform this passage is augmented by the use of a further image to inform the sudden psychological change that Eteocles and Polynices undergo, that of disease.183 Tisiphone ‘infects’ the household with her familiar cloud (adsuetaque infecit nube penates), creating almost the image of a house struck by the plague.184 The feelings that both brothers undergo are internalised (sub pectore), hinting at the dissimulative nature of tyranny. Moreover, the envy that one brother feels at the other having power is described in terms of sickness (aegraque laetis | inuidia) while the fear and anxiety that the other has in anticipation of handing over

 181 Hershkowitz 1998, 247–301. 182 The importance of erotic language may encourage comparisons between Statius’ poetic ship reaching port, 12.809 and elegiac passages such as Prop. 3.24.15–16 or Ovid AA 1.6, 771–2. On the metaphor of journeys in elegy, see Kennedy 1993, 49–50. 183 We might also see the ‘contamination’ of Statius’ epic with elegiac modes of discourse in gendered terms as ‘feminisation’ of a ‘masculine’ genre. Such a gendered approach forms a parallel to the weakness, disease and enervation of tyrannical behaviour in the poem. Cf. Kennedy 1993, 31–45 on elegy as a ‘female’ genre. The elegiac motif of love as disease re-used in epic is most notable is Virgil’s depiction of Dido. 184 OLD s.v. inficio 4 ‘to infect’. On Statius’ use of medical language, see Lagière 2017, 101–111. Nube is perhaps a surprising way of expressing the effect of a Fury, cf. Oedipus’ ex more, 11.615 with Feeney 1991, 341–2. Cf. Silv. 3.3.147 for Etruscus’ father living an ‘unclouded’ life.

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power is framed as a process that causes physical pain (ut sceptra tenentem | foedere praecipiti semper nouus angeret heres, 1.140–1).185 Tyranny and the desire for power are effectively a physical disease as well as a psychological disorder. Statius’ explanation of Eteocles’ and Polynices’ tyrannical behaviour in these terms also helps his audience to comprehend how Creon is affected by power in book 11 of the poem following the deaths of Eteocles and Polynices. He too will fall in love with power and Statius uses the same eroticised language (blanda potestas | et sceptri malesuadus amor, 11.655–6) as Creon forgets his dead son and his grief in a manner similar to the single-mindedness of the elegiac lover. Furthermore, the disease metaphor that underpins the tyrannical conflict between Eteocles and Polynices is also apparent when Creon ascends to a throne that is fatal to tyrants (fatale tyrannis, 11.654). We know, of course, that Creon will very soon be killed by Theseus, but Statius’ mode of expression suggests that the throne is fatal to all who ascend to it, and that Creon’s successor will be contaminated in the same way. That this is the case is suggested by Theseus’ arrival on the battlefield in book 12. As he leaps onto the plain before Thebes, Theseus is enraged, apparently by the sight of the unburied dead: desilit in campum qui subter moenia nudos adseruat manes, dirisque uaporibus aegrum aera puluerea penitus sub casside ducens ingemit et iustas belli flammatur in iras. Theb. 12.711–14 Down he leaps onto the plain that keeps the unburied dead under the walls. Breathing deep under his dusty helm air tainted with evil vapours, he groans and flares into the righteous anger of war.

Unburied bodies lead to disease and to the smell that this passage describes.186 Yet Theseus’ appearance on the Theban battlefield suggests that he too is contaminated by the Theban disease. Although we are clearly meant to assume that the sight and smell of corpses on the battlefield enrages Theseus, this is not made explicit. The employment in the final phrase of the quoted passage of a passive verb, fire imagery (flammatur) and powerful, possibly uncontrolled emotion (ingemuit, iras) is highly evocative of the possession of epic heroes by a Fury;

 185 OLD s.v. ango 2 ‘to cause physical pain or distress to’. Note also how the assumption of power is summarised by the action of holding the sceptre. 186 Cf. Tac. Hist. 2.70; 3.35; Ash 1999, 64–6. On disease from unburied bodies, see Livy 25.26.11; Sil. Pun. 14.611–15; Plut. Ant. 50.1.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid Theseus is inflamed into anger just as Tisiphone inflamed Eteocles and Polynices.187 Moreover, we again get a hint at the disease imagery of book 1 as Theseus breathes in the tainted air that is literally sick (aegrum) with evil fumes (diris uaporibus parallels the Fury’s assueta nube). Theseus is infected in an even more literal manner by the tyrannical sickness that pervades Thebes. His affliction is worrying given that Theseus is about to become the de facto ruler of Thebes.188 Yet it is Creon’s assumption of power that provides us with an indication that there might be a cure to this disease. Statius’ comment on Creon’s transformation suggests that mindfulness of the past would have helped Creon (numquamne priorum | haerebunt documenta nouis?, 11.656–7, ‘will newcomers never keep in mind the examples of their predecessors?’). Statius’ rhetorical question suggests that Theseus at least, having passed up the opportunity to display clementia, has fallen into the same trap as Creon. The assertion that his anger is iusta seems almost disingenuous in the face of such startling imagery. Yet Statius’ rhetorical plea that successors learn from predecessors has a much wider impact than its import for Creon and Theseus. Here documenta suggests a sense of exemplarity in the deeds of tyrannical men that accords with the broader trend in Roman writing we identified at the beginning of this chapter.189 Eteocles, Creon and Theseus are all documenta, instructional examples that serve as a warning to future rulers.190 Tellingly, Creon makes a typical tyrannical misreading of documenta when Theseus’ envoy Phegeus threatens him with further fighting.191 Creon wonders why Theseus has not seen the documenta provided by Thebes’ defeat of Argos (paruane prostratis ... documenta Mycenis | sanximus? 12.689–90, ‘Was that a slight lesson that we gave? See, here are more to challenge our walls.’). On the contrary, Thebes’ efforts have already been too great to withstand another onslaught. Creon misunderstands the effect of victory;192 he has not learnt how to  187 Although Allecto’s assault on Turnus, Aen. 7.456–9, is clearly influential. On Theseus’ madness, cf. Hershkowitz 1998, 296–301. 188 Statius’ breaking off of narration, 12.797–809, and perhaps also his habit of innovation in mythological narration leave us uncertain as to what happens next. We know that, one day, the Epigoni will come but we do not know when nor what will happen to Thebes in the meantime. We can only assume that Thebes is in Theseus’ hands. For the similarities between Theseus’ entry into Thebes, 12.782–96, and his triumphal entry into Athens earlier in book 12, see below, ch. 3.5. 189 See ch. 2, introduction above. 190 TLL 1805.74–1806.47. 191 For Domitian correctly reading documenta of a different kind, cf. Silv. 5.1.40. Cf. Simms 2020, 154–9. 192 Pausanias notes, 9.9.3, that the destructive losses that Thebes suffered became proverbial as a ‘Cadmean victory’.

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rule well from Theban documenta. It is perhaps the ability to learn that distinguishes the successful monarch from the tyrant. Statius provides his audience with a further fascinating model for tyrannical behaviour. The tyrannical character is clearly affected by the assumption of or the possibility of power. The sense that Eteocles, Polynices and Creon may have an innate or genetic predisposition to tyranny is somewhat modified by Theseus’ sudden transformation when he reaches Thebes. It is power that motivates in Statius’ universe and nothing else and its effects are almost instantaneous. Statius uses the commonplace vocabulary of animal savagery to describe tyrannical behaviour and uses the equally common language of madness to describe the psychology behind his tyrannical rulers. Yet the familiar traits of the lover of Roman erotic elegy are also visible in the tyrant’s obsessive love of power and the expression of the love for power as disease, appropriating another elegiac motif. The shift from depicting tyrants as sexually depraved monsters to individuals obsessed by power, and the depiction of this shift through the language of elegy reflects new concerns in the nature of epic tyranny.193 Elegiac discourse promotes a sense that tyranny lacks individuation, is severely limited in its ability to express itself and displays a self-defeating pattern of enervation. Furthermore, Statius also employs the related imagery of disease to illustrate the nature of the tyrannical condition as sickness. The poet makes prominent suggestions that his depiction of tyrannical behaviour has an exemplary purpose at heart, and that his tyrants become documentary instructions for future rulers.

. Reading Statius’ Tyrants in the Roman World Statius’ poem constructs the idea of tyranny in unusual and startling ways. Statius’ tyrants do not conform completely to the regular rhetorical stereotype, lacking some of the more entertaining and memorable traits, focusing entirely on the acquisition of power, being incapable of behaving as tyrants normally would often to the point of comical failure, while characters around them acquire and display the marks of tyrannical behaviour. Statius’ tyrants fall down badly as dissimulators, regularly failing to conceal their desires, misunderstanding the desires of others and often being defeated by honest, emotionally frank responses. Statius uses the language of erotic elegy to convey the lust for power

 193 A shift especially visible in Statius’ and Valerius’ epics and not one with which Roman literature persevered.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid that dominates his tyrants and this generic link brings with it a sense of enervation and limitation inherent in (especially his version of) the rhetorical stereotype. Moreover, Statius invokes the language of sickness in his depiction of tyranny, suggesting that love of power might be a disease that one can cure and links this suggestion with the sense that the Thebaid is a didactic piece, one that provides a large number of examples from which its readers may learn. Open criticism of and opposition to tyranny is regularly successful in the universe of the Thebaid and suicide in opposition to tyranny is worthy of great praise, but it is here that we begin to see a problem in Statius’ design. Suicide, whether the noble, politically motivated suicide of Maeon or the selfless sacrifice of Menoeceus, is always self-defeating. Similarly, vocal opposition from the people can be praiseworthy but rarely achieves more than the antagonism of the rulers in question. Most worrying of all, those characters who genuinely make something happen in the face of tyranny tend to become reflections of tyrannical behaviour themselves; Tydeus’ opposition to Eteocles reduces him to the wild, bestial savagery that typifies tyrannical rule and ultimately moves him to an act of cannibalism; Theseus seems contaminated in his efforts to restore a measure of righteous rule to Thebes. We can perhaps deduce the means to defeat the cycle of endless tyranny as it operates within the Thebaid, indeed, Statius appears to suggest that the cycle is self-defeating, but we have yet to evaluate how the Thebaid applies to the ‘real world’ of Roman politics, if at all, and how it was to be received by its audience. Reading tyranny in the Thebaid can produce some odd reactions. The audience is almost overwhelmed by tyranny’s dominance of the poem. Tyrants fall only to be replaced by carbon copy successors; Thebes is a production line for identikit tyrants; characters throughout the poem are afflicted by fits of tyrannical behaviour. Everyone gets to play tyrant in Statius’ poem but nobody does so successfully. The text of the poem reaches saturation point where tyranny becomes the overarching theme but in many ways ceases to have much meaning for the poem. The poem suggests unusual reactions to its tyrants, not only in the sense that protagonists within the poem react differently to tyranny than one might expect but also in the sense that tyrants are no longer figures that elicit fear but rather contempt and even laughter. At a political level, removing tyrants becomes a pointless exercise; a new and identical tyrant will replace the old (much like the principate, of course) and old oppositional strategies (such as suicide) no longer have the same impact. The exercise of removing the tyrant from power is futile and, in Statius’ epic universe, may even have a negative impact as the poem draws a picture of tyranny that eventually runs out of energy and stagnates. We cannot extract firm conclusions

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from a poem that ends so aporetically, but the Thebaid almost suggests that it is better to allow a tyrannical ruler to remain in power than to replace him; or to follow the metaphor of illness, it is better to try to cure an individual than to eliminate the disease altogether. Eteocles and Polynices are condemned as much for the instability and constant change that their proposed system of alternation entails as for any other aspect of their fraternal conflict (cf. e.g. alternaque regna, 1.1; iure maligno | fortunam transire iubent, 1.139–40; alternoque iugo, 1.175). Their conflict is swiftly followed first by Creon, then by Theseus. Such a stance against constantly changing rulers in a poem begun at some point around 80 AD inevitably evokes memories of the catastrophic later reign of Nero, the civil war of AD 69 and may be seen as, to some extent at least, a celebration of the relative stability brought by the Flavians. However, any such conclusion is itself problematised by the very nature of the text that provokes it. Statius never makes clear exactly how one might ‘cure’ the sickness of tyranny, beyond reading the Thebaid.194 We can only grope towards an unsupported assertion that the poem’s multiple exempla act as deterrents for the reader (especially if that reader is Domitian!), illustrations of how not to behave.195 To take the elegiac comparison one stage further, Statius sets himself up in the role of magister tyrannis, a dark alter ego of Ovid’s teacher of love. The absence of any concrete assertion of such a purpose on the poet’s part means that this large conclusion, though viable, rests on very small foundations (the poet’s reaction to Eteocles’ and Polynices’ deaths, his reaction to Creon’s assumption of tyranny, the concluding lines of the poem). Furthermore, any such interpretation is undercut by the nature of the tyranny that the Thebaid depicts. At odds with the rhetorical stereotype that is the norm in Roman writing, the poem presents an alternative view of tyranny that is difficult to equate with the Roman reality. The models and solutions we can generate may only really work within the poem’s universe and not in the wider world. We can seen how Statius pushes his poem towards the realities of Roman political life. Argive heroes display Roman uirtus, Maeon’s suicide is almost a model of Stoic, politically motivated suicide, that of Menoeceus presented as a form of devotio, Eteocles is cast in the mould of princeps, while Theseus’ intervention is read through the Roman virtue of clementia. Theban mythological epic merges  194 Compare the optimistic conclusions of Rebeggiani 2018, who is more willing to read Neronian contexts into this poem’s depiction of tyranny than I am. My suggestion is that, while the broader, rhetorical context of ‘tyranny’ in Roman literature and thought can be mobilised to make precise and specific identifications, the concept always retains a sense of openness. Contemporary audiences can read Nero and Domitian into specific situations in Statius’ poem, of course, but such readings are necessarily contingent and imperfect. 195 For more on Theseus’ disturbing process of identity formation, see ch. 3.5 below.

  Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid with contemporary Roman reality. Yet as Statius pushes his poem towards reality, the epic narrative resists. We see the flaws in the comparisons, the moments where the narrative fails to fit the model. Heroes are destroyed by the displays of uirtus, suicide is a self-defeating action and one that ultimately does not deserve to be repeated. Menoeceus’ suicide is a flawed devotio, and he assumes tyrannical proportions in his act of self-killing. Eteocles fails to live up to the rhetorical and historical models of tyrannical principes with which he is so closely compared. Despite his obvious potential to bring social cohesion, Theseus ultimately, as we shall see in the next chapter, fails to live up to expectations. The depiction of tyranny in the Thebaid cannot compare to the historical reality; Statius’ tyrants are unreal. The poem fails to bridge the gap between Greek myth and Roman reality and finishes without a clean conclusion; the poem ends exhausted, unable to answer the questions it poses. The Thebaid is comprehensible through the Roman world for which it was composed but it cannot be an allegory for Rome. Its composition through repeated exempla means that it cannot properly function as an exemplum. Nevertheless, the view of Statius as a critic of brazen opposition to tyranny and as an advocate of ‘working within the system’ is attractive as it fits nicely with Statius’ later career. Those portions of the Silvae and Achilleid that refer to Domitian are exceptionally positive in their appraisal of an emperor who was becoming, by all subsequent accounts, one of Rome’s worst tyrants. Statius is, among the wreckage of Domitian’s Rome, a success story; a professional poet of genuinely humble origins made good, achieving financial success and joining the canon of great literary practitioners of Rome. He succeeded by working within the restraints of and exploiting the opportunities afforded by the system; Statius is not a man afraid to buck literary trends, but he reveals a sharpness in knowing exactly where to draw the line when financial or political concerns are at stake. For those who find the idea of Statius as a cynical manipulator unpalatable, we should remember that his sycophancy towards his benefactors at the beginning and end of the Thebaid, throughout the Silvae, and at the beginning of the Achilleid demonstrates a willingness to please his patrons; it makes no sense for Statius to present a serious, open attack on tyranny.

 Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity Given our concerns about the nature of identity and selfhood in the Thebaid, it seems pertinent at this point to explore the character of Oedipus. An Oedipal theme is pertinent to a poet concerned with issues of identity. Oedipus is, after all, the quintessential divided character and, even before Freud, the man who murdered his father to marry his mother: he is both husband and son, father and brother, ruler and exile, lawgiver and criminal, a character whose very identity is ever in question and whose status is intimately tied up with uncertainty and riddling. Curious then that Statius decides to skip the central Oedipal moments in his own poem (the sphinx, the plague, the uncovering of his incest, etc.) and stage an epic which seems a little ‘after the Lord Mayor’s show’.1 These decisions are not, I would suggest, made idly since the myth occupies a position similar to that of the Thebaid within the Roman literary canon. Rather the fraternal narrative of Eteocles and Polynices drives us forward into a new area of identity politics. Crucial to Statius’ poem is that Oedipus is the lifter of the curse who becomes the bringer of another curse to his city. Eteocles’ and Polynices’ father/brother still has a significant and informative role to play in the poetics of the Thebaid. On this reading Oedipus is the quintessential subject caught between two deaths.2 When we first encounter him he appears in a void, seemingly having crossed the limit separating physical life from death; when he re-appears following the mutual murder of his brother/sons he is a sublime object cast out from the symbolic order into exile without yet being physically dead. Oedipus is himself not a major character within the poem,3 but does carry significant influence on the narrative4 and appears at very significant moments within the text. Furthermore, he acts as a ‘book-end’ for the conflict between Eteocles and Polynices, providing both its impetus and then appearing immediately upon their deaths. Indeed, he is the first character to take part in the ‘real’ action of Statius’ poem (although the poet lists a number of others, in particular the seven against Thebes, in the opening lines) and casts a curse upon his twin sons

 1 For the Thebaid as a poem which stages its own belatedness within the mythical canon, see Rebeggiani 2018, 178–81. 2 The phrase is taken from Lacan Seminar VII and Žižek uses this to refer to a particularly expressive form of the sublime, see Žižek 1989, 131–6; 1991, 83–7; and Kay 2003, 53–4. For Oedipus as subject to sublime forces, see Lagière 2017, 91–5. For an overview of the curse and Oedipus’ role in the poem more generally, see Simms 2020, 83–97. 3 See Ganiban 2007, 33. 4 Hershkowitz 1998, 248; Ganiban 2007, 24–43. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110717990-003

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity by invoking the Fury Tisiphone in order to set the narrative wheels in motion. The curse, an activation of a Fury to drive civil discord, is most frequently read against Juno’s activation of Allecto in Aeneid 7,5 but, as we shall see, the opening scene maps the epic cliché of divine inspiration onto the language of artistic production and reproduction. Furthermore, the interaction between an old man and a Fury also evokes the opening scene of Seneca’s Thyestes where a Fury descends to fetch the ghost of Tantalus from the Underworld, but comments upon the nature of literary inheritance by reversing the power structure which underpins such scenes. Later in the poem, Oedipus appears at a Theban victory feast in the eighth book of the poem; finally, he makes his longest appearance when he appears on the battlefield shortly after the mutual fratricide, laments over the destruction he and his family have wrought upon Thebes and, after an angry exchange, he is cast into exile by the new king, Creon. If motivation and authority have already been seen to be live issues in this poem, then these problems are most obviously visible at the poem’s beginning. The driving theme of the poem, encoded in its opening phrase, fraternas acies (‘fraternal battle-lines’), is more than the madness of a civil war; civil conflict is regularly described in ancient literature as a collective outburst of madness, but the splitting of the poem’s central message between twin brothers suggests that there is something inherently divided, multivalent and fractured about the Thebaid. This shattering impulse in the poem taints the actions of all the poem’s major protagonists, human and divine, and indeed the authorial voice itself, and Oedipus is at the heart of this process of contamination. One might even suggest that there are comparisons to be drawn between poet and his character, especially in the way in which he enacts madness within the poem, although we will shy away from reading anything as simplistic as a straight identification between the two.6 At the heart of the narrative is an irrational act: Oedipus curses his sons and they therefore fight to the death. Not only do the mechanics of a curse require a certain suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader (even in the classical world where such ‘supernatural’ processes are much more widely practised and accepted), but the Oedipal curse sets up the nature of motivation as an issue for exploration within the poem. The tension between divine authority and the free will of human agents is as old as the genre of classical epic itself, but the poem multiplies these difficulties and makes this one of the grand themes of the poem.  5 See Ganiban 2007, 30–3. 6 For Lagière, Oedipus enacts his curse in a manner parallel to the poet constructing his sublime narrative, see 2017, 95: ‘pour déployer son furor, Oedipe adopte l’attitude du poète sublime entretenant le pathos.’

An Excessive Identity: Oedipus as Οver-Determined Hero  

Who or what controls the events of this poem? As Denis Feeney demonstrated more than a quarter of a century ago, we are presented with a series of possible answers: the heavenly gods, the divine forces of the Underworld, personifications of abstract qualities, or human agents themselves variously impelled (if not by the divine) by emotions and by genetic, hereditary predispositions to do good or evil (generally evil).7 Feeney identified a tripartite expression of motivation where Olympian gods, Underworld gods and human psychology acted in constant tension with one another, even, or perhaps especially, when these were aiming at similar goals. Feeney also observed the inherent weakness of the gods as motivational forces within the text. Jupiter’s delayed entry into the narrative sequence of the poem and his constant failure as a motivational force have been explored by others,8 but it is also important to note from the outset that the relative absence or redundancy of the (Olympian) gods as enactors of epic narrative leaves enormous space free for other forces to create the story. Characterisation based on Roman ideals of exemplarity may be partly to blame for this confusing, contradictory state of affairs. Individual characters show different kinds of motivation according to which intertextual model is primarily in play in any given moment of the narrative and according to whichever exemplary effect of characterisation (divinely motivated, chthonically motivated, innately motivated) the poet wishes to deploy at any given point in the text. However, if we cannot reconcile all of these competing motivational forces what kind of reading is left to us of the way the narrative shapes itself?

. An Excessive Identity: Oedipus as Οver-Determined Hero Such ways of looking at motivation within a narrative are essentially rationalist in scope. We want to know how Oedipus’ curse can prompt such an outpouring of violence and hatred within the text. Whilst it is important to examine the text in this way, I have always found such readings inherently problematic. We have already seen, in our examination of Polynices, the difficulties in ascribing internalised psychologies to ancient literary characters. The divine motivations for the narrative have long been undermined by the essential weaknesses of the gods,

 7 Feeney 1991, 313–91, where he also discusses Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica and allegorisation more generally. See also Hill 1989; 1996; Franchet-D’Espèrey 2001, 188–98; and Dominik 1994, 29–73. On Lucretian multiple explanations in the Thebaid, see Hardie 2009, 254–63. 8 This is the particular focus of Hill 1996; and 2008.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity especially Jupiter, as positive moral agents.9 Rationalising, in a post-enlightenment sense, a chthonic motivation for the narrative of the poem seems internally contradictory as this is a process which is, by its very nature, irrational. It seems that we ignore at our peril the profound symbolic force which the curse scene in Thebaid 1 possesses. In particular, the process by which Oedipus drives the narrative has clear parallels with the process of identity formation we saw operating and misfiring in our analysis of Polynices above. Oedipus acts as a kind of photo-negative for the process of identity formation which Statius will begin to explore later in book 1 with his Polynices. Where Oedipus’ brother/son explores and rejects a series of possible identities in the wider world in order to return to a paradoxical absent identity at Thebes, Oedipus is hidden away from any social pressures in what increasingly feels like a blank space somewhere within the walls of Thebes. Oedipus is pure rejection of culture, or the symbolic universe, of social role, whether that of husband, father or ruler. Like Polynices, he rejects anything which might fit an ‘objective-participant’ model of identity. But his identity is hyper-charged beyond isolationism; he is living an almost absurdly literalised ‘night of the world’ and his profoundly corrupted sense of subjectivisation, divorced as it is from any real externalised public role (or it seems, external stimulus), resolves into a purely destructive force which propels the narrative forward. Paradox drives this; for all of his and the poet’s nods and winks at past iterations of the character and his ‘accustomed’ role in the Theban plot, Oedipus spends the opening scene wrestling with his essential absence, his lack of selfhood. The reductive depiction of Oedipus is Statius at his most brilliant; he takes the most extraordinarily over-determined character in classical literature and removes from him all sense of subjectivity. At the beginning of the poem, we jump from the narrator’s selective introduction (1.1–17), past a Domitianic alternative (1.17–33) to Theban mythology (1.33– 45) to Oedipus in his post-blinding state as he prepares to curse his sons and propel the conflict of the subsequent books: impia iam merita scrutatus lumina dextra merserat aeterna damnatum nocte pudorem Oedipodes longaque animam sub morte trahebat. illum indulgentem tenebris imaeque recessu

 9 Lagière 2017, 100 elegantly squares this circle by constructing a step-by-step explanation of Oedipus and Tisiphone’s motivation of Eteocles and Polynices underpinned by the essentially irrational processes of the sublime. For her emphasis on 1.106–9 and esp. 1.124, adsuetaque infecit nube penates and the connection with the language of disease and plague at Lucr. DRN 6.1138–1286; Virg. Geo. 3.478–85; Aen. 3.137–42; Ov. Met. 7.523–613, see Lagière 2017, 101–111.

An Excessive Identity: Oedipus as Οver-Determined Hero  

sedis inaspectos caelo radiisque penates seruantem tamen adsiduis circumuolat alis saeua dies animi, scelerumque in pectore Dirae. tum uacuos orbes, crudum ac miserabile uitae supplicium, ostentat caelo manibusque cruentis pulsat inane solum saeuaque ita uoce precatur: Theb. 1.46–55 Oedipus had already probed his impious eyes with guilty hand and sunk deep his shame condemned to everlasting night; he dragged out his life in a long-drawn death. He devotes himself to darkness, and in the lowest recesses of his abode he keeps his home on which the rays of heaven never look; and yet the fierce daylight of his soul flits around him with unflagging wings and the avengers of his crimes are in his heart. Then does he show the sky his vacant orbs, the raw, pitiable punishment of survival, and strike the hollow earth with bleeding hands, and utter his wrathful prayer:

Juxtaposed with the later scene of Polynices in a storm, our first sight of Oedipus seems to share many similarities.10 A connection between father/brother and brother/son(s) is again established through naming; here Oedipus is named in a plural form (Oedipodes, 48), a metrically acceptable form which accentuates the sense of blurred and uncertain identity.11 Moreover, Oedipus’ appearance is marked by darkness and withdrawal.12 Like his brother/son he occupies a space resembling a void; his self-blinding has condemned him to an everlasting night (aeterna nocte), he rests in the shadows (tenebris) hidden in the lowest part of his home (imaeque recessu / sedis inaspectos). Towards the end of the poem, he will explicitly call this space an underworld of his own making (caelum terramque reliqui / sponte, 11.692–3). The sense of withdrawal into a void is echoed in the paradoxical description of his empty eye sockets as uacuos orbes (‘empty worlds’). And yet, when we look back from Polynices’ perspective, we can see a number of differences. Although isolated and unseen, by the gods in heaven at the very least,13 Oedipus remains within the civic space of Thebes and will not be banished to the wild, external space of exile until his sons have killed one another in book 11, a fact underlined by his still having penates (1.50). His social isolation is not made clear until book 8 and even then it is reported with a loaded and ambiguous  10 On this opening scene, see Briguglio 2017, 12–32 (especially for the metaliterary and intertextual impact of Oedipus), 150–82 (for commentary); and Bessone 2020, 139–44. 11 Cf. Korneeva 2011, 103–4. 12 For Oedipus as the ‘scum of humanity’ in Lacan and Žižek, see Žižek 1998/2008, 180–3. 13 It is difficult to be sure of the extent to which Oedipus is ‘unseen’, given that Tisiphone’s immediate response is to look at Oedipus, 1.88–9, and that Ismene and Antigone, identified as proles Oedipodae, lament specifically over their father’s eyes at 8.610–11.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity ferunt. The sublime heights of Polynices’ passage through the storm are here ignored; Oedipus’ existence is marked by lowness and withdrawal.14 Where the impact of the storm and fear of his brother had pronounced external impact upon Polynices, Oedipus’ emotional state is effectively internalised and self-inflicted: his blinding is by his own hand (merita … dextra, 47); he immerses his shame in a (metaphorical) night (merserat … pudorem, 47); he indulges himself in shadows (indulgentem tenebris, 49). Furthermore, the language of morality is abundant in Oedipus’ presentation. Oedipus has impious eyes (impia … lumina, 46), his hand is guilty (merita, 46), his existence is almost personified as a shame to be condemned (damnatum … pudorem, 47). He has a savage mind (saeva dies animi, 52) and voice to match (saevaque ita voce, 55) and a criminal heart (scelerumque in pectore, 52). The apparent mindlessness of Polynices in his first moments of the poem is entirely at odds with the overdetermined and self-conscious wrongness of Oedipus. This sense of difference, contrast and paradox is augmented by the language of light and sight (lumina, 46) in this passage. The phrase saeva dies animi, ‘the savage daylight of his soul’, abruptly forces together the internal world of Oedipus’ animus and the external world of dies. Moreover, the contrast between aeterna nox and saeua dies together with the phrase adsiduis circumuolat alis certainly evokes Horace’s depiction of Death in the Satires (Mors atris circumuolat alis, 2.1.58) with a play on the darkness of Oedipus’ eternal night ironically becoming a kind of daylight.15 Yet this larger phrase, as has regularly been commented upon, also evokes a series of parallel usages by Virgil, including the appearance of Marcellus in the parade of Romans in Aeneid 6 (sed nox atra caput tristi circumuolat umbra, Aen. 6.866 ‘but black gloom hovers about his head with tragic darkness’), Aeneas’ descriptions of the Trojans’ suicidal mood as they fought the Greeks storming Troy (nox atra caua circumuolat umbra, Aen. 2.360 ‘black night hovers round us with her dome of shadow’) and their combat with the Harpies (turba sonans praedam pedibus circumuolat uncis, Aen. 3.233 ‘the noisy crowed hovered round the booty with their curved talons’).16 The linguistic comparison bears closer examination. Simple identifications are clearly inappropriate, yet the Virgilian intertexts are all suggestive of further

 14 Although depth can have the same connection with the sublime as height, see Porter 2016, 52. 15 For a discussion of the use of circumuolat in these lines and in Virgil and Horace, see Bessone 2020, 142–4. 16 On these Virgilian passages, see Horsfall 2006, on 3.233; Horsfall 2008, on 2.360; and Horsfall 2013, on 6.866 and his cross-references between these passages.

An Excessive Identity: Oedipus as Οver-Determined Hero  

meaning for Oedipus. Marcellus is marked by the extent to which he participates in Roman society within the parade (Aeneas remarks: qui strepitus circa comitum! quantum instar in ipso!, Aen. 6.865 ‘What a din from the companions about him! For how many of them does he stand!’),17 in contrast to the social isolation which Oedipus apparently occupies. The Virgilian adjective caua (Aen. 2.360) gives the sense of impending doom facing Aeneas’ men a literal, physical appearance which finds parallels in the impression of withdrawal in the Oedipal landscape (inane solum, 1.55). Yet this also highlights the absence of physical description of his ‘void’ whereas the storm-soaked world which Polynices will inhabit is blessed by a superfluity of physical description, however extraordinary. The intertextual comparison with the Harpies is more obviously appropriate for Oedipus in his current state, and will be picked up by the simile which describes him in book 8 as a second Phineus (8.255–8), but mention by Virgil of their curved talons also reminds us of the Senecan detail that Oedipus has blinded himself with his bare hands (scrutatus lumina, 1.46; cf. scrutatur auidus minibus uncis lumina, Sen. Oed. 965) and will make for a further moment of identity blurring with Polynices, when the brother/son attempts to blind Tydeus with his bare hands (scrutatur et intima uultus / unca manus, 1.426–7 ‘the clawing hand searches the inmost places of the visage’).18 The appearance in the Thebaid of the Senecan word, scrutatus, brings us full circle to Marcellus, whom Aeneas initially spotted amongst the parade of future-Romans with his downcast expression (deiecto lumina uoltu, Aen. 6.862). There is an elaborate textual pun here. Oedipus’ eyes, unlike those of Marcellus, have literally been deiecta, ‘thrown down’, and, in a further moment of father/ brother/son identity-shifting, this is exactly how Polynices will appear in book 3 when Tydeus returns to Argos from his failed embassy to Thebes (Cadmeius heros / adcurrit uultum deiectus, 3.366–7). The participle scrutatus, which more literally means ‘to explore thoroughly’,19 carries a metapoetic prompt to the reader to be alert for all of these inter- and intratextual cross-references to which we are about to be subjected. Yet in addition to the metaliterary context, scrutatus also suggests investigation of a more literal kind and thus play at a generic level. Oedipus acts as his own didactic praeceptor, researching his own identity in a

 17 On the elder Marcellus’ ‘presence’ at this funeral and his linking Greek techne with Roman ars, see Freudenburg 2017. 18 For various Lucanian and Senecan intertexts, see Briguglio 2017, 152. For the importance of blinding as a continuing theme in this version of the Oedipus myth and blinding as a particular form of violence which inspires sublime horror in the reader, see Lagière 2017, 91–2, 128–35. 19 L&S s.v. scrutor 1.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity horrifically literal way.20 His clawing out of his own eyes becomes a search for his own identity. It seems, rather, that Oedipus suffers not from an absence of identity, but from a superfluity of it. The hyperdetermination of his identity from the seemingly countless literary iterations of Oedipuses across the Greek and Latin corpus is what gives his prayer to Tartarus its strength: ‘di, sontes animas angustaque Tartara poenis qui regitis, tuque umbrifero Styx liuida fundo quam uideo, multumque mihi consueta uocari adnue, Tisiphone, peruersaque uota secunda. si bene quid merui, si me de matre cadentem fouisti gremio et traiectum uulnere plantas firmasti, si stagna peti Cirrhaea bicorni interfusa iugo, possem cum degere falso contentus Polybo, trifidaeque in Phocidos arto longaeuum inplicui regem secuique trementis ora senis dum quaero patrem, si Sphingos iniquae callidus ambages te praemonstrante resolui, si dulces furias et lamentabile matris conubium gauisus ini noctemque nefandam saepe tuli natosque tibi, scis ipsa, paraui, mox auidus poenae digitis caedentibus ultro incubui miseraque oculos in matre reliqui: exaudi, si digna precor quaeque ipsa furenti subiceres.’ Theb. 1.56–74 ‘Gods that rule guilty souls and Tartarus too small for punishments; and Styx, livid in your shadowed depth, you that I see; and Tisiphone, on whom I so often call: give me your nod and favour my warped desire. If I have done aught of service, if you cherished me in your lap when I dropped from my mother and strengthened me when they pierced my feet; if I sought Girrha’s pool poured out between two mountain peaks and in quest of father (though I might have lived content with the imposter Polybus) entwined the aged king in that narrow place of triply sundered Phocis and cut off the trembling old man’s head; if under your tutelage I had cunning to solve the riddle of the Sphinx; if I joyfully entered sweet madness and my mother’s lamentable wedlock, enduring many a night of evil and

 20 For Manilius, scrutari is regularly used of digging out hidden information, see Astr. 1.11, 2.824, 4.246, 513, 867. Astronomica 4.909–10 speaks of man inquiring about the true nature of Jupiter in language which seems remarkably like an investigation of one’s internalised self, et caelum scrutatur in aluo / cognatumque sequens corpus se quaerit in astris. The Aetna-poet takes the need to dig out hidden causes away from his reader, Aet. 178, non illic duce me occultas scrutabere causas.

An Excessive Identity: Oedipus as Οver-Determined Hero  

making children for you, as you well know; if thereafter, avid for punishment, I pressed down upon yielding fingers and left my eyes upon my hapless mother: hear oh hear, if my prayer be worthy and such as you yourself might whisper to my frenzy.’

Oedipus makes himself the only participant in his own catalogue-poem.21 The extended adaptation (almost a parody) of the prayer-formula ‘if ever I have done something for you, O God, then please do this for me’ might just easily be reduced to his saying: ‘if ever I have been Oedipus, then you must do this for me.’ The prayer gives Oedipus’ back story in unrelenting detail (a narrative which Statius himself could not reiterate): his abandonment at birth, his upbringing by Polybus in Phocis, his search for his true father and his killing of Laius in that search, his solving of the Sphinx’s riddle, marriage to Jocasta and self-blinding, all rendered in most graphic terms (esp. secuique trementis / ora senis, 65–6; miseraque oculos in matre reliqui, 72). Indeed, there are no promises of future benefits to the gods in this prayer (something one might expect in a conventional prayer) and Oedipus seems to have done nothing more to deserve the attention than be himself. The six extended protases build to his simple request, exaudi (73). Although we have heard Oedipus’ story over and over, he begs us to listen once more.22 This Oedipus’ literary belatedness is also marked out by his admission that such prayers to Tisiphone are customary (multumque mihi consueta uocari, 58) and well known to her (scis ipsa, 70).23 Furthermore, the prayer also makes such references in the subtler allusions to the Greek etymologies of Oedipus’ name, in both the wounding of Oedipus’ feet (traiectum uulnere plantas, 61; cf. οἰδέω, ‘I swell’, πούς ‘foot’) and to Oedipus as a man with special kinds of knowledge (sics ipsa, 70; cf. οἶδα πῶς, ‘I know how’). Such polyglot references further suggest the enormous weight of literary precedent resting on Oedipus’ shoulders. As he prays for his children’s destruction, Oedipus seems excessively aware of his own identity. Yet it is this intensity of self-awareness that is the cause of his own isolation within his oikos and within the demos of Thebes: ‘orbum uisu regnisque carentem non regere aut dictis maerentem flectere adorti, quos genui quocumque toro: quin ecce superbi —pro dolor!—et nostro iamdudum funere reges

 21 On Oedipus’ prayer, especially his ‘quotation’ of Virgil’s Dido with the words, si bene quid merui (1.60), see Bessone 2020, 144–6. 22 In this he is similar to Hypsipyle, who has told her story many times, see Gibson 2004. For the Thebaid as a ‘sequel’ to Seneca’s Oedipus, see Rebeggiani 2018, 72–6. 23 Cf. also 1.100–1, arripit extemplo … notum iter ad Thebas, with Micozzi 2015.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity insultant tenebris gemitusque odere paternos. hisne etiam funestus ego?’ Theb. 1.74–9 ‘Those I begot (no matter in what bed) did not try to guide me, bereft of sight and sceptre, or sway my grieving with words. Nay behold (ah agony!), in their pride, kings this while by my calamity, they even mock my darkness, impatient of their father’s groans. Even to them am I unclean?’

The fracturing of relations with his offspring is presented in a linguistically and syntactically bizarre series of juxtapositions and self-contradictions. Ostensibly, Oedipus is angry because his sons have not tried to console him and despise his grief, but it seems that it is his lost kingship that is really at issue. He equates his blindness with loss of rule (orbum uisu regnisque carentem, 74) only to complain that his sons have, in literal sense, not ruled him (non regere, 75), a phrase whose meaning is only made clear when Oedipus qualifies this (aut dictis maerentem flectere, 75). This apparently self-contradictory train of thought is underlined by his use of adorti, which (with the infinitive, as here) means to undertake a difficult or dangerous task, but also carries the sense of ‘to attack’.24 It is almost as if Oedipus condemns his children for not ruling him, for not attacking him. Furthermore, he immediately goes on to say that his sons are kings by virtue of his funeral (nostro iamdudum funere reges, 77) before complaining than he is even hated by them in terms which suggest that he is himself destructive but also to be mourned as at a funeral (hisne etiam funestus ego?, 79).25 Thus Oedipus wants to rule and to be ruled and although he has (metaphorically) died he complains that they treat him as if he were dead. The final lines of Oedipus’ prayer to Tisiphone exploit the tension that has existed throughout Oedipus’ appearance between vision and speech. As well as contrasting between darkness and light, as we have already seen, the opening description also juxtaposes his very visible blindness with the savagery of his voice (saeuaque ita uoce precatur, 55) as do the opening lines of his prayer (quam uideo, multumque mihi consueta uocari, 58). Oedipus’ central complaint similarly juxtaposes his blindness (orbum uisu, 74) and a request to look upon his sons (ecce superbi, 76) and famously complains that Jupiter looks on and does nothing (et uidet ista deorum / ignauus genitor?, 79–80). As this prayer reaches its climax, Oedipus combines these two notions once again in his instructions to Tisiphone:

 24 L&S s.v. adorior 2A&B. 25 L&S s.v. funestus.

Appearances Matter: Fury as ecphrasis  

‘da, Tartarei regina barathri, quod cupiam uidisse nefas, nec tarda sequetur mens iuuenum: modo digna ueni, mea pignora nosces.’ Theb. 1.85–7 ‘Queen of Tartarus’ pit, grant the wickedness I want to see. Nor will the young men’s spirit be slow to follow. Come you but worthy, you shall know them my true sons.’

The identity politics at work in this prayer is undermined by the strong paradoxes which it constructs. Oedipus builds a complex and highly literary identity for himself. Yet, what is most striking about this presentation is the extent to which Oedipus is not what he claims to be; he is no longer the tragic hero, nor is he yet the flawed exile; he exists outside the space and time of Thebes, hiding in a formless underworld; nor does he occupy the familiar literary spaces to which he so consistently alludes. In post-Oedipal Thebes, there is no role for Oedipus.

. Appearances Matter: Fury as ecphrasis This idea of absence in identity, already familiar to us from Polynices, is reflected in the physical description of Oedipus which is not only very limited, but picks up the notion of the void space which he occupies by focusing exclusively on the void spaces of his empty eye sockets (lumina, 46; uacuos orbes, 53; oculos in matre reliqui, 72) and the fingers which removed them (dextra, 46; digitis, 71). The Fury he summons is, by contrast, marked out by an excess of physical description (1.88–91, 103–113). Furies seem familiar to readers of Roman epic and yet the precise nature of their appearance is often left to the reader’s imagination. The most famous depiction of a Fury remains that of Allecto in the seventh book of Virgil’s Aeneid. The poet had already allowed his imagination to run riot when he created the monstrous image of Fama reporting Dido and Aeneas’s affair in book four;26 we could plausibly imagine something similarly ‘epic’ to kick-start the Iliadic half of the poem. Yet while Virgil was evidently not afraid to let rip when describing a monstrous, supernatural being who drives his epic narrative forward, his Allecto is trickier to pin down: odit et ipse pater Pluton, odere sorores Tartareae monstrum: tot sese uertit in ora, tam saeuae facies, tot pullulat atra colubris. Virgil Aeneid 7.327–9

 26 See Virg. Aen. 4.173–97. Hardie 2012, 102 calls Allecto a ‘close relative’ of Fama.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity Pluto, her own father, loathes her, her sisters in Tartarus loathe her; she even there is a monster transforming herself into countless faces and vicious expressions and darkly erupting with serpents.

What does a Fury look like? Having snakes for hair is the defining feature, but this monster is all about her ability to change her appearance. When she ‘infects’ Amata by throwing a snake from her head, she assaults, but does not touch her; the exact physical nature of what happens is left unclear, or even incomprehensible.27 The inability of visual description to encapsulate the process of madness is precisely the point of Virgil’s narrative in book seven. Virgil uses this deliberately odd description to exploit the tension between Amata’s innate madness and madness imposed by divine forces. However, what concerns us here is the paucity of physical description of the divine figure at work, beyond her serpentine qualities. We get a slightly better picture when she infects Turnus with madness a little later on: talibus Allecto dictis exarsit in iras. at iuueni oranti subitus tremor occupat artus, deriguere oculi: tot Erinys sibilat hydris tantaque se facies aperit; tum flammea torquens lumina cunctantem et quaerentem dicere plura reppulit, et geminos erexit crinibus anguis, uerberaque insonuit rabidoque haec addidit ore … Virgil Aeneid 7.445–51 These words kindled Allecto to fury. She flared up in anger. Seizures suddenly shuddered the young man’s limbs and a rigid stare, as he spoke, locked both of his eyes. Raw Strife, with her countless serpents, hissed; and her monstrous face thrust through. Then she drove him back with the whirling force of her blazing glare, though he struggled, trying to say more. Up from her tresses she made twin constrictors rise, crackled whips, and, foaming with rage, added…

Initially, Allecto appeared disguised a Calybe, a priestess of Juno, who attempts to persuade Turnus to conflict with the newly-arrived Trojans. Ironically, Allecto’s shape-shifting ability has failed her; when she appears as Calybe, Turnus pours scorn on her words. In anger, Allecto becomes ‘herself’. Again, the snakes are the central element in the depiction, to which are added flaming eyes (flammea … lumina, 448–9) and a cracking whip (uerberaque insonuit, 451). It clearly does not suit Virgil to immerse himself in a detailed depiction here, and what is  27 See Feeney 1991, 164–8 on Virg. Aen. 7.346–56 in particular. For the irrationality of Allecto, especially in the deer-hunting scene at Aen. 7.483–510, see Clément-Tarantino 2016.

Appearances Matter: Fury as ecphrasis  

most prominent is the confusing but undeniably powerful impact which the Fury has upon Amata and Turnus, not what she herself looked like at that moment.28 Ovid, in response to Virgil, works out a slightly fuller picture of his Fury, Tisiphone, when Juno sends her to punish Ino and Athamas in book four of his Metamorphoses. The Ovidian Tisiphone is a little more embellished than her Virgilian counterpart, but the poet seems interested as much in what she takes with her as what she looks like: nec mora, Tisiphone madefactam sanguine sumit inportuna facem, fluidoque cruore rubentem induitur pallam, tortoque incingitur angue egrediturque domo. Luctus comitatur euntem et Pauor et Terror trepidoque Insania uultu. Ovid Met. 4.481–5 Losing no time, malign Tisiphone seized a torch steeped in blood, put on a robe all red with dripping gore and wound a snake about her waist, and started from her home; and with her as she went were Grief and Dread, Terror, and Madness too with frantic face.

Ovid focuses on the blood-red robe and the torch, both soaked in blood, and the snake used as a belt. Later on, we discover that Tisiphone had also brought with her a bronze cauldron filled with poisons (Met. 4.500–5). Ovid also works hard to literalise the complex and ambiguous processes displayed by Virgil’s Fury by having his Tisiphone accompanied by a posse of personifications (Luctus … Insania, Met. 4.484–5).29 When she appears in Ino and Athamas’ doorway, the Fury is depicted in more detail: obstitit infelix aditumque obsedit Erinys, nexaque uipereis distendens bracchia nodis caesariem excussit: motae sonuere colubrae, parsque iacent umeris, pars circum pectora lapsae sibila dant saniemque uomunt linguisque coruscant. inde duos mediis abrumpit crinibus angues pestiferaque manu raptos inmisit, at illi Inoosque sinus Athamanteosque pererrant inspirantque graues animas; nec uulnera membris ulla ferunt: mens est, quae diros sentiat ictus. Ovid Met. 4.490–9

 28 Virgil Aen. 6.570–2 is little more effusive in his description of Tisiphone in Tartarus. See Feeney 1991, 168–72. 29 See Feeney 1991 241–8; cf. Hardie 2002, 231–8.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity In the entrance the baleful Fury stood and barred their way, stretching her arms entwined with tangled snakes and shaking out her hair. The snakes, dislodged, gave hissing sounds; some crawled upon her shoulders; some, gliding round her bosom, vomited a slime of venom, flickering their tongues and hissing horribly. Then from her hair she tore out two and with a doom-charged aim darted them. Down the breasts of Athamas and Ino, winding, twisting, they exhaled their noisome breath; yet never any wound to see, the fateful fangs affect their minds.

At first sight, this seems a powerfully emotive, detailed representation. Yet Ovid in fact resorts to the default setting by focusing on one detail, the snaky hair. Tisiphone’s long ‘locks’ writhe with venom-spitting serpents. They flow down her shoulders and body. She effectively becomes one twisting mass of snake-hair. Like Allecto before her, she hurls serpents at her victims to infect them with madness.30 After this, she pours poison over Ino and Athamas, waves her torch in the air and triumphantly returns to the Underworld. In physical terms, the Fury is almost transformed into an undifferentiated (albeit terrifying) mass of snakes. Although we get slightly more to hang our hats on, Ovid’s agenda is much more focused on teasing out the contradictions he inherited from Tisiphone’s Virgilian predecessor than it is in providing his audience with a comprehensible picture of a Fury in action.31 In other words, both Virgil and Ovid leave much of their Furies’ appearance to the imagination of their audience. Snakes are the central element in what makes a Fury a Fury, and a few, fairly obvious, accoutrements add to their portrayals. This imaginative poetics seems a very sensible solution to the conundrum of making an other-worldly presence compelling and terrifying. It makes sense not to rationalise the irrational. Statius’ initial depiction of Tisiphone resting in the Underworld when she hears Oedipus’ prayer appears to fit neatly with the conventions established by his two epic predecessors: talia dicenti crudelis diua seueros aduertit uultus – inamoenum forte sedebat Cocyton iuxta resolutaque uertice crines lambere sulpureas permiserat anguibus undas. Theb. 1.88–91

 30 The details of what happens when the serpent strikes Ino and Athamas is made more comprehensible, see Feeney 1991, 239–40. 31 Cf. Culex 218–19, Tisiphone, serpentibus undique compta, / et flammas et saeua quatit mihi uerbera.

Appearances Matter: Fury as ecphrasis  

The cruel goddess turned her stern countenance upon him as he spoke. As it chanced, she was sitting by unlovely Cocytus and had loosed the hair from her head and let the serpents lick the sulphurous waters.

As we saw in Virgil and Ovid, there is something disturbing about her looks, although seueros seems scarcely as frightening as what had gone before.32 The poet also focuses on that one consistent element in physical description, the snakes which form part of her hair. What follows, then, is remarkable for the way in which Statius plays with the tradition of epic Furies which he inherited. Having made much of the astonishing speed of Tisiphone’s response to Oedipus’ demands (ilicet igne Iouis lapsisque citatior astris / tristibus exiluit ripis, Theb. 1.92– 3), which is faster than Jupiter’s thunderbolt or a falling star, and the immediacy of her appearance in Greece (arripit extemplo Maleae de ualle resurgens …, Theb. 1.100) which makes play with the conventionality of her journey (notum iter ad Thebas; neque enim uelocior ullas / itque reditque uias cognataue Tartara mauult, 1.101–2), Statius pauses the narrative to provide an elaborate description of his new protagonist: centum illi stantes umbrabant ora cerastae, turba minor diri capitis; sedet intus abactis ferrea lux oculis, qualis per nubila Phoebes Atracia rubet arte labor; suffusa ueneno tenditur ac sanie gliscit cutis; igneus atro ore uapor quo longa sitis morbique famesque et populis mors una uenit; riget horrida tergo palla et caerulei redeunt in pectora nodi: Atropos hos atque ipsa nouat Proserpina cultus. tum geminas quatit ira manus: haec igne rogali fulgurat, haec uiuo manus aera uerberat hydro. Theb. 1.103–113

105

110

One hundred asps erect shaded her face, lesser population of her fearful head. In her sunken eyes sits a steely glow, as when Atracian art makes labouring Phoebe blush through clouds. Suffused with venom, her skin stretches and swells with matter. In her black mouth is a fiery vapour, whereby comes long drought and distempers and famine and a common death upon the nations. At her back lies stiffly a horrid mantle and blue-black knots return upon her breast. Atropos and Proserpine herself refurbish her attire. Then wrath shakes both her hands: the one glares with funeral fire, the other lashes the air with a living snake.

Although none of the description seems hugely original or surprising, what is remarkable is the wealth of detail which the poet provides at this moment; this was  32 L&S s.v. seuerus 1.1.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity probably the most comprehensive portrayal of a Fury which Roman epic poetry had yet produced.33 Tisiphone’s face is shaded by a hundred asps (centum … cerastae, 1.103),34 her eyes are sunken and glow with a steely light (sedet … oculis, 1.104–5), her skin swells and moves with the flow of venom underneath (suffusa … cutis, 1.106–7), her mouth belches a toxic black vapour (igneus … uapor, 1.107–8), she wears a bristling, blue-black cloak tied at the front (riget … nodi, 1.109–10), in her hands she wields fire (haec … fulgurat, 1.112–13) and a snake as a whip (haec … hydro, 1.113). The obvious question is why Statius feels the need to provide such an elaborate description when the work of his most influential predecessors would suggest an alternative strategy. Initially, this clear and comprehensible Tisiphone provides an effective contrast with the ambiguous and perplexing Oedipus who summons her. While the mortal sits in his own Stygian gloom and is hidden away not only from Theban characters within the text, but from the extradiegetic audience as well, Tisiphone makes a powerful impact upon the senses.35 In the underworld, ghosts retreat from her presence (discedit inane / uulgus et occursus dominae pauet, 1.93–4). As she passes into the human world, Day senses her presence (sensit adesse Dies, 1.97) and Atlas trembles (procul arduus Atlas / horruit, 1.98– 9). The sound of her snaky hair hissing causes all of Greece to quake: ut stetit abrupta qua plurimus arce Cithaeron occurrit caelo, fera sibila crine uirenti congeminat, signum terris, unde omnis Achaei ora maris late Pelopeaque regna resultant. audiit et medius caeli Parnasos et asper Eurotas dubiamque iugo fragor impulit Oeten in latus et geminis uix fluctibus obstitit Isthmos. Theb. 1.114–20 She halted where Cithaeron’s highest peak meets the sky and with green tresses utters hiss after fierce hiss, a sign to earth; the whole coast of the Achaean sea and the realms of Pelops echo wide. Half way to heaven Parnassus heard and rough Eurotas; the sound pushed Oeta’s unsteady range sideways and Isthmos scarce withstood twin waves.

 33 See Estèves 2001, 397–8. Cf. Briguglio 2017, 190: ‘il ritratto di Tisifone è un vero tour de force … il testo rielabora elementi tradizionali dell’iconografia infera.’ 34 1.104, turba minor diri capitis, does not suggest that there are more snakes at the back of her head (so Shackleton Bailey 2003, 49), but rather that these are less frightening than her actual face. 35 Lagière 2017, 98: ‘la peur est suscitée non seulement par le désordre cosmique qu’engendre la Furie, mais encore par la description de ses traits.’

Appearances Matter: Fury as ecphrasis  

The language of sublimity, which will be so prominent in Polynices’ experience of the storm later on in this book, is also in play as Tisiphone travels from Tartarus to Greece. She is compared to two very sublime phenomena, lightning and falling stars (ilicet igne Iouis lapsisque citatior astris, 1.92).36 The typically horrified reaction to the sublime experience is focalised initially through the ghosts in the underworld (discedit inane / uulgus et occursus dominae pauet, 1.93–4), but then through the reaction of the Sun (lucentes turbauit equos, 1.98), Atlas (Atlans / horruit, 1.98–9) and ultimately the forests, mountains and rivers of Greece itself. The sense of paradox is palpable; normally it would be the experience of wild nature which causes the extreme reaction to the sublime, yet here it is nature itself which recoils in horror at the sublimity of the Fury. The difference seems to be that the experience is not, as it was by Polynices, suffered by Oedipus himself (for example in reaction to his confrontation with a Fury) but by the environment which surrounds Thebes, which he himself seemed separate from. This set of geographical effects seems reasonably straightforward and typical of the appearance of a chthonic deity in the human realm. However, the final outcome of Tisiphone’s arrival on earth forces us to look back more carefully at Tisiphone’s literary ancestry: ipsa suum genetrix curuo delphine uagantem abripuit frenis gremioque Palaemona pressit. Theb. 1.121–2 Palaemon’s mother herself snatched him from the reins as he roamed on his curving dolphin and pressed him to her bosom.

After the series of physical effects caused by her appearance (an earthquake and subsequent tidal wave, 1.114–20), this wholly mythological ‘effect’ seems decidedly odd. The poet is here highly allusive, but ipsa genetrix must take us back to Ovid’s Ino.37 In that myth, Ino and Athamas are punished by Juno for caring for the newborn Bacchus. Tisiphone, as we saw above, causes their madness and Ino leaps from a cliff with her infant son Melicertes into the sea (Ov. Met. 4.519–30). Venus (who may also be suggested by the epithet genetrix before Palaemon is mentioned), taking pity on them, transformed both into sea gods, renamed Leucothea and Palaemon. The reader needs to be alert to this highly allusive glance

 36 See Lagière 2017, 99–107. This reading is intended to complement the more straightforward reading which suggests Tisiphone as a much more effective counterpart to Jupiter, Hill 1989, 104; and Dominik 2015, 270–2. 37 The myth has already been mentioned at 1.13–14; see below, ch. 4.3.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity back at the Metamorphoses, but if we take the signal given by the disconcerting jump from geographical to mythical impact of Tisiphone’s (re-)appearance in Greece and we are attentive to the Ovidian intertext we are compelled to look again at the differences between the two epic instantiations of this monstrous figure. We are required to contemplate this Tisiphone as a Fury transformed. The paradox which seems a potent element in the Fury’s interaction with the epic world is reconfigured by Statius as Tisiphone provides a physical and comprehensible (albeit fantastic) impact upon the epic landscape while Oedipus remains isolated from the norms of human existence. Yet I think it worth pushing the contradictions in our pair of protagonists a little further in two different, but complementary, directions. To begin with, Statius seems to be playing with the notion of ecphrasis in his description of Tisiphone,38 and in particular is negotiating the boundary between ecphrasis simply as an ancient literary critical term which connotes any kind of descriptive passage and ecphrasis (as a modern critical term) more particularly as a depiction of a work of art, one which usually has metapoetic implications for the surrounding text. Tisiphone is not, to be sure, a work of art, but the poet appears to move towards describing her as though she were one. The narrative pause which this ‘ecphrasis’ constitutes fulfils exactly the same sort of function that one expects in a more typical, formal ecphrasis: at a moment of rapid movement and significant plot development, the reader is compelled to pause and take stock of what is going on. Structurally, Tisiphone’s symbolic value as pseudo-artwork balances the artistic and symbolic emptiness of Clementia in book 12, a deity which ‘appears’ in Athens without a cult statue (nulla autem effigies, nulli commissa metallo / forma dei, 12.493–4). The authorial zooming in to focus on the finer detail paradoxically pushes the reader to zoom out and contemplate the wider implications of the narrative.

 38 The modern bibliography on ecphrasis in Roman literature is predictably vast. For overviews of the ancient term and its modern usage, see Fowler 1991; Webb 1999; and Zanker 2004, 6–7. Webb 2009 explores rhetorical usage in particular. Dufallo 2013 explores ecphrasis and the Roman absorption of Greek culture. General studies of the subject can be found in Ramus 31.1–2, 2002 and Classical Philology 102.1, 2007. It is an important theme in Elsner 1996; Squire 2009; and Porter 2010. For the modern term used for a distinct type of ancient description, see Elsner 2002, 2–3; Goldhill 2009; and Squire 2009, 143–4. For ecphrasis in Catullus 64, see Schmale 2004; in Virgil, see Barchiesi 1997; and Putnam 1998; In Ovid, see Hardie 2002; in the younger Pliny, see Henderson 2002. For accounts of the gaze in Roman literature, see e.g. Bettini & Gibbs 1999; Fredrick 2002; Bartsch 2006; and Lovatt 2013. For Tisiphone’s immobility and her rendering as an object, see Estèves 2001, 400–7.

Appearances Matter: Fury as ecphrasis  

What is more, the notion of the steely light in her eyes (ferrea lux, 1.105) seems to convey quite powerfully an image suggestive of metal statuary.39 The simile which compares Tisiphone’s eyes to a lunar eclipse created by Thessalian witches (qualis per nubile Phoebes / Atracia rubet arte labor, 1.105–6) contains a nexus of words which might easily find meaning in artistic creation. The delayed nominative labor is tricky to fit into a translation of this line and seems to emphasise the sense of Tisiphone as ‘work’ in both an artistic and poetic sense.40 The way in which the moon ‘is reddened’ (rubet) again could easily fit an explicitly artistic context, perhaps suggesting the reds typical of fresco painting.41 While Atracia arte must denote witchcraft for the simile to function, the language is constructed in such a way as to imply a broader, artistic context; ars connotes the skill of the witch, but also artistic technique more generally.42 If we accept Statius’ Tisiphone as ‘ecphrasis’, then this depiction seems all the more extraordinary, given the place which Furies inhabit in Roman art. The Fury seems to be an extremely unusual subject in Roman art, especially Roman art in the 1st century AD (this strikes me as a phenomenon similar to the near absence of temples to Ares in the classical Greek world). Furies are reasonably frequently portrayed in Greek art of the 5th and 4th centuries BC; we see a number of pottery examples depicting them especially in connection with the Orestes myth.43 The Fury also appears in Etruscan depictions of the ‘Seven against Thebes’ cycle.44 Depictions of Furies, usually in depictions of the Oresteia cycle, also appear on sarcophagi of the 2nd century AD.45 However, it seems much

 39 In Virgil’s depiction of the Underworld the adjective is used for Furies’ beds (6.280) and tower (6.554). Briguglio 2017, 192 suggests that Tisiphone’s ‘steely gaze’ proleptically anticipates the arms of warfare she will instigate. I would further suggest an implicit parallel between this descriptive moment and the depiction of Medusa on Adrastus’ metal goblet at 1.543–7. For an extended analysis of that ecphrasis, see Rebeggiani 2018, 207–13. 40 Hall et al. 2007 give ‘Phoebe travailing red’, which conveys the meaning if not the precise syntax. L&S s.v. labor 2a. 41 Cf. Lucr. DRN 2.35–6, textilibus si in picturis ostroque rubenti / iacteris. 42 L&S s.v. ars 1.C.2–3. 43 See e.g. the Black Fury painter’s Orestes crater from early 4th century BC Apulia (Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli inv. 82270); a red-figure depiction of Orestes at Paestum from c.330 BC (British Museum GR1917.12–10.1). 44 E.g. the ‘Sarcophagus of the Poet’ (Musei Vaticani cat.14561) from c.300 BC depicts the duel of Eteocles and Polynices in the presence of female funerary demons with torches on one side and the Orestes myth on the other. 45 See e.g. the fragmentary sarcophagus depicting scenes from the Oresteia including the Furies at Delphi (Metropolitan Museum of Art Acc. No. 28.57.8a-d); the Sarcófago de Husillos depicting

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity harder to find depictions from the 1st century (especially in connection with the ‘Seven against Thebes’ cycle) and, if our admittedly fragmentary evidence is any reliable guide to Roman artistic taste, then we might suggest that representing Furies in pottery or stone at the time when Statius was writing the Thebaid was not the done thing. Moreover, in these non-literary depictions, the Fury is consistently portrayed quite simply as a female figure (rarely terrifying in aspect) who has some snakes in her hair or occasionally carries a torch. Statius’ highly determined and positively frightening figure lacks an obvious counterpart in other artforms. Therefore, if we were to conceptualise the appearance of Tisiphone as an ‘ecphrasis’ we would be constructing in our minds an image of a fictive artwork which has no counterpart in real life. The closest Roman art gets to this sort of monstrous image might be images of Medusa, who shares the central trait of snakes for hair, and, indeed, Statius’ depiction of Tisiphone shares much with Lucan’s Medusa of Bellum Civile 9.46 Yet Medusa normally appears in Roman art as a severed head, whether as the apotropaic symbol or in artistic representations, for example, on the breastplate of Alexander on the mosaic originally in the House of the Faun at Pompeii and now held in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, or the fresco of Perseus holding a severed Medusa’s head in the Villa San Marco at Stabiae. At one level, this is not hugely problematic: after all, most epic ecphraseis describe objects which would be difficult to re-create in artistic form. Yet while it is very difficult to draw the shields of Achilles (Iliad 18) or Aeneas (Aeneid 8) or the images on the temple of Juno which Aeneas examines in Carthage (Aeneid 1), there are at least shields and temples with narrative artwork upon them in the real world which fulfil similar, if not identical, functions.47 Nonetheless, it does seem a little ironic if we are compelled to look into the eyes of Medusa to see Statius’ Tisiphone. Moreover, the apotropaic Gorgon on Athene’s breastplate is, in the Thebaid, a device for not seeing: the snakes of that female head stand on end and prevent her from looking at Tydeus’ cannibalism at the end of book 8 (stetit aspera Gorgon / crinibus emissis rectique ante ora cerastae / uelauere deam, 8.762–4, ‘the Gorgon stood rough with hair outflung and the asps upreared before  scenes from the Oresteia including Furies (Museo Arqueológico Nacional). I note that Zanker & Ewald 2012, 281–408 includes no documentation on the Oedipal section of the Theban cycle. 46 See Estèves 2001, 397. 47 Cf. Estèves 2001, 396: ‘Mais l’évidence est en outre traditionellement mise en oeuvre pour des descriptions dont le caractère artistique et idéalisé est clairement défini: objets d’art – tels le bouclier d’Énée, ou scènes apparentées, en ce que la description et si precise, et d’une finesse telle, qu’elle semble rendre compte d’un objet d’art réel.’

Role Reversal and Literary History: Oedipus and Tantalus  

her face concealed the goddess’). It seems powerfully ironic that, given how much Statius vaunts the literary familiarity of his Fury, that she is so unfamiliar in visual terms. I would contend that Statius’ ecphrastic Fury takes us one step further back in the process of artistic representation and asks us to contemplate the very identity of our protagonists. Moreover, I would contend that the relationship between Oedipus and Tisiphone is a meditation upon the emptiness which underpins their sense of self.

. Role Reversal and Literary History: Oedipus and Tantalus That the notion of some essential absence is at the core of identity here mirrors very closely what we observed in the constantly frustrated process of identity formation which Polynices endures throughout the poem. Yet there is one further level of complication when we come to consider Oedipal identity; we began by remarking upon the extreme sense of over-determination which is foregrounded in the depictions of both Oedipus and Tisiphone. Simply put, these are two characters we have seen before, over and over again. Both they and their narrator are very much aware of this overwhelming literary inheritance. Among the most significant literary models for Oedipus in Thebaid 1 is, as has been ably demonstrated by Randall Ganiban, Virgil’s Juno, specifically the Juno of Aeneid 7.48 This is scarcely surprising given our earlier discussion of Virgil’s Allecto. Ganiban notes that both Oedipus and Juno are: ‘obsessive, violent and subversive’ and the careful imitation of the Juno of the Aeneid’s Iliadic half marks a sense of escalation in horror and violence in the Flavian poem.49 However, this identification should also highlight one crucial difference between Virgil and Statius. Oedipus is not a god and yet is able to prompt the action of the poem as though he were one. This role reversal is more powerful than is sometimes acknowledged. That a divine or monstrous force (though, Oedipus closely resembles such a force in lots of ways) is not responsible for the instigation of the narrative breaks one of the ‘rules’ of epic narrative. It is not as if the Thebaid depicts its universe in quasirationalist terms, like the largely god-less Bellum Civile of Lucan. Instead, this is an epic universe replete with divine machinery, but where that machinery has

 48 Ganiban 2007, 30–3. 49 Ganiban 2007, 30.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity been rendered largely redundant. This stark problematisation of divine motivation, the enormous interpretive gap between Aeneid 7 and Thebaid 1, is mediated to a degree by another intertext, the opening scene of Seneca’s Thyestes.50 In that play, fraternal strife is motivated by the ghost of Tantalus who is summoned from Tartarus by an unnamed Fury. Tantalus at first wonders what new punishment awaits him, listing a series of possible alternatives before thinking of the new evils being perpetrated by his grandchildren (Thy. 1–23). The Fury urges Tantalus onwards, providing a series of awful, yet highly generalised, instructions for the ghost to perform before focusing in on the cannibal feast which Atreus will prepare for Thyestes (Thy. 23–67). Tantalus initially resists, paradoxically preferring his own punishments to the ones he will mete out (Thy. 68–83); the Fury insists (Thy. 83–6). Tantalus laments the transformation of his role from sufferer to imposer of punishment in terms which echo Oedipus’ prayer in the Thebaid (Thy. 83–100). Again, the Fury imposes her will and observes the effects that Tantalus’ appearance is having upon the human world he has invaded (Thy. 101–21). Beyond the obvious situational parallels, the Thebaid’s Tisiphone clearly mimics the appearance of Tantalus in Thyestes. One element of her description clearly goes beyond the traditional framework in ascribing to her a fiery breath which brings disaster and death to the people of the earth (igneus atro / ore uapor, quo longa sitis morbique famesque / et populis mors una uenit, 1.107–9 ‘In her black mouth is a fiery vapour, whereby comes long drought and distempers and famine and a common death upon the nations.’).51 Tantalus likewise imagines himself to be a poisonous vapour emitted from the earth or plague which brings death to earthly peoples (mittor ut dirus uapor / tellure rupta uel grauem populis luem / sparsura pestis? Thy. 87–9 ‘Am I sent forth like some dread exhalation from a fissure in the earth, or as a plague to scatter foul contagion among the nations?’). Like Tisiphone, Tantalus has an immediate impact on the earth itself when he appears from the Underworld. His Tartarean punishment, to be tantalised by food and water, rebounds in the mortal world as rivers and streams shrink from his presence and disappear (Thy. 106–19).52 Like Tisiphone, Tantalus  50 The scene is also important for the programmatic opening of the Thebaid before the Oedipus scene. Rebeggiani 2018, 31, 264 compares the two scenes. 51 On the language of pestilence in these lines see Lagière 2017, 101–111, esp. 108 on the connection with the Thyestes. Cf. Briguglio 2017, 194–5. For Seneca’s Oedipus as a pestilential figure, cf. Oed. 36; for the pseudo-Senecan Nero, cf. Oct. 236–40. See also Rebeggiani 2018, 75–6. 52 Tantalus also acts an important intertextual counterpoint to Bacchus in Thebaid 4.652–96 when the latter causes the rivers of Nemea to dry up. Thy. 119, timentque ueterem nobiles Argi sitim, has a particular resonance in this context. Cf. Parkes 2012, 252, 253, 264, 267.

Role Reversal and Literary History: Oedipus and Tantalus  

causes the day to darken (Thy. 120–1). The long series of conditional clauses which marks Oedipus’ prayer is mirrored in the run of rhetorical questions in Tantalus’ opening speech (Thy. 1–13) and the extraordinary set of thirty-five jussive subjunctives and eight imperatives which fill the Fury’s first speech (Thy. 23–67). Tantalus seems an appropriate intertextual counterpoint for Oedipus not least because he is very much aware of his own boundary crossing and transgressional qualities. Much like Oedipus, we see a character in the unfamiliar position of handing out punishment (me pati poenas decet / non esse poenam! Thy. 86–7). His opening words wonder where he is going in terms which suggest he is being re-written and given a change of status (in quod malum transcribor? Thy. 13 ‘To what evil am I being reassigned/transcribed?’). Rather like Oedipus and Tisiphone, Tantalus observes the shift from the Virgilian model of infernal causation. Whereas the ‘traditional’ approach has a heavenly deity summon a more minor, chthonic divinity to start conflict, Seneca has moved causation down a rung on the ladder. Now the chthonic deity is the prime mover and the ghost fulfils the role of Fury (note how Tantalus is infected by furious energy, Thy. 96–100) For Tantalus the shift in identity is from proverbial sufferer in the Underworld to the punisher in Argos. The invocation of Tantalus as intertext has profound implications for Oedipus, who is both an imitator of Virgil’s Juno and a character being crushed under an oppressive literary inheritance in his own right. The rhetoric of transcription not only allows Oedipus to ‘write himself across’ from the role of human sufferer to that of divine punisher, but it also speaks more deeply to the identity politics played out in his and Tisiphone’s first appearances.53 Oedipus is given an opportunity to re-write his role within the Theban cycle of myth. He shrugs off his customary positions in mythic narrative and is able to re-boot his identity. The invocation of artistic language to construct Tisiphone as an object in a parodic ‘ecphrasis’ under his explicit control refigures Oedipus as a creator of a hellish image. Commentators frequently note that his ability to shape the narrative from within simulates the vatic role of the poet himself.54

 53 Statius nowhere uses transcribor, but Virgil tellingly uses it when Allecto disguised as Calybe speaks of sceptres being transferred away from Turnus to the Trojans, Aen. 7.422. Seneca elsewhere uses transcribor to suggest a change in role and status, both of Cloelia being virtually written into the list of Roman heroes, Dial. 6.16.2.5, and of the philosopher contemplating natural phenomena, NQ 1.pr.17.3. 54 See e.g. Hershkowitz 1998, 248; and Ganiban 2007, 33–41.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity Yet if we compare Oedipus in Thebaid 1 to his brother/son Polynices in the same book, it seems possible to trace further parallels in terms of the identity formation of each. Subjectivisation for each operates in a distinctly disquieting void while the interaction of each with the world around them involves the language of sublimity. Both are absent presences in a very literal sense. The pre-ontological space which Oedipus inhabits at the beginning of the Thebaid fits all too neatly Hegel’s nightmarish vision of the Night of the World. Despite his multiple, previous existences in the classical canon, the Statian Oedipus exists in Thebaid 1 as a proto-subject whose dark, unconscious world of partial objects (note the repeated focus on his eyelessness) marks the Hegelian moment where the natural being is traumatically reconfigured as the social and cultural subject.55 Žižek’s reading of Hegel chimes neatly with the latter’s account of madness as the cutting of all links with external reality, which in turn describes with uncanny precision the status of the isolated, raging Oedipus in Thebaid 1.56 Žižek argues that this withdrawal from the world and the subject’s contraction and severing of all links with the external universe is the founding gesture of humanisation and the emergence of subjectivity itself. For Žižek, the passage through madness, as exemplified through our Oedipus and his own ‘tarrying with the negative’, is an ontological necessity; subjectivity presupposes radical negativity, followed by the construction of a symbolic universe of meaning.57 Yet the journey from abstract negative to concrete universality which Oedipus undertakes results in a profoundly disquieting conclusion – the sublime apparition of Tisiphone who imposes a dissociative politics of violence on Eteocles and on Polynices who, as we have seen, is entirely incapable of stepping into the socially constructed world which awaits him.58 Identity formation is instead consistently deferred in a chain that does not meet its resolution until the eleventh book of the poem. Instead of performing the Hegelian next step of moving from radical negativity to subjectivisation, Oedipus constructs Tisiphone, herself a species of ‘failed artistic object’, who in turn constructs the brother/sons who return obsessively to the pre-ontological state even  55 See Hegel 1974, 204; Žižek 1999, 30; and Sinnerbrink 2008, 4–6. 56 Cf. Žižek 1992, 50; and 1994, 145; Žižek also reads the Hegelian passage against Schelling’s concepts of ‘pure night of Self’, ‘infinite lack of Being’ and ‘violent gesture of contraction’ to synthesise his own account of identity formation, see 1997, 7–8; and 1999, 34–5. 57 Žižek 1997, 8–9. 58 Cf. Sinnerbrink 2008, 13, reading Žižek 1994, 94: ‘As Žižek points out, Hegel is well aware that this abstract universality gains existence through violence, the destructive fury towards all particular content, which is again the only way the concrete Universal can be realised through the emergence of the freedom of individual subjectivity.’

Role Reversal and Literary History: Oedipus and Tantalus  

after they have murdered one another. The process of infection whereby Tisiphone produces the self-destructive impulse in Eteocles and Polynices, which informs their actions for the remainder of the poem, underlines the extent to which they are withdrawn both from the rational universe and from its social constructs. Tisiphone’s bestowing of madness upon the brothers is famously described in a simile likening them to bulls: sic ubi delectos per torua armenta iuuencos agricola imposito sociare adfectat aratro, illi indignantes, quis nondum uomere multo ardua nodosos ceruix descendit in armos, in diuersa trahunt atque aequis uincula laxant uiribus et uario confundunt limite sulcos haud secus indomitos praeceps Discordia fratres asperat. Theb. 1.131–8 So when a farmer tries to yoke two bulls chosen from the fierce herd at one plough, they rebel; not yet has many a ploughshare bowed their lofty necks into their brawny shoulders. They pull opposite ways and with equal strength loosen their bonds, perplexing the furrows with their separate tracks. Not otherwise does headlong strife enrage the untamed brethren.

The essentially indistinguishable nature of the brothers is again to the fore (uario confundunt, 1.136), as is the violence and brutality at the heart of the conflict between them.59 However, one very obvious consequence of this simile is that it renders the brothers as wild animals whose physical prowess is emphasised (ardua … in armos, 1.134), as is their savagery (torua, 1.131),60 while the separation between tenor and vehicle collapses as they are described as indomitos, ‘untamed’, outside the body of the simile. The implication is that the brothers do not belong in the rational, social world. What is more, the very poverty of the kingdom for which the brothers fight is suggestive of the inability of any member of this family to enter into a stable socio-political environment:

 59 See Dominik 2015, 283–5. For commentary and full bibliography on the simile, see Briguglio 2017, 211–12. For a Lucanian reading of the simile which maps Eteocles onto Lucan’s Caesar and Polynices onto Lucan’s Pompey, see Rebeggiani 2018, 182–3. For his subsequent comparison with Otho and Vitellius, see the reservations of Ginsberg 2019. 60 This perhaps mimics the fierceness in Tisiphone’s eyes, L&S s.v. toruus.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity et nondum crasso laquearia fulua metallo, montibus aut alte Grais effulta nitebant atria congestos satis explicitura clientes, non impacatis regum aduigilantia somnis pila nec alterna ferri statione gementes excubiae nec cura mero committere gemmas atque aurum uiolare cibis, sed nuda potestas armauit fratres, pugna est de paupere regno. Theb. 1.144–51 And not yet did panelled ceilings shine golden with thick metal or lofty halls propped upon Greek marble, with space to spread assembled clients. There were no spears watching over the restless slumbers of monarchs nor steel-bearing sentinels in alternating station, nor were they at pains to trust jewels to wine and pollute gold with victuals: naked power armed the brethren, their fight is for a pauper crown.

Elsewhere I have suggested that this passage marks a moment of allusive primitivism, where Statius takes us back to the earliest narrations of the Theban myth in the Cyclic Thebaid.61 I think that we can blur this literary critical position with the notion that the unsophisticated state for which the brothers vie symbolises the profound inadequacy of their selfhood. In objective terms, they lack the trappings of kingship for which they fight and die. The poverty of the Theban state symbolises the poverty of selfhood within its chief protagonists. Oedipus’ appearance in the opening book of the poem is brief, but has profound implications for our understanding of motivation and characterisation within the text. The profoundly disconcerting emptiness at the heart of Statius’ Thebes symbolises the poet’s own disquiet about his own status as poet and the nature of the poetic enterprise he is undertaking.

. Emerging from the Darkness In a sense, of course, the entire passage featuring Oedipus in Thebaid 1 is a bit of a red herring (although one which has significant implications for our discussion of selfhood throughout the poem!) if we are thinking strictly about that character’s identity, because he never moves out of this moment of radical negativity and madness into the social world, but rests immobile in his self-made void and passes that madness onto his sons through the agency of Tisiphone. Indeed, the last we hear of Oedipus is the final words of his prayer, mea pignora nosces (‘you

 61 Hulls 2013, 199–201.

Emerging from the Darkness  

will know them [to be] my true sons’, 1.87). This emphasises that selfhood is something that Oedipus is simply passing onto his offspring – both Tisiphone within the text and we the external audience recognise this fundamentally overdetermined character not through his own actions but because his sons behave as Oedipuses. Furthermore, his very final word until book 11, the future verb nosces, also suggests that we will get to know Oedipus only after the mutual slaughter of his identical progeny. The poem has hit the pause button on subject formation at the key moment. Oedipus does appear briefly at a celebratory banquet thrown by the Thebans following the katabasis of Amphiaraus (8.240–54). At first glance, Oedipus has made a significant step into the world of community. The banquet is described in terms which heavily emphasise its social aspect (sociaeque ad foedera mensae, 8.240). Internalised personality traits can only be viewed in objective terms; Oedipus pays particular attention to his appearance by cleaning and brushing back his hair (canitiem … laxasse manu. 8.243–4),62 and engages in conversation (sociumque benignos / adfatus, 8.244–5; cunctos auditque refertque, 8.247). But it could never be that simple. Oedipus’ commensality is feigned (causa latet, 8.250) and his deliberate attempt to fake social interaction will only result in even greater violence (8.252–3). The banquet scene only goes to underline that identity formation is still to take place. Oedipus re-appears the instant that Polynices and Eteocles are dead (11.580, at genitor).63 As we noted above, it is as if he acts as a characterising frame for the poem’s central protagonists. His identity with the dead brothers is not only stressed by their incestuous familial relationship, but also by the fact that the poem keeps these characters apart; Oedipus in book 1 morphs into a furious presence that drives the brothers forward; their deaths allow Oedipus to emerge once more. His identity as genitor (again, note the reluctance to name him) links the three at a level beyond paternity. Oedipus desires to be piled onto his sons’ bodies, a third element in a grotesque funeral pyre (patremque recentibus, oro, / inice funeribus, 11.594–5); when Antigone finds the bodies, Oedipus covers them like a shroud (insternit totos frigentibus artus, 11.600). When he laments over the corpses, he sees them as ‘too much of mine’ (nimiumque mei, 11.611). Now he complains that he cannot properly know his sons (nec noscere natos, 11.611). At a literal level, this indicates a blind father’s inability to distinguish between identical sons, but the alliterative use of noscere takes us back to the final word of his

 62 When we next see Oedipus his appearance will be hideous once more, 11.582–4. 63 On the poet’s apostrophe to the dead brothers, 11.574–9, see below, ch. 4.5.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity prayer in book 1.64 Now the blurring of identities (cf. nexus fratrum, 11.624) works against Oedipus as he emerges into a social universe. At long last, it feels as if Oedipus has broken free of his ‘Night of the World’: his status is explicitly liminal (saeuoque in limine, 11.581);65 he has burst out of the shadowy depths he previously occupied (profundis / erupit tenebris, 11.580–1); a simile compares him to Charon ascending to the upper air (11.587–92, esp. superni / aeris, 590–1). Most tellingly, his existence is described as an incomplete death (mortem imperfectam, 11.582). This phrase is both analeptic and proleptic, looking back at the living death he endured in book 1 and anticipating the old man’s inevitable fate (although this is postponed beyond the reach of the poem) and his urge to suicide, which will be frustrated by Antigone (11.629–33). It also suggests Oedipus as exile, another species of death-in-life. In Lacanian terms, Oedipus is the subject ‘caught between two deaths’ (the symbolic and the Real); Oedipus is dead symbolically, excluded permanently from the symbolic community, while biologically and subjectively still alive.66 Yet the language of liminality (he is standing on a threshold, remember) and incompleteness also remind us that he has yet to enter fully into the concrete universe. For all the weight of literary history piled on his head, the Statian Oedipus has yet to decide who he really is. This journey to concrete universality has been and is still being retarded by the tortuous drift of the epic narrative. In a brilliant, metapoetic line, the poet describes Oedipus and Antigone’s journey through the shattered detritus of combat to find the twin corpses: inpediunt iter inplicitosque morantur arma uiri currus, altaque in strage seniles deficiunt gressus et dux miseranda laborat. Theb. 11.596–8 Arms, men, chariots hamper their way, entangling and delaying, and in the deep carnage the old man’s steps falter and his pitiful guide labours.

The juxtaposed arma uiri can only be (yet another) play on the opening of the Aeneid, the plurality of uiri foregrounding the absence of a single protagonist that  64 The parent unable to distinguish between dead offspring is a topos of Roman poetry, especially when it depicts civil war, see Hulls 2018, 329–31 on Sil. Pun. 2.636–49. 65 Hall et al. 2007 read 581, erepsit tenebris laeuoque. 66 See Lacoue-Labarthe 1991, 28; and Žižek 2012, 873, which I paraphrase here. Lacan is thinking of Sophocles’ Antigone, a role for which Statius’ Oedipus makes an admirable substitute. Antigone returns from ‘exile’ in book 12 to bury Polynices, who is dead in reality but is denied symbolic death by Creon’s edict.

Emerging from the Darkness  

is the reactive trope of post-Virgilian epic and self-consciously doing down the poem as yet another reiterative re-make.67 Yet the addition of currus points us in a different, intratextual direction. We are taken back to the confused and confusing dissemination of Amphiaraus’ katabasis in book 8 to Adrastus and his Argive army: currus humus inpia sorbet / armaque bellantesque uiros, 8.141–2 (‘the accursed soil sucks in chariots and arms and fighting men’). Just to add to the intratextual nexus, that report was given by a Palaemon, who was emphatically not the Ovidian, Theban, mythical Palaemon mentioned when Oedipus first summoned Tisiphone up from the underworld. Once we cast our minds back to Amphiaraus’ descent, we also find looser connections with the end of book 7 and its descriptions of the earthquake (alius tremor arma uirosque / mirantesque inclinat equos, 7.798–9, ‘a different tremor bends arms and men and marvelling horses’) and the seer’s headlong plunge: illum ingens haurit specus et transire parantes mergit equos; non arma manu, non frena remisit: sicut erat, rectos defert in Tartara currus […]68 Theb. 7.818–20 A huge cavern swallows him, sinking the horses as they are about to cross. He did not let the arms go from his hand or the reins. As he was, he brought the chariot down to Tartarus […]

This prosopographical cross-fertilisation in book 11 leads us by the nose to the conclusion that this moment is also all about descent to and ascent from the Underworld. Where Amphiariaus was swallowed up by the earth, Oedipus is finally spat out by it. What is more, as he and Antigone struggle to find the right pair of bodies, the language of impeding, entangling and, above all, delaying evokes a central theme of the poem.69 This delay has specific resonance for Oedipus and his continuing quest for a concrete identity of his own. The first words of his lament articulate this as tardiness and belatedness (tarda … longo post tempore, 11.605). We see Oedipus emerging still; he construes himself as, even now, caught in the world of nature and not yet in the social, cultural world (uincis io miserum, uincis, Natura, parentem, 11.607, ‘Nature, you conquer, behold, you conquer this unhappy parent!’). His irrational explanation for events (11.619–20) culminates  67 On the re-use and abuse of Aen. 1.1, see Landrey 2014. On this feature of the Thebaid, see below, ch. 4 passim. 68 Hall et al. 2007 give the reading of one manuscript, cursus. With the majority of manuscripts I read currus. 69 On the theme of delay, see Parkes 2012, xvii–xx and above, ch. 1.5.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity in a remarkably self-effacing phrase, nil ego, 11.621, ‘I [am] nothing’, which acts both as a denial of responsibility but also, by entirely eliding the verb, an effective denial of his own existence.70 Oedipus’ final action in the poem is his confrontation with Creon, who sends him into exile in Theban territory, denying him access to religion and shelter. Elsewhere I have written that this passage plays on the concept of age by reversing the pattern of characterisation of Creon and Oedipus found in Greek tragedy and showing both men spectacularly rejuvenated.71 Here we can see further implications for our study of identity in the precise terms of Creon’s decree of banishment. Oedipus’ liminal state is again symbolised by the precise location of his confrontation with the newly crowned king of Thebes (mox reducem Ogygiae congressus limine portae / Oedipoden, 11.664–5, ‘presently at the threshold of the Ogygian gate he encountered Oedipus’). He and Creon replay a bad version of the meeting between Hector and Andromache in Iliad 6. Here Oedipus plays Andromache returning home from the Skaian gate while Creon, like Hector, is soon to pass out through the gate never to return.72 Oedipus’ rejuvenation (seniumque recessit, 11.674; cf. 11.675–6, 740–7) is fleeting and while the old man is able to imitate earlier and more youthful literary versions of himself (meminitque sui, 11.746) he will rapidly and ultimately end up suffering the fate of one of his sons by disappearing in exile. It is this essential truth that indicates that Oedipus, while perhaps more selfaware than his son, gets no further in the process of selfhood. The concrete universality that seems, finally, in Oedipus’ grasp when he reappears in book 11 is snatched away. Creon’s terms of exile seem very mild (he may remain within Theban territory), but are in fact calculated to deny the former king the norms of human existence: ‘haud,’ inquit, ‘patriis prohibebere longe finibus, occursu dum non pia templa domosque commacules. habeant te lustra tuusque Cithaeron,

 70 See Hardie 1993, 45. The phrase links Oedipus back to Virgil’s Dido, who first greets Aeneas with the words, tune ille Aeneas?, Aen. 1.618, ‘Are you that Aeneas?’, but where the elision of final ‘e’ momentarily suggests, ‘you, Aeneas, are nothing.’ Statius plays with this phrase when Jocasta greets Polynices at Thebes, tune ille exsilio uagus et miserabilis hospes?, 7.500, ‘Are you the wandering exile, the pitiable guest?. Again the elision of ‘e’ to form tu n(e)ill(e) exsilio … could be heard as, ‘you the wandering exile and pitiable guest are nothing’. 71 Hulls 2013, 202–5. 72 Oedipus is subtly feminised in book 11. He suggests that his lamentation is soft, 11.608–9; furthermore, trementes … genae, 11.673–4 likens him to Virgil’s Dido, Aen. 4.643–4.

Emicuit per mille foramina sanguis impius: Theseus as Political Alternative  

atque haec ecce tuis tellus habitabilis umbris qua bellum geminaeque iacent in sanguine gentes.’ 11.750–5 ‘You shall not be banished far from your country’s bounds, so long as you do not sully her sacred shrines and homes by your presence. Let the wilds have you, and your own Cithaeron. And see, this earth where the war was and two peoples lie in their blood can be habitation to your shade.’

Despite his emergence some two hundred lines earlier, Oedipus is denied access to the world of the social and cultural subject, symbolised by temples and homes (pia templa domosque). Instead he will be allowed only the wild spaces of nature and Creon’s word lustra, ‘wilds’, is obviously calculated to evoke lustrare, ‘to purify ceremonially’.73 In the final analysis, Oedipus will be nothing more than umbra, a ghost, an exile enduring a new species of living death, but also a shadow of his former literary selves.

. Emicuit per mille foramina sanguis impius: Theseus as Political Alternative However, the story does not end there.74 The Thebaid continues beyond the end of Oedipus’ family to include the defeat of Creon and a very open resolution in mass lamentation, one Stefano Rebeggiani recently described as: ‘a somewhat happy ending.’75 We should, therefore, explore the identity of the man who provides a very limited form of political resolution to the poem, the Athenian king Theseus. The Argive widows come to supplicate at Athens’ altar of Clementia in a passage much discussed by commentators (12.481–518).76 From there it is Capaneus’ widow Evadne who addresses Theseus, whom we see for the first time returning in a recognisably Roman triumphal procession following his conquest of the Amazons and his taking of Hippolyte as bride (12.519–39). We have seen in our analysis of Oedipus and Polynices that for them the process of identity formation ends aporetically with neither able to escape the self-destructive pull of  73 For this verb in aftermath narratives, see Pagán 2000, esp. 433. 74 For the closural play in book 12’s first word, nondum, see Dietrich 1999, 42. The final word of book 11, umbra, echoes the final word of the Aeneid, umbras, 12.952. 75 Rebeggiani 2018, 14. 76 On the altar and on Theseus in book 12, see Kabsch 1968; Burgess 1972; Braund 1996; Pollmann 2004 ad loc.; Ganiban 2007, 214–32; Bessone 2008; 2011, esp. chs. 3–4; Criado 2015; Rebeggiani 2018 passim, esp. 84–92, 182–91, 260–76; and Simms 2020, 152–9.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity negativity that defines them. Here we will suggest that Theseus’ selfhood takes a different path. The Athenian king, although representative of the violent process of civilisation, is not an entirely appealing character for all his ability to provide a rapid end to the conflict, some level of closure to the poem and burial to the Argive dead. Recent readings have tended to view Theseus in binary terms, either viewing him as a largely or wholly positive force or, more frequently, as a negative character who has much in common with a morally dubious Jupiter and the Fury who Oedipus unleashed in book 1. Yet it seems much more sensible to read, as Rebeggiani does, Theseus as a character who displays profound moral and political ambivalence: ‘Statius’ depiction of Theseus shows that kingship cannot prescind from violence and fear and that the world cannot do without a somewhat hypertrophic and fragile absolute power.’77 Re-examining Theseus in the light of the identity formation which we saw with Polynices and Oedipus may provide us with a means to take this debate forward. Theseus is himself a being who creates a sense of the sublime by his very appearance. While he himself achieves the sort of stable identity which his Theban counterparts so sorely lacked, he has a profoundly destabilising effect upon the societies which he brings together at the poem’s conclusion. It is left at best implicit that Thebes achieves a sense of political stability following Athenian intervention: the throne is left unoccupied, protagonists are replaced by undifferentiated scenes of female mourning and, in the mythological future, hostilities between Thebes and Argos will be resumed by the Epigoni.78 Even before Theseus returns to Athens following his conquest of the Amazons, the arrival of the Argive widows in the city is marked by a frenzied grief (12.464–80, esp. coetumque gementem, 12.466) and Juno, herself overcome by grief (non ipsa minus, 466), infects the Athenian populace (presumably also a largely female population, given that Theseus returns in triumph later) with Argive mourning before they even know the reason for it. This contamination results in the destabilisation of social parameters and boundaries as Argives and Athenians become a single society:

 77 Rebeggiani 2018, 90. His reading, based strongly on Bessone 2011, is probably more optimistic than my own. For a summary of the debate, see Criado 2015, 291 nn.1, 2, 3; and Rebeggiani 2018, 12–18. The ambivalence and ambiguity of Theseus is also neatly summarized by Simms 2020, 154, 158: ‘we should be reluctant to make Theseus more than he is … In the latter half of the final book Statius casts Theseus as a ruler capable of bringing stability to Thebes – whether anyone likes it or not.’ 78 This is, of course, the thrust of esp. Dietrich 1999; and Pagán 2000.

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omnis Erechtheis effusa penatibus aetas tecta uiasque replent: unde hoc examen et una tot miserae? necdum causas nouere malorum, iamque gemunt. Theb. 12.471–4 All ages pour from the Erechthean homes, filling roofs and streets: whence this swarm, they ask, so many sad women all together? Not yet apprised of the cause of the distress, they are already groaning.

The mingling of Argives and Athenians in grief anticipates the final scene of Theseus’ entry into Thebes (12.782–96) where invasion (nec tecta hostilia uictor / aspernatus init, 785–6) blends into a mixing of peoples (pio … tumultu / permiscent, 782–3) and grief and victory merge into one (gaudent lamenta nouaeque / exultant lacrimae, 793–4). This is, moreover, a blending of Thebes, Argos and Athens; Theseus has been so successful in inspiring his citizens to take up this righteous cause that even the untrained people of the countryside join in his new expedition (12.611–13).79 Juno performs a similar mixing of peoples as the Argive women ‘invade’ Athens, ensuring that the Athenian people will leave Theseus no option but to attack Creon: dea conciliis se miscet ubique cuncta docens, qua gente satae quae funera plangent quidue petant, uariis nec non adfatibus ipsae Ogygias leges immansuetumque Creonta multum et ubique fremunt. Theb. 12.474–8 On every side the goddess mingles with groups of people, telling all, what race they come from, what deaths they are mourning, what their petition. And the women themselves talk to this one and that, everywhere denouncing Ogygian laws and ruthless Creon at large.

Our first glimpse of Theseus, however, focuses our attention not on the Athenian king, but on the people he has just conquered. While the king of Athens has clearly not inhabited the truly dark and terrifying metaphysical spaces in which we found his Theban counterparts, the triumphal procession does show him emerging from a wild space which is clearly Other (Scythicae post aspera gentis / proelia, 12.519–20) and is marked by symbols of extreme violence, including captured chariots, crests, horses and broken axes (uirginei currus cumulataque fer-

 79 See Braund 1996, 3; Pollmann 2004, 240; and Simms 2020, 158.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity cula cristis / et tristes ducuntur equi truncaeque bipennes, 12.524–5) and belts decorated with gems but also stained with blood (ignea gemmis / cingula et informes dominarum sanguine peltae, 12.527–8). This ‘civilising’ process has come at brutal cost, giving perhaps an indication of what Thebes can expect, but it also symbolises not only Theseus’ selfhood, but also that of the conquered Amazons. The description of the newlywed Hippolyte demonstrates their emergence into the world of concrete universality: nec non populos in semet agebat Hippolyte iam blanda genas patiensque mariti foederis. hanc patriae ritus fregisse seueros Atthides obliquae secum mirantur operto murmure quod nitidi crines, quod pectora palla tota latent, magnis quod barbara semet Athenis misceat atque hosti ueniat paritura marito. Theb. 12.533–9 Hippolyte too draws the people to herself, now bland of eye and patient of the marriage bond. Aside among themselves the women of Athens mutter, wondering that she has broken the austere usages of her country in that her hair is sleek and her bosom is all covered by her mantle, that she blends herself, a barbarian, with great Athens and comes to bear children to her foeman husband.

The Athenians are amazed by an Amazon queen who is so definitively un-Amazonian. As ever, our understanding of the internal processes of subject formation are mediated through external characteristics and focalised through others, in this case, the Athenian women. Hippolyte’s physical appearance now symbolises her identity shift: her expression is mild (blanda genas), her hair is brushed (nitidi crines; cf. the emphasis on Oedipus’ hair) and her breasts are covered (pectora … latent). More telling is that this dramatic shift in identity is articulated in sociological terms: Hippolyte has broken the rites of her own country (patriae … seueros) and her marriage to Theseus is expressed in terms of a contract or treaty (patiensque mariti / foederis). Although still identified by the Athenian women as barbara, she mixes herself with her new social and cultural world. By contrast, Propertius’ Hippolyte is cited as a happy example of femininity concealed (felix Hippolyte! nuda tulit arma papilla / et texit galea barbara molle caput, Prop. 4.3.42–3, ‘Lucky Hippolyte! She bore arms with a naked breast and covered her soft head in a primitive helmet’). Statius’ Hippolyte has very clearly achieved a new sense of individualism by identifying with a secondary community, that of Athens. She successfully completes the same process at which Polynices was so conspicuously unsuccessful in his sojourn at Argos.

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The comparison between conquered Amazons and Argive women indicates that the dead men for whom Evadne pleads have committed crimes which require appropriate punishment. Evadne’s speech to Theseus (12.546–86) is full of rhetorical trickery designed to persuade the Athenian king to come to their aid, but it also reveals the nature of the aid that Evadne seeks. Evadne admits that her people are unable to help themselves (de nostris ... ruinis, 547) but she subtly shifts attention towards the guiltlessness of the Argive women (dirae nec conscia noxae | turba sumus, 548–9) whilst passing over the undoubted guilt of the Argive army in silence, instead lamenting the needlessness of the war that Argos has just lost (quid enim septena mouere | castra et Agenoreos opus emendare penates?, 550–1). Despite Evadne’s subtle presentation of the Argive war against Thebes, we can see that there is a sense that the unburied men have committed a crime, for which they have been punished (nec querimur caesos – haec bella iura uicesque | armorum, 552–3; sed cecidere odia et tristes mors obruit iras, 574), but Creon’s edict forbidding burial is punishment too harsh (553–61). Evadne’s rhetorical questions are deliberately phrased so as to open an obvious role for Theseus himself (ubi numina, ubi ille est | fulminis iniusti iaculator? ubi estis, Athenae?, 561–2). The Athenian king is invited to step into the role of Jupiter as a dispenser of clementia and become the numen unrepresented in the altar of Clementia;80 Theseus can play Jupiter on earth, and, as iniusti suggests, he can do a better job than Statius’ morally dubious king of the gods. Evadne gives examples of Theseus’ prior deeds in battle where he has brought justice to foreign lands and ensured burial: tu quoque, ut egregios fama cognouimus actus, non trucibus monstris Sinin infandumque dedisti Cercyona, et saeuum uelles Scirona crematum. credo et Amazoniis Tanain fumasse sepulchris unde haec arma refers. sed et hunc dignare triumphum: da terris unum caeloque Ereboque laborem Theb. 12.575–80 You too, as the story tells us of your noble deeds, did not give Sinis or loathsome Cercyon to fierce monsters, and you wanted to have savage Sciron cremated. I believe that Tanais too smoked with Amazonian sepulchres, whence you bring back these arms. But deign this triumph also. Grant one labour to earth and sky and Erebus

 80 Cf. Bessone 2011, 109–110.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity Yet the examples of Theseus’ egregii actus do not seem to have much bearing on the dispensation of clementia. Rather, Evadne has shifted her focus once again onto the topic of civilisation and burial. Theseus’ killing of monsters, the brigand Sciron of Megara and Amazons represents his civilising influence; the smoking burial mounds at Tanais and Theseus’ desire to have cremated rather than thrown Sciron into the sea, represent his past efforts to ensure proper burial for his enemies. Yet the example of Sciron seems poorly chosen and reveals Evadne’s desire for Creon’s death; Sciron was thrown off a cliff into the sea, a terrible death, as Statius has made clear.81 Such a punishment seems extreme by any standard and looks suspiciously like an example of the young Theseus making a mistake similar to that made by Creon. The examples of Theseus’ justice that Evadne uses do not call clementia to mind but rather the cycles of civil strife and revenge that Theseus is ostensibly supposed to break. Theseus’ own identity is much more elusive, but is, like that of his new wife, largely focalised through the perceptions of those around him. In her long supplicatory speech (12.546–86), Evadne casts Theseus as a quasi-Homeric warrior, warlike and focused on the acquisition of fame, with the epithets belliger (12.546) and inclute (12.555). Furthermore, she makes him an alternative Hercules, (perhaps flattering him by) concentrating on his monster-killing exploits (non trucibus monstris Sinin infandumque dedisti / Cercyona, et saeuum uelles Scirona crematum, 12.576–7, ‘you did not give Sinis or loathsome Cercyon to fierce monsters and would have cremated savage Sciron’; si patrium Marathona metu si tecta leuasti / Cresia nec fudit uanos anus hospita fletus, 12.581–2, ‘if you freed your native Marathon from fear and the Cretan dwelling, if the old woman who sheltered you did not shed tears in vain’), begging him for one more labour (da … unum … laborem, 12.580) and even suggesting that Hercules envies him as an equal (nec sacer inuideat paribus Tirynthius actis, 12.584, ‘nor the divine Tirynthian envy you equal exploits’). The narrator in turn picks up this Herculean aspect and says that Theseus is forgetful of his labours both in war and in journeying (oblitus bellique uiaeque laborum, 12.599).82 The sense of divinisation increases as Theseus is identified as the son of Neptune (Neptunius heros, 12.588), an epithet which will be repeated in his journey to Thebes (Neptunius … Theseus, 12.665; cf. aequoreus … Theseus, 12.730). His response is pure energy; his reply to Evadne combines the disquietingly bloodthirsty with a powerful moral dimension:

 81 Cf. Theb. 9.300. Cf. Enn. Thy. W trg 369–70; J 296–7. 82 For a reading of Theseus as a ‘better’ Hercules, see Rebeggiani 2018, 147–52.

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nouus unde furor? uictumne putasti Thesea, dire Creon? adsum, nec sanguine fessum crede: sitit meritos etiamnum haec hasta cruores. nulla mora est Theb. 12.593–6 Whence this new frenzy? Fell Creon, did you think Theseus vanquished? I am here, and do not believe me blood-weary. This spear still thirsts for guilty gore. There shall be no delay.

His words have an undeniably programmatic quality. The king gives us as bold a statement of self-definition as we have seen in this poem (adsum, ‘Here I am!’ is in contrast to Oedipus’ self-denying nil ego, 11.621, but much closer to Hypsipyle’s illa ego nam, 5.33). However, the sight of nouus furor is also disconcerting. This is the language of civil war as established in the opening lines of Horace’s seventh Epode and Lucan’s Bellum Civile.83 Theseus’ blood-thirstiness cannot be an attractive trait, but he at least blends it with a powerful notion of righteousness (meritos).84 The anger which prompts his response is, famously, moral anger (iusta mox concitus ira, 12.589, ‘stirred by righteous wrath’). This moral-emotional complex is repeated when Theseus steps onto the Theban plain and sees the unburied Argive dead (iustas belli flammatur in iras, 12.714, ‘he flares into righteous anger of war’).85 The void so central to Oedipus’ and Polynices’ spiritual births is displaced onto the emptiness of the statue-less cult space of Athens’ defining deity, Clementia (12.493–4). This is the journey to concrete universality which Žižek constructed: the journey through the abstract negativity of violence and conflict is the only way to arrive at the historically ‘right’ conclusion of a stable and rational state. Theseus is that conflict personified; the only problem for the reader is that she never gets to see clearly this stable state which Theseus apparently creates. The two similes which are deployed by the poet at this point only underline this. Theseus is like a bull covering his wounds and preparing for another battle to protect his herd (12.601–5) and like Jupiter sending a winter storm (12.650–5). Neither simile is reassuring. A bull simile was the programmatic element of the conflict between Eteocles and Polynices (1.131–8),86 while a violent Jupiter does  83 On this trope see Ginsburg & Krasne 2018, introduction; Bessone 2018, 90–5; Hulls 2018, 329– 30 on the same trope re-worked in Sil. Pun. 2.636–49. 84 On Theseus’ role in bringing closure by punishing Creon, see Bessone 2009. 85 For a largely positive readings of Theseus’ iusta ira as a quality to be abandoned at the conclusion of hostilities, see Bessone 2011, ch.4; for iusta ira as a sublime reaction to tyranny, see Lagière 2017, 264–6. 86 See above, ch. 1.1, 3.3.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity not seem, in the world of the Thebaid, an encouraging role model.87 Moreover, the rapidity of Theseus’ response to Evadne’s plea seems much closer to Tisiphone in book 1 than anything Jupiter is able to achieve.88 While Theseus is: ‘the moral individual, acting on behalf of a larger universality, [acting] so as to challenge and undermine the inherited determinate ethical mores of his community,’89 the response to the extreme injustice is a negative emotion displayed by a semi-divine player who bears uncanny resemblance to the amoral superhuman forces which were driving the narrative hitherto. We are suggesting, therefore, that, despite the deep-seated ambiguity of his presentation (especially by Evadne) and for all that we would condemn him as abusive of his extraordinary power, Theseus provides the only outcome resembling a political solution we are ever going to get for the intractable and repetitive conflict at Thebes. We might even suggest that the text provides a possible ‘solution’ to the Girardian problem of difference which was central to Polynices’ inability to secure proper subjectivisation.90 As he prepares for battle, the final ecphrasis of the poem describes Theseus’ shield: at procul ingenti Neptunius agmina Theseus angustat clipeo, propriaeque exordia laudis centum urbes umbone gerit centenaque Cretae moenia seque ipsum monstrosi ambagibus antri hispida torquentem luctantis colla iuuenci alternasque manus circum et nodosa ligantem bracchia et abducto uitantem cornua uultu. terror habet populos, cum saeptus imagine torua ingreditur pugnas, bis Thesea bisque cruentas caede uidere manus: ueteres reminiscitur actus ipse tuens sociumque gregem metuendaque quondam limina et absumpto pallentem Cnosida filo. Theb. 12.665–76

 87 See Dominik 2015, 277–83. Rebeggiani 2018, 174–6 reads these similes more optimistically, seeing Theseus as a better Jupiter; cf. 261: ‘it is the tragic paradox in which Statius’ contemporaries live: the best imaginable form of power is one that cannot do without terror.’ This reading is not impossible or implausible, but the aporetic ending of the poem makes Theseus’ resolution uncertain and profoundly disquieting. 88 For the extreme speed of this section of narrative, see 12.597, protinus; 12.608, protinus; 12.611, continuo; 12.649, praeceps. 89 Sinnerbrink 2008, 13; cf. Žižek 1999/2008, 103–14. 90 See above, ch. 1.2.

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But at a distance, Neptunian Theseus compresses armies on his huge shield. On its boss he bears the beginnings of his own glory, the hundred cities and hundred walls of Crete and himself in the windings of the monstrous cavern twisting the shaggy neck of the struggling bull, binding alternate hands and knotty arms around him, with head averted to avoid the horns. Terror seizes the folk when he goes into battle fenced by the grim picture; they see Theseus double, and double his hands reeking with carnage. He himself remembers his deeds of yore, he gazes at the comrade band and the once-dreaded threshold and the Cnosian maiden, pale as the thread gives out.

Even by the standards of ecphrasis in this poem, the depiction of the shield is a remarkably metapoetic moment. The language of the world-in-miniature is revealed in the verb angustat. Theseus’ shield is huge (ingenti clipeo) but the description of it relatively sparse in comparison to the obvious literary models in Virgil and Homer.91 There is moreover a reflection of the current narrative of a second Theban war which is much compressed and accelerated in comparison to the first eleven books of the poem. This ecphrasis also completes the remarkable ‘Theseid’ which the poem charts in the second half of book 12. We have seen Theseus’ pseudo-Herculean journeying in Evadne’s speech, his Amazonomachy through the triumphal procession and now we get his exploits on Crete.92 The interweaving of narrative levels, from Crete to shield to Thebes, is symbolised by the interwoven limbs of hero and monster (alternasque … nodosa ligantem / bracchia),93 which in turn reinforces the image of Theseus as a monstrous civiliser. The first verb is disingenuous: we do not see agmina on the shield, but Theseus’ defeat of the Minotaur. Yet the violence which the shield depicts reflects its use on the battlefield. The focalisation behind this description is left deliberately ambiguous. We do not see this through specifically Theban eyes, but as a member of undifferentiated populi. The phrase cum … ingreditur must be frequentative – the shield creates a sense of terror whenever we look at it.94 Therefore the ambiguity in the nature of the audience implicates us as readers within this process. The shield is as much a symbol of epic narrative tout court as it is of any deftly

 91 It is also overtly analeptic in that it provides Theseus’ back story, in contrast to the proleptic effect which most ecphraseis embody, see Harrison 2001; 2010; and 2013. Prolepsis is of course encoded in the effect which the shield will have on the Theban battlefield. 92 We also have a broadening out of Athenian mythography summarised in the brilliantly allusive geographical catalogue of Theseus’ army, 12.611–38. 93 Cf. the interwoven chainmail breastplate of Creon which also suggests allusive complexity, qua subtemine duro / multiplicem tenues iterant thoraca catenae, 12.774–5. 94 This must run in parallel to the sublimity of Minerva’s shield, decorated with the Medusa’s head, which causes Dirce to tremble, 12.606–10. See Rebeggiani 2018, 210–12, although I am less comfortable with the notion that Theseus is simply: ‘transforming it into an instrument of order.’

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity woven Athenian myth. What is more, the viewer’s (and, by implication, the reader’s) experience of the shield is a sublime one, a detail which, as we saw with Polynices and Oedipus, has important implications for the process of subjectivisation. This becomes even more crucial when we shift our focalisation from that of the undifferentiated populi to Theseus himself. The masses see Theseus as a blood-stained double – one on the shield, one carrying the shield (again an important shift from the Homeric and Virgilian models). In this doubling, he replicates the twins who are the main focus of the Thebaid’s narrative and the father/ brother whose complicated family relationship makes him another identikit protagonist. Yet unlike Polynices, who was unable to rationalise his essential difference and escape the obsessive regression to his fraternal double, and unlike Oedipus, who swapped his profound metaphysical negation for a more concrete, but equally self-effacing one in exile, Theseus stages the subjective process of identity formation as a reading of himself on his shield. In the ecphrasis, Theseus moves from carrying himself (and gerit in this context must come close in meaning to something highly reflexive such as ‘playing himself’) to looking at himself (ipse tuens) and remembering himself (meminiscit). At one level, he is mimicking the role of the epic narrator, re-remembering and re-telling his own story (a new version?) every time he looks at his own image on the shield.95 The moment of self-regard is also a repeated moment of self-recognition. If, in a literary landscape which excludes the possibility of Cartesian subjective discourse, one wanted to ‘construct’ the epic hero, we could not find a better model than the Statian Theseus gazing at his shield. The powerful sense of the shield as a sublime object is echoed in Theseus’ actual appearance on the battlefield: ut uero aequoreus quercum Marathonida Theseus extulit erectae cuius crudelis in hostes umbra cadit campumque trucem lux cuspidis inplet, ceu pater Edonios Haemi de uertice Mauors impulerit currus rapido mortemque fugamque

 95 Furthermore, the story he tells is tricky: the socium gregem perhaps suggests Theseus’ participation as an Argonaut, cf. 5.431–4, hic et ab asserto nuper Marathone superbum / Thesea … cernimus. Moreover, the story behind absumpto pallentem Cnosida filo seems difficult to pin down. However, here I would suggest that Theseus performs a beautifully objectified example of Žižek’s subjectivisation: ‘in the (verbal) sign, [he] – as it were – finds [him]self outside [him]self, [he] posits [his] unity outside [him]self, in a signifier which represents [Theseus].’ Cf. Žižek 1996, 43.

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axe uehens, sic exanimes in terga reducit pallor Agorenidas.

Theb. 12.730–6

But sea-born Theseus held forth his Marathonian oak; raised high, its cruel shadow falls upon the enemy and the gleam of the point fills the grim battlefield; as though father Mavors were driving his Edonian chariot from Haemus’ summit bearing death and rout on his rapid wheels, so pale terror leads back the panicking sons of Agenor

Here we see Theseus from the point of view of the combatants outside the walls of Thebes. He is an object of terror: his spear, so gigantic it is labelled an oak tree (quercum) casts a cruel shadow (crudelis … umbra) and the gleam of the spearpoint makes the battlefield ferocious (trucem). The personifications of the shadow and the battlefield through these adjectives reflects the awe-inspired reaction of all the participants in the final conflict of the poem. To the exhausted Thebans, Theseus is a second Mars who makes them pale with fear. It is difficult to rationalise his appearance as reassuring. While the process of Theseus’ selfconstruction seems confident and complete, its impact upon the world around him is sublimely destructive. So complete is this process that Theseus scarcely fulfils any further function within the poem. In just over one hundred lines, Creon joins an entirely one-sided battle (12.677–729), Theseus’ violent prowess is demonstrated in one final aristeia (12.730–51), before he isolates Creon on the battlefield and kills him (12.752–81).96 Creon’s death, for all his bluster (12.689–92, 761–6), is achieved with rapidity and is soaked in closural blood (ille oculis extremo errore solutis / labitur, 12.777–8, ‘he collapses as his eyes wander in final dissolution’). Theseus’ prayer over the corpse (extremique tamen secure sepulcri, 12.781, ‘but you are sure of a final tomb’) ends conflict at Thebes instantaneously.97 Concrete universality once again requires a passage through madness, violence and terror, but these forces are sublimated in ways which Polynices, Oedipus (and indeed, the other protagonists of the Thebaid) found impossible to achieve. Terror was experienced by those who observe his shield (12.672) and the man himself in battle (12.730–6); the extreme violence of Athenian conflict with Thebes results in the re-booting of Thebes qua social community with Theseus as guest (iam hospes Theseus,

 96 On ‘accelerazione narritavea’, see Bessone 2011, 154. 97 On the merciless and instant killing of Creon, see Dominik 1994, 98; and Pollmann 2004, 264, 274 both in conjunction with Virg. Aen. 12.928–52.

  Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity 12.784): Theseus regains his identity as the guest of Callimachus’ Hecale and becomes a new version of Aeneas visiting the future site of Rome (Aen. 8.188);98 madness is located in the visceral emotional reaction to being told of the unburied Argive dead. It is tempting to read Theseus positively, not least as he succeeds in the process of self-formation in a way which Oedipus and Polynices so conspicuously fail; however much you may be disturbed by the furious, autocratic power which the king of Athens displays so unapologetically, this seems to be the price you have to pay for resolution at Thebes. Yet political resolution is pointedly omitted from the poem’s conclusion: ‘what Theseus brings to the Theban situation, what political order remains, is left undisclosed by Statius.’99 Theseus’ final words to Creon (12.779–81) for all their closural promise instead bring a powerful sense of confusion to the story: accedunt utrimque pio uexilla tumultu permiscentque manus. medio iam foedera bello, iamque hospes Theseus: orant succedere muris dignarique domos. nec tecta hostilia uictor aspernatus init: gaudent matresque nurusque Ogygiae, qualis thyrso bellante subactus mollia laudabat iam marcidus orgia Ganges. ecce per adversas Dircaei uerticis umbras femineus quatit astra fragor matresque Pelasgae decurrunt, quales Bacchea ad bella uocatae Thyiades amentes magnum quas poscere credas aut fecisse nefas. gaudent lamenta nouaeque exultant lacrimae. rapit huc rapit impetus illuc Thesea magnanimum quaerant prius anne Creonta anne suos: uidui ducunt ad funera luctus. Theb. 12.782–96 From both sides the standards meet in friendly confusion; they grasp hands. In the midst of battle comes a treaty; now Theseus is a guest. They beg him to come inside their walls and honour their homes. Not rebuffing them, the victor enters enemy dwellings. Ogygian mothers and brides rejoice, even as Ganges, subdued by the battling wand, praised warlike revels, already in liquor. See, over in the shades of Dirce’s height, a cry of women shakes the stars and the Pelasgian matrons are running down like mad Thyiads summoned to Bacchic wars; you might think they were demanding some great crime, or had committed one. Lamentations rejoice, new tears exult. Impulse sweeps them hither and thither – should they first seek great-hearted Theseus or Creon or their loved ones? Widows’ mourning leads them to their dead.

 98 See Bessone 2011, 144–8. 99 Simms 2020, 159.

Emicuit per mille foramina sanguis impius: Theseus as Political Alternative  

The three-way conflict between Athens, Argos and Thebes is now reduced to pious chaos (pio tumultu) – pious presumably because Argive and Theban bodies will now be given proper funerals – which repeats Theseus’ chaotic opening of Tartarus for Creon’s soul (manes, / pandite Tartareum chaos, 12.771–2).100 The erstwhile combatants shake hands, but do in language which reaffirms the blending of societal groups and the sowing of confusion (permiscentque manus).101 The women of Thebes rejoice (gaudent matresque nurusque), but in an extremely disconcerting way. The final extended simile of the Thebaid likens the Theban women celebrating Theseus’ entry into their homes like the drunken river Ganges performing orgiastic rites following Bacchus’ conquest of India (791–3).102 Meanwhile, the Argive widows are equally Bacchic in their behaviour. Likened to insane Thyiads who have performed or are demanding nefas they cannot but remind us of the Theban women who tore Pentheus apart.103 Moreover their running down from the heights of Dirce (Dircaei uerticis … decurrunt) further suggests the Bacchic madness of the Antiope myth.104 Dionysiac chaos in Theseus’ Thebes resolves into a pair of arresting oxymorons (gaudent lamenta nouaeque / exultant lacrimae) before it becomes evident that at least some of the Theban and Argive women may not even know which side has won (Thesea magnanimum quaerant prius anne Creonta / anne suos). This phrase, strictly speaking, must mean that mourning women do not know whether to seek out Theseus who has entered the city, the body of Creon, or the bodies of their relatives. Yet the overarching sense of confusion and the grammar of the phrase may at least imply that some believe it is Theseus who died on the battlefield (unless we attach a weight of meaning to magnanimum). Thus we see a disturbing juxtaposition between Theseus, the super-powerful individual who can construct a stable identity for himself, and Thebes, a polity whose identity has rapidly dissolved into a generalised act of female mourning (uidui ducunt ad funera luctus, 12.796, ‘widows’ mourning leads them to their dead’).

 100 On Theseus’ ‘prayer’ and its connection to the necromancy scene in Seneca’s Oedipus 571– 3, see Augoustakis 2015, 390–1. 101 L&S s.v. permisceo 1, 2B. 102 Tellingly, Dominik 2015, 290 places this simile under the heading of ‘Abuse of Supernatural Power’. 103 Cf. Eur. Bacchae; Ov. Met. 3.701–33. 104 For the Dirce-Antiope myth where Dirce wandering the hills as a Maenad caught and mistreated Antiope and was in turn killed by Antiope’s sons Zethos and Amphion who tied Dirce to a bull, see Hyg. Fab. 8, probably derived from Eur. Antiope. For Dirce as the daughter of Achelous and nymph of a spring, presumably on Mount Cithaeron, see Eur. Bacchae 519–36.

 Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity Thus far we have explored a series of characters within the text of the Thebaid: Polynices, Oedipus, Theseus and, more obliquely, a range of tyrannical characters in the poem. Yet we have skipped around the most important character within the Thebaid, that of the poet himself. Our discussion of tyrannical figures in particular suggested that this is a poem that is consistently eager to confront the tensions presented by the process of creating new poetry out of the deeply complex intertextual and exemplary models which are such a deep-seated feature of Latin literature. At this stage we should confront the identity of the poet head on. The role of Statius qua author is thrown into relief by the role of Hypsipyle in book 5 of the Thebaid. She is herself a ‘poet’ who produces a 450–line excursus on events in Lemnos which has been much studied of late by a number of commentators.1 Yet while she is a poet-figure (i.e. a character within the framework of the poem who, like a Demodocus, Odysseus or Aeneas, produces ‘her own’ poetry), it is our contention that Hypsipyle is not a figure for the poet himself.2 Her own narrative excursus is the meat in the Nemean sandwich of two passages which we will, as we shall see in a moment, regard as crucial to our understanding of Statius as poet of the Thebaid: the arrival of the Argive army in the waters of the river Langia in book 4 and the funeral pyres constructed for Hypsipyle’s erstwhile charge Opheltes in book 6. Broadly speaking, Hypispyle’s story is presented as typical of the narrow, fine-spun poetics of Callimacheanism, while the militaristic narrative which it delays is portrayed as grandiloquent, unrestrained and excessive. While anyone who reads the extraordinary violence of the massacre of the Lemnian men will realise that Hypsipyle’s story-telling is much closer in form and content to the surrounding Theban narrative, it is the way in which these competing accounts position themselves that concerns us here. When we first meet her, Hypsipyle is the slave of the Nemean king, Lycurgus, and wet nurse to his infant son Opheltes, who is fated to be the first casualty of

 1 On Hypsipyle and the Aeneid, see Frings 1996; Nugent 1996; and Gibson 2004; On Hypsipyle’s Euripidean predecessors, see Soerink 2014; on her narrative as an epyllion, see Heslin 2016. Parkes 2014 looks at the narrative from the direction of Valerius Flaccus. On Statius’ narrative strategies in the sequence, see Simms 2020, 49–66. 2 I am grateful for one of the anonymous reader’s encouragement to discuss Hypsipyle, but this point diverges a little from her suggestion. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110717990-004

Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity  

Argos’ war with Thebes. It is only after she guides the Argives to water, at the beginning of book 5, that she reveals her identity (5.28–39). She then gives the Argives a lengthy account of her backstory (5.47–498) which is divided into roughly three sections: Venus and Tisiphone causing the Lemnian women to murder their husbands while Hypsipyle saves her father Thoas (5.47–334), the arrival of Jason and the Argonauts, her relationship with Jason and his subsequent abandonment of her (5.335–485), and the discovery of the survival of Thoas by the other Lemnian women and Hypsipyle’s capture by pirates (5.486–498). Hypsipyle leaves Opheltes to be crushed by a gigantic snake, but wins the protection of the Argive leaders and, despite the aggressive posturing of Lycurgus and his wife Eurydice, survives to be reunited with her (now grown-up) twin sons by Jason. The notion of Hypsipyle as a poet in her own right is one now familiar to us from recent scholarship and her narrative of the Lemnian women’s murdering of their husbands is especially reminiscent of Aeneas’ account of the fall of Troy.3 More recently, Peter Heslin has argued that the Hypsipyle narrative is a species of epyllion with the Lemnian narrative acting as the inset within the larger drama.4 What follows will rehearse his arguments before enhancing and exploring further possibilities offered by such a reading. In particular, the epyllion’s structural dynamic of providing counterpoint to the surrounding narrative can be read as suggesting provocative ways of reading Statius’ role as poet in counterpoint to Hypsipyle. Crucially, Hypsipyle as a poet is also a driver of her own destiny: ‘as interlocutor and narrator she constructs and re-constructs her own selffashioning.’5 Her story neatly fits the notion of an internalised, domestic, familial narrative from a female perspective which provides contrast to an external, masculine, heroic frame. Her provision of shelter to heroes on a journey suggests Hecale’s reception of Theseus in Callimachus’ Hecale; her self-portrayal as a female figure in despair rescued by Bacchus calls to mind Ariadne of Catullus 64; the lament of  3 On her role as poet, see especially Nugent 1996; Gibson 2004, 156–171; and Heslin 2016. On the imitation of Aeneid 2, see Frings 1996; Gibson 2004, esp. 156–60; and Ganiban 2007, 71–95. 4 Heslin 2016, esp. 90–112. My summary necessarily simplifies much of the complexity he finds in book 5, especially Hypsipyle’s capacity to acquire ‘masculine’ traits and impose ‘feminine’ roles on her male interlocutors. Whether we decide that ‘epyllion’ constitutes a proper genre or not is a moot point at this stage. It is clear that the Lemnian narrative displays strong intertextual affiliation to Callimachus’ Hecale, Catullus 64, Virgil Georgics 4 and the Culex, all texts which one might place under the banner of epyllion, even if one were dubious about its exact generic status. See above, introduction. 5 Heslin 2016, 89.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity Opheltes’ mother Eurydice recalls the Orpheus narrative of Georgics 4; the defeat of the giant serpent, as we have seen, evokes the Culex. Contrasts between inset and frame work on two levels – Hypsipyle’s narration creates contrast not only with the external narrative of the Thebaid, but also with her intertextual forebears. Hypsipyle begins book 4 as a childless slave employed as a wet-nurse and is in book 6 restored to her status by the Argives and reunited with her children; within her own story in book 5 she starts as ruling queen of Lemnos but ends as a slave. Within her story, it is Thoas, the elderly king of Lemnos, who receives a fake funeral with an extravagant pyre (5.313–319), but, as we shall see, it is Opheltes, the baby child of the Nemean king, and the gigantic snake which crushed him who receive two remarkable pyres (6.54–77, 90–117) in the external narrative of book 6. However, reversals of patterns found in intertexts abound: the larger story of Opheltes suggestively combines the two Callimachean narratives of Molorchus (in Aetia 4) and Hecale, both also set in Nemea, but reverses the model provided by the Hecale by allowing Hypsipyle a happy ending as opposed to Hecale’s death; the slaughter of the Lemnian men clearly evokes the fall of Troy in Aeneid 2, but, despite acting as ‘host’ to the Argive leaders, Hypsipyle self-consciously models herself neither on Dido nor on Hecale, but on the story-telling Aeneas himself;6 moreover, Thoas’ fake pyre also evokes the fake pyre constructed for Aeneas by Dido in Aeneid 4; personal loss is displaced from Hypsipyle onto Lycurgus and his wife Eurydice, whose name can only suggest Orpheus’ loss in Georgics 4 framed by Aristaeus’ gain; most profoundly, of course, Hypsipyle’s almost improbably happy ending is in stark contrast to the many endings in the larger narrative. Such comparisons serve to illustrate how, as is typical of the epyllion, the internal narrative acts as a counter-point to the external, reversing or inverting form and content located outside it. Yet this notion of counter-point also extends to Hypsipyle as a poet-figure in her own right, who as the female poet of an epyllion stands in marked contrast to Statius as the epic poet of the Thebaid. Yet the contrast between is not straightforwardly couched in generic or gendered terms: Hypsipyle’s story of Fury-inspired mass slaughter on Lemnos is every bit as violent and destructive as any other moment of the poem.7 Rather it is the poetess’s  6 For the self-conscious element, see Heslin 2016, 101–5. 7 Indeed, it might be better to classify the differences between poetics along the lines of Quintilian’s schema of rhetorical styles. Hypsipyle’s narrative follows Quintilian’s intermediate or florid style: 12.10.58, 60: tertium alii, medium ex duobus, alii floridum (namque id ἀνθηρόν appellant) addiderunt. […] medius hic modus et translationibus crebrior et figuris erit iucundior, egressionibus amoenus, compositione aptus, sententiis dulcis, lenior tamquam amnis et lucidus quidem sed uirentibus utrimque ripis inumbratus.

Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity  

supreme confidence in her narrative and the Callimachean language used to mark the shift from ‘epic’ to ‘epyllion’ and back again that is important here. The opening words of her speech to the Argives evoke Aeneas’ introduction of his narrative in Aeneid 2 (immania uulnera, rector, / integrare iubes, 5.29–30, ‘ruler, you bid me freshen monstrous wounds’; infandum, regina, iubes renouare dolorem, Aen. 2.2–3, ‘queen, you bid me renew dreadful grief’) while her initial self-presentation (illa ego nam … raptum quae sola parentem / occului, 5.33–5, ‘I am she … who alone seized and hid her parent’) simultaneously reminds us of Aeneas as saviour of Anchises while alluding to the ‘ille ego qui’ incipit of the Aeneid from Donatus.8 Heslin also notes how, at the moment of confrontation with Lycurgus, six of the Seven against Thebes are explicitly named as Hypsipyle’s protectors, but not Polynices (5.661–9).9 This certainly fits with Polynices’ broader identity crisis in the poem, but the disparity between the two has been visible from that moment of introduction; Hypsipyle is very effusive and without any shame in announcing herself (5.29–39, esp. 38–9, hoc memorasse sat est: claro generata Thoante / seruitium Hypsipyle uestri fero capta Lycurgi, ‘this much it is enough to tell: I am Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas, I bear the thraldom of your Lycurgus’) to Adrastus (her actual interlocutor, 5.20–7) whereas Polynices could not bring himself to speak his father’s name when he first met the Argive king (1.465–7, 673– 81).10 The poetics of the opening of book 5 also suggest a powerful shift in tone. As we saw earlier, when the Argive army quenches its thirst in the waters of the Langia, they reduce the river’s volume (5.1–2, pulsa sitis fluuio, populataque gurgitis alueum / agmina linquebant ripas amnemque minorem, ‘thirst quenched by the river, the army was leaving its ravaged bed and banks – a smaller stream’). Furthermore, the Argive army preparing to leave Nemea is compared to a noisy flock of cranes flying north from Alexandria to Thrace (5.11–16) in a simile which reworks its famous Homeric and Virgilian models (Hom. Il. 3.3–6; Virg. Aen. 10.264–6) by having the ugly-sounding cranes flying northwards to Thrace, the home of Mars. Both elements suggest that Nemea respresents the adoption of an Alexandrian

 8 Gibson 2004, 157–8. Compare also Achilles’ confident ille ego, Ach. 1.650, when he reveals himself to Deidamia just after he has raped her. 9 Heslin 2016, 106–7, esp. 107: ‘the inset narrative about Hypsipyle truly functions as a carefully inverted image of the framing plot’. 10 The shift is also visible from the way in which Hypsipyle reluctantly describes herself in book 4, et nobis regnum tamen et pater ingens – / sed quid ego haec, 4.780–1, ‘yet I too had a kingdom and a great father – but why do I go on like this…?’, but does so with huge confidence in book 5. See Parkes 2012, 311–14; Nugent 2016, 176–7.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity poetics while Hypsipyle ‘takes over’ the narrative: the invocation of the clear, narrower stream is a typical neoteric device, one which we shall explore in more detail shortly, while the harsh noisiness and direction of the cranes (both of which allude to the prologue of Callimachus’ Aetia, 5.13–14) suggest a louder, noisier martial poetics which will be metaphorically banished during the Nemean delay.11 While such poetic imagery is hugely flattering for Statius’ Hypsipyle as a marker of the quality of her ‘poetry’, it is, by contrast, a less than flattering way for Statius to present himself as an epic poet, because it is the external narrative which is being denigrated as bombastic and overblown. This is, once again, a construct of course, because Hypsipyle is as much as voice of the historical Statius as is Statius the epic narrator of the Thebaid. The contrast between the confident Hypsipyle and the diffident Polynices also mirrors the contrast between heroine and the poet himself who allows the Muses to guide his poetic enterprise from the beginning (1.3–16) and who is, as we shall see in this chapter, remarkably self-effacing when allotting poetic immortality to Hopleus and Dymas (10.445–8; see section 4.3) and reluctant to rival the Aeneid at the poem’s conclusion (12.810–19; see section 4.5). The narrow waters which mark the beginning of book 5 of the poem and its transition from ‘epic’ to ‘epyllion’ contrast with the raging, muddy torrent of Langia when first the Argive forces find it (4.812–30; see section 4.2). The pyre which Hypsipyle constructs for her father Thoas also lies in contrast to the pyres made for Opheltes which have remarkable metapoetic significance for the larger poem (see section 4.1): ipsa quoque arcanis tecti in penetralibus alto molior igne pyram, sceptrum super armaque patris inicio et notas regum gestamina uestes, ac prope maesta rogum confusis crinibus adsto ense cruentato, fraudemque et inania busta plango metu si forte premant, cassumque parenti omen et hac dubios leti precor ire timores. Theb. 5.313–319 I too in the secret recesses of our dwelling build a high-flaming pyre and cast thereon my father’s sceptre and arms and his well-known garments, the dress of kings. In sadness I stand by the pyre with dishevelled hair and bloodstained sword, lamenting the stratagem of an empty funeral in fear that they might perhaps crowd in on me, and I pray that the omen might be without effect on my father and that doubting fears of his death be so discharged.

 11 McNelis 2007, 88–90.

Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity  

The pyre is every bit as destructive as any other, but the key to Thoas’ funeral is that it is all a fake.12 The empty tomb is a fraus,13 and indeed, Hypsipyle’s description of the pyre is as much suggestive of the opening book of the Thebaid. The location in the depths of her home (arcanis tecti in penetralibus) reminds us of the subterranean hiding place of Oedipus at the beginning of the poem (1.48–51) as does the bloody sword she has acquired and her disordered hair. In this context, confusis crinibus cannot but remind us of the Oedipodae confusa domus (1.17) which Statius decides to narrate. If Hypsipyle’s artful, Callimachean epyllion is emblematised by her father’s pyre, then the external narrative will be symbolised by the twin pyres of book 6. One final comparison should suffice before we turn back to the figure of Statius himself. Heslin also draws a contrast between Hypsipyle standing still as stone at the happy moment when she is reunited with her sons (illa uelut rupes inmoto saxea uisu / haeret et expertis non audit credere diuis, 5.723–4, ‘She stays fixed like a stony rock, her eyes unmoving, not daring to trust the gods she has experienced’) and a famous moment in the epyllion of Catullus 64, when Ariadne realises she is abandoned by Theseus (Cat. 64.55, 61–62).14 Yet Hypsipyle equally resembles a heroine literally turned to stone, Niobe.15 Niobe’s situation here as a Theban woman who has lost all her children and been turned to stone is another strong counter-point to Hypsipyle. However, the fact that Niobe’s husband Amphion is, as we shall see in this chapter (section 4.3), a crucial touchstone for Statius’ poetics, may suggest a further contrast between the poetics which she represents and those of the poet himself. Although I have tried to speak carefully throughout this book about text and author, poetry and poet, Thebaid and Statius, and not sell myself down the rivers of intentional fallacy or ideological dogmatism, it is certainly worth reiterating  12 For the pyre as the moment when Hypsipyle acquires real agency, see Nugent 2016, 184–5. 13 A word which anticipates the fraus of the wounded Eteocles in his duel with Polynices, 11.554, and the pyre they will share at 12.429–36. 14 Heslin 2016, 110. Hypsipyle will also become a stone figure on the relief sculpture of the temple dedicated to Opheltes, 6.242–8. There, she will be portrayed in motion, showing the river to the Argives (hic flumina monstrat, 6.244) and her Lemnian narrative will be elided. See Gibson 2004, 171. 15 The obvious comparison to make is with Ovid Met. 6.303–12, although there is no especially close linguistic comparison beyond 6.304–5, lumina maestis / stant inmota genis, which is unsurprising in the context of a woman literally being turned to stone. Unlike Catullus’ Ariadne, Ovid’s Niobe is not the subject of an ‘epyllion’ per se. However, it might be observed that the Metamorphoses, by its very nature as a series of interconnected narratives, must inevitably be in constant engagement with the notion of epyllion poetry. In general on Ovid’s narrative technique, see Barchiesi 2002.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity some methodological ground rules here and now. This will not be an attempt to recover a historical ‘Statius’ and we will only tangentially allude to the political context which links this poem’s production to its reception by Domitian. Our inquiry is into the Statius who is presented to us in the text of the Thebaid itself, someone who is a related but separate entity to the Statius who presents himself in the Silvae and Achilleid (and, indeed, to the historical Statius who wrote all three). I will invoke this latter poet (or poets) too, but also suggest that Statius’ authorial selfhood shifts from context to context and from poem to poem, but not to the extent that his identity becomes purely contingent or happenstance. Literary-historical contexts are crucial for our poet; I would suggest that the intimidating scale of literary inheritance,16 the literary milieu of Flavian Rome and the complex political realities of Italy in the 80s and 90s AD are all crucial contexts for constructing the poet of the Thebaid. Furthermore, we can explain shifts in poetic identity in biographical terms (e.g. Statius grows in confidence as a poet in the 90s AD once he sees the success of the Thebaid),17 in generic terms (e.g. the genre of his poems predicate a different literary persona), or in intertextual terms (e.g. we should not expect a consistent poetic persona, this is something driven by the allusive nexus activated by the text at any given moment of self-presentation), yet none of these analytical lines of attack gets to the heart of the poetic subject in the Thebaid. We have already suggested that the Thebaid is a poem whose narrator (the Statius we are really interested in) constantly struggles to control his material in the face of intertextual and exemplary oppression. In what follows, we will suggest that, at key metapoetic moments, the Thebaid shows a remarkably destructive and nihilistic poetics, both with regard to its literary inheritance and to its own identity. Furthermore, an examination of key passages of authorial self-display at the beginning and end of the poem (as well as two embedded in the midst of the narrative) reveal an authorial persona that is diffident and uncertain of his subject matter and his poem’s future;18 there is a deliberate contrast, we will suggest, between this rhetorical pose and that which we see in Statius’ other works with regard to the Thebaid. The processes of subject formation which we saw in Polynices, Oedipus and Theseus are all crucial for our reflection on and understanding of Statius’ own subjectivisation in this poem.

 16 See Feeney 1991, 340; Dominik et al. 2015; Gervais forthcoming. 17 This confidence is most visible at Silv. 4.7.25–8, 5.3.233–8. 18 That diffidence is most visible at Theb. 10.445–8, 12.810–19; Silv. 1 pr., adhuc pro Thebaide mea, quamuis me reliquerit, timeo, ‘I am still fearful for my Thebaid although she has already left me.’

Dead Wood: Encoding Authorial Identity  

. Dead Wood: Encoding Authorial Identity The richness of this problem of authorial identity is brought out in a key poetic moment of the poem in book 6. The Argive army has been tarrying in the woods of Nemea since the beginning of book 4, when Bacchus had caused all but one of the streams and rivers to dry up, but where they also met the heroine Hypsipyle. She guided them to water, but neglected the care of the infant Opheltes, the son of local king and queen, Lycurgus and Eurydice. The child was inadvertently crushed to death by a gigantic snake which lived in the woods, an animal subsequently killed by the Argive heroes. Book 6 largely deals with the funeral games celebrated in Opheltes’ honour, but two pyres are described before the games begin: the child’s funeral pyre (6.54–78)19 and a larger pyre (6.84–117) constructed as an offering to pay for the slaughter of the snake.20 This pair of passages is of great significance for understanding Statius’ poetics. They function as a complex synecdoche for the poem in its entirety, reflecting the process of poetic generation which fuels the poem and illustrating the relationship between epic and other genres and between this poem and its epic predecessors. The description of the pyre of Opheltes operates as an ecphrasis in the modern sense, that is, a description of a manufactured, artistic object.21 Ecphrasis functions at multiple levels; in one way, it constitutes a narrative pause – here, a moment of description which interrupts the narrative flow of the funeral and games which follow it; but an ecphrasis is also ‘constitutive of narrativity’22 and demonstrates the relationship between this secondary narrative strain, the description of the object, and the wider narrative: ‘inclusion through ecphrasis invites the reader to consider the relevance of this secondary field of reference to the primary narrative.’23 So the ecphrasis drives our understanding of the poem forward even as it retards the delivery of the ‘story’.24 The description of Opheltes’ pyre is powerfully suggestive:

 19 On the pyre of Opheltes and in particular its relationship with Callimachean models, see McNelis 2007, 91–3. 20 On both episodes, see also Mottram 2012 ad loc. 21 On ecphrasis, see ch. 3.2 above. 22 Bal 2009, 39. 23 Barchiesi 1997, 274. 24 For the powerful metapoetic resonances of the description of the necklace of Harmonia, see McNelis 2007, 11–12, 51–75.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity tristibus interea ramis teneraque cupresso damnatus flammae torus et puerile feretrum texitur: ima uirent agresti stramina cultu; proxima gramineis operosior area sertis et picturatus morituris floribus agger; tertius adsurgens Arabum strue tollitur ordo Eoas complexus opes incanaque glaebis tura et ab antiquo durantia cinnama Belo. summa crepant auro Tyrioque attollitur ostro molle supercilium: teretes hoc undique gemmae inradiant: medio Linus intertextus acantho letiferique canes. opus admirabile semper oderat atque oculos flectebat ab omine mater. arma etiam et ueterum exuuias circumdat auorum gloria mixta malis adflictaeque ambitus aulae, ceu grande exequiis onus atque inmensa ferantur membra rogo sed cassa tamen sterilisque dolentes fama iuuat paruique augescunt funere manes. inde ingens lacrimis honor et miseranda uoluptas, muneraque in cineres annis grauiora feruntur namque illi et pharetras breuioraque tela dicarat festinus uoti pater insontesque sagittas iam tunc et nota stabuli de gente probatos in nomen pascebat equos cinctusque sonantes armaque maiores expectatura lacertos. Theb. 6.54–7725 Meanwhile a couch doomed to flame, a childish bier, is woven from sad branches of tender cypress. The lowest part is strewn with rustic greenery, next is a space more elaborate with herbal wreaths and a mound decked with flowers soon to die. The third tier rears high with Arabian heap, comprising eastern wealth and white lumps of incense and long-lasting cinnamon from ancient Belus. The top rattles with gold, a soft overhang of Tyrian purple rises high, flashing at all points with polished jewels; in the middle among the acanthus is woven Linus and the deadly hounds. The mother always hated this splendid work and averted her eyes from the omen. Glory mingling with distress and pride of the afflicted palace places arms too and trappings of ancient forbears around the bier, as though a great load was being borne to burial, a vast body for the pyre; vain and barren fame yet pleases the grieving and the tiny dead grows bigger by his funeral. Thence comes great honour to the tears and a piteous pleasure. Gifts are borne for burning more weighty than his years; for his father in premature vow had reserved quivers for him and miniature darts and guiltless arrows, and even then was rearing in his name proven horses of his stable’s well-known breed, and clattering belts and shields expecting bigger arms.

 25 See Hall et al. 2007 for their renumbering of lines 73–82. The overall effect is very similar.

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The pyre is inappropriate for the tiny child placed upon it and the poet pushes this description to the point of its becoming ridiculous. The passage plays on the contrast between the tiny child and the ludicrously large honours paid him: the cypress branches are tender (teneraque cupresso, 6.54), the bier is childish (puerile feretrum, 6.55); the decoration of flowers (morituris floribus, 6.58) evokes the doomed youths of epic battlefields, especially anticipating Atys in book 8; the purple cloth is soft (molle, 6.63); the dead body pathetically tiny (parui, 6.71) and ill-suited to the array of weaponry prepared prematurely (breuiora, 6.74) by his father. The scale and wealth of the pyre is out of all proportion: the three tiers of the pyre are increasingly elaborate (operiosior, 6.57), piled high with Arabian perfumes, incense, cinnamon, gold, purple cloth and gems (Arabum strue … opes … tura ... cinnama … auro … ostro … gemmae, 6.59–63). The fame which is given to Opheltes is empty (cassa tamen sterilisque ferantur / fama, 6.70–1); it is only in terms of his ridiculous funeral that he grows in size (6.71–3).26 This ecphrasis clearly plays on the typically Callimachean contrast between large and small, but it is also rich in metaphors of weaving and artistic production (texitur … operiosior … picturatus … intertextus).27 When all these elements are brought together, the ecphrasis cannot but have a metapoetic impact. The heavy emphasis on elaborate decoration and architectural structure is more familiar from the Silvae and Statius’ descriptions of the villas of his patrons,28 but such poetic instantiations seem to be treated with a certain distain. Certainly the overblown funeral pyre, with its excess of adornment, is rejected, not just implicitly by the narrator, but tellingly also by Eurydice, Opheltes’ mother, who cannot look at the central, woven element (opus admirabile semper / oderat atque oculos flectebat ab omine mater, 6.65–6). The use of admirabile seems ironic when the reader is confronted by the surprising and enjambed oderat. One might suggest that Statius is aping the artful, decorative poetics of the Hellenistic world. This ecphrasis centres on what is appropriate, both at a funereal and at a poetic level. There is a strong sense that the constructed, Callimachean aesthetics enshrined in the pyre are not apposite for the work which is being undertaken here. The poetics espoused in the description of the pyre constructed by the Argives, however, could not provoke a stronger sense of contrast:

 26 On Statius’ use of language and the construction of the pyre, see Mottram 2012 ad loc. 27 This passage also looks back to the Callimachean image of the army running into the stream and muddying the waters, see below, ch. 4.2; McNelis 2007, 87–8; and Parkes 2012 ad 4.824–7. 28 See Zeiner 2005; and Newlands 2012, on e.g. Silv. 1.3, 2.2.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity parte alia gnari monitis exercitus instat auguris aeriam truncis nemorumque ruina montis opus cumulare pyram, quae crimina caesi anguis et infausti cremet atra piacula leti. … sternitur extemplo ueteres incaedua ferro silua comas, largae qua non opulentior umbrae Argolicos inter saltusque educta Lycaeos extulerat super astra caput: stat sacra senectae numine nec solos hominum transgressa ueterno fertur auos, Nymphas etiam mutasse superstes Faunorumque greges. aderat miserabile luco excidium: fugere ferae, nidosque tepentes absiliunt, metus urguet, aues. cadit ardua fagus Chaoniumque nemus brumaeque inlaesa cupressus. procumbunt piceae flammis alimenta supremis ornique iliceaeque trabes metuendaque suco taxus et infandos belli potura cruores fraxinus atque situ non expugnabile robur. hinc audax abies et odoro uulnere pinus scinditur, adclinant intonsa cacumina terrae alnus amica fretis nec inhospita uitibus ulmus. dat gemitum tellus: non sic euersa feruntur Ismara cum fracto Boreas caput extulit antro, non grassante Noto citius nocturna peregit flamma nemus. linquunt flentes dilecta locorum otia cana Pales Siluanusque arbiter umbrae semideumque pecus. migrantibus adgemit illis silua nec amplexae dimittunt robora Nymphae: ut cum possessas auidis uictoribus arces dux raptare dedit, uix signa audita nec urbem inuenias: ducunt sternuntque abiguntque feruntque inmodici, minor ille fragor quo bella gerebant. Theb. 6.84–7, 90–11729 Elsewhere at the bidding of the learned augur the army presses to pile up an airy pyre, like a mountain, with tree trunks and forest wreckage, to burn up the sin of the snake’s slaying and dark offerings, of expiation for their ill-omened death. … Straightway a wood whose ancient foliage never knew the axe is felled, than which none richer in lavish shade was raised in the glades of Argolis and Lycaeus to lift its head above the stars. It stood sacred in the majesty of age, said not only to surpass men’s ancestors in

 29 Lines 88–9 are omitted by a number of manuscripts and deemed spurious by some editors. They add little to the text and are most likely an interpolation.

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antiquity but to have seen generations of Nymphs and Fauns come and go. Piteous destruction was at hand for that grove. The beasts fled, the birds flitted from their warm nests – fear drives. Falls the towering beech, the Chaonian forest and the cypress that winter cannot harm, spruces fall, aliment for funeral flames, and mountain ashes, and trunks of ilex, and yew of dangerous sap, and ash that will drink blood shed in accursed war, and age-proof oak. Then the daring fir and the pine with aromatic wound is split, and the alder, friend to seas, and the vine-welcoming elm lean unshorn tops on the ground. The earth groans. Not so is Ismara overturned and carried off when Boreas lifts his head from his fractured cavern nor does nocturnal fire more swiftly destroy a forest under the South Wind’s assault. Pales and Silvanus, lord of shade, and the demigod herd leave the places they love, haunts of ancient peace, and as they depart the wood groans in sympathy, while the Nymphs loose not the oaks from their embrace. As when a commander gives a captured town over to greedy victors to plunder, scarce is the signal heard and the city is gone; unrestrained they drag and flatten, drive off, carry off; with less noise they made war.

This is a description of a moment of production, where a gnarus augur (Amphiaraus), who is frequently described elsewhere in the text as vates (‘prophet’, but also ‘poet’), has constructed a pyre from the raw materials of the wood. However, this ecphrasis displays some significant differences to our earlier example. For one thing, ecphraseis are normally thought of, at least in the modern sense of the word, as descriptions of works of art (cf. e.g. the coverlet in Catullus 64, Virgil’s shield of Aeneas or, indeed, Statius’ necklace of Harmonia or the shield of Theseus) and the pyre is not, in any real sense, a work of art.30 Given that we wish to read this description as a metaphor for the artistic process, the fact that this is an ecphrasis of a manufactured, but non-artistic, object seems telling. Moreover, ecphrasis is normally a ‘privileged moment of focalisation’,31 where we, as readers of the text, ‘see’ the object described through the eyes of a narrator-focaliser; here it is difficult to know who is looking at the pyre. The Argive army itself seems blissfully unaware of the destruction it is wreaking (esp. 6.114–17). The identity of the eyes through which we view is left ambiguous. The essential wrongness of an act which is intended to be pious is a familiar theme in this poem. The act of building the pyre is supposed to assuage the guilt of the Argive both for the killing of the snake and for the war which is to follow (crimina caesi / anguis … infausti cremet atra piacula belli, 6.86–7). The groaning of earth and wood as trees are cut down unequivocally demonstrates that what

 30 The ancient word ecphrasis has, of course, a much broader semantic range, see de Jong 2014, 120–2. I would suggest that this description occupies an aesthetic middle ground between the necklace of Harmonia and the pseudo-ecphrasis of Tisiphone in book 1. 31 Bal 2009, 35; cf. Genette 1983, 72–8 on focalisation more generally.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity Amphiaraus has commanded is quite wrong (dat gemitum tellus … aggemit … silua, 6.107, 112–13). Thoughtlessness is a theme of this part of the narrative: the snake crushes Opheltes without realising what it has done; the Argives destroy the wood without thinking what they have done. Yet if this potential internal audience fails to view the object, we as external audience cannot but see this as a metaphor for the poem as a whole. The pyre is initially described as opus (6.86, ‘the work’), a word loaded with metapoetic implications. Yet the description shifts from the pyre itself to the wood from which it is constructed (sternitur extemplo ueteres incaedua ferro / silua comas, 6.90–1, ‘straightway a wood whose ancient foliage never knew the axe is felled’). The word silua is also heavily loaded with metapoetic connotations, as a Latin translation for the Greek word ὕλη to mean ‘raw material’.32 David Wray, in his essay on the multiple meanings of the title of Statius’ collections of occasional Silvae, brings out with great clarity the poet’s self-deprecating presentation of those poems as improvised, unpolished, rough drafts by means of play with the meanings of silua.33 Comparison of the first prose preface of Statius’ collection with the relevant section of Quintilian’s work makes the point clearly: diu multumque dubitaui, Stella iuuenis optime et in studiis nostris eminentissime, qua parte [et] uoluisti, an hos libellos, qui mihi subito calore et quadam festinandi uoluptate fluxerunt, cum singuli de sinu meo pro congregatos ipse dimitterem. Silv. 1 praef. Much and long have I hesitated, my excellent Stella, distinguished as you are in your chosen area of our pursuits, whether I should assemble these little pieces, which streamed from my pen in the heat of the moment, a sort of pleasurable haste, emerging from my bosom one by one, and send them out myself. diuersum est eorum uitium, qui primum decurrere per materiam stilo quam uelocissimo uolunt, et sequentes calorem atque impetum extempore scribunt: hanc siluam uocant; repetunt deinde et componunt quae effuderant. Quint. IO 10.3.17 A different mistake is made by those who choose first to run through their material with the hastiest of pens and, following their own heat and impetus, write ex tempore: this they call a silva; they then go back and structure what they have poured forth.34

 32 See OLD s.v. 5; Hinds 1998, 11–16; Wray 2007, 128–33. For the indeterminate generic status of the Silvae, see Bonadeo 2017. 33 On the claim of improvisation in the Silvae, see Newlands 2009; Cucchiarelli 2017. 34 I follow the italicisations of Wray 2007, 129.

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This clearly has a rather different implication for the weighty and time-consuming Thebaid. The thermodynamic metaphor of poetic production is one that Statius also employed at the very beginning of the poem, when he spoke of Pierian fire inspiring him (Pierius calor, Theb. 1.3) and hints at again here in the simile of the South Wind fanning a forest fire (6.109–10). However, the pace and sense of rush central to the Silvae is not visible either in Statius’ claims to have spent twelve years creating the Thebaid (Theb. 12.811–12) or in the Nemean narrative itself, which is so heavily characterised by delay and retardation.35 Instead woods are being cut down and burned in the process of creation. The pyre itself has obvious resonances with the characteristics of epic poetry itself. It is a work of mountainous proportions (montis opus, 6.86) evoking the more gigantomachic image of epic poetry. The woody material it consumes is rendered as limbless trunks and the ruins of woodland (truncis nemorumque ruina, 6.85) which will in turn be burned. This is not poetic creation, but poetic destruction. How should we understand the silvan material which Statius’ pyre consumes? We might read this in a gendered manner, and Alison Keith has illustrated the way in which feminised epic landscapes are subjected to masculine domination: ‘the absorption of female characters into the mythological landscapes of Roman epic appeals to a binary opposition between a feminised nature and a masculine culture embedded in the larger social complex of attitudes about gender relation in ancient Rome.’36 In this instance a gendered reading merges with a generic reading: the softer, more feminine genres are replaced with brutish, masculine epic. The Nemean grove is certainly a kind of locus amoenus and as such representative of pastoral poetry in particular. The shady, comfortable locus of pastoral is cut down and replaced by martial epic. Yet the poetic model espoused here seems particularly destructive. Epic is not a higher genre which emerges from the feminine world of pastoral. None of the pastoral mode remains following the erasure of the grove by the Argives: ‘Nemea changes from a beautiful refuge to a site of meaningless death and pollution.’37 The sense we get is not of a feminine landscape sustaining male domination, but rather the killing of a giant snake (5.549–87) and the chopping down of endless tree trunks is suggestive of a species of spiritual castration. This is a poetics of the most powerfully nihilistic kind.

 35 See Parkes 2012, xvii–xx; on Callimachean agrupnia, see Acosta-Hughes & Stephens 2012, 213–14; McNelis 2007, 22–3; Gervais forthcoming. 36 Keith 2000, 36–64, esp. 58–60; quote from 63–4. 37 Newlands 2004, 144.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity If the play on genre and gender seems horribly negativistic, then similar issues are at play when we explore how this scene of tree-cutting fits into the genre of epic itself. It is a topos common to most epic poems, with examples from Homer (Iliad 23.117–20), Ennius (Annales fr. 175–9 Sk.), Virgil (Aeneid 6.179–82), Ovid (Metamorphoses 8.738–884) and Lucan (Bellum Civile 3.399–452).38 Virgil memorably articulates his ‘classicising’ of his rough Ennian predecessor as a journey through an ancient wood (itur in antiquam siluam, Aen. 6.179). Statius likewise emphasises the age of the Nemean grove as a wood with ancient foliage (ueteres incaedua ferro / silua comas, 6.89–90) and one which is older than all of men’s ancestors (nec solos hominum transgressa ueterno / fertur auos, 6.94–5).39 Statius’ grove is a totalising metaphor – it is as if the poet is cutting down and burning all of his literary inheritance.40 This sense, which chimes in nicely with Statius’ encyclopaedic frame of literary reference and his instinct to allude to every kind of literary predecessor, of the grove as an absolutist metaphor for the literary canon is also echoed in the long catalogue of trees which the Argives cut down (6.98– 106). Gordon Williams in the 20th century read this as ill-judged excess where Statius made his poetry ridiculous by increasing the number of trees well beyond his epic models. However, I would suggest that the vast, over-determined catalogue of trees cut down alludes to the vast array of poetic material which is being burnt in Statius’ poetic pyre. The catalogue of trees itself imitates another topos of epic, the list of (otherwise unimportant) warriors killed during a hero’s aristeia.41 The trees being cut down are described with a range of vocabulary familiar to readers of epic battle scenes: a beech tree falls (cadit, 6.98) as if in battle; a cypress, hitherto unharmed (inlaesa, 6.99), and spruces do likewise (procumbunt, 6.100).42 The trees start to be personified: the yew tree should be feared (metuenda, 6.101), the ash tree drinks blood in war (infandos belli poture cruores / fraxinus, 6.102–3) and the oak tree cannot be beaten in a fight (non expugnabile

 38 On the tree-cutting topos in Roman epic, see Williams 1968, 263–5; Thomas 1988; Masters 1992, 25–8; Hinds 1998, 10–14; Newlands 2004, 144–6; Augoustakis 2006; Goldschmidt 2013, 14 n.50, 66 n.121; Campbell 2019, 25–32. The notion of tree-cutting as sacrilege is of great importance in Ovid and Lucan. 39 There is a further metapoetic play in the use of fertur to suggest an Alexandrian footnote; see Ross 1975, 78; Hinds 1998, 1–3; NcNelis 2007, 110–13, 165–7. 40 The catalogue also evokes the woods of Virg. Ecl. 6.1–8, 7.61–8. See Brown 1994, 24, 202; Soerink 2015, 12 n.34. For the programmatic importance of the Eclogues for the Thebaid, see below, ch. 4.5. 41 Hulls 2006; and 2011 on aristeiai in Statius and Silius. On aristeiai in the Aeneid, see Harrison 1991, xxi–xxxiii. 42 See Mottram 2012 ad 6.100.

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robur, 6.103). The final simile in the passage blurs boundaries between tenor and vehicle: the Argives cut down trees like an army plundering a city (ut cum possessas … quo bella gerebant, 6.114–17);43 the polysyndetic run of verbs describing the destruction of the wood (ducunt sternuntque abiguntque feruntque, 6.116) mimics the lists of warriors cut down by heroes in their aristeiai.44 The pyre made of trees becomes a pyre for the trees; we are reminded that this is an empty metaphor, a pyre without a body, but a funeral pyre nonetheless, fuelled by trees whose explicit purpose is to provide last rites (flammis alimenta supremis, 6.100). The creation of the pyre and the cutting down of the wood situates this passage firmly within the canon of Roman epic poetry, but it does so in a disturbing way. The poem’s literary ethos is itself destructive; the vast range of literary material at the poet’s disposal is, like so many epic warriors, cut down and destroyed. As slaughter becomes the defining metaphor for poetic production, the description of the wood also acquires a contemporary resonance when the woodland deities Pales and Silvanus are evicted along with animals, nymphs and fauns (linquunt flentes dilecta locorum / otia cana Pales Silvanusque arbiter umbrae / semideumque pecus, 6.110–12). As Carole Newlands has noted, these are distinctively Roman deities and their inclusion brings to mind the empty Italian landscapes of land confiscation and civil war.45 Yet this is also a part of the totalising metaphor implicit in this passage; the landscape of Greek mythology is intertwined with the landscape of Roman literature and Italian politics in an allencompassing, destructive sweep.

. Muddying the Waters: Identity and persona in and around Thebes This destructive ethos of poetic production is unnerving, to say the least, and finds its metapoetic twin in another passage earlier in the Nemean narrative. As we saw in the introduction, where we explored the passage for its intertextual openness and especially its connections with Xenophon, when Hypsipyle shows the Argive army to the Langia, the only river in Nemea which Bacchus has not

 43 This blurring of boundaries echoes the effect of the Argive muddying the stream of Langia at 4.812–30. 44 Wills 1996, 378–80. The line may also allude to Ovid’s description of Scylla at Metamorphoses 14.61–5 where she is transformed into a monster with dogs’ heads at her waist. The monstrous hybridity of Scylla suggests a similar character for the Nemean pyre. 45 Newlands 2004, 145–6 with Virg. Ecl. 1 & 9; Luc. 1.28–9.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity caused to dry up,46 the troops, desperate to drink, charge into the stream and muddy the waters: sic Ambracii per litora ponti nauticus in remis iuuenum monstrante magistro fit sonus inque uicem contra percussa reclamat terra, salutatus cum Leucada pandit Apollo. incubuere uadis passim discrimine nullo turba simul primique, nequit secernere mixtos aequa sitis, frenata suis in curribus intrant armenta et pleni dominis armisque feruntur quadripedes: hos turbo rapax, hos lubrica fallunt saxa, nec implicitos fluuio reuerentia reges proterere aut mersisse uado clamantis amici ora. fremunt undae longusque a fontibus amnis diripitur: modo lene uirens et gurgite puro perspicuus nunc sordet aquis egestus ab imo alueus. inde tori riparum et proruta turbant gramina. iam crassus caenoque et puluere torrens, quamquam expleta sitis, bibitur tamen. agmina bello decertare putes iustumque in gurgite Martem perfurere aut captam tolli uictoribus urbem. Theb. 4.805–2347 So along the shores of the Ambracian sea sounds the cry of sailors at the oars as the helmsman points (and loud the land returns the echo), saluting Apollo when he brings Leucas into view. Everywhere common soldiers and officers plunge indiscriminate into the stream, equal thirst cannot separate the mingled throng. Bridled horses enter in their chariots, chargers full of riders and arms are swept along. Some the whirling current, some the slippery rocks play false. They do not scruple to trample kings caught in the flood or drown the face of a yelling friend. The waves crash and from its source the long river is torn asunder. Once it was a gentle green, transparent in its liquid flow; now its channel is soiled, churned up from the depths, the ridges of the banks and the uprooted herbage tumbles it. Now rushing thick with mud and dust, they drink it nonetheless, though their thirst is slaked. It was as though armies were fighting a pitched battle raging in the flood or victors were sacking a captured town.

 46 As McNelis 2007, 87 n.32 points out, this already has a Hellenistic connection to Nicander Alexipharmica 104–5 where a nymph shows a spring to a hero. 47 As most editors, I ignore the lines interpolated by Klotz in his edition and follow the standard line numbering. On the issue, see Parkes 2012, ad 4.716–22.

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Here we should explore the passage’s metapoetic connections through the lens of Hellenistic poetry.48 The contrast between the pure, gentle stream (lene … perspicuus) and the muddying turmoil caused by the soldiers (turbo rapax … diripitur; sordet … torrens) has an obvious resonance;49 since Callimachus, the purity of water had frequently been used by poets to suggest delicacy of their poetry and the purity of the source of inspiration, while fast-flowing, disturbed and muddy waters suggested poetry which was hastily composed, poor in quality, often characterized as over-long, pretentious and bombastic; in generic terms, Hellenistic and Roman writers often coalesce these stylistic contrasts into generic differences between small-scale poetic forms and long, martial (often annalistic) epic; certainly this clash of styles is visibly in action in the description of the murky Nemean stream: ‘although martial interests prevail in this particular clash, it is nonetheless significant that different types of poetic approaches have been brought into conflict.’50 The image was famously used by Horace in his criticism of Lucilius (at dixi fluere hunc lutulentum, saepe ferentem / plura quidem tollenda relinquendis, Hor. Sat. 1.10.50–1), yet, if we use Horace’s logic here, it seems that Statius can only be criticizing his own poetry. The calm and beautiful waters of this pastoral locale are destroyed by the arrival of the poet’s large-scale and brutal epic narrative.51 In case we do not quite get the point, Statius even spells it out for us; the Argives running into the stream is played out as though they were sacking a town or fighting a pitched battle (agmina bello … uictoribus urbem, 4.821–3). If we pair this passage with the inflammatory nihilism of book 6, we get the impression of a poet who really lacks a sense of self-worth. However, I feel that there is more to this passage. The simile which likens the arriving Argive army to sailors spotting cape Leucas and praising Apollo suggests a more specific intertextual connection. The depiction of the land echoing the sailors’ shouting (reclamat / terra) suggests intertextual echoes, while the praise of Apollo (salutatus … Apollo) suggests the final lines of Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo, where the Alexandrian makes very important use of metapoetic water imagery:

 48 For such readings, see Brown 1994, ch.1; Newlands 2004, 142; McNelis 2007, 87–8; and Parkes 2012 ad loc. 49 For pure streams, cf. Ov. Met. 5.587–8; Sil. Pun. 4.42–4. For the pursuit of water, cf. the thirsty Pompeians in Luc. BC 4; for fighting in water, cf. Luc. BC 3.509–762; Sil. Pun. 4.570–703. 50 McNelis 2007, 88. On Callimachus, see Williams 1978, 85–99; and Knox 1985. See also Antoniadis 2018, 935, who draws further connections between this passage and Ov. Am. 3.6.1–2 and Luc. BC 1.204–5. 51 Here I agree with Soerink 2015, 2–6.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity ὁ Φθόνος Ἀπόλλωνος ἐπ᾽ οὔατα λάθριος εἶπεν ‘οὐκ ἄγαμαι τὸν ἀοιδὸν ὃς οὐδ᾽ ὅσα πόντος ἀείδει.’ τὸν Φθόνον ὡπόλλων ποδί τ᾽ ἤλασεν ὧδέ τ᾽ ἔειπεν: ‘Ἀσσυρίου ποταμοῖο μέγας ῥόος, ἀλλὰ τὰ πολλὰ λύματα γῆς καὶ πολλὸν ἐφ᾽ ὕδατι συρφετὸν ἕλκει. Δηοῖ δ᾽ οὐκ ἀπὸ παντὸς ὕδωρ φορέουσι Μέλισσαι, ἀλλ᾽ ἥτις καθαρή τε καὶ ἀχράαντος ἀνέρπει πίδακος ἐξ ἱερῆς ὀλίγη λιβὰς ἄκρον ἄωτον.’ χαῖρε ἄναξ: ὁ δὲ Μῶμος, ἵν᾽ ὁ Φθόνος, ἔνθα νέοιτο. Callimachus Hymn to Apollo 105–113 Envy spoke secretly in Apollo’s ear: ‘I do not admire the poet who does not sing of things like the sea.’ Apollo spurned Envy with his foot and spoke thus: ‘Great is the stream of the Assyrian river, but it carries much filth of the earth and much refuse on its waters. The Melissae do not carry water from every source to Deo, but from the trickling stream that springs from a holy fountain, pure and undefiled, the very crown of waters.’ Hail, lord! But let Blame go where Envy lives.

The connection is further emphasized by Statius’ use of a nautical simile, which links in turn to Callimachus’ Envy admiring those who sing ὅσα πόντος, ‘like the sea’. Furthermore, Apollo’s use of συρφετός to describe the Euphrates also suggests a ‘mob’ or ‘rabble’ like that of the Argive army crashing into the stream in total disorder.52 This intertext suggests a more complex process of self-positioning at work; in one sense, Statius is cast as a Flavian Callimachus by the nexus of connections with the Hymn to Apollo, but at a secondary level, Statius qua epic narrator is cast as Envy over-writing the Apolline, Callimachean poetics located in the waters of Langia. The connection with φθόνος is one which we will pick up when we look at the final lines of the Thebaid. However, for now we should acknowledge that this is an enormously powerful statement concerning the nature of epic narrative; Statius is a poet with a ‘split personality’ who acknowledges that he cannot write a large-scale poem without muddying the waters. However, if we take this passage as also being descriptive of the process of poetic affiliation, then these Nemean waters may also imply an intertextual process which is remarkably anarchic and disconcertingly egalitarian. This is an allusive free for all where standard generic hierarchies are being deconstructed; there is no discrimination or hierarchy in consumption (discrimine nullo); this is a poetic space where even kings are not revered (reuerentia reges / proterere).

 52 LSJ s.v. συρφετός 2a, b.

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. Amphion’s Walls: Constructing the Poet It is with these readings of the poetics of the Thebaid in mind that we now turn to the opening lines of the poem. The opening lines suggest violence and a nihilism that goes beyond the subject matter of the poem: fraternas acies alternaque regna profanis decertata odiis sontesque euoluere Thebas Pierius menti calor incidit.

Theb. 1.1–3

Fraternal battle-lines and alternating reigns fought over with profane hatred and to tell of guilty Thebes, Pierian fire lights my mind.53

Modern commentators frequently mark out the separation from Virgil’s Aeneid in this opening and the profound affiliation with Lucan’s Bellum Civile.54 Yet the crucial element is that the reader joins the poet at the moment where the exact nature of his subject matter coalesces in his mind. In our rush for intertextual definition, we can overlook the sublime, incendiary metaphor for inspiration (Pierius calor) which intratextually ties in to the funeral pyres of book 6.55 The Thebaid is a poem that consumes texts by burning them up. Fraternal battle lines and violent dispute over power work equally well as intertextual metaphors; the construction of the Thebaid involves a violent appropriation of ‘fraternal’ intertexts. The lack of clarity in the opening words and tortured word order construct a poet still searching for his poem. It is too easy to retroject the conflict between Eteocles and Polynices onto the opening lines when we are not reading them for the first time. Fraternal hatred and alternating rule covers a very wide range of possibilities, even when sontes Thebas is introduced. Reading fraternas acies in a metapoetic way provides another layer of meaning. However, this is not a poem about civil war, for all that fraternal conflict imitates it. We will not be reading bella … plus quam ciuilia (Luc. BC 1.1). The Thebaid thus takes the political theme of Lucan’s poem and its imagery of a society twisting and turning in on itself and replicates

 53 I have deliberately retained the Latin word order and delayed the main verb in this translation. 54 On 1.1–45 generally, see Ganiban 2007, 44–50; and Briguglio 2017, 106–50. For cognatas acies, see Vessey 1973, 61; Dominik 1994, 170; Delarue 2000, 102; Roche 2015, 393–4; and Rebeggiani 2018, 153. For the contrast with the Aeneid, see Hill 1989, 101; for a juxtaposition of both with the opening of the Punica, see Hulls 2011, 160–3. For the connections with Lucan, see Henderson 1998, 219–20; and Franchet d’Espèrey 1999, 28–9. 55 Lagière 2017, 73–4.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity that self-destructive impulse at a poetic level. The image of fraternas acies might be most apposite as a description of this text’s violent poetics. The sense that the poet is not yet sure of his subject is confirmed by what follows: unde iubetis ire, deae? gentisne canam primordia dirae, Sidonios raptus et inexorabile pactum legis Agenoreae scrutantemque aequora Cadmum? longa retro series, trepidum si Martis operti agricolam infandis condentem proelia sulcis expediam penitusque sequar quo carmine muris iusserit Amphion Tyriis accedere montes, unde graues irae cognata in moenia Baccho, quod saeuae Iunonis opus, cui sumpserit arcus infelix Athamas, cur non expauerit ingens Ionium socio casura Palaemone mater. atque adeo iam nunc gemitus et prospera Cadmi praeteriisse sinam: Theb. 1.3–16 Where do you command me to begin, goddesses? Shall I sing the origins of the dire folk, the rape Sidonian, the inexorable compact of Agenor’s ordinance, and Cadmus searching the seas? Far back goes the tale, were I to recount the affrighted husbandman of covered soldiery hiding battle in unholy furrows and pursue the uttermost what followed: with what music Amphion bade mountains draw nigh the Tyrian walls, what caused Bacchus’ fierce wrath against a kindred city, what savage Juno wrought, at whom hapless Athamas took up his bow, wherefore Palaemon’s mother did not fear the vast Ionian when she made to plunge in company with her son. No; already shall I let the sorrows and happy days of Cadmus be bygones.

As we noted earlier, the apparent abdication of authorial control of his subject is remarkable.56 The third line of the poem portrays a poet asking the Muses for his topic before he gives us a catalogue of Theban stories which is thoroughly Ovidian both in form and content.57 It provides a synoptic overview of the Theban narrative at Metamorphoses 2.836–4.603 by passing rapidly over events which have already been narrated by an epic predecessor; this in itself seems a very Ovidian way to re-cap Ovid. Interestingly, what worries Statius is that his narrative will be too long if he re-covers all the ground which Ovid did (longa retro series … si … expediam … sequar). The scale of the Theban narrative (longa series) is worrying

 56 See above, introduction. 57 See Keith 2002; 2004–5; Hulls 2011, 161–2; and Briguglio 2017, 111.

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given what we will later see happening to Nemean rivers and funeral pyres.58 In those moments, the scale of the narrative was consistently intertwined with its destructive nature. These Theban myths, which the poet will ultimately avoid narrating in full, nonetheless have odd resonances within the text of the poem itself. We have already seen the irruption of the story of Athamas, Ino and Palaemon in the narrative of Oedipus summoning Tisiphone.59 While the subject-matter which Statius eschews reads like a summary of Ovid, the catalogue itself also looks back to Pindar’s second Olympian:60 ἕπεται δὲ λόγος εὐθρόνοις Κάδμοιο κούραις, ἔπαθον αἳ μεγάλα, πένθος δὲ κρεσσόνων πρὸς ἀγαθῶν. ζώει μὲν ἐν Ὀλυμπίοις ἀποθανοῖσα βρόμῳ κεραυνοῦ τανυέθειρα Σεμέλα, φιλεῖ δέ νιν Παλλὰς αἰεί, καὶ Ζεὺς πατὴρ μάλα, φιλεῖ δὲ παῖς ὁ κισσοφόρος: λέγοντι δ᾽ ἐν καὶ θαλάσσᾳ μετὰ κόραισι Νηρῆος ἁλίαις βίοτον ἄφθιτον Ἰνοῖ τετάχθαι τὸν ὅλον ἀμφὶ χρόνον. Pindar Ol. 2.22–30 This saying fits the royal-throned daughters of Cadmus, whose sufferings were great; yet even so, heavy sorrow sinks back in the face of mightier blessings. Long-haired Semele died amid the roar of thunder, but she lives on amid the Olympian gods, loved for all time by Pallas and Olympian Zeus, and especially loved by her ivy wearing son. Ino, too, men say, was granted an immortal’s life for all time in the depths, along with Nereus’ sea-nymph daughters.

Pindar’s poem gives a brief re-cap of Theban myth for its addressee, Theron of Acragas, who claimed descent from Theban ancestors. Olympian 2 also gives a brief summary of the stories of Laius, Oedipus, Polynices and Thersander (2.30– 45). Yet, the Pindaric catalogue feels much more feminine than Statius’. The Flavian list gives Cadmus, Bacchus (as destroyer of Pentheus), Athamas and Palaemon. The only female character mentioned by name is Juno, who punished both Semele and Ino. By contrast, Pindar also mentions Cadmus, but as father of Semele and Ino; Dionysus is named obliquely (παῖς ὁ κισσοφόρος, 2.27) as Semele’s son. Pindar only gives us female characters in the story of Ino, Athamas and Palaemon.

 58 See McNelis 2007, 59–61. 59 See above, ch. 4.1, 4.2. 60 Willcock 1995. See Clay 2011, esp. 339, on the programmatic importance of Ol. 2.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity The sentiment has also endured a pretty radical shift: Pindar’s essential point to Theron is that god-given fortune ultimately triumphs over grief and bitterness (2.19–22); both Semele and Ino will live among the gods. Statius acknowledges the rise and fall of the fortunes of Cadmus’ family (gemitus et prospera, 1.15), but only to say that he will ignore the positive possibilities which Pindar offers him. Furthermore, it is important to note that Statius adds the myth of Amphion to the Pindaric list. The importance of this Theban bard for the identity of Statius’ literary project is shown most explicitly in a later reflection upon his poem’s development in Silvae 3.2: tu tamen ante omnes diua cum matre, Palaemon, annue, si uestras amor est mihi pandere Thebas, nec cano degeneri Phoebeum Amphiona plectro. Silv. 3.2.39–41 But above all grant your favour, Palaemon, with your goddess mother, if it is my desire to tell of your Thebes and I sing Phoebus’ Amphion with no degenerate lyre.

Here Statius inserts his creation of the Thebaid quite explicitly in between the Ino myth and Amphion’s own creation of Theban walls. Federica Bessone has suggested that Statius casts himself as the new Amphion in his proem to the Achilleid and as an heir to both Amphion and Pindar in the Silvae,61 in a positive reading which I would like to complicate a little here. Unlike the increasingly confident poet of the Silvae and Achilleid, the poet of the Thebaid is one who requires external guidance as to what he should write. This is, I would suggest, alien to the greater autonomy displayed by the poet in his later works. Instead of writing his own narrative, the Thebaid-poet stages his activity as the re-writing of a predecessor’s version of the same narrative (both Ovid and Statius are effectively writing sontes Thebas) in a way which both dramatizes the intertextual process (in this case of the Thebaid’s interaction with the Metamorphoses) and the poet’s search for autonomous space within the literary canon (what of Thebes is left to narrate?). It seems that this search for a subject proves futile; Statius winds up with the most over-determined and hackneyed Theban narrative left (i.e. the one Ovid did not narrate!), that of Oedipus and his family.62 Yet although he rejects the possibility of singing of Amphion’s musical building of Thebes’ walls, his reference to

 61 Bessone 2014, 223–7, 228–32. Cf. Rosati 2014. 62 See Vessey 1973, 69–71; Henderson 1993, 166–7; Brown 1994, 1–4; Pollmann 2004, 28–31; and Ganiban 2007, 47.

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that vates suggests another intertextual element in this proem, that of Propertius. Peter Heslin has recently shown how Propertius uses the figures of Amphion and Orpheus: ‘to embody a distinction between public epic and private elegy.’63 In Elegy 1.7, Propertius polemically contrasts his own poetry with the mythological epic Thebaid of Ponticus. This Ponticus is normally read as a historical figure, but Heslin (persuasively, to my mind) reads him as a fabrication; he is partly a standin for Antimachus of Colophon, the Hellenistic Greek poet who wrote a Thebaid and was much loathed by Callimachus and Catullus, partly an epic stooge for Propertius’ elegiac poetics. Heslin even provocatively suggests that the pseudonym Ponticus is inspired by Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo (Hymn 2.106 ὅσα πόντος). Furthermore, the connection between the opening of Statius’ Thebaid and Propertius 1.7 is underlined by the opening lines of that poem: dum tibi Cadmeae dicuntur, Pontice, Thebae armaque fraternae tristia militiae, atque, ita sim felix, primo contendis Homero (sint modo fata tuis mollia carminibus), Prop. 1.7.1–4 While you tell of Cadmaean Thebes, Ponticus and the tragedy of fraternal warfare, if I may say so, you contend with the primacy of Homer (may the Fates be gentle with your songs), […]

The opening words of this Thebaid now have a different resonance. The re-working of Lucan’s cognatas acies (Luc. BC 1.4) into Statius’ fraternas acies shouts so loudly to readers of Roman epic that we may become deaf to any other resonance.64 Yet Statius’ fraternas acies neatly re-appropriates the Propertian line, armaque fraternae tristia militiae, while avoiding the excessively Virgilian arma, which is deferred until the thirty-third line of the Flavian poem (satis arma referre / Aonia, 1.33–4),65 a word which would not become the clichéd epic opening for more than a decade after Propertius completed his first book.66 At first this seems to be the most self-defeating metaliterary moment thus far; Statius appears

 63 Heslin 2018, 1. On Propertius 1.7, see Heslin 2018, 101–5; on 1.9, see 2018, 105–8. 64 See Vessey 1986, 2969; Henderson 1993, 165–7; and Ganiban 2007, 47. 65 So Bessone 2018b, 19–20. The Lucanian cognatas is also deferred to 1.11, cognata in moenia. For Propertius as evidence for adaptations of the Eteocles-Polynices myth around the time of Actium, see also Prop. 2.34.37–46; Braund 2006 264–5; and Rebeggiani 2018, 33 and n.111. 66 Heslin 2018, 6–7 re-dates the Monobiblos to 33/2 BC, but this does not much affect my argument. It is worth noting in passing that rivalling Homer is explicitly what Statius does in the Achilleid, see Bessone 2014. It seems clear that the Propertian intertext is live in both proems.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity to be aligning himself with Ponticus, that quintessential bad epicist and bête noire of Augustan poetry. However, it may be that the Thebaid places itself differently in this pseudo-literary history. Propertius in 1.7 imagines a scenario where Ponticus falls in love and is unable to complete his epic, thus teeing up the premise for 1.9: te quoque si certo puer hic concusserit arcu— quo nollem nostros me uiolasse deos!— longe castra tibi, longe miser agmina septem flebis in aeterno surda iacere situ; et frustra cupies mollem componere uersum, nec tibi subiciet carmina serus Amor. Prop. 1.7.15–20 Should the boy hit you with his unerring bow (which I wouldn’t want my gods to have desired!), wretchedly you’ll cry that your camps, your seven columns lie far, far away, inattentive in eternal dust. And in vain you will want to compose a soft verse and lazy Love will provide no songs for you.

Ponticus falling in love allows Propertius to imagine the narrative of the poem suspended at the moment where the Argive bodies lie unburied. Where Propertius imagines Ponticus to have broken off and his Thebaid, like the Argive warriors, to be rotting in the dust, Statius inserts his own poem which will conclude with Argia and Antigone’s intervention, Creon’s defeat by Theseus, and a highly Orphic scene of lamentation. The phrase which summarises the Theban back story in Statius, longa retro series, may even evoke longe … longe … cupies at Propertius 1.7.17–19.67 This collocation of parallels thematic and linguistic suggests that, while Statius may be comparing himself to Ponticus (both write Thebaids, after all), he maintains his distance from the latter’s poem. Unlike Ponticus, Statius is able to complete his Thebaid.68 Furthermore, Statius’ reference to Amphion at Thebaid 1.9–10 also allows for intertextual links with Propertius 1.9, which revisits Ponticus in love and explicitly mocks his Amphionic poetics as useless now that he has fallen in love: quid tibi nunc misero prodest graue dicere carmen aut Amphioniae moenia flere lyrae? […] quisquis es, assiduas tu fuge blanditias!

 67 It also picks up Ov. Met. 4.564, luctu serieque malorum. 68 For emphasis on the Thebaid as a poem which does show a second battle and comparisons with the battle of Philippi and the second battle of Cremona in AD 69, see Rebeggiani 2018, 189–91.

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illis et silices et possint cedere quercus, nedum tu possis, spiritus iste leuis.

Propertius 1.9.9–10, 30–2

What good does it do you now, poor wretch, to speak your weighty song and weep the walls of Amphion’s lyre […] Whoever you are, flee from the constant flirtations! Flints and oaks would give way to them, not to mention you, who are a light spirit.

The Augustan poet undercuts the story of Amphion moving boulders into place to build Thebes’ walls purely by the power of his voice. A traditional paradigm of the civilizing power of epic song proves useless in this erotic, elegiac context.69 At the poem’s conclusion, Propertius sets Orpheus as a prototypical love-poet in contrast to Amphion. He too is able to move inanimate objects with his voice, but he is a figure of the countryside, not of the city, and he can move the human soul in a way which Amphion cannot.70 The intertextual links with Propertius 1.7 encourage us to read Statius’ Thebaid 1.9–10 through the lens of Propertius 1.9, yet it seems that the Flavian text may resist an attempt to map criticism of Ponticus neatly onto the later Thebaid. Statius’ reference to Amphion blurs elements that Propertius kept carefully separate (quo carmine muris iusserit Amphion Tyriis accedere montes, ‘with what song Amphion ordered mountains to approach Tyrian walls’). In Statius’ slightly awkward summary, the walls of Thebes are already built; instead Amphion summons mountains, which are in the Thebaid definitively wild spaces, towards pre-existing walls.71 There is therefore a subtle blending of what were for Propertius the Amphionic and Orphic elements of city and country into a single vatic model. What does this mean for our poet? He is neither Ponticus nor Propertius, but exhibits elements of both. However, we should not mistake this for a positivist synthesis of Augustan poetic models (i.e. Statius finding narrative space within the canon by avoiding Ovid’s Theban stories is also Statius finding a happy generic medium between Ponticus’ grandiloquent epicism and Propertius’ elegiac Callimacheanism) because it seems that the archetype of Amphion as wall-builder has especial importance for the later narrative of the Thebaid.72 Instead, Statius leaves this Amphionic synthesis to one side (adeo … praeteriisse sinam). Statius is, in fact, a uates who knocks walls down rather than one  69 Virgil does much the same thing in a pastoral context, Ecl. 2.23–4. Cf. also Prop. 4.1.57. 70 Heslin 2018, 107–8. 71 Heslin 2018, 236–40 sees a similar conflation of Orpheus and Amphion in Prop. 3.2.1–10. Creon banishes Oedipus to Mount Cithaeron precisely because it is an uncivilised, wild space, 11.752, habeant te lustra tuusque Cithaeron. See above, ch. 3.4. 72 For Amphion as builder or founder of the city, see also Theb. 2.455, 4.611, 8.233, 10.787.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity who builds them. Already before the Argive invasion, Thebes’ walls are aged and collapsing (ipsa uetusto / moenia lapsa situ magnaeque Amphionis arces / iam fessum senior nudant latus, 4.356–8, ‘Even the walls have crumbled with ancient neglect. Amphion’s great towers lay bare, flanks worn and decayed’).73 Yet for many readers, the climax of Statius’ Thebaid is the sublime assault on Thebes’ walls by Capaneus, his challenge to Jupiter and destruction by thunderbolt.74 Once he has scaled the walls of Thebes, Capaneus explicitly taunts these as Amphion’s soft creation before reducing it to rubble: utque petita diu celsus fastigia supra eminuit trepidamque adsurgens desuper urbem uidit et ingenti Thebas exterruit umbra, increpat attonitos ‘haene illae Amphionis arces? pro pudor! hi faciles carmenque imbelle secuti hi mentita diu Thebarum fabula muri? et quid tam egregium prosternere moenia molli structa lyra?’ simul insultans gressuque manuque molibus obstantes cuneos tabulataque saeuus destruit: absiliunt pontes tectique trementis saxea frena labant, dissaeptoque aggere rursus utitur et truncas rupes in templa domosque praecipitat frangitque suis iam moenibus urbem. Theb. 10.870–82 Finally he stands out high above the long-sought summit and rising sees the affrighted town below, terrifying Thebes with his huge shadow. Thus he taunts the astonished people: ‘Are these the famous citadels of Amphion? For shame! Are these the obedient walls that followed Amphion’s unwarlike song, the long-told lying legend of Thebes? And what great feat is it to flatten the structures of a soft lyre?’ Thereupon he falls upon the blocks with foot and hand, fiercely demolishing wedges and planks standing in his path. The bridges fly apart, the stone ties of the covering roof give way, the rampart is dismantled. He uses it again, hurling the mutilated rocks down upon the temples and houses, smashing the city with her own walls.

Here we have moved some distance away from the Propertian concept of Amphion’s song as representative of martial epic poetry. For Capaneus, Amphion has come to represent the polar opposite of that manly strain of poetry; these

 73 They are equally weak at Theb. 7.456. 74 The bibliography on this is extensive. See Klinnert 1970; Delarue 2000, 83–5; Lovatt 2001; 2005, 128–39; Leigh 2006, especially for the language of sublimity; Chaudhuri 2014, 256–97; Lagière 2017, 248–60; and Rebeggiani 2018, 142–7.

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walls are soft (molli) and unwarlike (imbelle) and Amphion now represents something much closer to Propertian elegy. Capaneus uses exactly the same sort of language we have seen deployed in the construction of Opheltes’ pyre.75 Indeed, if we wished to push the language of poetic competition a little harder, we could legitimately claim that these are elegiac walls which were easy to build (faciles … muri). By contrast, Capaneus’ sublime epic poetics are much harder to achieve (petita diu) and, at least according to their author, outstanding (egregium). Read metapoetically, Capaneus’ disassembly of Thebes is indicative of the intertextual process. The protagonist takes the Amphionic building blocks of the city, pulls them apart (truncas) and smashes them together to create a new literary (w)hole (frangit … urbem).76 Thebes never re-builds her walls; they remain dilapidated when Theseus and the Athenians make their assault (12.704–6). Indeed, the unbuilt, deconstructed space which Capaneus creates looks increasingly like the Theban void which Oedipus occupied or the sublime storm which Polynices travelled through in book 1. Capaneus’ deconstruction begins to echo the irrationality of Polynices’ storm (esp. pontes absiliunt). If we return to the introductory lines of the Thebaid which prompted our discussion of Amphion, Capaneus and Propertian poetics, and place these alongside our discussion of episodes of water drinking and pyre building in Nemea, we can now see a trio of metaphors being used for poetic production in the Thebaid: wood cut down and burned, a pure stream being muddied by an invading army and city walls being torn down. All three metaphors are destructive in nature and all three seem especially concerned with the re-appropriation of literary material in a mode which I would describe as intertextual. These violent, aggressive poetics suggest a relationship with literary models that centres on the process of ripping apart and re-assembling to form an entirely new synthetic product. Yet this seems difficult to reconcile this mode of writing with the absence of autonomy in finding his subject matter in the opening lines of the poem. At the beginning of book 1, Statius is thoroughly deferential, asking for guidance from the Muses and negotiating his way through Theban material covered by Ovid. A poet willing to cast his epic as a successor to Virgil’s Culex cannot be said to espouse an allusive policy which is strictly smash-and-grab. This deferential attitude is most explicitly enunciated in the poet’s apostrophe to Hopleus and Dymas, respectively the squires of Tydeus and Parthenopaeus, who  75 The use of such language is also visible in the confrontation between Tydeus and Atys in book 8; see Augoustakis 2016, xliii–li, 273–90; and Hulls forthcoming b. 76 For truncus already as suggesting the poet’s inability to control his own language, see Hulls forthcoming b.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity made a night expedition earlier in book 10 to recover the unburied bodies of their chiefs (10.347–448). A Theban cavalry band discovers them on the battlefield and Hopleus is killed. Dymas is surrounded by the Thebans who offer to release him and Parthenopaeus’ body if he reveals the Argive war plans. Dymas refuses to betray his city and commits suicide over the corpse, explicitly using his own body as a surrogate grave covering (10.436–41). Were the re-working of the Nisus and Euryalus episode in Aeneid 9 not already obvious enough, Statius pauses to make an apostrophe to his fallen heroes which names their Trojan counterparts and posits an extraordinarily deferential relationship with their Virgilian forebears: uos quoque sacrati, quamuis mea carmina surgant inferiore lyra, memores superabitis annos: forsitan et comites non aspernabitur umbras Euryalus Phrygiique admittet gloria Nisi. Theb. 10.445–8 You too are consecrate, though my songs arise from a lesser lyre, and will go down the unforgetful years. Perchance too Euryalus will not spurn your attendant shades and the glory of Phrygian Nisus will grant you entry.

Here the poet undoubtedly creates much of the bad press he received in scholarship in the 20th century with the images of an inferior lyre and one of Virgil’s minor characters spurning the Argives. However, the extreme deference displayed in the inferiore lyra of these lines is starkly contrasted with the nec cano degeneri … plectro of Silvae 3.2.41 (‘nor do I sing with a degenerate lyre’). In the latter passage, Statius portrays his singing of the Thebaid in similarly Pindaric terms (lyra, plectro), but with a much greater degree of confidence. To an extent, we should see this difference in attitude to one’s poetry based upon a difference in poetic identity in the Thebaid and the Silvae. However, there is also a degree to which we might read Statius’ inferiority complex in Thebaid 10 as disingenuous and, as we will show below, a little more involved than a simple comparison with Virgil’s Aeneid. Moreover, recent readers have pointed out that Hopleus and Dymas display a moral probity conspicuously absent in Nisus and Euryalus, although the pietas of the former pair is also couched in failure.77 The sociological role of suicidal self-sacrifice is important in Flavian Rome to a degree which was not the case in an Augustan context. There is a powerful sense in which Hopleus

 77 On the apparently irony-free quotation of Aen. 9.447 on a 9/11 memorial, see Seider 2016– 2017.

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and Dymas act as an ideologically charged ‘correction’ of Nisus and Euryalus.78 More recently Marco Fantuzzi has explored the way in which Statius removes the erastes-eromenos relationship which was so central to Nisus and Euryalus in Aeneid 5 and 9.79 Fantuzzi also suggests that Statius hints at a re-direction of amor in Thebaid 10, where each squire ‘loves’ his chief.80 Whether this love is erotic or not is unclear, but this does not matter very much (even the unus amor between Nisus and Euryalus is ambiguous, after all). What is crucial is that we see a redirection from a ‘horizontal’ social affiliation (and while the erastes-eromenos relationship is, by definition, not one of equals, Nisus and Euryalus occupy a pretty similar social stratum which is distinctly separate from that of Aeneas and Ascanius) to a ‘vertical’ social bond (i.e. chief and squire). The poet’s anxiety about a future interaction with Nisus and Euryalus specifically suggests that the Trojans will reject them as companions (comites non aspernabitur), that is, not as lovers. Not only does Statius’ ‘correction’ of the martial ethics displayed by Nisus and Euryalus suggest that his insecurity about following Virgil may contain an element of misdirection, we might also suggest that the inferior lyre (inferiore lyra) actually relates to a generic concern rather than an allusive one. If we study the apostrophe in isolation, we run the risk of ignoring the telling fact that the Theban band which kills Hopleus and attempts to suborn Dymas is led by another Amphion (monitu ducis acer agebat / Amphion equites, 10.387–8). Who is this Amphion? We first encounter him during the teichoscopia in book 7, when Phorbas points him out to Antigone as leader of the men from Onchestus.81 There he wears a helmet marked with a lyre and a bull (lyra galeam tauroque insignis auito, 7.279, ‘his helm conspicuous with lyre and ancestral bull’), which suggest a connection with Amphion and his punishment of Dirce. Indeed, Shackleton Bailey claims that this is the son of the lyre-playing wall builder.82 When we see him fighting Parthenopaeus in book 9, this Amphion is said to be descended from Jupiter (Iouis de sanguine claro, 9.777) which might suggest a connection with the wall-builder (whose mother, Antiope, was either raped or

 78 On the passage, see Hinds 1998, 92. On the blamelessness of Hopleus and Dymas, see Kytzler 1969, 214–17; Burgess 1971–2, 58–9; Markus 1997, 58–60; and Pollmann 2001, 18–24. For the pair as models of pietas, see Ripoll 1998, 291–5, 297, 403–4; and Ganiban 2007, 132–3. In addition to these, on the limitations of pietas, see also McGuire 1997, 17–20; and Pollmann 2001, 25–8. 79 Fantuzzi 2012, 260–5. 80 See La Penna 2000, 139; Fantuzzi 2012, 263 with Theb. 10.442, 444. 81 For this polis in Boeotia, see Paus. 9.26.5. 82 Shackleton Bailey 2003, 402 s.v. ‘Amphion (2)’. On the teichoscopia more generally, see McNelis 2007, 112–15; and Lovatt 2013, 242–50.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity seduced by Jupiter, depending on which version we read). Yet, despite the decoration of the helmet, a common name and some shared ancestry, this seems unlikely. Nowhere in the narrative is this Amphion explicitly named as the son of a homonymous father. And against such a reading goes the standard mythological narrative that Amphion the wall-builder married Niobe and their children were famously massacred by Apollo and Diana.83 What is more, the myth of Niobe’s children is also alluded to by Phorbas during the teichoscopia (omnibus innexas cono super aspice laurus / armaque uel Tityon uel Delon habentia uel quas / hic deus innumera laxauit caede pharetras, 7.351–3, ‘behold the laurels twined about every helm and the shields imaging Tityos or Delos or the quivers that the god emptied here in uncounted slaughter’).84 There was a mythical variant in which two of Amphion and Niobe’s children survive the massacre, but they were named Amyclas and Meliboea and they settled in Argos where they founded a shrine to Leto.85 The direct relationship with the wall-building Amphion now looks rather unlikely. We could accuse Statius of inconsistency here and suggest a sort of mythological ‘continuity error’.86 However, we might counter that the Amphion myth is too important and programmatic for the poem for the poet to have let this one slip through unnoticed. Furthermore, that first appearance of the warrior Amphion in the teichoscopia hints at the cryptic nature of his origins. Phorbas rather too confidently assert that he is someone easy to recognize (cognoscere pronus, / uirgo, 7.278–9). Moreover, the plebes Onchesti lack a king of their own (hos regis egenos, 7.277); Amphion is merely a substitute. Phorbas suggests that Amphion is motivated to fight for the walls he loves (pro caris … muris, 7.281), which suggests a link to the wall-builder, but this is a moment of focalization through a narrator who, as Helen Lovatt has discussed, is not always terribly reliable.87 The bull on the helmet as auito, ‘ancestral’, conflates reference to the bull which destroyed Dirce and Europa, a rather more distant Theban ancestor.88 Given that we know that Niobe’s husband did not have children who survived, one wonders if this Amphion is trying to be something he is not. In this uncertainty in identification, the warrior begins to resemble Thiodamas whose status was uncertain in book 8 and who is himself engaged in a

 83 See Hom. Il. 24.602–17; Diod. Sic. 4.74.3; Apollod. 3.5.6; Ov. Met. 6.146–312; Hyg. Fab. 9. 84 See Lovatt 2013, 243. 85 See Telesilla 721 PMG; Paus. 2.21.10. 86 O’Hara 2007, 1–7. 87 Lovatt 2013, 243–4. 88 Shackleton Bailey 2003, 419 n.40.

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night mission in book 10.89 Amphion is himself a character with a vested interest in the act of narration. When Dymas begs the Thebans to bury Parthenopaeus, he instead asks him to tell a different sort of story: ‘immo,’ ait Amphion, ‘regem si tanta cupido condere, quae timidis belli mens, ede, Pelasgis, quid fracti exanguesque parent. cuncta ocius effer, et uita tumuloque ducis donatus abito.’ horruit et toto praecordia protinus Arcas inpleuit capulo. ‘summumne hoc cladibus,’ inquit, ‘derat ut adflictos turparem ego proditor Argos? nil emimus tanti, nec sic uelit ipse cremari.’ Theb. 10.431–8 ‘On the contrary,’ says Amphion, ‘if you are so eager to bury your king, tell me what war plan the cowardly Pelasgi have; broken and exhausted, what do they intend? Out with it all, and quickly. Then take your life and your leader’s burial and go free.’ The Arcadian shuddered and straightway filled his breast, hilt and all: ‘Was this wanting to crown my calamities, that I should turn traitor and dishonour Argos in her trouble? Nothing is worth that price, nor would he himself wish to be buried thus.’

Amphion offers the possibility of an alternative narrative should Dymas be prepared to make himself a singer of a different kind. The exchange is subtly interlaced with the vocabulary of poetic production. The offer to bury (condere) is couched in terms which cannot but take us back to the production of Virgil’s Aeneid.90 Amphion’s demand uses imperatives (ede … effer) which suggest literary production.91 Dymas’ rejection of this offer, in the most self-destructive way possible, is also a rejection of the opportunity to become a story-teller and a rejection of one poetic strategy for another. Given the heavy emphasis on the moral probity of Hopleus and Dymas, it is tempting to read this as a dismissal of a less honourable poetics. In the lines which immediately follow, Amphion tells his own version of this story to Eteocles: at ferus Amphion regi qui facta reportent edoceantque dolum captiuaque corpora reddant mittit ouans Theb. 10.449–51

 89 See Hulls forthcoming b. 90 For a detailed analysis of the use of condere in the Aeneid, see Rimell 2015, 39–62, esp. 57–62. 91 L&S s.v. edo 2.B; s.v. effero 2.A.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity But fierce Amphion in triumph sends messengers to the king to report the action and inform him of the stealth and return the captive bodies.

Thus the killer of Hopleus and Dymas becomes a narrator of a different kind. Indeed, his narrative is so compelling when he later tells it in person that it nearly provides sufficient distraction to allow the Argives in through the gates of the city (10.489–92). Yet there is a stark moral contrast between the story of self-sacrifice and the story of morally dubious nighttime trickery encapsulated by the word dolum.92 Amphion is, in fact, no better than those two more famous nocturnal miscreants, Nisus and Euryalus; it is just that he lacks a compelling love story to balance the record. One even wonders if Statius is here punning on the name Dolon, the central character of the night episode in Iliad 10, who did spill the beans to Odysseus and Diomedes.93 If we consider Statius’ apostrophe to Hopleus and Dymas in the light of the surrounding Amphionic narrative, his inferior lyra acquires a slightly different meaning. It is a self-effacing comment, but one which suggests that the poetry of the Thebaid is inferior to the story-telling which Hopleus and Dymas represent. This is the poetics that Dymas so forcefully rejects; he and his comrade engage in a pious act of burial, whereas the Thebaid will focus on bodies remaining unburied. Statius’ and Amphion’s lyres become one and the same thing. Furthermore, the poetics of the Thebaid are in fact mapped onto the poetics of the Aeneid; Amphion’s morality is much closer to that of Nisus and Euryalus. Indeed, we appear to come full circle to Propertius 1.7, where, when Ponticus fell in love, his Theban bodies were left permanently unburied.

. A Confused House: Oedipal Models in the Proem While the play on the various physical models of epic narrative form (pyre, river, walls) and the invocation of Pindaric and Propertian models constructs a rich and complex picture of the poet of the Thebaid, it also constructs a Statius who embodies some powerful self-contradictions. He is at once deferential, lacking in authority and self-effacing, yet also powerfully destructive. This seems sharply at odds with the attitude the poet of the Silvae will show once he has had a chance to publish his epic and see the impact of its dissemination. In book 4 of the Silvae, Statius expresses a remarkable degree of assurance about the Thebaid and in particular its rivalry with the Aeneid:

 92 OLD s.v. dolus. 93 See Fantuzzi 2012, 235–45.

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quippe te fido monitore nostra Thebais multa cruciata lima temptat audaci fide Mantuanae gaudia famae.

Silv. 4.7.25–8

With you as loyal guide my Thebais, tortured by many scrapes, tries the joys of Mantuan fame with a bold lyre.

The boldness of the Thebaid’s rivalry seems astonishing after the apostrophe to Hopleus and Dymas and his admonition to his poem not to follow the Aeneid too closely (12.810–19). Bessone has noted the importance to Statius of the Callimachean image of filing his poetry.94 Yet here I think we should also see the separation in the poetic persona of ‘Statius’ in Silvae 4 and of ‘Statius’ in the Thebaid. This is expressed in the image of tortuous filing which appears in stark contrast to the sweeping destruction of his epic poetics. There is a care and fineness in construction implied in this image which is constantly being confounded in the metapoetic passages of the Thebaid. There, Statius’ Amphionic poetics blur the models he finds in Pindar, Callimachus and Propertius with the bombastic masculinity of a ‘Ponticus’. That confidence in the quality of his poem and its careful construction is also displayed in his contemplation of his father’s inspirational role: te nostra magistro Thebais urguebat priscorum exordia uatum; tu cantus stimulare meos, tu pandere facta heroum bellique modos positusque locorum monstrabas. labat incerto mihi limite cursus te sine, et orbatae caligant uela carinae. Silv. 5.3.233–8 With you as my mentor my Thebais pressed close upon the works of ancient bards. You showed me how to spur my songs, how to set forth the deeds of heroes, the modes of warfare, the layout of places. Without you my course falters, uncertain of my track, befogged the sails of the orphan craft.

Again, we get a real sense of confidence in the quality of his poem. Statius is now hot on the heels of his epic predecessors (urguebat) and his poem a clear order imposed on it by its creator and his mentor (stimulare … pandere), but none of the obliteration we see in the poem itself. There is anxiety in this poem (Statius is

 94 Bessone 2014. For the play on movement and inertia in these lines, see Hulls forthcoming.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity wondering how he will cope now his father is dead, of course), but it is an anxiety for the poet, not for the poem. Both 4.7 and 5.3 show a poet relying on guides (both Vibius Maximus and Statius’ father are alternative sources of poetic inspiration) and a Thebaid which is set free and successful. It seems we must not only separate the poet of the Silvae from the poet of the Thebaid, but also Statius from the Thebaid. By contrast, the proem of the Thebaid (1.1–45) is all about what Statius is not. He begins with a complex series of refusals to narrate the story-lines he found in Pindar and Ovid. He then sets out a more specific programme: limes mihi carminis esto / Oedipodae confusa domus (1.16–17), ‘let the limit of my song be the confused house of Oedipus’. The use of limes, meaning ‘limits’, but also ‘boundary wall’, and domus continues the metaphor of wall-building richly embodied in the figure of Amphion.95 The poetics of confusion and disorder are bound into this poem from its very beginning. Moreover, if we were to refer back to Pindar as our catalogue model, we would still be in the dark as to the exact scope of this Thebaid: ἐξ οὗπερ ἔκτεινε Λᾷον μόριμος υἱὸς συναντόμενος, ἐν δὲ Πυθῶνι χρησθὲν παλαίφατον τέλεσσεν. ἰδοῖσα δ᾽ ὀξεῖ᾽ Ἐριννὺς ἔπεφνέ οἱ σὺν ἀλλαλοφονίᾳ γένος ἀρήιον: λείφθη δὲ Θέρσανδρος ἐριπέντι Πολυνείκει, νέοις ἐν ἀέθλοις ἐν μάχαις τε πολέμου τιμώμενος, Ἀδραστιδᾶν θάλος ἀρωγὸν δόμοις: Pindar Ol. 2.38–45 From the time when Laius’ son met his father and, as had been foretold, killed him, so fulfilling the oracle delivered long before at Pytho. The sharp-eyed Fury saw this act, and slew his warlike sons, who died at each other’s hands. When Polynices fell he left behind his son Thersandrus, who won honour both in young men’s contests and in the battles of war – a young shoot from Adrastus’ stock, destined to be an avenger of his house.

As examples of the mutability of royal fortune, Pindar provides a dark model for his addressee Theron to contemplate in this victory ode. It is interesting to see the way in which Thersander is naturalized as an Argive (Ἀδραστιδᾶν θάλος ἀρωγὸν δόμοις), achieving the renewed civic identity which Statius’ Polynices will never acquire. Statius’ narrative has an all-encompassing quality, glancing backwards and forwards at other elements of Oedipus’ house. However, the opening passage

 95 L&S s.v. limes 1.B.2.

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does the exact opposite of what one might expect of an epic poet by spending all its time telling us what the poet is not going to say, rather than what he will say. Having vaguely ascribed an Oedipal theme for himself, Statius then engages in avoiding another narrative, that of Domitian (1.17–33). These lines summarise the emperor’s achievements on earth and predict his apotheosis and assumption of Jovian powers in the heavens. Now the recusatio is a narrative device that is all about telling by not telling (and this allows Statius to list Domitian’s military achievements in reverse order, 17–22), but this is also a typically Propertian move, pulling the poem away from an annalistic, panegyric epic narrative.96 Overall, the reader’s necessary experience of multiple versions of the Theban story in earlier literature actually hampers our understanding here: Oedipus’ house could, as Pindar realized, easily cover any of four generations. Which Thebes will we be seeing? Again, Statius appears to focus more tightly on his topic in the final part of the proem (1.33–45), but I would suggest that in reality this pseudo-contents page may cause as much confusion and clarification: nunc tendo chelyn satis arma referre Aonia et geminis sceptrum exitiale tyrannis nec furiis post fata modum flammasque rebelles seditione rogi tumulisque carentia regum funera et egestas alternis mortibus urbes, caerula cum rubuit Lernaeo sanguine Dirce et Thetis arentes adsuetum stringere ripas horruit ingenti uenientem Ismenon aceruo. quem prius heroum, Clio, dabis? inmodicum irae Tydea laurigeri subitos an uatis hiatus? urget et hostilem propellens caedibus amnem turbidus Hippomedon plorandaque bella proterui Arcados atque alio Capaneus horrore canendus. Theb. 1.33–45

 96 See Heslin 2018, 102. For the Propertian poetics of Statius’ recusatio and in particular its relationship with elegy 2.10, see Galli 2013, 64 n.34; and Bessone 2018b, 34–6. Rebeggiani 2018, 155–63, 167–8 rightly places this passage in a tradition with Virg. Geor. 1.289–96 and Luc. 1.33– 66. The potentially problematic comparison with Nero is most sensibly read as a challenge to avoid the failures of the previous dynasty. It is worth contemplating the possibility that lines 17– 33 may have first been composed very early in Statius’ project: 1.22–3, tuque, o Latiae decus addite famae / quem noua maturi subeuntem exorsa parentis could easily have been applied to Titus and included after Domitianic exploits following his death in AD 81. Titus was compared to Nero (e.g. Suet. Tit. 7.1) and had a greater military reputation than his brother (Tac. Hist. 5.1).

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity Now I tune my lyre. It is enough to tell of Theban weapons, the sceptre that brought the destruction of the twin tyrants, madness that endured after death, flames that rebelled in the strife of the pyre, kings’ bodies deprived of graves, and cities exhausted by alternating deaths, when blue Dirce grew red with Lernaean blood and Thetis shuddered at the Ismenos, which was accustomed to brush past its thirsting banks but was instead flowing with a great heap of corpses. Which hero will you grant me first, Clio? Tydeus, unrestrained in anger? The sudden chasm of the laurel-bearing prophet? Wild Hippomedon also presses me onward as he drives forth the hostile river with corpses. And I have to lament to battles of the reckless Arcadian, and sing of Capaneus with a different horror.

Statius strikes a Pindaric pose by tuning his lyre,97 but provides a synoptic catalogue of events (and all these do appear in the poem) which, as Randall Ganiban notes, is much more the sort of thing one might expect in a tragedy or comedy than in an epic poem.98 Confusion is still a theme of this programmatic section, where events appear in an entirely different order to what we will eventually experience in the poem.99 We might also suggest that the emphasis of the actual narrative is very different to the one that these lines predict. The Seven against Thebes storyline is compressed into just over three books of the poem (Amphiaraus, Tydeus, Parthenopaeus, Hippomedon and Capaneus are all killed between the end of book 7 and the end of book 10); the conflict between Eteocles and Polynices, while the overarching narrative, is regularly sidelined; the burial storyline is squeezed into book twelve. However, in lines 1.33–45, all of the complex poetic strategies which we have witnessed elsewhere are very much in play. The pyre as metaphor of poetic appropriation and destruction is visible in the rebellious flames of the brothers’ shared funeral (flammasque rebelles / seditio rogi); the rivers here are not simply muddied, but run red with blood (caerula cum rubuit Lernaeo sanguine Dirce); these rivers have been transformed from dry, narrow streams into bloated, corpse-bearing monstrosities (arentes adsuetum stringere ripas).100 The poet’s professed abdication of responsibility for his narrative is already revealed as Hippomedon, himself the embodiment of the muddied river (turbidus), drives Statius into action (urguet … propellens; contrast urguebat, Silv. 5.3.234). The most powerful image in this programmatic passage is the sense of the sublime. Thetis’ appalled reaction to the slaughter-choked river (horruit) is also the reaction of a viewer of a sublime (un)natural event; the poet himself an-

 97 Cf. Bessone 2014. On the passage more generally, see Briguglio 2017, 136–50. 98 Ganiban 2007, 46 cites Eur. Hipp. 1–57; Plaut. Mil. Glor. 79–155. 99 Vessey 1973, 65; Georgacopoulou 1996c, 95–6. 100 The verb stringere is particularly suggestive of a Callimachean poetic form; L&S s.v. stringere 1.B.2 ‘to pluck off, cut off’; 2.A ‘to touch upon, treat briefly’.

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ticipates the horrifying sublimity of Capaneus’ assault on heaven by acknowledging that he will sing at a different level to encapsulate that event. The horrifying impact of the sublime at the moment of this poem’s genesis anticipates the sublime impact of the Fury Tisiphone when she passes through the Underworld and arrives in Greece, or the sublimity of the storm which Polynices passes through on his way to Argos. The irruption of the sublime marked key moments of (frustrated) identity formation for both Oedipus and Polynices in book 1. It seems sensible therefore to explore the possibility of reading Statius in this book in a similar vein. He himself is mentally assaulted by fire (Pierius menti calor incidit), which would easily fit the sublime experience which produces lasting spiritual disruption. Certainly there are suggestions that Statius is operating in the same type of space in which we find his two Thebans. In a sense, the beginning of the poem is always going to be marked by absence and coming into being, yet Statius highlights the emptiness of his poetic environment, by asking the Muses to fill that space (unde iubetis ire, deae?). Statius’ journey through the Theban literary landscape towards Oedipus caught in his own void becomes another ‘Night of the World’. Where Hegel saw in that place: ‘an unending wealth of many representations, images, of which none belongs to him,’ Statius maps out in detail the alienating mythography of Thebes as catalogued by Pindar and Ovid. Where Hegel saw in his interior of nature: ‘phantasmagorical representations, is night all around it, in which here shoots a bloody head—there another white ghastly apparition, suddenly here before it, and just so disappears,’101 Statius builds his own series of phantasmagoria, culminating in the cannibalistic Tydeus and the monstrous Hippomedon and Capaneus. Here then we see the poet of the Thebaid entering the realm of the cultural and social subject. Statius’ reaction to his arrival is to immerse himself poetically in Oedipus’ own domain of madness and withdrawal (note the abruptness of the narrative shift: alio Capaneus horrore canendus / impia iam merita scrutatus, 1.45–6). Again, Statius’ reflections upon his poem’s production in the Silvae illuminate this process further; at the end of book 3, Statius reflects on the burden of writing the poem which he shared with his wife: tu procurrentia primis carmina nostra sonis totasque in murmure noctes aure rapis uigili; longi tu sola laboris conscia, cumque tuis creuit mea Thebais annis. qualem te nuper Stygias prope raptus ad umbras

 101 Hegel 1974, 204, quoted in Verene 1985, 7–8. See above, introduction.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity cum iam Lethaeos audirem comminus amnes aspexi, tenuique oculos iam morte cadentes! Silv. 3.5.33–9 It is you who catches with your ear the first notes of my songs as they run forth and whole nights of murmuring. Only you know my long labour, my Thebais grew along with your years. How you behaved recently when I was almost swept into the Stygian shades, already hearing Lethe’s waters close at hand, and stayed my eyes already falling in death!

Again, the Callimachean qualities of the poem are to the fore: the Thebaid has endured a long process of creation and many late-night vigils.102 However, the shift in lines 37–9 to Statius’ near-death experience seems an oddly abrupt. Statius’ has been recounting his wife’s involvement in his poetic career (3.5.28–36) and will shortly make an extravagant comparison between her and a series of famous literary wives (3.5.44–51). Readers normally understand the near-death experience in strictly biographical terms and Statius as employing a form of emotional blackmail to ensure his wife joins him in his putative ‘exile’ in Naples (3.5.40–3). Yet the juxtaposition of composition and Statius’ near-descent into the underworld also suggests that the extreme labour of the project nearly killed him and that writing the Thebaid leaves him in a space so similar to death that he can hear the river Lethe. The detail of Statius’s eyes falling in death brings him perilously close the blinded Oedipus of Thebaid 1. The Oedipal void doubles, therefore, as the poet’s own (cf. menti, Theb. 1.3; alio … horrore canendus, 1.45). In a process that is bound up in notions of sublime experience, Statius seems obsessed with what his poem is not (i.e. not a re-hash of earlier Thebaids, not an annalistic epic on Domitian).103 The poet construes his own subjectivity out of his pre-ontological, discursive power of negativity. In a pre-Cartesian world, Statius lacks the intellectual framework to ‘look inside himself’ in a genuinely subjective sense. Instead that process is externalized through violent interaction with the female goddesses of inspiration, with the obsessive re-working of Theban narratives and through the externalisation of the process of identity formation within the framework of an epic narrative. The deaths of the Seven against Thebes, the refusal to narrate other potential plot-lines, the dismemberment of his own story through re-membering and remembering the diverse constituent elements of his epic are all productive of Statius’ poetic self. The

 102 On sleeplessness as a Callimachean quality, see Acosta-Hughes & Stephens 2012, 213–14; for its importance of the sphragis of the poem, see McNelis 2007, 22–3; Gervais forthcoming. 103 For the sublime in these opening lines and Silvae 2.7, see Lagière 2017, 73–4.

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opening forty-five lines of the Thebaid are the space where the poet is able to construct himself as a character within his own text. If we read the opening forty-five lines of the Thebaid as the traumatic moment of subjectivisation, this begs two further, related questions. To begin with, to what extent should we see the identity formation of Oedipus, Polynices and Theseus as representative or symbolic of the self of the poet himself? Does Statius identify most closely with one or other of these models or as a self-contradictory blurring of these possibilities? Further to this, we have seen that the nature of this poem of fraternas acies pulls us in two directions, that is, towards the self-destructiveness of civil conflict exemplified in its mythological re-printing of Lucan’s cognatas acies on the one hand and towards fratricidal and destructive poetics the arma fraternae militiae of Propertius on the other. What can we say of Statius’ relationship with his literary forebears? Is the attempt to write another Thebes ultimately going to prove a futile exercise where the poet constantly struggles to find a place for his own voice?104 Or should we see an entirely more aggressive authorial pose where poet is able to tear apart the limbs of his literary brothers’ shattered texts and reconstruct these in a dynamic new whole?105 Or is the Thebaid an attempt to carve a new species of poetic identity, one which reconciles these apparently mutually exclusive modes of selfhood?

. meriti post me referentur honores: Poet and Poem in the sphragis While the opening passage of the poem sets the poet’s self-construction in motion, we cannot truly see how the poem enters into concrete universality until we re-examine the poem’s ending. Although the Thebaid is unusual in being a fully completed Roman epic poem which survives more or less intact, it has long been acknowledged that the poem displays a multiplicity of closural strategies and moments. We will begin with the so-called sphragis, the authorial address to the poem itself which brings the epic to a close:

 104 Hershkowitz’s narrative of enervation in the Thebaid, where the poem ultimately runs out of narrative energy and collapses into an indiscriminate narrative of female lamentation, could underpin such a reading; see Hershkowitz 1998; Dietrich 1999 reads the poem as a feminine voice marginalised in Flavian culture. 105 E.g. Ganiban 2007 reads the Thebaid as a politically motivated ‘correction’ of the monarchical vision of the Aeneid. Lagière 2017 reads the Thebaid as a sublime appropriation of nonepic genres, especially tragedy.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity durabisne procul dominoque legere superstes, o mihi bissenos multum uigilata per annos Thebai? iam certe praesens tibi Fama benignum strauit iter coepitque nouam monstrare futuris. iam te magnanimus dignatur noscere Caesar, Itala iam studio discit memoratque iuuentus. uiue precor, nec tu diuinam Aeneida tempta sed longe sequere et uestigia semper adora. mox tibi si quis adhuc praetendit nubila liuor occidet et meriti post me referentur honores. Theb. 12.810–19 Will you long endure and be read, outliving your master, O Thebais, for twelve years the object of my many sleepless nights? Certainly, favoring Fame has already laid out a friendly path for you and begun to show you to future generations. Already magnanimous Caesar deigns to know you. Already Italian youths eagerly learn and recite you. Live, I pray, and do not challenge the divine Aeneid; rather, follow at a distance and always worship her footsteps. Soon any clouds of envy that still cover you over will perish, and after I am gone your well-earned honours will be paid.

Modern scholarship has paid a great deal of attention to these lines and especially to the remarkably dense intertextuality these lines display.106 We should not, in our examination of these lines, do more than summarise the rich and important work already done. Rather, I would like to explore the way in which the sphragis interweaves itself with the narrative conclusion of book twelve and with the poet’s apostrophe to Eteocles and Polynices in book 11. We should also begin by re-examining what it means to refer to the lines as a sphragis. With these thoughts in mind, we can turn to the trickier business of relating the poem’s end(s) to the process of subjectivisation. It is worth remembering from the outset that this is a highly unusual form of sphragis in that it does not focus on the name and reputation of the poet, a role established for these sorts of passages since the earliest period in Greek literature,107 but rather the name and reputation of the poem itself. Whereas Greek and Roman poets often imagine an unnamed individual’s reaction to them and their

 106 Modern work includes Vessey 1986, 2974–6; Henderson 1992, 38–9; Malamud 1995, 24–7; Braund 1996, 7–8; Nugent 1996, 70–1; Hardie 1997, 156–8; McGuire 1997, 239–42; Dietrich 1999, 50; Pagán 2000, 444–6; Dominik 1994, 173–5; 2003; Pollmann 2004, 284–9; Georgacopoulou 2005, 231–42; Leigh 2006, 223–5; McNelis 2007, 22–3; Rosati 2008; Bessone 2011, 34–6; Gervais 2015, 232–7; and forthcoming. 107 Cf. e.g. Hom. Hymn Ap. 165–76; Theognis 19–23; Hesiod Theog. 22–4; see Peirano 2013, 256– 65; Peirano 2014. For the ending of the Aeneid as a covert sphragis, see Seider 2018.

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poetry,108 Statius performs the role of the focaliser himself, imagining a successful future for his poem. If we were to follow Irene Peirano’s recent exploration of poetic anonymity and Genette’s concept of ‘onymity’, we would see the Thebaid as being onymised, but its poet being thoroughly anonymised.109 If the sphragis was originally conceived of as a form of signature which guarantees a poem’s authenticity, then Statius’ autograph has been effaced and replaced by the imprimatur of the poem itself. This separation between poet and poem is important for unpicking the extraordinary intertextual tangle that we find in these lines. These lines are also, much like the apostrophe to Hopleus and Dymas, remarkable for the way in which they explicitly chart the Thebaid’s literary future in relation to the Aeneid. Once again, we can see the poet characterized by his remarkably deferential attitude and his lack of confidence in his poem’s future. Yet it is worth remembering that there are two elements of separation in play here: the Thebaid enjoys initial success in Rome (iam te magnanimus … iuuentus) but avoids following the Aeneid too closely, but is also equally separated from the poet who created it (post me). In a new article on Statius’ sphragis, Kyle Gervais has analysed this allusive nexus primarily on a political rather than a purely aesthetic level; in his conclusion he reads these lines as depicting a: ‘future [that] is tied neither to empires nor emperors nor the poets who write about them, but exists in a time, soon to come, that is simply after Statius.’110 That independence for the poem is based on three familial models which are established through the network of intertextual references which the poem activates at its conclusion.111 The Thebaid is metaphorically positioned in husband-and-wife, in father-and-child and in masterand-slave relationships simultaneously.112 In these lines the poem is cast as a female Thebais who plays Eurydice to the Aeneid’s Orpheus (cf. Geo. 4.486–7 reddite Eurydice superas ueniebat ad auras / pone sequens) or Creusa to its Aeneas (cf. Aen. 2.710–11, mihi paruus Iulus / sit comes, et longe servet uestigia coniunx).

 108 Cf. e.g. Prop. 4.1.65–6; Ov. Am. 3.15.7–14. Ov. Met. 15.871–9 is in the first person, but there Ovid imagines his own future, vivam, as much as his poem’s. 109 See Peirano 2013. 110 See Gervais forthcoming, 041. 111 In lines 810–19, I have highlighted key intertextual words in bold and italicised the three key figures with whom the poem interacts, Caesar, the Aeneid and Statius. Key intratextual words linking this passage to the apostrophe in book 11 are also italicised. 112 In addition to Gervais forthcoming, 007–014 on husband/wife models, see Malamud 1995; and Nugent 1996. For Arachne as a further model for Thebais, see Dietrich 1999. On the model of divinity and worshipper, see Rosati 2008. For the Lucretian way of reading ‘following not too closely’ as ‘disindoctrination’, see Malamud 1995. For the ‘deserved honours’ of the poem, see Rosati 2013, 83–4; Bessone 2014, 216–17.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity In both Virgilian texts, the female model for Thebais will perish: Eurydice will be sucked back into the Underworld when Orpheus turns round to look at her while Creusa will follow Aeneas at a distance only to be lost in the flames of a falling Troy. Gervais adds a further comparison with Lucan’s Cornelia and Pompey (cf. Lucan BC 5.773–5), but repositions this with Statius as Pompey and Thebais as Cornelia. Although Cornelia does survive Pompey, and this seems a more positive model than Eurydice or Creusa, the model does not seem entirely reassuring. In the lines to which Statius’ apostrophe to his poem refers, Cornelia contemplates the fact that, even if she were to commit suicide on hearing of Pompey’s death, she would nonetheless have outlived him. However, the crucial detail is that the fate of the poem is not tied inextricably to the fate of the poet. Furthermore, Statius also demonstrates his unwillingness to do what both Virgil and Ovid allegedly tried to do with their epic poems and throw them on the fire (cf. Ov. Tr. 1.7.13– 26, esp. 25 precor ut uiuant; Vit. Verg. 37–9). Given the potency of the pyre as a metapoetic model elsewhere in the Thebaid, where the texts of literary predecessors were metaphorically hurled on the pyre in the process of poetic composition, it is hugely significant that the poem will not end in self-immolation.113 Ovid’s Tristia 1.7 as intertext provides impetus for the familial modelling of Thebais through its characterization of the Metamorphoses as a child (through the myth of Althaea and Meleager) and a slave (by naming himself as dominus, 1.7.14). Gervais builds on this by exploring the rich vein of intertextual connection with Virgil’s fourth Eclogue and the unnamed child at the centre of that poem.114 Eclogue 4 also studies the tensions between small-scale Callimachean ideals and grand, epic discourse and is thus an especially apposite comparand. Like Eclogue 4, the Thebaid blurs Callimachean poetics with those of imperial epic; like the narrator of Eclogue 4, Statius is concerned for the future of his ‘child’. It is a set of tensions which Statius has already explored in his narrative of the death of the infant Opheltes in books 4–6.115 Although the discourse of imperial epic is portrayed with deep political pessimism in this reading and although Statius qua father is extremely anxious over his child’s future: ‘Statius’ uiue precor is not spoken with the bitterness or despair of a person forcibly separated from a loved one, but rather as a hopeful father sending a grown child into the world.’116 Finally, when

 113 Gervais forthcoming, 012 n.30 rightly adduces the example of Evadne hurling herself on her husband’s pyre as an example to the poem of what not to do, Theb. 12.800–2. 114 Gervais forthcoming, 018–025 and 027–028 on Ov. Her. 7.63–4, Fasti 5.412. 115 See Soerink 2015, 6–7 for connections between Nemea and Eclogue 4. 116 Gervais forthcoming, 028.

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exploring the master-slave relationship, Gervais complicates the tradition of poetic immortality which is guaranteed by the fate of Rome itself (cf. Hor. Odes 3.30; Virg. Aen. 9.446–9; Ov. Met. 15.871–9; Luc. BC 9.980–6) by invoking models drawn from Ovid’s erotic and exilic poetry (esp. Ov. Am. 1.15).117 Ovid as the master-in-exile who cannot accompany his poetry to Rome (cf. Ov. Tristia 1.1, 1.7, 3.1, 3.14, 5.12; Pont. 1.2) becomes a key paradigm for Statius’ separation from his own poem; it is the poet, not the poem, who will be sent into a metaphorical ‘exile’. Further models of the relationship with epic predecessor and audience are to be found in Martha Malamud’s reading of this passage as re-presenting the Thebaid as a didactic poem teaching a Lucretian brand of skepticism to the Itala iuuentus (12.185) rather than the ideological indoctrination of the Aeneid.118 Lucretius’ following in the footsteps of Epicurus has: ‘therapeutic intent; it transforms its reader, Memmius, by systematically dismantling his ideas and unmaking his world.’119 The image of following in the footsteps of a venerated predecessor is crucial for this didactic pose (te sequor, o Graiae gentis decus, inque tuis nunc / ficta pedum pono pressis uestigia signis, Lucr. DRN 3.3–4, ‘I follow you, o glory of the Greek race, and now I place my footsteps made in the traces left by your feet’; cuius ego ingressus uestigia dum rationes / persequor… Lucr. DRN 5.55–6, ‘I trace his steps while following his arguments…’). Statius’ comparison does not quite hold perfectly, of course. For Lucretius, it is through the teaching of Epicurus that Memmius’ world view will be transformed. For Statius, the implication is that the Thebaid, playing the part of a Lucretius, will go some way to dismantling the world view of the venerated Aeneid, a second Epicurus. In this sphragis, it is the unnamed youth of Italy who will fulfil the role of Memmius. However, the language of remembering also takes us back to Statius’ apostrophe to Eteocles and Polynices in book 11: ite truces animae funestaque Tartara leto polluite et cunctas Erebi consumite poenas, uosque malis hominum Stygiae iam parcite diuae: omnibus in terris scelus hoc omnique sub aeuo uiderit una dies monstrumque inmane futuris excidat et soli memorent haec proelia reges. Theb. 11.574–9  117 For Virgil’s poetry linked to the survival of Rome’s political landscape, see Am. 1.15.26–7, 33. For the sphragis of the Metamorphoses re-worked in an explicitly anti-imperial vein, see Tristia 3.7.45–54. This latter poem, addressed to Ovid’s protégée Perilla, is a particularly interesting when read alongside Statius’ sphragis and Silvae 3.5.54–67. 118 Cf. Hor. Ep. 1.20.17–18. 119 Malamud 1995, 27. Her reading chimes neatly with Ganiban 2007 who reads the Thebaid as correcting the ideological values of the Aeneid.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity Go, fierce souls, pollute grisly Tartarus with your death and exhaust all the pains of Erebus. And you, Stygian goddesses, spare now the ills of mankind. In all lands and every age let one day only have seen such a crime. Let the monstrous horror be forgotten by future generations and only kings remember this duel.

This apostrophe to the twin protagonists is remarkable for the tension visible in the very voice of the narrator. Here the poet emphasizes his wish not to tell the epic story he is narrating: he urges that this event be a one-off, that all except kings forget.120 Read together with the sphragis and its insistence that the poem’s readers will remember, this suggests once again a split between poet and poem. If the sphragis involves a careful re-working of the language of Eclogue 4, it also must involve a careful reconsideration of the poetics of that poem, which speaks of a desire to sing a grander kind of pastoral poetry (si canimus siluas, siluae sint consule dignae, Ecl. 4.3, ‘if we sing woods, let us sing woods worthy of a consul’). It seems that the apostrophe in book 11 also looks back at key metapoetic passages of the Eclogues, but this time to poems 6 and 10, both of which explore poetic affiliations by reference to the figure of the poet Gallus. Given our invocation of Propertius’ first book of elegies in the proem, it will come as no surprise that I see Statius plunging his epic poem into the complex poetic dialogue between the pastoral Virgil and elegiac Propertius and that his retrojection of his epic poem into that complex literary conversation suggests ways in which he sees his own identity being shaped. Although we only have space here to scratch the surface of the interaction between Virgil and Propertius, Heslin summarises the exchange between the two thus: ‘Published only a few years after the Eclogues, Propertius’ first book declares its filiation with Gallan elegy and rejects Virgil’s pastoralization of Gallus. We saw … that the figure of Milanion in Propertius’ first elegy is a mythological version of the character of Gallus in the tenth eclogue. Propertius’ first book is, in an important sense, a sequel to Virgil’s. But it offers, as we have seen, a different path forward for the lover. Rather than retreating into pastoral like Virgil’s Arcadian Gallus, Milanion chose the steep and narrow path of exclusive devotion to Atalanta and was eventually rewarded for it.’121

Statius places his poem slap bang in the middle of this Augustan polemic. The juxtaposition proelia reges with memorent (11.559, ‘let kings remember these battles’) can only remind us of the Callimachean recusatio at the beginning of Eclogue 6:122  120 Cf. Luc. BC 7.552–62. On these lines, see also Georgacopoulou 1998. 121 Heslin 2018, 139. 122 See Acosta-Hughes & Stephens 2012, 236–8.

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cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem uellit, et admonuit: ‘pastorem, Tityre, pinguis pascere oportet ouis, deductum dicere carmen.’ nunc ego (namque super tibi erunt qui dicere laudes, Vare, tuas cupiant et tristia condere bella) agrestem tenui meditabor harundine Musam. Virg. Ecl. 6.3–8 Next, kings and wars possessed me; but Apollo tweaked my ear, telling me, ‘Tityrus, a countryman should be concerned to put the flesh on his sheep and keep his poetry spare.’ Since there will be bards aplenty desiring to rehearse Varus’ fame, and celebrate the sorrowful theme of warfare, I shall take up a slim reed pipe and a rural subject.

Statius, like Virgil’s Tityrus, wishes to follow Apollo’s advice and reject the destructive world of kings and battles. But it is too late; the brothers have already fallen. Instead, the poet of the Thebaid can only hope that this narration happens once and no more. His inability to correct the epic trajectory of his project until it is too late apes his belatedness within the literary canon. The pessimistic mood is further enhanced by malis hominum (11.576), which takes us to another Gallan moment in Eclogue 10, where Gallus has imagined life as a pastoral poet only to realise that he can never be released from the erotic world: tamquam haec sit nostri medicina furoris, aut deus ille malis hominum mitescere discat. iam neque Hamadryades rursus nec carmina nobis ipsa placent: ipsae rursus concedite siluae. Virg. Ecl.10.60–3 As if such things could drug a frenzy like mine! As if men’s agonies could soften the lovegod’s nature! No, never again shall I find solace among the wood-nymphs. Or in poetry even: words and woods mean nothing to me now.

Gallus’ conflict is, ultimately, a generic one. Virgil stages the possibility in Eclogue 10 that Gallus abandon the genre of erotic elegy and move to pastoral. Here we see his Gallus rejecting that possibility; the love god always wins. And in the Monobiblos, Propertius closes off that possibility even further. With Virgilian eclogic in mind, Statius’ parcite, diuae (11.576, ‘spare us, goddesses’) may also recall Virgil’s pergite Pierides (Ecl. 6.13, ‘begin, Muses’); the Muses which inspire Virgil’s poem and, indeed, Statius’ poem (cf. Pierius calor, Theb. 1.4) are transformed into vengeful goddesses of the Underworld. Like the Propertian intertexts and the image of Amphion which suffused the opening of the Thebaid, the Eclogues matter precisely because they illustrate the paths which Statius has not been able to take. Both Virgil’s and Propertius’ Galluses take difficult upwards

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity paths. Virgil shows us Gallus meeting the Muses by the streams of Permessus (Ecl. 6.64–73) while Propertius’ Milanion stays the elegiac course to win his Atalanta (Prop. 1.1). Statius’ twins meanwhile will descend to the Underworld in yet another act of pollution (polluite, 11.575, cf. the muddied river) and destruction (consumite, 11.575, cf. pyres consuming raw material). This reading of the final lines and of the poet’s apostrophe to the twins is bewilderingly complex. The final lines construct multiple roles for the Thebaid which stage its relationship simultaneously with its poet and its literary inheritance. These relationships consistently put the Thebaid in a socially inferior position, whether as wife, as child, as slave, as worshipper or as philosophical acolyte. Yet these positions can all also be read as opportunities for the poem to find its own space, to gain independence, to achieve a different kind of memory. What is most important for my reading here is that the final lines of the Thebaid separate poet from poem and give the poem its own name (Thebais). The pessimism of the apostrophe of book 11 relates to the poet alone; it is in his voice that we see the whole epic project descending into the Underworld and it is he who desires that his discourse not be repeated nor remembered. When Oedipus first appeared at the beginning of the poem, we left the process of identity formation very much open. Would the poem destroy itself or become destructive? The answer seems very much to be the latter. The question durabisne must be a rhetorical one, as the conclusion of the poem makes it clear that this Thebais will outlive its master and its socio-political context. However, what was not apparent in the opening lines is the separation between author and work. The poet’s role is very much the one which saw both Oedipus and Polynices endure where Statius is never able to emerge from the hellish world of his own creation into the normalized world of the social and cultural subject. Instead, he simply has to stop telling the story, but does so in a way which renders him most like a Virgilian predecessor, the Sibyl of Cumae: non ego, centena si quis mea pectora laxet uoce deus, tot busta simul uulgique ducumque tot pariter gemitus dignis conatibus aequem Theb. 12.797–9 Were some god to loose in my breast a hundred voices I could not in worthy effort do justice to so many pyres of captains and common folk alike, such a chorus of groanings non, mihi si linguae centum sint oraque centum, ferrea uox, omnis scelerum comprendere formas, omnia poenarum percurrere nomina possim Virg. Aen. 6.625–7

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Not if I had a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths and a voice of iron, would I be able to run through all the forms of crimes, all the categories of punishments

The ‘countless tongues’ topos is an epic cliché for the poet’s ability to say the unsayable.123 Statius loses his ability as narrator and instead resembles the Sibyl showing Aeneas the punishments of the Underworld. The quantity of pyres, that potent symbol of the intertextual and creative process of the Thebaid, ultimately defeats him. There are just too many (tot busta). The social and cultural world becomes an undifferentiated mass for a poet who, like Argia and Antigone cremating Polynices and Eteocles, can no longer distinguish between individuals or recognize markers of social status (uulgique ducumque). His voice lacks differentiation, shape or form and in the end becomes a chorus of groans (tot pariter gemitus). Any identity he gains in the poem is regressive. The search for the self ultimately confounds the poet. Indeed, it seems that Statius stages his own death at the poem’s conclusion.124 A range of linguistic markers and, in particular, the invocation of Envy suggest an intertextual link with the end of Ovid’s first book of Amores: quid mihi Liuor edax, ignauos obicis annos […] mihi fama perennis quaeritur, in toto semper ut orbe canar. uiuet Maeonides, Tenedos dum stabit et Ide, dum rapidas Simois in mare uoluet aquas; uiuet et Ascraeus, dum mustis uua tumebit, dum cadet incurua falce resecta Ceres. […] pascitur in uiuis Liuor; post fata quiescit, cum suus ex merito quemque tuetur honos. […] ergo etiam cum me supremus adederit ignis, uiuam, parsque mei multa superstes erit. Ov. Am. 1.15.1, 7–12, 39–42 Why, gnawing Envy, do you reproach me for years spent in idleness? […] I seek eternal fame, so that I may be sung throughout the world forever. Maeonian Homer will live while Tenedos and Ide stand, while the Simois rolls its rapid waters into the sea. Ascraean Hesiod will  123 For the topos more generally, see Hinds 1998, 34–47; on Virgil’s Sibyl, see Gowers 2005. Compare esp. Hom. Il. 2.488–9; Virg. Geo. 2.43–4. For Statius’ use of this topos in Silvae 4.2, see Malamud 2007, 233–7; Hulls 2011, 170–4; Hulls forthcoming. 124 In this, the Thebaid is the mirror image of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, which stages the rebirth of poetry after Lucan’s epic and the civil war of 69, see Stover 2012, 155–8.

  Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity live too, while grapes swell for the vintage, while grain falls to the cut of the curved sickle. […] Envy feeds on the living, and after death it fades, as each man enjoys the honours he deserves. And so even when the funeral fire has consumed me, I will live, and a great part of me will survive.

Unlike Ovid, who assures himself that he will survive through his own poetry, Statius stages an afterlife for his poem alone. For Ovid, the funeral pyre is not the end; he and his poetry stay very much bound together for posterity. Both poems invoke the personification of Envy (Liuor), but having read the muddying of the stream in Nemea, we cannot but see Statius’ poem in particular also interacting with Callimachus’ Φθόνος (Hymn 2.105–113). In that poem, Envy espoused a broad and muddy poetics which Apollo rejected. We have seen that Statius in the Nemean episode and elsewhere took on the very poetics which Callimachus’ Apollo so firmly rejected and tried to blend it with a labour-intensive, carefullywrought poetics which one might comfortably label ‘Callimachean’. Yet unlike Ovid, Statius does not intend to survive his poem. He will die (post me) and Liuor will perish with him (occidet). At a poetic level, the Thebaid requires that the poet be the embodiment of Callimachus’ Φθόνος or of Propertius’ Ponticus in order to create this kind of poem. However, the poet is prepared to make the ultimate selfsacrifice and destroy himself so that his poem may live and may be honoured in the way it deserves. In a poem of fraternas acies, the brothers always have to die. By staging the poem as a female child, the poem plays the part of Antigone leading blind Oedipus (who always looks like a uates) out into the wilderness. Oedipus’ self-denying utterance, nil ego (11.621) on the death of his sons dovetails neatly with Statius’ more effusive comment, but also mimics the pseudo-Virgilian incipit to the Aeneid found in the Suetonian-Donatan biography: ille ego qui quondam … (VSD 42, ‘I am he who once …’).125 Where the pseudo-Virgilian lines summarise his literary career through Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid, Oedipus’ words close off the possibility of existence in a poetic world. Yet in the Oedipal world, at least one brother is also always simultaneously a father. By re-positioning the Thebais at the poem’s conclusion as a child, Statius solves the regressive and selfdestructive conundrum which his poetics posed throughout the work. However, this is not the end. The separation of poem from poet (where the two were fairly intertwined at the beginning of the poem) suggests a more positive and successful outcome for this new character named Thebais. Where Statius

 125 On these lines see Laird 2009, 5–6; Peirano 2013, 273–4; Mac Góráin 2018, 428–9 and above, introduction. Again, we are reminded of Hypsipyle posing as a ‘fake Virgil’, cf. 5.34–6, illa ego nam … occului with Heslin 2016, 103–4.

meriti post me referentur honores: Poet and Poem in the sphragis  

imitates Oedipus, the poem plays Theseus. As with Theseus, the moment of individualization is not achieved without cost. However, the poem, unlike its poet and many of its characters does achieve subjectivisation and does emerge into the world of concrete universality. The Thebaid is its own passage through madness, violence and terror. The sphragis becomes a moment of individualization, where the poem breaks associations with its primary, organic community (i.e. by leaving the poet behind and refusing to follow too closely in the footsteps of its predecessors) and identifies with a secondary, artificial community. It finds itself marked out as a member of a social and cultural world by becoming wife, child, slave, worshipper and acolyte. If the subject is always constituted through loss, through radical negativity, through the expulsion of the basis of reality from which it is made, then this poem achieves that selfhood by its separation from its author. The externalized reality for the Thebaid is posited by its identification as a female character, ‘Thebais’. Thus the poem can be seen to make a journey of self-identification and construct a novel identity for itself.126 The literary journey of the Thebaid is a brutal one, but, by casting the figure of the poet into the void, the poem is able to achieve its own sense of self.

 126 Again, to paraphrase Žižek 1996, 43, it finds itself outside itself and posits its unity outside itself in a signifier which is self-representative.

 Afterword? Per te poeta fui: Dante’s Statius and the Re-Writing of Literary History It seems that our reading of identity in the Thebaid can only be suffused with a Hegelian sense of radical negativity. More than any other poem, this one achieves Barthes’ ‘death of the author’.1 In order for his poem to achieve a sense of self and be a part of the world, the poet must destroy himself. What that reading suggests is that the poet must take these sorts of radical and ultimately self-destructive steps in order to find a space for another epic poem in a literary landscape that is already remarkably crowded. Yet that reading eschews the overt sense of the Thebaid’s final lines, that the poem should look back to one predecessor in particular, the Aeneid, and regard it with a quasi-religious veneration. The epic ends with a built-in sense of its own belatedness. Statius’ radical poetic vision was not necessarily shared by his own successors, however, and in this final chapter, we will explore the possibility of revivifying the author alongside his text. Statius is a key figure for Dante Alighieri in his Commedia. Moreover, it is one contention of this chapter that Dante does not allude to Statius in a piecemeal fashion, but regards the Flavian poet as a consistently important touchstone for his vision of Purgatory.2 In many senses, Purgatorio XXI–XXX is a staged as a sequel to the Thebaid.3 Dante performs the same creative act for Statius which Statius performed for the Thebaid; he makes him a character within his own poem. We saw how Statius’ bringing Thebais to life created a sense of identity for the work quite separate from its author. In Dante’s Purgatorio, we see poet and poem re-united and re-born as ‘Statius’ is re-made as an inspirational figure of veneration in his own right. Dante is heavily invested in the poetics of the Thebaid and is, as we shall see, a close reader of the poem’s conclusion too. However, the poet of the Italian renaissance takes the challenge of literary belatedness head on and achieves what Statius in the Thebaid could not. To be sure, Dante has the twin advantages of Christianity and writing in the vernacular to set himself apart from an overwhelming classical tradition. Nonetheless, it is possible for the poet to find space in the tradition as well as his poem.

 1 Barthes 1975, 27. 2 In this, I follow Wetherbee 2008, 159–202. On Statius and Dante, see Caviglia 1974; Dewar 1991, xliii–xliv; Parkes 2012, xxxvi; and Augoustakis 2016, lxvi–lxx. 3 Cf. Wetherbee 2008, 22; and Heslin 2015, 513–14. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110717990-005

Climbing the Mountain again: Statius in Purgatory  

. Climbing the Mountain again: Statius in Purgatory Towards the end of Dante’s ascent up the mountain of Purgatory, the protagonist and his guide Virgil enjoy an extended encounter with the spirit of another classical epic poet, Statius. In Canto XX of Purgatorio, the protagonist-Dante and Virgil feel an earthquake, doubly terrifying in the normally immutable kingdom of Purgatory, after which they can hear the gloria in excelsis Deo being sung.4 At the beginning of Canto XXI, Dante and Virgil meet Statius for the first time and are informed that the earthquake is caused by the final purgation of Statius’ soul. Statius accompanies Dante and Virgil for the remainder of their ascent into the Garden of Eden (which in Dante’s topographical conception is the Earthly Paradise at the summit of Mount Purgatory from which souls ascend to heaven). Statius is, perhaps surprisingly for modern readers of classical literature, one of the most important characters in the Divine Comedy as a whole, a character whose role is only surpassed in scope by those of Virgil, Beatrice and Dante himself. It is that initial encounter between Dante and Statius which forms the basis of his re-examination of Statius’ identity, an encounter which will introduce Statius as a character in Purgatorio, the importance of his poetry, especially the Thebaid, for Dante and the complex relationships that Dante-poet sets up between himself and his two classical forebears. Dante explores the tensions between poets of different eras, between Latin and vernacular poetry, between pagan and Biblical inspiration and seeks to assert the dominance of both post-Augustan and post-Classical texts despite their following in the footsteps of famous predecessors such as Virgil. More importantly perhaps we would suggest that Dante engages in varied, detailed and complex readings of Statius’ Thebaid and that the Florentine poet invites us as readers of the Commedia to re-examine our interpretation of Statius’ identity, especially as it relates to Virgil. Dante’s Statius plays a complex role within the latter part of Purgatorio, but we will focus mainly on his initial arrival in Cantos XXI and XXII:5 Statius appears quietly behind Dante and Virgil at the beginning of the Canto (XXI.7–13) and asks how it is that they ascend the mountain so quickly (XXI.19–21). Virgil explains briefly and asks Statius about the earthquake which the travellers felt at the end of Canto XX (XXI.22–37). Statius explains that the mountain of Purgatory, which is normally unchangeable in any way, trembled to mark the purgation of Statius’

 4 On Statius’ appearance in the Commedia, see Lewis 1956; Barolini 1984, 256–68; Franke 1994; Martinez 1995; 1997; Butler 2003; Guy-Bray 2006, 3–27; Brownlee 2007; Wetherbee 2008; and Heslin 2015. More generally, see also Hollander 2001, 90–147, esp. 114–21 on Virgil. 5 For bibliography of studies of Cantos 20–22, see Martinez 1995, 170 n.16.

  Afterword? Per te poeta fui: Dante’s Statius and the Re-Writing of Literary History own soul. Statius then introduces himself (XXI.82–99) as a poet inspired by Virgil’s Aeneid in particular. Virgil hopes to avoid recognition, but Dante-protagonist inadvertently smiles, piquing Statius’ curiosity.6 Dante reveals the identity of Virgil and Statius attempts to embrace his feet. Virgil however refuses to accept the embrace (XXI.130–2). It seems clear that the encounter constructively re-works Statius’ own injunction to his poem not to follow the Aeneid too closely. Dante makes a crucial move in that appropriation, however, by shifting back to fictionalised versions of Statius and Virgil and not thinking about a relationship between poems. In Canto XXII, Statius explains how he came to be in Purgatory. Although an ostensibly pagan poet, he was secretly inspired by the opening lines of Virgil’s fourth Eclogue to become a Christian, but made a public show of paganism because he feared the persecutions of Christians by the emperor Domitian (XXII.64– 99). Given the degree to which the language and imagery of Eclogue 4 informs the final lines of the Thebaid,7 it seems peculiarly appropriate that Dante chose that Virgilian poem as the motivation for his Statius’ Christianisation.8 After some discussion of the fate of other classical poets, the three poets continue their ascent of the mountain, Virgil and Statius leading and talking amongst themselves and Dante following and listening. Statius remains with Dante for much of the remainder of the cantica and will provide an explanation of the soul in Canto XXV. First of all, however, let us examine the key moment of meeting between the Dante-protagonist, Virgil and Statius: La sete natural che mai non sazia se non con l’acqua onde la femminetta samaritana domandò la grazia, mi travagliava, e pungeami la fretta per la ‘mpacciata via dietro al mio duca, e condoleami a la giusta vendetta. Ed ecco, sì come ne scrive Luca che Cristo apparve a’ due ch’erano in via, già surto fuor de la sepulcral buca, ci apparve un’ombra, e dietro a noi venìa, dal piè guardando la turba che giace;

 6 On this reaction as an indication of the limitations of Virgil’s knowledge, see Wetherbee 2008, 198. 7 See Gervais forthcoming. 8 The depiction of Statius as Christian is a Dantean innovation, see Kallendorf & Kallendorf 2002; Wetherbee 2008, 181–8. For Dante’s reasons for such a move as inspired by Statius’ theology, see Heslin 2015, 512–17.

Climbing the Mountain again: Statius in Purgatory  

né ci addemmo di lei, sì parlò pria, dicendo: “O frati miei, Dio vi dea pace”.9

Purg. XXI.1–13

The natural thirst which is never quenched but with the water which the woman of Samaria bagged as a boon was tormenting me and our haste was urging me along the encumbered way behind my leader and I was grieving over the just vengeance; and lo, as Luke writes for us that Christ, new-risen from the sepulchral grave, appeared to the two who were in the way, a shade appeared to us, and he came behind us while we were watching the crowd that lay at our feet, and we were not aware of him until he first spoke and said: ‘O my brothers, God give you peace.’

As Statius approaches behind Virgil and Dante, following in their footsteps, Dante-poet appears to imitate the final lines of Statius’ Thebaid, where Statius depicted his own poem following in the footsteps of Virgil’s Aeneid: uiue precor, nec tu diuinam Aeneida tempta sed longe sequere et uestigia semper adora. mox, tibi si quis adhuc praetendit nubila liuor occidet et meriti post me referentur honores. Theb. 12.816–19 Live, I pray, and do not challenge the divine Aeneid; rather, follow at a distance and always worship her footsteps. Soon any clouds of envy that still cover you over will perish, and after I am gone your well-earned honours will be paid.

The manner in which Statius-shade approaches suggests an intertextual link between our two texts and that, just as Statius deferentially reads Virgil, so Dante is approaching his classical predecessors by following in their footsteps. This reading of Statius’ initial meeting with Dante and Virgil was first suggested by Umberto Bosco and Giovanni Reggio in their commentary on the Purgatorio and has been taken up explicitly in a more recent article by Ronald Martinez.10 Martinez views this meeting as implicitly being an account of Dante’s rendering the Latin epic tradition into something accessible to Dante and his audience.11 Although the allusion to the end of the Thebaid is not especially well marked at the level of verbal reminiscence in the opening lines of Canto XXI, and, as we shall see, the end of the Latin epic is not the only key text alluded to here, we will briefly explore the ways in which Dante builds up a series of allusions to Statius’ poem

 9 Translation of the Commedia throughout by Sinclair 1939. 10 Martinez 1995 passim, esp. 155–6; see Alighieri 1982–3 ad loc. 11 Martinez 1995, 155.

  Afterword? Per te poeta fui: Dante’s Statius and the Re-Writing of Literary History which makes our reference to the closing lines of the Thebaid at this point an inescapable conclusion. As well as exploring the complex relationship that Dante’s Commedia has with Statius’ poetry, we will also need to explore the mechanics of leading and following as Dante-poet presents it in these Cantos. Although Dante presents a strict sense of authorial hierarchy, when we look more closely we can see him presenting the relationships between texts as always intricate and difficult and that the literary order presented is consistently dynamic and unstable. Dante looks to create a poetics of progress, where to fall later in the poetic tradition is to improve upon the past and where poetry, like the pilgrim on his journey to paradise, is always moving onwards and upwards.

. conosco i segni: Statius the Poet in Dante’s Commedia As well as looking at the end of the Thebaid in writing this section of Purgatorio, we can see that Dante also has a programmatic interest in the opening lines and opening images of Statius’ epic poem, and in particular on the use of fire imagery in connection with poetic inspiration. Dante’s exploration of the relationship between Statius and Virgil becomes a hugely important model for his own relationships with his classical models: Stazio la gente ancor di là mi noma: cantai di Tebe, e poi del grande Achille; ma caddi in via con la seconda soma. Al mio ardor fuor seme le faville, che mi scaldar, de la divina fiamma onde sono allumati più di mille; de l’Eneïda dico, la qual mamma fummi, e fummi nutrice, poetando:

Purg. XXI.91–9

Men yonder still speak my name, which is Statius; and I sang of Thebes and then of great Achilles, but fell by the way with the second burden. The sparks that kindled fire in me were from the divine flame from which more than a thousand have been lit – I mean the Aeneid, which was in poetry my mother and my nurse

As we saw at the end of the Thebaid, the Aeneid was represented by Statius as a divine female personification (12.816, nec tu diuinam Aeneida tempta). In casting the Aeneid as mother and nurse, Dante’s Statius explicitly picks up on the complex of imagery in the Thebaid’s concluding lines which depicted the poem as wife, child, worshipper and slave. However, Dante blurs the boundaries between author and work by having Statius lit by the same inspirational fire as his work.

conosco I segni: Statius the Poet in Dante’s Commedia  

He speaks of the inspiration afforded him by reading Virgil’s Aeneid as sparks kindling a fire in his soul, of Virgil’s epic as a divine flame which has lit many others. Similarly, Statius speaks of his love for Virgil which burns inside of him: Ed ei surgendo: “Or puoi la quantitate comprender de l’amor ch’a te mi scalda

Purg. XXI.133–4

And he, rising: ‘Now thou canst understand the measure of love that burns in me for thee […]

The imagery here threatens to spill over into a lover’s discourse with Statius burning with desire like a classical elegiac poet,12 a tendency which is explored, but remains checked, in Dante’s creation. Furthermore, in the following Canto, Virgil begins his account of how the shade of Juvenal descended to Limbo and told Virgil of Statius’ veneration with his own fiery discourse: quando Virgilio incominciò: “Amore, acceso di virtù, sempre altro accese, pur che la fiamma sua paresse fore;

Purg. XXII.10–12

When Virgil began: ‘Love kindled by virtue always kindles another, if only its flame appear without […]’

Finally, Statius describes the enlightenment which he gained by reading Virgil’s fourth Eclogue as though he were a man travelling by night and able to see because a guide travels behind him shining a light: Ed elli a lui: “Tu prima m’invïasti verso Parnaso a ber ne le sue grotte, e prima appresso Dio m’alluminasti. Facesti come quei che va di notte, che porta il lume dietro e sé non giova, ma dopo sé fa le persone dotte...

Purg. XXII.64–9

 12 For the trope, see Kennedy 1993; for the discourse of poetic affiliation figured as a homoerotic relationship, see Guy-Bray 2006.

  Afterword? Per te poeta fui: Dante’s Statius and the Re-Writing of Literary History And the other answered him: ‘Thou first directedst me to Parnassus to drink in its caves, and first, after God, enlightenedst me. Thou didst like him that goes by night and carries the light behind him and does not help himself but makes wise […]

This is an important passage to which we shall return, especially as it reverses the pattern of leading and following established at the end of the Thebaid and by Statius’ appearance at the beginning of Canto XXI. For the moment, let us note the complex of imagery related to fire and light that underpins all four passages and suggest that Dante-poet here is thinking of two classical passages, the first being the opening of the Thebaid, where Statius speaks of his own fiery inspiration, the second from the beginning of book 4 of Virgil’s Aeneid, where Dido confides in her sister regarding her love for Aeneas: fraternas acies alternaque regna profanis decertata odiis sontesque euoluere Thebas Pierius menti calor incidit.

Theb. 1.1–3

Fraternal battle-lines and alternating reigns fought over with profane hatred and to tell of guilty Thebes, Pierian fire lights my mind. agnosco ueteris uestigia flammae.

Aen. 4.23

I recognise the traces of the old flame

Repeated intertextual contact with our primary classical text, the opening of the Thebaid, seems reasonably straightforward. Dante signals his knowledge of both of Statius’ epics explicitly by having the ghost of the poet refer to them. Moreover, the way in which Statius approaches the two travellers and refers to specifically Virgilian inspiration maps neatly onto the programmatic opening and closing passages of the Thebaid by invoking the key images of flame and following in footsteps. Yet this combination of key images is complicated by additional reminiscence of a secondary classical text, where Virgil’s Dido recognises the flame of love rekindled by the appearance in Carthage of Aeneas. Again, Statius’ poetic affiliation to Virgil threatens to reconfigure itself as an amatory relationship. Thus in Dante’s re-presentation of Statius’ literary relationship with Virgil, the alluding poet following in the footsteps of his predecessor is inspired much like a lover burning with desire and with that flame lighting up his own literary path. The extensive use of light as a metaphor for poetic revelation is further complicated by the wider importance of light for spiritual knowledge in Dante’s Purga-

conosco I segni: Statius the Poet in Dante’s Commedia  

torio. As Jeffrey Schnapp explains: ‘due to the fact that Purgatory’s terrain is unfamiliar to Virgil, his authority is somewhat diminished, the Latin poet repeatedly appeals to the sun – symbol of God and reason … for assistance.’13 Here the classical and Christian work in parallel. In a similar way, the metaphor of flame and fire for poetic inspiration must be taken alongside the inspiration of the Apostles by the Holy Spirit which allows them to speak in tongues: And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Acts 2:2–4

Again, the parallels between Christian and classical in Dante are striking: in both instances the flame acts as a signal that a special form of inspiration has taken place which allows the recipient to speak in a new manner. Hence the metaphor of light and fire for the inspiration Virgil provides to Statius is also figured in the same terminology as that which Dante uses to describe divine knowledge as it is imparted to the pilgrim or in the manner with which the Holy Spirit inspires the Apostles. Just as Virgil lights an allusive, inspirational poetic, even erotic, path for Statius, so God’s light illuminates Dante’s intellectual and spiritual path upwards into Paradise. The equivalence is disconcerting, but Dante knows what he is doing, I think. For the moment, let us merely accept the breadth and programmatic importance of Statius for Dante’s own poetry. Furthermore, let us not assume that this is for Dante a passing, if intense acquaintance which he makes with Statius. Statius’ poetry, the Thebaid in particular, is of huge inspirational value for Dante’s Commedia. Statius’ descriptions of Thebes provide perhaps Dante’s most important model for his own description of the city of Dis in Inferno. David Quint has shown how, in Canto 9 of Inferno, Dante: ‘pits the Virgilian tradition of underworld descent and heavenly messenger against the conjuration scenes of Lucan and Statius.’14 Later on, in the eighth circle of hell, where the spirits of false counsellors are burned by flames, Dante sees a divided flame which he likens to the flame erupting from the pyre of Eteocles and Polynices, but within which Virgil informs him are the tormented souls of Ulysses and Diomedes:

 13 Schnapp 2007, 94–5. 14 Quint 1975, 206.

  Afterword? Per te poeta fui: Dante’s Statius and the Re-Writing of Literary History “Maestro mio”, rispuos’io, “per udirti son io più certo; ma già m’era avviso che così fosse, e già voleva dirti: chi è ‘n quel foco che vien sì diviso di sopra, che par surger de la pira dov’Eteòcle col fratel fu miso?”. Rispuose a me: “Là dentro si martira Ulisse e Dïomede, e così insieme a la vendetta vanno come a l'ira; e dentro da la lor fiamma si geme l’agguato del caval che fé la porta onde uscì de’ Romani il gentil seme. Piangevisi entro l’arte per che, morta, Deïdamìa ancor si duol d’Achille, e del Palladio pena vi si porta”.

Inf. XXVI.49–63

‘My master,’ I replied ‘by hearing thee I am more certain, but already I thought it was so, and I already wished to ask thee who is in that fire which comes so cloven at the top that it seems to rise from the pyre where Eteocles was laid with his brother.’ He answered me: ‘Within there are tormented Ulysses and Diomed, and thus together they go under vengeance as once under wrath, and within their flame they groan for the ambush of the horse that made the gateway by which the noble seed of the Romans went forth; they lament within it the craft on account of which Deidamia dead still mourns Achilles, and there is borne the penalty for the Palladium.’ ecce iterum fratres. primos ut contigit artus ignis edax, tremuere rogi et nouus aduena busto pellitur: exundant diuiso uertice flammae alternique apices abrupta luce coruscant. Theb. 12.429–32 See, once more the brothers! As soon as the consuming fire touched the limbs, the pile shook and the new arrival is driven from the pyre. The flames gush up divided at the top, flashing two tips in broken light.

Here Dante takes the opportunity to incorporate a key Statian image in what is, perhaps, a rather unexpected context. Indeed the invocation of Eteocles by Dante-protagonist is almost presented as a kind of misapprehension. Yet given the warning in the passage about excessive and misused cleverness (Dante nearly falls into the flames himself), Dante-poet may be suggesting something about the dangerous inspirational power of Statius’ poetry in the midst of one of the most concerted pieces of dramatic imagination in the Inferno.

conosco I segni: Statius the Poet in Dante’s Commedia  

Perhaps the greatest and certainly the most extended episode in Inferno also finds its inspiration in Statius’ Thebaid. At the end of Canto XXXII, Dante encounters Guelf Count Ugolino della Gherardesca and the enemy who betrayed him in life, Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini. In Hell, Ugolino and Ruggieri are imprisoned in a hole, where Ugolino avenges Ruggieri’s treachery by eating his brain (Ugolino tells his story in Canto XXXIII). The episode is overtly indebted to Tydeus and his cannibalism of Melanippus (whose name is transposed to Menalippo in the Italian) at the end of Thebaid 8:15 Noi eravam partiti già da ello, ch’io vidi due ghiacciati in una buca, sì che l’un capo a l’altro era cappello; e come ‘l pan per fame si manduca, così ‘l sovran li denti a l’altro pose là ‘ve ‘l cervel s’aggiugne con la nuca: non altrimenti Tidëo si rose le tempie a Menalippo per disdegno, che quei faceva il teschio e l’altre cose.

Inf. XXXII.124–32

We had already left him when I saw two frozen in one hole so that the one head was a hood for the other, and, as bread is devoured for hunger, the one above set his teeth in the other at the place where the brain joins the nape; Tydeus gnawed at the temples of Menalippus for rage just as he was doing with the skull and the other parts. erigitur Tydeus uultuque occurrit et amens laetitiaque iraque, ut singultantia uidit ora trucesque oculos seseque agnouit in illo, imperat abscisum porgi laeuaque receptum spectat atrox hostile caput gliscitque tepentis lumina torua uidens et adhuc dubitantia figi. infelix contentus erat: Theb. 8.751–7 Tydeus raises himself and turns his face to meet him. He is wild with joy and anger as he sees the gasping visage, the fierce eyes, and recognizes himself in the other. He orders that the enemy’s head be cut off and brought to him. Holding it in his left hand, he glares at it savagely and swells as he sees it still warm and the eyes, grim and uncertain, grow fixed.

This is Dante at his most explicit, both in terms of the violence which dominates the punishment of Ugolino and Ruggieri, but also in terms of the directness with  15 See Martinez 1997, 63 and n.97. On Dante’s allusion to Tydeus, see Augoustakis 2016, lxvii– lxix; on the episode in Thebaid 8, see Augoustakis 2016, 344–50.

  Afterword? Per te poeta fui: Dante’s Statius and the Re-Writing of Literary History which he alludes to his model text. Cannibalism acts as a trope for the act of literary allusion, the redisposition of source-text a brutal act of domination by the vernacular poet, which also acts the violence of Statius’ own appropriations. Given the reflective potential for the cannibalism scene in the Thebaid to stand for the process of identity formation, this has further, powerful implications for Dante’s self-construction as a successor to the classical and especially the Flavian tradition. Furthermore, the potential of this image to double as an image of the manner of Dante’s intertextuality has formidable consequences for the appearance of Statius in Purgatorio, implying as it does that later poets can assume positions of control in their intertextual allusions. Further allusions to Statius’ poetry in the Commedia underline this idea. When awaking from sleep outside the gates of Purgatory itself, Dante likens himself to the young Achilles waking on Scyros, after Thetis had taken him from Chiron to hide him from the Greek expedition to Troy. Given that Statius-shade later announces himself as the poet who sang first of Thebes, then of Achilles, it is difficult to suppose an allusion to a poem other than Statius’ Achilleid, especially given that Dante-poet here uses the same introductory formula as he had with the Tydeus simile in Inferno XXXII: Stazio la gente ancor di là mi noma: cantai di Tebe, e poi del grande Achille; ma caddi in via con la seconda soma.

Purg. XXI.91–3

Men yonder still speak my name, which is Statius; and I sang of Thebes and then of great Achilles, but fell by the way with the second burden. Non altrimenti Achille si riscosse, li occhi svegliati rivolgendo in giro e non sappiendo là dove si fosse, quando la madre da Chirón a Schiro trafuggò lui dormendo in le sue braccia, là onde poi li Greci il dipartiro; che mi scoss’io, sì come da la faccia mi fuggì ‘l sonno, e diventa’ ismorto, come fa l’uom che, spaventato, agghiaccia. Dallato m’era solo il mio conforto, e ‘l sole er’alto già più che due ore, e ‘l viso m’era a la marina torto. Purg. IX.34–45 Even as Achilles started up, turning his awakened eyes about him and not knowing where he was, when his mother carried him off sleeping in her arms from Chiron to Scyros, whence

conosco I segni: Statius the Poet in Dante’s Commedia  

later the Greeks took him away, so I started, as soon as sleep left my eyes, and turned pale, like one that is chilled with fear. Beside me was my comfort alone, and the sun was already more than two hours high, and my face was turned to the sea. iam premit astra dies humilisque ex aequore Titan rorantes euoluit equos et ab aethere magno sublatum curru pelagus cadit; at uada mater Scyria iamdudum fluctus emensa tenebat exierantque iugo fessi delphines erili cum pueri tremefacta quies oculique patentes infusum sensere diem. stupet aere primo quae loca qui fluctus ubi Pelion. omnia uersa atque ignota uidet dubitatque agnoscere matrem. Ach. 1.242–50 Now day presses down the stars and Titan rolls his dripping steeds out from the low and level waters and the sea raised by his chariot falls from the vast sky. But the mother had already crossed the waves and was safe on Scyros’ shore, the weary dolphins had left their mistress’ yoke, when the boy’s sleep was shaken and his wide eyes felt daylight pouring in. At first sight of sky he was stunned: what place is this, what waves, where is Pelion? Everything he sees is strange and changed, and he doubts to recognize his mother.

Comparison of passages suggests interesting roles for Dante-pilgrim and -poet. In Statius’ Achilleid, Achilles asks his mother where he is, in Purgatorio, Dante-protagonist asks Virgil for information and reassurance. Virgil therefore plays a maternal role, much as Statius will later claim Virgil played in inspiring his poetry (la qual mamma / fummi, Purg. XXI.98–9). It is no surprise that we can equate Virgil’s role as guide within the Commedia to Virgil’s role as inspirational author in its composition, but what this series of similes does provide for us is the opportunity to map Statius’ role as a Christian follower of Virgil who ascends into Paradise onto Dante’s role as follower; Statius becomes a model of emulation for Dante. As Kevin Brownlee puts it: ‘this Statius figure is thus an inscribed model who authorises the new vernacular Christian Dante-poeta in the process of defining himself over the course of the Commedia’s story of Dante-protagonist.’16 Yet there is an extra twist in the allusive fabric of this passage. In Statius’ Achilleid, Achilles is not only amazed at the change in location, but also that his mother has replaced Chiron in the role of parent (1.250, dubitatque agnoscere matrem). Dante-poet’s allusion here perhaps signals a shift in intertextual authority away from Virgil (who was both mother and nurse to Statius-shade).17

 16 Brownlee 2007, 149. 17 On the shift in the Achilleid, see Heslin 2005, 118.

  Afterword? Per te poeta fui: Dante’s Statius and the Re-Writing of Literary History The sense of a shift in the canonical hierarchy is implicit in two other Statian moments in the text, the first in Canto XXII, the second in Canto XXVI. In Canto XXII, Virgil and Statius discuss the latter’s conversion to Christianity; Statius claims his conversion to Christianity pre-dated the composition of the Thebaid, but describes his epic in a slightly surprising way: E pria ch’io conducessi i Greci a’ fiumi di Tebe poetando, ebb’io battesmo

Purg. XXII.88–9

Then before I brought the Greeks to the rivers of Thebes in my verse I received baptism

Here the Thebaid is reduced to the Argive army being led to Theban rivers. Brownlee points out the disparity between Statius’ conversion and his Theban waters: ‘the non-baptismal significance of the Theban rivers in the Statian epic contrasts dramatically with the Dantean ‘Statius’ metaphoric baptism in the river, that is, the text of the Dantean Virgil.’18 However, it seems that Dante is also alert to the metapoetic importance of rivers in Statius’ text. It seems as if the Christian ritual of baptism is also being used to clean the waters which Statius’ Greeks had earlier muddied.19 What is more, the Argive army tarrying in Nemea is not a passing, localised point of interest for Dante, but holds a more programmatic fascination for him. When Dante-protagonist meets his vernacular poetic predecessor, Guido Guinizelli, there occurs a scene of veneration strikingly similar to that between Statius and Virgil and marked by an overt reference to Statius’ Thebaid: Quali ne la tristizia di Ligurgo si fer due figli a riveder la madre, tal mi fec’io, ma non a tanto insurgo, quand’io odo nomar sé stesso il padre mio e de li altri miei miglior che mai rime d’amor usar dolci e leggiadre; e sanza udire e dir pensoso andai lunga fïata rimirando lui, né, per lo foco, in là più m’appressai. Poi che di riguardar pasciuto fui, tutto m’offersi pronto al suo servigio con l’affermar che fa credere altrui. Ed elli a me: ‘Tu lasci tal vestigio, per quel ch‘i’ odo, in me, e tanto chiaro,

 18 Brownlee 2007, 148–9. 19 For the important role the Nemean episode plays for Dante, see Wetherbee 2008, 182–96.

conosco I segni: Statius the Poet in Dante’s Commedia  

che Letè nol può tòrre né far bigio. Ma se le tue parole or ver giuraro, dimmi che è cagion per che dimostri nel dire e nel guardar d’avermi caro’.

Purg. XXVI.94–111

Such as, in the grief of Lycurgus, the two sons became on seeing their mother again, I became, but with more restraint, when I heard speak his own name the father of me and of others my betters, whoever have used sweet and graceful rhymes of love; and without hearing or speech I went on a long way in thought gazing at him, and did not, for the fire, go nearer him. When I had fed my sight on him I offered myself wholly ready at his service, with the assurance that gains belief. And he said to me: ‘Thou leavest such a trace and so clear in me by that which I hear thee tell as Lethe cannot destroy or dim; but if thy words have now sworn truth, tell me for what cause thou showest thyself, by speech and look, to hold me dear.’

Here Dante-protagonist is struck dumb by his encounter with the man he terms his poetic ‘father’ and compares himself to the twin sons of Hypsipyle when they were reunited with their mother in Statius’ Nemean episode (Theb. 6.710–30).20 Key moments in Dante’s construction of poetic lineages and hierarchies are coloured with Statian reminiscences. These Greek waters clearly hold a privileged place in Dante’s poetic scheme; despite the apparent contrast that Brownlee highlights, Dante’s Statius merges the narrative of Bacchic rejuvenation at Nemea with his own status as closet Christian. The character himself says of his affiliation: ‘per te poeta fui, per te cristiano.’ (Purg. XXII.73). Yet the double inspiration that Virgil provides allows follower to transcend his master; Virgil cannot pass upwards into Paradise, but both Statius and Dante will do so. Similarly, when Dante here meets a poetic master whom he follows, shows deference towards and reveres, we are never in doubt that Dante transcends Guinizelli, not only in a purely physical sense, by passing through Purgatory, but also in the poetic realm. What is more, Dante reassures us of this transcendence by building a simile out of the narrative of Statius’ Thebaid. Dante’s willingness to transcend his poetic models is further indicated, we might suggest, by the passage which marks Virgil’s final disappearance in Canto XXX. Here Dante-protagonist plays child to Virgil’s mother, Dido to his Aeneas, but also Orpheus to his Eurydice, and even provides the sensitive reader with an allusive sting in the tail. As he leaves Virgil behind, he turns to his guide: volsimi a la sinistra col respitto col quale il fantolin corre a la mamma  20 On the encounter with Guinizelli, see Wetherbee 2008, 207–9.

  Afterword? Per te poeta fui: Dante’s Statius and the Re-Writing of Literary History quando ha paura o quando elli è afflitto, per dicere a Virgilio: ‘Men che dramma di sangue m’è rimaso che non tremi: conosco i segni de l’antica fiamma’. Ma Virgilio n’avea lasciati scemi di sé, Virgilio dolcissimo patre, Virgilio a cui per mia salute die’ mi; né quantunque perdeo l’antica matre, valse a le guance nette di rugiada che, lagrimando, non tornasser atre. “Dante, perché Virgilio se ne vada, non pianger anco, non piangere ancora; ché pianger ti conven per altra spada”.

Purg. XXX.43–57

I turned to the left with the confidence of a little child that runs to his mother when he is afraid or in distress, to say to Virgil: ‘Not a drop of blood is left in me that does not tremble; I know the marks of the ancient flame.’ But Virgil had left us bereft of him, Virgil sweetest father, Virgil to whom I gave myself for my salvation, nor did all the ancient mother lost avail my cheeks washed with dew that they should be stained again with tears. ‘Dante, because Virgil leaves thee weep not yet, for thou must weep for another sword.’ agnosco ueteris uestigia flammae.

Aen. 4.23

I recognise the traces of the old flame tum quoque marmorea caput a ceruice reuulsum gurgite cum medio portans Oeagrius Hebrus uolueret, Eurydicen uox ipsa et frigida lingua ah miseram Eurydicen! anima fugiente uocabat: Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripae. Geo. 4.523–7 Then too, even then, what time the Hebrus stream, Oeagrian Hebrus, down mid-current rolled, rent from the marble neck, his drifting head, the death-chilled tongue found yet a voice to cry: ‘Eurydice! ah! poor Eurydice!’ with parting breath he called her, and the banks from the broad stream caught up ‘Eurydice!’

Dante explicitly likens himself to a child running to his mother, translates Dido’s famous line we have already encountered from book 4 of the Aeneid, and, by the double repetition of Virgilio, casts himself as Virgil’s Orpheus. It strikes me that there is a subtle but rapid shift in emphasis here. Dante goes from helpless, weakling child, to female lover and finally becomes the husband who survives his wife. This transformation makes much greater sense in the light of the sphragis at the

conosco I segni: Statius the Poet in Dante’s Commedia  

end of Statius’ Thebaid. There it was Statius’ poem which was portrayed as Eurydice vainly following the Aeneid’s Orpheus. Dante carefully re-crafts that network of images so that he can now occupy the privileged position of an Orpheus who will ascend to an upper world. Furthermore, Beatrice’s triple invocation not to weep balances the Orphic moment and suggests that, despite all the veneration and the self-deprecation, Dante will leave Virgil behind both literally and poetically. The sting in the tail comes in two ways; firstly, through the potential for a double allusion in the triple naming of Virgil. Statius had, at the end of his own epic poem, reworked Georgics 4 in his own lament for Parthenopaeus; secondly, through an intratextual repetition of the unusual triple rhyme structure which we heard earlier when Statius first appeared and spoke of his devotion to Virgil:21 Arcada quo planctu genetrix Erymanthia clamet Arcada consumpto seruantem sanguine uultus Arcada quem geminae pariter fleuere cohortes. Theb. 12.805–7 […] with what lamentation the Erymanthian mother bewails the Arcadian, the Arcadian who keeps his beauty though his blood is spent, the Arcadian for whom both armies wept alike. Al mio ardor fuor seme le faville, che mi scaldar, de la divina fiamma onde sono allumati più di mille; de l’Eneïda dico, la qual mamma fummi, e fummi nutrice, poetando: sanz’essa non fermai peso di dramma.

Purg. XXI.94–9

The sparks that kindled fire in me were from the divine flame from which more than a thousand have been lit – I mean the Aeneid, which was in poetry my mother and my nurse; without it I had not weighed a drachm.

The repetition of the triple rhyme brings us back to the first encounter with Statius, the moment where the follower in footsteps first appeared.22 However, the followers are now about to go beyond the bounds of their guide. Once more, amidst the veneration, Dante the poet creates the idea, in no small measure through his various uses of Statius, that he is to surpass his poetic predecessors. Statius’ greeting to Virgil and Dante, O frati miei, Dio vi dea pace (XXI.13, ‘O my

 21 See Martinez 1995, 165–7. 22 For the importance of the triple iam in Theb. 12.810–19, see Gervais forthcoming.

  Afterword? Per te poeta fui: Dante’s Statius and the Re-Writing of Literary History brothers, God give you peace’), is a comprehensive transformation of the poetics of fraternas acies.23 Perhaps it is no wonder then, that when the ghost of Statius first meets Virgil and Dante, Virgil attempts to hide his identity, giving Dante a look that commands silence (XXI.103–29). Dante cannot help but smile, which Statius notices. Once Statius asks Dante, Virgil grudgingly allows the pilgrim to reveal his guide’s true identity. Virgil’s behaviour seems a little churlish, almost like Venus concealing her identity from Aeneas in Aeneid 1. What is more, the pattern of revelation is changed, corrected even, when Dante meets Guinizelli. In the latter instance it is the star-struck Dante who cannot speak, and Guinizelli who reads in his expression the admiration Dante has for him. Dante’s give-away smile is mirrored by Statius at the beginning of Canto XXII when he hears how Juvenal reported his admiration to Virgil (queste parole Stazio mover fenno | un poco a riso pria, XXII.25–6, ‘these words first made Statius begin to smile a little’). One wonders, however, if Virgil’s behaviour is motivated by a kind of authorial anxiety where master attempts to put off that moment where he is surpassed by pupil. Several studies of Virgil’s role in the Commedia have noticed the limitations to the guide’s knowledge and the frequency with which Statius and Lucan are invoked by Dante-poet to fill in the blanks.24 It is Statius, not Virgil, who, in Canto XXV provides the complex discourse on the relationship between body and soul.

. The Road to Emmaus: Different Patterns of Following Part of the problem for many readers of the final lines of Statius’ Thebaid is, as we saw, his essential attitude of inferiority. Statius’ poem itself plays a wide variety of inferior roles in the conclusion of the Thebaid and despite the many instances in Dante’s writing where Statius appears to be given a privileged role, there is the pervasive sense, despite his Christianity, of Statius’ secondariness when placed next to Virgil. Moreover, Dante homes in on Virgil as the single, specific comparand for Statius. Yet it is precisely Dante’s recasting of Statius as a Christian that allows for Dante’s reconstruction of literary hierarchies to favour later poets. That initial moment of meeting between Statius, Virgil and Dante is explicitly modelled upon a well-known scene in Luke’s gospel (Luke 24:13–32; come ne scrive Luca | che Cristo apparve a’ due ch’erano in via, Purg. XXI.7–8)

 23 See Wetherbee 2008, 161. 24 Quint 1975 on Inferno 9; Butler 2003 on Inferno 31.

The Road to Emmaus: Different Patterns of Following  

where two disciples encounter the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus, but do not recognise him until He breaks bread with them in consecration of the Eucharist:25 Now behold, two of them were traveling that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. So it was, while they conversed and reasoned, that Jesus Himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know Him. … Now it came to pass, as He sat at the table with them, that He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight. Luke 24:13–16, 30–31

In William Franke’s reading of Dante’s Statius through Luke’s gospel, the emphasis lies upon the way in which revelatory truth relies upon the lived experience of the reader: ‘Dante similarly emphasises how Statius’ recognition of the Christian truth latent in Virgil’s text stems from his own personal experience in a world in which Christ is made present.’26 Yet what is clear is that on his first appearance in Purgatory, it is Statius who plays the role of Jesus at Emmaus, thus lending him an authoritative air which Virgil cannot match, and providing for the pilgrim the revelatory Christian truth underpinning Virgil’s writing, that is, the Christian message hidden in Eclogue 4 (itself the text which underpins the end of the Thebaid). As the ascent of Purgatory recommences, the poets move more rapidly with Statius now acting as their guide (prendemmo la via con men sospetto | per l’assentir di quell’anima degna, XXII.125–6, ‘we took our way with less uncertainty because of the assent of that elect soul’). The simple message has huge implications for our secondary authors; following in another’s footsteps is not an admission of inferiority. What is more, just as the Christian Statius acquires superiority in following, so the later, medieval, vernacular poet Dante can, by virtue of his greater Christian understanding, surpass his predecessors. Statius’ Christianity is, of course, a pleasant fiction and a Dantean invention. Yet the model that this fictional Statius provides for Dante is enormously important. Different acts of following in footsteps in Cantos XXI and XXII underline not only the complexity of poetic relationships, but also how Dante subtly constructs these relationships in order to privilege his own position in the hierarchy.

 25 There are other important parallels: the earthquake and singing of the gloria in Canto 20 relate to the singing of the gloria at Luke 2:8–14 and the earthquake that marks Christ’s death at Para. 7.48; Statius’ greeting mimics the greeting Jesus gives to his disciples at Luke 24:34. 26 Franke 1994, 9.

  Afterword? Per te poeta fui: Dante’s Statius and the Re-Writing of Literary History While Statius initially acts as follower, he describes his connection with Virgil in a simile which complicates the picture: Ed elli a lui: “Tu prima m’invïasti verso Parnaso a ber ne le sue grotte, e prima appresso Dio m’alluminasti. Facesti come quei che va di notte, che porta il lume dietro e sé non giova, ma dopo sé fa le persone dotte...

Purg. XXII.64–9

And the other answered him: ‘Thou first directedst me to Parnassus to drink in its caves, and first, after God, enlightenedst me. Thou didst like him that goes by night and carries the light behind him and does not help himself but makes wise […]

Who is the follower here? Dante’s Statius exploits the tension between Virgil and himself adroitly through this image. More intriguing from our point of view is the picture that Dante paints as the trio ascends to the sixth Terrace on Purgatory: Elli givan dinanzi, e io soletto di retro, e ascoltava i lor sermoni, ch’a poetar mi davano intelletto.

Purg. XXII.127–9

They went in front and I by myself behind listening to their talk, which gave me understanding in making verse.

Very rapidly Dante-protagonist becomes the one who follows in footsteps and explicitly gains poetic knowledge in so doing, but also gains a sense of superiority by being an enlightened follower (which is, of course, the Lucretian role which Statius intends for the Thebaid). Interrelated with this increasingly complex picture of poetic hierarchy is the crucial scene with which Canto XXI ends, where Statius attempts to embrace the feet of his master, but is forbidden to do so by Virgil on the basis that shades cannot touch one another: Già s’inchinava ad abbracciar li piedi al mio dottor, ma el li disse: “Frate, non far, ché tu se’ ombra e ombra vedi”. Ed ei surgendo: “Or puoi la quantitate comprender de l’amor ch’a te mi scalda, quand’io dismento nostra vanitate, trattando l’ombre come cosa salda”.

Purg. XXI.130–6

The Road to Emmaus: Different Patterns of Following  

Already he was bending to embrace my teacher’s feet; but he said to him: ‘Brother, do not so, for thou art a shade and a shade thou seest.’ And he, rising: ‘Now thou canst understand the measure of love that burns in me for thee, when I forget our emptiness and treat shades as solid things,’

The logic in Purgatorio is inconsistent, as Dante-protagonist encounters a similar problem when he meets the Florentine musician Casella, yet the two Mantuan poets Virgil and Sordello (a 13th century poet of the Provençal dialect) are certainly able to embrace one another: Ohi ombre vane, fuor che ne l’aspetto! tre volte dietro a lei le mani avvinsi, e tante mi tornai con esse al petto.

Purg. II.79–81

O empty shades, except in semblance! Three times I clasped my hands behind him and as often brought them back to my breast. e ‘l dolce duca incominciava “Mantüa ...”, e l’ombra, tutta in sé romita, surse ver’ lui del loco ove pria stava, dicendo: “O Mantoano, io son Sordello de la tua terra!”; e l’un l’altro abbracciava.

Purg. VI.71–5

And the gentle leader began: ‘Mantua …’; and the shade, who had been all rapt within himself, sprang towards him from the place where he was, saying: ‘O Mantuan, I am Sordello of thy city.’ And the one embraced the other.

Certainly, these passages are carefully modelled upon the failed embraces in the Aeneid, where Aeneas tries and fails three times to embrace the ghosts of Creusa and Anchises (Aen. 2.792–4, 6.700–2),27 yet the logic is obscure, if there is any at all; does Dante’s embrace fail because he is among the living, while the equally insubstantial Sordello and Virgil succeed? And is Virgil therefore deceiving Statius by refusing his attention? Statius certainly seems to understand that shades are insubstantial and therefore cannot touch one another, implying that the scene in Canto VI is an aberration. Furthermore, Statius imitates Mary Magdalene attempting to embrace Jesus following his crucifixion, an allusion which again feminises Statius and makes him subordinate:

 27 See Martinez 1995, 167.

  Afterword? Per te poeta fui: Dante’s Statius and the Re-Writing of Literary History Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father…” John 20:1728

Whilst it is tempting to read the emptiness of the shades as a metapoetic indication of the constructedness of Dante’s Virgil and Statius, there does seem to be a crucial difference between these earlier scenes of embracing and that of Statius and Virgil, which is that Statius attempts to embrace Virgil’s feet. The detail is important in that it takes us back to the final lines of the Thebaid, where Statius encourages his poem not to follow too closely in the Aeneid’s footsteps. Vestigia refers most naturally to footsteps or may be used metaphorically to mean traces of other kinds (as in Dido’s uestigia at Aen. 4.23 or Guinizelli’s vestigio at Purg. XXVI.106). Yet Dante also uses vestigge to mean the path that is trodden (Purg. XXXIII.108) and the Latin uestigium also refers to that which creates the footprint.29 Thus in Canto XXI, Statius literally attempts to get too close to Virgil’s uestigia and breaks his own injunction. Dante thus emphasises not only a posture of absolute deference, but also the way in which Statius maintains his own power by keeping a discrete distance from his predecessor.

. Vernacular and Latin Traditions and the Notion of Renaissance Succession At this point it seems pertinent to broaden our discussion and see how Statius might act as a model for Dante’s own poetics. Dante’s attitude towards the 13th century vernacular poets whom he meets on his journey, Virgils to his Statius one might say, is every bit as self-effacing as that of Statius. The encounter with Sordello prompts Dante to a tirade against the (extremely messy) political condition of Italy at the beginning of the 14th century. We have already witnessed his reverence for Guinizelli, but we should note also how Dante links their use of vernacular with their survival: E io a lui: “Li dolci detti vostri, che, quanto durerà luso moderno, faranno cari ancora i loro incostri”.

Purg. XXVI.112–14

 28 For negative connotations of such an embrace, see Matthew 4:19. 29 L&S s.v. uestigium B.1.

Vernacular and Latin Traditions and the Notion of Renaissance Succession  

And I to him: ‘Those sweet lines of yours, which so long as the modern use shall last will make their ink still dear.’

In the same Canto, Guinizelli introduces Dante to another Provençal poet, Arnaut Daniel, who is even permitted to speak in his own language (XXVI.140–7). Much like Statius himself, Dante-protagonist is highly reverential of his predecessors, and the attitude towards classical poetry in the Commedia is, by and large, one of veneration rather than anything more antagonistic. This, however, does not sit well with the oppositions between vernacular poetry and Latin poetry that Dante constructs in his other works where the vernacular is unequivocally the superior language in which to write:30 harum quoque duarum nobilior est uulgaris De Vulgari Eloquentia 1.1.4 Of these two the nobler is the vernacular

The contrast between this Dante, who seems utterly self-confident as regards his classical predecessors in more minor works, and the Dante who, in his greatest composition, seems extremely deferential both to classical and vernacular antecedents is mirrored by the attitude visible in Statius’ own poetry; we have seen the respectful and anxious stance at the end of the Thebaid, but this stands in contrast to his much more assertive and positive outlook in later poetry (cf. e.g. Silvae 4.7.25–8, 5.3.60–3, 233–8; Ach. 1.12–13).31 Given Dante’s ignorance of the Silvae, such correspondences as we find there must be coincidental, but this seems all the more instructive as it demonstrates both poets positioning themselves within the canon in similar ways. In any event, we can construct a reading of Dante where the poet is ambivalent and cagey about his own superiority and the significant marker for such self-positioning within any poetic canon is that closing passage of Statius’ Thebaid. No wonder then, that Dante’s own successors used that classical passage as a model text when finishing their own works; Sta-

 30 It is ironic to expound such an ideal in a Latin text. See also Convivia 1.7.1–4 with Martinez 1995, 151–4. 31 See above, introduction, with Rosati 2011; and Bessone 2014. It is tempting to compare the poetic catalogues in Canto XXII.94–114 with Statius’ catalogue of poets at Silvae 5.3.146–59. Note that both Convivio and de Vulgari Eloquentia were published in 1305, Purgatorio in 1315, while the Thebaid was published in c. AD 92, Silvae 4 in c. AD 95. Where we detected a growing confidence in Statius as his career progressed, Dante’s confidence in his vernacular form is already well established.

  Afterword? Per te poeta fui: Dante’s Statius and the Re-Writing of Literary History tius’ vive precor is reworked by Boccaccio (Filocolo 5.97, Teseida 12.84–6), Petrarch (Africa 9.475–83) and Chaucer (Troilus and Criseyde 5.1786–92).32 Statius therefore provides the dominant closural model as well as a key pattern of literary affiliation for the poets of the early Italian renaissance. Following in the footsteps of one’s predecessors becomes a marker of excellence.

. uestigia semper adora: Reading Statius Reading Virgil through Reading Dante The appearance of Statius in Canto XXI of Purgatorio presents us with a complex and dynamic metapoetic image. Dante takes the end of the Thebaid as a key moment in an important text and incorporates it into his own literary and spiritual journey. We see Statius once more following in Virgil’s footsteps. Yet by virtue of the fiction of Statius as a secret Christian, Dante is able to transform the logic of literary succession in his own favour. Literary successors need no longer be viewed as secondary or inferior. The reasons for this process are manifold: Dante needs to establish himself as superior to his classical forebears, to establish vernacular poetry as superior to Latin, to prove himself as superior to his own vernacular predecessors. Dante looks to find his own space in the literary canon and this episode shows how he is willing to manipulate Roman literary history in order so to do. We get a glimpse of how Dante pictures himself as another literary follower and the relationship between this role and the central path towards spiritual illumination, and his own take on the tensions between imitation and originality. Yet as a reader of selfhood in Statius, we may be more interested in what such a set of readings might mean for a Flavian epicist caught at the crossroads between the traditions and originality of Augustan poetry and the brave new world of renaissance poetry, equipped with the religion and language to reinvigorate a moribund tradition. Dante certainly makes it clear that Statius is as valuable a text as any in the canon, but, given that we no longer live in a world where one needs to apologise for reading Flavian epic, we cannot simply suggest that Dante legitimates the scholarly activity of re-reading the Thebaid. Rather we should look at the way Dante constructs himself as one who follows Statius’ example and therefore as a special kind of poet, one with access to the best of both worlds, the higher truths of Christianity and the traditions of classical poetry. As a result, Statius himself partakes of this new and grander poetics.  32 See Barolini 1984, 261 n.75.

uestigia semper adora: Reading Statius Reading Virgil through Reading Dante  

Although Statius once more occupies a central role in the classical canon, his injunction to his poem not to follow the Aeneid too closely still encourages us to read our poet with what one might simplistically term ‘Virgilian eyes’. What Dante suggests to us therefore, is that we can take Statius on our own terms as never before and view the Flavian epic poet as carving his own niche in the literary canon and constructing his own poetics which in Dantean mode may follow in the footsteps of earlier poetry and nonetheless partake of higher truths. The degree to which Statius qua poet of the Thebaid needs to be re-written in order to function within Dantean poetics is remarkable. Statius is finally permitted to emerge into the world of the concrete universal as a Christian pilgrim, which in Dante is symbolised by his ascent into Paradise. The nihilism of Statius’ identity as it was presented to us in the Thebaid is replaced by an astonishing literary optimism.

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Index Rerum et Nominum Accius, Lucius 56 Achilles 42, 140, 222, 224–225 Adrastus 8, 11, 1–3–16, 17–19, 24–25, 27, 29–30, 35, 55, 68, 149 Aeneas 5, 18, 27, 42, 44, 49, 73, 88, 127, 131, 140, 162, 164, 166–167, 205–206, 211, 220, 227 Aeschylus 42 Agrestis, Julius 104–105, 109 Aletes 87–91, 110, 111 ‘aliquis’ 87–91, 110 Allecto 122, 131–134, 141 Alexander Mosaic, the 140 Amata 132–133 Amphiaraus 147, 149, 175–176, 200 Amphion xlv, 169, 183–196, 197–198 Amyclas 194 Anchises 167, 233 Andromache 38, 150 Antigone 44–45, 81–82, 84, 147, 149, 188, 193, 211, 212 Antimachus of Colophon 187 Antiope 193 Apollo, Apollo and Daphne 25–26, 38, 81, 182, 194 Arachne 38 Argia 18–19, 22, 24–26, 28–29, 37–38, 44–45, 74, 82, 84, 188, 211 Argos xliv, 1, 4, 5, 8, 17, 19–22, 24–26, 27–29, 31, 33, 37, 67, 69, 70, 74, 77, 116, 127, 154, 163, 165, 201 Ariadne 165, 169 Aristaeus 166 Aristotle xxx Artaxerxes xx Arulenus Rusticus 93–94, 110 Astyanax 98, 100 Athamas 133–134, 137, 185 Athene xiii, 11, 38, 102 Atreus 83, 142 Augustine, Saint xxx Bacchus xvii–xviii, xxi, 71, 137, 163, 165, 171, 179, 185, 227

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110717990-007

Barchiesi, Alessandro 38 Barthes, Roland 214 Beatrice 215, 229 Bernstein, Neil 15–16 Bessone, Federica 186, 197 Bloom, Harold 49 Boccaccio, Giovanni 236 Bosco, Umberto & Giovanni Reggio 217 Briguglio, Stefano 110 Brownlee, Kevin 225–226 Brutus, Marcus Junius 56 Burke, Edmund xli–xlii Cadmus 77, 185–186 Caesar, Gaius Julius 92–93 Callimachus, Callimacheanism xxviii, 162, 164, 166, 168–169, 173, 180–182, 187, 189, 197, 202, 206–207, 211 Cannae, battle of 91 Capaneus 67, 76, 83–84, 101, 190–191, 200–201 Casella 233 Cato, Marcus Porcius 92–93, 107–109 Catullus, Gaius Valerius 165, 169, 175, 187 Chaucer, Geoffrey 236 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 48, 51–53, 56–57, 99 Clearchus, son of Rhamphias xix Clementia, clementia 54, 92, 116, 119, 138, 151, 155–157 Cornelia Metella 206 Coroebus 16 Cremona, 2nd battle of 105 Creon xliv–xlv, 45, 49, 50, 55, 58, 61, 64, 68–70, 75, 77–82, 84, 86–87, 111, 113– 117, 119, 122, 150–151, 153, 155, 162, 188 Creusa 18, 205–206, 233 Crotopus 55 crudelitas 53–54, 113 Culex, pseudo-Virgil xxiii–xxix, 166, 191 Cyclic Thebaid 146 Cyrus the Younger xx–xxi

  Index Rerum et Nominum Dante Alighieri xlv, 214–237 P. Decius Mus 99 Demodocus 164 Descartes, Réné xxix, xxxi, xxxii–xxxv, xxxix, xlii, 8, 160, 202 devotio 79–80, 99–101, 119–120 Diana 194 Dido 91, 131, 166, 220, 227–228 Diomedes 196, 221–222 Dis 76 Domitian [emperor AD 81–96] xiii, xxv, 54–55, 60, 85, 91, 93–94, 119–120, 124, 170, 199, 202, 216 Dolon 196 Donatus, Aelius xxi, 167, 206, 211 Dymas xlv, 83, 91, 95–96, 101, 168, 191– 193, 195–196, 197, 205 ecphrasis / ekphrasis 37, 131–141, 158– 160, 171–175 Emmaus 230–231 Ennius, Quintus 178 Envy / Livor / Phthonos 182, 204, 211– 212 Epictetus xxx–xxxi Eteocles xxxix, 2, 3, 8, 13, 16, 21, 22–23, 33, 36–44, 49, 50, 55–56, 58–70, 75– 78, 81, 82–84, 86–90, 96, 102–110, 111–117, 118–120, 121, 144–145, 147, 157, 183, 195, 200, 204, 211, 221–222 Euripides xx, 42, 100–101 Euryalus 192–193, 196 Eurydice [wife of Lycurgus] 165–166, 171 Eurydice [wife of Orpheus] 28, 205–206, 227–228 Evadne 155, 158, 159 exempla, exemplarity xii, xxxi, xliii, xliv, 47–53, 70, 78, 116, 119–120, 123 Fantuzzi, Marco 193 Feeney, Denis 123 furor 14, 61, 82–84, 93, 112–114, 157 Gallus, Cornelius 10, 208–209 Ganiban, Randall 42, 141, 200 Genette, Gerard 205 Gervais, Kyle 205–207

Giddens, Anthony xxxvii, xliii, 17 Gill, Christopher xxx–xxxii, xxxvii, 18 Girard, Réné 20–21, 158 Gowing, Alain 109 Guinizelli, Guido 226–227, 230, 234–235 Haemon 103–104, 106 Haemonides 102, 106 Hector xli, 38, 42, 44, 150 Hegel, G.W.F. xxxiv–xxxvii, xxxix, 144, 201, 214 Heidegger, Martin xxxii Heinrich, Alan 99–100 Herennius Senecio 94, 110 Herodotus xiv–xviii, xx–xxi Hershkowitz, Debra 21 Heslin, Peter 165, 167, 169, 187, 208 Hill, D.E. 71 Hill, Timothy 92 Hippolyte 151, 154 Hippomedon 84, 200–201 Homer xli–xlii, 37, 49, 88, 103–104, 159– 160, 167, 178 Hopleus xlv, 168, 191–193, 195–196, 197, 205 Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] 126, 157, 181, 207 House of the Faun, Pompeii 140 Hypsipyle xvii, xlv, 157, 164–170, 171, 179, 227 identity xi–xiv, xxix–xliii, xliv–xlv, 1–8, 14–16, 17–22, 24–30, 31–34, 35–46, 47–51, 52, 55–57, 61–62, 64–65, 68, 70, 72, 76–77, 79–80, 82, 89, 91–110, 121, 123–131, 141–144, 147, 149, 164– 183 Ino 133–134, 137, 185–186 intertext, intertextuality xi–xxiv, 11, 21– 29, 44, 49, 65, 103, 123, 127, 138, 142– 143, 163–170, 179–191, 205–211, 217– 225 Jason 91, 165 Jocasta 31–32, 56, 68, 96

Index Rerum et Nominum  

Jupiter xxxix, xliv, 3, 21–22, 24, 49, 50, 55, 58, 67, 70–77, 84, 97, 123, 155, 157, 193–194 Juvenal [Decimus Junius Juvenalis] xiv– xxv, 219, 230 Juno 75, 122, 133, 137, 140, 141, 185 Kant, Immanuel xxxii, xlii, 7–8 Keith, Alison 177 Lacan, Jacques xxxii, xxxvi, xxxvii, xxxix, 8, 147 Lagière, Anne xxxix, xlii Laius 65, 75, 185 Langia xviii, xlv, 179 Lavinia 18, 28 Leto 194 Leucothea 137 libertas 101, 106–107, 109 libido 53–54, 61, 111–113 Linus 16 Little Iliad 98 Livy [Titus Livius] 48, 99 Long, A.A. xxix–xxx, [pseudo-]Longinus xl–xliii, 7 Lovatt, Helen 29 Lucan [Marcus Annaeus Lucanus] xii, xl, 13–14, 73, 92–93, 95, 99, 104, 140, 141, 157, 178, 183, 187, 206–207, 230 Lucilius, Gaius 181 Lucretius [Titus Lucretius Carus] 207, 232 Lycaon 71 Lycophron xv–xvi Lycurgus 55, 164, 167, 171 Maeon 61–65, 80, 83–84, 86–87, 89–91, 95–96, 101–110, 111, 118–119 Malamud, Martha 207 Manto 65 Marcellus, Marcus Claudius 126–127 Mars 16, 76, 161, 167 Martial [Marcus Valerius Martialis] xxiii, 85, 93, 108, 110 Martinez, Ronald 217 Mary Magdalene 233 McGuire, Donald 95, 108, 110–111 Medusa 140

Melanippus / Menalippo [in Dante] xiii, 223–224 Meliboea 194 Melicertes 137 Menoeceus 68–69, 79–80, 84, 91, 95– 101, 102, 118–120 Mezentius 83 Midas 38 Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli 140 Nemea xviii, 29 Neoptolemus 98 Nepos, Cornelius 48 Nero [emperor AD 54–68], Neronian Rome 54, 85, 91–95 Newlands, Carole 179 Niobe 169, 194 Nisus 192–193, 196 Odysseus / Ulysses 11, 19, 38, 44, 49, 89, 98, 164, 196, 221–222 Oedipus xliii, xliv–xlv, 4, 16, 56, 73–75, 80–81, 86, 88, 97, 111, 121–151, 152, 157, 160–162, 164, 169–170, 185, 191, 198–199, 201–203, 210, 213 Oeneus 16 Opheltes 29, 164, 166, 168, 171–175, 191, 206 Orestes 89, 139 Orpheus 28–29, 187, 189, 205–206, 227–229 Ovid [Publius Ovidius Naso] xii, xxi, 25, 29, 38, 55, 70–72, 75, 84, 91, 113, 133– 135, 138, 149, 178, 184–186, 191, 198, 201, 206–207, 211–212 Palaemon 137, 149, 185 Pan xviii, 38 Parthenopaeus 191, 193, 195, 200, 229 Peirano Garrison, Irene 205 Penelope 38 Perseus 140 persona xiv, xliii, 47–51, 56, 62, 65, 70, 78–79, 113, 170, 179–182, 197 Petrarch [Francesco Petrarca] 236 Petronius [Titus Petronius Niger] 93

  Index Rerum et Nominum Phaethon xx–xxi, 29–30 Phineus 127 Phorbas 193–194 Pietas 68, 100 pietas 98, 192 Pindar 185–186, 193, 196, 197–201 Plato xxx Plutarch xxxi Polynices xix–xxi, xxxix, xliii, xliv, 1–46, 47, 49, 55–56, 58–62, 68, 72, 74, 76, 78, 82–84, 88, 111, 114–117, 119, 121, 123–127, 131, 137, 144–145, 147, 151– 154, 157, 158, 160–162, 164, 167–168, 170, 183, 185, 191, 198, 200–201, 203– 204, 211, 221–222 Pompey [Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus] 56, 206 Porter, James xl Primus, Antonius 105 princeps 90, 119–120 Propertius, Sextus xxi, 9–10, 154, 187– 191, 196, 197, 199, 203, 207–210, 212 Quint, David 221 Quintilian [Marcus Fabius Quintilianus] 176 Rebeggiani, Stefano 29, 104, 151–152 Ripoll, François 95, 101, 106 Ruggiero degli Ubaldini 223 saevus, saevitia 54, 58, 84, 112–113 Saguntum 91 Schelling, F.W.J. xxxiv–xxxv Schnapp, Jeffrey 221 Scipio Africanus 91 selfhood xii–xiii, xxix–xliii, xliv, 1, 7, 30, 44–46, 48, 121–122, 142, 147, 150–154, 170, 203, 213, 236 Semele 75, 185–186 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus [the Elder] 53 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus [the Younger] xii, xxx, xl, 83, 94–95, 98, 100, 109, 122, 127, 142–143 Shackleton Bailey, D.R. 193 Silius Italicus 60, 91 Sordello 233

sphragis xlv, 203–213, 228–229 Stoicism xxx–xxxi, 48–49, 101, 105–108, 119 storm, as sublime or metaphysical xv, xli, xliv, 4–8, 14, 16–17, 19, 28, 30, 32– 34, 35, 44, 46, 76, 125–127, 137, 191, 201 subjectivity, subjectivisation xxix– xxxviii, xlii–xliii, 1, 7–8, 18, 20, 30, 44, 124, 144, 158, 160, 170, 202–204, 213 sublime, the xxxix–xliii, xlv, 7–8, 14, 28, 30, 41, 44–46, 62, 72, 79–80, 121, 126, 137, 144, 152, 160, 183, 190–191, 201– 202 suicide 33, 58, 61, 63–64, 69, 79–80, 83, 86–87, 91–110, 118–120, 148, 192, 206 Suetonius [Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus] 54 Tacitus, Cornelius 54, 93–95, 104–105, 109–110 Tantalus 122, 142–143 Taylor, Charles xxx Teiresias 65, 80, 81, 83 Thebes xxvii–xix, xxxiii, xxxix, xliv–xlv, 2, 17, 20, 21–22, 24–25, 27, 31–44, 59–91, 98, 102–110, 115–116, 118, 122, 127, 161–163, 165, 190, 199 Thersander 185, 198 Theseus xxxix, xliii, xliv–xlv, 55, 114–117, 118–119, 151–163, 164, 169–170, 175, 188, 203, 213 Thiodamas xvi, 194–195 Thoas 165–166, 168–169 Thrasea Paetus 93–94, 108 Thyestes 83, 142–143 Tiberius [emperor AD 14–37] 54, 85, 91 Tibullus, Albius 111 Tisiphone xxxix, xliv, 2, 62, 73, 75, 76, 78, 84, 88, 111, 114, 122–123, 130–147, 165, 185, 201 Tissaphernes xix Tmolus 38 Turnus 42, 132–133 Tydeus xiii–xiv, 8, 10–16, 22–24, 33–35, 60–65, 83–84, 86–88, 90, 102–110, 112, 118, 127, 191, 200, 223–224

Index Rerum et Nominum  

tyranny xl, xliv, 49–120 Ugolino della Gherardesca 223 Valerius Flaccus, Gaius 60, 91 Valerius Maximus, Manius 48 Venus 21–22, 137, 165 Vespasian [emperor AD 69–79] 60 Vibius Maximus 198 Villa San Marco, Stabiae 140 Virgil [Publius Vergilius Maro] xxi–xxii, xxiii, xxx, xlv, 9–10, 13, 18, 28, 49, 73, 75, 83, 91, 99, 126–127, 132–135, 141– 143, 159–160, 167, 175, 178, 183, 192– 193, 195, 196, 197, 206–212, 215–237

Virtus 79, 98, 100 virtus 11, 14, 92, 101, 110, 119–120 vis 53, 113 Vitellius [emperor AD 69] 54, 104–105 Vulteius 92 Williams, Gordon 178 Wray, David 176 Xenophon xviii, 29, 179 Xerxes xvii Žižek, Slavoj xxxii–xl, xliii, xliv, 7, 8, 30, 144, 157

Index οf Sources Acts of the Apostles 2:2–4 221 Acts of the Arval Brethren AFA 55, column 2, 62–64

55 n.25

Callimachus Hymn to Apollo 103–113 106

182, 212 187

Callinus fr.1W

14 n.40

Catullus 64.1–2 64.55 64.61–62

xi n.1 169 169

Aeschylus Agamemnon 1282 Choephoroi 1042

89 n.100

Anthologia Latina 1111.13

103 n.148

[Apollodorus] Bibliotheca 3.5.6

Chaucer Troilus and Criseyde 5.1786–1792 236

194 n.83

Cicero Ad Atticum 2.19.3 56 n.29 9.4 51–53 16.2.3 56 n.29 De Finibus 2.61 78 n.84, 99 n.137 3.61 106 n.155 De Officiis 1.93–151 48 3.32 54 n.21 De Partitionibus Oratoriae 11 54 n.21 Paradoxa Stoicorum 2.17 26 n.66 Philippics 1.36 56 n.29 Post Reditum ad Quirites 1 79 n.84, 99 n.135 Pro Rege Deiotaro 43 54 n.22 Pro Sestio 48 79 n.84, 99 n.135 Republic 2.48 54 n.21 3.45 54 n.21

89 n.100

Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica 1.1–2 xi n.1 2.36 12 n.37 2.96–97 12 n.37 Apuleius Apologia 10

113 n.179

Archilochus fr.109W

14 n.40

Aristotle Politics 1314a4–5 1330b17–20

63 n.50 62 n.45

Boccaccio Filocolo 5.97 Teseida 12.84–86

236 236

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110717990-008

  Index οf Sources Tusculan Disputations 1.74 107 n.159 Verrines 2.5.115 54 n.22 Dante Commedia – Inferno 26.49–63 222 32.124–132 223 Commedia – Paradiso 7.48 231 n.25 Commedia – Purgatorio 2.79–81 233 6.71–75 233 9.34–45 224–225 21.7–8 230–231 21.1–13 216–217 21.7–13 215 21.13 229 21.19–21 215 21.22–37 215 21.82–99 216 21.91–93 224 21.91–99 218 21.94–99 229 21.98–99 225 21.103–129 230 21.130–132 216 21.133–134 219 22.10–12 219 22.25–26 230 22.64–69 219–220, 232 22.64–99 216 22.73 227 22.88–89 226 22.125–126 231 22.127–129 232 22.130–136 232–233 26.94–111 226–227 26.106 234 26.112–114 234–235 26.140–147 235 30.43–57 227–228 33.108 234 Convivia 1.7.1–4 235 n.30

De Vulgari Eloquentia 1.1.4 235 Dio Cassius 57.2–5 60.16 64.15 66.10.5 66.19.1 67.1.2 67.3.3 67.4.5 67.9.6 67.11.2–3 67.12.1–5 67.13 67.16.1 68.10 68.13 74.13.4

86 n.95 91 n.103 93 n.116 55 n.25 55 n.25 65 n.54 55 n.25 55 n.25 55 n.25 55 n.25 55 n.25 93 n.117 65 n.54 62 n.45 62 n.45 12 n.37

Dio of Prusa Oratio 13.1–2

55 n.25

Diodorus Siculus Bibliotheca 4.74.3

194 n.83

Diogenes Laertius 7.130 106 n.155 Donatus Vita Virgilia 37–39 42 Ennius Annales 157–159 Sk 266 Sk 481 Sk Thyestes J 296–297 W trg 369–370

206 xxii, 212

178 xiv n.10 19 n.54 156 n.81 156 n.81

Index οf Sources  

Euripides Bacchae 519–536 Electra 1024–1026 Fragment 360.16–18 Heracleidae 224 Hippolytus 1–57 Phoenissae 415–421 1370–1371 1379–1380 1388–1389 1395 1398–1399 Supplices 130–140 280 Troades 1133–1139

98 n.129

Florus 1.14.3

79 n.84, 99 n.137

163 n.104 99 n.134 99 n.134 89 n.100 200 n.98 11 n.32 12 n.37 42 12 n.37 12 n.37 12 n.37 11 n.32 89 n.100

Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 4F5 103 n.149 Gospel according to John 20:17 234 Gospel according to Luke 2:8–14 231 n.25 24:13–32 230–231 24:34 231 n.25 Gospel according to Matthew 4:19 234 n.28 Herodotus 6.105–112 7.43 7.58 7.108

xviii xvii xvii xvii

7.109 7.226.1–2

xvii xv

Hesiod Theogony 22–24

204 n.107

Homer Hymn to Apollo 165–176 Iliad 1.1 2.488–489 3.3–6 5.801 6.200–202 22.440–441 23.117–120 24.602–617 Odyssey 1.1 18.1–117 20.9–13 20.14–16 Horace Epodes 7.1–2 Odes 1.6.2 1.12.1–3 3.30 4.3.2–3 4.9.5–6 Satires 1.10.50–51 2.1.58 Hyginus Fabulae 8 9

204 n.107 xi n.1 211 n.123 167 11 10 n.27 38 178 194 n.83 xi n.1 11 19 19

13 n.40 103 n.148 xi n.1 207 111 n.170 103 n.148 181 126

163 n.104 194 n.83

Inscriptiones Graecae IG II2 3919 xxv

  Index οf Sources Juvenal 4.72–118 7.82–87

xxv xxiv

Laus Pisonis 232

103 n.148

Little Iliad fr. 20W

98 n.129

Livy 1.24.1–14 3.5.9 7.6.1–6 7.9.6–10.14 7.10.2–12 7.25.3–26.13 8.9–11.1 8.9.10 8.10.7 9.17.12 23.47.3 25.26.21

12 n.37 83 n.90 99 11 n.33 12 n.37 11 n.33 99 79 n.84, 101 99 11 n.33 12 n.37 115 n.186

[Longinus] Peri hupsous 7.2 10.3, 5, 6

xl xli–xlii

Lucan Bellum Civile 1.1 1.2 1.2–3 1.4 1.8 1.28–29 1.67 1.68–158 1.109–111 1.111–120 1.158 1.204–205 1.226 2.512–513 3.399–452 3.509–762

183 xi n.1 92 n.110 187 14 179 n.45 13, 73 73 59 n.36 74 n.72 73 181 n.50 74 n.73 82 n.89 178 181 n.49

5.504–596 5.727–728 5.734–738 5.773–775 7.552–562 8.556–557 8.557–558 9.980–986

5 n.12 25 n.64 21 n.59 206 208 n.120 92 n.110 26 n.66 207

Lucretius De Rerum Natura 1.24 1.29 2.35–36 3.3–4 5.55–56 6.1138–1286

xi n.1 xi n.1 139 n.39 207 207 124 n.9

Lycophron Alexandria 1412–34 1413–1414 1424–1425

xv xviii n.21 xvii–xviii

Macrobius Saturnalia 3.9.9–13

99 n.132

Manilius Astronomica 1.11 2.824 4.246 4.513 4.867 4.909–910

128 n.20 128 n.20 128 n.20 128 n.20 128 n.20 128 n.20

Martial 1.3.3 1.8 1.78 6.32 8.55 11.4 11.7 11.13

26 n.66 108 108 n.163 93 n.116 xiii n.31 90 n.101 85 85

Index οf Sources  

Nicander Alexipharmica 104–105

180 n.46

Olympiodorus Commentary on Plato’s Phaedo 4.403 106 n.155 Orosius 3.9.3 Ovid Amores 1.2.8 1.15 1.15.1 1.15.7–12 1.15.9 1.15.26–27 1.15.39–42 3.6.1–2 3.9.25 3.15.7–14 Ars Amatoria 1.6 1.673–674 1.711–712 2.4 3.718 Epistulae ex Ponto 1.2 Heroides 12.211 13.30 Metamorphoses 1.1–3 1.163–165 1.163–261 1.209–243 1.240–241 1.253–265 1.514–525 2.836–4.603 3.290 3.701–703 4.564 4.481–485

79 n.84, 99 n.137

112 n.176 207 211–212 211–212 103 n.148 207 n.117 211–212 181 n.50 103 n.148 205 n.108 114 n.182 113 n.180 114 n.182 103 n.148 112 n.176

4.490–499 4.519–530 5.222 5.587–588 6.22–23 6.146–312 6.303–312 6.458 6.562 7.120–121 7.133 7.142–143 7.523–613 11.169–170 11.474–569 13.415–417 15.871–879 Remedia Amoris 373 Tristia 1.1 1.7.13–26 3.1 3.7.45–54 3.14 5.12

133–134 137 74 n.73 181 n.49 38 194 n.83 169 n.15 58 n.32 58 n.32 12 n.37 12 n.37 12 n.37 124 n.9 38 5 n.12 98 n.129 205 n.108, 207 103 n.148 207 206–207 207 207 n.117 207 207

207

Pausanias 2.21.10 9.9.3 9.26.5

194 n.85 116 n.192 193 n.81

112 n.176 25 n.64

Persius 6.11

103 n.148

xi n.1 60 n.38 71 60 n.38, 71 72 n.67 72 25 184 74 n.73 163 n.103 188 n.67 133

Petrarch Africa 9.475–483

236

Philostratus Vita Apollonii 7.7

55 n.25

Pindar Isthmians 5.50

xiv n.10

  Index οf Sources Olympians 2.1–2 2.22–30 2.38–45

xi n.1 185–186 198–199

Plato Republic 657b–c

63 n.50

Plautus Miles Gloriosus 79–155 Mostellaria 213 Pliny Panegyricus 48.3 Plutarch Antony 20.3–4 50.1 Aratus 51–53 Galba 27.4 Otho 17 Sertorius 10.3–4 Sulla 30.4–5 Polybius 1.44.5 3.43.8

200 n.98 78 n.80

54 n.21

83 n.90 115 n.186 78 n.81 83 n.90 93 n.116 78 n.81 78 n.81

12 n.37 12 n.37

Porphyrio Commentum in Horati Carmina 1.6.7.2–3 19 n.53 Procopius De Bellis 1.13.32,38 7.31.16

12 n.37 12 n.37

Propertius 1.1 1.1.9–14 1.7.1–4 1.7.15–20 1.9.9–10 1.9.30–32 2.28.29 3.2.1–10 3.17.12 3.20.6 3.24.15–16 4.1.57 4.1.65–66 4.3.11–12 4.3.42–43 4.3.49 4.7.93–94

112 n.177 10 187 188 188–189 188–189 103 n.148 189 n.71 112 n.176 32 n.79 114 n.182 189 n.69 205 n.108 25 n.64 154 25 n.64 32 n.79

Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 1.1.1 6.3.96 10.3.17 12.10.58 12.10.60 12.10.61

54 n.21 19 n.53 176 166 n.7 166 n.7 5 n.17

Sallust Jugurtha 60.3–4

12 n.37

Scholia Homer Odyssey 2.12 Pindar Nemeans 7.155a

113 n.179 88 n.99

[Seneca] Octavia 236–240 971

142 n.51 103 n.150

Seneca the Elder Controversiae 1.7 2.5 3.6 4.7

53 n.19 53 n.19 53 n.19 53 n.19

Index οf Sources  

5.8 7.6 9.4

53 n.19 53 n.19 53 n.19

Seneca the Younger Ad Marciam 16.2.5 143 n.53 De Clementia 1.25.1 54 n.21 1.26.4 54 n.21 De Providentia 2.9–10 107 n.159 5.8 100 n.139 De Tranquillitate 11.4–5 100 n.139 Epistles 14.13 109 24.3–4 107 n.159 30.8 100 n.139 67.9 79 n.84, 99 n.137 70.20–27 99 n.139 74.21 95 n.122 Natural Questions 1.pr.17.3 143 n.53 6.32.4 100 Oedipus 36 142 n.51 571–573 163 n.100 965 127 Phoenissae 295–302 111 n.173 Thyestes 1–13 143 1–23 142 23–42 111 n.173 23–67 142, 143 68–83 142 83–86 142 86–87 143 87–89 142 87–100 142 96–100 143 101–121 142 106–119 142 120–121 143 446–470 59 n.36

Troades 522–523 931 1080–1087 1090–1091 1093–1096 1102–1103 1110–1117 1118–1119

19 n.53 103 n.150 98 98 98 98 100 100

Sidonius Carmina 7.287–289

12 n.37

Silius Italicus Punica 1.1, 3 2.612–695 2.636–649 3.113 4.42–44 4.457–459 4.570–703 9.173–177 11.186–188 13.261–298 13.374–380 14.501 14.611–615

xi n.1 91 n.102 148 n.64, 157 n.83 25 n.64 181 n.49 91 n.102 181 n.49 91 n.102 91 n.102 91 n.102 91 n.102 78 n.80 115 n.186

Solon fr.4W

14 n.40

Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 50 89 n.100 498–499 99 n.134 746 89 n.100 Statius Achilleid 1.4 1.242–250 1.650 1.846–847

103 n.148 225 167 n.8 19 n.53

  Index οf Sources De Bello Germanico Morel–Büchner FPL3 333–4 = schol. ad Juv. 4.94 xxv n.35 Silvae 1 praef. xxii, xiv, 176 1.5.8–9 xiii n.30 2.7.73–74 xiii n.30, xxvi 3.2.39–41 186 3.2.40–1 xiii n.30, 192 3.2.142–143 xiii n.30 3.3.147 114 n.184 3.5.13 xxvi 3.5.28–36 202 3.5.33–39 201–202 3.5.40–43 202 3.5.44–51 202 3.5.54–57 207 n.117 4.2.65–67 xxv 4.4.70 xxvi 4.7.25–28 170 n.17, 197 5.1.40 116 n.191 5.2.158–159 xxvi 5.3.29–33 xxvi n.39 5.3.100–103 xxv 5.3.134–135 xxv n.36 5.3.146–149 235 n.31 5.3.156–157 xv 5.3.195–208 xxv 5.3.225–238 xxvi n.39, 170 n.17 5.3.233–238 197–198 5.3.234 200 Thebaid 1.1 xi, xviii, 119 1.1–3 183, 220 1.1–17 124 1.3 177, 202 1.3–4 xi 1.4 209 1.3–16 168, 184–185 1.9–10 189 1.11 187 n.65 1.15 186 1.16 2 n.3 1.16–17 198 1.17–33 xiii, xxvi, 103 n.147, 124, 199 1.17–18 xiii

1.17 1.32 1.33–34 1.33–45 1.37–143 1.42–45 1.45 1.45–46 1.46–55 1.46–87 1.48–51 1.55 1.56–74 1.74–79 1.79–80 1.85–87 1.87 1.88–89 1.88–91 1.92 1.92–93 1.93–94 1.97 1.98–99 1.100–101 1.101–102 1.103–113 1.105–106 1.106–109 1.107–109 1.114–120 1.121–122 1.123–130 1.124 1.125 1.127–128 1.129–130 1.131–136 1.131–138 1.100–101 1.105–106 1.139–140 1.140–141 1.144–151 1.144–164 1.150 1.152–155

xxvi, 169 xiii 187 124, 199–201 112 2 n.3 202 201 124–128 74, 88 169 97 128–131 129–131 97 131 146–147 125 n.13 134–135 137 135 136, 137 136 136, 137 129 n.23 135 135–136 139 124 n.9 142 136–137 137 2, 75, 111–112, 114 60 n.39, 124 n.9 111 62, 78, 110 112 2, 2 n.5, 3 n.8, 59, 112 145, 157 129 n.23 139 119 115 37, 59–60, 146 3 n.8, 112 62, 78 60

Index οf Sources  

1.164–168 1.165 1.168–173 1.168–196 1.169–170 1.171 1.173–196 1.175 1.176–217 1.178–180 1.186–196 1.189–190 1.193–4 1.196 1.197–302 1.205–208 1.216–218 1.224–225 1.236–241 1.243–245 1.247 1.248–283 1.256–258 1.300 1.302 1.303–311 1.312–313 1.312–314 1.320–323 1.316 1.316–323 1.326–328 1.339 1.345–357 1.346–347 1.353–354 1.358–375 1.361–2 1.364 1.365 1.366 1.367–369 1.370–375 1.372 1.376–382 1.377–378 1.401–404

3–4 3 87 87 90 3 n.8, 87 3 3, 117 87 3, 88 111 3, 88 3 n.8 3 71 71 n.65 72 72 74–75 73 16 n.47 71 75 75 73 75 n.77 10, 29 4 4 10 61 5 58 n.32 5 5 n.13, 76 8 5–6 8 8 8 6, 8, 76 6–8 7–8 8 9, 35 n.82 10, 30 n.77 10–11

1.401–446 1.410–417 1.402–403 1.403 1.408 1.412–413 1.414 1.418–419 1.418–427 1.421–426 1.423 1.426–427 1.428 1.428–434 1.429–430 1.430 1.438–441 1.451 1.452–465 1.465–467 1.543 1.673–681 1.682 1.689–690 2.1–70 2.89–119 2.152–172 2.306–308 2.313–332 2.319–321 2.315 2.316–321 2.319–321 2.332–339 2.335 2.338 2.352–6 2.383–3.113 2.384 2.384–388 2.393–409 2.399 2.406–408 2.410 2.410–411 2.411 2.415–451

8 10–11 13 14 10, 12 14 14 14 11 12 14 127 11 11 13 14 13 15, 15 n.44 16 15, 167 139 n.39 15, 167 16, 17 16 n.47 75 n.77 75 n.77 16 16–17 61 16–17 22 20 22 18 22 19 n.54 21–22 61 3 n.9 61–62 62 62, 110–112 60 111 62 63 n.50 62

  Index οf Sources 2.430–439 2.435–436 2.451–453 2.452–469 2.455 2.466 2.466–468 2.476–479 2.480–481 2.682–689 2.690–703 2.692 2.693 3.1–7 3.18–21 3.40–77 3.41–42 3.42 3.50–52 3.58 3.58–78 3.62 3.63–77 3.66 3.75–77 3.75–77 3.77 3.77–81 3.81–91 3.82 3.87–88 3.90–91 3.92–93 3.93–95 3.94 3.96–98 3.99–102 3.99–113 3.100–103 3.102 3.102–104 3.176 3.206–208 3.206–218 3.213 3.214 3.214–217

20 16 n.45, 16 n.47 86 62 189 n.72 62 86 86, 87 81 n.86 102 102 103 n.148 103 n.150 64–65, 112 n.176 64–65 102 106–107 103 n.148 106–107 104 63, 111 105 105–106 106 n.155 102 96 n.126 86, 106 n.155 63 63 111 86, 96 102 87, 104 104 107 63 107 96 101 105 102–103 88 88 111 88 n.99 3 n.9 89

3.216 3.348–364 3.365–381 3.366 3.366–367 3.369–370 3.373–375 3.374 3.378–379 3.379–381 3.381–382 3.691–692 3.695 3.696 3.700 3.704–710 3.705–706 4.74–92 4.84 4.356–358 4.377–405 4.406–414 4.414–645 4.461–486 4.488–500 4.490 4.501–518 4.611 4.652–3 4.652–696 4.697–704 4.780–781 4.804–830 4.805–823 4.811–812 4.812–830 4.816–817 5.1–2 5.11–16 5.13–14 5.20–27 5.28–39 5.29–30 5.29–39 5.33 5.33–36 5.47–334

108 n.161 23 23, 61 35 n.81 127 24 24 24 24 24 23 26 82 n.89 26 26 n.66 24–25 25 n.64 26–28 28 n.72 190 65 65 65 65–66 66 81 67 189 n.72 xviii 142 n.52 xvii 167 n.8 xvii 180–18 xviii 168 xix xvii, 167 167 168 167 165 167 167 157 167, 212 n.125 165

Index οf Sources  

5.148 5.313–319 5.335–485 5.363–411 5.486–498 5.549–587 5.661–669 5.723–724 6.54–78 6.84–117 6.109–110 6.242–248 6.296–549 6.316 6.316–326 6.396–399 6.407–409 6.424–426 6.451 6.467 6.467–468 6.491–504 6.504–505 6.507–512 6.511–512 6.512 6.513 6.549 6.710–730 7.1–33 7.108–144 7.145–192 7.277 7.278–279 7.279 7.281 7.351–353 7.456 7.477 7.492–500 7.500 7.507–509 7.534–537 7.539–559 7.558–563 7.798–799

13 n.38 166, 168 165 5 n.12 165 177 167 169 37 n.91, 166, 171, 172–173 166, 171, 174–179 177 169 n.14 29 29 61 30 30 29, 30 29 29 29, 30 xix–xx 29 xix 30 29 29 29, 30 227 76 xviii 71 194 194 193 194 194 190 n.73 31 31–32, 35 n.81 150 n.70 31–32 32 33 33 149

7.818–820 8.69–70 8.141–142 8.233 8.240–254 8.255–258 8.286–93 8.412–418 8.610–611 8.751–761 8.753 8.757 8.762–764 9.1 9.1–95 9.12 9.49–67 9.294 9.300 9.777 10.249–261 10.347–448 10.387–388 10.431–438 10.431–440 10.445–448 10.449–451 10.489–492 10.558 10.674–677 10.713–714 10.720–722 10.720–734 10.756–759 10.756–773 10.769 10.776–777 10.777–782 10.787 10.790–791 10.793–814 10.796 10.800 10.806–809 10.813 10.815–820

149 74 n.73 149 189 n.72 147 127 xvi xiv 125 n.13 xiii, 223 xiv xiv 140 12 67 63 n.50 34–35 82 n.89 156 n.81 193 35 n.84 192 193 195 96, 192 96, 168, 170 n.18, 192–193 195–196 196 13 n.38 79 99 69 96 79 n.84, 80, 98 96 98 98–99 100 189 n.72 80 96 98 97 97 97 97

  Index οf Sources 10.870–882 11.21–26 11.97–112 11.119–135 11.130–135 11.205–238 11.208–209 11.231–233 11.242–243 11.257–536 11.262–264 11.263–265 11.264–267 11.269–296 11.297 11.297–302 11.303–306 11.309 11.387–573 11.392–395 11.396–402 11.396–402 11.403–408 11.420–424 11.429–435 11.439–442 11.449–450 11.453–456 11.496 11.497–573 11.498 11.499 11.501–502 11.503 11.509 11.510 11.515 11.516 11.518–530 11.539–540 11.525 11.530–535 11.537–540 11.548–551 11.552–553 11.554 11.556

190–191 101 61 76 76 67 76 67 67 68 86 101 68 68, 86 86 68–69 69, 70 69 36 36 59 n.35 36–38 39, 41 43 39–40 40 40 40 71 61 40 40 37 40 40 40 40 40–41 41–42 41–42 63 n.50 42 68 43 42 169 n.13 42

11.557–560 11.559 11.560–573 11.568–573 11.574–579 11.580–581 11.582 11.582–584 11.587–592 11.594–595 11.596–598 11.600 11.605 11.607 11.608–609 11.611 11.615 11.619–621 11.621 11.624 11.629–633 11.648–664 11.654 11.652–654 11.655–666 11.662 11.664–665 11.665–681 11.666–667 11.673 11.673–674 11.673–707 11.674 11.689–690 11.692–693 11.708–739 11.740–741 11.746 11.748–754 11.750–755 11.755–756 11.758–759 12.1 12.94–102 12.103 12.187–193 12.312–315

43–44 208 42 43 147 n.63, 207–210 147–148 148 147 n.62 148 147 148 147 149 149 150 n.72 147 114 n.184 149–150 157, 212 148 148 77–79 114 101 62, 110–111, 114, 116 79 150 80–81 111 86 150 n.72 111 150 116 125 81 86–87 150 81 150–151 81 xix 60 n.38 64 101 28 38, 44

Index οf Sources  

12.333–337 12.356–358 12.420–428 12.423 12.429–436 12.447–451 12.464–480 12.471–474 12.474–478 12.481–518 12.493–494 12.519–520 12.519–539 12.524–525 12.527–528 12.533–539 12.546–586 12.575–580 12.588 12.589 12.593–596 12.597 12.599 12.601–605 12.606–610 12.608 12.611 12.611–613 12.611–638 12.649 12.650–655 12.655 12.665–676 12.672 12.677–729 12.678–679 12.679–681 12.689–692 12.704–706 12.711–714 12.714 12.730 12.730–736 12.730–751 12.752–781 12.761–766 12.771–772

44–45 82 45 13 n.38 45–46, 169 n.13, 222 45–46 152 153 153 151 138, 157 153 151 153–154 154 154 155–156 155 155 157 157 158 n.88 156 157 159 n.94 158 n.88 158 n.88 153 159 n.92 158 n.88 72 n.69, 157 156 158–160 161 161 82 n.89 82 161 191 115 157 156 160–161 161 161 161 162

12.774–775 12.777–778 12.779–781 12.781 12.782–796 12.784 12.797–799 12.797–809 12.800–802 12.804 12.805–807 12.810–819

12.811–812 12.816–819 Suetonius Domitian 8 8.3 10 10–13 10.3 10.4 14–16 15.3 22 Otho 12 Tiberius 65 Titus 8 Vespasian 9 Vita Lucana Tacitus Agricola 2 2–3 42 Annals 3.7.1 4.1 6.2

159 n.93 161 162 161 153, 162–163 161–162 210 114, 117 n.188 206 n.113 82 229 xiii, 168, 170 n.18, 197, 203–207, 229 n.22 177 217

85 65 n.54 55 n.25 54 n.23 93 n.117 94 n.117 65 n.53 65 n.54 85 93 n.116 62 n.45 55 n.25 55 n.25 xiii n.31

93 n.117 94 94 63 n.50 54, 63 n.50 62 n.45

  Index οf Sources 6.15 6.49 15.62–64 16.16 16.19 16.32–35 Histories 2.12 2.49 2.70 3.35 3.54 3.54.2 3.55

62 n.45 107 n.158 92 n.108 91 n.103 93 n.114 92 n.108 111 n.170 93 n.116 115 n.186 115 n.186 93 n.116 104–105 107 n.162

Telesilla 721 PMG

194 n.85

Theognis 19–23

204 n.107

Thucydides 7.71.1–6

12 n.37

Tibullus 1.6.1 1.10.59–66 2.4.59

111 113 n.180 111

Ulpian Digest 28.3.6.7

92 n.108

Valerius Maximus 9.2.1

83 n.90

Valerius Flaccus Argonautica 1.1 1.38–39 1.64–66 1.574–642 1.767–851 4.257 4.292 4.467 5.532–535

xi n.1 63 n.51 63 n.48 5 n.12 91 n.103 12 n.37 12 n.37 32 n.80 63 n.51

Velleius Paterculus 1.3.3 88 n.99 2.88 63 n.50 Virgil Aeneid 1.1 1.1–2 1.5 1.8 1.33 1.1–34 1.50–156 1.55–57 1.89 1.105–107 1.121 1.227 1.565 1.618 2.2–3 2.360 2.710–711 2.741 2.792–794 3.137–142 3.233 4.23 4.173–179 4.624 4.643–644 5.451–452 6.153 6.179–182 6.272 6.276 6.280 6.554 6.570–572 6.625–627 6.700–702 6.862 6.865 6.866 7.327–329 7.346–356 7.422

xi n.1 5 n.14 17 xi n.1, 13, 73 17 73 5 n.12 5 n.13 5 n.13 7 n.20 88 19 n.54 103 n.150 32 n.80, 150 n.70 167 126–127 205–206 27–28 233 142 n.9 126 220, 228, 234 131 n.26 74 n.73 150 n.72 12 n.37 74 n.73 178 5 n.13 78 n.80 139 n.39 139 n.39 133 n.29 210–211 233 127 127 5 n.13, 126 131–132 132 n.27 143 n.53

Index οf Sources  

7.445–451 7.456–459 7.483–510 7.616 8.188 9.246 9.307 9.446–449 9.447 9.481–497 10.264–266 10.846–856 10.861–866 12.234 11.455 12.529 12.886 12.928–952 12.940–952 12.952 Eclogues 1 2.23–24 4 4.3 6.1–12 6.3–8 6.13 6.64–73 9

132 116 n.186 132 n.27 103 n.150 162 88 88 207 192 n.77 96 n.128 167 34 n.81 34 n.81 79 n.84, 99 n.135 13 n.38 60 n.38 17 161 n.97 42 151 n.74 179 n.45 189 n.69 206–207, 216, 232 208 xxviii n.44 209 209 210 179 n.45

10.52–59 10.60–63 Georgics 2.43–44 4.378–485 4.380 4.486–487 4.491 4.520–522 4.523–537 4.563–6 [Virgil] Aetna 178 Ciris 62 Culex 1–7 218–219 42–414 Xenophon Anabasis 1.8.13, 20 3.1.2–4 4.7.24 4.7.25 Hiero 5.2

9–10 209 211 n.123 124 n.9 103 n.148 205 28 28 n.72 228 xii n.6

128 n.20 103 n.148 xxviii 134 n.31 xxiii

xx xix xviii xix 63 n.50