12.498:sons of Hercules The Heraclidae. Euripides tells of how they appealed to Theseus for clemency after having been pursued by King Eurystheus (see Met. 9.273–75).
12.510:It sheltered Oedipus An anachronistic reference. Oedipus took refuge north of Athens, in the town of Colonus, just before his death. See Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus.12.510:Olynthians Olynthus was a Macedonian town that appealed to Athens for military assistance when it was under attack by King Philippus (see Demosthenes, Olynthia 1, 2, and 3). Statius might here be using Clemency as a metonym for Athens.
12.511:Orestes Tried and acquitted in Athens for the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra (see Aeschylus, Eumenides)12.516:Pharos An island off of the Egyptian coast
12.519:After his bitter wars in Scythia Theseus has just returned from his recent victory over the Amazons, whose queen (Hippolyta) he married.
12.526: Maeotis’ A sea in Scythia (the modern Sea of Azov), connected to the Black Sea by the Cimmerian Strait
12.545:wife of Capaneus In Euripides’s Suppliants, Adrastus petitions Theseus for help in burying the dead.
12.570:Cecrops The founder and civilizer of Athens
12.571:Emathians The Macedonians
12.576–77: Statius lists several criminals whom Theseus defeated; each was known to be a threat to travelers. Cercyon challenged travelers to wrestling contests and killed them after he won; Sinis catapulted them to their deaths with bent pine trees; and Scironthrew them into the sea (see Met. 7.439–47).
12.588:Neptunian An epithet for Theseus (“Neptunius heros,” Met. 9.1), derived from the legend that he was the son of Neptune (see Plutarch, Theseus)
12.615–17:Brauron,/Monychia . . . Marathon Attic districts. Piraeus is the primary harbor of Athens.
12.619–24:Icarius and Celeus Prominent men of Attica. Icarius, who lived in Athens, was Erigone’s father; Celeus was the king of Eleusis, northwest of Athens. Statius provides a catalog of Attic mountain, valley, and river towns that supply Theseus with troops. Aegaleos, Parnes, Lycabessos, and Hymettus are all mountains, the last of which was known for its honey (hence “fragrant”). Melaenae was an Attic village; Acharnae was a district at the base of Mount Parnes.
12.625:Sounion A cape in southern Attica on which a temple to Minerva stood. After receiving a ship’s signal that led him to believe his son had been devoured by the Minotaur, Aegeus (Theseus’s father) threw himself into the sea from this promontory.
12.627:Salamis An island southwest of the Attic coast
12.629:Callirhoë A spring in Athens with nine water heads that provided the water source for wells throughout the city (see Pausanias 1.14.1)
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12.630:Orithyia The mother of Calais and Zetes by Boreas, the north wind (see Met. 6.712)
12.632:hillside The Acropolis, the site where Neptune and Minerva contended for patronage of Athens. The tree that decided the contest was the olive, Minerva’s gift to the Athenians (see Met. 6.81).
12.665–66:his great shield The shield of Theseus depicts his own previous conquests—in particular, his victory over the Minotaur.
12.676:Ariadne’s The daughter of King Minos, who helped Theseus escape from the labyrinth by means of a trail of thread (Met. 8.172)
12.733:Edonian Thracian
12.788:Ganges See note to 4.383.
12.793:Thyiades Followers of Bacchus (cf. Aeneid 4.302)
12.805:Erymanthian Atalanta (after Erymanthus, the Arcadian mountain)
Selected Proper Names
Achaea: Northern Peloponnesus or southeast
Thessaly; used by Homer to refer to all of Greece; Achaean means Greek. Achelous: A river (and, by association, its god) in the western mainland of Greece that forms the border between Archania and Aetolia. Achelous wrestled with Hercules in a contest for the hand of Deianira (Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.1–97). Adrastus: King of Argos and sole survivor of the seven against Thebes Agenor: Father of Cadmus Amores: Literally, loves; little cupids or putti Amphiaraus: One of the seven against
Thebes; a prophet of Apollo, swallowed alive by the earth Amphion: King who erected a wall around
Thebes. He borrowed Apollo’s lyre and charmed the stones into place with his song.
Antigone: Daughter of Oedipus Aonia: District that contains Thebes; part of
Boeotia, from Aon, son of Neptune Arcadia: Region in Greece in the central
Peloponnesus. The Arcadian is sometimes Mercury, sometimes Parthenopaeus.
Arcturus: Star whose presence in autumn indicates foul weather (hence, the moon perhaps dimmed by clouds at
2.58)
Arethusa: Spring in Syracuse, Sicily Argive: From the city of Argos Asopos: River in Boeotia Atropos: One of the Moirae, or Fates, sister of
Clotho, who spins the thread of life, and Lachesis, who measures the thread. Atropos cuts the thread; her name means “not turnable.”
Bacchus: Son of Cadmus’s daughter Semele and Zeus; god of wine, the patron god of Thebes; a name of Dionysius Boötes: Constellation known today as the Big
Dipper, formerly the Wagon or Wain. The word means “oxen-driver.” Boreas: North wind Bromius: Name for Bacchus, deriving from a
Greek epithet for the god that referred to shouting and uproar Capaneus: One of the seven against Thebes; killed by lightning Cerberus: Doglike, triple-headed guardian of the entrance to the underworld Cirrha: Site of Apollo’s oracle; city in Phocis near Delphi Cithaeron: Mountain in Boeotia, sacred to
Bacchus Clio: Muse of History Cocytos: Mythic river in the Lower World Coroebus: Citizen of Argos who killed Apollo’s monster and shamed the god Creon: Father of Haemon and Menoeceus who assumes control of Thebes after the deaths of Polynices and Eteocles Cyclops: Plural, in this translation, for those who forge Jove’s lightning bolts (related to but not the same as the group of shepherds to which belonged the one-eyed monster Polyphemus, met by Odysseus)
Cyllene: Mountain where Maia gave birth to
Mercury Danaë: Seduced by Jupiter, who appeared as a shower of gold in her lap; the mother of Perseus.
Danaus: Founder of Argos and father of fifty daughters who murdered their husbands at his command. Like Homer,
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Statius uses Danai (Danaans in this translation) to refer to Greeks.
Dione: Mother of Venus Dirae: Sister Furies Dirce: Stream in Boeotia; the region around it Echion: One of the survivors of those born when Cadmus sowed the dragon’s teeth; a synonym for Theban. “Echion’s miserable son” is Polynices.
Erasinus: River in Argolis Erymanthos: Mountain chain in Arcadia; home of the Erymanthian boar, killed by Hercules Eriphyle: Wife of Amphiaraus, who convinced her husband to join in the war against Thebes, which he knew was doomed Eteocles: Son of Oedipus and Jocasta, brother of Polynices, Antigone, and Ismene, who refuses to relinquish control of Thebes Euhius: Bacchus, god of wine Eumenides: Polite name (the “good ones”) for the avenging Furies Eurotas: East wind; also, a river in Laconia on which Sparta stood Gradivus: Mars; from gradior, he who marches forth Haemon: Son of Creon Haemus: Mountain range in Thrace, one of the regions mentioned by the Bacchante as a place of worship for the god Hippomedon: One of the seven against
Thebes; drowned Ilissos: River in Athens, sacred to Minerva Inachus: Former king of Argos and the name of the local river. Inachian youth are Greeks (see 8.363).
Io: Jupiter turned Io into a heifer to hide her from Juno, then had Mercury put to sleep the thousand-eyed Argus, who guarded her. According to Ovid, she became the Egyptian goddess Isis (Metamorphoses 1.588ff.).
Ismene: Daughter of Oedipus Ismenos: River of Boeotia, near Thebes. The
Ismenian hero is Polynices (see 2.307; cf. Metamorphoses 2.244).
Isthmos: Isthmus of Corinth Jove: Ruler of the gods. “Infernal Jove,” literally, black Jove, is Pluto, the god of underworld, who gained his realm when he drew lots with Jupiter (another name for Jove) and Neptune (cf. A
eneid4.638: Juppiter Stygius).
Laconia: Land of the Spartans Laius: Father of Oedipus, whose sword killed him at the crossroads in Phocis Lerna: Marsh in Argolis; home of the Hydra, the nine-headed monster that Hercules killed in his second labor Lethe: Infernal stream of forgetfulness Linus: Infant son of Apollo and the daughter of Crotopus, elsewhere named Psamanthe. A festival of lamentation commemorated his death after he was eaten by dogs.
Lucifer: Morning star (from Latin for “light bearer”)
Lucina: Goddess of childbirth, identified with both Juno and Diana, so named because she brings to light Lyaeus: Name for Bacchus, from a word meaning to “loosen”
Maenalos: Range of mountains in Arcadia, sacred to Pan and Bacchus, whose orgies were celebrated there. Mercury was born in Arcadia (see 7.65).
Maia: Oldest of the Pleiades, the Arcadian seven sisters, who were daughters of Atlas; mother of Mercury Malea: Promontory in Laconia, at the southwestern tip of the Peloponnesus Megaera: One of the three Furies or Erinyes who imprisoned Phlegyas, son of Mars,
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king of the Lapithae and father of Ixion (cf. Aeneid 12.846)
Melanippus: Slayer of Tydeus. Dante’s
Menalippo Menoeceus: Son of Creon, who jumped off a tower to save Thebes Mopsus: Famous seer who traveled with the
Argonauts Nemea: Valley in the Argolis, southwest of
Corinth, where Hercules performed the first of his twelve labors by killing the Nemean lion Neptune: Roman god of the oceans, like the
Greek Poseidon; brother of Jupiter Niobe: Apollo killed the seven sons and seven daughters of Niobe (the “Theban mother”) because her ability to give birth dishonored Latona. Lactantius notes that Homer says she had twelve children (Iliad 24.603); Sophocles says fourteen. She was turned to stone on Mount Sipylus.
Oenomaus: King who required a chariot race against whoever sought the hand of his daughter Hippodamia. Those who lost were fed to his man-eating horses, which Juno compares with the Thracian steeds of Diomedes (Hercules eighth labor).
Oete: Mountain range of Thessaly Ogyges: First ruler of Thebes; hence, Ogygian is a synonym for Theban.
Olenian: From the town in Achaia named after Olenos, the husband of Lethaea, who changed into a stone (see Meta-morphoses 10.69)
Osiris: Egyptian deity Palaemon: Sea god, the immortalized manifestation of Melicertes, son of Ino (one of the daughters of Cadmus); god of harbors and patron of sailors (see Meta-morphoses 4.542)
Parnassus: Range of mountains west of
Boeotia. Delphi, Apollo’s birthplace, is located at its southern end.
Parcae: Roman version of the Moirae, the
Fates: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos Parrhasis: Town of Arcadia, home of Callisto, who was turned into a bear and became the constellation Ursa Major, a constellation that never sets below the horizon Parthenopaeus: Son of Atalanta, youngest of the seven against Thebes Phocis: Site of the crossroads where Oedipus killed his father Laius Phoroneus: Son of Inachus, king of Argos; brother of Io; husband of Niobe Phrygian: Apollo helped build Troy, in
Phrygia.
Pieros: King of an area on the border of
Thrace and Macedonia who gave his nine daughters the names of the muses (cf. Metamorphoses 5.302)
Polybus: King of Corinth, adoptive father of
Oedipus. His untruth was his misrepresentation of himself as Oedipus’s natural father.
Proserpina: Daughter of Jupiter and Ceres, married to Pluto (Dis); queen of the underworld Semele: Daughter of Cadmus, mother of Bacchus. Juno tricked her into asking to see Jupiter in all his power. The experience destroyed her when he appeared as thunder and lightning.
Strymon: River in Macedonia; also the name of Chromis’s horse (see 6.464)
Styx: River in the underworld Taenaros: Promontory and town of Laconia; fabled entrance to the underworld and site of a temple to Poseidon (Neptune) Tantalus: King of Phrygia, who boiled his son
Pelops and served him at a banquet for the gods; punished in the underworld by being unable to reach a fruit tree or water
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Tartarus: Abyss of the underworld (Statius uses the plural form, Tartara)
Thessaly: District of northern Greece famous for witches and magic Theseus: Ruler of Athens Tityos: Giant whom Jove condemned to lie in a field of the underworld where vultures eternally fed on his entrails
Tydeus: One of the seven against Thebes, son of Oeneus and father of Diomedes, who gnawed the head of Menalippus Tyre: Town in Phoenicia; another name for
Thebes, because Cadmus came from Tyre
Selected Annotated Bibliography
Ahl, F. M. “Statius’ Thebaid: A Reconsideration.” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt,
II, 32.5 (1986): 2803–2912.
A good look at the Greek tradition from which Statius drew, including the family connection between Amphiaraus and Adrastus that Statius does not mention. “Statius constantly undermines fixed boundaries and definitions. Virtually every character and every action is subjected to constantly changing perspectives and frames of reference. . . . In even the tiniest details of his epic Statius shows how events are misconstrued” (p. 2898).
Anderson, David. Before the Knight’s Tale. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1988.
A detailed study of how Boccaccio and Chaucer rewrote the Thebaid. Chaucer may have picked up the hint that Polynices had a son with Antigone and that the son is Palamon, “a kynges brother son, pardee” because Eteocles suspects her love for Polynices (Thebaid 11.371) and Lactantius says the siblings slept together.
Barthes, Roland. On Racine. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964.
Fraternal hatred is not the work of an hour, Barthes argues. As Eteocles says of Polynices in Racine’s La Thébaïde: “Ce n’est pas son orgueil, c’est lui seul que je hais.” Boiardo, Matteo Maria. Orlando Innamorato (Orlando in Love). Translated with an introduction and notes by Charles Stanley Ross. West Lafayette, Ind.: Parlor Press, 2004.
Chance, Jane. Medieval Mythography: From Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, A.D.
433–1177. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1994.
This volume provides a detailed summary of scholarship identifying Thebaid commentators like Fulgentius and Lactantius (p. 543) and the manuscript tradition of the poem (p. 169).
Coleman, Kathleen M. “Recent Scholarship on the Thebaid and Achilleid: An Overview.” In
Statius II: Thebaid. Books 1–7, ed. and trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey, pp. 9–37. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Contains a good account of recent work by text editors.
Dominick, William J. The Mythic Voice of Statius: Power and Politics in the Thebaid. Leiden: E.
J. Brill, 1994.
Correlates the Thebaid to the struggle for power in Rome.
Edwards, Robert, R., ed., John Lydgate, The Siege of Thebes. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval
Institute Publications, 2001.
Edwards reviews the prose redactions of Le roman de Thèbes and the symbolism of “desire, confusion, and catastrophe” of Chaucer’s “broche of Thebes.” In giving the history of Lydgate’s addition to the Canterbury Tales, he mentions also that John Gower’s Confessio Amantis retells the story of Capaneus’s defiance of Zeus.
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≥∫≤ SELECTED ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Feeney, D. C. The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991.
Feeney notices that Statius’s principle motif is divagation and delay, and that even Opheltes’ new name, which means “Beginner of Doom” (Môros [Gk.]) also means “originator of delay” (mora). “Criticism of the poem’s episodic progress evaporates before the evidence that the poet calls our attention again and again to his dilatory manner of narrating” (p. 340). Feeney also reads the silence of Apollo’s oracle
s in book 9 as “an image of the sun-god going into eclipse” (p. 373).
Fulgentius, Fabius Planciades. “On the Thebaid.” In Fulgentius the Mythographer, trans.
Leslie George Whitbread. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1971.
Gossage, A. J. “Virgil and the Flavian Epic.” In Virgil, ed. D. R. Dudley, pp. 67–93. New York:
Basic Books, 1969.
A good comparison of the Aeneid and the Thebaid, as well as the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus and the Punica of Diodorus Siculus.
Henderson, John. Fighting for Rome: Poets and Caesars, History, and Civil War. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998.
This book and Henderson’s other essays on Statius define the outer limits of classical scholarship. Henderson is nearly always difficult and inspiring. “Expect miles of post-Homeric machinery: Olympian inserts, twin catalogues and teichoscopy, necromancy and underworld scenography, funeral games and aristeiai, prayer-sequences and prophecy, tragical included narrative and etiological hymn, developed formal similes, battle-Sturm und Drang, mountain vastnesses tipping out torrential volumes of surging verse by the dozen, the whole works” (p. 215).
Hutchinson, G. O. Latin Literature from Seneca to Juvenal: A Critical Study. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
Hutchinson reads Statius’s style closely, commenting on the poet’s use of epigram, his lightness of touch, and his ability to prepare an effect and still surprise, which Hutchinson compares to Boiardo’s art (p. 94). Also Boiardan is Statius’s “inexhaustible imagination and fancy.” Hutchinson adds that the contrast between the giant serpent that kills Opheltes and the toddling infant illustrates how Statius’s “use of language, searchingly vivid and refined, gives a constant sense of subtlety in the midst of extremity; his brilliant wit removes us from any simple immersion in narrative with a singular audacity and sharpness” (p. 121). Hutchinson also considers how Statius connects the two halves of his poem more closely than Virgil does. For example, Tydeus’s defeat of fifty Thebans foreshadows the battles that make up the latter part of the poem. An exception is Hypsipyle’s story of Lemnos. Although modeled on Aeneas’s account of the fall of Troy, its tenuous connection the main narrative recalls the conscious mannerism of Ovid’sMetamorphoses (p. 179).
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