1. Mangled Epic: Statius’ Thebaid
Politics and Poetics
Mangled Epic: Statius’ Thebaid

2. Historical context
68CE: Nero hounded out of power and driven to suicide
68-69: ‘year of the four emperors’ – Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian
69-79: Vespasian rules as emperor
79-81: Vespasian’s son Titus is emperor (dies unexpectedly)
81-96: Domitian, Titus’ younger brother, rules as emperor
96: Domitian assassinated, followed by damnatio memoriae.

3. Rome: a Flavian city

4. ‘The Thebaid is one of the profoundest works of Latin literature and one of the most successfully executed’ (Ahl 1982, 938)

5. ‘The Thebaid is not a Roman epic, it has no national or patriotic motive’ (Vessey, 1973)
‘Statius in the Thebaid creates a mythic cosmos that repeatedly reflects his contemporary Rome’ (McGuire, 1997)

6. The politics of the Thebaid
POSITIVE /PRO-DOMITIANIC
NEGATIVE /SUBVERSIVE
OPTIMISTIC
PESSIMISTIC
-POLYPHONY
-CONTRADICTION
-INTERTEXTUALITY IN 3 DIMENSIONS -

7. Themes in criticism of Thebaid
Power (Dominik)
Pietas (Kytzler)
Anti-pietas (Pollman)
Fury (Hershkowitz,Franchet d’Espèrey)
The anger of Jupiter (Rieks)
Roman civil war (Ahl)
Allegory (Feeney)
Dynastic succession (Hardie)
Literature as political escapism (Fuhrmann, Williams, Pollman)

8. Doublespeak? S.Bartsch, 1992, Actors in the Audience.

9. The new, 12-book AenThebaid?
Virgil’s structure/form, yet no teleology, no movement ad mea tempora?
The Thebaid, like Lucan’s BC, is obsessed with DELAY and LIMIT

10. The politics of form Virgil’s 12-book structure, but…
Horror conveyed in elegant, fluid Latin (contrast with Lucan)
Style + thematic emphasis on LIMIT = political conservatism?
Does the re-monumentalisation of the epic tradition offer a literary optimism in contrast to notes of political pessimism?

11. Literary optimism- political pessimism?
Oedipus against Eteocles & Polynices: patrilinearity poisoned.
Statius pays homage to Virgil but does not aim to rival the Aeneid (Theb ): proper father-son relationships revived?

12. The final duel: both die

13. Political ‘issues’ in the Thebaid
Civil war (nb recent civil war of 69)
Succession, the problem of…
Brotherly rivalry (see Suetonius 2.3 on Domitian and Titus)