1. 1988 graffito + scholion on the Berlin Wall, Waldenburg, H., The Berlin Wall book (1990) 67Google Scholar. This essay is for Robin Nisbet, who introduced me to Statius' poetry, and for Phil Hardie, welcome to Cambridge Classics Faculty. The essay's ‘/’ will appear, in A. J. Boyle (ed.), The Roman epic: critical essays, as: ‘Form remade/Statius' Thebaid’.

2. Barthes, R., S/Z (1974) 27Google Scholar. ‘The narration is always contested.’ (Leith, D. and Myerson, G., The power of address, Explorations in rhetoric (1989) 160.Google Scholar)

3. Hardie, P., ‘Ovid's Theban History: the first ‘Anti-Aeneid’?’, CQ n.s. 40 (1990) 224–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar shows just how Ovidian ‘Theban History’ anticipates Statius'.

4. This like all summaries is loaded – and trained on you. Apollod. 3.5.7–7.1 is the fullest ancient summary.

5. We post-republican Romans can join democratic Athens in wincing at the savage sarcasm of this. Thus the play's invention, tyrant Theseus as ‘founder of democracy’, insists: dêmos d'anássei diadochaîsin en mérei / eniausíaisin (Eur. Suppl. 406–7, ‘Power to the People is effected through succession between its representatives / in yearly rotation’). Absolutism precisely can't work this way – alternation can only be a Theban foedus. Tisiphone's present to Oedipus, the treaty as Munich touch-paper.

6. So most readers, e.g. Vessey, D., Statius and the Thebaid (1973) 315Google Scholar, ‘[I]t is through (Theseus) that evil and madness are finally eradicated when he slays first Haemon (747ff.) and then Creon (774ff.), last representatives of the gens profana of Thebes.’ The text only says: ‘Theseus’ spear stuck through two horses into Haemon's chariot-pole and … he homed in on Creon alone’ (12.747–53). Is this one of those narrative ‘Gaps“ that ‘contribute[ ] to the reader's dynamic participation in making the text signify’ (Rimmon-Kenan, S., Narrative fiction, Contemporary poetics (1983) 127–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar)? / Or: Is it Incompetence's ‘Gash’? / Well, my Haemon's no survivor - is yours?

7. More simply, the duet re-makes its origin, the duel: alterna furentes (7.640), alterna gementes (12.387).

The silence of Thebaid is marked for the eyes - spoken silence, then - in its paralipses. (As Yun Lee Too has made me ‘see’.) ‘For now, press on’ (praeteriisse sinam, 1.16).

8. See Clair, T. Le, The art of excess, Mastery in contemporary American fiction (1989)Google Scholar, esp. ‘Introduction. Excess, mastery, and systems’, for contemporary, ‘post-modern’, reawakening to the ‘Big Book’, its outplay of force. / Pynchon, huh? / This essay's gross topic must be:’ (What) Can Thebaid mean?’ I try to explain why. / Beckett, then? Huh.

9. Vessey, D. W. T., ‘Pierius menti calor incidit: Statius' epic style’, ANRW 2 32.5 (1986) 3006Google Scholar. See Petron., Sat. 89Google Scholar, Troiae Halitosis, 119–24, Bedlam Ciuile, ingenti uolubilitate uerborum, with Zeitlin, F. I., ‘Romanus Petronius: a study of the Trojae Halosis and the Bellum Ciuile’, Latomus 30 (1971) 56–82Google Scholar.

10. Alternation between Thebes and Argos weaves text of books 1–4 (Vessey (n.6) 136); later the two armies, the two brothers, intertwine – past extinction.

11. ‘To the hilt’ and ‘hilt and all’ are favourite body-blows from Statius: Laius (2.8), Maeon (3.88), Lemnians (5.253), Dymas (10.435–6), Eteocles/Polynices – thinks Oedipus (11.631) –.

12. Ahl, F. M., ‘Statius' “Thebaid”: a reconsideration’, ANRW 232.5 (1986) 2898Google Scholar. This is the point of the excessive narrative of mastery, cf. Ahl, F. M., ‘Homer, Vergil, and complex narrative structures in Latin epic: an essay’, in Marcovich, M., (ed.), Silver & Late Latin poetry, (= ICS 14 1–2) (1989) 31Google Scholar, Le Clair (n. 8) passim.

Duality/the duel/binarism opens out to septenary, myriad dialectic in epic Thebes: no ‘hero’; no ‘(anti')hero + (anti-)hero’, but acies = ‘lines, a host, division on the field of battle/antagonism in the field of vision: the principle, or “puncept”, of “Di-vision”. Such is the nature of ‘Narrative’, that it intrinsically pits <One> True Report (‘Eteo/cles”) against Poly <valent> Contestation (‘Poly/nices’). Dub this crisis, (of) criticism, ‘Di/Vision’.

13. Early 1970s Button after W. Burroughs.

14. Wilbury, Lucky, ‘Tweeter and the Monkey Man’, on The travelling Wilburys Vol. I (1988)Google Scholar.

15. I shan't/couldn't/perform it, either. My English can give no semblance of the substitutive volatility of Statius' Latin, epic in-breeding; my attention was monopolized in writing by the-The-Thebaid's teeter across its Amphiaraean gorge of risibility.

/ Or. Read Statius' entire poetic in the absurd, ecstatic, apostasy from Virgil sported in his conceit, galeas … rotat per nubila plenas (‘Tydeus rockets helmets full through the clouds’, 8.699): fair comment on the absurd commentary that continues ever to be written on Virgil's galeam ante pedes proiecit inanem (‘Ascanius threw down before his feet his empty helmet’, Aen. 5.673. E.g. Williams, R. D., P. Vergili Maronis, Aeneidos Liber Quintus. Edited with a commentary (1960) 169–70Google Scholar, quoting Servius and Henry, ‘concauam, sine capite … “(I)t had been trivial, if not absurd, to remind the reader that the helmet which Ascanius took off and threw down on the ground had not his head in it …” (O)n the whole Servius' explanation seems the best; it is not “absurd” unless it is forced to appear so.’ (Dutiful Silius explains himself: ‘helmet plus contents: one dead face’, ‘galeam atque inclusa perempti ora uiri, 4.219, ‘one warhead: helmetful of decapitation’, plenam … abscisi galeam capitis … iacit, 10.146–8; the models for all this excess are Il. 20.482, têl' autêi péleki káre bále, Aen. 9.771, cum galea longe iacuit caput, Juhnke, H., Homerisches in romischer Epik flavischer Zeit (1972) 131 n. 338.Google Scholar)

/ But no, this risible writing is ‘absurdist’: Statius cumulates throughout his poem, as here, the telling nexus of ‘helmet’ (galea, cassis) with ‘face’ (uultus. uultu- + gale-, 5.355, 8.541, 11.526; casside uultu-/, verse-phrase from Lucan 7.586, cf. Val. Flacc. 6.760 (an echoing book-end), Sil. 10.648), 9.541, 879, 11.408, cf. 8.449, 9.700–1, 11.172; genis … cassis, 2.716–7, etc. In this nexus we feel the Person we must ‘feel for’ inside the Warrior, that feeling of ‘no longer a man, but from head to foot… noisy, glaring, rending metal’ (Bacon, H. H., ‘The Shield of Eteocles’ in Segal, E. (ed.), Oxford readings in Greek tragedy (1983) 33Google Scholar. In the Virgilian tradition, this is envisaged as that ‘Kiss through the Helmet-visor’, Aen. 12.423, per galeam … oscula, cf. Theb. 4.20, galeis … oscula.).

To write/read Oedipal ‘Thebes’ is to fixate on the visage – its Senecan language, trux, toruus, etc. – and tear the eyes from their face-sockets/cheeks, (genae mass through the text. Except in dictionaries, there is no segregating OLD s.v. (1) ‘cheek’, from (2) ‘region about the eyes, … eyes’. For ora + genae, cf. 1.437–8, 2.231–2, 11.226, 372–3, 584; cf. 1.538. For the Propertian verse-phrase ungue genas/ (Prop. 4.5.16), beloved tongue-twist of Ovid's ‘amatory’ elegy (× 7 in Am., Ars, Her.; elsewhere only in inevitable Claudian), see Theb. 10.818, / ungue genas (cf. 2.130. Any genae are scarce in pre-Statian epic: × 5 in Aen., × 9 in Met., × 7 in Lucan; Sen. Phaedr. has an abundance.)

16. Key contributions and reference-points: Ahl (n.12), Aricò, G., Ricerche Staziane (1972)Google Scholar, Schetter, W., Untersuchungen zur epischen Kunst des Statius (1960)Google Scholar, Venini, P., P. Papinii Statii Thebaidos Liber XI: introduzione, testo critico, commento e traduzione (1970)Google Scholar, Vessey (n. 6), Vessey, D. W. T. C., ‘Flavian epic. 2. Statius. The Thebaid’, in Kenney, E. J. and Clausen, W. V. (edd.), The Cambridge History of Classical Literature Vol II: Latin Literature (1982), Vessey (n. 9)Google Scholar.

17. Cf. Vessey (n. 6) 184–7, 265 for Argo/Argos et sim.

18. Quinn, K., Texts and contexts. The Roman writers and their audience (1979) 57Google Scholar. The once standard view, this. When Quinn 115, goes on, without discussion, to call Statius ‘dull’ and claims that the ‘Thebaid is a curious anachronism, a century and a half out of date, the sort of thing, it is to be supposed, people were writing in Virgil's youth' he achieves idiosyncrasy. More representative the discussion of Copley, F.. Latin literature. From the beginnings to the close of the second century A.D. (1969) 324Google Scholar: ‘(A)ffected, shallow, and mannered … (T)he subjects are worn-out and hackneyed and all Statius' ingenuity cannot bring them to life again … Almost equally undistinguished as a writer … is …–’.

19. For the most part from Germany, for some reason / masked as another.

20. For the scholarship see new essays by Dominik, W. J., Hardie, P., Hill, D. E., McGuire, D. T. in Boyle, A. J. (ed.), The imperial muse, vol II; Flavian epicist to Claudian (1990: too late for this essay)Google Scholar, bibliography to Vessey (n. 6), Ahl (n. 2); Burck, E., ‘Die > Thebais< des Statius”, in Burck, E. (ed.), Das römische Epos (1979) 300–51Google Scholar is a reliable survey essay (to late 70s). Par for course, the ample collection devoted to Silver Latin criticism in Marcovich (1989), which can find but one space for (textual/exegetical) notes on Statius. CQ once even began a year with the words: ‘I have not read the Thebaid more than three times, nor ever with intent care and interest’ (Housman, A. E., ‘Notes on the Thebaid of Statius’, CQ 33 (1933) 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar). We must try to make out the forcelines marked out in this dis-taste, why it was quite so important to be quite so clear about this, what was (/ is) at stake.

21. Prop. 2.8.10, cf. Lucr. 5.326, bellum Thebanum et funera Troiae, Corneille, Rodogune 171–2, Ces deux sièges fameux de Thèbes et de Troie, / Qui mirent l'une en sang, l'autre aux flammes en proie.

22. Thebaid's night-attack in Book 10 is to recover Tydeus' corpse. In Il. Book 10, Tydeus' son is abroad (Ahl (n. 12) 2867). You will recognize Thebaid's pattern as their squires ‘rummage, locate, (fail to) retrieve’ Tydeus' and Parthenopaeus' corpses (scrutari campum, 359, quaeritur, 370). Floodlightingfrom the Moon/Diana helped (monstrauit funera, 371), but Hopleus dies hugging Tydeus (tenens, 403), and then, like a cornered mother lioness (414–19), Dymas invokes the Theban paradigm of Ino and Palaemon for pity (425) before falling upon Hopleus' body by way of ‘burial’ (pectus / iniecit puero, 440): à la Aen. 9's Nisus and Euryalus, but re-doubled, as the foursome hugs death (complexibus, 442). / Eat your heart out, Virgil.

23. Davies, M., The epic cycle (1989) 23–9Google Scholar: ‘The Thebais'.

24. Zeitlin, F. I., ‘Thebes: theater of self and society in Athenian drama’, in Winkler, J. J. and Zeitlin, F., (edd.), Nothing to do with Dionysos? Athenian drama in its social context (1990) 145–7Google Scholar: ‘The Middle Term: Argos’.

25. Referential void, so mytho/logical arena.

26. New tatters in Lloyd-Jones, H. and Parsons, P., Supplementum Hellenisticum (1983) frr. 52–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. See Ziegler, K., Das hellenistische Epos² (1966) 20–2Google Scholar.

28. Propertius 1.7, 9. See Stahl, H.-P., Propertius: ‘Love’ and ‘War’. Individual and state under Augustus (1985) 48–71, esp. 63–5Google Scholar. When the elegist's project, his second book, works with a suicidal Thebes over against a heroic Troy in caricatural dejection of Vergil's ‘Iliad re-make, do we hear most proximately ex Pontico as well as from Accian/Attic tragedy? (Cf. Stahl 182: ‘Will the same lasting praise be granted to the Aeneid? Or will it suffer the fate of Ponticus' or Lynceus' or Homer's Thebaiad?)

29. See Ahl, F. M., ‘The Rider and the horse: politics and power in Roman poetry from Horace to Statius’, ANRW 232.1 (1984) 40–100.Google ScholarTheb. 1.156–7 makes explicit a la Lucan the cosmic amplification it will work upon Thebes, cf. Ahl (n. 12) 2827.

30. Ahl (n. 12) 2814 rightly stresses that the War of 69 was bloodshed in vain for most everyone, (miser heu bellorum terminus! illi [sc. Creon] / pugnauerant fratres…, ‘Aaagh! Sick Armistice! Brother fought brother – and HE collects!’, 11.651–2).

31. Cf. Lee, A., Realism and power. Postmodern British fiction (1990) 83Google Scholar, quoting Schechner, ‘“All effective performances share this ‘not – not not’ quality … inbetweenness.” … [Narratives] “act inbetween identities” themselves, and also textualize this in the performance of their characters and examinations of subjectivity.’

32. See Schetter, W., ‘Die Einheit des Prooemium zur Thebais des Statius’, MH 19 (1962) 204–17Google Scholar, Vessey (n. 6) 60–7, (n. 9) 2971–1.

33. Marked at 1.6 (praeteriisse sinam, ‘By-pass. I'll let be’. Cf. Ahl (n. 12) 2821 n. 25, ‘The entire epic is as conscious of the Cadmean past as the Roman future’).

34. At 4.553–78 Manto roll-calls the Cadmean stemma.

35. For the ins-and-outs of Thebes' all-pervasive (re-)productivity, see Goldhill, S., ‘Exegesis: Oedipus (R)ex’, Arethusa 17 (1984) 177–200Google Scholar.

36. No more than anyone else can I omit mention of Statius pater, the Neapolitan teacher-poet. Because Statius filius could not: he writes of his authority-figures, / his writing is figured as the trace of their authority. (See Silu. 5.3, Hardie, A., Statius and the Silvae: poets, patrons and epideixis in the Graeco-Roman world (1983) 5–14.Google Scholar)

37. For Cadmus' return (– his notorious ‘over-valuation of blood relations’ –) ‘as’ Oedipodionides, cf. e.g. 1.182–3 (iussus … quaerer 'Cadmus / exul … ‘Cadmus directed to search in exile’) with 1.312 (patriis … uagus exsul ab oris, ‘Polynices wandering from his fathers’ shores in exile’).

Oedipus' ‘quest for The Father’ led him to ‘probe his sockets’ (scrutatus lumina, 1.46). This, as our reading eyes will register, introduces the gestural figuration of the poem's assault on the reader's gaze. / To exaggerate, / the poem is this acid attack.

/ Statius sows the words for ‘delving’ and ‘rummaging', scrut- and rim-, with the sack (e.g. 3.564, scrulari penitus superos, 7.761, rimantur terras, 8.253, sceleris … rimatur semina, 724, rimatus … Astaciden, 9.451, scrutatur uiscera, 10.530, scrutantur … turres, scrutari × 0 in Virgil, × 1 in Ovid, × 6 in Lucan (a miscellany like Statius' just listed; see esp. 8.556–7), × 1 in Val. Flacc. rimari × 3 in Aen., × 1 in Ovid, × 0 in Lucan, × 0 in Val. Flacc. Cf. M. Dewar, Statius Thebaid IX, edited with an English translation and commentary (1991) 106 on 9.244).

/ This / – like any – / epic attacks its eyes: e.g. decapitated ‘wide eyes search for their trunk’ (hiantes / truncum oculi quaerunt, 7.645–6); the trampled dying ‘see chariots coming over their faces’ (super ora uident, 7.765); the trampling war-horse ‘mashes helmet into face, shield into chest’ (in uultus galeam … calcat, 8.541); one victim, ‘shot by the self-burying point of a barb with triplet claws, pulls out the arrowful of left eye’ (luminius orbe sinistro … callida tergeminis acies se condidit uncis … oculo plenam labente sagittam, 9.751) before the re-doubled wound perfects his darkness’ (alio geminatum lumine uulnus I expleuil tenebras, 753–4): he hunts from memory before ‘falling over a corpse’ (prolapsus in Idan / decidit, 755–6); on Thebes' Killing Fields, corpses show ‘arrows sticking straight up, stuck straight into eyeballs’ (mediis … sagittae / luminibus stantes, 12.30).

/ Contemptible theatrics. / How does it compare, then, with the unerringly-named King Harold of The Poet, Virgil's ‘Saces’, aduersa sagitta / saucius ora (‘enemy arrow in face-wound’, Aen. 12.651–2), come to tell Turnus he's blind (cf. 670–1) to his men's imploring ‘gaze’ (ora … oculos, 656–7)?

/ Contemptibly. / Perhaps. But how does it compare with the obscenities of War? It's very restrained, surely. (For attempts to verbalize Killing Fields see Hanson, V. D., The Western way of war. Infantry battle in classical Greece (1989)Google Scholar. For the view of War's Divisions from the Women's field ambulance, cf. Marcus, J., ‘Corpus/corps/corpse: writing the body in/at war’, in Cooper, H. M., Munich, A. Auslander, and Squier, S. Merrill (edd.), Arms and the woman. War, gender, and literary representation (1989) 124–67Google Scholar: e.g. 128, a quote from Mary Borden's ‘First War’ faction ‘The Forbidden Zone’:

It is impossible to be a woman here. One must be dead, … There are no men here, so why should I be a woman? There are heads and knees and mangled testicles. There are chests with holes as big as your fist, and pulpy thighs, shapeless; and stumps where legs once were fastened. There are eyes – eyes of sick dogs, sick cats, blind eyes, eyes of delirium; and mouths that cannot articulate; and parts of faces - the nose gone, or the jaw. There are these things - but no men.

Hexameters can hardly show us past the perimeter fence of repression round any Warzone: it says on any such Wall, ‘Official: Art-Writing Keep Out.’

38. Vessey (n. 9) 3006. Some featured concatenations: 1.125–30, 154–5, 591–2, 3.564–5, 7.216–7, 12.504. (Now this is a list, (like all lists.) a list of lists.) / Alternat(iv)ely, you face, again and again, ‘a mannerism discussed by Curtius and termed by him “verse-filling asyndeton”; often used … merely as a proof of logodaedaly …’ (Vessey (n. 6): 148).

39. Last and prima facie least here, the echoes of Cadmean Ino's grief for her little toddler Palaemon will re-double through the text (1.122, 2.381, 4.59, 562, 6.10, 7.421, 9.331, 402, 10.425. Cf. Dewar (n. 37) 122 on 9.328ff., 133–4 on 9.401ff., ‘For Statius, the myth seems to have symbolized the universal pathos of bereavement’).

40. Cohan, S. and Shires, L. M., Telling stories. A theoretical analysis of narrative fiction (1988) 1, q.v.Google Scholar

41. Aonia spells ‘Thebes’, as it spells ‘epic’ - genre and material self-originating as one. (Cf. 1.314, and passim. Thus Eteocles is ‘Aonides’, 9.95.) In Northern Greece, the Muses sing their own, cf. 7.285–9, 628–31 – their own dirge, 8.552–3.

42. R. Ogilvie quoted by Ahl (n. 12) 2808.

43. This programme sentence says what it does, ‘straining’ ‘enough’ to run through its seven limbs and so to pile hexameters into a ‘huge heap’ that culminate in its self-enacting last word through a three-verse clausal flourish, / caerula cum rubuit… Dirce / et Thetis … / horruit ingenti uenientem Ismenon aceruo, / (rogi ∼ regum makes a punceptual point.)

44. uatis hiatus, 42, means ‘a (single) chasm gobbled the seer’; exemplum sui, the phrase tells of ‘the bard's sublime sonorities’ - Only an epicist could stretch his throat round these strains … If you read on, you will come to see your Amphiaraean Self engulfed, along with your entire text, in the ‘hell-deep maw of wound down into the warrior's corpse’ (ei mihi, sed quanto descendit uulnus hiatu!, 12.340).

45. (I accept the old suggestion of alto, for alio, at 1.45). The catalogue of the Seven returns, inflated, as the Argive Catalogue, 4.32–308. 1.41 parades its quotation from Horace's Pindaric tag, Odes 1.12.1, reminding us that Statius' discussion of his epic poetic is not confined to its text. His Horatian alterity, as the Flavian lyricist of Siluae, serves as an interpretative matrix, developed from Horace's lyric comments on the Virgilian project. An important part of the rhetoric of humility in Proem and in Epilogue is this colouring of Thebaid as a poem which chooses to be other and less than itself (cf. Schetter (n. 16) 20–1, Vessey (n. 6) 41–4, ‘The “Thebaid” in the “Silvae”).

46. Cf. Cinna fr. 11.1–2, haec … multum inuigilata … / carmina, Lyne, R. O. A. M., Ciris. A poem attributed to Vergil, edited with an introduction and commentary (1978) 120–1Google Scholar, on Ciris 46.

47. On the epilogue see Vessey (n. 9) 2974–6. The last line looks forward to the poet's own memorial, deferred but promised, like his poem's.

48. Juvenal 7.82–7. This comically exploits the personification in Theb. 12.810–9 and other points of Statius' poetic statements are incorporated elsewhere through the satire. See Braund, S. H., Beyond anger, A study of Juvenal's third book of Satires (1988)Google Scholar: Index s.v. Statius.

49. Hor. Odes. 2.20.19–20, noscent … dicet, cf. Theb. 12.814–15, noscere … discit. This is imposed onto the ‘humble’ epilogue prosopopoeia of Hor. Epp. 1.20.

50. Ovid, Am. 1.15 and esp. Met. 15.871–9 (Vessey (n.9) 2974–6). In particular, cf. Theb. 12.819, / occidet, with Met. 15.879, uiuam / and, in the insert Lucan 9.980–6, 986, / uiuet (Ahl (n. 12) 2835 n. 36, for Ovid/Statius bibliography).

51. Lucr. 3.4, etc. Cf. Clay, D., Lucretius and Epicurus (1983) 40Google Scholar, ‘On first impression it appears that he considered himself a follower, but it is also clear that in relation to his reader he regarded himself as a leader and that in terms of Roman poetry he viewed himself as taking a path taken by none before him.’

52. 11.579, soli memorent haec proelia reges. But –

53. Vessey (n. 6)61.

For evasive deferral, sublation, with a nondum, ‘not yet’, cf. Virg. Georg. 3 Proem, Prop. 2.10, Calpurnius' first word, so whole auvre; so Theb. 12.1, first word, so programme for its book: / nondum cuncta (‘Light at the end of the tunnel, dear reader. Nearly there. A book of totalization to cap even the eleven you've just known.’)

55. See Callim. Aet. fr. 1.25–8. limes, favourite edge of Statian meaning: cf. 1.25, 136, confundunt limite, 157, 322, 390, 2.61, 3.502,4.2, 413, 450, 5.286, 736, 6.629, 7.595, 747, 8.326,9.183, 364, 10.298, 611, 11.473, 12.241. (The nexus with trames, semita, orbita, callis et sim. programmes Statian semiosis.)

56. For Nachleben see Dewar (n. 37) Introduction 37–8; cf. the refs. in AM (n.12) 2807 n. 5, Vessey (n. 6) 2 n. 3, Venini (1970) 7 n. 1. / This could be disputable. Christine de Pizan can model for the problem: in Book of the City of Ladies 2.17 she presents the exemplum ‘Argia’, to show Augustinians how woman's nature has the potential to match all man can do’, as ever - ex hypothesi -her materials are courtesy of the ‘misogynist’ tradition (Boccaccio, , De claris mulieribus 27Google Scholar). Does this count as (de-)politicisation?

57. Preface to La Thébaïde: ‘La catastrophe de ma pìece est peut-être un peu trop sanglante, en effet, il n'y paraît presque pas un acteur qui ne meure à la fin.’ ‘Too’ much for what? For whom? (On the play see Cave, T., Recognitions, A study in poetics (1988) 327–33Google Scholar: a tiro's Oedipal rivalry with Corneille. Apolitical script and/or depoliticized critique?)

58. Ahl (n. 12) 2900, ‘Soldier princes ruled Rome as they had ruled Thebes. The rights of conquest and of family inheritance … were still the rule of the day’; Ahl (n. 12) 2806 n. 4 points us toward Pope's translation, with Aden, J. M., ‘The change of sceptres, and impending woe: political allusion in Pope's Statius’, PhQ 52 (1973) 728–38Google Scholar.

59. Tell a text by what it laughs ‘at’, its derision, e.g. 5.357, 6.697, 825, 9.820, 10.648, 908, 11.91, 12.35, 768 …? Thebaid shapes / and shares / the disgust of a traditional reading of Thebaid (such as Williams', G., Change and decline, Roman literature in the early Empire (1978) esp. 258–9, 262–3Google Scholar).

60. Playing Virgil's second is, then, a Roman appropriation of Hellenic urbanity's topos, with ‘Homer’. It means: ‘Roll over, Beethoven’.

61. Next most self-adverting moment in Thebaid is 10.445–8, where the poet hopes his tenth book ‘Doloneia’ will, inferiore lyra or no, last, on a par with Virgil's Euryalus and Nisus. (See Vessey (n. 9) 2966–7; on the episodes' intertextuality, between mea carmina, Aen. 9.446, and mea carmina, Theb. 10.445, cf. Kytzler, B., ‘Imitatio und Aemulatio in der Thebais des Statius’, Hermes 97 (1969) 209–19.Google Scholar) The figure of (Lucan's) Thessalian Witch is waved at us as a deceptive ‘trailer’ for what prove to be Tiresias'/Manto's necromantic antics (esp. 2.32, 3.142, 559, 4.504). We could say / by way of exaggeration: / Thebais hates her imitatio. – All those Valerian Medeas and Virgilian Troys that litter the text –

The same self-consciously disfiguring poetic is at work at every level of Statian textuality. For example, epic's zoomorph, the War-Horse, hyper-tropes in Statius (face lumina surgunt, ‘eyes lit up’, 6.396) when the fathers’ (Ennius'/Virgil's/ …, 's), perfect sound-sense rhy(th)me, summo / quadrupe-dante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum, goes out of synch, before Thebaid's chariot-race can begin: pereunt uestigia mille/ante fugam, absentemque ferit grauis ungula campum (/ ‘Before the off, a thousand paces are lost. / On the spot, We're still in the paddock, but the hooves are giving the race-course a hammering.’ / Or: ‘This plexity of Silver intertextuality, a thousand poet's blooms, so much lost to us: so many momentary traces, they elude our grasp and then they are gone. Weigh Poetry, what can it count for? Art - mimesis, representation - is at most what you feel happening as you read, that beating of the verse on its generic domain, the noise in your ear. Always somewhere else, ever too soon, topology of the present absence’, 6.400–1. / See Gossage, A. J., ‘Virgil and the Flavian Epic’, in Dudley, D. R., (ed.), Virgil (1969) 88Google Scholar for amiable sarcasm. von Moisy, S., Untersuchungen zur Erzählweise in Statius' Thebais (1971) 100–3, 102 n. 2Google Scholar. shows how the markers of referential absence intensify the experience of the text by psychologising, emotionalising, the experience in the text, cf. amissos longo del ordine tauros, shepherd can't believe his bulls are lost, ‘he counts the long line where they are - gone’, 3.52, excitus ira /… in absentem consumitproelia fratrem, ‘ecstatic wrath exteriorises him to himself, he devours battles against his brother - wherever he may be’, 2.132–3, stant ueteres ante ora metus campique uacantis / horror, ‘ingrained fear faces them with resistance, the past. The Killing Fields bristle still - they are empty space: for horror, horror uacui’, 12.11–2)

As we have seen, Thebaid knows its ‘limit’: namely, ‘confusion’. (Ahl (n. 29) 95–6 explains how Arion the Wonder Horse's saddling with Polynices stands emblem for crashed Power-relations, Flavian disjunction: esp. aurigam fugit. ‘They're off. The horse is up and running– from it own driver’, 6.429.)

62. Auden, W. H., ‘Epitaph on a Tyrant’ in Heaney, S. and Hughes, T. (edd.), The rattle bag (1982) 142Google Scholar.

63. M. Holub, ‘A history lesson’ in Heaney and Hughes (n. 62) 191.

64. Think of it as that space that keeps your ears apart. For instance, ‘Thebes, by the way, was Dryden's irreverent name for Cambridge’ (Swinburne: in O.E.D.: s.v. Thebes. Ahl and Vessey, Henderson and Hardie –).

65. See Irwin, J. T., Doubling & incest/repetition & revenge. A speculative reading of Faulkner (1975)Google Scholarpassim and esp. 120 for ‘revenge’ as a self-perpetuating, feedback loop of alternation. Oedipus runs Creon through ‘Success-ion at Thebes’ at 11.681–705; his curse makes, has made, ‘Creon = Oedipus’ (12.85–6, et nunc Oedipodi par est fortuna doloris / ac mihi? quam similes gemimus … umbras).

66. Markers of latecoming proliferate, e.g. 3.179–80, 8.52–3, 11.615, 12.506.

67. o iustissime diuum (‘Just the Justest God of them all, hey!’, 1.250), calls Juno to pater omnipotens, 248 - in (impassioned; convincing?) reproach -: ‘How far back is far back enough’ (retro … sat, 1.268–9, cf. Schubert, W., Jupiter in den Epen der Flavierzeit (1984)Google Scholarpassim, esp. 253–60 for Thebaid and theodicy, Ahl (n. 12) 2839: this essay, exp. 2834–50, is a sustained impeachment of The White House in the Sky, ‘le Pluton de l'Olympe’ (Lesueur, R., Stace, Thébaïde Livres I–IV (1990) 40Google Scholar). In this ultimate merger of brother's lines, Jupiter/Pluto overdetermine Eteocles/Polynices to the infernal infinity of a cosmic/Karnak ‘Thebes’.

On Statius' Capitol Hill, Jupiter mentions ‘universal peace’ just the once - as a ‘Peace Dividend’ threat to put General Gradivus out of a job, i.e. to encourage him to encourage his men, 7.32.

68. 1.214–82. For the ‘Tantalid’ Argive connection, cf. the synchrony at 4.308, el hie alii miscebant proelia fratres. (At 10.785, Argive women just are Tantalides.)

69. E.g. Vessey (n. 9) 2969.

70. Cf. 4.436, consanguineas acies sulcosque nocentes (‘blood-lines, ploughed Guilt’).

71. So 4.631–2, quisemet in ortus / uertit, etc. Cf. 1.316, recursans, for Oedipodionid psychic recursion: Obsession. One way, and another, war is remeabile, a recursus / (6.946, an echoing book-end) - like Adrastus’ Oedipal/‘Freudian’ ‘boomerang arrow’ (uenit harundo retro versumque a fine tenorem/ pertulit, et notae iuxta ruit ora pharetrae, 6.940–1; back to the quiver-womb, as I would misread the hidden riddle of the book's outcome: penitus lalet exitus ingens, ‘Deep is the secret. What is the “end”? The question dwarfs us’, 944). Cf. Vernant, J-P., ‘From Oedipus to Periander: Lameness, Tyranny, Incest in Legend and History’, Arethusa 15 (1982) 23Google Scholar:

Like a boomerang, the return [sc. of Oedipus] occurs not in the proper time, under the required conditions, in the Tightness of a succession respecting the order of generations, but in the violence of an excessive indentification … (H)e goes back too far … On the transferential uncanniness of ‘Narrative recursion’ see Spence, D. P., ‘Narrative recursion’, in Rimmon-Kenan, S. (ed.), Discourse in psychoanalysis & literature (1987) 187–210)Google Scholar.

Statius' ‘end’ of the first half of his epic with recursusj, buries the secret that his books of war to come are (pre-)destined to repeat their preparations past, text-deep (cf. Kytzler, B., ‘Beobachtungen zu den Wettspielen in der Thebais des Statius’, Traditio 24 (1968) 14–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Juhnke (n. 15) 113 and n. 264. Book Seven will start with an ‘And …’, atque ea cunclanles Tyrii primordia belli …, ‘And (so), reverting to type, Thebaid will continue to defer its first battle-action’).

72. Ann. 174, oras euoluere belli, Aen. 1.262, uoluens fatorum arcana mouebo.

73. The Bacchic Odes 2.19, 3.5 lie behind nourishes like Theb. 1.3 in the Siluae.

To stoke the ‘heat’ of Thebais, cf. the priming of ‘Bellona's War-Torch’, 4.6, by 1.249, 422,426, 631, 662, 2.391, 411, 571, 673, 685, 3.124, 260–1, 338, 383, 406–8, 595 … ‘Madness’ is unleashed to open the narrative, its narrative (1.126 and passim; cf. Schetter (n. 16) 5–20, ‘1. Die zentralen Motive. 1. Furor’).

‘Thebes” blind darkness, the place (where) we hide from ourselves, is (to be) experienced inside the head, it re-plays the mind's ‘I’ of Oedipus: saeua dies animi … in pectore Dirae (‘mental day-light turned sadist’, 1.52. Cf. floodlit Tiresias, desiste canendo / … externae satis est mihi lucis, inertes / discedunt nebulae, et uultum niger ex […] it aer’, ‘Stop the song. I have plenty of light coming in my window, the clouds that block an artist evaporate and black fog [blank]-s my face’, 4.583–5; so P(olynices) respicit Argian; haec mentem oculosque reducit coniugis (‘looks back to Argia; she returns his gaze inside to the conjugal’, 4.91), anticipates 9.40, where nox oculos mentemque rapit has P. ‘faint inside over Tydeus’, and 12.187, where dead P. is for Argia ante oculos omni manifestus in actu (‘palpably there in every move’); Creon, too, over Menoeceus: ilium quaeritque tenetque, … ilium … aspicit … semper de turre cadentem (‘hunts for him, hugs him, watches him forever falling forever down from his turret’, 11.265–7.

The boys’ mens will follow in the wake of their poet's (1.87; P's does, 1.322, but it can't speak … its … his … [paternity], 1.466. For the epicist as uates, see O'Higgins, D., ‘Lucan as Vates’, CA 7 (1988) 208–22Google Scholar: thus Statius bonds with Amphiaraus as his hypostasis, with eight addresses to him, Moisy (n. 61) 9; and the poet calls to his Muses at 10.830–1 for maior … a-mentia, for his hyperbole of hyperbolae, that maius opus, mad-Capaneus. Cf. Schetter (n. 16) 19–20).

74. Cf. Tiresias, 4.583–5, above, and esp. 12.494, where icon-free Cle-mentia just loves to habit(u)ate mentes - like Thebais.

75. For the Senecan in Thebaid, cf. Vessey (n. 6) 57, 70.

76. Cf. Moreland, F. L., ‘The role of darkness in Statius: a reading of Thebaid I’, CJ 70 (1974–1975) 20–31Google Scholar, Vessey (n. 6) 92–4.

77. / deserit,/ praeterit,/ linquit, 329, 332, 335.

78. Notice Scirone … Scyllaea ‘equalizing’ petras ro rura, 333. These landscape details ‘suggest the frenzy and thirst for blood in Polynices himself (Moreland (n. 76) 23). ‘The old man of Megara and Corinth the even-tempered’, seni milemque, 334, ready us for reception by the lobotomized fogey of Argos, Adrastus (cf. sen-, 391, 434, 474, 491, mit-, 448, 467).

79. limite, 332, litora, 335. pendens / keeps us hanging through a ‘purple-passage’, the two-verse tricolon of mythography, that rises to the Greek termination Corinthon /, before we leave it with/ linquit, 332–5. Statius is a writer. He really / nearly / is.

80. Cf. Moreland (n. 76) 24.

81. Moreland (n. 76) 24: the ‘black night’ here is the mental darkness wished by Oedipus on his son.

82. percussa sonant… rauco / ore minatur …frementes / confligunt… uellunt /, 347–9. Feel Theban Brothers in Auster's struggle with Boreas.

83. Boreal hiatu /, 352, figures this glacial Epic's magnum os.

84. For Statius' Taenarus Hell, cf. 1.96, 2.32–14, etc. alta … agmine magno … surgens concentrates epic markers (to find in Erasmus a nicely (un)Callimachean muddy river to go with the unavoidably recurrent Inachus, Statius thinks here, as he does elsewhere, of Sen. Agam. 315–23, with Inachia … Thebais … Erasini gelidos fontes … Ismenos … Manto / sata Tiresia …).

85. The river scene tells us Thebais is a re-make, no-holds-barred, churning up the dregs, putting the froth of Myth back on the narration of Evil (esp. prius … refusa … funditus … ueteri, 358–60).

86. The mountain scene tells us Thebais is a re-make, total hybris, the ‘Strong Poet's’ improvisational attack on the past, originary display of Madness in Summer (esp. frangitur o-m-n-e n-e-m-u-s … antiqua … nullis … per aeuum, 361–3.

87. Hear aural revelation in what follows: patuere … pauens passimque … pastorum pecorumque, 363–7. Pan, Everywhere.

88. Cf. Moreland (n. 76) 25, / woefully exaggerating, / ‘For him (P.), Eteocles is the storm.’

Don't miss that ‘in-betweenness’ in a-mens, the veiling of the absence leaving on display, where it cannot be missed, the cancelled trace of what it denies: we can think no full disjunction from ‘mind’. Amens here is a key textual ‘punctum’, the ‘gash’ in reading where we are opened to ourselves.

89. N. MacCaig, ‘After his death’, in Heaney and Hughes (n. 62) 22.

90. Henderson, J., ‘Lucan/The world at war’, in Boyle, A. J. (ed.), The imperial muse, Vol. I: To Juvenal through Ovid (1988) 149Google Scholar. Moisy (n. 61) 1–39, ‘A) Subjektive Erzählelemente’, reports 68 apostrophae, splendidly isolating the chief techniques of this the style of the C.lst C.E. / showing how to feel its barrage.

91. So-called loci philosophumenoe, e.g. 1.144–51, nondum crasso laquearia fulua metallo … (‘Not yet ceilings gilded with precious crust …’: outdoing Lucan, Moisy (n. 61) 17–9, q.v.), 3.551–65, 4.408, 6.934–7, 10.629–30. For political doxa, cf. qui mospopulis, uenturus amatur (‘People do love their nextbut-one rulers, don't they?’, 1.170). Thus the anonymous voice of Thebes’ Country Joe spouts safe treason sous rature, rising to: hie imperat, Me minatur (‘Yin commands/Yang menaces’, 1.196, Ahl (n.12) 2829; cf. 10.586–7, with Menoeceus’ mother, ut alterni … Oedipodionii mutent diademata fratres (‘All this. Just so those princes can play crown-swapping, brother-to-brother’, 10.800–1); folk ‘curse the foe out loud, mentally their ruler’, 2.481 (cf. 8.615, 11.755–6); libertas = speaking out before the tyrant, 3.214–5 (Ahl (n. 12) 2830–1); Statius asks: ‘When will they ever learn?’ at 11.656–7, numquamne priorum / haerebunt documenta nouis?

92. Meltzer, F., Salome and the dance of writing. Portraits of mimesis in literature (1987) 197CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the pivotal force of the epic proem's interrogation, cf. Conte, G. B., La ‘Guerra Civile' di Lucano (1987) 13–14Google Scholar. Thompson, L. and Bruère, R. T., ‘Lucan's use of Virgilian reminiscence’, CPh 63 (1968) 2BGoogle Scholar accept the echo. (Agonized epic speeches, however, regularly begin somewhat thus, e.g. Aen. 5.670–1, 11.732–3, Met. 3.531, Theb. 2.212–3, 548, 3.607, 10–804 … ‘Laocoon's style of oratory … in its deliberate artlessness … is reminiscent of the oratory of early Republican Rome … specifically the prototype of the old Roman, Cato the Elder,’ J. P. Lynch, ‘Laocoon and Sinon: Virgil, Aeneid 2.40-198’, G & R 27 (1980) 171.Google Scholar)

93. So in Pluto's curse, where he thinks he determines the Theban narrative, fratres …fratres alterna in uulnera … ruant (‘Brothers … Brothers can go dive into wounds for each other’, 8.70. Cf. Tisiphone's non solitas acies … sed fratrum …, ‘war gone strange - lines of brothers’, 11.97-8, and Polynices’ fratri concurro, quid ultra estt, ‘I invade Brother. The absolute LIMIT’, 11.185).

94. Cf. Bardon, H., ‘Le gout a Pepoque des Flaviens’, Latomus 21 (1962) 732–48: esp. 741–3Google Scholar, with Lesueur (n. 67) ‘Introduction’ 49–51, ‘Une esthetique baroque?’.

95. Robustly deconstructed by Johnson, W. R., Momentary monsters. Lucan and his heroes (1988) 123–34Google Scholar.

96. Schetter (n. 16) 122–5, ‘Die Thebais als manieristisches Kunstwerk’, Vessey (n. 6) 8. G. K. Galinsky, ‘Was Ovid a Silver Latin poet?’, in Marcovich (n. 12) 70–1 shows how in the beginning Curtius named ‘mannerism’ for the pile of the ‘un-, non-, pre-, post-, anti-classical’: the abject, then (cf. Ahl (n. 12) 2809–10; Vessey (n. 9) 2974 re-makes ‘mannerism’ into ‘poetry’, deferral, resistance to and protection from paraphrase).

97. Vessey (n. 16) 572.

98. See for what follows Euben, J. P., The tragedy of political theory. The road not taken (1990)Google Scholarpassim, esp. Chs. 1–2.

99. Foucault, M., Discipline and punish (1979) 217Google Scholar, cf. Euben (n. 98) 298, ‘Nor do we live in anything approaching a Greek polis.’ (Contrast Gilbert Murray in 1915, quoted in Buitenhuis, P., The great war of words. Literature as propaganda 1914–18 and after (1989) 48Google Scholar: ‘England is “a community in which one man dies for his brother … It is for us that these men are dying, for us the women, the old men, and the rejected men." ‘).

100. Boon, J. A., Other tribes, other scribes. Symbolic anthropology in the comparative study of cultures, histories, religions and text (1982) 230–1Google Scholar.

101. Hanson (n. 37) ‘Introduction’ 13. See passim for what follows: he soon proves that literary carnage cushions us from the realities.

102. E.g. Il. 11.426–55, Aen. 10.338–14, Juhnke (n. 15) 74–5.

Statius, then, runs true to ‘form’: twin brothers regret killing twin brothers, ‘helmet-masked’ (occultos galeis, 8.448–55, para-Homeric dual duel, after Il. 16.317–29, cf. 326–7, hòs tò mèn doioîsi kasignéloisi daménte / béten eis Erebos … Juhnke (n. 15) 128 n. 316.); a true brother sooner dies than deserts his brother (9.272–5); one twin spared and one speared - so mum and dad won't have any more trouble telling them apart (9.292); Menoeceus and Haemon fight side by side, ‘100% proof brothers by blood’ (consanguinei … atque omnia fratres, 10.654 (; Theseus kills triplet brothers (12.744).

So Tydeus looks around for ‘Anyone with a brother’, to kill (8.668–9); Piety appeals ‘Calling all parents and brothers’ (11.478); and at centre-stage; Polynices ‘wants to die in his brother's blood’ (11.153).

103. For the ‘confusion’ of una in urna, cf. Ovid, Met. 4.166, the end of Pyramus/Thisbe, quodque rogis superest, una requiescit in urna./ (‘The pyre-remains. R.I.P. At one in one, earned, urn’ and Lucan 9.1003, unam … urnam /, ‘one whole in one hole’) with Theb. 3.148–9, felices quos una dies, manus abstulit una. / peruia uulneribus media trabe pectora nexi (‘Lucky Sons! Lost to one day, one foe, and joined for ever - by a dirty great pole stuck right through your medals, a Highway for wounds.’ See Vessey (n. 6) 125 on this self-enacting verse).

104. Cf. Juhnke (n. 15) 35 and n. 79 and Dewar (n. 37) 126-34 for Ismenis’ para-Homeric search.

105. Cf. esp. 3.151–3 (Ide), hosne ego complexus … quae uulnera tractem?

Thebaid's Oedipal pattern of ‘brother + brother; add: father’ is recurrent, e.g. erecta genas aciemque offusa trementi/ sanguine (‘Cheeks/sockets erect and eyesight suffused with pulsating blood’, 5.95–6), Polyxo sets the Lemnian stakes at ‘four sons, plus Pop’, uulnera fratrum / miscebopatremque simul spirantibus addam (‘My recipe calls for brothers - and a dash of dad; add before all the ingredients go flat’, 5.125–6. Cf. Götting, M., Hypsipyle in der Thebais des Statius (1969) 75–7Google Scholar, Vessey (n. 6) 175); twin snake-shaking Tisiphone fratrem huic, fratrem ingerit illi, / aut utrique patrem (‘piles brother on x, brother on y, or daddy z on x + y’, 7.467–8).

106. Cf. Oedipus’ behest to Tisiphone, i media in fratres (‘Go get between the brothers’, 1.84); so e.g. Polynices will face brother ‘even if mother and sisters interpose themselves’ (in media arma cadant, 11.170–1); Argia and Antigone threaten to ‘jump in the pyre to separate the warring brothers' shades’ (mediae in ignes ueniemus, 12.446).

107. Henderson, J., ‘Not “Women in Roman satire” but “When satire writers ‘Woman’”, in Braund, S. H. (ed.), Satire and society in ancient Rome (1989) 97Google Scholar.

108. 3.151, complexus … oscula. As we saw, birth is relative/ly loose relationship compared with the comradeship of the trenches.

109. Drool, as brother watches brother die, closes the other's oculos etiamnum in luce natantes (‘swimming, still, in light’, 2.638–9. Cf. Atys expiring in romantic mutual gaze on his fiancee Ismene's lap, uisus defeclaque … ora / sustulit; Mam unam neglecto lumine caeli / aspicit et uultu non satiatur amato /, ‘lifting the eyes in his dead face, he focussed on her, on her, on her, and for the first and last time can't get enough, gazing in her gaze - LOVE!’, 8.648–50. She gets to ‘close his eyes and flooding tears pass through eyes onto eyes’ (declinare genas … lacrimasque in luminafudit, 653–4). Creon's are, fittingly, the last in the Vine of those needing ‘eyes - no mote wandering for them, you've made your last big mistake - closed’ (oculis extremo errore solutis, 12.777).

110. Cf. Hanson (n. 37) 11.

111. Capaneus at 6.737, the text's sole use of ciuilis, denies that Thebes-Argos conflict counts as ‘civil bloodshed’. Contrast Ahl (n. 12) 2869, ‘It is the archetypal civil war in which noone triumphs.’ Petre, Z., ‘Thèmes dominants et attitudes politiques dans les Septs Contre Thèbes d'Eschyle’, StudClas 13 (1971) 24Google Scholar, explores with insight the half-truth of her formulation: ‘Cette lutte fratricide est l'image mythique de la guerre civile.’

112. Vidal-Naquet, P., ‘Les boucliers des héros. Essai sur la scene centrale des Sept contre Thèbes, Oedipe entre deux cités. Essai sur l'Oedipe à Colone’, in Vernant, J.-P. and Vidal-Naquet, P., Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne II (1986) 186Google Scholar.

113. Vidal-Naquet (n. 112) 144, ‘II y a fusion entre la guerre étrangère et la guerre civile, entre les deux côtés du fronton? This ambiguity about who is really an enemy and an outsider, and about where he is, is the ambiguity of the house of Laius itself (Bacon (n. 15) 27; cf. Thalmann, W. G., Dramatic art in Aeschylus's Seven Against Thebes (1978) 38–42Google Scholar, ‘The city's walls: inside and outside’).

Theb. 8.353–7 is a trace of the old Seplem schema; otherwise, Menoeceus' jumping, Capaneus' blasting and Theseus’ storming from the (very same) ramparts survive to tell of the siege's symmetries, 10.765–82, 875, 882, 12.706.

114. Cf. Ahl (n. 12) 2880–1, ‘Is [P.] an Argive or a Theban prince?’ (At 2.426–7, brother calls him regi / Argolico: cf. 4.91–2, 7.457; Creon becomes Eteocles, Oedipodionesque Tyrant, when he gives the ‘Order of the Day: henceforth, that brother is Argive’ (Argiuus haberi / frater iussus, 12.58–9; P. himself addresses Adrastus reverentially us pater, then referentially as socer, 11.156–63).

115. Cf. 7.689, parcior ad dues Polynicis inhorruit ensis (‘Polynices’ sword brought, and betrayed, horror to his fellow Thebans with less gusto.’ Not, then, quite abstaining, just less busy than brother? Cf. Vessey (n. 6) 141).

116. With ‘grim eyes, bloodless cheeks/sockets’ (7.474), Jocasta's topic prompts aversion: fratrem … quid aufers lumina ? -fratrem … (‘your brother … why turn your eyes away ? - your brother …’, 508–9. In book 11, she must try to stop the ‘Coriolanus’ within, Eteocles: she is sardonically/stupidly ‘compared’ with mother Agave, head-in-hand (11.318–20. Cf. Vessey (n. 6) 273–4, on ‘These twin episodes …).

117. Wills, G., ‘Critical inquiry (Kritik) in Clausewitz’, in Mitchell, W. J. T. (ed.), The politics of interpretation (1983) 160–1Google Scholar.

118. Before Thebaid, Eur. Suppl. was the classic switchback between ‘the rhetoric of eulogy’ and ‘the ugly facts of blood, wounds, and bodily decay, the pathos of loss … unabated, and … unassaged by the physical contact for which the mothers have longed (cf. 69–70, 815–18)’ (Burian, P., ‘Logos and Pathos: the politics of the Suppliant Women’, in Burian, P. (ed.), Directions in Euripidean criticism. A collection of essays (1985) 149, q.v.Google Scholar).

119. Lucan 8.407, cf. 1.551–2,4.549–51, E. Narducci, ‘Sconvolgimenti naturali e profezia delle guerre civili’, Maia 26 (1974) 103–5, Ahl (n. 12) 2812–6, ‘The theme of civil war’.

120. The slogan of Dupont, F., L'Acteur roi: le theatre dans la Rome antique (1985)Google Scholar, cf. Henderson, J., ‘Tacitus/The world in pieces’, in Boyle (n. 20) 190Google Scholar.

121. Federspiel, J. F., The Ballad of Typhoid Mary (1984) 137Google Scholar.

122. Waters, R., ‘Another brick in the wall Part 3 … The trial’, on Floyd, Pink, The Wall (1979)Google Scholar.

123. Tolstoy, L. N., War and peace (1957)Google Scholar Book 3 part 1.19, Vol. 2. 987; cf. Cumming, M., A disimprisoned epic, Form and vision in Carlyle's French Revolution (1988) 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar for Hegelian ‘regret’ at the passing of the epoch of epic.

124. Cumming (n. 123) 113, ‘the variegated and troubled form of phantasmagory’.

125. Belsey, C., John Milton. Language, gender, power (1988) 36, 8Google Scholar.

126. It is only in the culturally salient, determinative, instance that critique of the ‘warring’ forces in the text can proceed: hence the self-inspiring effectivity of the canon: ‘If tragedy is a negation of the possibility of a systematic order of knowledge, how is it that it is itself one of the finest examples of this supposedly impossible order?’ presumes to be a pressing question precisely because it is asked of (fifth-century Athenian) tragedy (Reiss, T. J., Tragedy and truth. Studies in the development of a renaissance and neoclassical discourse (1980) 21Google Scholar). / For Statius' ‘nervosité, … des tensions spasmodiques, des mouvements convulsifs’, cf. Lesueur (n. 67) ‘Introduction’ 50–1.

127. Cf. Euben (n. 98) 292 on DeMan: ‘Every [text] contains not just a view of the world, but the view that its view cannot be a fully accurate representation of the world.’ The view ‘of’ the Thebaid: ‘Surely it doesn't even contain a “view”, any view?’, fights one corner / over against epic's threat to totalize.

128. Cf. Euben (n. 98) 133, ‘… the closed entropic society of Thebes … literally a trope for imprisonment, exile and death.’ On the two ‘entropies’, cf. Porush, D., The soft machine. Cybernetic fiction (1985) esp. 56–7Google Scholar.

129. Zeitlin (n. 24) 134, 145. You must read this essay (earlier version in Euben, J. P. (ed.), Greek tragedy and political theory (1986) 101–41Google Scholar; Vidal-Naquet (n. 112) and Euben (n. 98), esp. 99–100, explore further).

130. Euben (n. 98) 149.

131. Euben (n. 98) 139–40. For a Theban’ sky, cf. 6.241, Evening/Morning Star known to be ‘one, through alternating risings’ (atterno … unus in ortu); for ‘Theban’ maps, cf. races ‘which Isthmus catches up inside, this side; and [races] which Isthmus shoves away below, away down there, with this rim, then that, in alteration’ (quas … alligat intus / Isthmos et alterno quas margine submovet infra, 2.182–3), and ‘Corinth on high, sheltering a double sea, with shadow here, then shadow there, in alternation’ (Acrocorinthos … alterna geminum mare protegit umbra, 7.106–7).

132. Barthes, R., On Racine (1977) 61, 62–3Google Scholar (see 61–6; cf. Zeitlin (n. 24) 140); Zeitlin, F. I., Under the sign of the shield. Semiotics and Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes (1982) 25–6Google Scholar:

Two sons must ‘fight not so much to settle the differences between them … but instead to establish through violence a definitive difference - victor-vanquished - by means of which they can be distinguished each from each’ [Fineman … on Girard]. But Eteokles and Polyneikes, by their mode of death, which I have termed reciprocal and reflexive, fail to establish that difference between victor and vanquished, for each is victor over the other but each is also vanquished by the other. This is exactly the meaning of their conflict, unlike other conflicts between brothers …, namely, that issue from an incestuous union cannot establish any difference between its offspring, but can only produce sons who embody the principle of difference, unreconcilable except through their inevitable identical end.

Aeschylus' play works especially clearly toward assimilating Eteocles to his brother, esp. Sept. 679 (cf. Petre(n. 111)23–4).

But cf. Theb. 11.408, coeunt … pares sub casside uultus, ‘Come together: visage + visor:: visor + visage, end of ‘Di/Vision”. This is logo/(syn)tactically self-enacted at II.539, fratis uterque furens cupit adfectatque cruorem / et nescit manare suum (‘Brother-to-brother past sanity, lust and body-lurch for brother's blood, / mind the other side of knowing the flow's its own’. Along with the Fury-Sisters, admire and be choked, 537–8, at the poetic ‘work’, opus, 537, performed here by uterque, ‘2-into-l’; by the verse-hinge alter(n)ation ‘apo koinou - of / fratris … cruorem / … suum that boundaries the sense-unit; and by the Silver ‘agglutination’ of que … et which presses home the Cartesian paradox).

133. For (arguments over) these arguments see Tobin, P. D., Time and the novel. The genealogical imperative (1978)Google Scholar / Beizer, J. L., Family plots. Balzac's narrative generations (1986)Google Scholar; Zeitlin (n. 132) 23–8, ‘Genos: system of family/system of language’. The triad, family phalanx, of Laertes-Odysseus-Telemachus to close the Odyssey stands as the model collapsed by the all-too-fraternal line Laius-Oedipus-Eteocles/Polynices. Statius points up that Hypsipyle's twins, the model brothers ‘Euneos’ and ‘Thoas’ - geminis eadem omnia (‘Identical twins. Totally’, 6.343, cf. 345, 434–5, 477) - spell respectively a ‘good’ omen for the (‘Ship’ of) State and the correct generational pattern of reversal: grandad's name renewed by grandson (5.464–5, 6.343–4. Cf. Irwin (n. 65) 64). These sons are all Jocasta could want, as they are recognized and ‘tear mum in half with greedy hugs taken turn by turn’ (complexibus … alterna … pectora mutant, 5.722.

134. Cf. Zeitlin (n. 132) 15–22. ‘Narrative, time, and repetitive form’.

135. Cf. Euben (n. 129) ‘Introduction’, 40.

136. Euben (n. 129) esp. 150–5.

137. Devereux quoted by Segal quoted by Euben (n. 98) 62.

138. Fitch, J. G., Seneca's Hercules Furens. A critical text with introduction and commentary (1987) 226, q.v.Google Scholar for refs.

139. ‘In distrust of merit’, Moore, M., The complete poems (1968) 136Google Scholar (from ‘Nevertheless’, 1944).

140. ‘In the penal colony’, Berkoff, S., Three theatre adaptations from Franz Kafka (1988) 139Google Scholar.

141. Gossage, A. J., ‘Statius’, in Dudley, D. R. (ed.), Neronians and Flavians, Silver Latin I (1972) 226Google Scholar n. 35, Vessey (n. 6) 167. See esp. 5.744, utinam plures innectere pergas, / Phoebe, moras, where Amphiaraus ‘prays for lots of lovely Nemean poetry from Statius'. (For Callimachus’ wet-look nymphettes of Nemea, Vessey (n. 6) 168 n. 4.)

142. See Hardie (n. 3) for this. The chief, paraded, inter-textual episodes are listed, e.g., by Lesueur (n. 67) ‘Introduction’ 18–25; Juhnke (n. 15) 315–70 tabulates ‘Homerparallelen zu Statius' Thebais' in full (‘Son of Knauer on Aen.).

143. Sandbach, F. H., ‘Anti-antiquarianism in the Aeneid, in Harrison, S. J. (ed.), Oxford readings in Vergil's Aeneid (1990) 461–2Google Scholar itemizes / and accounts sardonically / for the ‘modernity’ - the absurdity of absurdum - of Opheltes’ funeral, nine-day's-wonder of a poetic temple and all, in book 6: “There can be no doubt that it is deliberate, and it would hardly be rash to suppose that he was deliberately following Virgil's example, when he remembered it.’

144. 5.538–9 (after Ovid, Met. 3.31–4, cf. Vessey (n. 6) 187).

145. See Thomas, R. F., ‘Callimachus, the Victoria Berenices, and Roman poetry’, CQ n.s. 33 (1983) esp. 103–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for Roman poets’ play with Callimachus’ Victoria Berenices and its Nemean inset juggling Hercules with Adrastus, Molorchus with Archemorus (cf. Colace, P. R., ‘Il Nuovo Callimaco di Lille, Ovidio e Stazio’, RFIC 110 (1982) 140–9Google Scholar; and see 6.368 for ‘Herculean Nemea’).

146. Cf. Götting (n. 105) 50–62 for comparison with Homer and Virgil.

Politically, Hypsipyle speaks volumes: ‘Why does Miss Clean form a government? This is Sin City’, her people grumble (quid imperat urbe nefanda!, 5.492). She must be banished as ‘the innocent ruler of a guilty people’, Ahl (n. 12) 2886–7.

147. A ‘Theban’ death, (even) this: alternus … sanguis (3.91. Cf. Vessey (n. 6) 107–16. Ahl (n. 12)2889 finds in him confusing shades of Turnus).

148. Schetter (n. 16) 41–2, Vessey (n. 6) 116–31, 131–3. His mother convicts him of mortis amor, glossed as sacra insania menti (‘Sacred/cursed schizophrenia’, 10.804): no man escapes the sour furore of ‘Thebes’, once Gradiuus implants ‘Killing's Death-Wish: in a split-second they shot off to headlong action, get shot of delay’ (mortis amor caedisque:… praecipitant redimuntque moras, 7.138–9. Further skewing ironies in Ahl (n. 12) 2888).

149. Cf. the simile of the sorores who bury Phaethon, 12.413–15, for Polynices’ sister and wife: shoulder to shoulder under his weight (anticipated at 3.173; cf. Vessey (n. 6) 133). We have seen their dark ‘doubles’: soror Tisiphone calls upon germana Megaera, consanguineos … anguis and all, to help share her grande opus, 11.61–113. (These snakes are, all of them, the snakes that make Thebes ‘Thebes’ - from Cadmus and Harmonia on down, cf. Newman, J. K., ‘De Statio epico animadversiones’, Latomus 34 (1975) 86–7Google Scholar, Ahl (n. 12) 2846 n. 40.)

150. 12.385–8, ‘they drop together for an embrace a trois, split the limbs 50/50 and with a groan from her and a groan from her (alterna) go back to his face and take turns for the pleasure of their favourite neck’. Blackest humour, though, at 12.452–63, where the Sisters of Mercy compete manically for Creon's punishment, in a ‘Me, choose me!’ stasis, a mock Thebaid (alternis … uerbis; cf. 448, rogi discordis, with 462, discordat); ‘you'ld have thought it was the usual Theban wrath ‘n’ hate’./Really, is this not the poetic pits …?

151. Holland, R., The lost generation (1932) 171Google Scholar, quoted in Tylee, C. M., The Great War and woman's consciousness. Images of militarism and womanhood in women's writings, 1914–64 (1990) 230–1Google Scholar.

152. Cf. Ahl (n. 12) 2887, ‘In short, the war itself is a most unecessary digression.’

153. So 6.69–70, ‘as if big, epic, limbs were pyre-bound’; 6.122–23: a special Service for Dead Babies, as previously used, a dozen times, by Niobe (cf. 6.517: ‘If Polynices had died before book Seven, he could had an Opheltes’ funeral’, Vessey (n. 6) 192).

For suffering innocence in Thebaid cf. Gossage (n. 61) 225 n. 32, Ahl (n.12) 2886–8, ‘The innocent and well intentenioned’. Statius' babes-in-arms include Argia's ‘Astyanax’, Thessander, 3.683, and the mythic paradigms, Ino/Leucothea's Palaemon/Melicertes (6.10-11), and Linus, featuring at Opheltes'/Archemorus’ funeral as embroidery: his mother ‘abominated it to aversion (oculosflectebat ab omine, 6.66. Cf. Vessey (n. 6) 104, Ahl (n. 12) 2853).

Infanticide, ‘the killing of children’, always spells, or threatens to spell, the suicide of narration, ‘the killing of story-telling’ (B. Simon. ‘Tragic drama and the family: the killing of children and the killing of story-telling’, in Rimmon-Kenan (n. 6) 152–75).

154. So, eternally, we must imagine widow Evadne's 'search’ (for a bolt in her breast, too, quaesierit, 12.801–2) and widow Deipyle's ‘lying on her corpse's kisses’ (iacens super oscula saeuijcorporis, 802–3): this, for Capaneus. This, for Tydeus. And for ‘the bloodless face’ of Parthenopaeus, Every Mother's Son, lovely in death’ (consumpto seruantem sanguine uultus), the poem can but treble (Arcada … / Arcada … / Arcada … 805–7) the double mourning of its ‘double armies’ (geminae … cohortes, 807). - Just a gesture to its ‘Hyacinth’, no more. Ad inf.

155. So Vessey, D. W. T. C., ‘Notes on the Hypsipyle episode in Statius, Thebaid 4–6’, BICS 17 (1970) esp. 46–7Google Scholar, Götting (n. 105) esp. 63–79, 81–6. ‘Lemnos’ figures Thebes and Argos, so every/stinking/ polis. (Every state, every state of being?)

Recognize The Pattern: one Lemniad probes where to wound her man (uulnera rimatur, 5.210); one hugs hers (oculis uigilantibus hostem / occupat amplexu) and as he gets aroused for his knifing he feels for her (oculis … tremens … murmure Gorgen / quaerit…, 216–7); mother forces a sister to see herself in the face of fratricide (heu similes … uultus / aspiciens): she falls on his corpse (iacenti j incidit, 226-35); the escape is floodlit by Bacchus (285–6), Sun averts light from Lemnos (297).

‘Lemnos’ is Myth's showplace to show (epic) gender its place, island stocked with armisque uirisque (305), when men left women/home/re-productivity/ploughing's furrow-line, non arua uiri (309), until the women took up arma … uirum and dared faces in helmets (for shame: uultu galeas intrare, 353–5); but pre-made order is re-made soon, / arma aliena cadunt, rediit in pectora sexus (397) for Venus and Amor insinuate into their minds the Argonauts’ / arma habitusque uirum (447), the Isle is full of instant baby-noises (462) - and the women tire their eyes when these men leave them (lassauit euntes / lux oculos, 483).

/ Statius turns Virgil's opening, titular, phrase over and over again, one of the best/worst cases when battle is first joined: / plena armenta uiris … jarma loco … (8.403–4. Dire's not the word. ‘Theban Epic whirls epic away in epic flourish’ is, in ‘Statian’: rapidus torrens … / arua, armenta, uiri = alterna ducum, 3.675–7).

156. Higonnet, M. R., ‘Civil wars and sexual territories’, in Cooper, , Auslander Munich, and Merrill Squier (n. 37) 81, q.v.Google Scholar

157. Dylan, B., ‘10,000 men’, on Under the red sky (1990)Google Scholar.

158. See Bonds, W. S., ‘Two combats in the Thebaid’, TAPhA 115 (1985) 225–35Google Scholar; on ‘The death of Tydeus’, see Vessey (n. 6) 283–94.

159. See 2.469–75, with Ahl (n. 12) 2876, Bonds (n. 158) 232 for Tydeus' boars and others'; for fratricide, cf. 1.397, 402, fraterni sanguinis, 2.113, fraterno sanguine.

160. 1.410, alternis …

161. 1.401–77. Parody of Apollonius’ Big Fight, Castor vs. Amycus (Arg. 2.1–97): with 1.426 contrast the boxers’ sizing each other up’ (sese permensi oculis, at 6.760).

162. Cf. 7.540, necfrater eram (T. treated by E. as if P.); Vessey (n. 6) 141–7.

163. So 2.491, 8.701–2 (cf. Williams (n. 59) 199–200 for the topos). Tydeus re-fights Ovid's (Calydonian hunt +) Lapithocentauromachy, cf. 2.563–4, 5.262, etc. (He is, ominously, ‘full of spoils and blood’, spoliis et sanguine plenus, already at 2.682.)

164. Cf. Henderson (n. 90) 157 n. 26, Schetter (n. 16) 37–9, Zwierlein, O., ‘Statius, Lucan, Curtius Rufus und das hellenistische Epos’, RhM 131 (1988) 68–70Google Scholar.

165. See Vessey, D. W. T. C., ‘The myth of Linus and Coroebus in Statius' Thebaidl, 557–672’, AJPh 91 (1970) 315–31Google Scholar, Kytzler, B., ‘Zum Aufbau der statianischen ‘Thebais’. Pius Coroebus, Theb. I 557–692’, ANRW 2.32.5 (1986) 2913–24Google Scholar for the reverberations of this episode that encompass the including text. (Myth is as always anamorphic to meaning, through displacement and condensation, cf. Python's ‘hug’, amplexum, 564, the rabid pack's, and the monster's, ‘blood-baby-munch’, morsu depasta cruento /, morsu cruento / deuesci, 589, 603–4.)

/ Adrastus plays Alcinous/Latinus/Dido/Evander here: his hymn a fix of Aen. 8 with the end of Aen. 1. / As we have now seen, the dark in Statius is the side of out there in the world, it is what fills the holes in your head, where you should look out and see (e.g. 1.78, 240, 2.441).

166. Note the simile's altema, 528. Oral dentition here picks up on Tydeus’ last mouthful and when Polynices ‘fell and crushed brother with his panoply’ (/concidit et totis fralrem grauis obruit armis, 11.573), recall that earlier, as if á la Nisus, corpse upon dear corpse, (Aen. 9.444), he ‘disarmed naked, fell on the now void corpse of his best of friends’ to lament Tydeus (abiectis … armisjnudus in … corpus amicilprocidit, 9.48). Recognize the pattern next ‘when daughter's cry located the bodies Oedipus groped for, he spread his every limb over their every cold limb’ (ut quaesita diu monstrauit corpora clamorjuirginis, insternit totos frigentibus artus, 11.599–600). Eteocles’ ‘trick death-blow’ (erigit occulte ferrum, 565) returns when father's suicidal grief has him ‘hunt the dagger(s)’ in the corpses, but quick-thinking daughter already spoiled his trick (occulte telum … quaerebat, 628–9. For ‘killing your scalper as a martial topos, see Zwierlein (n. 164) 76–8).

167. Avatar Oedipus is Thebaid - is Tisiphone: ‘Enthroned in eyes sunk deep in the skull: iron light’ (sedet intus abaclis / ferrea lux oculis), venom-swollen skin, ‘Wrath's double gesticulation’ (geminas qualit iramanus, 1.104–12). The epic sets out, the way Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, all set out, to up its volume by cumulating its figures for Power: ‘Oedipus + Tisiphone’, re-made as ‘pater omnipotens (1.248) + Laius’.

Ahl (n. 12) 2844 shows how the text puns ab alto/(2.115) between ‘from (Virgilian) Olympian heights of sublimity’ / ‘from (Senecan) Hellish depths of abjection’. / (So already at 1.421,435, ab alto /, per alta /, deep, high.)

/ Meantime, Statius' ‘Bathais’ fools around with Tisiphone's hairwash and snake-conditioner (1.90–1), with court etiquette ‘Fun’ on High (203–4), with Mercury's travelling-kit (304–5). (/ Schubert (n. 67) 76–7, 101–2, shows how the latter passages work to show the alienated power-relations between Jupiter and his universe of minions and to structure their episode - e.g. against their re-make to start book seven.)

168. Schetter (n. 16) 16 compares esp. Il. 19.86: ouk aítiós eimi.

169. Cf. Segal, C., ‘The theme of the mutilation of the corpse in the Iliad’, Mnemosyne Suppl. 17 (1971) 61Google Scholar. As Achilles had threatened to eat Hector raw (22.347), so Hecuba will wish to eat Achilles’ liver (24.212–13).

170. For Tydeus (and all the ‘Seven’) as Hercule manqué, cf. Vessey (n. 6) 198–9 and n. 3. They are, like him, like his bestial victims, too (Vessey) (n. 6) 204).

171. Manic vision, as ever, contours the scene: Tydeus uultu … occurrit, uidit / ora trahique oculos, spectat atrox … gliscilque lepentisjlumina torua uidens et adhuc dubitantia figi (‘met him face-on, saw his face, eyes a-trailing, grimly watched the sight… grew expansive, seeing the eye-lights grim, not yet decided to get fixed’, 8.751–6).

/ A sick sight for a sick Tisiphone's eyes (All my own work, she crows, 11.86–91).

172 Rep. 571c, 619b. For the ‘Oedipal’ constructedness of Greek tyranny, whether Cypselid or Labdacide, see esp. Vernant (n. 71). On the ‘place’ of cannibalism à la grecque, see Detienne, M., Dionysos slain (1979) 53–67Google Scholar, ‘Gnawing his parents' heads’. On Tydeus' hyper-Dacian head-hunting, see esp. Beazley, J. D., ‘The Rosi Krater’, JHS 67 (1947) 3–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Dewar (n. 37) 57.

/ Tydeus' lion-simile is, we find, hors d'ceuvre, 2.675–80 (His lip-smacking sheep-gorge).

173. Cf. 119–35, … ut … uidit pater … / ‘uidimus … licitas … acies, … lateant … Iouem; sat … sontes … uidisse, … turbanda dies … Ledaei uideant neu taliafratres.’ / Sic pater omnipotens uisusque nocentibus aruis / abstulit … (‘When the Father saw … he said, “We have seen lines of regular war. … Let the brothers hide from Jupiter; enough to have seen the guilty … I must smog the day … And they mustn't see, Leda's twin boy brothers.“ Thus the Almighty One. And he tore his gaze from the fields ploughed with guilt.’ See Vessey (n. 6) 162.)

Aversion of the gaze, as we have been noticing, is the Theban pattern: e.g. 7.789, 10.502, and 12.562, where ‘Dawn backs up over the Killing Fields’.

174. Sphinx is always already the epic('s question), she is / in excess / the Thebaid: ‘cheeks/sockets erect and eyes suffused with old blood’ (erecta genas suffusaque tabo / lumina), hugging human remains (amplexa), gnawed bones (semesa … ossa premens) clutched to her naked breast, hideous parody of Woman's grief carrying out the dead, she dominates the visual/battle-field (uisu … frementij conlustrat campos), ready for all-comers with her ‘cursed tongue, claws a-sharpening, bite drawn’ (dirae … linguae,… acuens … ungues, /… strictos … denies /, 2.505–15). Sphinxes emblazon both Polynices’ sword (4.87) and Haemon's helmet (7.251–2) Cf. Moret, J.-M., Oedipe, la Sphinx et les Thebains. Essai de mythologie iconographique. Tome I (1984) 4 n. 8)Google Scholar.

Arma antiqua manus ungues dentesque fuerunt (Lucr. 5.1283): recognize in Sphinx the Throwback Pattern of Thebaid's ‘claws/talons/hooks’, including along with Tydeus’ and Polynices’ scrapping ‘claws’ (unca manus, 1.427), Tydeus’ ‘human claws’ (uncas … manus) as he climbs dire Sphinx's ledge (2.555–8), and Tydeus’ ‘clawed gnawing’ (morsibus uncis, 9.13): Coroebus’ hellish monster's ‘claws’ (unca manus, 1.610); man-eating tigress’ ‘jaws … and claws’ (geneaset… ungues, 2.130); Calydonian Boar's ‘claw-jaw’ (aduncae … maleae, 2.470); the ‘claw-bird’ owl (auis unca, 3.507)’; ‘claw-beaked face-mouths’ (ora recuruo / ungue) of ‘cursed birds’ (dirae … uolucres that imitate planctus, 3.513); eagles with ‘claw mouth-faces and sword talons’ (unca … ora … et strictis unguibus, 3.534–5); a human ‘claw-hand’ (unca … dextra) clutching a twig over a brink (9.495-6: a la cliff-edge Palinurus, Aen. 6.360, uncis … manibus; cf. Dewar (n. 37) 153 ad loc); rabid wolves’ marks on the fold-doors, red in ‘tooth and claw’ (ungues /… denies /, 10.47–8); pigs-o'war ‘claw tusks’ (dentibus uncis, 11.532); ‘bloody Argive fingernails’ (cruentis / unguibus inplanctus, 12.109–10); corpses awaiting ‘clawed birds' (uncis I alitibus, 12.212–13).

In the first place, Oedipus, become his victim's revenge, left his eyes on poor mother ‘with slashing’ or ‘collaborating fingers’ (digitis caedentibus, or cedentibus, 1.71–2; cf. 1.427), and used ‘bloody nails’ (cruentis I unguibus) on his diadem (1.82-3). Senecan Oedipus was, already, the Sphinx's form re-made (See Mastronade, D. J., ‘Seneca's Oedipus: the drama in the word’, TAPhA 101 (1970) 321–2Google Scholar on 100, her unguis, 968, his unguibus. ‘The night-time revenant/Fury/Madness traditionally promises to go for the face with Flo-Jo claws’, nocturnus … Furor / petam … uultus umbra curuis unguibus, Hor. Epod. 5.92–3).

175. In the Oedipodionids’ duel, the scopic drive is also fetishized to/as the end: our stand-in within the ‘boars’ simile, the blenched hunter turns spectator and stills his hounds to listen, while the sister Furies play the admiring arena-crowd (11.533–8); prematurely exultant Polynices tells dying Eteocles ‘you see, you've let yourself get out of shape’, proclaims victory, 7 see Dido's heavy eyes, a face swimming in death (graues oculos atque ora natantia lew, cf. Aen. 4.688) - someone go fetch sceptre and crown, fast, while he can see’ (551, 558–60); the bard prays ‘but one day shall ever see this abomination, anywhere, any age’ (577–8), ‘Not finished yet’, Ecce iterum fratres: brotherly hatred outlives brothers, ‘flames stream up with halved head and flash one crest, then flash the other crest (alternos), torn-off chunks of light’ (12.429–32).

176. Offending the audience and self-accusation’, Handke, P., Offending the audience and self-accusation (1971) 27Google Scholar.

177. ‘Where are you tonight? (Journey through dark heat)’, on Dylan, B., Street legal (1978)Google Scholar.

178. Vessey (n. 16) 575. / Courageously dis/rupted by Vessey (n. 9).

179. See Rabinowitz, P. J., ‘End sinister: closure as disruptive force’, in Phelan, J. (ed.), Reading narrative. Form, ethics, ideology. (1989) 120–31Google Scholar for this phenomenon.

180. Ahl (n. 12) 2897, q.v. 2892–8.

181. Adrastus gallops off to hide, to find darkness for living death as if an Amphiaraean Oedipus, as if down to Hell (11.443–6, cf. Ahl (n. 12) 2858).

182. Constrast the trajectories of Caesar's Lucan, cosmic Ovid, Odyssean Virgil: no broadening of the mind, travelling with Statius. Just ‘cool’ Nemea's ‘Herculean … thickets’ (4.646–7), too small to deploy/catalogue (euoluere) a host (5.43–7).

183. Thebaid is, / says Hyperbole, / Tisiphone's skin, suffusa ueneno / tenditur ac sanie gliscit (1.106–7), ‘suffused with venom, stretched and puffing putrid’): here ‘swelt’ Polynices (1.299), Tydeus (2.114), Eteocles (2.346), Capaneus (3.600), Hippomedon (9.442), Parthenopaeus (9.781), Oedipus (11.378, 676), Creon (12.174); Wrath (1.411–2), War-Horses (6.418) and armies (7.528), venom (5.508), Ganges and Ismenos (4.387, 9.459).

184. Vernant, J.-P., ‘Ambiguity and reversal. On the enigmatic structure of Oedipus Rex’, in Vernant, J.-P. and Vidal-Naquet, P., Tragedy and myth in ancient Greece (1981) 96–7Google Scholar, ‘Oida; I know: this is … Oedipus triumphant,… the tyrant. Pous: foot:… to end up as he began,… as one excluded like the wild beast… The eminently knowledgeable master of Thebes,… the accursed child, the Swollen Foot rejected by his native land.’ Cf. Goldhill, S., Reading Greek tragedy (1986) 199–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ‘Blindness and insight’.

185. ‘Dead yesterday’, Hamilton, M., Dead yesterday (1916) 309Google Scholar.

186. Repetitious proliferation of siblings is the overt intensifer of the text: Eteocles/Polynices, Menoeceus/Haemon, Jupiter/Neptune/Pluto, Mars/Apollo, Hercules/Bacchus/Apollo, Mars/Mercury, Sleep/Death, Castor/Pollux, Boreads, Belidae, Minos/Rhadamanthys, Ismenus/Asopos, Amphion/Zethus; Cadmus/Europa, Jupiter/Juno, Apollo/Diana, Athena/Hercules, Cydon and sister; Argia/Deipyle, Antigone/Ismene, Furies, Fates, Muses, Nymphs … / Kinship terms mass through these lines.

187. For the paradigmatic ‘scrapping over corpses’, cf. 12.34 (where Lucretius’ universe falls silent, the end of his text). Stasis on Olympus, 10.883–97.

188. See Rosaldo, R., ‘Death in the ethnographic present’ in Hernadi, P. (ed.), The rhetoric of interpretation and the interpretation of rhetoric (1989) esp. 177Google Scholar, for devastating critique of ethnography's coldness to the pain after death, after the wake.

189. Thebaid often gestures beyond its power to describe: ‘Le maître des silences est Stace: il en présente la gamme la plus variee, la plus riche’ (Bardon, H. ‘Le Silence, moyen d'expression’ REL 21 (1943–1944) 120Google Scholar, cf. 110–14, e.g. 2.163, 3.102–3, 4.145, 7.452, 10.273–4, 815–16. The speech ‘broken-of’ in aposiopesis is a special colour of the poem, e.g. 1,465, 3.87, 291, 4.517–18, 12.380).

190. Read Scarry, E., The body in pain. The making and unmaking of the world (1985)Google Scholar.

191. ‘Thebes’ is, as we saw, a Mother's Lament (cf. Dewar (n. 37) 126 on 9.351–403, 130–1 on 376ff.): Ino; Ide; Eurydice; Jocasta; Ismenis (Crenaeus’ last gulp: ‘Mother -’, 9.340); Atalanta: the super ‘Camilla/Pallas/Lausus-in-one’ gorgeousness, her Parthenopaeus, sexy gold-tunic from mum's needle (9.691–2), lengthily talks his book out to curtains, with ‘Poor mama’ refrain (9.885–907); the ‘clawed cheeks/sockets’ of Menoeceus’ mother (ungue genas, 10.818): her lament, after Aen. 9's Euryalus' mother, 792–814.

192. Cf. Segal, C., ‘Boundary violation and the landscape of the self in Senecan tragedy’, in Segal, C. (ed.), Interpreting Greek tragedy. Myth, poetry, text (1986) 321–2Google Scholar, on the ‘uterine and visceral’ imagery here, ‘Aside from the grim, even grotesque physical horror, Oedipus’ language depicts the feelings of guilt, remorse, emotional suffering, the physical as well as the psychological wrench of anguish, through images of somatic violation, images of being trapped within himself (322).

‘Next time’, Oedipus’ readers will know worse: nunc manum cerebro indue (‘This time, dip your hand right in your brain!’, Phoen. 180. Outdoing Hecuba's attack on Polymestor, Ovid, Met. 13.561–4, digitos in … lumina condit / expellitque genis oculos … / immergitque manus … / non lumen … loca luminis haurit, ‘She buries fingers in eye-lights, pops eyes from sockets/cheeks, plunges hands in, wipes out, not the light, but the place for the light’).

For a sane attempt to see into the dark madness of this Senecan Oedipus, see Poe, J. P., ‘The sinful nature of the protagonist of Seneca's Oedipus’, in Boyle, A. J. (ed.), Seneca Tragicus, Ramus essays on Senecan drama (1983) esp. 154–6Google Scholar (Poe knows the bind we are in: ‘knowing a meaning’ in this regard can only be a failure of our nerve, mocked by the act of Oedipus’ body).

193. Euben (n. 98) 99.

194. ‘Hidden cities 5’, Calvino, I., Invisible cities (1974) 125Google Scholar.