58 pages • 1 hour read
Statius, Transl. Jane Wilson JoyceThebaid
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 92A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Omens and Prophecies
In Virgil’s Aeneid, omens and prophecies are used to combat narrative delay and keep the plot moving. Virgil is always interested in shuttling his hero Aeneas along to his end goal: the glorious founding of Rome. Statius, on the other hand, often uses prophecies and omens as devices of delay. His text is about unspeakable crime; on a metaliterary level, the poet takes any excuse possible to stall talking about it. In the Thebaid, seers like Amphiaraus and Tiresias often must be asked or convinced to consult the signs. The omens, when consulted, are never good—Statius revels in describing the terrifying sights and sounds. Importantly, once the prophets have seen and interpreted the signs, they rarely share the results quickly with the people who need to hear them. They hide until pushed to reveal the truth, sometimes under threat of violence. Finally, they actively resent the gods for forcing them to see the truth.
That being said, the subjects of the prophecies never seem to need an excuse to ignore the will of the gods. Unpropitious omens, when observed, are often explicitly ignored. Like Oedipus, people not only are blind to the truth, they want to stay blind. Some want to stay ignorant out of cowardice, or else they are subjects of kings and cannot risk reacting out of fear for their lives. Others prefer to stay blind because the truth gets in the way of their pursuit of power. On the latter point, the major prophetic scene of the poem occurs in Book 3 before the war even starts. Amphiaraus and his friend see the fight play out in the sky, seven eagles attacking seven swans, representing the Argive attack on Thebes. Amphiaraus’s warnings are not only ignored; he is threatened for voicing them.
By introducing a stream of dire and ultimately useless portents, Statius underlines the powerlessness of mortals. By ignoring or not understanding the omens, humans commit the crimes that the gods—including Jupiter—have encouraged. Humanity’s inability to foresee or prevent these events intensifies the horror of the narrative.
Dysfunctional Brothers
Statius uses the metaphor of brothers at combat to ratchet up the sense of impiety around civil war (Rome itself was founded by a pair of warring brothers, Romulus and Remus). When Oedipus curses his sons Eteocles and Polynices in the beginning of Book 1, he is also cursing his own brothers since all three men share the same mother, Queen Jocasta. While this Oedipean triad represent the most obvious warring brothers in the Thebaid, their dysfunction is reflected in heaven, too. When the earth splits and swallows Amphiaraus at the end of Book 7, Dis, king of hell, wonders if his brothers Jupiter and Neptune are trying to take over his kingdom. In the Thebaid, having a brother means having a particularly deadly political rival—a dynamic Statius may have modelled on the emperor Domitian’s strained relationship with own brother, Titus.
Statius also uses imagery of brothers—especially twins—to highlight his universe’s disordered family units. Some brothers are products of rape like Hypsipyle’s children by Jason (Book 5, 445-67) and the father-son duo Lapithaon and Alatreus who are so close in age that Antigone mistakes them for brothers (Book 7, 290-308). Others—usually identical twins, e.g. Lichas and Anthedonian (Book 9, 284-314)—are killed together and entwined in death, emphasizing the self-destructive nature of civil war.
Strangely, the most functional brothers in the text are not related by blood. Tydeus, who was exiled for killing his true brother in Calydon, implies that Polynices is his brother (Book 2, 464-7), and Polynices feels the same way, as he describes in his lament for Tydeus’s death (Book 9, 53). Their bond, however, is not strong enough to prevent their demise—both die horrifically due to the blood guilt they carry.
The Death of Infants
One of the most obvious symbols of unusual cruelty and perversity in the Thebaid is the poem’s concentration on the violent death of infants. While noble warriors are expected casualties in war, children are innocent and unable to protect themselves. Their helplessness amps up the pathos of their demise and underlines the violent injustice of a world which not only permits but encourages their slaughter.
The most important example is in Book 5, where Hypsipyle’s negligence allows a monstrous snake to crush baby Opheltes. Other examples include when Apollo sends a baby-eating monster to harass the town of Inachus in Book 1 (596-626) and when a Lemnian woman slaughters her child to use his blood for an oath (Book 5, 104-63). While the deaths of small children are not completely unknown in earlier myths—the most famous example being when Odysseus tosses Astyanax, the son of Hector, from the walls of Troy—baby-killing as a literary motif came more into vogue in the Roman imperial period. Statius’s contemporary Seneca also featured these sorts of scenes, most famously in his tragedy Thyestes.
