The Infernal World of Statius Thebaid Curtis Dozier Classics Honors Thesis Dartmouth College Spring, 2000Pereant agedum

discrimina rerum. Come, let the boundaries of the cosmos be destroyed! Pluto, Thebaid VIII.37 On the Cover: Vergil and Statius by Barry Moser, from Dantes Purgatorio, translated by Allen Mandelbaum. Bantam Books, 1982. pg.198.Table of Contents Page Introduction: Statius in Purgatory 1 Chapter 1: Allecto and the Beginning of War 11 Chapter 2: The Sister of Allecto 23 An Emblem of the Thebaid: The Necklace of Harmonia 24 The Underworld on Earth 35 A New Fury for a Different War 45 The Boundaries of the Underworld 52 An Infernal Chariot Race 68 Chapter 3: Tisiphones War 73 Tisiphone, Thebes, and the Beginning of War 74 Reciprocal Movements 81 The Wrath and Betrayal of Tydeus 88 Tisiphones Double Victory 92 The Furies Depart 98 Epilogue: In the Footsteps of the Aeneid 104 Notes 107

Bibliography 110A Note on the Translations This project assumes an audience familiar with the basic mythology surrounding Thebes and the house of Oedipus, but not with Statius Thebaid itself. My treatment of the Thebaid is therefore descriptive as well as analytical, and my translations of Statius Latin are an important part of this descriptive process. Melvilles recent translation is good for its transformation of Statius poetry into clear English poetry, but this is a difficult transformation to make, as the sacrifices Melville (or any translator) must make for English clarity show. I have not tried to translate Statius Latin particularly literally or poetically, but only to provide a clear English version of the Latin which emphasizes the points I wish to make about each passage. I have translated all Latin into English prose, which I hope will allow my readers to grasp the passages relevant to my discussion easily. I have followed this same principle in translating more familiar authors, such as Homer and Vergil; in these cases my translations emphasize the aspects of the original which are important for my discussion. I have adapted Allen Mandelbaums translation of the Divine Comedy in this same way. My abbreviations for ancient texts are taken from the Oxford Latin Dictionary and Lidell-Scott-Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, and bibliographic abbreviations are the same as in Lanne philologique. I have used the

Latin text of Roger Leseurs Bud edition (Les Belles Lettres, 1990) although I have occassionally preferred the reading of Garrod. (Oxford, 1906)Acknowledgments It was an almost Dantean journey from Hanover to Rome and back which brought this project to completion, and several people took the place of Vergil as my guide. Walter Stephens, now at Johns Hopkins University, introduced me to the Divine Comedy, without which I would have remained ignorant of Statius poetry, and Reginald Foster in Rome gave me the linguistic versatility necessary to read Imperial Latin. Special thanks to the Richter Memorial Trust, The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, and the Classics Deparment Reid Scholarship for funding my study with Reginaldus. Thanks to the Dartmouth College Department of Classics, and in particular, to Robert Craig in Boulder, Colorado and Edward Bradley for introducing me to the Aeneid, without which, like Statius, I could not have finished my project, to William Scott for introducing me to the Iliad, which looms behind all of poetry and even our lives, and to Roberta Stewart and Margaret Williamson for their advice on my introduction, my conclusion, and much in-between. Very special thanks to Margaret Graver for her expert help with Statius difficult Latin. Above all, thanks to my advisor, James Tatum, an extraordinary teacher and scholar, who during my first years at Dartmouth, and in

particular during this project, has always told all the truth, but told it slant. May I never be blind.1 Introduction: Statius in Purgatory This is a study of Statius Thebaid and a tradition in Latin epic poetry. Any reading of a poem which fits into such a tradition can be called intertextual, because in order to write a poem which can be called an epic, poets connected their poems to the epics which came before.1 Latin epics are long poems, composed in dactylic hexameters, and certain episodes, images, and characters appear throughout them. Each poet adapts these expected elements to fit his specific theme in order to write an epic which acknowledges its predecessors but stands as an original poem. Philip Hardie examines several features of the tradition of Latin epic poetry in The Epic Successors of Vergil. 2 His book covers all of the Latin epics, from Vergil to Silius Italicus, but the very premise of his book is the starting point for this study: the influence of the Aeneid pervades all the poems which follow it. And if we begin at the ending of the Thebaid, we can see how it is noteworthy among these poems, because in the poems epilogue, Statius makes his debt to Vergils Aeneid explicit. Vive, precor, nec tu divinam Aeneida tempta, sed longe sequere et vestigia semper adora.

Live, I pray, and do not rival the divine Aeneid, but always follow at a distance and worship its footsteps. (12.816-817) The epilogue demands that we read the Thebaid as a sequel to the Aeneid. Prominent as it is, Vergils voice is but one among many behind the poem, for Statius does not ignore Homer, Lucan, and Ovid. Nevertheless, as he tells us, the Aeneid is the primary source for the Thebaid. Statius reverence for Vergil has led modern scholars to denounce him as an inferior imitator of Vergil and an example of the decline of Latin literature from a 2 golden to a silver age. It is this misinterpretation of the epilogue to the Thebaid which I seek to correct as I examine the role of the underworld in the poem as one example of how Statius ingeniously follows the Aeneid in composing his own epic. The judgments of scholars on Statius over the past hundred years range from lukewarm to dismissive. Among much tedious rhetoric and cumbersome mythology, there is enough of imagination and pathos to make the poem interesting and even charming, writes MacKail in his Latin Literature. 3 Tyrrell is less willing to strain to find value in Statius, to whom he ascribes exaggeration, unreal sentiment, forcible-feeble diction, and ineffectual struggles to achieve the grand manner.4 Even J. H. Mozley, in

his 1928 translation of the Thebaid, apologizes for his choice of Statius: To be the author of a great epic poem is to count as one of the few great poets of the world, and it need hardly be said that Statius can make no claim to that honor.5 Only two other English translations of the Thebaid have appeared since Mozleys, compared to several per decade of the Aeneid. Poynton translated the poem into Spenserian Stanzas, which makes for more of a poetic paraphrase than a useful translation,6 and Melvilles most recent contribution is useful but limited because he transforms two lines of Latin into three lines of English; such a translation distorts the proportions of the Latin original.7 The small number of translations over the past century indicates a lack of scholarly and public interest in Statius and his poetry. In fact, much in the Thebaid deserves attention from scholars and readers alike, as John Henderson ably argues in his article on Statius poetry.8 And the reception theorist Robert Holub writes, Why a given work becomes famous, how that fame is perpetuated over periods of time, what factors increase or diminish a reputationall of these 3 questions involve the historian as much as the sociologist or psychologist.9 His omission of the literary critic from this list is notable; the neglect of the Thebaid over the

past few centuries is not because of any flaw in its poetry, but because of the variable climate of the discipline of classics and literary studies in general. Reputation aside, the poem does have thematic relevance to its contemporary audience and to the modern reader. In the first century C.E. the Thebaids theme of brothers battle lines (fraternae acies, Theb. 1.1) would have had immediate resonance with a Roman audience. Two men vying for supreme power would have conjured up such pairs as Romulus and Remus, themselves brothers, Caesar and Pompey, Antony and Augustus, and finally Titus and Domitian, under whom Statius composed the Thebaid. This poem, with its examination of rivalries between potential rulers must have had an immediate relevance to what Hardie terms the instabilities of power in the Roman Principatethe difficult but always necessary transfer of the state from one emperor to the next.10 The address to Domitian in the proem situates the Thebaid firmly in the same literary climate as Statius Silvae, with their frequent adulation of Domitian, and Martials epigrams, the later books of which are dedicated explicitly to the emperor.11 The address to the emperor in a poem is familiar from the praise of Caesar in Vergils first Georgic, and from the praise of Agustus at the end of Ovids Metamorphoses. Such praise reaches its most excessive form in the 33-line encomium of Nero in the De Bello

Civili (1.33-66). Statius proem includes this adulation, but treats the subject of the emperor much more briefly than Lucan does. After recounting the deeds of Domitian, he writes: Tempus erit, cum Pierio tua fortior oestro4 facta canam: nunc tendo chelyn satis arma referre Aonia et geminis sceptrum exitiale tyrannis. A time will come when the Muses zeal will make me braver and I will sing your deeds; now I tune my harp to relate only Theban arms and the deadly rule of twin tyrants. (1.32-34) He will write an epic about Domitian later, but only after he finishes the Thebaid; any direct connection between the events of the poem and the current emperor is left to his readers imagination. This refusal to explicitly relate the poem to the current political climate may have been a careful means of avoiding Domitians anger. However its first audiences may have received it, the Thebaid has relevance for the modern audience as well. It is about war: its origins, the motivations behind it, and the suffering it causes. Such topics have not lost their interest to us. And in ages other than ours, Statius received the praise and attention he deserves; the Thebaid was studied by Bocaccio, Chaucer, Milton, Pope, and Spenser, to name a few poets who valued Statius poetry.12

Statius is gradually receiving more and more critical attention, but he is still ignored by most Classicists. In this sense, he is very much a poet in purgatory. He has been resurrected, but he is still undergoing a period of testing, in which Classicists decide whether to admit him into their canon and give him the recognition as a great poet which he enjoyed for so many centuries. So it is appropriate that I discovered Statius, not in his present purgatory in modern scholarship, but in the Purgatorio of the Divine Comedy, where Dante and Vergil meet Statius just as he is admitted into paradise (Purg. XXI.13ff.).5 This is one of the few passages in literature where modern readers encounter Statius, if they ever see him at all. Dante, however, is a sensitive and appreciative reader of Statius. He recognizes the difficulty of following Vergil in a literary tradition and he admires Statius enough to admit him into heaven as a Christian, which he almost certainly was not.13 Many of the most famous images of the Divine Comedy, especially from the Inferno, come from Statius: Count Ugolino gnawing on the head of Bishop Ruggieri is modeled on Tydeus (Inf. XXXII.130-31), the flames of Ulysses and Diomedes fighting like the flames of Polynices and Eteocles (Inf. XXVI.52-54), and Capaneus himself suffering for his arrogance (Inf. XIV.63). The past century of Classicists may have

ignored Statius, but clearly he inspired the imagination of Dante, who took him seriously as an influential and creative poet. Statius appears at a moment of transformation in the Divine Comedy, as he finally completes his penance in purgatory and proceeds to paradise. His conversation with Vergil in Canto XXII shows us that this is not the only transformation which Dantes Statius has undergone: Because of you I was a poet; because of you I was a Christian (per te poeta fui; per te christiano. Purg XXII.73). This is an account of the transformation of Statius the poets life. He read Vergil and became a poet himself; he later read more Vergil and became a Christian. His journey in the Divine Comedy, then, has been a long one, from paganism to paradise through poetry and Christianity. Dante, beginning not as a pagan but as a straying Christian poet, undergoes this same journey in the course of the poem. He conceives of his poetic journey as a sea voyage at the beginning of Purgatorio, saying To cross better waters the little ship of my talent lifts her sails (Per correr miglior acque alza le vele/ omai la navicella del mio ingegno, 6 Purg. I.1-2). He even extends the metaphor to his audience: You who are in your little bark, desiring to listen, following behind my ship (O voi che siete in picioletta barca/desiderosi dascoltar, seguiti/dietro al mio legno, Par. II.1-3). As Singleton notes, Dante can only be addressing his readers; Dante conceives of both writing

and reading poetry as a voyage.14 This image of poet and poem as voyager recalls the epilogue to the Thebaid, where Statius says that he has more poetry to write, but my little raft now deserves a rest from the wide sea (mea iam longo meruit ratis aequore portum. Theb. 12.809). Dantes Statius, then, has undergone a transformation because of Vergils poetry, and Dantes first introduction of Statius describes this relationship. Al mio ardor fuor seme le faville, che mi scaldar, de la divina fiamma onde sono allumati pi di mille; de lEneda dico, la qual mamma fummi, e fummi nutrice poetando: sanz essa non fermai peso di dramma. My fire, the seeds of the sparks which warmed me, were from the divine flame by which more than one thousand poets are inspired; I speak of the Aeneid, which was a great mother and a nurse when I was writing: without her, my work would not be worth even part of an ounce. (Purg. XXI.94-99) The reverence which Dantes Statius shows for Vergil is not simply an invention of Dante, but a feature of Statius Thebaid. We recall to the epilogue to the Thebaid. Vive, precor, nec tu divinam Aeneida tempta,7 sed longe sequere et vestigia semper adora.

mox, tibi si qui adhuc praetendit nubila livor, occidet, et meriti post me referentur honores. Live, I pray, and do not put the divine Aeneid to the test, but always follow at a distance and worship its footsteps. If some jealousy has spread clouds over you until now, it will soon perish, and after I have died deserved honors will be bestowed. (12.816-819) Dante, too, saw that Statius valued the Aeneid above all other epic poems. But Dante is also transforming Statius poetry. In the epilogue to the Thebaid, Statius the poet addresses the poem itself and orders it to follow at a distance and worship the footsteps of another poem, the Aeneid. But Statius speech in Purgatorio does not just repeat this sentiment, since Dante is a poet who, as Angus Fletcher says, sets out to write allegory.15 We must understand that Statius appearance in the Divine Comedy is more than an appearance of Statius the poet in literature. In the Thebaid, it is the poem which will follow the divine Aeneid, but in Dante, the character Statius expresses this respect for Vergil. The Statius whom Dante portrays in the Divine Comedy is not a man on a poetic journey but a representation of Statius work itself making a journey towards paradise, the deserved honors (meriti honores, Theb. 12.819) Statius the poet describes in the Thebaid. Dantes Statius tells us that it was Vergil who turned him into

a poet, and allegorically he also tells us that Vergils poetry transformed, or more accurately defined, Statius poetry, for without the Aeneid as model, the Thebaid could never have been written. In Dante we see that the Thebaids relationship to the Aeneid is not at all 8 slavish. Instead we see the Aeneid as the source of the Thebaids energy, as Statius inspiration and starting point in composing a worthy successor. Statius reverence for the Aeneid is quite different from the implicit attitude towards Vergil in the other two epic poems which come between Vergil and Statius, Ovids Metamorphoses and Lucans De Bello Civili. The Metamorphoses, which is an epic poem in length and meter but is not at all an epic poem in theme and structure, discards the themes of Vergil, such as war and heroes, and takes its themes from the Callimichaean tradition of myths which explain the origins of things, or aitia. 16 As John Henderson says, Lucans De Bello Civili is a poem at war with itself and with its genre: it defaces [Lucans] citys wall, unmakes its foundation and its history, implodes its traditions and ideologies along with the documents which bear them; it stains the language of public propriety, twists Latin into self-revulsion, writes the continuing aetiology of its own accursed fall.17 The De Bello Civili attacks the epic themes of

Vergil.18 It engages a historical theme in a world without Olympian Gods, in which both sides embody Aeneas and Turnus; Caesar and Pompey have the violence of Turnus and the drive for conquest of Aeneas. This combination results in the destruction of both their homeland. Understandably Statius did not seek to emulate either of these responses to Vergil; Ovids wit and poetic mastery could not be replicated (in epic as in love elegy), and the war Lucan waged with Vergil was no more desirable than a civil war. Statius turned to yet a third approach to writing an epic, one less aggressive but just as creative. After bold poems like the Metamorphoses and the De Bello Civili, the Thebaid, which appears from the proem onward to be a return to a purely mythological epic, seems 9 at best tame or at worst an artificial exercise in myth. Although Lucan and Ovid have overshadowed Statius epic in modern scholarship, all three of these poets are doing the same thing: they are shaping the tradition to their own specifications.19 The Thebaid, like the Aeneid, embraces a mythological theme: the civil war in Thebes. But unlike the Aeneid, which describes the foundation of the Roman race and defines Roman virtues and ideals, the world of the Thebaid is remote from the Roman world. Its setting is Oedipus Thebes, in the generation before the Trojan war, and hence a generation before Aeneas

journey to Italy and the beginning of Roman history. Statius is conscious of this figurative distance between the themes of the Aeneid and the themes of the Thebaid; in the epilogue, he exhorts his poem to follow the Aeneid at a distance (longe , 12.817). This distance, by which Statius writes a poem which follows rather than ignores the Aeneid, is the subject of my project. From the wealth of material in the Thebaid, I have chosen the fury Tisiphone as the example of the distance Statius creates between his poem and Vergils. In book seven of the Aeneid, Vergil selects Allecto from the three mythological furies to start his war. The war of the Thebaid begins in a similar manner as Oedipus summons a fury to earth to incite violence among men (1.56-86); both Statius and Vergil draw on the tradition of furies which extends well beyond the world of epic.20 But Statius differentiates his poem from the Aeneid by employing not Allecto as Vergil did but her sister, Tisiphone. Statius art is to develop the furies which appeared only in passing in the Aeneid, whether as part of the landscape of the underworld in book six (Aen. 6.572), or indirectly as in the episode of the harpies in book three (3.252) and that of the nonspecific dira (fury) in book twelve (12.843-886). Nor does Statius stop with 10 Tisiphone; in book eleven of the Thebaid she summons the third fury, Megaera, to help her in concluding the war. In this way Statius poem both resembles and departs from its

model, the Aeneid. The same is true of the Thebaids structure. The war in Latium begins in Aeneid 7, halfway through the poem, but the Thebaids war begins in book one. Instructed by his reverence for Vergil, Statius begins the Thebaid where the major stage of the Aeneid begins; Vergil himself called books 7-12 of the Aeneid the greater work of the two halves (maius opus, Aen. 7.45). Even as he prizes Vergils poetry, though, Statius differentiates his poem from the Aeneid, for the Thebaid describes a war in twelve books instead of seven. In order to study the underworld in Statius poetry, I will organize my discussion around Tisiphones appearances in the Thebaid. Before turning to the Thebaid, however, it will be helpful to examine the appearances of Allecto in Aeneid 7, which are the scenes which Statius modifies in characterizing his fury. My second and third chapters are divided to fit the two halves of the Thebaid. In the first half of the Thebaid, Statius shows how his Tisiphone differs from Vergils Allecto, and so my second chapter describes Statius development of the role of the underworld in his war. This chapter will discuss the two ways in which Statius follows Vergil: close imitation and bold departure. The third and final chapter begins in Thebaid 7 as combat begins. Statius distinctive artistry truly emerges in these later books. His war, which combines civil war with

theomachy, departs greatly from Vergils, while continually drawing on Vergilian concepts of the powers of the underworld which sustain the action. 11 Chapter 1: Allecto and the Beginning of War Statius positions his poem in relation to the Aeneid in two ways: exact correspondence, and significant departure. Both are evident throughout the poem, nowhere more clearly than in Oedipus' invocation of Tisiphone in Thebaid 1. Bringing a fury to earth to begin a war is unmistakably an imitation of the Allecto episode in Aeneid 7. At the same time, this close poetic imitation is a radical departure from Vergil. Oedipus does not summon Allecto, but her sister, Tisiphone, and in the Thebaid, it is not the god Juno but the mortal Oedipus that summons the fury. In this regard the Thebaid follows the Aeneid in the same way that Vergil follows the Homeric epics, a tradition captured in microcosm in the opening phrase of the Aeneid. "I sing of arms and a man" (arma virumque cano 1.1) simultaneously reproduces exactly the first word of the Odyssey, , "man," while transforming the first word of the Iliad from , "rage," into a metonym for the war which rage causes, arma, "arms." Close adaptation of Vergil together with free innovation characterizes Statius' poetry, and in his epilogue, Statius exhorts the Thebaid to both. The Thebaid will worship the footsteps of the divine Aeneid while following it at a distance (sed longe sequere et

vestigia semper adora, 12.817). Scholars sometimes have referred to the relationships between texts in familial terms; to Harold Bloom, for instance, the Thebaid would be a son of the Aeneid. 1 But if we had to cast Statius imitation of Vergil into genealogical language, the relationship between the Thebaid and its predecessor would be one of sisterhood. For Vergil's portrayal of Allecto in Aeneid 7 is key to understanding Statius' innovation in his portrayal of her sister Tisiphone.12 In Aeneid 7 Vergil describes the beginning of the war in Latium. He shows us how the seeds of this war were present and fertile before Aeneas arrives in Italy, providing the final stimulus necessary for violence. Among other things, this book is about the psychology of war: how stillness descends into turmoil, how love turns into hatred, how fear turns into frenzy. In each of these cases, an apparently idyllic setting or benign emotion such as love gives way to violence. Allecto causes these transformations, and so exhibits the disruptive power of the underworld. In many ways, the war of the Aeneid resembles the war of the Thebaid. Turnus and Aeneas both have a claim to Italy, one because he is a native king and the other because he has been granted

Italy by fate. Similarly, Polynices and Eteocles have an equal claim to Thebes. However, the war in the Aeneid can be seen as a war over the legitimacy of Aeneas and Turnus respective claims to power, but as twin sons of Oedipus, Polynices and Eteocles both have a native right to the throne. It is not these claims but the motivating power behind the wars which reveals the differences between the conflicts; it is Juno who desires the war in the Aeneid in order to delay the success of her enemies the Trojans, but it is Oedipus, the father, who prays for his sons to kill each other. Nevertheless, Tisiphone plays a role similar to Allecto. Both furies play on the passions of their targets to incite violence, and we must understand Allecto and her victims in order to understand Tisiphone and hers. A major feature of Allecto is her disruptive power. The Italy in which she will work appears to be peaceful, but this peaceful exterior hides a latent instinct for war which Allecto will provoke. When the farmers take up arms for war after the killing of Silvias stag, Vergil describes most clearly the violence which lurks within Italys 13 inhabitants. These farmers become violent when they see that Iulus has wounded the sacred stag, and their peaceful nature gives way to violence. Olli (pestis enim tacitis latet aspera silvis) improvisi adsunt, hic torre armatus obusto,

stipitis hic gravidi nodis; quod cuique repertum rimanti telum ira facit. These men (for a harsh plague hides in silent woods) are immediately present, some armed with burnt torches, others with heavy knotted stakes. Whatever each one finds as he searches, anger makes into a weapon. (Aen. 7.505-508) Their ability to improvise weapons shows that although they are not warriors, the farmers desire battle. This instinct for war is the harsh plague and the silent forests are the apparently peaceful Italy which will soon plunge into war. It was Allecto who drove Iulus hunting dogs to kill the stag, and in this scene we see the disastrous effects of her intervention. The transformation in the farmers takes place near the end of book seven, but a similar transformation takes place in the Latins throughout the book. The images of Italy at the beginning of the book contrast with the later turmoil. The book opens with a funeral for Aeneas nurse Caeta, and an effortless journey past Circes dangerous isle. Even the weather aids the Trojans: The wide deeps rest, winds breathe into the night, a white moon does not deny travel, and the sea shines under a soft light (alta quierunt aequora...aspirant aurae in noctem nec candida cursu luna negat, splendet temulo sub lumine pontus. 7.6-9). Aeneas lands at the mouth of the Tiber, happy (laetus 7.36)

because of the apparent end of his labors. The Trojans have been happy before, as in 14 Aeneid 1 when they happily trim their sails (vela dabant laeti, 1.35). In both instances, an outbreak of violence disrupts their high spirits. Juno, angry because the Trojans have safely escaped from Troy, bribes Aeolus to bring a storm against the Trojans in Aeneid 1. Similarly, the invocation of Erato in Aeneid 7 shows the violence which Juno has in store for Aeneas, despite the idyllic setting of Italy. Nunc age, qui reges, Erato, quae tempora rerum, quis Latio antiquo fuerit status, advena classem cum primum Ausoniis exercitus appulit oris, expediam, et primae revocabo exordia pugnae. Now come, Erato, I will tell who were the kings, what was the historical situation, what was the state of things in ancient Latium, when the foreign army first arrived on the shore of Italy; I will repeat the origins of the first battle. (Aen. 7.37-40) The Trojans have not arrived in paradise but in a county on the brink of war. With Allectos help, the recently arrived Trojans will unleash the war on themselves. Erato, the muse of erotic love poetry, seems an unusual choice for a poem about war, but her association with intense passions makes her the perfect muse to oversee the intense passions of Amata and Turnus, which Allecto will transform from love to violence in the course of the book. Vergils choice of Erato is also one of his

own adaptations of earlier epic as she is the muse of the second half of Apollonius Argonautica. , .15 Come now, Erato, stand near, and tell me how Jason brought back the fleece into Iolkos by the love of Medea. (Arg. 3.1-3) The love story between Medea and Jason begins in book three, for which Erato seems an obvious choice of muse. But Argonautica 3 also describes the brutal battle between Jason and the warriors who spring from the dragons teeth. Vergil establishes the same double association of Erato with love and violence as Apollonius because the passions of the players in the war manifest both sides of Erato: they shift from romantic love to a love of war. The fury effects this shift as she plays on these intense passions and perverts them into hatred and violence. The arrival of the fury itself and the invocation of the muse disrupt the tranquillity of the world in similar ways; in both cases a benign atmosphere, whether of peace or of love, changes into one of violence. Allectos first two victims are introduced in terms of the passions which she perverts. We learn that Turnus is Lavinias chief suitor, that he, handsome beyond all others, seeks her (petit ante alios pulcherrimus omnis. 7.55). The superlative

handsome beyond all others emphasizes Turnus excellence in wooing. This is his first introduction; we learn later that he is also impressive among warriors in the catalogue of troops at the end of the book: Turnus, outstanding in his body, wheels among the first ranks, brandishing his weapons and taller than the rest by his whole helmet (Ipse inter primos praestanti corpore Turnus vertitur arma tenens et toto vertice supra est. Aen. 7.783-784). Allecto transforms his passion for Lavinia at the beginning of the book into a passion for war at the end. Similarly, the queen Amata desires Turnus to be Lavinias husband with astonishing love (miro amore, 7.57). Critics are divided over the object of this amor, but there can be little doubt that mirus shows that Amata is subject to 16 intense passions as well, possibly for Turnus himself. With both Amata and Turnus, Allecto will turn these romantic passions into violent passions. Her third victim, Iulus, is no exception; playing on his love of praise (amore laudis, 7.496) she will drive him to kill the sacred stag and unleash the war. In her visits to each of these three characters, Allecto finds her victim in a peaceful setting and provokes the frenzy which will lead to war. However, each encounter also reveals a particular dimension of Allectos work and so provides Statius with a varied portrait of the role the infernal can take in beginning a war. With Turnus,

Allecto transforms his passion for Lavinia into a passion for war by disrupting the delicate balance of his mind with fear. The encounter with Amata describes how the characters are simultaneously in control of their passions and wildly out of control, so intense is their fury. And the encounter with Iulus shows Allectos versatility in starting war; even the unromantic passions of an apparently innocent boy fan the sparks of a massive conflict. These three encounters each embody to a certain degree the elements of the others, and together they show Allectos power to direct all kinds of human passions into violence. Allecto comes to Turnus while he is sleeping and a scene of quietude transforms into violent madness. Allecto disguises herself and attempts to convince Turnus to fight by playing on his innate drive for war and conflict. Her choice of Calybe, the old priestess of Junos temple (Iunonis anus templique sacerdos, 7.419), shows that she believes that Turnus will be an easy mark since he hides an instinct for war, as does her flattery: Let him know and ultimately feel Turnus in arms (sentiat et tandem Turnum experiatur in armis, 7.434). Her disguise amounts to a reduction of herself to her 17 essential role in the bookshe is at the most basic level Junos messenger telling the Latins that they must go into battle, and here she intends to inflame Turnus with the news

of Aeneas arrival. However, Turnus reacts even more passionately than planned, because of his arrogance. He dismisses Calybe in every way: he tells her sarcastically that he already knew about the Trojans arrival (7.437), claims superior communion with Juno (7.438-9), insults her age (7.440), denounces her ability as a seer (7.441-2), and demands that she allow men to concern themselves with war (7.443-4). As a result of his arrogance, Allecto does not drive him directly into frenzy but quite the opposite Turnus enrages Allecto with his arrogance and in doing so arouses his own passion for war as well. Vergil describes Turnus reaction to Allecto with a simile, which along with the simile of Amata and the top is one of two similes in Aeneid 7 which explore the nature of Allectos power over people. Although it is not possible to spell out every implication of the figurative language of a simile, the similes in both the Aeneid and the Thebaid are crucial to understanding the characters of the epic and so require careful analysis. In this first simile the fury unleashes Turnus personal passion for war, and Vergil likens the disturbance and the ensuing frenzy to the boiling of a pot. Saevit amor ferri et scelerata insania belli, ira super; magno veluti cum flamma sonore virgea suggeritur costis undantis ani exsultantque aestu latices, furit intus aquai

fumidus atque alte spumis exuberat amnis, nec iam se capit unda, volat vapor ater ad auras.18 ergo iter ad regem polluta pace Latinum indicit primis iuvenum et iubet arma parari... A love of weapons and the wicked madness of war rages [in Turnus], as does anger. Just as when with a great noise flaming twigs are placed under the sides of a foaming pot, the surface of the water dances with the heat, and deep within a smoky river of water rages and abounds with deep foam. Nor can the water hold itself and black steam flies upwards. Therefore, after his peace had been disrupted, he appointed the foremost of the youths to make a journey to king Latinus, and ordered weapons to be prepared...(7.461-468) The apparently peaceful mind of Turnus the suitor before his encounter with Allecto is likened to the smooth surface of the water before it breaks into a boil. In one sense, Allecto affects Turnus like the flames affect the pot, but the origins of Turnus anger lie much deeper in his character. The flaming twigs are like his passion for Lavinia which we saw in his first introduction; Lavinia herself crackled with flame during one of the omens earlier in the book (7.74). Vergil here describes Turnus rage in terms which recall Lucretius discussion of anger in book three of the De Rerum Natura: This heat is present in the mind as well, which it takes on when it burns with anger and frenzy flashes more fiercely from the eyes (Est etiam calor ille animo, quem sumit, in ira

cum fervescit et ex oculis micat acrius ardor, De Re. Nat. 3.288-89). A Homeric parallel also shows how this anger deprives Turnus of his control over his passions. In Iliad 23 Hephaestus surrounds the river Xanthus with flames, and the river asks why he must take part in the war. Meanwhile, the heat has caused the waters to boil. f pur kaienow, n d' flue kal =eyra.19 w d lbhw ze ndon peigenow pur poll knshn eldenow palotrefow siloio pntoyen boldhn, p d jla kgkana ketai, w to kal =eyra pur flgeto, ze d' dvr: So he spoke as he burned with fire, and his fair waters boiled. Just as a cauldron boils within when it is urged on by a huge fire, and it melts the fat of the fattened pig and bubbles on every side, as dry sticks are placed under it. So did the fair waters burn with fire, and the water boiled. (Il. 21.361-365) The simile shows that the river Xanthus cannot resist the heat of the fires any more than a pot can, and from Lucretius we see that heat in the mind is connected to anger. These two sources together illuminate the state of Turnus mind, since implicit in the comparison of Turnus with the river Xanthus is a similarity between Turnus anger and the heat of the boiling. With this rich network of texts, Vergil shows how it can be that once Allecto has enraged him, Turnus is unable to control his own passions for war.

Allectos visit to Amata reveals a different aspect of fury-induced frenzy. In her visit to Turnus, Vergil describes the mental process which she initiates, and her visit to Amata explores the characters behavior once they have realized their passion for war. After Allecto infects Amata, her rage does not begin immediately but rather after she goes to Latinus and speaks in a motherly manner (mos matrum, Aen. 7.357). Her pleas to Latinus demonstrate that she is deceiving herself about the possibility of resolving the situation in a way satisfactory to her desires, namely, by allowing Lavinia to marry Turnus. This frustration compels her to assert that by a foreign husband the Gods must in fact mean Turnus (7.369-372); naturally Latinus is not convinced. With his rejection 20 of her proposal, the frustrated desire for Turnus, which she has perhaps not even recognized, changes into a violent desire for war. Tum vero infelix ingentibus excita monstris immensam sine more furit lymphata per urbem, ceu quondam torto volitans sub verbere turbo, quem pueri magno in gyro vacua atria circum intenti ludo exercentille actus habena curvatis fertur spatiis; stupet inscia supra impubesque manus mirata volubile buxum. But then the unlucky woman was frenzied by the massive portents, and she rages beside herself throughout the whole city without restraint. Just as when made

to spin by a twisting lash, a top, which the boys, intent on their game, drive in a great circle around the empty yard, is borne through the curved space, driven by a whip; above it, the children stand amazed and the crowd wonders at the spinning boxwood. (7.376-382) To spell out some possible meanings in the figurative language: Amata has abandoned her civilized manner (mos matrum, 7.357) in favor of a frenzy which is not part of the character of a mother (sine more, 7.377). This frenzy is complex in that Amata is simultaneously in control of herself, while being under the furys power as well. The twisting lash reminds us of Allectos whips (verbera, 7.336) and so likens Amata to a plaything of Allecto. However, although the top is driven on by the boys as Allecto drives on Amata, it exercises a certain hypnotic control over the watching boys; each one stands amazed by it (7.381) and is inscia, not understanding. Amata also exhibits this 21 kind of control when she pretends to be in a Bacchic frenzy in order to rouse the Latin matrons (7.385). She is not actually possessed by Bacchus, whereas Allecto really did instill the first feelings of frenzy in her with the snake. This episode shows how Allecto releases her victims passions but then allows them to act them out without her intervention.

From here Allecto turns to the Trojan side of the conflict and drives Iulus dogs to kill Silvias stags; This was the first cause of toils and fired the spirits of the farmers to war (prima laborum causa fuit belloque animos accendit agrestis, 7.481). As with Turnus and Amata, Allecto plays on the passions of her victim. Iulus is inflamed with a love of praise (laudis succensus amore, 7.496) as the hounds catch the scent of the stag. This is not a romantic passion like Turnus or Amatas but a desire for grandeur which Allecto channels into violence just as easily. She does not make use of her usual methods such as the snake for Amata or her own horrifying image for Turnus, but uses a new art (arte nova, 7.477); she simply instills a sudden madness (subitam rabiem, 7.480) in the dogs which leads them to hunt down Silvias stag. Allecto does not actually touch or confront Iulus in any way because the barking dogs will be enough to inflame his love of praise. The hunt in book seven recalls the hunt of book four, in which Iulus accompanies Dido and Aeneas on their hunt. The two passages together demonstrate the power of Allecto even over non-violent children. In Aeneid 4, we see Iulus as a playful and innocent hunter because of his rejoicing (4.157), his prayers for a good hunt (4.158), and the use of boy (puer, 4.159) to describe him. This innocence does not keep Iulus from assisting the fury, even in ignorance. Killing the stag is an act which

violates pietas, the reverence and duty which one bears to his family, his friends, and in 22 this case, to the sacred. Allecto works against this virtue, again as a disruptive force. If pietas is an attention to the natural order of the world, in which sons love their fathers and sacred stags wander safely in the forest, it is the role of the fury to disrupt this order. Statius Tisiphone will exhibit the same powers as her Vergilian sister. Although Thebes is hardly as idyllic as the Italy of Aeneid 7, Tisiphones arrival still disrupts the city. Tisiphone also plays on the passions of her victims: on Oedipus hatred for his sons, on Eteocles and Polynices jealous rivalry for the throne, on Tydeus brutal anger, and on Capaneus arrogance. Hers is a war against pietas as well; she even perverts Hippomedons loyalty to the fallen Tydeus. However, this adherence to Vergil is only one aspect of the Thebaids poetics. As we will see, Statius departs from Vergil by drawing on a tradition not limited to the Aeneid when he selects Tisiphone instead of Allecto as his fury. These two furies each bring an individual personality to their respective tasks, and even the etymology of Tisiphone shows how she is the appropriate fury for the Thebaid. Her name comes from , to avenge, which is the root of , revenge, and , blood; she is the avenger of blood, the perfect fury for the war fought as Oedipus revenge on his sons.2

So although they are both furies with essentially the same powers, Tisiphone in the Thebaid is a different fury from Allecto in the Aeneid. My reading of Statius poem will be organized around the appearances of Tisiphone and other infernal figures with attention to ways Statius fury is similar to Vergils, and to the ways in which the two differ, in order to demonstrate Statius creativity in simultaneously following and departing from the Aeneid.23 Chapter 2: The Sister of Allecto The first six books of the Thebaid relate the events which lead up to the conflict of the poem: the exile of Polynices, his alliance with Tydeus and Adrastus, and the march of the Argives toward Thebes. Inseparable from the development of this conflict are Tisiphone and the other characters from the underworld, whose infernal power drives the brothers to vie for control of Thebes in the first place. The spread of this infernal presence on earth is the direct result of Oedipus' curse on his sons, and the two brothers own jealous rivalry for power. As we saw with Allecto in the Aeneid, furies direct the passions of men into violence, and it is Oedipus' wrath which unifies the first half of the Thebaid; because of it he curses his sons and summons Tisiphone. These six books describe how Tisiphone carries out Oedipus' wish for the deaths of his sons. Aeneid 7 depicts a large-scale intervention of the underworld on earth, and infernal

characters and images appear throughout the poem in short episodes such as the appearance of the nameless Dira in book twelve, but Tisiphone affects the course of the Thebaid over the space of twelve full books. In this expansion the first six books of the Thebaid develop in the same way that the first half of Aeneid 7 develops. Statius describes his setting, introduces his fury, and explores the various ways in which she and the other forces of the underworld work on earth. In this chapter, I will show some ways that the world in which Tisiphone appears differs from the world of the Aeneid. My first passage, however, will not be the opening scene of the poem but the description of an artifact that is actually older than the story of the Thebaid itself, the Necklace of Harmonia, created before Thebes was founded (2.269-297). This ekphrasis presents in microcosm Statius adaptations of earlier epics, 24 and in particular, of the Aeneid. We will then turn to the opening of book one, in which Statius introduces Thebes as a city where the powers of the underworld possess great power. Tisiphone's arrival later in book one is the first instance of the underworld coming to earth, as well as the first instance of Statius' modification of Vergil's Allecto for the Thebaid. But Tisiphone is not the only character from the underworld who comes

to Thebes in the course of the poem; the journeys of Mercury and Laius further develop the effects of crossing boundaries between the realms of the cosmos. The first half of the Thebaid ends with the funeral games of Archemorus, the infant son of Lycurgus, king of Nemea. These games prefigure the intervention of Tisiphone in the coming war and so give a foretaste of the way the fury will act in the second half of the poem. An Emblem of the Thebaid: The Necklace of Harmonia An ekphrasis is a passage in a literary text which describes a work of art or artifact.1 Such passages engage the reader in a way that other descriptions do not. Like any description, an ekphrasis attempts to create an image for the reader, but when a poet describes the features a sculpture or a painting, he calls attention to his act of description, especially when his description involves an interpretation of the image depicted by the art. When the poet admits that he is interpreting a piece of art with his description, he requests a further interpretation from the readeran evaluation of his interpretation of the work of art in question.2 The necklace of Harmonia in the Thebaid makes this same demand on us. Statius describes the necklace, its history, its fabrication, its material, and its successive owners throughout Theban history. As such it serves as an emblematic example of Statius creativity within an epic tradition. His ekphrasis both

embraces a 25 tradition of ekphrases in epic and boldly departs from it, much as the Thebaid embraces and departs from the epic tradition itself. Homer and Vergil employ ekphrasis extensively, from the shield of Achilles in the Iliad to the most famous of the Aeneid's ekphrases, the shield of Aeneas. These descriptions present the themes and structures of the poem as a whole in microcosm.3 Statius, modeling his poem on the Aeneid, gave his ekphrasis the same function as Vergil gave the Shield of Aeneas. As Michael Putnam says, the Aeneids literary descriptions add to the text in consequential ways,4 and Statius ekphrasis adds to his poem in a similar way, as well. Through the necklace of Harmonia Statius applies the power of Tisiphone to disrupt and blend realms of the cosmos to ekphrases from earlier epics, Vergils shield of Aeneas among them. The ekphrasis of the necklace of Harmonia appears near the beginning of the Thebaid, in book 2. Since ekphrases appear throughout the Aeneid, such a description would not be remarkable except that the necklace is the main ekphrasis of the poem, which in the Aeneid and the Iliad appear late in the poems, in book 8 and book 18, respectively. When we find the ekphrasis of the necklace of Harmonia in book 2, we expect that later in the poem we will find at least one description of a shield. Aeschylus

Seven Against Thebes, which describes each of the seven Argive shields, heightens this expectation. But Statius never does describe a shield. By placing the necklace of Harmonia near the beginning of the poem, Statius calls attention to his modifications of the epic ekphrasis, which represent the modifications of the epic tradition throughout the poem, especially his choice of Tisiphone instead of Allecto. Once we read the epilogue and learn that the Thebaid is a sequel to the Aeneid, Statius exclusion of an epic shield 26 seems an even bolder departure from Vergil. In general ways, the Thebaid conforms to the tradition; the Aeneid had ekphrases and furies, and Statius gives us both. But his ekphrasis and his fury differ from those of Vergils epic in important ways; he depicts a necklace instead of a shield, and he uses Tisiphone instead of Allecto. The choice of a necklace instead of a shield for his main ekphrasis is the most stark departure from the Aeneid. For this departure Statius relies on the larger epic tradition to guide him; he draws on features of the ekphrases in the Homeric epics which indicate that Vulcans abilities extend beyond making shields. In the Iliad, Thetis travels to the house of Hephaestus to request a new set of arms for Achilles, and finds him working there. trpodaw gr ekosi pntaw teuxen stenai per toxon #stayow egroio,

xrsea d sf' p kkla kst puyni yken, fr o atatoi yeon dusaat' gna d' atiw prw da neoato yaa dsyai. For he was making tripods, twenty in all, to stand around the wall of his wellbuilt great hall. And he placed golden wheels on the bottom under each one, so that they would enter the gods assembly on their own, and would return back home, marvelous to see. (Iliad 18.373-377) The circular wheels of the tripods, the circles of the two epic shields to come, and the circular links of the chains which he makes in Odyssey 8 all demonstrate that it is characteristic of Hephaestus (and Vulcans) art is to forge in circles. Statius, then, makes the necklace of Harmonia Vulcans latest circle. Nor is jewelry-making an 27 unusual craft for the god of the forge; Hephaestus, when he hears that Thetis has come to see him, relates that when Thetis was taking care of him he made her brooches and spiral arm-bands and cups and necklaces (prpaw te gnaptw y' likaw klukw te ka rouw , Iliad 18.400-401). The necklace of Harmonia is Vulcans return to his oldest craft; its circularity, and its part in his revenge on his adulterous wife are both characteristic of his use of his skill elsewhere in myth.5 The ekphrasis begins with the circumstances of Vulcans creation of the necklace

and the artisans who design it. Lemnius haec, ut prisca fides, Mavortia longum furta dolens, capto postquam nil obstat amori poena nec ultrices castigavere catenae, Harmoniae dotale decus sub luce iugali struxerat. Hoc, docti quamquam maiora, laborant Cyclopes, notique operum Telchines amica certatim iuvere manu; sed plurimus ipsi sudor. As was the ancient belief, Vulcan, troubled for a long time by Mars secrecy, after no punishment could block the disclosed love nor could avenging chains restrain it, built this as a fitting dowry for Harmonia on the eve of her wedding. Although they are skilled for greater things, the Cyclopses toiled over this, and the Telchines, famous for their works, helped zealously with their friendly hands; but most of the sweat was his. (Theb. 2.269-276) Vulcan makes the necklace as a gift for Harmonia, the daughter of the adulterous union 28 of his wife, Venus, and Mars. The artisans who help him come from both heaven and earth; Vulcan and the Cyclopses come from Olympus, while the Telchines, who are the sons of the earth and the sea, are magicians from Rhodes. Vulcan here has drawn on the resources of a realm other than his own in employing the willing Telchines to help him, just as Oedipus called on Tisiphone to assist him in book one. Their intentions

are similar also, as the circumstances of the fabrication of the necklace show. Just as Oedipus needs Tisiphones help to bring vengeance on his sons, who inhabit the earth with him, Vulcan makes the necklace as revenge against Venus and Mars, his own Olympian brother and sister. In this way Statius connects the necklace with the invocation of Oedipusas part of a plot for revenge against ones own relatives. Tisiphone, the avenger of blood, is the proper fury for the vengeful passions of both Oedipus and Vulcan. Oedipus summons her, and Vulcan includes in the necklace the chief snake having been taken from the black hair of Tisiphone (atro Tisiphones de crine ducem, 2.282-283) to affirm her importance in his revenge. Vulcan made the epic shields in past epics not to punish anyone, but to assist a great warrior in his war, which was the subject of both of the epics in which the shields appeared. The necklace, an ornament for a dowry (dotale decus, 2.272), is intended for use not in war but in a wedding. Weddings are the source of families, and the wedding of Harmonia to Cadmus is the source of the family to which Oedipus and his sons belong. Statius chooses a necklace instead of a shield to reflect more fully his theme. The Thebaid is an epic about war, but fraternae acies describes not only war but a war

between family members. A shield can only be used in battle scenes, of which there are many in the Thebaid, but the conflict of the poem reaches beyond battles. The necklace, 29 in a way that a shield could not, has been present in Thebes since Cadmus wedding, and so represents the presence of the underworld throughout the history of this Theban family. Furthermore, Vulcans motivation for making the necklace differs from his motivation for making the shield of Aeneas. In the Aeneid, he made the shield as a favor to his wife; bound by love (devinctus amore, Aen. 8.394) as Venus embraced him, he agreed to make a shield for Aeneas. In the Thebaid, though, Statius refers to the adultery of Venus and Mars which leads Vulcan to make the necklace to punish his wife (Theb. 2.269-270). Adultery is a violation of marriage, which corresponds to Oedipus incest with Jocasta. These two violations are very different, the former being a devaluation of the bonds of marriage, the latter, to extend Levi-Strauss term, being an overrating of the bonds of marriage.6 That is, the marital trouble of Venus adultery is opposite, but related, to the incest of Oedipus. In this way the necklace is an appropriate gift for the troubled family of Oedipus. In Odyssey 8, Demodocus tells the story of the adultery of Aphrodite and Ares.

Hephaestus takes revenge on his wife by trapping her in bed with Ares in a net of golden chains. Statius description of the necklace refers to this episode: after no punishment could block the disclosed love nor could avenging chains restrain it (capto postquam nil obstat amori poena nec ultrices castigavere catenae, Theb. 2.270-272). Unlike the epic shields, the chains for Mars and Venus are the product of Vulcans craft which do resemble the necklace of Harmonia in that he forged both as a punishment for Venus. Because she has cuckolded Vulcan, his personal investment in the necklace is much greater than with the shields for Aeneas and Achilles. Statius emphasizes this intensity of 30 emotion when he describes the interest Vulcan took in the completion of the necklace: most of the sweat was Vulcans (plurimus ipsi sudor, 2.275-6). While working on the shield of Aeneas, Vulcan shares the work evenly with the Cyclopses (Aen. 8.443-45), but here he cares more and takes a greater share of the labor. The necklace of Harmonia, with its connections to weddings, adultery, and family, would be quite at home in the domestic world of the Odyssey, but with a brutal twist. Whereas the Odyssey depicts a post-war world, the necklace, which in many ways leads ultimately to the fratricide of the brothers, plunges this domestic world back into war. This connection to the Odyssey illuminates a further dimension of Statius

ekphrasisthe story of Aphrodite and Ares relates to the Odysseys theme of Penelopes fidelity, but also depicts the manner in which a poet such as Homer performed his composition.7 The necklace has both a thematic and poetic relevance for the Thebaid; its story relates to the familial strife of the house of Oedipus, and it is a product of Statius poetic project: a departure from the model of the Aeneid and its shield by recalling an earlier epic tradition. Nor does the necklace represent only a departure from this tradition. Beyond being a representation of Statius departures from the epic tradition, it also embodies the presence of the furies in the poem by its very construction. A major feature of Aeneid 7 is Allectos blending of the human world with the underworld, which leads to a violent disruption of the human world. Statius makes this blending of realms an important feature of the Thebaid as well and the necklace is itself a blend of materials and skills of the various realms. The artists who designed the necklace came from heaven and earth, and the materials from which Vulcan forges the necklace come from all regions of the 31 universe, including the underworld. Ibi arcano florentis igne zmaragdos cingit et infaustas percussum adamanta figuras Gorgoneosque orbes Siculaque incude relictos fulminis extremi cineres viridumque draconum

lucentes a fronte iubas; hic flebile germen Hesperidum et dirum Phricei velleris aurum; tum varias pestes raptumque interplicat atro Tisiphones de crine ducem, et quae pessima ceston vis probat; haec circum spumis lunaribus ungit callidus atque hilari perfundit cuncta veneno. Then he girded it with emeralds burning with inner fire and diamond formed into foreboding shapes, the eyes of Gorgons, ashes having been left on the Sicilian anvil from the last thunderbolt, and the crests flashing from the fronts of sea serpents. Here is the sad seed of the Hesperides and the harsh gold of Phrixus fleece. Then he wove in various diseases, the chief snake having been taken from the black hair of Tisiphone, and the most wicked power which commends the girdle; he expertly anoints these with lunar foam and soaks everything with cheerful poison. (2.276-285) The lightning bolt, a symbol of the celestial realm throughout the poem, represents the heavenly part of the necklace, and the crests of the sea serpents represent Neptunes realm of the sea (2.279). The diamonds and emeralds come from the earth (2.276-7), but Vulcan corrupts their beauty with the worst of the earthly realm, the monstrous features 32 of the Gorgons (2.278). The lightning bolt and the sea serpents, although beautiful, are deadly manifestations of the powers of each of the Olympian brothers, and so the

necklace combines the beauty of heaven and earth with horror. From the underworld, Vulcan includes a snake from the head of Tisiphone; such snakes are the whips she uses to drive men to violence, as we know from Aeneid 7 where Allecto strikes Amata with a snake (Aen. 7.456), and later in the Thebaid when Tisiphone brings fear to Thebes (Theb. 7.466). These snakes give the necklace the power to cause violence, in contrast to the beauty of the gems. To these he adds other destructive features: varied diseases (variae pestes, 2.282), the worst power which commends the girdle (quae pessima ceston vis probat, 2.283) and cheerful poison (hilare venenum, 2.285). The latter two combine suffering with desire; Venus girdle instills desire in people, and the cheerful poison perhaps infected Oedipus as he delighted in the sweet frenzies and lamentable marriage to his mother (dulces furias et lamentabile matris conubium gavisus, 1.68-69). The final infernal touch is the lunar foam, which Erichtho and other witches use to summon the dead (De Bel. Civ. 6.669). With the inclusion of the foam, Vulcan connects the necklace, already infused with infernal power, to witches, who are connected to the underworld although they are mortals on earth. Beyond the materials used to make it, the necklace relates to the conflict of the Thebaid as an artifact which has been present at every stage of the citys cursed past. It

was first a dowry for Harmonia, the wife of Cadmus and the mother of the whole line of Thebes. Statius describes the history of the necklace, which is also a history of the family; the women who have worn the necklace stretch from Harmonia to Jocasta. Prima fides operi, Cadmum comitata iacentem33 Harmonia versis in sibila dira querellis Illyricos longo sulcavit pectore campos. improba mox Semele vix dona nocentia collo induit, et fallax intravit limina Iuno. teque etiam, infelix, perhibent, Iocasta, decorum possedisse nefas; vultus hac laude colebas, heu quibus, heu placitura toris! post longior ordo. Tunc donis Argia nitet vilisque sororis ornatus sacro praeculta supervenit auro. The first proof of the works power was when Harmonia, a companion to Cadmus as he fell to the ground, furrowed the Illyirican fields with her long breast after her complaints were turned into harsh hisses. Soon shameless Semele had scarcely put the harmful gift on her neck when deceitful Juno crossed the threshold. And they say that you, also, unfortunate Jocasta, possessed the beautiful curse; you were adorning your face with this praise, alas, just before you took pleasure in that bed! There is a longer line of stories in addition. Then Argia shines with the gifts and surpasses the cheap decorations of her sister with sacred

gold. (Theb. 2.290-298) Both the proem and the history of the necklace only claim to describe partially their stories, as well: the story that goes far back (longa retro series, Theb. 1.7) has a similar effect as the longer line in addition of line 296 (post longior ordo). The necklace has been present at every stage in the history of Thebes, an emblem of the familys accursed weddings and infernal nature. The women who have owned the necklace are the wives of 34 the men catalogued in the proem to the Thebaid, and although they are not mentioned directly in the proem, they played the vital role of wives in continuing the line of Cadmus. Harmonia, the first bearer of the necklace, was Cadmus wife (1.6); Semele is not mentioned except under the general work of savage Juno (1.12); and Jocasta is completely neglected except in the troubled house of Oedipus at 1.17. Both the necklace and the proem, then, present a history of Thebes. When read together, these two histories show the character of the weddings which have continued the line of Cadmus: with each generation the disruptive and violent influences of the underworld are present in the form of this necklace. The necklace, then, is an object appropriate to the themes of brothers battle lines (fraternae acies, Theb. 1.1) and the power of the furies to bring violence to earth. Statius

model for his fury, as well as for his epic, is the Aeneid, but the description of the necklace also shows that he is doing more than composing a variation on the Aeneid. Although Aeneas shield fits the marital theme of Vergils epic, Statius chooses a different object to represent the Thebaid. The necklace relates to the familial aspects of the conflict and includes the blending of realms which is a hallmark of Tisiphones involvement in the war. It also accompanies the accumulation of guilt in Thebes which results in the fratricide; each generation of Thebans passes it on to the next along with the curse of the line. Above all, it represents a new stage in the evolution of Latin epic poetry. It bears many of the features of the epic shields which precede it, but no where else in epic is a necklace the main ekphrasis of a poem. In this sense, the necklace of Harmonia is a microcosm of the poetic techniques of the Thebaid; it includes features of earlier epics but boldly transforms them at every turn.35 The Underworld on Earth Just as the main ekphrasis of the Thebaid appears early in the poem, Statius names his setting earlier and more directly than previous epic poets. Even as he achieves the epilogues aspiration to live up to the Aeneid, he will do so with the highest ingenuity. The proem to the Aeneid mentions Troy in line 1 and Rome in line 7, but begins unexpectedly in Carthage in line 13: There was an ancient city...Carthage

(Urbs antiqua fuit...Karthago. Aen. 1.12-13). The Odyssey reveals that Odysseus is on the island of Calypso only after 14 lines, and the Iliad does not mention Troy until line 19. But Statius proem names Thebes in the second line. Fraternas acies alternaque regna profanis decertata odiis sontesque evolvere Thebas, Pierius menti calor incidit. unde iubetis ire, deae? The muses fire drives my mind to recount brothers battle lines and alternating reigns fought for with cursed hatred, and guilty Thebes. From where, o goddesses, do you order me to begin? (Theb. 1.1-3) This early definition of the setting recalls Lucans opening of De Bello Civili , which names central Greece as its setting in its first line: [We sing] wars worse than civil on the Emathian plain (Bella per emathios plusquam civilia campos. De. Bel. Civ. 1.1). Even in the first line of the proem, Statius has followed an epic other than the Aeneid in order to differentiate his poem from Vergils. In Statius as in Lucan, the early revelation of the setting is emphatic; as soon as we read Thebas we know that the Thebaid will be 36 an epic about familial strife and ruin, both hallmarks of the line of Cadmus. Statius is aware of this long line of disaster in his proem, and as he asks the muses where to begin he further emphasizes the range of possible starting points in the ruinous

story of Thebes. He spends ten lines recounting the story of Thebes: Cadmus search for Europa (1.6), the sowing of the dragons teeth (1.7), Amphion building the citadel (1.8), Bacchus rage (1.11), and the flight of Ino from her frenzied husband Athamas (1.13-15). He finally settles on the story of Oedipus as a boundary which separates the myths behind his poem from the narrative he will relate: let the boundary of my poem be the ruinous house of Oedipus (limes mihi carminis esto Oedipodae confusa domus, 1.16-17). Statius has chosen Oedipus, the most disastrous character from a history of disastrous families. This selection sets the direction for the poemit will begin with this ruinous house, and proceed to the final confrontation between Oedipus two sons. This opening differs from the opening of book seven of the Aeneid, which Statius evokes as his model for beginning an epic about war. As we saw above, Aeneid 7 begins with images of tranquillity and peace: the solemn burial of Caeta, the Trojans easy arrival in Latium with good weather, and the happiness of Aeneas men finally to have arrived on land after so many trials. The poets invocation of Erato disturbs that peace and announces the coming conflict. By contrast, Thebes has never been tranquil. The city was founded after Cadmus battle with the soldiers who sprang from the dragons

teeth. The next generation brought more violence as Amphion seized the city for himself. From these violent beginnings the line of Cadmus continued its accursed course down to his most notorious descendant, Oedipus, who lives under Thebes in a state near to death. His existence is the culmination of the history of Thebes, which has become an 37 underworld on earth. As Oedipus summons Tisiphone from the underworld this infernal presence will spread through the whole city. The introduction of Oedipus describes the state of his life in blindness under Thebes. Impia iam merita scrutatus lumina dextra merserat aeterna damnatum nocte pudorem Oedipodes longaque animam sub morte tenebat. Illum indulgentem tenebris imaeque recessu sedis inaspectos caelo radiisque penates servantem tamen adsiduis circumvolat alis saeva dies animi, scelerumque in pectore Dirae. After he gouged out his cursed eyes, as he deserved, with his hand, Oedipus had sunk his guilty shame into endless night and was holding his spirit under a long death. As he wallows in shadows and the retreat of the deepest home and keeps the chambers which neither the sky nor the suns rays have struck, nevertheless on hard wings the savage day of the mind flies around him, and the Furies of his crime encircle his breast. (1.46-52)

Although Oedipus lives on earth, he lives in the endless night (aeterna nox, 1.47) of long death (longa mors, 1.48). Our first view of Thebes, through Oedipus, is a view of an underworld which Oedipus has made by blinding himself. The Thebes from which Oedipus summons Tisiphone is a city which already resembles the underworld whose influence Tisiphone will bring to it. Darkness is a feature of this underworld, and here Oedipus lives in a double darkness of his self-inflicted blindness (1.46) and of the 38 darkness of the chamber which he keeps under Thebes. The chamber even resembles a tomb, which neither the sky nor the suns rays have struck (1.50), further emphasizing the state of death in which Oedipus lives. This deathly city is the perfect setting for a fury; Allectos task in Aeneid 7 was to incite a violent war in peaceful Latium, but Statius gives Tisiphone a city already under the influence of the underworld. Because he is alive but lives in a state of near-death, Oedipus is a mortal who confuses the boundaries of the underworld by his very being. Lucans Erichtho is another such figure in Latin epic, and the ways in which Oedipus resembles her further develop his connection to the underworld.8 In De Bello Civili 6, Erichtho brings a dead soldier back to life in order to inquire about the fates of Pompeys sons. She is the infernally powerful mortal of Lucans poem: Neither the gods, nor life, forbids her from

listening to the meetings of the shades, from knowing the Stygian homes and the secrets of hidden Dis (Coetus audire silentum, nosse domos Stygias arcanaque Ditis operti non superi, non vita vetat. De Bel. Civ. 6.513-515). Accordingly, Statius makes Oedipus resemble both Erichtho and her victims in the Thebaid. Like Oedipus, she is an outcast from cities and dwells instead in tombs, away from regular mortals. Illi namque nefas urbis summittere tecto aut laribus ferale caput, desertaque busta incolit et tumulos expulsis obtinet umbris grata deis Erebi. For her it is a crime to reside under the roof of a city or in a house, and she lives in the abandoned pyres. After driving out the spirits, she dwells in tombs, the darling of the gods of the underworld. (6.510-513)39 Just as Oedipus will communicate freely with Tisiphone, Erichtho speaks easily with all inhabitants of the underworld (6.512-13). For her materials she uses the corpses of men, and part of her procedure is to defile the body as she plunges her hand into the eyes and delights to gouge out the frigid globes (imergit manus oculis gaudetque gelatos effodisse orbes. 6.541). Oedipus lives a life not unlike one of her victimsall but dead, having blinded himself. As Tisiphones quick response to his invocation of the underworld shows, Oedipus, like Erichtho, is a darling of the gods of the underworld. Although the resemblance between Erichtho and Oedipus gives his

introduction a non-Vergilian aspect, Statius main model is nonetheless the Aeneid. The position of Oedipus as the Thebaids first speaker connects him to Juno, the first speaker in both halves of the Aeneid. This establishes him as the character of the Thebaid who summons the furies, as Juno was in the Aeneid. Oedipus and Juno express a similar sense of being offended in their opening speeches. Juno is angry that the Trojans have been allowed to reach Carthage and believes her authority as a goddess has been ignored: And who worships the power of Juno beyond all others, or places offerings on her altars as a suppliant? (et quisquam numen Iunonis adorat praeterea aut supplex aris imponet honorem? Aen. 1.48-49). Oedipus expresses similar outrage at his sons contempt for his authority as a father: they mock my darkness and hate their fathers groans (insultant tenebris gemitusque odere paternos, 1.78). In Aeneid 7, Juno still believes that her strength has been defeated (7.293-322) and turns to the underworld to assist her in bringing war between the Trojans and the Latins, saying If I cannot bend the gods on high, I will move the underworld (Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo, 7.312). In his first speech Oedipus, too, calls on a fury to bring war to his enemies, his 40 sons. His speech resembles both of Junos speeches in the Aeneid; it expresses his

outrage at his enemies, his sons, and concludes with an invocation of a fury. This is an appropriate combination of the first speeches from each half of the Aeneid for the Thebaid, an epic which begins in book one as Aeneid 7 began. However, Oedipus outrage is also fundamentally different from Junos anger, which sprang from bitterness over the judgment of Paris; because of his judgment she hates the Trojans, and her outrage only grows as the Trojans succeed despite her opposition. In Aeneid 7 she is still angry, because her plan to detain Aeneas in Carthage has failed. Oedipus anger, however, is against his own sons. Goddesses in epic since Athena of the Iliad and the Odyssey have helped their favorites and hindered their enemies, but fathers are supposed to serve as a source of stability and identity for their sons. Juno behaves as she should, but Oedipus provides not stability but ruin for his sons. In so far as it works against his kinsmen, his anger against his sons is more like the wrath of Achilles against his fellow Greeks than the outrage of Juno against her Trojan enemies. Although both Oedipus and Juno summon furies to start their wars, their angers are different and their furies are as well. Oedipus first speech reveals his connection to the fury of the Thebaid Tisiphone has attended Oedipus throughout his life. Di, sontes animas angustaque Tartara poenis qui regitis, tuque umbrifero Styx livida fundo

adnue, Tisiphone, perversa vota secunda: si bene quid merui, si me de matre cadentem fovisti gremia et traiectum vulnere plantas41 firmasti, si stagna peti Cirrhaea bicorni interfusa iugo, possem cum degere falso contentus Polybo, trifidaeque in Phocidos arto longaevum implicui regem secuique trementis ora senis, dum quaero patrem, si Sphingos iniquae callidus ambages te premonstrante resolvi, si dulces furias et lamentabile matris conubium gavisus ini noctemque nefandam saepe tuli natosque tibi, scis ipsa, paravi, mox avidus poenae digitis caedentibus ultro incubui miseraque oculos in matre reliqui: exaudi, si digna precor quaeque ipsa furenti subiceres. Gods, who rule over the guilty spirits and Tartarus crowded with punishments, and you the Styx, whom I see, dark with a shadowy source, and you, Tisiphone, whom I am accustomed to call on often, assist me now and bless my wicked prayers. If I have deserved anything well, if you favored me falling from my mother into your lap and healed me, stabbed in my feet with a wound, if I have sought the Delphic pools placed between the twin horned summit, although I could have lived content with a false prophecy, and in the narrows of the three pronged Phocis I grappled with the aged king and cut the face of the trembling old

man, while I was looking for my father, if I was made expert by your guidance and solved the riddles of the unfair sphinx, if I delighted in sweet frenzies and a 42 lamentable marriage of my mother, and often carried out an accursed night, and I have promised offspring to you, you know yourself, and soon, eager for punishment, I stabbed myself with my gory fingers and bequeathed my eyes to my pitiable mother: hear me, if I pray worthy things and what you yourself would suggest for me in my frenzy. (Theb. 1.56-74) Oedipus attributes to Tisiphone all of his successes, from his rescue on the mountainside (1.61) to solving the riddle of the Sphinx (1.66), and his failures, from murdering his father (1.65) to committing incest with his mother (1.68). Statius audience would hardly need to be reminded of these events, but Oedipus claim that Tisiphone presided over all of them is a significant expansion of the myth. The effect is to describe his life in terms of the underworlds violations of the established order of the world. He was placed on the mountainside to die, but he survived. No one was supposed to be able to solve the Sphinxs riddle, but he succeeded. And with patricide and incest he perverted two bonds of family; sons should not murder their fathers nor marry their mothers, but Oedipus did both. With this invocation, he will violate the relationship of father to son, as well. Such prayers go not to the Olympian gods but to the underworld, who violate such

relationships as part of their disruptive role. His invocation of them includes a description of their role in the underworld: you who rule guilty souls and Tartarus crowded with punishments (sontes animas angustaque Tartara poenis qui regitis. 1.56). These gods rule Oedipus himself, since he more than anyone in the poem is a guilty soul (sons anima), and his chamber provides a crowded Tartarus (angusta Tartara, 1.56) for himself. In fact, Oedipus recognizes that the Olympians have abandoned him, saying And does he, the father of gods, idly look upon these things? (et videt ista 43 deorum ignavus genitor? 1.79-80). Oedipus means that he believes that Jupiter has looked upon him and turned away, forcing him to turn to the underworld for help. Furthermore, Oedipus calls Tisiphone the one whom I am accustomed to call on often (multum mihi consueta vocari, 1.58). Beyond saying that Tisiphone has been with him throughout his life, he here implies that he has welcomed and even requested her presence in the past. The introduction of Oedipus and the first section of his speech connect Oedipus to the underworld, but in his actual request to Tisiphone he reveals his vengeful spirit which makes him an appropriate character for summoning the fury Tisiphone. Tu saltim debita vindex huc ades et totos in poenam ordire nepotes.

indue quod madidum tabo diadema cruentis unguibus abrupui, votisque instincta paternis i media in fratres, generis consortia ferro dissiliant. da Tartarei regina barathri, quod cupiam vidisse nefas, nec tarda sequetur mens iuvenum; modo digna veni, mea pignora nosces. You, at least, the avenger I deserve, be present and drive both my sons into punishment. Put on the crown drenched with gore which I snatched away with my bloody nails, and guided by paternal prayers go amidst the brothers, let the blade shatter the partnership of the family. Grant, queen of the Tartarean void, the abomination which I have desired to see, and the mind of the youths will not follow slowly. Merely come, worthy one, and you will know my offspring. (1.80-44 87) We see here that Oedipus is not only an old man, bitter about his hideous fortune, but a cruel father, bent on destroying his sons. He wants Tisiphone to punish his sons for dishonoring him, and to do this by breaking the agreement between them with the blade (ferro, 1.84). Just as Oedipus has violated appropriate familial relations, here he wishes death on his children. One detail in particular shows Statius skill at characterization with language. He tells us that his request is a paternal prayer (paternum votum 1.83), and describes a partnership of the family (consortia generis, 1.84); although we know that Oedipus is angry at his sons, this line could

refer to establishing an agreement between the sons and the father, who is included in the gens, until we read dissiliant (dissolve) in line 85. Only then does the true nature of his request become clearit is a brutal wish of a father for his sons to come into conflict with each other. His request that the agreement be dissolved with weapons shows that his ultimate goal for his sons is violence, and fratricide. Only when the fratricide is complete will Oedipus recognize the horrible fate he has brought to his family: Alas, alas, the vows of the father and the wicked prayers are heeded too completely (Heu dolor, heu iusto magis exaudita parentis vota malaeque preces! 11.616). The events which lead to the fratricide take place over eleven books; once the war in Latium had begun, Juno sends Allecto away, but the war of the Thebaid requires the disruptive, ruinous presence of a fury throughout. Statius must present Tisiphone as a fury appropriate for an involvement in twelve books of war.45 A New Fury for a Different War The introduction of Oedipus and his invocation of Tisiphone establish that he and Thebes have already been infected with the darkness, death, and violence of the underworld. Because Statius describes the city and its past king in this way, we can see that the world in which Tisiphone will work differs greatly from the world in

which her sister worked in the Aeneid. There Juno summoned Allecto to turn the Latins passions to violence, but the passions at work here in Thebes need no such alteration. Oedipus summons Tisiphone because of his wrath against his sons, and his assertion that the minds of the youths will not follow slowly (nec tarda sequetur mens iuvenum. 1.86-7) shows that his sons are already on the verge of jealous violence. Tisiphones task in the Thebaid will be to follow Oedipus wish for fratricide by amplifying the rivalry of his sons until they murder each other. Unlike Allecto, who departed after a single book, Tisiphones task will take her nearly eleven books to complete. Statius dramatizes the difference between the two furies from the beginning of Tisiphones introduction when Oedipus words find her alongside the river Cocytus. The idyllic nature of the scene is tempered only by its infernal surroundings. Talia dicenti crudelis diva severos advertit vultus. inamoenum forte sedebat Cocyton iuxta, resolutaque vertice crines lambere sulpureas permiserat anguibus undas. To him saying such things the cruel goddess turned her harsh face. By chance she was sitting along side the unpleasant Cocytus, and after unbinding her hair from her head she had allowed the snakes to lap at the sulphurous waves. (1.88-46 91)

The Aeneid emphasizes Allectos departure from the underworld (Aen. 7.324), but Statius shows us what his fury is doing when the prayer reaches her ears. The image is not as terrifying as one might expect for the introduction of a furyTisiphone relaxes by the side of the river and allows the her hair to refresh itself. But the image is not idyllic, either, since the river is Cocytus and a writhing mass of snakes composes her hair. The charm of the scene comes in part from Statius playful echo of Ovid. The rare adjective inamoenus to describe the river is an especially Ovidian turn, since the word first appears in the Metamorphoses, where it describes the whole underworld: [Orpheus] approached Persephone and the master of the shades, who controls the unpleasant realm (Persephonen adiit inamoenaque regna tenentem umbrarum dominum...Met. 10.15). In the Thebaid and the Metamorphoses the adjective is used to portray an amoenus, pleasant situation that is negated in the adjective itself by the underworlds gloom. In Ovid, Orpheus is bringing pleasant music to the underworld, and Tisiphone appears at a moment of peaceful rest. Both Statius and Vergil describe the reaction of the underworld to their furies departure. As always, Statius account resembles and differs from Vergils. Tisiphone is just as terrifying as Allecto, but her personality is completely different. Ilicet igne Iovis lapsisque citatior astris

tristibus exiluit ripis. discedit inane vulgus et occursus dominae pavet; illa per umbras et caligantes animarum examine campos Taenariae limen petit inremeabile portae.47 Sensit adesse Dies, piceo Nox obvia nimbo lucentes turbavit equos; procul arduus Atlas horruit et dubia caelum cervice remisit. At that moment, faster than the bolt of Jove and a falling star she leaps from the gloomy banks. The vacant crowd recoils and fears the approach of the queen; through the shades and the fields dark with the troop of souls she seeks the threshold of the Taenarian gate, from which no one can return. The Day senses that she is present, and Night, blocking the way with its black cloud, startles the shining horses. At a distance hard Atlas is afraid and shifts the sky on his doubting shoulder. (Theb. 1.92-99) Vergils introduction of Allecto gives an account of the hatred which she inspires in the underworld: Even her father Pluto himself hates her, her Tartarean sisters hate the monster (Odit et ipse pater Pluton, odere sorores Tartareae monstrum. Aen. 7.327-8). In Statius the shades of the underworld recognize Tisiphones power as well, but their reaction is one of fear rather than hatred, as the retreat of the shades (Theb. 1.94) and the fear of Day, Night and even Atlas himself show (1.97-99). Allecto certainly inspires fearwhen she reveals herself to Turnus he reacts first with terror which

gives way to violence: a huge fear shatters his sleep (olli somnum ingens rumpit pavor Aen. 7.458), before a love of weapons and the wicked insanity of war rages, as does anger (saevit amor ferri et scelerata insania belli, ira super. 7.461). Both furies play on emotions, but Tisiphone strikes her victims at a later stage in their development; she drives the brothers to act on their jealousy in establishing alternating reigns, and finally transforms their jealousy into hatred. Furthermore, Statius describes her departure from the bank of the 48 river as faster than the bolt of Jove or a falling star (igne Iovis lapsisque citatior astris, Theb. 1.92). Since the thunderbolt and the stars represent the heavenly realm, this comparison emphasizes the infernal nature of Tisiphone, and shows that she will act in opposition to the power of Jupiter in the poem. The comparative adjective citatior, faster, even foreshadows the outcome of her standoff with the Olympians; Jupiter eventually turns away and leaves earth to Tisiphone. Without the king of gods to oppose her, Tisiphone triumphs with ease. Just as Oedipus reflected on the role of Tisiphone in his life, Statius description of her reveals the role of Thebes in hers. Arripit extemplo Maleae de valle resurgens notum iter ad Thebas; neque enim velocior ullas

itque reditque vias cognatave Tartara mavult. Immediately rising from the valley of Malea she takes up a familiar route towards Thebes; She comes and goes more swiftly on no other road, nor does she prefer kindred Tartarus. (1.100-102) The journey which Tisiphone makes to Thebes is a familiar route (notum iter, 1.101); she has come this way before. In his invocation Oedipus claimed that Tisiphone had accompanied him throughout his life, and now we see her following her old route back to him. As her eagerness in traveling shows, she would rather be in Thebes than her infernal home (1.102). Here Statius continues to develop the similarities between the underworld and Thebes: Oedipus lives his infernal life hidden in Thebes, and Tisiphone regards Thebes as a kind of infernal vacation spot, to which she has often journeyed to use her powers in the life of her favorite subject, the cursed Oedipus.49 Upon arriving on earth, Tisiphone perches on a high place and gives a signal to which the whole world responds. In many ways, her arrival resembles Allecto giving the signal for war in Aeneid 7, in which the fury perches on a stable, and makes a sound so terrible that the natural world is afraid while nameless mothers hold their children tightly. At saeva e speculis tempus dea nacta nocendi ardua tecta petit stabuli et de culmine summo

pastorale canit signum cornuque recurvo Tartaream intendit vocem, qua protinus omne contrmuit nemus et silvae insonuere profundae; audiit et Triviae longe lacus, audiit amnis sulpurea Nar albus aqua fontesque Velini, et trepidae matres pressere ad pectora natos. But the savage goddess, seizing an occasion for doing damage, leaves her perch and finds the high roof of a stable and from the highest tip sings the shepherds sign, and lets forth a hellish blast with her curving horn, at which the whole grove shook to its core and the deep forests resounded; wide lake Trivia heard it, as did the river Nar, white with sulphurous water, and the springs of Velinus, and fearful mothers pressed their children to their breasts. (Aen. 7.511-518) Tisiphones hiss over Thebes resembles Vergils passage in many ways in that both furies perch on a high point and make a sound that frightens even the landscape itself, but Statius introduces slight differences into these details which characterize Tisiphone differently from Allecto. Ut stetit, abrupta qua plurimus arce Cithaeron50 occurrit caelo, fera sibila crine virenti congeminat, signum terris, unde omnis Achaei ora maris late Pelopeaque regna resultant. Audiit et medius caeli Parnassos et asper

Eurotas, dubiamque iugo fragor impulit Oeten in latus, et geminis vix fluctibus obstitit Isthmos. Ipsa suum genetrix curvo delphine vagantem abripuit frenis gremioque Palaemona pressit. As she stood where the highest part of Cithaeron with its sheer summit meets the sky, she sent forth with her green locks fierce hisses as a sign to the world, with which the whole shore of the Achaean sea and the realm of Pelops widely resound. Both Parnassus in the middle of the sky and harsh Eurotas heard it, a crash struck wavering Oetes on the ridge in its side, and the isthmus barely resists the twin waves. The mother herself snatches Palaemon wandering on a curved dolphin from the reins and presses him to her breast. (Theb. 1.114-122) The furies have the same disruptive effect on the earth in these passages. However, these two passages come at different stages in each furys task. The summit of Cithaeron is Tisiphones first stop in the Thebaid, whereas Allecto perches on the roof of the stable just before she returns to the underworld; Tisiphones work on earth begins where Allectos leaves off. In both poems, the presence of the furies affects even the landscape. Statius chooses different geographical features from Vergil, however, which carry a special meaning appropriate to the Thebaid. The mountains are not just examples of the most 51 difficult of natural features to frighten, but a reminder of the civil war

between the Giants and the Olympians, in which the giants piled mount Pelion and Ossa on top of each other in an attempt to attack Olympus. The mountains fear that the civil war between Polynices and Eteocles will be a conflict of that magnitude as well. In the Aeneid, Allectos sound terrifies mothers (Aen. 7.518), and here Tisiphones hiss has a similar effect, but Statius names Ino as a mother whose story relates to Tisiphones task in the Thebaid. Ino wants to protect Palaemon because her other son was killed by her frenzied husband. Statius has chosen this specific story because Inos motherly fear for a fathers violence against his sons is appropriate for Tisiphones mission in Thebes, to drive two sons to kill each other. The Aeneid is not the only text behind Statius description of Tisiphones hiss. A mention of the Corinthian isthmus in a passage about the beginning of a war recalls a similar passage in the proem to Lucans De Bello Civili which describes the only thing delaying the coming war (sola futuri...belli...mora, De. Bel. Civ. 1.99-100). In his first simile, Lucan compares the Corinthian isthmus holding two oceans apart to Crassus keeping Pompey and Caesar in check (1.100ff). In Lucan the isthmus breaks and civil war ensues; one effect of the simile is to demonstrate the violence of the war beginningas violent as if the Peloponnesus were separated from the

mainland. Similarly, in the Thebaid the isthmus barely resists the twin waves (geminis vix fluctibus obstitit , Theb, 1.120). The war in Statius will be no less brutal. Statius describes Tisiphone in great detail: her hundred snakes (centum cerastae Theb. 1.103), the steely light in her eyes (ferrea lux oculis, 1.105), her skin soaked with venom (suffusa veneno...cutis, 1.107), the fiery breath in her black mouth (igneus 52 atro ore vapor, 1.107-8), and the horrible shawl on her back (horrida tergo palla, 1.109-110). Such a detailed description of a fury has no precedent in the Aeneid. Although Allecto has the same features, especially the snakes for hair and the horrifying visage, Vergil mentions those details only in passing as Allecto goes about her task. But Statius gives Tisiphone a prominent description because she will play an important role throughout the poem. This is Statius major departure from Vergils Allecto; although Allecto takes a substantial role in the Aeneid by causing the war between Aeneas and Turnus, her appearances are limited to the middle section of a single book. Tisiphone, however, is invoked by Oedipus, appears in the opening scene of the epic, and will be a major character throughout the greater part of the epic, departing only after she has completed her task of bringing the brothers to their fratricidal duel. Statius project in the

Thebaid is to transform a furys crucial but limited role in the Aeneid into an important role which lasts throughout an entire poem. The Boundaries of the Underworld Tisiphones arrival on earth introduces another aspect of the underworld in the Thebaid: the violent disruption of the cosmos by blending the underworld with the human world. In Aeneid 6, Aeneas traveled to the underworld and so brought earth to the underworld. However, he had the sibyl as his guide and the golden bough to make his journey possible; as she tells him, but it is not permitted to enter into the hidden parts of the earth before one plucks the golden foliage from the tree (sed non ante datur telluris operta subire auricomos quam quis decerpserit arbore fetus, Aen. 6.140-141). Tisiphone has none of this legitimization; both earth and the underworld resist having their 53 boundaries crossed by the fury. Tisiphones passage from the underworld to Thebes is Statius first example of such a violation of boundaries. Her journey causes disorder at every stage: the shades of the underworld recoil from her as she passes through their fields (Theb. 1.93-5), her arrival on earth disturbs the day and night themselves (1.97), and even mighty Atlas shudders at her approach (1.99). Finally, the mountains themselves shake as she makes her hissing call to violence (1.114-120), and Ino, a diety,

fears for the safety of her son (1.121-122). These disruptions are all on a cosmic scale the immortals themselves fear her arrival and the features of the natural world become players in the conflict to come. Allectos arrival is disruptive in many of the same ways in Aeneid 7, but in the Thebaid these cosmic disturbances are precursors to the disturbance which Tisiphone will cause as she brings the two brothers into violence against each other. Statius presents several different boundary crossings in the early books of the poem in order to emphasize the violence of inappropriate crossings such as Tisiphones. The second journey across boundaries comes when Jupiter sends Mercury to the underworld to bring Laius back to earth. Jupiters command to Mercury reveals how he differs from the Jupiter of previous epics: Quare impiger alis portantes praecede notos, Cyllenia proles, aera per liquidum regnisque inlapsus opacis dic patruo: superas senior se adtollat ad auras Laius, exstinctum nati quem vulnere nondum ulterior Lethes accepit ripa profundi54 lege Erebi; ferat hic diro mea iussa nepoti. Therefore, my Cyllenian offspring, light on your wings, outstrip the winds which bear you, and once you have slipped through the liquid air and the black

kingdoms, speak to your uncle. Let aged Laius carry himself to the winds above. He was killed by the wound of his son and the far bank of Lethe has not yet accepted him by the law of deepest hell. Let him carry my orders to his detestable nephew. (2.292-298) Here Jupiter takes a role radically different from his role in Aeneid 1, where he appears only as an aloof father, calming Venus fears that Aeneas will not survive to found Rome (Aen. 1.257ff). In book one of the Thebaid we see Jupiter sending his messenger to the underworld to bring yet another infernal character to earth, this time a mortal as opposed to the fury which Oedipus summoned. Jupiters role here more closely resembles his role in book five of the Odyssey or book one of Ovids Metamorphoses. In Odyssey 5, as in Statius, Zeus sends Hermes on an errand, to tell Calypso to release Odysseus from her island (Od. 5.29ff). In Ovids concilium deorum , or council of gods, Jupiter expresses outrage over Lycaon: An satis, o superi, tutos fore creditis illos cum mihi, qui fulmen, qui vos habeoque regoque struxerat insidias notus feritate Lycaon? O Gods, could you trust that [the world] will be safe enough when Lycaon, famous for his savagery, has planned treachery against me, who holds and rules the thunderbolt and you? (Met. 1.196-198) Lycaons treachery (insidiae) was to attempt to kill Jupiter while he was on

earth to test 55 whether he was a god. Oedipus sons have shown a similar disregard for their father: but his sonsa deed without precedent!-trampled on [Oedipus] falling eyes (at natifacinus sine more!cadentes calcavere oculos! Theb. 1.237)! However, in none of these epics does Jupiter resort to summoning a figure from the underworld in order to achieve his goals. In the Aeneid, Juno was the Olympian who summoned a being from the underworld, but Statius portrays Jupiter, the king of gods, invoking the underworld, and so makes him a player in the conflict and gives such invocations a central place in the poem. Mercury, who travels to the underworld to retrieve Laius, is a direct transposition of the Greek Hermes into Roman mythology.9 He is the trickster figure in Greek myth; as Lewis Hyde says, he is On the road. [Hermes] does not live in the halls of justice, the soldiers tent, the shamans hut, the monastery. He passes through each of these...10 Like Hermes, Mercury is the figure for whom it is appropriate to pass through each of these places. We can easily add the underworld to Hydes list; Zeus gives Hermes the sole right to travel to the underworld in the Homeric Hymns: [Hermes] alone should be the chosen messenger into Hades ( h.

Merc. 572). In the Thebaid, Mercury alone passes between all three realms of the cosmos, from the heavens to the earth to the underworld and back, without disturbing any of the realms he visits. Unlike the messenger of the gods, Tisiphone and Laius cause great disturbance in their travels between levels of the cosmos. Book two opens with Mercurys arrival in the underworld and his return to earth with Laius. Mercurys trip from earth to the underworld is not so effortless as his trip from heaven to earth was; foul vapors (foeda...aura, 2.5), and fiery barriers (obiecta 56 incendia, 2.6) hinder his travel, and when he leaves the underworld he must brush off the infernal clouds from his face and calm his eyes with living breaths (infernaque nubila vultu discutit et vivis adflatibus ora serenat, 2.56-7). These hindrances, however are not so much due to the disruptive quality of his travel as to the choking atmosphere of the underworld. Laius, on the other hand, is not an Olympian but the shade of a deceased mortal. He travels only with great difficulty and causes great disturbances. These two journeys together emphasize the difference between characters who are allowed to pass between realms of the cosmos, such as Mercury, and characters whose travel between realms is a violation of the cosmic order, such as Laius. Laius departure from the underworld, like Tisiphones in book one, causes a great disturbance among the shades of the underworld and on earth above.

The amazement of the empty woods, the fields inhabited by shades, and the dusky grove (steriles luci possessaque manibus arva et ferrugineum nemus, 2.12-13) resembles the mountains shaking as Tisiphone approached in book one (1.114ff), except that here it is the landscape of the underworld which responds to the departure of a character from the underworld. Above, Earth herself marvels that the path back lies open (ipsaque Tellus miratur patuisse retro, 2.13-14). The reaction of the landscape to such boundary crossings shows how unusual and disruptive such crossings by characters other than Mercury are; even the landscape cannot remain indifferent to this disturbance of the cosmic order. Laius must also pass by Cerberus guarding the exit, who would have smashed his scattered bones on the ground, if Mercury had not soothed him as he bristled with his Lethaean wand and closed his iron eyes with a threefold sleep (iam sparsa solo turbaverat ossa, ni deus horrentem Lethaeo vimine mulcens ferrea tergemino domuisset 57 lumina somno, 2.29-31). He can only pass out of the underworld with Mercurys assistance, since Mercury is allowed to make such journeys while Laius, a deceased mortal, is not. Oedipus violent patricide first sent Laius to the underworld, and his arrival on earth is no less violent than his first departure from earth or his recent

departure from the underworld. As he leaves, a nameless shade, whom the gods had killed for blaspheming (2.16-17) warns him that the world above will make him hate to return to the underworld. Vade ait o felix, quoscumque vocaris in usus, seu Iovis imperio, seu maior adegit Erinys ire diem contra, seu te furiata sacerdos Thessalis arcano iubet emigrare sepulcro, heu dulces visure polos solemque relictum et virides terras et puros fontibus amnes, tristior has iterum tamen intrature tenebras. Go, he says, O fortunate one, for whatever purpose you are called, whether the will of Jove, or a greater Fury drives you to go against the light, or a raging priestess of Thessaly orders you to emerge from a dark tomb. Alas, you will see the sweet poles and the sun which you left there, and the green lands and the rivers pure in their sources, but you will nevertheless be more sad to enter back into these shadows. (2.19-25) His warning recalls Achilles' warning to Odysseus in Odyssey 11: boulohn k' prourow n yhteuen ll, ndr par' klr, botow polw eh, 58 psin nekessi katafyinoisin nssein. I would wish to be on earth and to serve another, even a poor man, who has only a small livelihood, than to rule over all the perishing shades (Od. 11.489-491).

Achilles and the nameless shade agree that the underworld is far more unbearable than the world above. However, in actually returning Laius does not find earth so hospitable. Inferior volat umbra deo, praereptaque noscit sidera principiumque sui; iamque ardua Cirrhae pollutamque suo despectat Phocida busto. ventum erat ad Thebas; gemuit prope limina nati Laius et notos cunctatus inire penates. ut vero et celsis suamet iuga nixa columnis vidit et infectos etiamnum sanguine currus, paene retro turbatus abit: nec summa Tonantis iussa nec Arcadiae retinent spiramina virgae. The shade flew lower than the god, and he recognized the lost stars and his origin; and now he looks down on the heights of Cirrha and Phocis polluted by his own burial. They arrived at Thebes; Laius groaned near the threshold of his child and hesitated to enter the familiar dwelling. But as he saw both his own yoke hanging on the lofty pillars and his chariot, still spattered with blood, he almost turned back in horror, and neither the highest orders of Jupiter nor the waving of Mercurys wand could hold him. (Theb. 2.62-70) On earth, Laius finds not the beautiful sun and pools which the envious shade predicted (2.23ff) but reminders of his murder by his own son. He flies over Phocis where Oedipus 59 killed him, and finds at home his yoke and chariot, remnants of his reign in Thebes. Far

from resisting his return to the underworld, as the shade warned he would (2.25), Laius return to earth is so traumatic that he almost returns to the underworld to escape (2.6970). The ease with which Mercury, who faces none of this fear, can pass between regions of the cosmos contrasts the difficulty a shade faces in his to return to earth. This passage invites a comparison between Thebes and the underworld, as well; although Achilles and most shades might consider earth a dwelling preferable to the underworld, the infernal city Thebes is even more inhospitable for the descendants of Cadmus than the underworld itself. Somehow Laius musters the courage to enter Thebes and visit his son. Statius models his visit to Eteocles on Allectos visit to Turnus in the Aeneid. As we saw in chapter one, Allecto disguises herself as Calybe, a priestess of Juno, and tells Turnus that Juno wants him to go to war with Aeneas over Lavinia. When he dismisses her, Allecto throws off her disguise in a rage and drives the terrified Turnus to violence (Aen.7.415ff). Allectos choice of disguise as Junos priestess is logical since Juno summoned Allecto and since she tries to convince Turnus to fight in terms of his being slighted out of marriage to Lavinia. Like Allecto using Lavinias marriage to anger Turnus, Laius uses the marriage of Polynices to Argia as a threat to Eteocles (2.108). But Laius choice of

Tiresias for his disguise presents a much more complex situation than Allectos choice of Calybe. Tiresias the seer is famous for the accuracy of his prophecies, but Laius comes as a false Tiresias; not only is he merely a disguise and not actually the seer, but he describes Polynices and Tydeus plans as if they are already in motion, when in fact his report is but a prediction, albeit accurate, of what is going to happen. At the time of 60 Laius visit, Tydeus and Polynices have not yet married the daughters of Adrastus, let alone planned to march on Thebes. Furthermore, Laius, by taking on the form of the blind Tiresias, becomes blind, at least in his disguise, like his son Oedipus. This likening of Laius to Oedipus, along with the revelation of Laius to Eteocles, generates the effect of the encounter; Laius use his infernal power to stain Eteocles with the guilt of Oedipus. In her visit to Turnus, Allecto disguises herself as Calybe and takes off her disguise only when it has failed to affect him: Talibus Allecto dictis exarsit in iras. at iuveni oranti subitus tremor occupat artus, deriguere oculi: tot Erinys sibilat hydris, tantaque se facies aperit. After [Turnus] had said such things Allecto burned with rage. A sudden shaking took hold of the limbs of the gazing youth, and his eyes grew fixed. The fury hissed with so many snakes, and such a face revealed her identity. (Aen. 7.445ff)

Laius does not wait for Eteocles reaction before revealing himself, as if he had planned to do so all along. Ramos ac vellera fronti deripuit, confessus avum, dirique nepotis incubuit stratis, iugulum mox caede patentem nudat et undanti perfundit vulnere somnum. illi rupta quies, attollit membra toroque eripitur plenus monstris, vanumque cruorem excutiens simul horret avum fratremque requirit.61 He cast off the branches and the leaves from his forehead, revealed himself as the grandfather, and leaned over the sheets of his harsh grandson. Then he uncovered his throat yawning with gore and soaked Eteocles sleep with his gushing wound. Eteocles rest was broken, and he lifted his limbs, filled with horror leapt from the couch, and shaking off the ghostly blood simultaneously fears his grandfather and calls for his brother. (Theb. 2.121-127) Although Laius and Allecto take off their disguises under different circumstances, Laius revelation resembles Allectos. She reveals herself through her salient feature, the snakes of her hair and her flaming eyes (Aen 7.447-450), and Laius does the same as he pours blood from the wound which Oedipus dealt him. Blood is a common component in initiation rituals and rites of passage, and this blood represents Oedipus murder of

Laius.11 As Laius washes Eteocles with the blood he initiates him further into the selfdestructive family of Oedipus. Turnus reacted to Allecto with fear which gave way to violence, and Eteocles reaction is similar: he simultaneously fears his grandfather and desires to fight his brother (simul horret avum fratremque requirit, Theb. 2.127). Again we return to Allecto in Aeneid 7. After she enrages Turnus, Vergil likens the transformation of Turnus state of mind to the boiling of water in a pot to which a flame has been applied (Aen 7.462-66). Following the example of Vergils simile, Statius also describes the transformation of Eteocles mind, but he uses two similes instead of one. Two similes together demand not only that we examine the comparison that each simile is making to an element of the narrative, but also that we compare the two similes themselves. Tu, veluti magnum si iam tollentibus austris62 Ionium nigra iaceat sub nube magister immemor armorum versantisque aequora clavi, cunctaris. You, just as if a captain, while winds are already stirring up the huge Ionian sea, sleeps under a dark cloud unmindful of the rigging and the rudder which cuts the water, you are delaying. (2.105-108) Laius uses this simile to describe his grandson, who is compared to a ships captain sleeping. The violence of the winds already stirring up the huge sea,

however, is fast approaching, and the implication of the simile is that if the captain remains unmindful the violence will overpower his ship. The slumbering Eteocles does not heed this warning; he continues to sleep until Laius violently wakes him. In the second simile the poet himself describes this awakening. Qualis ubi audito venantum murmure tigris horruit in maculas somnosque excussit inertes; bella cupit laxatque genas et temperat ungues, mox ruit in turmas natisque alimenta cruentis spirantem fert ore virum: sic excitus ira ductor in absentem consumit proelia fratrem. Just as when a tigress who has heard the sound of hunters bristles against the nets and shakes off lazy sleep; she desires battle, loosens her jaws and sharpens her claws. Soon she rushes into the crowd and carries in her mouth a breathing man as nourishment to her savage children: thus rage stirred up the general and he takes up a battle against his absent brother. (2.128-133)63 Eteocles now is compared to a tigress who wakes and turns to violence, a very different image from the captain of the first simile. This transformation parallels the transformation which takes place in Eteocles during Laius visit. In the first simile, Eteocles is the ships captain sleeping while a storm approaches. In the second simile, he

is the tigress waking up to face the band of hunters. The first simile shows Eteocles as ruler of Thebes, but the second simile presents him as a fierce tigress fighting for her own life and the lives of her children; between the two similes Eteocles has been transformed from a sleeping ruler to a vicious animal. Furthermore, the two similes reflect the effects of Laius naming Polynices as the threat to Eteocles. In the first simile a storm threatens the ship. Eteocles as captain, even if he were awake, would be powerless to avert the coming storm and could hope only to keep his ship afloat through the tempest. In the second simile, however, the threat has become a band of hunters, and the tigress, no longer powerless to act, kills one of the hunters and returns to feed her young. Laius visit has the same empowering effect on Eteocles, who after the speech and the blood bath, takes up a battle against his brother who is not even present (in absentem consumit proelia fratrem, 2.133). The change in speakers between the two similes further emphasizes this change in Eteocles. Laius simile is persuasive; the implication is that since the storm is coming, Eteocles should strive not to be a sleeping captain. The second simile in not pursuasive but descriptive of the active role Eteocles will take in the war and the feral quality of his frenzy. Laius visit to Thebes, like Tisiphones earlier in the poem, results in violence and

disturbance on earth, because it defies the order of the cosmos; he travels back from the world of the dead, from which no one can return (inremeabile, 1.96). The juxtaposition 64 of Mercurys easy flight with Laius journey emphasizes his violation of the boundaries of the underworld and earth. Tisiphone also violates these boundaries, but wields far more infernal power than Laius, and causes far more disturbance with her travel. With each of these journeys, part of the underworld comes to earth and causes violence: Tisiphone infects Thebes, and Laius incites his grandson. The necromancy of Tiresias in Thebaid 4 will bring even more of the underworld to Thebes; there Manto and Eteocles see the whole underworld opened before them. The prophecy of Tiresias predicts the final outcome of the conflictit will be the underworld that brings about the utter destruction of the brothers. The necromancy is modeled on both the large-scale summoning of the underworld in Odyssey 11 and Erichthos summoning of the dead soldier in De Bello Civili 6. In Thebaid 4 Eteocles seeks out Tiresias for help in seeing the future after being terrified by a portent and not a match for various terrors (trepidus monstro et variis terroribus impar, 4.406). The portent which frightens him is the appearance of a Bacchante in Thebes claiming to have seen a vision that two similar bulls rush together

in battle (similes...concurrere tauros, 4.397). A similar Bacchante appears at the end of De Bello Civili I and relates her vision of the death of Pompey at the end of Lucans war: I recognize him, a headless corpse, lying on the shores of the river (hunc ego, fluminea deformis truncus harena qui iacet, agnosco. De Bel. Civ. 1.685-686). Statius Bacchante describes not a single defeat like Pompeys but both bulls savagely dying in their mutual anger (alternaque truces moriuntur in ira, Theb. 4.400). These bulls can only refer to Polynices and Eteocles; they have been compared to bulls before when they first came into conflict in book one (1.131). However, Eteocles, the son of Oedipus, 65 going to see the seer Tiresias for information about the future brings Statius to De Bello Civili 6 where Sextus Pompey, the son of Pompey the Great, goes to Erichtho in search of the future as well. In the angry second speech Statius makes explicit his reliance on Lucans episode when Tiresias asks Or if a Thessalian witch would summon you with her rabid song, would you come (An, rabido iubeat si Thessala cantu, ibitis? 4.504)? Although Thessaly is famous for its witches throughout ancient literature, the failure, at first, of the underworld to respond to Tiresias in the Thebaid resembles very closely the same failure to respond to Erichtho in Lucans epic. The reaction of the seers to the underworlds

reluctance connects the passages most clearly: both fly into a rage and invoke a nameless power who wields incredible power. Erichthos deity is one over whom the underworld holds no power: An ille compellandus erit, quo numquam terra vocato non concussa tremit, qui gorgona cernit apertam verberibusque suis trepidam castigat Erinyn, indespecta tenet vobis qui Tartara, cuius vos estis superi, Stygias qui perierat undas? Or must I call on him, at whom, when he has been called, the shaken earth always trembles, who gazes on the uncovered gorgon, who punishes the fearful fury with his whips, who holds a Tartarus which you cannot fathom, to whom you are the upper gods, who violates the oath of the river Styx? (De. Bel. Civ. 6.744-749) This deity is even more infernal than the creatures of the underworld, which is 66 appropriate in Lucans epic because Erichtho herself is such a horrifying figure; she of all mortals would be able to summon such a being. In the Thebaid, Tiresias describes the power which he could invoke in different terms: Novimus et quidquid dici noscique timetis, et turbare Hecaten, ni te, Thymbraee, vererer et triplicis mundi summum, quem scire nefastum. I even know something which you are afraid to say or to speak, which disturbs

even Hecate, if I did not fear you, Apollo, or the highest of the three realms of the world, whom it is a crime to know. (Theb. 4.514-516) This deity wields power over the underworld like Erichthos, but also over the Olympians Hecate, Apollo, and Jupiter himself. This invocation is appropriate to the Thebaid, in which the conflict takes place in all three of the realms of the cosmos, including Olympus. The necromancy in the De Bello Civili brings a single soldier back to life, but in Statius version Tiresias, Manto and Eteocles receive a view of the whole underworld. The appearance of many souls resembles Odyssey 11 where Odysseus meets with the shades of many of his previous companions, and the underworld of Aeneid 6 where Aeneas sees guilty souls such as Sisyphus and Ixion (Aen 6.616). It is the past generations of Thebes which differentiate Statius episode from the others. Manto and Eteocles see Cadmus himself (Theb. 4.553), the soldiers who sprang from the fields (4.556), the sons and daughters of Cadmus (4.561), including Semele and Pentheus (4.565), and Niobe, the boastful daughter of Tantalus (4.576). Like the proem and the description of the fabrication of the necklace of Harmonia, this is a view of the history of 67 Thebes. The necklace of Harmonia revealed the presence of the underworld at the weddings which continued the line of Cadmus, but here we see every

descendant of Cadmus as shades in the underworld, which shows the infernal end which each character faces. Furthermore, all of the figures from the history of Thebes arrived in the underworld by a appropriate boundary-crossing; Laius alone in the history of Thebes has been able to travel back to earth, and then only with great difficulty. Like all of those before them, Eteocles and Polynices will soon make a similar journey, together, to the underworld. Their journey will be as easy as any other mortals, because it the journey all dead humans make. However, the conflict which leads to their deaths will take an enormous toll on both Thebes and Argos. The prophecy of Tiresias in book four describes this toll. As his appearances in the Odyssey and the Metamorphoses show, he is associated with opposing the cosmic order. In the Thebaid, this takes the form of crossing boundaries which should not be crossed, but Tiresias is connected to all kinds of transgression. In the Odyssey he tells Odysseus that in order to return home, Odysseus must overcome several divine opponents, including Poseidon and Helios (Od. 11.100ff). In Ovids Metamorphoses, Tiresias himself transgresses by striking two snakes he finds copulating in the forest; he is ultimately turned into a snake as punishment (Met. 3.324ff). Striking the snakes was his transgression, but a further punishment awaited him. After living as a man and a

women, Juno and Jupiter ask him whether men or women take more pleasure in sex; he agreed with Jupiter that women did and Juno is said to have been upset more gravely than reason would allow, and not in proportion to the deed, and she cursed his eyes with the eternal darkness of her judgment (gravius Saturnia iusto nec pro materia fertur 68 doluisse suique iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte. 3.333-335). Like Oedipus, his punishment for transgression was blindness. In the Thebaid, Oedipus demands transgression, and Tiresias predicts the disruption and violence which in his experience accompany it. Certa est victoria Thebis, ne trepida, nec regna ferox germanus habebit, sed Furiae geminumque nefas, miserosque per enses. ei mihi! crudelis vincit pater. Do not fear: victory is sure for Thebes, and your fierce twin will not hold the kingdom. But the furies and a two-fold abomination, and alas, because of your grievous swords your cruel father triumphs. (Theb. 4.641-44) The powers of the underworld will bring all this to pass in Thebes, as the Furies take control of the city. Oedipus, the father, in violation of the relationship between father and sons, will have his wish fulfilled for his sons to murder each other in violation of the relationship between brothers. An Infernal Chariot Race

Before the Argives arrive at Thebes and begin to fight, they hold funeral games for the infant Archemorus, son of King Lycurgus of Nemea. These funeral games are Statius version of such games from Iliad 23 or Aeneid 5. Funeral games commemorate a deceased mortal, amd so are necessarily connected to the underworld where that mortal finally rests. But Statius introduces a further infernal aspect to his games in the monster which Apollo summons from the underworld in order to assure that Amphiaraus win the 69 chariot race. These games fill the sixth book of the Thebaid and so are associated by position with the sixth book of the Aeneid, in which Aeneas descends to the underworld. While visiting he sees the furies (Aen. 6.280) among many other infernal monsters. These monsters which he sees in the underworld arrive on earth in Aeneid 7; between books six and seven of the Aeneid the underworld changes from a mythological presence to a literal, powerful force on earth.12 The fury-like figure of Thebaid 6 prefigures Tisiphones role in the poems second half in this same way. The funeral games are separate from the war, but the monster affects the lives of the contestants in the games just as Tisiphone will affect the combatants in the war. The parallels between Statius games and the games in Homer and Vergil are many, from the order of the events which reproduce those of Aeneid V to cheating in the

foot race.13 Statius has also modified his games in order to allow each of the seven Argive princes to win a single victory in an event which reflects his particular passions and eventual defeat.14 These alterations fit the games to the narrative, but a monster from the underworld also intervenes in one of the events; it keeps Polynices from winning the chariot race by frightening his horse. Here, for the first time of in the poem, the forces of the underworld enter directly into the lives of men, as Tisiphone will in the war to come. The monster which Apollo summons is not a fury but a figure which resembles a fury. Anguicomam monstri effigiem, saevissima visu ora, movet sive ille Erebo seu finxit in astus temporis, innumera certe formidine cultum tollit in astra nefas. non illud ianitor atrae70 impavidus Lethes, non ipsae horrore sine alto Eumenides vidisse queant, turbasset euntes Solis equos Martisque iugum. Nam flavus Arion ut vidit, saliere iubae, atque erectus in armos stat sociumque iugi comitesque utrimque laboris secum alte suspendit equos. Whether he moved the snake-haired form of a monster with a very savage appearance from Erebus, or placed it for the cunning of the moment, he lifted this abomination, surely endowed with innumerable terrors, to the stars. The

doorkeeper of black Lethe could not look at it fearlessly, nor could the Furies themselves have been able to see it without deep horror. It would have upset the running horses of the sun or the chariot of Mars. For as golden Arion saw it, his mane bristled, and he halts and rears, and holds high his yoked partner and both toiling companions with himself. (6.495-504) Like Tisiphone in Oedipus invocation, this monster is a nefas which Apollo lifts to the stars (6.498). It has all the usual features of a fury, such as the snaky hair (anguicomam), the savage face (saevissima visu ora, 6.495), and like Allecto and Tisiphone, it inspires fear in the other spirits in the underworld and in mortal men and animals on earth. Demonstrating the enormous power of fear in Statius poem, this monster even frightens the Furies, who cause fear throughout the work (6.500). Apollo sends it to earth in order to frighten Polynices horse, Arion. In book four, the portent which leads Eteocles to go to Tiresias for an oracle, the image of two bulls locked in combat, recalls the first simile of the poem which describes the two brothers as bulls unable to share the yoke of the 71 plow (1.131). The monster here disrupts Arion and the rest of Polynices team in a similar image of yoked animals unable to work together (6.504). With this portent, Eteocles and Polynices have each had a vision of yoked animals fighting each other.

This fury-like figure influences the outcome of the games; cheating and Olympians have played such a role in the funeral games of the Iliad and the Aeneid, but this is the first instance of a character from the underworld doing so. The presence of this fury-like figure who is not quite a fury in a battle-like scene which is not quite a battle prefigures the actual furys appearance in later books. Tisiphone, whose role in the first half of the poem has been limited to her visit to Thebes in book one, appears throughout the second half of the poem. Allecto did not appear in the Aeneid until book seven, and Statius increases Tisiphones level of involvement in Thebaid 7. She even rescues Polynices from danger in order to preserve him for the fratricide to come. After he crawls safely from the racecourse, Statius laments What a place for death, O Theban, how much war would you have been able to avoid, if harsh Tisiphone had not denied it! (Quis mortis, Thebane, locus, nisi dura negasset Tisiphone, quantum poteras dimittere bellum! 6.513-14). He reveals that Tisiphone, an unlikely savior, has protected Polynices through the chariot race and that if only he had died, much war could have been averted. But Tisiphone has another, more brutal plan in mind for Polynices and everyone else in the second half of the poem. The first six books of the Thebaid, then, set the stage for the war of the second

half of the poem with intervention from the underworld: Oedipus summons Tisiphone, who drives the brothers to draw lots for exile, and Laius enrages Eteocles. These episodes show Statius following Aeneid 7 in his description of the disruptive powers of 72 the underworld. But Tisiphone is a different fury from Allecto, and through frequents turns to authors other than Vergil, such as Lucan and Homer, for further images of the underworld on earth, Statius differentiates his poem from the Aeneid. Although I have focused on the appearances of infernal characters and the blending of earth and the underworld in the first half of the poem, these characters have appeared only infrequently in the first half of the poem. Tisiphone, especially, only appears in books one and six. However, in books seven through twelve, she will be constantly engaged in the conflict until it reaches its disastrous end.73 Chapter 3: Tisiphones War In the first six books of the Thebaid Statius describes the events leading up to the war, from Oedipus' invocation of Tisiphone to just before the Argives final approach to Thebes. The first six books of Statius model, the Aeneid, are devoted to the wanderings of Aeneas, which follow the Trojan war and end with a second war in Italy. In a sense, the war in the Thebaid begins long before the war of the Aeneid, which begins only after

Aeneas arrives in Italy in book seven. However, the fighting in the Thebaid does not actually start until book seven, and so the wars in the two epics both begin in the second half of the poems. In this way he structure of the Thebaid both resembles and differs from that of the Aeneid, and in the same way the war of the Thebaid will be the same as the war in the Aeneid but will also be radically different.1 A fury begins both wars, but whereas Allecto departs at the end of Aeneid 7, Tisiphone's intervention persists from the beginning of the conflict to its end. After beginning the war, she expands its scope from a war over the throne of Thebes into a cosmic theomachy in which the forces of the underworld banish pietas from the earth. Thebaid 7 and this chapter begin in the same wayTisiphone drives Thebes to violence in a scene which differentiates the war in the Thebaid from that of the Aeneid. The remainder of the chapter is devoted to the ways in which Tisiphone's war goes beyond Allecto's. The deaths of Amphiaraus and Capaneus continue the violations of boundaries which Tisiphone began in book one, the death of Tydeus embodies the battle the underworld wages against pietas, and Tisiphone's invocation of Megaera is Statius' striking creation of an infernal pair to match the Theban twins. Having played a major role throughout the war, the furies depart from the Thebaid; Statius reliance

on Greek 74 tragedy in this departure aids in interpreting the controversial ending of the poem. Tisiphone, Thebes and the Beginning of War Tisiphone transforms Thebes into a city ready for war by striking each citizen with a fear of the Argives. This transformation takes place in Turnus in the Aeneid when Allecto reveals herself to him; first he is afraid, and then he becomes violent. Similarly, when Tisiphone enrages Polynices and Eteocles against each other, Statius tells us that fear, the parent of hatred (parentis odii metus, 1.127) seizes each of the brothers. In books seven and eight of the Thebaid, he describes this transformation in the entire city of Thebes, which is shaken with fear as Tisiphone, shaking her twin snakes, rages in both camps (geminum excutiens anguem et bacchatur utrisque Tisiphone castris. 7.4667). Discurrunt muris; nil saeptum horrore sub illo, nil fidum satis, invalidaeque Amphionis arces. rumor ubique alios pluresque adnuntiat hostes maiorque timor; spectant tentoria contra Inachia externosque suis in montibus ignes. Hi precibus questuque deos, hi Martia tela belligerosque hortantur equos, hi pectora fletu cara premunt miserique rogos et crastina mandant funera. Si tenuis demisit lumina somnus,

bella gerunt; modo lucra morae, modo taedia vitae attonitis, lucemque timent lucemque precantur.75 The citizens rush down from the walls; nothing is hidden under that fear, nothing is sufficiently safe, and the citadels of Amphion are powerless. Rumor announces other enemies on all sides, a greater fear announces more to come. They see a military camp set up on Inachus and foreign flames in the mountains. Some men call on the gods with prayers and complaints, others invoke martial arms and warring horses, others in tears clasp their breasts and pitifully call for pyres and the next days funerals. If brief sleep closes their eyes, they wage war in their dreams; They are troubled and think of the value of delay at one moment, the suffering of life in the next. They both fear and beg for morning. (7.453-465) The image of Thebes under Tisiphones influence is one of complete disarray and terror. The fear which drives them to abandon all hope in the protection of the walls (7.455-6) is so intense that they hallucinate and believe that they are seeing the enemy at the gates or just over the nearest hill (7.458-9). Tisiphone has destroyed the unity of the city; each person has his own plan for facing the enemy, whether to pray for help, fight, or resign himself to perishing (7.460-1). The only thing common to the citizens of Thebes is their fear of the enemy. This fear is both so disruptive that they do not know whether to try to put off the war or to end their lives (7.464), and so pervasive that they fear

the nightmares of the night but are afraid to wake if it means that they must go to war (7.465). Nevertheless, the fear which Tisiphone causes will develop into violence; the fury plays on the passions of the whole city as she has with individual victims in the past. Only Oedipus remains fearless: aroused far from his deepest chambers, he calls for the furies and begs for his eyes (procul ille penatibus imis excitus implorat Furias oculosque reposcit, 7.468-9). He begs the furies for the return of his eyes so that he can witness the 76 beginning of the strife between his sons; while all of Thebes shrinks from war, the cruel father Oedipus still demands it. The fear turns into violence when the Argives kill two tigers sacred to Bacchus. Statius models this scene on the Trojans killing Silvias deer in Aeneid 7, but as always, he transforms the scene to fit the Thebaid. As we saw in chapter one, Allecto finds Iulus hunting and gives his dogs the scent of the sacred deer. Iulus, inflamed with a love of exceptional praise (eximiae laudis succensus amore, Aen. 7.494) follows his frenzied dogs and kills the deer; the farmers of Latium hear of his deed and rise up against the Trojans in war (7.475-510). In the Thebaid Aconteus kills the tigers and the Thebans retaliate with violence, but Statius has not reproduced the situation from the Aeneid

exactly. Allecto brings frenzy to the hunting dogs, but Tisiphone enrages the tigers. Fierce tigers are a commonplace in ancient literature, but these tigers are different: For hunger never drives them to aggression, a ready hand feeds them, and they take their food and tip back their mouths, which should be feared, for wine as it is poured; theirs is a restful circuit of the countryside (quippe nihil grassata fames: manus obvia pascit, exceptantque cibos fusoque horrenda supinant ora mero, vaga rure quies. Theb. 7.574576). In fact, Tisiphone turns the placid tigers into her own hunting dogs, for they rush off into the Argive army and kill Amphiaraus charioteer: When these were touched three times each by the snaky whip of the Fury, Tisiphone drove them to return enraged into their former state of mind (has ubi vipereo tactas ter utramque flagello Eumenis in furias animumque redire priorem impulit, 7.579-581). But the tigers also correspond to Silvias stag, as the sacred animal which is ultimately killed. Tisiphones effect, then, is to drive the tigers to kill an Argive so that the Argives will kill the tiger; this self-77 destructive quality, not found in Vergils version, makes the episode appropriate for Statius theme of civil war. At the end of the book Apollo opens a chasm in the earth and Amphiaraus drives his chariot into the void and down to the underworld. Both sides of the battle retreat in

amazement and fear: Absistunt turmae, suspectaque tellus omnibus, infidi miles vestigia campi circuit, atque avidae tristis locus ille ruinae cessat et inferni vitatur honore sepulcri. The troops stand back, and the earth is suspected by everyone, the soldiers avoid walking on the untrustworthy field, and the sad place of ready destruction lies empty and is avoided out of respect for the infernal opening. (8.130-133) In Thebes, everyone rejoices, thinking that the gods opened the abyss in order to defeat the Argives. Oedipus, however, wishes that the war could resume since his sons still live. He sits unwillingly at the victory feast and searches for the first sword fight and the seeds of strife with a silent prayer (primos comminus enses et sceleris tacito rimatur semina voto. 8.252-253). Tisiphone, who here displays the same relentless energy as Allecto in Aeneid 7, and who lacks the regulating influence of Juno which sent Allecto back to the underworld, answers his prayer and returns yet again to Thebes to enrage the populace yet again. 78 Iam Mavortia contra cornua, iam saevos fragor aereus excitat enses. addit acerba sonum Teumesi e vertice crinem incutiens acuitque tubas et sibila miscet Tisiphone: stupet insolito clangore Cithaeron

marcidus et turres carmen non tale secutae. iam trepidas Bellona fores armataque pulsat limina, iam multo laxantur cardine Thebae. turbat eques pedites, currus properantibus obstant, ceu Danai post terga premant: sic omnibus alae artantur portis septemque excursibus haerent. Now Martial trumpets sound the challenge, now the clang of bronze brings out savage swords. From the height of Teumesus harsh Tisiphone adds her cry and shaking her locks spurs on the war trumpets and mixes in her hisses. Weak Cithaeron stands amazed by the unusual clamor, as do the towers which followed a different song. Now Bellona beats on fearful doors and armed thresholds, now Thebes empties through many gates. Horsemen disturb the soldiers, chariots block those hurrying, as if the Greeks were pressing from behind: in this way the battle lines crowd every gate and stop in the seven exits. (8.342-352) Tisiphone employs the same high perch and blare of the war trumpet as Allecto did in Aeneid 7. The landscape and the citizens react to both furies in the same way, as well. However, Allecto drove a town to violence only once in the Aeneid, but this is Tisiphones second visit to the city of Thebes. This repeated visit is all part of the 79 escalation of the war. Tisiphones involvement increases between the first half of the poem and the second, and effects a greater change in the city in book eight than in book

seven. The fear of Thebes in book seven, as noted, reproduced the reaction of Turnus to Allecto on a larger scale. The frenzy in Thebes in Thebaid 8, however, resembles the frenzy Allecto inspires in Amata. As we saw in chapter one, Vergil describes Amatas frenzy with the simile of the spinning top, in which we learn that Amata is simultaneously Allectos plaything and in control of herself. Here the whole city exhibits this combination of control and disorder. The eques, pedites, and currus (horsemen, foot soldiers, and chariots) block each other as they hurry to exit the city (8.350-1), and the citizens are in such a hurry to return to fighting that they cannot all fit through the numerous gates of the city of Thebes (8.352). Statius uses two similes to describe the mobilization of Thebes to war. This is the second double simile of the poem; in Thebaid 2 two similes described the transformation of Eteocles from a sleeping king into a violent warrior. The two similes of Thebaid 8 present the two sides of the war: the Thebans eagerness to return to fighting and the Argives fear after their recent setback. But as in book two, the similes together have an effect as well. The first simile of the Nile, which follows the description of the Thebans crowding the gates of the city, shows that despite the confusion of the call to arms, the citizens of Thebes are also in control of themselves. Qualis ubi aversi secretus pabula caeli Nilus et Eoas magno bibit ore pruinas,

scindit fontis opes septemque patentibus arvis in mare fert hiemes; penitus cessere fugatae 80 Nereides dulcique timent occurrere ponto. Just as when the hidden Nile drinks the nourishment of the distant sky and the eastern snows with its huge mouth, and breaks the wealth of its spring and carries seven storms through the open fields to the sea; the fleeing Nereids immediately retreat and fear to enter the sweet sea. (8.358-362) The Thebans are as unified as the water of a river flowing to the ocean in their desire to rejoin the battle. This simile describes the violence of the second beginning of the war. The second simile of the disoriented sailors contributes to this effect; it describes not the Thebans but the Argives, who have recently lost one of their generals, Amphiaraus. Cuncta phalanx sibi deesse putat; minor ille per alas septimus exstat apex. Liquido velut aethere nubes invida Parrhasiis unum si detrahat astris, truncus honor Plaustri, nec idem riget igne reciso axis, et incerti numerant sua sidera nautae. The whole rank feels that it is lacking; that seventh crest stands less high along the line. Just as if a jealous cloud in the liquid ether steals one star from the Great Bear, and the glory of the Wain is spoiled, nor can the pole stay the same after this star has been removed, and doubtful sailors count their stars. (8.369373)

Both of these similes describe the violent effect of the armies leaving Thebes. The Nile drives the nymphs of the ocean away because they cannot survive in its sweet (or notsalty, dulcis , 362) water. To humans, salt water is poisonous and fresh water nourishing, and so we expect that the nymphs would prefer fresh water to salt water. This is not true in the ocean, and this inversion of the expected contributes to the violence 81 of the simile. The battlefield is the ocean and the Theban armies are the sweet water. The implication is that the armies pouring out of Thebes evoke the same response from the landscape; again geographical features become players in the conflict. On the other hand, no amount of freshwater could dilute the salty ocean and the simile shows that the scale of the coming battle will be oceanic; it will absorb the Theban armies with its violence. The second smile, which describes the disappearance of an important star from the heavens, likens the battle to another enormous expanse, the sky. The Argives resemble the doubtful sailors (incerti nautae, 8.373) faced with the disappearance of their leader Amphiaraus and the onslaught of the wave of Theban warriors. These two similes reveal not only the unity of the Thebans and the trepidation of the Argives, but the magnitude of the upcoming battleit will be as violent as if a star were stripped from the sky. With these similes the second round of combat begins on a large scale; all of

Thebes is mobilized against the Argive attack. This expansion of the war will last until the brothers kill each other. Until then, Tisiphones work will not be finished and she will remain in the battle. Reciprocal Movements After the war has begun, each of the seven Argive heroes, except for Adrastus, dies in battle. Amphiaraus and Capaneus both perish because they transgress into the underworld and the heavens without the authority to do so. Each of these reversals of the earlier boundary crossings results in an encounter with one of the Olympian brothers, and each of these encounters results in a redefinition of the conflict of the poem. Amphiaraus trip to the underworld is a journey from earth to the underworld by a living 82 being, the opposite of the journeys of the fury Tisiphone and the shade Laius from the underworld. Just as Tisiphone and Laius bring the underworld to earth, Amphiaraus brings earth to the underworld since he is not dead when he arrives. By the logic of the cosmos, the arrival of a living being in the underworld is just as disruptive to the underworld as the arrival of a fury or a shade is on earth, and his arrival sends Pluto into a rage over the violation of his realm. The infernal rulers speech transforms the conflict of the poem from an earthly battle to a war on a cosmic scale. More than repeating one of his themes, Statius seems to be treating his concept of

blending the realms of the cosmos with some irony when Amphiaraus arrives in the underworld. Ut subitus vates pallentibus incidit umbris letiferasque domos orbisque arcana sepulti rupit et armato turbavit funere manes, horror habet cunctos, Stygiis mirantur in oris tela et equos corpusque movum. When the seer suddenly fell among the pallid shades, burst into the deathly houses and the hidden parts of the buried world, and disturbed the spirits with his funeral while he was still armed, terror took hold of all the inhabitants, and they marveled at the weapons, the horses, and the body still living on the Stygian shore. (8.1-4) Compared to Aeneas dignified and contemplative trip to the underworld, the image of Amphiaraus, with chariot and horses, landing with a crash before the throne of Pluto in the underworld is incongruous. The fear which the reluctant seer Amphiaraus, arguably the least threatening of the Argive generals, causes in the underworld also heightens the 83 irony of the scene. Throughout the first half of the Thebaid the underworld has caused fear on earth, but here it is the shades who recoil from a living mortal. Of course, the effect is not simply playful. Statius reminds us that the earth is not the only realm to have fixed boundaries which resist violation; the underworld can be just as easily

invaded as the earth can. Plutos response springs from this most recent intrusion into the underworld; the harsh king of the dead has finally had enough of the incursions on his realm from above, and his speech reveals the serious change which the god of the dead in going to work on the conflict. Quae superum labes inimicum impegit Averno aethera? quis rupit tenebras vitaeque silentes admonet? unde minae? uter haec mihi proelia fratrum? congredior, pereant agedum discrimina rerum. What fall from above has thrust this unfriendly air upon Avernus? Who has broken the shadows and reminds the silent dead of life? From where do these threats come? Which of my brothers starts this battle with me? I will meet him; come, let the boundaries of the cosmos perish. (8.34-37) Pluto is outraged that Amphiaraus has brought with him unfriendly air (inimicum aethera) and that he reminds the dead of life (admonet silentes vitae). The air to which Pluto refers is the air of earth which gives life to its inhabitants. Just as the Nereids reject life-giving fresh water in the simile that describes Thebes (8.362, discussed above), Pluto rejects the air of the earth because it contaminates the deathly underworld regardless of its life-giving properties on earth. However, Pluto directs his anger not only at Amphiaraus but at his brothers Jupiter and Neptune (8.36). Later in his speech, Pluto 84

expresses his outrage that Jupiter is allowed to go to earth to satisfy his lusts while he scarcely once, and not even to the lofty stars, dared a journey to take a wife in secret on the Siculan plain (vix unum, nec celsa ad sidera, furto ausus iter Siculo rapui conubia campo, 8.61-62). He also laments the many heroes who have been able to enter the underworld while still living: Pirithous, Theseus, Hercules, and Orpheus (8.5457). Jupiters travels to earth and the constant intrusion on the underworld by heroes, along with the requirement to return his wife Persephone to earth for part of the year, have left Pluto bitter about what he sees as disrespect for his position among the Olympians. Oedipus feels similar bitterness. He was angry because his sons failed to give him the respect he deserves as their father, and Pluto is angry because Amphiaraus and the gods have failed to give him the respect he deserves as king of the underworld. And just as the bitterness led Oedipus to curse his sons, so does Pluto curse the earth. His intent is clear: to let the boundaries of the cosmos perish (pereant discrimina rerum, 8.37) by unleashing the underworld on the earth above. Later, he even invokes Tisiphone: i, Tartareas ulciscere sedes, Tisiphone; si quando novis asperrima monstris, triste, insuetum, ingens, quod nondum viderit aether,

ede nefas. Go, Tisiphone, avenge your home, Tartarus; if ever you were fierce with your strange powers, bring forth a crime against the gods which is sad, unusual, and enormous, such as the heavens have never seen before. (8.65-68). This is the second invocation of Tisiphone in the poem, and it signals that the conflict is 85 going to begin again on new terms: Eteocles is still waging war on Polynices, but now Pluto is waging war on his brother Jupiter in the heavens above. Fraternal strife suddenly refers not only to the earthly conflict but to Olympian conflict as well. Pluto is threatening a theomachy which challenges the order of the cosmos over which Jupiter reigns. He will challenge this order not with arms but with attacks on the order of Jupiters world. For these attacks Pluto uses the term nefas (8.68) which refers to offenses against divine law. Such crimes are the perfect weapon against the Olympians, and the king of the underworld details the specific acts he has in mind. Atque adeo fratresnostrique haec omina sunto prima odii--fratres alterna in vulnera laeto Marte ruant; sit, qui rabidarum more ferarum mandat atrox hostile caput, quique igne supremo arceat exanimes et manibus aethera nudis commaculet: iuvet ista ferum spectare Tonantem. praeterea ne sola furor mea regna lacessat, quaere deis qui bella ferat, qui fulminis ignes

infestumque Iovem clipeo fumante repellat. faxo haud sit cunctis levior metus atra movere Tartara, frondenti quam iungere Pelion Ossae. And yet the brotherslet these be the first sign of my hatredlet the brothers rush into mutual wounds with harmful Mars; let there be one, who in the custom of rabid beasts brutally gnaws his enemys head, and one who will bar the dead from their final fires and stain the air with unburied shades: May fierce Jupiter 86 look down on these things! Also, lest this frenzy harm my kingdom alone, find one who will wage war on the gods, who will beat back the fire of the thunderbolt and hostile Jove with his smoking shield. I will make it so that everyones fear of disturbing black Tartarus is no less than to pile mount Pelion on Ossa. (8.6979) Pluto wants to destroy the order of Jupiters world, and to make him see the consequences of angering the underworld (8.74). He calls for all kinds of violations of divine law: Tydeus gnawing the head of his killer (8.72), Creon barring the burial of the dead (8.73), and Capaneus challenging Jupiter in combat (8.76-7). He also calls for the fratricide of the brothers, which both Oedipus and Jupiter have demanded already. When Oedipus prayed that his sons kill each other, it was in the name of vengeance. When Jupiter called for it, it was in the name of punishing sons who had disregarded the gods

wish that sons should honor their fathers. Plutos call for the fratricide gives the deed a further importancehe wants the brothers to kill each other as a challenge to the order of Jupiters universe. Plutos reference to Pelion and Ossa (8.79), and hence to the Titans war against the Olympians, demonstrates that he means these acts to be attacks on the Olympians themselves. Since Oedipus, Jupiter and now Pluto have called for fratricide, the conflict now takes on a truly cosmic scope, involving the mortals, the gods, and the dead. The most explicit example of the underworlds attack on the Olympians comes when Capaneus scales the walls of Thebes and demands to fight Jupiter himself. Like Amphiaraus living descent into the underworld, Capaneus arrival among the Olympians is a reciprocal movement. Mercury, Mars, and Apollo, all Olympians, have come to the earth from heaven but Capaneus, a mortal, here travels in the opposite direction, from 87 earth to heaven. Like Amphiaraus, he is still alive, which makes the journey that much more inappropriate; only certain mortals, such as Hercules, are allowed to join the Olympians, and then only after death and a life of great deeds. Again there is a comic touch to this two-way travel between the upper and lower realms of the cosmos. The insane Capaneus grows bored of the battle on earth: Already

the earthly things seem cheap to the hero, and he tires of the endless gore (Iam sordent terrena viro taedetque profundae, 10.838). Capaneus is looking for a change of pace he climbs a tower, reaches Olympus and challenges the king of gods to a duel. Even his taunting insult to Jupiter is absurdly like a Titans or Giants challenge to the Olympians in the mouth of a mortal: Nunc age, nunc totis in me conitere flammis, Iuppiter! an pavidas tonitru turbare puellas fortior et soceri turres exscindere Cadmi? Now come, now exert yourself against me with all your flames, O Jupiter! Or are you more brave when it comes to disturbing frightened girls with your thunder and burning the towers of your father-in-law Cadmus? (10.904-906) Despite his extravagant bravado, Capaneus really is playing Plutos warrior, since one reason for his anger was that Jupiter refused to let him keep Persephone for the whole year (8.61-65); here Capaneus taunts Jupiter for his own intrigues. Capaneus arrival among the gods is as disruptive as Amphiaraus in the underworld as well: On all sides the throng of gods press around Jupiter hesitating , gnashing their teeth and calling for their avenging weapons (premit undique lentum turba deum frendens et tela ultricia poscit, 10.910-11). This tumult among the Olympians shows that they are not observers 88

but actual warriors in the conflict. Statius even emphasizes that the celestial palace shakes on its own, even without having received a signal (ipsa dato nondum caelestis regia signo sponte tonat, 10.913-14). The gods stir to battle as easily as men, victims of the same latent violence. Jupiter has no difficulty defeating Capaneus, but Plutos wishes for a theomachy have been fulfilled as the king of gods enters into the battle. The Wrath and Betrayal of Tydeus Pluto ordered Tisiphone to drive men to commit crimes against the gods (nefas, 8.68), and carrying out his orders consumes her from books eight to ten. Later, when she summons Megaera to help her end the war, she tells us that her proudest accomplishments were the war of the gods mixed with the frenzied arms of [Capaneus] and the enormous rage of the thunderbolt (mixta viri furialibus armis bella deum et magnas fulminis iras, 11.90-91), and [Tydeus] befouled by blood and his mouth dripping with black gore (sanguine foedatum atroque madentem ora ducem tabo. 11.86-87). These two warriors violated the divine laws of the world in different ways Capaneus, daring more than is permitted to mortals, attacks the gods themselves, and Tydeus, commiting canibalism, devours his opponent and fellow man. These varied crimes widen the scope of the conflict. With Capaneus assault, the battle threatens to envelop Olympus. With Tydeus, Tisiphone even perverts the act of killing an

opponent. In her war, just to see an opponent dead is not enough; Tydeus must defile both his own body and his opponents body in order to satisfy the frenzy which Tisiphone has given him. Erigitur Tydeus vultuque occurrit et amens89 laetitiaque iraque, ut singultantia vidit ora trahique oculos seseque adgnovit in illo, imperat abscisum porgi, laevaque receptum spectat atrox hostile caput, gliscitque tepentis lumina torva videns et adhuc dubitantia figi. infelix contentus erat: plus exigit ultrix Tisiphone. Tydeus, sits up and turns so that he can see the gaping face and the eyes being dragged to him and recognizes himself in it, and he orders that the head be cut off and handed to him. Taking it in his left hand he brutally gazes upon the head of the enemy and he exults seeing the savage eyes of the lukewarm body, still hesitating to become fixed. The unfortunate man was content with that, but the avenging Tisiphone demanded more (8.751-758). Tydeus is subject to intense rage even without the fury as demented by joy and anger (amens laetitiaque iraque, 8.751-2) shows. He calls for the head of his opponent himself before Tisiphone has influenced him, but it is Tisiphone who drives him to gnaw on the

head and commit an unspeakable act. Pallas Athena was on her way to admit Tydeus to the ranks of the immortals (8.759) but when she sees him dripping with the gore of a broken skull and his jaws wickedly stained with living blood (illum effracti perfusum tabe cerebri et vivo scelerantem sanguine fauces, 8.760-61) she retreats in horror and disgust. Statius emphasizes the offense that the gods take at this crime when the snakes from the head of Medusa which hangs from Athenas shield must shield her eyes from the horror (8.762-3). Usually the head of the gorgon is something from which one must 90 hide his eyes, but the sight of Tydeus gnawing the head is so horrible that the gorgon can only be used for protection. Tisiphone here causes the gods of Olympus to reject a great warrior; she has transformed him into a soldier for the underworld before he even dies. In this scene, among the most famous in the Thebaid, we see the underworlds infection of Thebes most clearly, as Tisiphone offends the Olympians, defiles the mortals, and shatters the conventions which govern even the wars of mortals. Tisiphones work with Tydeus is not done, however, even after she has driven him to gnaw the head. Book nine opens with Hippomedon valiantly defending Tydeus body from the outraged Thebans, and Tisiphone tells him that Adrastus is in danger elsewhere on the battlefield. He leaves the body unprotected: To his comrades

Hippomedon gives his task and his own fight, and he wanders away, the deserter of his like-minded friend (miserum sociis opus et sua mandat proelia et unanimi vadis desertor amici. 9.168-69). Tisiphone turns Hippomedon, once the fearless protector, into the desertor of Tydeus. In Latin, this word takes the fullest definition of its English derivative: a desertor is one who abandons someone in a violation of their duty or alliance to that person. In this definition, Tisiphones purpose in the poem becomes clear. She is attacking pietas, the duty which a good man feels to the gods and those around him. All of her actions in the poem amount to a disturbance of this loyalty to gods, men, children, family, and city. In carrying out Oedipus orders, Tisiphone destroys the pietas between a father and his sons in retaliation for the sons disregard for the pietas they should feel for their father. She lures Hippomedon to abandon Tydeus, violating the pietas between friends and between warriors fighting for the same side. Pluto orders Tisiphone to disrupt the pietas which men feel for the gods, and with 91 Tisiphones help Capaneus and Tydeus act in contempt of the gods. The fratricide of Polynices and Eteocles violates their pietasfor each other and for the gods, and so is the fitting culmination of Tisiphones role in the poem. Understood in this way, a further dimension of Statius composing a sequel to the Aeneid emerges. The Aeneid

follows Aeneas voyage from Troy to Rome during which he develops the notion of Roman pietas. The Thebaid presents the forces of the underworld vanquishing the very virtue which Vergils hero, pius Aeneas, embodies. The banishment of pietas receives its fullest treatment in Thebaid 11 when Tisiphone actually meets the virtue personified on the battlefield. The abstract deity Pietas recalls the cosmology of the De Bello Civili, which features exclusively abstract deities such as Rome and Fortune in order to show that the Olympian gods of earlier epic have abandoned the earth out of displeasure for the civil war. In the Thebaid, too, the gods will abandon the earth out of disgust for Tisiphones war on pietas. Jupiter, in his speech of departure compares Tisiphones and Megaeras work to such crimes against the gods as the funerals of the table of Tantalus, and the guilty altars of Lycaon, and Mycenae leading the hurrying stars to the pole (funera mensae Tantaleae et sontes Lycaonis aras et festina polo ducentes astra Mycenas. 11.127-129). The feast of Tantalus, the sin of Lycaon, and the house of Atreus to which Mycenae refers, are all examples of acts which violate pietas. Jupiter tolerated these outrages, but turns away in disgust at the battle below. As a result, the lands lacked their sweet calm sky (dulci terrae caruere sereno. 11.135). With this departure, the earth suffers and the

infernal triumphs on earth.92 Tisiphones Double Victory Over ten books, Tisiphone has brought the underworld to earth to play a part in two conflicts. Oedipus summoned her first and bid her to drive his sons to kill each other because they had mistreated him. Pluto summoned her as well and bid her to banish pietas from earth by driving various heroes to act in contempt of the gods and men. The fratricide of Polynices and Eteocles continues Plutos plan as well. In Thebaid 11, Tisiphone fulfills both Oedipus and Plutos commands. Tisiphone and her sister, Megaera, return to the brothers and inspire them to enter into single combat with each other. Polynices mortally wounds Eteocles, who pretends to be dead and kills Polynices as he approaches to seize the scepter of Thebes (11.560-567). With this fratricide, Oedipus prayer is fulfilled. In the course of the battle between the brothers, Pietas intervenes, and Tisiphone drives her back to Olympus (11.496). With this banishment, the fury completes Plutos wish. Before Tisiphone completes her orders, she summons her sister, Megaera, from the underworld. This is the third invocation of a fury in the Thebaid after Oedipus and Pluto. This time, Tisiphone herself invokes the underworld.

Hac, germana, tenus Stygii metuenda parentis Imperia et iussos potui tolerare furores, Sola super terras hostilique obvia mundo, Dum vos Elysium et faciles compescitis umbras. Nec pretium deforme morae cassique labores: sed iameffabor enimlongo sudore fatiscunt93 corda, soror, tardaeque manus. Thus far, my sister, I have been able to follow the orders, which must be feared, of our Stygian father and the raging commands. I face a hostile world alone above ground, while you hold back the feeble ghosts in Elysium. And the prizes of the struggle are not small and the work not in vainbut now, even I confess, my sister, my heart grows weary with this long toil and my hands grow slow. (11.7680, 92-93) The appearance of Tisiphone signaled that Statius was going to treat the furies in epic in a new way, and Megaeras arrival on earth adds yet another dimension to his treatment of furies. With this invocation, Tisiphone completes an infernal triadall three furies appear in Statius and Vergil. The Thebaid is a poem about twins, siblings, and family, and so requires two furies instead of one. Accordingly, the furies form an alliance, a kind of acies sorroum, (battle line of sisters), to match the fraternae acies of

Polynices and Eteocles. These sisters unite toward a common goal in a perversion of pietas between siblings; the brothers fight against each other but Tisiphone and Megaera work together as loyal sisters. Furthermore, Tisiphone cites the orders, which must be feared, of our parent (impera metuenda parentis, 11.76) as the reason for Megaera to join the battle; she is appealing to Megaeras sense of pietas for Pluto, while exhibiting her own pietas towards him by working to carry out his orders. Since the only functioning pietas is that of the furies, we see that the underworld has completely taken over Thebes, and the furies work is almost finished.94 Tisiphone requires the help of her sister because Her heart grows weary with the long toil, and her hands grow slow (longo sudore fatiscunt corda, tardaeque manus. 11.92-93). With this admission we see that Statius has taken Tisiphones work far beyond the work of Vergils Allecto, who, in her final speech in the Aeneid, expresses her desire to continue causing ruin on earth. Juno restrains her and sends her back to the underworld (Aen. 7.545-560). Allecto obeys, but Vergil presents her as a tireless force. The conflict of the Thebaid has worn out Tisiphone, whose work lasts ten books longer than Allectos; Tisiphone has carried out a much fuller plan than her sister did in the

Aeneid. While Allecto only starts the war in Italy, Tisiphone appears at every stage in Statius conflict, from the initial prayer of Oedipus to the final confrontation of the brothers. The appearance of Tisiphone in the fabrication of the necklace of Harmonia (Theb. 2.284) and the revelation, discussed in chapter 2, that Tisiphone has brought her powers to Thebes before show that she has even prepared for this final battle for as long as Thebes has been a city. And although Tisiphone admits her fatigue here, she still has much yet to do in book eleven before the brothers will kill each other and Pietas will retreat from the earth. The final goal of Oedipus and Plutos commands is the fratricide of Polynices and Eteocles. In order to bring it about, each fury visits one of the brothers, and each furys visit corresponds to one of the two tasks facing the furies in Thebaid 11. Megaeras visit to Polynices initiates the final stage of the human conflict of the poem as she takes the place of Tisiphone in carrying out Oedipus wishes for Polynices. Megaera finds Polynices pondering a vision of his wife, Argia, in which she carried funeral torches and refused to speak to him. Another fury visiting a warrior invites a comparison with 95 Allectos visit to Turnus in the Aeneid, but the two passages are quite different. The same is true for Laius visit to Eteocles in Thebaid 2. Allecto disguised herself as the

priestess of Juno and Laius disguised himself as Tiresias, but Megaera does not need to employ any disguise or even appear to her target since the vision of Argia came to Polynices without the furys help. The vision which Polynices sees, however, is as infernal as any fury: he knows that his mind has seen a monster (scit mentem vidisse nefas, 11.147). Nefas is the term used throughout the Thebaid for a intrusion from the underworld onto earth. Furthermore, Megaera is a a fury from gaping Acheron (Acherontis aperti Dira, 11.150). The underworld gapes so widely that visions such as Polynices vision of Argia can move freely to earth without a summons, and now Megaera takes over where the vision left off with a furys usual mode of attack, as she touched his chest three times with her lash (ter admoto tetigit thoraca flagello. 11.151). Polynices flies into a frenzy and hastens towards the conclusion of the poem: Ardet inops animi. nec tam considere regno, quam scelus et caedem et perfossi in sanguine fratris exspirare cupit. He rages bereft of his mind, and he desires not so much to reign on the throne as for wickedness and gore, and to breathe his last in the blood of his murdered brother. (11.152-154) In Thebaid 1, Tisiphone drove the brothers to violence and they desired naked power (nuda potestas, 1.150) but by book eleven a change has come over

Polynices; his anger is directed only at his brother. The fraternae acies first competed for a throne, but now their main desire is to kill each other in battle.96 While Megaera provokes Polynices anger against his brother in fulfillment of Oedipus wish for his sons to kill each other, Tisiphone seeks out Eteocles in order to fulfill Plutos order to banish pietas from earth. She finds Eteocles making a sacrifice in vain to Jove in return for the deserved lightning bolt (sacra Iovi merito pro fulmine nequiquam..ferebat, 11.205-6). In order to complete her mission she redirects the sacrifice to the underworld, where it will reach Pluto. Eteocles, however, does not know until after his speech that his prayer has been tampered with, and so composes his prayer as if he were speaking to Jupiter. He intends the prayer to be an apology for Capaneus audacity and a submission to the power Jove wields over Thebes, but in fact the prayer will reach Pluto as an insult. Eteocles sacrifice is a gesture of pietas to Jove, but Tisiphone interferes with this proper communication between humans and gods by directing the prayer to the underworld, which should enrage Pluto since Capaneus is an infernal hero (11.70), and so robs the sacrifice of its pietas. Plutos plan for banishing pietas from the earth includes the brothers killing each other since fratricide violates the law of the gods, and accordingly Tisiphone enrages

Eteocles while interfering with his sacrifice. She makes him play the role of a fury himself; instead of disguising herself she forces him to disguise himself with courage when the bull interrupts the sacred rite: He orders that the rite be begun and carried out with faltering bravery, and he subdues his great fears with a feigned countenance (ipse instaurari sacrum male fortis agique imperat, et magnos ficto premit ore timores. 11.232233). The effort which Eteocles must expend keeping his feigned countenance gives way to violence, as the simile of Hercules death describes. Qualis ubi implicitum Tirynthius ossibus ignem97 sensit et Oetaeas membris accedere vestes, vota incepta tamen libataque tura ferebat durus adhuc patiensque mali; mox grande coactus ingemuit, victorque furit per viscera Nessus. Just as when Hercules detected the fire wrapping around his bones and Oetaean clothes clinging to his limbs, nevertheless he carried out the prayers which he had begun and offered the poured incense as he remained hard and endured the evil; soon the weight ravaged him and he groaned, and victorious Nessus raged through his innards. (11.234-238) Tisiphone, in the form of frenzy, will course through Eteocles body in the same way that a metaphorical Nessus, in the form of poison, raged within Hercules. The myth of Hercules compares Eteocles to the great hero through some of Statius

possible sources from Greek tragedy, Sophocles Trachiniae and Euripides Heracles, in which familial strife figures prominently. In the Trachiniae, Deianira gives her husband, Heracles, the poisoned robe. Like Oedipus, she brings death to a family member. Euripides is recalled much more generally. Lyssa in his play is one source for Vergils Allecto; she drives Heracles to murder his own family, just as Eteocles will kill his brother. Once the brothers prepare to meet in combat, Tisiphones and Megaeras work is almost done. Jupiter has abandoned the world, and only the deity Pietas remains to intervene. She is no match for Tisiphone, who has battled the virtue throughout the second half of the poem with Capaneus, Tydeus, and Hippomedon. Tisiphone dispatches her as easily as she enrages the brothers: She presses the chaste face with writhing snakes and brandishes her torch (pudibundaque ora reducentem premit adstridentibus 98 hydris intentaque faces. 11.494-5). Pietas retreats and the brothers move to kill one another. This scene is crucial to understanding Tisiphones constant presence in the poem. Vanquishing pietas required that she do more than begin the battle; such a victory required the fury to preside not only over the first acts of violence, the deaths of Tydeus and Capaneus, and Hippomedons desertion of Tydeus, but even the appearance

and banishment of the personification of pietas, Pietas herself, and the fratricide of the brothers. The Furies Depart After Tisiphone banishes Pietas, the fraternae acies finally meet and the war quickly comes to a close. The role of the underworld in the Thebaids war has been enormous. Tisiphone started the war at the request of the infernal hero Oedipus, it was fought over the infernal city of Thebes, and it eventually displaced completely the pietas by which men honor the gods, friends and relatives. Tisiphone has taken part in the war at every stage, and has even worked in Thebes since its foundation, but if the war is ever going to end, Statius must somehow remove her from the poem. With this process Statius departs fully from his model, the Aeneid, which does not describe what happens to furies after the war. He does not, however, abandon Vergil completely. Vergil drew on Greek tragedy in introducing Allecto at the beginning of the war in Aeneid 7, and in a final inversion of Vergils poem, Statius turns to tragedy at the end of his war for a model of how to end a poem in which the furies figure prominently. The furies first begin to recede as Polynices and Eteocles fight. Nec iam opus est Furiis; tantum mirantur et adstant99 laudantes, hominumque dolent plus posse furores. There is no more need for the Furies; they only marvel and stand by praising, and

they lament that the rages of men has been able to be more [than their own]. (11.537-538) The force of mirantur (11.537) is that the furies are just spectators in the battle which they caused, instead of influential forces in the lives of the brothers. To Jupiter, the crimes which Tisiphone drove men to commit were even more horrible than those of Tantalus and Lycaon, and just as the violence of the war exceeded Jupiters expectations, so do the brothers rage more fiercely than Tisiphone herself (11.538). The furies have always been literal representations of rage who drive men to violence, but by this point the brothers have become so frenzied that they embody the furies more fully than the furies themselves. In the first speech of the poem, Oedipus summoned Tisiphone and prayed for the death of his sons. But now, as the furies fulfill his wishes, he realizes that Tisiphone has triumphed even over him. Tarda meam, pietas, longo post tempore mentem percutis? estne sub hoc hominis clementia corde? vincis io miserum, vincis, Natura, parentem! ... heu, dolor, heu iusto magis exaudita parentis vota malaeque preces. Quisnam fuit ille deorum, qui stetit orantem iuxta praereptaque verba dictavit Fatis? furor illa et movit Erinys100

et pater et genetrix et regna oculique cadentes; nil ego. O pietas, do you strike my heart so late, after so much time? Is there desire for forgiveness in this human heart? You have conquered this pitiable father, O my proper nature...Alas, alas, the vows of the father and the wicked prayers are heeded too completely. Which god was that, who stood by as I spoke, snatched up my words, and passed them on to the Fates? It was rage, and the Furies, and my father, mother, kingdom, and falling eyes which did this; Not I! (11.605607, 616-621) Oedipus finally finds himself moved by the duty to his sons which he violated in his invocation of Tisiphone in book one, and it is with surprise that he recognizes pity for his sons, whom he prayed to Tisiphone to destroy. His apostrophe to pietas is particularly striking; he was the first to pray for a war against pietas, and aided by Plutos wishes and Jupiters abandoning the earth, Tisiphone has banished the virtue from earth. Only now, with this banishment complete, is Oedipus able to recognize the ruin he has brought to his household, and like the Oedipus of Oedipus at Colonus he attempts to shift the blame for what happened away from himself (OC. 270-274). Especially in the Thebaid, it is only partly the truth that he can call himself innocent; Oedipus was already angry with his

sons when he summoned Tisiphone, who comes from the underworld as a literal representation of his rage. Even in his speech blaming the furies he is unable to separate his own agency from theirs as he attributes the crime to his own eyes which he himself gouged from their sockets. In his grief, Oedipus affirms that the furies spring from internal passions, but in 101 the Thebaid, they have been present far beyond Oedipus cell. They withdraw even more from the action in Thebaid 12, as the brothers continue to fight even on their funeral pyre. Pallidus Eumenidum veluti commiserit ignes Orcus, uterque minax globus et conatur uterque longius. Just as if pale Orcus had mixed together the flames of the furies, each threatening fireball tries to outreach the other. (12.433-435) The furies have been real players in the conflict throughout the poem, but here they have retreated into a simile. This is the last appearance of the furies in the Thebaid; they became spectators when the characters of the poem became more violent than the furies themselves, and here they are nothing more than figurative representations of the rage of man. Aeschylus Oresetia dramatizes the appearance of these furies as visible characters. At the end of Choephori, they appear to the tormented Orestes, but only he can see them.

He tells the chorus, You do not see them, but I see them ( , . Ch. 1061). The Eumenides, however, begins with the furies as the chorus on stage, visible to all. Philip Hardie identifies this same transformation, from invisible to visible, in the introduction of Vergils Allecto. 2 Statius reverses this transformation which Aeschylus began when the furies, visible throughout the Thebaid, recede into the figurative language of a simile even as the brothers continue to fight in book twelve. This connection to Greek Tragedy is important in understanding the conclusion of the Thebaid. In Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus the curse of Oedipus lineage becomes a blessing of protection for Athens since Theseus defends Oedipus from his sons. The Philoctetes exhibits this same transformation; Philoctetes bow and even his wounded 102 body, for which he was banished from his people, is ultimately required for the Greeks to conquer Troy. In both of these plays, one of them about the end of Oedipus life, a curse turns into a blessing, and Statius works this same transformation in Thebes. Again, the Eumenides, as a play in which furies figure prominently, offers an excellent analogue to Statius ending: Athena integrates the furies into the new Athenian state as the Eumenides, a form very different from their form at the beginning of the play,

where they were bloodthirsty monsters from the underworld. In their new form, the Eumenides are less destructive than the Furies: No household will prosper without [their] will ( . Eum. 895). The furies will still punish crimes (Eum. 932-7) but their role is one of maintaining the state, not destroying its members. Book twelve of the Thebaid ends with Theseus refounding Thebes under his own rule, and the furies of the Thebaid appear to have acted in order to end the longa series of family strife in Thebes when seen as fulfilling the role of the Eumenides at the end of the Oresteia. This return of the city to glory under a new leader, however, only describes half of the outcome of Statius' poem, which, as Philip Hardie has argued, simultaneously strives for completion such as the departure of the furies provides, while resisting closure as other epics do.3 The arrival of Theseus in Thebes resembles the ending of the Odyssey , in which Odysseus, Laertes, and Telemachus return to reestablish Ithaca. This final scene, however, is less of an ending than a new beginning since the poem ends even before Odysseus has returned to his palace. Statius description of Theseus refoundation of Thebes has the same inconclusive quality, since Theseus has only sorted out the survivors of the war when the poem ends. In this way the poems ending

resembles that of the Odyssey; but the Thebaid also ends as the Iliad, the oldest war epic 103 in the tradition, and the Aeneid end, with death. The Aeneid ends with the death of Turnus, the Iliad with the burial of Hector. Statius poem goes one step farther than the Aeneid by killing both his heroes and exiling Oedipus, and ending, like the Iliad, with a funerary scene. Rapit huc, rapit impetus illuc, Thesea magnanimum quaerant prius, anne Creonta, anne suos: vidui ducunt ad corpora luctus. The widows move on a whim here, now there, and they wonder whether they should seek first great hearted Theseus, or Creon, or their own loved-ones: their widow grief takes them to the bodies. (12.794-796) The widows choose to attend to the bodies of their sons and husbands and the narrative abruptly breaks off, leaving Thebes in ruin and Theseus poised to rebuild it. The furies have retreated and the family of Oedipus has at last been driven out of Thebes, but the final image of the widows driven by grief to the bodies on the battlefield makes it difficult to believe that the end of the war has purged Thebes of her guilt.104 Epilogue: In the Footsteps of the Aeneid Durabisne procul dominoque legere superstes, o mihi bissenos multum vigilata per annos Thebai? iam certe praesens tibi Fama benignum stravit iter coepitque novam monstrare futuris.

iam te magnanimus dignatur noscere Caesar, Itala iam studio discit memoratque iuventus. vive, precor; nec tu divinam Aeneida tempta, sed longe sequere et vestigia semper adora. mox, tibi si quis adhuc praetendit nubila livor, occidet, et meriti post me referentur honores. Will you endure for a long time, and will you be read when you outlive your master, O my Thebaid, whom I worked on so much for twelve years? Truly immanent Fame has already made a friendly path for you, and begins to show you in your youth to the future. Already great-hearted Caesar has deemed you worthy to read, and Italian youth learns and recites you in their zeal. Live, I pray, and do not put the divine Aeneid to the test, but always follow at a distance and worship its footsteps. If some jealousy has spread clouds over you until now, it will soon perish, and after I have died deserved honors will be bestowed. (Theb. 12.810819). With these words Statius ends the Thebaid. His wish for his poem to endure beyond his life is a conventional wish upon completing a work; Ovids Metamorphoses and the third book of Horaces Odes end with similar aspirations to immortality. The last 105 word of the Metamorphoses is vivam, I will live (Met. 15.879) with Ovid as subject, and Horace writes: Non omnis moriar multaque pars mei

vitabit Libitinam; usque ego postera crescam laude recens. I will not completely die, and a great part of me will evade death; I will grow, ever fresh with the praise of later generations. (Carm. 3.30.6-8) Both of these epilogues, however, wish for the immortality of the poet, while Statius wishes immortality for his poem even as he affirms his own impending death with after I am gone in his last line (post me, Theb.12.819). And the Thebaid did achieve immortality from the great poets of the Renaissance onward. However, in the past century, it has been neglected and only recently have scholars such as David Vessey, Philip Hardie, and John Henderson worked effectively to revive it. This study is part of that movement in that it attempts to show Statius creativity in adapting the Aeneid. As we saw following Dantes lead, Statius reverence for Vergil is the key to reading the poem in this way. But Statius does not give us a direct reference to Vergil at the beginning of his poem, but at the end. By withholding this information, he tempts us to continue reading. The first time we read the Thebaid, we already know the story of the house of Oedipus, and we probably recognize the Aeneid behind it as early as the invocation of Tisiphone in book one. We might, ignoring its intensely complex transformation of earlier epics like several centuries of critics, abandon this poem as a fanciful return to a mythological epic. If we read the poetry without these

prejudices, we will enjoy the beauty, and brutality, of Statius poem; for example, each of the fates of 106 the seven Argive generals is in itself a memorable scene, described in the most lively style. But once we have finished reading the poem, Statius sends us back to its beginning; only in the epilogue does he invoke the name of Vergil, daring us to read the Thebaid again with an eye to his transformation of the Aeneid. And his epilogue continues to entice, even after a second reading. My project traces only one of the many ways in which Statius has adapted the Aeneid. The poem can be read and reread in this manner; if we prefer not to follow the role of the underworld, the role of Oedipus as a perversion of Anchises would provide material for another lengthy study, and a study of Parthenopaeus as figure that recalls both Lausus and Pallas, another. For as many tropes or themes as could be named in the Aeneid, and they may well be countless, there are as many readings of their adaptations and transformations in the Thebaid. From this sea of interpretation, Statius emerges as a poet skilled enough to compose a post-Vergilian epic which remains innovative while maintaining, and advancing, the great tradition of Latin epic that the Aeneid had established. The epilogue, then, is a bold (and justified) claim to the same complexity of the Aeneid. Statius adapts Vergils poem and transfers its status as a masterpiece onto

his own poem, even in its final lines.107 Notes for Introduction: 1 E.g. Hinds. 2 Hardie (1993). 3 MacKail (1904), 188. 4 Tyrrell (1908), v. 5 Statius, trans. Mozley (1928), xiv. 6 Statius, Thebaid. J. B. Poynton trans. Oxford (1971). 7 Statius, trans Melville (1992). See also W. J. Dominiks review in BMCR 4.3.20 (1993) for a discussion of the limitations of Melvilles translation. 8 Henderson (1991). 9 Holub, 47. 10 Hardie (1993), xi. 11 Sullivan, 33. 12 Vessey discusses the afterlife of the Thebaid in his introduction to Melvilles translation, pp xlii-xliii.

13 Singleton, 1973. pp. 510-11. 14 Singleton, 1975 p. 37. 15 Fletcher, 130. 16 Conte, 350. 17 Henderson, 1998. 18 Conte, 443-4. 19 Hinds, xi. 20 Horsfall, 224ff.108 Notes for Chapter 1: 1 Blooms Freudian approach to literary succession necessarily depends on familial models. 2 Etymology from Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek Lexicon., p. 1798 Notes for Chapter 2: 1 Heffernan provides a concise definition and a discussion of what kinds of descriptions apply: Ekphrasis is the verbal representation of visual representation. p. 3. 2 Bartsch, 15. 3 Heffernan, 10. 4 Putnam (1998), 2. 5 Detienne, 300.

6 Levi -Strauss, 107. 7 Heubeck, 349. 8 Hardie (1993), 77. 9 Grimal, 286. 10 Hyde, 6. 11 Turner, 96. 12 See Putnam (1995) pp 100-120 on this transformation. 13 Vessey, 211. 14 id. 217.109 Notes for Chapter 3: 1 Hardie (1993), 62. 2 Hardie (1991), 38. 3 Hardie (1993), 11.110 Bibliography Aeschylus. Aeschylus I: The Oresteia. Richmond Lattimore, trans. University of Chicago Press, 1953. ____. Aeschylus II: Seven Against Thebes et al. S. G> Benardete, trans. University of Chicago Press, 1953.

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