1. Recent literature which discusses the end of the Thebaid includes: Dietrich, J., ‘Thebaid’s Feminine Ending’, Ramus 28 (1999), 40-53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fantham, E., ‘The Role of Lament in the Growth and Death of Roman Epic’, in Beissinger, M., Tylus, J. and Wofford, S. (eds.), Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World: The Poetics of Community (Berkeley and London 1999), 221-36Google Scholar; Braund, S., ‘Ending Epic: Statius, Theseus and a Merciful Release’, PCPS 43 (1997), 1-23Google Scholar; Hardie, P., ‘Closure in Latin Epic’, in Roberts, D.H., Dunn, F.M. and Fowler, D. (eds.), Classical Closure: Reading the End in Greek and Latin Literature (Princeton 1997), 139-62Google Scholar; Malamud, M., ‘Happy Birthday, Dead Lucan: (P)raising the Dead in Silvae 2.7’, Ramus 24 (1995), 1-30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hershkowitz, D., ‘Patterns of Madness in Statius’ Thebaid’, JRS 85 (1995), 52-64Google Scholar; Hershkowitz, D., ‘Sexuality and Madness in Statius’ Thebaid’, MD 33 (1994), 123-47Google Scholar; Dominik, W.J., The Mythic Voice of Statius (Leiden 1994Google Scholar); Hardie, P., The Epic Successors of Virgil (Cambridge 1993Google Scholar); Henderson, J., ‘Form Remade/Statius’ Thebaid’, in Boyle, A.J. (ed.), Roman Epic (London and New York 1993), 162-91Google Scholar; Henderson, J., ‘Statius’ Thebaid/Form Premade’, PCPS 37 (1991), 30-80Google Scholar; Ahl, F., ‘Statius’ Thebaid: A Reconsideration’, ANRW 2.32.5 (1986), 2803-912Google Scholar. For the text of the Thebaid, I have followed Hill, D.E. (ed.), P. Papinii Stati Thebaidos Libri XII (Leiden 1983Google Scholar); for the Siluae Courtney, E. (ed.), P.Papini Stati Silvae (Oxford 1990Google Scholar); for Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile Shackleton Bailey, D.R. (ed.), M. Annaei Lucani De Bello Civili Libri X (Leipzig 1997Google Scholar). All translations are my own.

2. Braund (n.l above, 16) sees Lucan’s influence as responsible for the dark side of the Thebaid: ‘I should emphasise that I have no difficulty with acknowledging the presence of a darker side to the poem. That is where the influence of Lucan, Statius’ most obvious extant precursor for civil war epic, emerges most strongly.’ Throughout, this article will engage with Braund’s interpretative choices, privileging this darker side to the poem.

3. I am indebted throughout this section to Malamud’s article on Siluae 2.7 (n.l above).

4. Thebaid 12.816f. Hinds, S., Allusion and Intertext (Cambridge 1998), 93Google Scholar, marks the similarly liturgical language in both passages.

5. The poem’s ‘bidden’ status (see Hardie, A., Statius and the Silvae: Poets, Patrons and Epideixis in the Greco-Roman World [Liverpool 1983], 30-36Google Scholar) further problematises the praise. For in the prologue to Book 2 of the Siluae Statius makes it clear that the poem was written at the bidding of Polla, Lucan’s widow. However, the gesture in itself is highly significant: Statius allows himself, the poet of the Thebaid, to be seen as above all an admirer of Lucan. Thus the public nature of his praise itself commits his Thebaid to a discipleship in Civil War. We must read his reading of Lucan.

6. Van Dam, H.-J., Silvae Book II: a Commentary (Leiden 1984), 470Google Scholar, catalogues the many past readers of Statius who were outraged at his appalling literary judgement; this only went to show how lacking in all sensibility Statius must be. However, now that Statius has been rehabilitated as a worthwhile poet (and, paradoxically, so has Lucan), it is assumed that he cannot have made such a judgement: Van Dam, for instance, says ‘Statius is writing a poem of praise here and he has to pretend that he thinks Lucan a great poet’.

7. See Hinds (n.4 above) and Hardie 1993 (n.l above).

8. Conte has formulated this useful dichotomy for exploring the variety of intertextual relationships in which a text can be involved: Virgil, in this case, would correspond to Conte’s modello-codice while Lucan might be his modello-esemplare. See G.B. Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and other Latin Poets (Ithaca 1986).

9. Malamud (n.l above), 14.

10. Malamud (n.l above), 15: ‘At least one voice in Lucan’s narrative is suicidal, longing for its own silence.’

11. The battlefield can also be a place of transition, marking the space between the old order and the new: V. Pagan (paper given at Statius Workshop, Trinity College, Dublin, 1998) proposes this as a way of reading the battlefields in Book 12 as a point of transition between the old corrupt order of Thebes and the positive new order of Theseus.

12. Iliadic mourning is located in the city and camps rather than on the battlefield itself; Virgil excludes both mourning and battlefields by simply stopping.

13. In a simile Lucan marks Caesar’s difference from Hannibal, who gave honourable burial to the consuls after Cannae: BC 7.799-803. This follows Livy’s account of Cannae (Livy 22.52). Silius (10.549-77) also gives a version of the burial. Pagan (n.ll above) points out the elements of Statius’ description of the battlefield which are in common with accounts of battlefields in the historians.

14. Recent work includes: Davidson, J., ‘The Gaze in Polybius’ Histories’, JRS 81 (1991), 10-24Google Scholar; Feldherr, A., Spectacle and Society in Livy’s History (Berkeley and London 1998Google Scholar). Critics have been wary of theories of ‘The Gaze’ as developed by feminist film theory. Davidson (lOf.) justifies his use of the term ‘Gaze’ in this way: ‘Lines of sight form their own structures, linking the protagonists and the readers of the histories together in the act of looking … “Gaze” has the advantage of reflecting the visual metaphors which are used consistently by Polybius.’ I am interested in the gaze as more than a thematisation of the relationships of looking both within and without the text: its significance as a line of power is also very important. The emphasis on looking within these texts too requires investigation: if there were no theory of ‘The Gaze’, then readers of Lucan and Statius would need to invent it.

15. Hanson, V.D., The Western Way of War (London 1989), 202Google Scholar. Examples from Herodotus include: after Marathon, Spartans who had missed the battle go to see the bodies of the Persians (Her. 6.120); Xerxes views the bodies at Thermopylae (Her. 7.238); Xerxes hides some of the bodies from his fellow Persians coming to see the defeat with their own eyes (Her. 8.24-5); and from Xenophon: viewing after the battle of Koroneia (Xen. Agesilaus 2.14).

16. He also marks out the most notable (and gruesome) of the day’s findings with the phrase praecipue conuertit omnes (‘it turned all headlong,’ 22.51.9). What is most horrific is also most compelling. Here we have the famous Roman who, unable to hold a weapon, died chewing on the nose and ears of his Numidian enemy. Whether this is an example of courage, or of the horror of war, it is reminiscent of both Erichtho and Caesar, feasting on the battlefield. Statius represents this only too concretely in his description of the cannibalism of Tydeus (Theb. 8.751-66) where eating is one step further than gazing.

17. See Scarry, E., The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford 1985Google Scholar) for the importance of physical mutilation in creating situations of victory and defeat.

18. Versnel, H.S., Triumphus: An Inquiry into the Origin, Development and Meaning of the Roman Triumph (Leiden 1970), 167Google Scholar; Val. Max. 2.8.1; Livy 40.38; Cicero, In Pisonem 26.62.

19. for instance Livy 22.52.6: ad octo milia fuisse dicuntur fortissimorum virorum (‘they are said to have been around 8,000 first-rate men’).

20. OLD s.v.cerno; agnosco; specto.

21. Feminist film criticism, which focuses on the male gaze and woman as object of the gaze, sees the gaze as objectifying and de-humanising its object—namely women. See Mulvey, L., ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, in Penley, C. (ed.), Feminism and Film Theory (London and New York 1988), 57-68Google Scholar; Humm, M., Feminism and Film (Edinburgh 1997Google Scholar); Thornham, S. (ed.), Feminist Film Theory (Edinburgh 1999Google Scholar). Criticism of the concept from an art-historical perspective: Kern, S., Eyes of Love: The Gaze in English and French Paintings and Novels 1840-1900 (London 1996Google Scholar); from a symbolic interactionist perspective: Tseëlon, E. and Kaiser, S., ‘A Dialogue with Feminist Film Theory: Multiple Readings of the Gaze’, Studies in Symbolic Interaction 13 (1992), 119-37Google Scholar.

22. Leigh, M., Lucan: Spectacle and Engagement (Oxford 1997), 288Google Scholar, comments on this passage: ‘The spectatorship described is that of the tyrant.’

23. See Barton, C., The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton 1993Google Scholar), especially 85-106 (‘Fascination’), for discussion of the emotions of the audience in the arena. For instance, Sen. De Tranqu. 11.1-6. The way in which empathy and identification were important parts of the gaze to the gladiatorial audience is made obvious by the use of the gladiator as an image for the struggles of the Stoic. Davidson (n.14 above) distinguishes two types of gaze in Polybius: the comparative and analytical, which ‘takes a remote view of things, assessing, contrasting and placing into context’, and the ‘empathetic’ gaze, which is ‘much more involving, entailing the “projection” of the sufferings of others on to one’s own circumstances’ (15f.).

24. In Book 12, too, grief is presented as a sort of pleasure. At 12.388 Argia and Antigone enjoy their groaning: cara uicibus ceruice fruuntur (‘in turn they delight in his dear neck’). At 12.793-95 the mothers rejoice and exult in their lament: gaudent lamenta nouaeque/exsultant lacrimae (‘they rejoice in lament and exult in new tears’). Hershkowitz (n.l above 1994, 143) points out that their grief is described in sexual terms.

25. Amphiaraus descends to Hell at the end of Book 7, Tydeus’ aristeia, cannibalism and death are the climax and end of Book 8, Parthenopaeus’ death ends Book 9, and Capaneus’ exploit forms the high-point of the end of Book 10.

26. ‘In short do we always react to death in battle with sorrow, or do we…regard martial epic as “an appropriate form of entertainment for a military minded people?”’ Leigh (n.22 above), 258.

27. Caesar BC 3.96-99.

28. Vessey, D., Statius and the Thebaid (Cambridge 1973), 130Google Scholar, sees him only as a figure of pietas gone wrong.

29. See Hinds (n.4 above, 91-98) for a discussion of secondariness and ‘secondariness’ in the Thebaid and Achilleid.

30. This sentiment is attributed to Caesar by Cicero in the Pro Marcello: quos amisimus ciuis, eos Martis uis perculit, non ira uictoriae, ut dubitare debeat nemo, quin multos si posset C. Caesar ab inferis excitaret, quoniam ex eadem acie conseruat quos potest (‘Those citizens whom we have lost, those struck down by the force of war, not by the anger of victory, as no-one should doubt, if he could, Caesar would arouse those many men from the depths, since he saves whom he can from the same side’, 17.3-5).

31. Bartsch, S., Actors in the Audience: Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian (Cambridge MA 1994), 1-62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses the breakdown of categories of spectator and spectacle.

32. Hardie (n.1 above 1993, 17) draws attention to words like these: ‘…words of iteration, alius, alter, iterum, rursus etc., whose occurrence in epic is always worth attention.’

33. Leigh (n.22 above, 299) sees Lucan’s presentation of Roman History as a repeated cycle culminating in civil war.

34. Braund (n.1 above), 14. Theseus is an ambivalent figure, however: see Ahl (n.1 above), 2898; Dominik (n.1 above), 92-98 (esp. 93: ‘Like Adrastus, Theseus seems concerned with natural justice. But his treatment of women and violent undertaking of war against Thebes introduce a disturbing aspect into the notion of a just ruler.’); Hershkowitz (n.1 above 1994), 144-47; Dietrich (n.1 above), 43-45.

35. See Cairns, F., Virgil’s Augustan Epic (Cambridge 1989CrossRefGoogle Scholar), for an exposition of the ‘European’ view on kingship in the Aeneid.

36. Braund (n.l above), 10: ‘Clementia is sought by those without power when they throw themselves on the mercy of an all-powerful force.’ Burgess, J.F., ‘Statius’ Altar of Mercy’, CQ 22 (1972), 339-49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that Statius changes the use of the word Clementia. Previously it had been used to refer to situations where an offence had been committed by an inferior and the offended party chose to be lenient. Statius, however, uses it to refer to situations where no offence has been committed. Although Burgess’s final conclusion takes a positive view of Domitian and imperial clementia, he lays the foundations for a particularly Statian critique of clementia: Once the offence has been taken out of the equation, only the power is left in the relationship.

37. Braund (n.1 above), 11.

38. See Leigh (n.22 above), 53-68, for a discussion of Caesar’s clementia.

39. Dyer, R.R., ‘Rhetoric and Intention in Cicero’s Pro Marcello’, JRS 80 (1990), 17-30Google Scholar, makes this argument for the Pro Marcello; Levene, D.S., ‘God and Man in the Classical Latin Panegyric’, PCPS 43 (1997), 66-103Google Scholar, disagrees (but Levene’s own interest in Cicero’s attribution of quasi-divinity to Caesar is also open to Dyer’s tactics: by making Caesar into a living God, Cicero could only highlight what a threat he was to the elite).

40. Vessey (n.28 above), 131.

41. Henderson (n.1 above 1991), 55.

42. Dietrich (n.1 above), 49; for ‘male epic values’, ibid. 48. Fantham (n.1 above, 232) also argues that lament in Statius ‘triumphs over heroics’ and leads to the ultimate closure: the death of Roman epic. See also Perkell, C., ‘The Lament of Juturna: Pathos and Interpretation in the Aeneid’, TAPA 127 (1997), 257-86Google Scholar. Fantham argues that lament structures the second half of the Thebaid: in my view, this is perhaps to go too far. Death and lament are certainly very important, but it is the deaths themselves that hold the key structural positions—lament is part of the aftermath.

43. The laments of Argia and Antigone ‘create a mise-en-abîme, a reliving of the whole epic, or rather a rival version of the epic Statius has just told, seen through women’s eyes and in women’s terms.’ Fantham would differentiate between female (creative) lament and male (destructive) calls for revenge. However, this distinction does not hold in the Thebaid: already in Book 5 the reactions of Opheltes’ parents reverse this ‘norm’, and as I will show, Statius’ portrayal of grieving women is deeply disturbing.

44. Perkell (n.42 above), 278.

45. Perkell (n.42 above), 280: ‘Lament may subvert the dominant male ideology…or may reinforce it, as in Inner Mani, where lament is the prelude to murderous vengeance.’ Seremetakis, C.N., The Last Word: Women, Death and Divination in Inner Mani (Chicago and London 1991Google Scholar), shows how women’s control of the lament process sets up an alternative structure of power to the male council, and how women use pain in order to challenge and manipulate institutions in a form of ‘sociopolitical resistance’ (4, 126-58). See also Holst-Warhaft, G., Dangerous Voices: Women’s Lament and Greek Literature (London 1992CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

46. Dietrich (n.1 above, 46) contrasts the ‘lonely male lament’ of Creon with the ‘shared experience of female grief’. Here, however, Argia removes herself from that group context, and as I will demonstrate below female grief is as competitive as it is shared.

47. At 10.632-49 Virtus is described shedding her warrior’s trappings to become the prophet Manto and inspire Menoeceus to sacrifice himself, in the reverse of Argia’s transformation.

48. Cooper, H.M., Munich, A.A. and Squier, S.M., ‘Arms and the Woman: The Con(tra)ception of the War Text’, in Arms and the Woman: War, Gender and Literary Representation (Chapel Hill 1989), 9-24Google Scholar, link birth and death, creativity and destruction and would see the female role as equally implicated in the generation of the war text.

49. Another mythic cycle of vengeance resulting from the events of the Thebaid is the murder of Eriphyle by her son, because she forced Amphiaraus into battle even though he knew he would die out of desire for Harmonia’s necklace. This is foreshadowed at Theb. 2.299-305.

50. Vessey (n.28 above), 126.

51. Malamud (n.1 above), 4.

52. Masters, J.M., Poetry and Civil War in Lucan’s Bellum Civile (Cambridge 1993), 179Google Scholar.

53. Johnson, W. R., Momentary Monsters: Lucan and his Heroes (Ithaca 1987Google Scholar). Ide is specifically the Thessalian witch situated on the battlefield; she is strongly linked to Erichtho through the nocturnal setting, the mention of the prophesying corpse and the description of the handling of dead bodies.

54. See O‘Higgins, D., ‘Lucan’s Vates’, Classical Antiquity 7 (1988), 208-26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Masters (n.52 above), 179-215, concerning Erichtho (and the counterpoint episode of Appius and the Delphic Oracle) as metapoetic signifiers.

55. See Gordon, R., ‘Lucan’s Erictho’, in Whitby, M., Hardie, P. and Whitby, M. (eds.), Homo Viator: Classical Essays for John Bramble (Bristol 1987), 231-41Google Scholar, on Erichtho as night-witch.

56. Johnson (n.53 above).

57. Holst-Warhaft (n.45 above) argues that women were made powerful through their control of death and mourning; their ability to compose laments which often call for or celebrate revenge threatened male society, and led to the suppression of female mourning in 5th Century Athens. In the context of this research, Statius’ comparison of Ide with a witch makes sense; Holst-Warhaft calls lament ‘a song with magic powers’ and locates the traditional figure of the witch in the same category as the lamenting woman. For instance, ‘the broomstick symbolises her inverted role, the domestic tool protruding from her loins’ (153). However, the intimate association between lament and revenge means that lament perpetuates the male system of honour and violence.

58. Masters (n.52 above), 206. Lucan incongruously applies the word uates to her; spells and poems are both carmina.

59. Masters (n.52 above), 212.

60. Ahl (n.l above), 2898.

61. Hershkowitz (n.l above 1994), 146 n.49: ‘The Argive and Theban women become indistinguishable, all appearing, because of their frenzed Bacchic behaviour, to be Thebans. In this respect Theseus’ actions do not curtail the madness of Thebes but lead directly to an expanded resurgence of it.’

62. Braund (n.1 above), 5.

63. Dietrich (n.1 above, 46) reads the continued enmity of the brothers’ shades as a contrast to female co-operation.

64. Fantham (n.1 above), 231. Inversely, see Hardie (n.1 above 1997), 153 n.50, on the triumph as funeral (Aeneid 11.53f.; Lucan 3.288-92; Thebaid 12.88, 578f.).

65. Fantham (n.1 above), 226.

66. Masters (n.52 above), 248.

67. It is always worth remembering that Virgil’s ending has not always been accepted as final: for instance, a thirteenth book was written by Maffeo Vegio in the Renaissance (see Hardie [n.1 above 1997], 144) and the tradition that Virgil himself wanted the Aeneid burnt when he died because of its unfinished nature speaks volumes about classical preoccupation with closure.

68. Masters (n.52 above), 251: ‘…the civil war can have no ending. Everything about the poem is boundless, illimitable, infinite.’

69. See Hardie (n.l above 1993 and 1997).

70. Masters (n.52 above), 253.

71. Braund (n.l above). Dietrich (n.l above, 42) presents the final coda to the Thebaid as looking away from the epic genre, toward the Georgics, Eclogues and Horace’s Odes. In the final coda, the Aeneid is mentioned, and so is Caesar, an elliptic suggestion of Lucan’s ending which focuses on Caesar. Another revealing intertext for Statius’ coda is Lucan’s address to Caesar over the remains of Troy (BC 9.980-86).

72. Dietrich (n.1 above), 5. She also sees an alternative Iliad ending in the funeral of Menoeceus.