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The epic poem Thebaid was composed by Statius around 80-92 A.D. in twelve books and concerns the expedition of the Seven against Thebes in support of the attempt by Oedipus's son Polyneices to recover the throne from his brother Eteocles. Book IX is set in the midst of the fighting before the eventual death of the two brothers. This new edition includes apparatus criticus, a translation, commentary, and an extensive introduction--which contains sections of Statius's life and works; a summary of the epic, themes, characters, and poetry; and an explanation of the poem's great popularity in the Middle Ages.
Epic and tragedy, from Homer's Achilles and Euripides' Pentheus to Marlowe's Tamburlaine and Milton's Satan, are filled with characters challenging and warring against the gods. Nowhere is the theme of theomachy more frequently and powerfully represented, however, than in the poetry of early imperial Rome, from Ovid's Metamorphoses at the beginning of the first century AD to Statius' Thebaid near its end. This book -- the first full-length study of human-divine conflict in Roman literature -- asks why the war against god was so important to the poets of the time and how this understudied period of literary history influenced a larger tradition in Western literature. Drawing on a variety of contexts -- politics, religion, philosophy, and aesthetics -- Pramit Chaudhuri argues for the fundamental importance of battles between humans and gods in representing the Roman world. A cast of tyrants, emperors, rebels, iconoclasts, philosophers, and ambitious poets brings to life some of the most extraordinary artistic products of classical antiquity. Based on close readings of the major extant epics and selected tragedies, the book replaces a traditionally Aeneid-centric view of imperial epic with a richer dialogue between Greek and Roman texts, contemporary authors, and diverse genres. The renewed sense of a tradition reveals how the conflicts these works represent constitute a distinctive theology informed by other discourses yet peculiar to epic and tragedy. Beginning with the Greek background and ending with a look ahead to developments in the Renaissance, this book charts the history of a theme that would find its richest expression in a time when men became gods and impiety threatened the very order of the world.
The Dark Side of Statius' Achilleid explores systematically and for the first time the darker aspects of Statius' Achilleid, bringing to light the poem's tragic and epic dimensions. By seeking to position at centre-stage these darker elements, the book offers several new readings of the Achilleid in relation to its literary inheritance, its gender dynamics, and its generic tensions. This volume delves beneath the surface of a story that ostensibly deals with a light subject matter—the cross-dressing of a young Achilles on Scyros—to offer an in-depth examination of the poem's relationship to its epic and tragic precursors, and to explore its more serious themes. It is shown to challenge traditional epic narratives, examine Achilles' complex familial relationships and his deviant and transgressive heroism, highlight the tragic character of Thetis, and provide glimpses of the horrors that the cataclysmic Trojan War will beget. By looking into Statius' wide-ranging dialogue with his literary predecessors, such as Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Seneca, as well as Statius' previous epic magnum opus, the Thebaid, the multidimensional characterisations of Achilles and other of the poem's key characters, such as Ulysses, Calchas, and Thetis are investigated. Far from simply representing a shameful but essentially humorous cross-dressing episode in Achilles' life that is destined to be forgotten, the Achilleid can be seen to challenge the very fabric of epic by probing the validity and authority of its literary tradition, as well as highlighting its highly innovative and experimental nature.
A classical epic of fratricide and war, the Thebaid retells the legendary conflict between the sons of Oedipus—Polynices and Eteocles—for control of the city of Thebes. The Latin poet Statius reworks a familiar story from Greek myth, dramatized long before by Aeschylus in his tragedy Seven against Thebes. Statius chose his subject well: the Rome of his day, ruled by the emperor Domitian, was not too distant from the civil wars that had threatened the survival of the empire. Published in 92 A.D., the Thebaid was an immediate success, and its fame grew in succeeding centuries. It reached its peak of popularity in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, influencing Dante, Chaucer, and perhaps Shakespeare. In recent times, however, it has received perhaps less attention than it deserves, in large part because there has been no accessible, dynamic translation of the work into English. Charles Stanley Ross offers a compelling version of the Thebaid rendered into forceful, modern English. Casting Statius's Latin hexameter into a lively iambic pentameter more natural to the modern ear, Ross frees the work from the archaic formality that has marred previous translations. His translation reinvigorates the Thebaid as a whole: its meditative first half and its violent second half; its intimate portrayal of defeat and retribution, and the need to seek justice at any cost. In a wide-ranging introduction, Ross provides an overview of the poem: its composition, reception and legacy; its major themes and literary influences; and its place in Statius' life. And in a helpful series of notes, he offers background information on the major characters and incidents. -- Paolo Asso
This forty-volume collection comprises all the issues of an early and influential classical periodical, first published between 1810 and 1829.
This edition presents all of the surviving manuscripts, together with textual apparatus and commentary. The poem is also presented in parallel with its principal source, Boccaccio's "Filostrato", enabling the reader to compare the two poems in charting the evolution and achievement of Chaucer's "Troilus". This edition has been revised and corrected in order to make the text fully accessible to the reader unfamiliar with Chaucer's work. An introduction discusses the text, metre and sources of "Troilus" and assesses the literary importance of Chaucer's translation method.