From my youth, I've been a fan of stories where a group of men (usually men, sometimes women too) are engaged in an adventure together. From the tales of King Arthur and his knights to the adventures of the Argonauts, I've enjoyed such stories. In comics, I most enjoyed team titles like The Justice League of America, The Legion of Superheroes, The X-Men, and The Avengers. Even in movies, I've been rather fond of such stories. My all-time favorite film is Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and movies like The Magnificent Seven or The 47 Ronin also really grab my attention. And so the story of the "Seven Against Thebes" was one that appealed to me from the get-go. In addition, that the story is that of a lost cause was one that appealed to a life-long Red Sox and long-time Cubs fan. Finally, Statius' epic, viewed second only to Vergil's Aeneid as a Latin epic, and very popular through the Renaissance, seemed to be just the work that I'd love to read, and, for the most part, I did enjoy it. I did feel, though, that an epic poem was not perhaps the best form to treat this theme, or rather an epic poem of this length. Knowing that he was competing with Vergil, Statius composed an epic poem of 12 books (about 300 pp. in length). A shorter epic, say the length of Apollonius' Argonautica (4 books [under 200 pp.]), would have sufficed and made for a better work. Throughout the work, there are scenes which Statius feels compelled to use, because Vergil had a similar scene; sometimes that works (as in the Argive night raid on Thebes in Book X), often it fails (as in the funeral games for Archemorus in Book VI, or the catalogs of troops in Books IV and VII). Statius' use of language too is much more elaborate and fancified than the language of Vergil (Melville does a good job of catching Statius' stylized language in English). Often, when he is describing the nightmare world of the poem, he is very successful in catching that otherworldly quality in his language. Sometimes, though, his mannered language is an attempt to show off, and, when he is fancy and elaborate where simplicity would do, he fails.
Statius, by his own admission (in Book XII), spent twelve years on the work, an immense amount of time (c. 83 - c. 95 CE) (Vergil spent only ten years on the Aeneid, though he would have spent more time revising). Domitian was the emperor for the entire period of Statius' creative output and the poet enjoyed imperial favor. Domitian, though, was a rather paranoid and tyrannical ruler. He enjoyed Statius' verse, and probably asked the poet to compose an epic poem about him. Such an effort on Statius' part would have been difficult to carry off -- Domitian had done little that would merit such an epic, and an epic extolling lesser deeds would have earned him ridicule and disdain. Worse, failure to praise the emperor in just the right way could have cost him his life. Early in Book I, Statius delivers a recusatio, an apology for not taking up the task of imperial panegyric. He claims to be too green a poet at this time, and so has composed this other poem instead, so that he will be up to full power when it comes to writing an epic about Domitian. These recusationes were standard fare in imperial epics; only Vergil's Aeneid, which does glorify Augustus, if indirectly, is without one. With an emperor like Domitian, such an apology would be necessary, as he was insulted easily, and he wasn't a person who took insults well.
Why did Statius pick this story, though? It puzzles me. The story of the Argonauts would seem a better choice for a purely mythological epic, or some other story about Troy (maybe Hercules' earlier expedition against Troy). Even the labors of Hercules might have done. Was it the theme of fraternal conflict that appealed to him? The city of Rome was founded by Romulus, who had killed his brother, Remus, for setting up a rival settlement. Rome had several civil wars in the 200 years preceding Domitian's reign, the latest only 12 years or so past. And so, the theme of brother against brother, which runs contrary to the Roman idea of pietas (loyalty to gods, state, and familly), was a very popular one with Roman authors. Still, the work seems better suited to a tragedy, even a tragic trilogy, than to an epic. The scope of this conflict, though great, is not so great as can be treated in an epic, at least not in an epic this long.
Fraternal conflict is at the center of the plot in this work, but it takes place in a nightmare world unlike any other in Greek or Roman epic. Lucan, in his epic about the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, the Pharsalia, is the only work that comes close to depicting a world gone awry. When the story begins, the exiled king of Thebes, Oedipus, calls upon Tisiphone (one of the Furies, the spirits that avenge blood guilt), claiming that she has been his patron goddess more than any of the Olympians. That Oedipus would look on such a monster as his patron suggests the way he views the world, and the world we see in this poem is one in which monsters rule. From that point on, it is Tisiphone, more than any other character, human or divine who directs the action. Imagine the world seen only through the eyes of a bloodthirsty avenging angel, and you get a sense of the world depicted in the Thebaid. In this work, Jupiter claims to be acting as an agent of Fate, restoring balance for Thebes' past crimes, but this is not the Jupiter of Vergil's Aeneid, who truly is acting as an agent of Fate, trying to keep all things in balance, and keeping the interference of the other gods to a minimum. Nor is it the moderate king of gods of Homer's Iliad or Odyssey, who acts as a final judge in the disputes of the gods and men. Here there is much greater grumbling on the part of the other gods, but whenever anyone suggests that a more reasonable course of action be plotted, it is Jupiter who refuses and demands more war and death, and this is not a Jupiter who will listen to reason, despite his statements to the contrary. He seems more caught up in a vendetta than in justice. And he seems to be almost an agent, perhaps puppet would be more like it, for Tisiphone. It's clearly a world topsy-turvy and Statius captures that dark weirdness very well. Consider the description of Tisiphone in Book I (ll. 103-109):
Shading her brow a hundred snakes stood high,
The threatening terror
of her ghastly head.
A stteely glint shone in her sunken eyes
Like the
red pallor fo the labouring moon
Among the clouds bewitched by magic
spells.
Upon her taut and poison-tainted skin
Corruption swelled; from
blackened lips she breathed
A fiery vapour laden with disease,
Hunger and
thirst and universal death.
When however, Statius employs such flowery language to a simple transition, the effect seems silly. One such example from Book XII (ll. 1-6) deals with the arrival of dawn:
Not yet had wakeful dawn sloped every star
From heaven, and the moon
with falling horn
Still watched the approach of day, when from the East,
Dispelling now the trembling shades of night,
Aurora rose, preparing
the vast sky
To greet the sun's return.
Homer in his work marked such transitions with a line or two about "rosy-fingered dawn." Statius here tries to outshine Homer with greater verbiage and more elaboration, and the attempt fails. Such elaboration, though, may very well explain his popularity in the Middle Ages, where such elaboration was very much in vogue.
This is a world in which the exiled prince, Polynices, wanders the Greek world in the dark of night, through the worst storm described in epic poetry; it's a world where the Theban prophet, Tiresias, instead of checking the flights of birds, or examining the remnants of a slaughtered animal (the usual ways of checking for omens), holds a strange ritual in a clearing in the dark woods, at the place where Oedipus defeated the Sphinx, and summons the ghosts of dead Thebans to consult. And then, he's primarily interested in the Thebans who've committed some crime or horrible act. That others go along with such rites seems perfectly right in this nightmare work. Statius' language in this scene captures perfectly the strangeness of the whole event -- he provides plenty of gruesome detail, such as one who dreams a nightmare might focus on; in a nightmare, the dreamer would linger on the bizarre elements -- so too does Statius.
Vergil, in his Aeneid, gave his audience a glimpse into the mythological underpinnings of what would become Rome. The hero of his poem is not Aeneas, so much, as Rome itself. Aeneas and the other heroes of the work (even Jupiter) are merely agents on Rome's behalf, centuries before the city would be founded. There are terrible moments in that poem, where innocents die, and where individuals must sacrifice their lives or personal dreams to the greater glory of Rome. Still, that ultimate victory of Rome and that city's glory, shine a bright light over the work, and some of that brightness alleviates the suffering in the poem's tragic moments. In the Thebaid, though, Statius is not telling the story of a city that would attain the glory of Athens, or even of Sparta, but one that would primarily be known for its terrible and murderous mythological image.
In addition, the story is that of a failed expedition. Even if the Iliad is a tragic work, the Greeks will win at Troy; Odysseus will get home in the Odyssey; the Argonauts will get the fleece in the Argonautica. Here, the good guys (who are the Argive invaders attempting to put Polynices on the throne) will fail. At the poem's conclusion, the cowardly and tyrranical Eteocles has been replaced by the tyrannical Creon; the cities of Thebes and Argos are both ruined. There is no great victory, and the only justice attained is that of burial for the Argives, enforced on Thebes by Athenian forces under Theseus.
As a Red Sox and Cubs fan (it may say something about me that the only sports teams I'm interested in are those that have attained almost tragic stature by their losses -- I'd have been a Brooklyn Dodgers fan too, I imagine), I am well aware that greatness can be attained even in a losing venture, and there have been great movies that have dealt with fighting against the odds and losing (e.g. Das Boot or The Perfect Storm).
This book, though, has only a few truly heroic moments, and one of those is darkened somewhat by the cruel nature of its hero. When Tydeus is ambushed on his return from an embassy from Polynices to Eteocles (Book II), the Argive hero manages to defeat 50 men who attack him in the woods outside Thebes. To attack a herald is one of the worst crimes one can commit, and to send a group of 50 to attack one man is the height of cowardice. Despite his heroic derring-do and great martial valor, it is tough for us to root for Tydeus, who maintains a Dirty Harry like anger throughout the work. Later, in Book IX, while he dies in battle, he demands the head of the man who slew him, and gnaws on his foe's head, disgusting everyone, even the bloody god, Mars. Only the heroic efforts on the part of Dymas and Hopleus, the squires to Parthenopaeus and Tydeus to regain their leaders' bodies for burial (Book X) and the valiant assault of Capaneus against the walls of Thebes (Book XI) attain truly heroic stature; only there are we moved by the violence and loss we see. Ironically, it is Capaneus, an atheist, who refuses to call upon the gods and trusts only his own valor, who earns the most respect from the reader. Usually depicted as a renegade, who denies the power and justice of the gods, the Capaneus in this work comes across as truly heroic. In a world where people pray to the gods for their own selfish aims, and where the gods themselves manage to make the world a hell for men, the rejection of the gods by Capaneus, who stands on his own two feet, may be the only sensible thing to do.
The lack of a real hero in the work is a problem. Statius' sympathies are clearly with Polynices, who should, by the terms of the contract, be king. But Polynices is not a very dynamic figure; he is clearly outshone by the violent Tydeus and the heroic atheist, Capaneus. Those two, however, are destined to be supporting players, and so we lack a central figure on whom we might focus our attention. This is not Statius' fault, though one imagines that Polynices could have been drawn as a much more compelling figure than he is. The argument that tradition may have cast him as a rather weak figure is not compelling, as Statius had no problem changing tradition in having Jocasta still alive, in having Oedipus holed up in a cave near Thebes, in having a much younger Antigone and dealing fast and loose with how Antigone is treated in response to her disobedience to the law. There is a problem with stories of group efforts, that if one tries to give each of the heroes a moment in the sun, then one has a series of stunning cameos, but not a cohesive or compelling story.
Coupled with this is Statius' decision to incorporate into his work scenes that follow the model of earlier epics. Homer's Iliad XXIII had funeral games in honor of Achilles' comrade, Patroclus. Vergil's Aeneid V had funeral games in honor of Anchises, Aeneas' dad. So here we have the funeral games in honor of Archemorus in Book VI. Homer's funeral games, though, serve a necessary (and brief) interlude between the climactic battle between Achilles and Hector (Iliad XXII) and the ransoming of Hector's body by King Priam (Iliad XXIV). The funeral games allow Achilles, who is rather a murderous monster on a rampage when he meets Hector, the time to heal somewhat and regain his lost humanity, so that the encounter with Priam will resonate with the shared realization of Priam and Achilles in the tragedy of life. Vergil's funeral games also allow for an interlude between the very moving and tragic love story of Aeneid IV and the descent into the Underworld of Aeneid VI, but are included for other reasons too. In holding such games for his father, Aeneas is showing pietas, a loyalty to his father that is considered one of the great Roman virtues. Also, Vergil uses the games as an opportunity to glorify prominent Romans, whose ancestors these are said to be competing for prizes.
Though the funeral games of Archemorus are said to be the founding of the Nemean games (one of the other great Panhellenic athletic festivals like the Olympics), the founding of those games has nothing to do with the matter at hand, the expedition of Argos against Thebes. Besides, most of Book V had been taken up with a long exposition of the Argonauts landing at Lemnos, a story told by Hypsipyle, former queen of that island, now guardian of Archemorus. The result is that we have two books (and some of IV too) that have been an interlude, and an unnecessary one at that. Even Jupiter is aware of it, when he calls Mars in on the carpet for letting this long interlude of peace occur. The king of the gods suggests that maybe Mars needs to go on a vacation, a nice peaceful vacation, if he can't do his job. It's a nice little scene, but it underlines the long and unnecessary delay in the action.
In addition, Book XII, which follows the battle of Eteocles and Polynices (both killed, the city of Thebes saved, sort of), is largely a cleaning up operation. An important part of the story involves the expedition of Athens against Thebes to allow for the burial of the Argive soldiers (as divine law would require -- once they're dead, you can't deny them burial), and this couldn't easily be cut from the work, but it requires more than a book to do it justice. Besides, the story of the Seven ends with the battle between the two brothers. And so, we have a whole final book which feels like an add-on, not a crucial part of the story. Vergil's Aeneid ends with the final battle between Aeneas and the Italian hero, Turnus. Very dramatic. Here, one might say the poem ends, "not with a bang, but with a whimper." It introduces a whole new cast (the women of Argos and the Athenian army) who were not earlier part of the story. Shakespeare's Hamlet ends with the arrival of Fortinbras to claim Denmark. Not an integral part of the story heretofore, the Norwegian prince comes in to clear the stage of all the dead bodies. That scene, which seems a bit contrived, is a small part in a much greater play. In Statius' poem, though, the same clean-up operation, which requires more elaboration than he can provide, still takes up 1/12 of the whole work, and severely weakens the story's impact.
All in all, I'd say that I enjoyed the Thebaid, which does a marvelous job of painting a nightmare world, but the work lacks the overall unity and power of works like Vergil's Aeneid and Homer's Iliad. It seems rather like a sprawling city, which may have beautiful or dramatic highlights, but lacks an overall sense of completion and unity. It also is a little too mannered for my taste, with too much emphasis on Statius displaying his learning (of which he had lots) at the expense of telling his story. It may be that the story itself is the problem, at least for a poet to spend so much time on it.