Statius, Thebaid 2: Edited with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary

Composed towards the end of the first century CE, Statius’ Thebaid relates the myth of the ‘Seven against Thebes’: the assault of the seven champions of Argos on the ancient city in a bid to oust Eteocles, son of Oedipus, from his throne in favour of his brother, Polynices. Book 2 presents several key events in the build-up to the Theban war: Eteocles’ haunting by the ghost of his grandfather Laius, the ill-omened weddings of Polynices and his ally Tydeus to the princesses of Argos, and Tydeus’ failed embassy to Eteocles, leading to his famed victory over a Theban ambush. This volume represents the first full-length scholarly commentary in English on Book 2 of the twelve-book Latin epic, greatly expanding on and updating Mulder’s 1954 Latin language commentary. An extensive introduction covers the poem’s historical, textual, and literary contexts, with particular attention to Statius’ adaptation of prior literary tradition and especially the epics of Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Valerius Flaccus, and Silius Italicus. The Latin text, accompanied by a clear translation and apparatus criticus, is newly edited to take advantage of the recent detailed editorial work on the poem by Hall, Ritchie, and Edwards and is supplemented by a comprehensive and incisive line-by-line commentary which addresses a range of textual, linguistic, and literary topics. The result is a keenly focused yet accessible critical edition that will be of interest both to specialist scholars of Latin poetry and to advanced graduate students studying Flavian epic.