Alius furor. Statius’ Thebaid and the metamorphoses of Bacchus
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Alessandro Schiesaro
Abstract
The centrality of Bacchus’ role in Statius’ Thebaid is unprecedented in the epic tradition. Of Statius’ predecessors, only Ovid had accorded him a significant on-stage role, while others, such as Virgil, made him important in indirect ways that are associated with the creative energies that drive the narrative. Statius responds to his predecessors mainly by subverting the traditional Bacchic imaginary. The god emerges as largely ineffectual, neither a fully-fledged culture hero, nor a terrible punisher of hybris. As if to work athwart the god’s traditional role as ‘most terrible but also most sweet to mankind’ (Eur. Ba. 861) or ‘a mediator of peace but midmost in the fight’ (Hor. Odes 2.19.27-28), the poem oscillates between war and peace, between deferral and continuation of its own action. This chapter examines the presentation of Bacchus in the Thebaid and some of the implications of this presentation for the poem’s poetic and ideological texture. There is particular discussion of Bacchus’ main interventions: in book 4 to forestall the Argive alliance’s assault on Thebes; and again in book 7 when he upbraids Jupiter for his complacency in allowing Thebes to be attacked, in both of which Bacchus emerges as unwarlike relative to his models and antagonists. Bacchic manoeuvres proliferate: Venus encroaches on the territory of Bacchus by staging her own Bacchae in the Lemnian episode of book 5; Statius’ matrona (4.377-405) replays Lucan’s sibyl (1.679-95) in her Bacchic enthusiasm, which in the revised version signals the furor of civil war, and yet remains ineffective as a plot-motivator. Leaving aside Virgil and Ovid, Statius takes most closely after the sublime Dionysian furor of Lucan and Seneca, and yet what we find in the Thebaid is an attenuated Bacchus, metamorphosed into the antithesis of the sublime aesthetic, a reduction of which the poem at several points shows metapoetic awareness. The chapter brings together the different strands of its argument by examining the role of Bacchus in the conclusion of the Thebaid.
Abstract
The centrality of Bacchus’ role in Statius’ Thebaid is unprecedented in the epic tradition. Of Statius’ predecessors, only Ovid had accorded him a significant on-stage role, while others, such as Virgil, made him important in indirect ways that are associated with the creative energies that drive the narrative. Statius responds to his predecessors mainly by subverting the traditional Bacchic imaginary. The god emerges as largely ineffectual, neither a fully-fledged culture hero, nor a terrible punisher of hybris. As if to work athwart the god’s traditional role as ‘most terrible but also most sweet to mankind’ (Eur. Ba. 861) or ‘a mediator of peace but midmost in the fight’ (Hor. Odes 2.19.27-28), the poem oscillates between war and peace, between deferral and continuation of its own action. This chapter examines the presentation of Bacchus in the Thebaid and some of the implications of this presentation for the poem’s poetic and ideological texture. There is particular discussion of Bacchus’ main interventions: in book 4 to forestall the Argive alliance’s assault on Thebes; and again in book 7 when he upbraids Jupiter for his complacency in allowing Thebes to be attacked, in both of which Bacchus emerges as unwarlike relative to his models and antagonists. Bacchic manoeuvres proliferate: Venus encroaches on the territory of Bacchus by staging her own Bacchae in the Lemnian episode of book 5; Statius’ matrona (4.377-405) replays Lucan’s sibyl (1.679-95) in her Bacchic enthusiasm, which in the revised version signals the furor of civil war, and yet remains ineffective as a plot-motivator. Leaving aside Virgil and Ovid, Statius takes most closely after the sublime Dionysian furor of Lucan and Seneca, and yet what we find in the Thebaid is an attenuated Bacchus, metamorphosed into the antithesis of the sublime aesthetic, a reduction of which the poem at several points shows metapoetic awareness. The chapter brings together the different strands of its argument by examining the role of Bacchus in the conclusion of the Thebaid.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents VII
- List of illustrations IX
- List of Contributors XI
- Introduction. Dionysus in Rome: accommodation and resistance 1
- The ancient reception of Euripides’ Bacchae from Athens to Byzantium 39
- Images of Dionysus in Rome: the archaic and Augustan periods 85
- Liber, Fufluns, and the others: rethinking Dionysus in Italy between the fifth and the third centuries BCE 111
- Dionysian associations and the Bacchanalian affair 133
- Dionysus/Bacchus/Liber in Cicero 157
- Bacchus and the exiled Ovid (Tristia 5.3) 177
- Alius furor. Statius’ Thebaid and the metamorphoses of Bacchus 193
- The shadow of Bacchus: Liber and Dionysus in Christian Latin literature (2nd–4th centuries) 219
- Index rerum et nominum 239
- Index locorum 245
- Index of inscriptions and visual artefacts 247
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents VII
- List of illustrations IX
- List of Contributors XI
- Introduction. Dionysus in Rome: accommodation and resistance 1
- The ancient reception of Euripides’ Bacchae from Athens to Byzantium 39
- Images of Dionysus in Rome: the archaic and Augustan periods 85
- Liber, Fufluns, and the others: rethinking Dionysus in Italy between the fifth and the third centuries BCE 111
- Dionysian associations and the Bacchanalian affair 133
- Dionysus/Bacchus/Liber in Cicero 157
- Bacchus and the exiled Ovid (Tristia 5.3) 177
- Alius furor. Statius’ Thebaid and the metamorphoses of Bacchus 193
- The shadow of Bacchus: Liber and Dionysus in Christian Latin literature (2nd–4th centuries) 219
- Index rerum et nominum 239
- Index locorum 245
- Index of inscriptions and visual artefacts 247
