Thebaid

Statius opens his poem with a traditional invocation to the Muses, asking for their help recounting a tale of “Brothers crossing swords; held by turns, their kingdom, vied for in fiendish hatred” (1-2). He briefly touches on the troubled history of the royal family of Thebes as a whole (4-14), but zeroes in on his true subject: the dysfunctional house of Oedipus. After a brief panegyric, or formal praise, to the emperor Domitian (17-33), we enter the epic proper.

Blind and wretched, Oedipus, the former king of Thebes, languishes in a dark dungeon. He prays to the infernal “gods who rule over guilty souls,” specifically the Fury Tisiphone, reminding her (and the reader) of his story. Dictated by Fate, Oedipus unknowingly killed his own father and married his mother, with whom he fathered several children (59-64). When he finally learned the truth, Oedipus blinded himself.

Oedipus now accuses his sons, Eteocles and Polynices, of gross neglect (74-9). As Jupiter, the king of the gods and usual divine arbiter of justice, has not punished them for dishonoring and ignoring their father, Oedipus turns to the gods of the Underworld.