Statius’ Thebaid: The Oneness of Doubling and the Two Horns of Princeps Natura

Charles E. Blume (University of Vermont)

The frequent doubling in Statius’ Thebaid resonates deeply because of its close association with the dual Hesiodic strife running through the poem. This linkage of doubling and strife contributes to the overall unity of the epic poem by becoming subordinated to the overarching character of Nature.

The murderous strife of the two main characters, the brothers Polynices and Eteocles, is so powerful that it ripples throughout the poem, spreading additional doubled images of various kinds. The doubling emanating from the two brothers acting at the center of the poem often reflects their destructive discord but may also involve strife that is akin to fruitful rivalry, thus re-enacting the two forms of eris set forth in Hesiod’s Works and Days. This Hesiodic strife and coordinate doubling are seen in the Thebaid’s pairing of Argos and Thebes, Theseus and Creon (12.670), Argia and Antigone (12.458), Polynices and Tydeus (1.457), the twin sons of Hypsipyle (5.713), the twin sons of Ide (2.637), and Virgil and Statius (12.816). On a metaphorical level, discordant doubling amplifies the foregoing combinations and includes pairs of bulls fighting each other (or just single bulls spoiling for a fight) (1.131, 2.328, 4.397, 6.864, 11.253 and 12.601) and Polynices and Eteocles’ joint funeral pyre splitting into two fires (12.431). Some additional harmonic or antagonistic doubling consists of highly charged words emitting ambiguous overtones, such as effoso, cupit, adfectat and obruit (11. 504, 539, 573), sounds of the two shores coexisting peacefully on either side of the Isthmus of Corinth (1.335), and two-edged furrows forming when Cadmus sows seeds of destruction (3.180) and Amphiaraus rides his chariot (7.762).

The doubled images ironically serve to support a transcendent unity in the poem, a unity which is formed through the leadership of Nature, who rises to the level of a supreme leader gradually through the poem and is finally confirmed in that role by the climactic acknowledgements of three personages: Pietas, who addresses Nature as princeps (11.466), Capaneus’ wife, who exclaims, “heu princeps Natura!” (12.561), and Theseus, who proclaims Nature to be a leader as he marches against Creon (12.645). Statius carefully crafts the character of this principal personification so that, by the end of the poem, Nature has marshaled all the disparate elements of doubling, including the two-sided strife, into a unified field by virtue of her own intrinsic double quality of fertilization and disintegration. The poem is unified because the doubled images file behind Nature and collectively imitate her encapsulation of these two qualities, one of engendering through harmonization of effort and the other of perishing through decomposition. Nature exhibits this destructiveness and beneficence from both the gods’ and humans’ perspective, as, for instance, when Jupiter cites Nature as a cause of the civil war (7.217) and the seer Thiodamas describes the goddess Nature as having opened her lap to receive Amphiaraus (8.330).

While some scholars have dealt with unresolved antitheses (Henderson), discord (d’Espèrey, Nagel), and Nature’s role in the poem (DeLarue, Nagel), I make a new contribution to the scholarship by elucidating the nexus of doubling, Hesiodic strife and Nature and demonstrating that the interrelationship of these elements unifies the poem.

“Statius’ Thebaid: The Oneness of Doubling

and the Two Horns of Princeps Natura”

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