University of Groningen Beginning of Doom Soerink, Jorn IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2014 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Soerink, J. (2014). Beginning of Doom: Statius Thebaid 5.499-753. Introduction, Text, Commentary. [S.n.]. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). The publication may also be distributed here under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, indicated by the “Taverne” license. More information can be found on the University of Groningen website: https://www.rug.nl/library/open-access/self-archiving-pure/taverne- amendment. Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 28-09-2021 Beginning of Doom Statius Thebaid 5.499-753: Introduction, Text, Commentary Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen op gezag van de rector magnificus prof. dr. E. Sterken en volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties. De openbare verdediging zal plaatsvinden op donderdag 27 november 2014 om 16.15 uur door Jörn Soerink geboren op 21 februari 1982 te Zeist Promotor Prof. dr. R.R. Nauta (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) Copromotor Dr. H.V. Lovatt (University of Nottingham) Beoordelingscommissie Prof. dr. M.A. Harder (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) Prof. dr. S.J. Harrison (University of Oxford) Prof. dr. C. Reitz (Universität Rostock) Cover illustration: Opheltes’ death on an Attic sarcophagus, ca. 160 AD (see Appendix B h) Preface Silver Latin literature currently experiences a golden age. Flavian epic in particular is more popular than ever before. Translations, monographs, articles spring up like mushrooms; conferences, symposia, workshops are organised all over the globe. The modern interest in Statius – and his contemporaries Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus – can be explained, at least partially, from developments in literary studies in general, such as the vigorous interest in intertextuality in the wake of French structuralism, the postmodern interest in metapoetic self-consciousness, and the rethinking of the classical canon – although Statius, of course, has been a canonical author for many centuries. The greatest incentive, however, must be the sheer quality of his poetry. Things have been different. In 1955 Pieter Jan Enk could write: ‘Over de dichters van het zogenaamde zilveren tijdperk is het oordeel in vele opzichten nog steeds onbillijk. Ten eerste hierdoor, dat zeer weinige Latinisten ze nauwkeurig lezen, en ten tweede, dat velen zich van vooroordelen moeilijk kunnen losmaken. [...] Wat Statius betreft praten velen liever Schanz na, die de Thebais “ein totes Produkt” noemt, dan dat zij naar onze grote landgenoot Hugo de Groot, naar Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, naar Leo of Mackail luisteren. In 1930 brak ik in mijn inaugurele rede een lans voor Statius, thans kan ik de verdediging van deze dichter aan mijn leerlingen Dr. Mulder en Dr. ten Kate overlaten.’1 Although he published little on Statius himself, Statian scholarship is indebted to Enk and the University of Groningen. As Enk himself subtly reminds us, he made no small contri- bution to Statian scholarship via his pupils: Herman Heuvel and Heine Mulder wrote com- mentaries on Thebaid books 1 and 2 respectively,2 while Rijkel ten Kate’s dissertation, under the delightful title Quomodo heroes in Statii Thebaide demonstrantur quaeritur, discusses the protagonists of Statius’ poem and their literary backgrounds. In a fine twist of fate, Rijkel ten Kate also taught my supervisor, Ruurd Nauta, at the Willem Lodewijk Gymnasium in Gronin- gen.3 My dissertation thus carries the burden of a distinguished Groningen tradition. Not being a son of Boreas myself, it was Hans Smolenaars at the University of Am- sterdam who first aroused my interest in Statius. After spending some time working on Statius as his assistant in 2005, I soon found myself writing an MA thesis under his guidance, on Furies in Flavian epic. Our Epicurean conversations about Statius, inter alios, have contri- buted much to my apprehension and appreciation of this fascinating poet. The present dissertation originates from my MSt thesis, supervised by Bob Cowan and submitted in Oxford in 2008, which offered a commentary on Thebaid 5.499-541. Following my interest in fictional snakes, I had come to share Garrod’s opinion that the story of Opheltes is ‘one of the prettiest of the Thebaid legends’.4 A glance at the indices locorum of the then new monographs by Charles McNelis and Randall Ganiban, however, suggested that Statius’ story of Opheltes, which reaches its climax in the second half of book 5, had been compara- tively neglected and perhaps undervalued. Most critical energy, it seemed, had been invested 1 Enk 1955: 11-2. For the aesthetic judgements of Schanz, Hugo Grotius et alii see Ten Kate 1955: 4-8. 2 Commentaries on Statius’ Thebaid, including those in preparation, are listed in the bibliography. 3 On Ten Kate’s commitment to school education see his obituary in Trouw, 6 February 2008. 4 Garrod 1906: 276. in the first half of book 5, Hypsipyle’s embedded narrative about the Lemnian massacre – per- fectly understandable in light of the modern interest in gender, narratology and metapoetics. But the episode that follows is no less fascinating: the striking correspondences with Adrastus’ narrative in book 1, Statius’ engagement with Euripides’ Hypsipyle, the symbolic significance of Opheltes’ death for the coming Theban War – to mention only some of the most conspicuous issues. After Hendrik Fortgens’ commentarius exegeticus on Opheltes’ funeral (Thebaid 6.1-295), Riccardo Mauri’s saggio di commento on Hypsipyle’s Lemnian narrative (Thebaid 5.1-498), and Ruth Parkes’ excellent commentary on book 4, a commen- tary on Thebaid 5.499-753, I thought, might be a welcome addition to Statian scholarship. I am most grateful to the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (ICOG) for enabling me to write that commentary. I do not wish to elaborate on its principles, but given the recent interest in – and problematisation of – the commentary as a scholarly genre,5 let me briefly state its aims. In the first place, my notes intend to help readers understand the text, shedding light on textual difficulties, mythological obscurities, metrical oddities, etc. As readers familiar with the poet’s contorted style – notes on that too – will know, sometimes Statius’ palimpsestic poetry can only be fully appreciated through the lens of other texts: my commentary also aims to lay bare and interpret such intertextual relations. Finally, I have tried to connect the words on the surface with the deeper concerns of the poem as a whole. Since the passage should not be read in isolation, the commentary is preceded by an introduction, which addresses not only the second half of book 5, but the whole Opheltes episode, which could roughly be defined as the Nemean episode (Thebaid 4.646-7.104) minus Hypsipyle’s embedded narrative and the games. The first chapter traces the development of the story of Opheltes throughout classical literature, from the first attestation of his name in Linear B to Roman times. The second is devoted to Statius’ engagement with Euripides’ Hypsipyle, which underlies Statius’ entire Nemean episode. Chapter three discusses the intra- textual connections between Statius’ story of Opheltes and the story of Linus and Coroebus in book 1, which leads us to Callimachus, who figures prominently in recent Statian scholarship – and in chapter 4. The fifth chapter modifies the dominant Callimachean interpretation of Statius’ Nemean episode, which harbours some unquestionably epic elements as well. Nemea, I argue, is Statius’ paradise lost, and the violent disruption of its pastoral world has both poetic and political significance. Chapter six argues that the Opheltes episode can be read as mise en abyme, mirroring the epic’s central themes of premature death, maternal bereavement, and the frenzy of (more than) civil war. The brief seventh chapter is about the topography of Nemea, for I believe that Statius has mapped fictional events on a factual landscape. Writing a commentary, in my experience, entails that the text under consideration becomes πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον, the measure of all things.6 In my world the Thebaid, lines 5.499-753 in particular, is the pivotal poem of classical literature, and Statius the central poet around whom all others revolve like planets around the sun, describing circles and ellipses at various distances. And speaking of circles: I have been accused of ‘panophism’. I can only hope that I am not as as lunatic as Charles Kinbote in Nabokov’s Pale Fire. Surely my disser- 5 See Most 1999; Gibson and Kraus 2002. I should like to thank Gail Trimble and Matthew Hosty for inviting me to their Commentary Workshop on Greek and Latin epic (Oxford, 23 March 2014), and all other participants, esp. Stephen Heyworth, for their helpful suggestions. 6 On Protagoras’ homo mensura thesis see Van Berkel 2008. tation does not offer the final word on Statius’ Opheltes episode. Yet it is my hope that the ideas and comparanda which I have committed to paper, sometimes with hesitation, will foster further research and make a small contribution to our understanding of this marvellous poem.