Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/18

As a poet who depicts the society of his time, Statius compares very favourably with Martial in avoiding the coarseness that was so prominent a feature of it, and his poetry reflects the sensitiveness of his character.

To be the author of a great epic poem is to count as one of the few great poets of the world, and it need hardly be said that Statius can make no claim to that honour. He stands with Apollonius, Lucan, and Valerius Flaccus in the second rank. Yet the Thebaid received high praise from the elder Scaliger and the post-Renaissance critics, and the tendency to-day is, if anything, to underrate its merits. It is, indeed, somewhat lacking in unity of theme, yet it must be remembered that much depends on the story chosen, and that of the Seven against Thebes is a difficult one to handle owing to the double interest: the Argive and the Theban strands are hard to combine satisfactorily; in fact, the unity of the plot is a duality, i.e. the conflicting fortunes of the two brothers, and the real interest consists in the gradual approach and closer interweaving of the two “subjects,” until, as in the stretto of a fugue, the climax is reached in the great duel of Bk. XI. Here, it is true, Statius might have stopped, with the Aeneid as his model, but the Theban legend is fruitful in incident, and it might be justly urged that the burial of the Argives, with the appeal of Theseus that it involves, together with the striking episode of the “strife of flames upon the funeral pyre” of the two rivals, formed a real part of the story; it must be admitted, however, that the