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syncretism, or the regarding of different deities as so many manifestations of one ultimate Power, characteristic of the time.^[1] This probably originated with Stoicism, and Stoicism had become the religion of educated Romans, so far as they had one. “Dieu, c’est-à-dire Jupiter, et la Nature ne sont qu’un. Et cette raison divine, cette loi universelle, c’est le Fatum qui ne fait aussi qu’un avec la Nature et avec Dieu” (Legras, La Thébaïde, p.160). Another apparent inconsistency has been laid to the poet’s account, in making Jupiter first announce his decision to embroil Argos and Thebes, and then attempt to deter the Argives on their march by hostile omens; in this, however, he is doing no more than ancient writers commonly do in accepting both divine warning by omen and divine irrevocable will without attempting to reconcile them. That Statius was not unaware of the difficulty can be gathered from his discussions of divination and of omens (iii. 551, vi. 934).

The divine personages who make up the supernatural machinery of the Thebaid are treated in the familiar, realistic manner of traditional epic; certain personifications take their place among them, such as Sleep, Virtue, Piety; the latter, in her well-meant effort to stop the duel of the brothers, is treated very unceremoniously by Tisiphone, and hustled off the battle-ground whence she flees complaining to the Thunderer (xi. 457 sq.). Yet occasionally the poet strikes a higher note; one of the best known passages of the Thebaid is the description of the altar and grove of Clementia at Athens, in which the poet gives beautiful expression to the old Athenian ideal