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A few touches show some degree of insight: the people of Crotopus, king of Argos (in Adrastus’ narrative), have just been saved from the awful pestilence sent on them by Apollo: “stupet Inacha pubes, magnaque post lacrimas etiamnunc gaudia pallent” (i. 619), “the Inachian youth stand appalled and their joy, though great now sorrow is ended, even yet is pale and dim.” Capaneus is said to be “largus animae modo suaserit ira” (iii. 603), “lavish of his life, should wrath but urge him,” a development of the Horatian “animaeque magnae prodigum Paullum.” The Argive leaders who have taken the place of those slain in the fight are “haud laeti seque huc crevisse dolentes” (x. 181), “feeling no joy, but grief that they are raised so high.” Thetis, urging the boy Achilles to don the girlish clothes, adds “nesciet hoc Chiron” (Ach. i. 274), “Chiron will not know of it.”

The plot of the Thebaid was probably modelled on the vast Epic of Antimachus (fl. c. 400 B.C.), which Cicero calls “magnum illud volumen,” and of which Porphyrio tells us that the author had completed twenty-four books before the Argive host had been brought to Thebes. Statius, though he took only six books in doing it, has been criticized for unnecessary delay in arriving at Thebes, but he was probably wise. as twelve books of battle-scenes would have rendered his work as unreadable as the seventeen books of Silius Italicus’ Punica.

The following is a summary of the chief events of the Thebaid: i. 1–45, Invocation of the Emperor. 45–311, Oedipus, who has blinded himself, invokes Tisiphone and curses his sons: she hears him and hurries to Thebes; the brothers, full of mutual hate, agree to reign alternately; the lot falls on Eteocles,