BMCR 2009.06.31: Cowan on Ganiban, Statius and Virgil. The Thebaid and the Reinterpretation of the Aeneid

Randall T. Ganiban, Statius and Virgil. The Thebaid and the
Reinterpretation of the Aeneid.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University
Press, 2007.  Pp. 258.  ISBN 978-0-521-84039-2.  $90.00.

Reviewed by Bob Cowan, Balliol College, Oxford
([email protected])
Word count:  2790 words
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[The reviewer would like to apologise for the lateness of this review.]

Like the proverbial buses, the long wait for monographs in English
dedicated specifically and synoptically to Statius' Thebaid has ended
with the arrival of three in quick succession, indeed in three years,
and all from the same press. Almost a quarter of a century after
Vessey's seminal, if much-challenged, Statius and the Thebaid and
thirteen years after Dominik's brace of subversive studies on rhetoric
and politics in the poem, Cambridge University Press have followed
Helen Lovatt's Statius and Epic Games (whose scope is far wider than
the title suggests) with the more-or-less simultaneous publication of
Charles McNelis' Statius' Thebaid and the Poetics of Civil War and the
current volume by Randall T. Ganiban.[[1]] This, in concert with the
steady production of commentaries on individual books, not to mention
monographs in languages other than English, is vital for the
advancement of research on the poem. For, despite the profusion of
often outstanding articles, chapters, and sections published in
journals and studies of Flavian epic and poetry more generally, which
tend to focus on specific aspects of the poem, such attempts to see the
poem steady and see it whole must be the ultimate aim of Statius'
readers.

As with Lovatt, so Ganiban's scope is broader and more comprehensive
than his title suggests. Though it bills itself as 'a monograph that
interprets Statius' epic as a political critique of the Aeneid', the
book does not limit itself to intertextuality with Virgil, but provides
a reading of more-or-less the entire poem, stressing its dominant moral
and political pessimism, specifically the irrelevance of  pietas and
the overriding 'poetics of nefas'. Indeed, one might argue that the
title of Ganiban's original dissertation, Nefas and the Poetics of
Statius' Thebaid, would have been more appropriate, since this is
probably a more central concern than intertextuality with Virgil. Nine
chapters, all thematic, but still broadly chronological and focused on
a specific episode or episodes, reinforce this aim through a
sophisticated analysis of Statius' intertextual and metatextual
engagement with Virgil. Some interpretations are familiar, as is
inevitable in such a comprehensive treatment, while others are arguably
a little strained. There is also one major omission, which Ganiban's
explicit explanation only partly justifies, in the refusal to discuss
Domitianic or more broadly Flavian politics. However, overall the book
succeeds extremely well, particularly on the level of illuminating and
sophisticated close readings, but also on that of its powerful, if
flawed, overarching thesis.

The introduction appropriately sets the agenda for the book, with a
discussion of how Ganiban intends to read the Thebaid's engagement with
the Aeneid and a paradigmatic analysis of an appropriately paradigmatic
episode, Adrastus' narrative of Linus and Coroebus. This introduces the
first central contention, that the Thebaid, in polemical opposition to
the Aeneid, or at least its 'Augustan voice', depicts the central
Virgilian ideal of pietas as being (in various formulations)
'irrelevant' or 'meaningless' in the world of the poem. The second,
equally if less explicitly programmatic chapter treats an even more
programmatic passage, Oedipus' invocation of Tisiphone, and establishes
the concept of the 'poetics of nefas', the second and even more
dominant of the book's themes. The following seven chapters are each
centred around a theme, so that there is no sense of trudging through a
running commentary on the poem, but each still focuses on a specific
episode or series of connected episodes, in broadly chronological
order, so that the reader gains a sense of a cumulative argument
building through the epic as well as the monograph. So, chapter 3 on
prophecy and the gods surveys the early books, including Jupiter's
council, the various prophecies at Thebes and Argos, and Eteocles'
necromancy of Laius; ch. 4 focuses on Hypsipyle, and especially her
relationship with the pietas of her warring Virgilian antecedents,
Aeneas and Dido; ch. 5 treats Bacchus' two failed attempts to emulate
the Virgilian Juno in delaying the epic telos; ch. 6 on Dis and the
domination of hell in fact traces infernal influence on the deaths of
Menoeceus and of the five of the Seven to die before Polynices. Ch. 7
focuses again on the motif of delay, this time the failed attempts to
forestall the fratricide. Ch. 8 particularly successfully treats
spectacular viewing and its connotation for monarchy. Finally, the last
chapter discusses the last book and whether, as is often argued, the
positive virtues of pietas and clementia finally win through in the
actions of Argia, Antigone, and Theseus.

In addition to countless superb close-readings, and the success of most
of the individual chapters as satisfyingly self-contained arguments,
the overarching theses are broadly convincing, though with a number of
weaknesses on matters of detail and of fundamental conception. As noted
above, a certain amount of Ganiban's discussion is relatively familiar
and he is quite frank about his debt to, for example, Hardie on heaven
and hell, Fantham and Heinrich on Menoeceus, or Bernstein on
spectacle.[[2]] This is perfectly appropriate for a book which is
drawing and building on existing scholarship to provide a holistic
interpretation, and Ganiban is careful to differentiate his own
interpretations. Just occasionally, this desire to differentiate
himself from earlier discussions, or sometimes simply to support the
central thesis, can lead to overstrained and (an inevitably subjective
judgement) unconvincing arguments. The discussion of Apollo's clementia
towards Coroebus (9-23) rightly emphasizes the problematic depiction of
the god and his behaviour, but the argument that his reuerentia caedis
has nothing to do with Coroebus' pietas, simply because the latter
quality is not explicitly mentioned seems rather forced and unsound
foundations on which to build the claim that this episode is
paradigmatic for the 'meaninglessness of pietas' in the world of the
Thebaid. There is a little confusion and slippage in the otherwise
impressive chapter on Hypsipyle between the notion that the latter's
pietas is in some way compromised or tainted, and that it is simply
futile and irrelevant in a perverted world. Particularly forced, though
of less importance for the surrounding argument, is the suggestion that
the mysterious hand which avenges Parthenopaeus is not related to and
hence undermines Diana's promise to avenge him (129-31). In general,
the 'meaninglessness' or 'irrelevance of pietas' is a convincing
argument, even if Ganiban sometimes strains to make every instance fit
it. However, I wonder whether 'futility' or 'impotence' might be better
terms, since individual virtue is often shown and (arguably) valorized;
it is only that it has no effect in a post-Lucanian world of nefas.
Ganiban himself comes closest to this in his (for me) most successful
formulation on the subject, describing the upshot of Argia and
Antigone's burial of Polynices (212): '[Pietas] might provide temporary
solace on a private level, but it is not rewarded in the larger,
political world.'

The other, related quibble I have with the book's overarching theses is
the nature of the engagement with the Aeneid. In the first instance,
though intertextuality with the Aeneid, often analysed in a very
sophisticated manner (see more below), is very frequently to the fore,
it is not quite the central issue which both title and agenda suggest.
In terms of intertexts, Lucan is quite as important, not least as
Statius' principal antecedent as a practitioner of the 'poetics of
nefas', while Ovid and Seneca are not far behind. Moreover, Ganiban
shows that the aforementioned pietas and nefas are of more general and
far-reaching significance than merely as points of contact with Virgil.
However, even in terms of the Thebaid's engagement with the Aeneid--of
course an immensely complex and slippery issue--there is a certain,
perhaps inevitable, lack of clarity about what the relationship is. The
title claims a 'reinterpretation' and Ganiban frequently depicts
Statius as undermining the 'Augustan voice' of the earlier epic; he
certainly provides ample evidence for this, but at least as often there
is a sense of the Thebaid and its characters as providing a dark
equivalent, an evil twin, if you will, of the Aeneid, constantly
failing to measure up to the ethics (if not the poetic achievement) of
its great predecessor; this would tend to suggest a positive reading,
an affirmation of the 'Augustan voice', which the Thebaid does not
'reinterpret' but to which it rather presents a perverted alternative.
Related to this is the notion of Thebes as 'Other', famously discussed
by Zeitlin in relation to Attic tragedy, and often applied to the
Thebaid.[[3]] Admittedly, as Ganiban shows, Statius' Argos and Athens
are also tainted, but it would be instructive in the context to examine
the question as to whether, crudely, Thebes as 'Other' to Rome (as
earlier to Athens) is roughly equivalent to the Thebaid as 'Other' to
the Aeneid.

Ganiban's treatment of intertextuality and metapoetics is particularly
impressive. Much work has of course been done on this and Ganiban is
scrupulous in acknowledging the influence, in particular of Feeney on
the self-consciousness of Statius' gods.[[4]] However, his subtle
analysis of Statian characters' attempts and especially failures (with
a further, acknowledged debt to Hershkowitz[[5]]) to re-enact their
Virgilian forebears, with all the ideological and political
implications that entails, was particularly successful. I particularly
enjoyed Jupiter's attempt to resemble his Virgilian equivalent and its
being foiled by his affinity to the closer intertexts of Virgil's Juno
and Ovid's Jupiter (55). In a similar vein, the emphasis on the poetics
of horror--with a brief and judicious nod towards modern film theory
(49-50)--and the combination of desiring fascination with disgusted
rejection which horror and, by extension, the poetics of nefas was very
convincing, especially as focalized through characters who express a
desire for horrific spectacle, such as Oedipus, Tisiphone, and Dis. One
surprising omission, or perhaps rather lack of emphasis, was on the
connotations of nefas as that which cannot be spoken and hence
narrated. Much work has been done on this with regard to Lucan, notably
by O'Higgins and Masters, where the narrator's voice, or (in Master's
analysis) its Pompeian component, constantly tries to delay and even
renege on the narration of the unspeakable crime that is civil
war.[[6]] Ganiban's discusses morae, notably the splendid contrast of
Bacchus' failed retardations with the Virgilian Juno's success, as well
as the concatenation of failures in Theb. 11 discussed in chapter 7; he
discusses Statius' famous prayer that his narrative of the fratricide
not be read, except by kings; above all, the entire book is based on
the central theme of the poetics of nefas. Despite this, there are only
occasional nods towards the notion of narratorial desire to defer or
avoid narration of crime.[[7]] As with the lack of engagement with
Flavian politics which I shall now discuss, the decision of what and
what not to treat is of course entirely the author's, but it does seem
something of a missed opportunity when so many of the other aspects of
Ganiban's argument could be helpfully linked up by this motif.

As I mentioned in my preamble, the one major omission which I feel in
Ganiban's discussion is an adequate engagement with the politics of
Domitianic Rome, or indeed politics more generally. This is
particularly surprising and disappointing because of his emphasis on
the centrality of politics to his agenda. Not only is it the stated
theme of the book, but he often emphasizes the politicized nature of
his own approach in contrast to that of others, as, for example, when
he notes that Hardie, in Epic Successors, 'less concerned with the
political aspects of [the growing divide between heaven and hell].' Yet
there is surprisingly little in the book which could be considered a
thoroughgoing engagement with 'politics' in any focused sense. Of
course, there is a sense in which 'politics' can cover almost any
aspect of human life, and certainly the issues of pietas and clementia
are important to how human beings co-exist and interact in any kind of
<greek>politei/a</greek>. However, both this and the rather generalized
approach to tyranny and the corruption of power in chapter 8 seem
insufficient in the context. The closest Ganiban comes to a
historically and politically situated analysis is in his use of a first
century CE political text, Seneca's De Clementia, to discuss the Ara
Clementiae and Theseus' intervention in chapter 9, but even there the
stress is more on Stoic philosophy, and little is said about the
Neronian political context, let alone how that might relate to either
the Augustan or Domitianic era. Ganiban does explicitly, if very
belatedly, justify on the last two pages his decision not to deal with
the poem's attitude to Domitian. This is a wise decision because
Herrscherkritik is a path oft-trodden and not always with the most
careful of steps. However, it is surely possible to discuss Flavian
politics and their relationship (and difference) from Augustan politics
without simply looking for coded attacks on the princeps. Indeed, much
recent work has stressed the Flavian cultural and political context of
the epic and other poetry of the era.[[8]]

Ganiban does make some effort to engage with the Augustan political
context of the Aeneid in his introduction,[[9]] particularly the
significance of the princeps' virtues. However, the
implication--perhaps deliberate--seems to be that the Thebaid is
engaging directly either with the Augustan situation or with some
transhistorical conception of politics, independent of historical
context. Neither of these is impossible, but surely more useful would
have been some engagement with how attitudes to politics and especially
imperial politics had changed in the course of a century, with the
return of civil war in 69 CE, a change of dynasty, the unambiguous
establishment of dynastic monarchy, and the monarch's being a
hereditary dominus et deus as opposed to a (professedly) self-made
first citizen who has delivered Rome from civil war. If, as Ganiban
fully convinces us, the Thebaid engages with and reinterprets the
Augustan politics of the Aeneid, at least part of that reinterpretation
must be influenced by these changes in politics. Some engagement with
the image of the princeps constructed in the Silvae and Martial's
epigrams and, from the next dynasty, Tacitus' Agricola and Dialogus,
Pliny's correspondence with Trajan and the Panegyricus, and Suetonius'
Caesars. Of course, I run the risk here of criticizing the book for not
being other than it is, but I think it is not unreasonable to argue
that its own explicit agenda might lead the reader to hope for at least
some engagement with these issues.

The argument is extremely well set-out, with a programmatic
introduction and recapitulating conclusion to each chapter, which
manage to be helpful without being redundantly repetitive. The only
flaw in this respect is Ganiban's strong tendency to overload his
footnotes. There can be no objection to the impressive weight of
scholarship which the notes bear, a mark of intellectual thoroughness
and honesty as well as a service to other researchers. My gripe is
rather with the considerable number of extensive excursus, almost
always interesting, convincing and in themselves valuable, which make
up weighty and distracting footnotes. From numerous examples, I might
select n.46 on 127, where fourteen lines of very small print are
devoted to an important discussion of the infectiousness of Tydeus'
nefas in gnawing on Melanippus' head. Such excursus cannot but
interrupt the flow of the argument for a reader or, if she tries to
avoid such interruptions, be ignored, which is a pity when the material
is so good. Tempting though it is to smell such roses (and leave them
to the side of the road), perhaps author and editor ought to be more
brutal in deciding whether such extensive discussions are truly
digressions, and hence should be trimmed or excised, or whether--which
is the case with most of Ganiban's outsize footnotes--they should be
integrated into the text and the body of the main argument where they
belong.

The book is impressively free of errors. In noted only three very minor
slips. The Lemnian parricide Alcimede briefly morphs into Alcideme (79)
but is herself again two pages later. Antigone's tutor and exegete in
the teichoscopy, Phorbas, less accountably becomes Pherecles (167).
Finally, Ganiban, like Pollmann, whom he cites, understandably succumbs
to the incestuous atmosphere of Thebes by briefly making Polynices
Argia's brother rather than her husband (209). More subjectively, modo
digna ueni (1.87) might be better rendered 'only come in a fitting
aspect' than 'come now, worthy one' (28, 31, my italics).

In sum, this is a splendid study of the Thebaid, which combines a
synthesis of much existing scholarship with considerable original
insights on the levels of detailed close reading, sophisticated
intertextual analysis and broader thematic discussion. Its overarching
theses are important and cogently argued; if there are some flaws and
omissions on both the micro- and macroscopic level of its
argumentation, they do very little to undermine the book's overall
quality.


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Notes:


1.   Vessey, D.W.T.C. Statius and the Thebaid. (Cambridge, 1974),
Dominik, William J.  The mythic voice of Statius : power and politics
in the Thebaid. (Leiden, 1994), id. Speech and rhetoric in Statius'
Thebaid (Hildesheim, 1994), Lovatt, Helen,  Statius and epic games :
sport, politics, and poetics in the Thebaid, McNelis, Charles Statius'
Thebaid and the poetics of civil war (Cambridge, 2007).

2.   Hardie, Philip, The Epic Successors of Virgil (Cambridge, 1993),
also Elaine Fantham (1995) 'The ambiguity of Virtus in Lucan's Civil
war and Statius' Thebaid', Arachnion. A Journal of Ancient Literature
and History on the Web, nr. 3.
(http://www.cisi.unito.it/arachne/num3/fantham.html) ,
Heinrich, Alan 'Longa retro series: Sacrifice and repetition in
Statius' Menoeceus episode' Arethusa 32 (1999) 165-95, Bernstein, Neil
W. 'Auferte oculos: modes of spectatorship in Statius Thebaid 11.'
Phoenix 58 (2004) 62-85.

3.   Zeitlin, Froma I. 'Thebes: Theater of Self and Society in Athenian
Drama' in Winkler, J.J. & Zeitlin, Froma I. edd. Nothing to do with
Dionysus? (Princeton, 1990) 130-67.

4.   Feeney, D.C. The Gods in Epic. (Oxford, 1991).

5.   Hershkowitz, Debra 'Parce metu, Cytherea: 'Failed' Intertext
Repetition in Statius' Thebaid, or, Don't Stop Me If You've Heard This
One Before' MD 39 (1997) 35-52.

6.   O'Higgins, Dolores, 'Lucan as vates' ClAnt 7 (1988) 208-26.;
Masters, Jamie, Poetry and Civil War in Lucan's Bellum Civile.
(Cambridge, 1993).

7.   E.g. 'The decision not to watch made by Jupiter, Adrastus, and
Pietas reflects the inherent nature of the violence: if the war is
"unspeakable" (nefas), it is also unwatchable.' (183). Even here, the
emphasis is overwhelmingly on spectacle (the theme of the chapter)
rather than narrative.

8.   E.g. Boyle, A.J. & Dominik, W.J. edd. Flavian Rome: culture,
image, text (Leiden, 2003), Hartmann, Jana Maria, Flavische Epik im
Spannungsfeld von generischer Tradition und zeitgenoessischer
Gesellschaft. (Frankfurt am Main), Marks, Raymond, From republic to
empire; Scipio Africanus in the Punica of Silius Italicus. (Frankfurt
am Main, 2005).

9.   His schema of polarized 'Augustan' and 'ambivalent' readings might
be nuanced by taking fuller account of the third way offered by Morgan,
Ll. 'Assimilation and Civil War: Hercules and Cacus ( Aen. 8.185-287).'
in Stahl, H.-P. ed. Vergil's Aeneid: Augustan epic and political
context (London, 1998) 175-97. Ganiban cites this (14 n.74) as quoting
Gransden's simplistically positive reading of the Cacus narrative as if
it endorsed it, whereas it actually embraces the passage's troubling
civil war implications but sees them as contributing to a complex,
ultimately pro-Augustan notion of sacrificial 'constructive
destruction', a model for the post-Actium restoration of Rome.