Thebaid (Latin poem)

The Thebaid (/ˈθiː.beɪˌɪd/; Latin: Thēbaïs) is a Latin epic in 12 books written in dactylic hexameter by Publius Papinius Statius (AD c. 45 – c. 96). The poem deals with the Theban cycle and treats the assault of the seven champions of Argos against the city of Thebes.

Based on Statius' own testimony, the Thebaid was written AD c. 80–c. 92, beginning when the poet was around 35, and the work is thought to have been published in 91 or 92. According to the last verse of the poem, Statius wrote the Thebaid over the course of a dozen years during the reign of Emperor Domitian, although the symmetry of the compositional period, assigning one book per year, has been taken with suspicion by scholars. The poem is divided into twelve books in imitation of Vergil's Aeneid and is composed in 9,748 hexameter verses, the standard meter of Greco-Roman epics. In the Silvae, Statius speaks of his extensive work in polishing and revising the Thebaid and his public recitations of the poem. From the epilogue it seems clear that Statius considered the Thebaid to be his magnum opus and believed that it would secure him fame for the future.

Statius's Thebaid deals with the same subject as the Thebaid—an early Greek epic of several thousand lines which survives only in brief fragments (also known as the Thebais), and which was attributed by some classical Greek authors to Homer. Perhaps a more important source for Statius was the long epic Thebais of Antimachus of Colophon, an important poem both in the development of the Theban cycle and the evolution of Hellenistic poetry. Also significant for Statius were the myth's many treatments in Greek drama, represented by surviving plays such as Aeschylus's Seven Against Thebes, Sophocles's Antigone, and Euripides's Phoenissae and Suppliants. Other authors provided models for specific sections of the poem; the Coroebus episode in Book 1 may be based on Callimachus's Aetia, while the Hypsipyle narrative in Book 5 echoes Apollonius of Rhodes's treatment.

...
Wikipedia