Jocasta flies to her son; Antigone, from the tower, calls to her brother; Adrastus protests, and finding himself unheeded, makes his way from the field back to Argos; the goddess of Piety comes down and urges the two armies to interpose, but is driven from the scene by the Fury, who shakes her serpents and torches in her face. The combat is conducted like that in the Phonissæ of Euripides, except that, in Statius, Eteocles receives his death-wound first, and Polynices is stabbed while leaning over him and taking his spoils. Edipus emerges from his cell, and insists on being taken to the bodies. He repents of the curses he has invoked, and says that natural piety has returned to him, which he shows by wishing that he had his eyes back to be pulled out again in sign of grief. Creon, who has succeeded to the throne, with the insolence of an upstart monarch, bids him leave Thebes. He replies indignantly, Antigone submissively, and they are allowed to withdraw to Citharon. The Argives retire in confusion from the Theban territory, and the Eleventh Book ends. The story is now exhausted, and it is not easy to see why the poet should have prolonged it, unless perhaps in compliance with the practice of his predecessors. But there is a class of readers who are curious to know the sequel of every tale, who wish for a sixth act to Hamlet, and wonder what Edgar and Albany did after the death of Lear: and it may gratify these to find that Statius occupies a twelfth book with telling us that Creon buries his son magnificently, Eteocles obscurely, and Polynices not at all; that the widows of the Argive chiefs set out for Thebes to beg their husbands' bodies, but, on hearing of Creon's tyranny, turn aside to Athens, and implore the aid of Theseus; that Argia, Polynices' wife, goes to Thebes nevertheless, and is proceeding to lay out the corpse when she falls in with Antigone, who had come on the same errand; and that Theseus leads an army to Thebes, conquers it with little or no resistance, and kills Creon. The meeting of the husbandless wife and brotherless sister is strikingly told, and might have been admired had it occurred elsewhere: the conquering expedition of Theseus is hurried over in a couple of hundred lines, as if it were a trifling episode. The poet himself seems to feel his mistake: he tells us that he cannot describe how the Argive ladies severally wailed their dead: it would be an extensive subject even for a new poem, and after his long voyage he wants to get into port. And so he takes leave of his work, which is already approved by Cæsar, and studied by the schoolboys of Italy, and will, he trusts, have an immortality of its own, though a less glorious one than that of the Æneid. Such is an outline of the principal work of a writer, who, in Characteristics of Statius' Style. 159 the opinion of the elder Scaliger,1 stands above all Greek and Roman epic poets, save Virgil alone; being superior to Homer in the quality of his verses, the number of his figures, the distribution of his characters, and the elaboration of his sentiments. To our readers, we fear, he will appear to have produced a medley of confused and exaggerated effects, crowding disproportioned incidents and overdrawn or underdrawn characters within the framework of a story, which may be a striking one, but which he did not invent, but borrow. He has been compared to Ovid, and with some justice, as both are apt to sacrifice taste to ingenuity, simplicity to show; but while Ovid, with all his faults, tells his tale excellently, Statius tells his indifferently. Nor can we agree with the praise which has been bestowed by two eminent critics, Mr. Hallam2 and Mr. Merivale, on the structure of the Thebaid, as though it had the advantage of other epic poems in unity and greatness of action. The March to Thebes is one thing, the Siege of Thebes another: the former interests us only as the preparation for the latter, and to spend half the poem on it is really to fall into the error of the writer, who, as we said earlier in this paper, could not despatch that part of his subject under twenty-four books. It may be true that the incidents of the march formed a recognised portion of the Theban legend, and could as little be dispensed with in a traditional exposition of the story as the incidents of the siege; but while we admit that there may be an excuse for the fault, we must not speak as if the fault had not been committed. Our limits do not allow us to give our readers as adequate a notion as we should wish of the style of Statius. There is a family likeness among most, if not all, of the writers of the silver age; point, terseness, clever condensation, are characteristic of them all; their fault is a want of simplicity and repose. These characteristic features Statius may be said to exaggerate and distort. Everything with him is, so to say, of the second intention; thoughts are locked up in epigrams, facts in allusions. The great masters of this art were, we need not say, the writers of the corresponding period of Greek cultivation, the school of Alexandria. When Lycophron wants to describe Heracles, he speaks of him as one whom a dead man killed with swordless guile. But Statius is hardly less successful in darkening his meaning, when, at the outset of his poem, he says he shall 2 History of Literature of Europe. 3 Satis arma referre 1 Poetics. Aonia, et geminis sceptrum exitiale tyrannis, content himself with speaking of the arms of Aonia, and the "Centum illi stantes umbrabant ora cerastæ, He is "A hundred uncoiled vipers shaded her brow, not half the multitude of that terrible head: deep in her sunken eyes sits an iron light, like as by Thessalian skill the agony of Phoebe glares red through the clouds." We want our readers to observe the choice of the word "cerasta" for the common "angues or "serpentes;" the enigmatical expression "turba minor," signifying that the snakes were innumerable, as one hundred was less than half their number; the boldness with which the light is called "ferrea," iron-red, and made to sit in the eyes; the exaggeration of speaking of the eyes as "abacti," driven away into the head; the novelty of making the labour of the moon look red, instead of the labouring moon herself; and the use of the recondite word "Atracian," from one of the tribes of Thessaly, for the ordinary word "Thessalian." We do not mean to say that most of these might not be paralleled from other poets, but we think it will be admitted that the allowance of strange expressions is large for three lines and a half. It would be too much to say that the style of the silver age is essentially ill adapted to the production of broad pictorial effects in narrative. We are at once confronted by the fact that Tacitus, the most graphic historian of Rome, perhaps of any nation, belongs, not only by accident of birth, but by the quality 1 66 Nati, facinus sine more, cadentes calcavere oculos" (Book 1. 238). There is a similar doubt about verse 72, "miseraque oculos in matre reliqui,” which may only mean that Edipus blinded himself at the time of his mother's death. 2 Book I. 103 foll. Prize Fight in Virgil and Statius compared. 161 of his genius, emphatically to the silver age. His narrative may indeed be called, as Mr. Carlyle's has been called in our own day, history read by flashes of lightning; but that vivid and fitful intensity leaves a more distinct as well as more powerful impression on the mind than the equable moonlight glow of Livy. But Tacitus is enabled to produce this effect by the presence of that stern self-restraint which accompanies power of the highest class. The flashes of his genius are no mere idle coruscations, but obey a fixed law which makes each subservient to a general result. But for this restraining principle, we should have not a history, but a series of epigrams. And this restraining principle is precisely what Statius wants. The consequence is that we have a narrative which is full of short cuts and compendious expedients, and at the same time incredibly tedious. We are always out of breath, and yet seem never to arrive at our journey's end. The paradox of the arguers against motion is realized, and progress is shown to be impossible by the infinite divisibility of the ground which has to be passed over. Let us contrast the narrative of the Thebaid for a few moments with the narrative of the Æneid, choosing a place in the two stories where they really come into competition, the description of the prize fight in the funeral games. We must trust that our readers' recollection will supply them with the details in Virgil's account, while we endeavour to give them some notion of those in the tale as told by Statius. As soon as Adrastus has proclaimed that the boxing-match is to begin, which he does by commending the prowess shown in boxing as "bellis et ferro proxima virtus," Capaneus rises like the Homeric Epeios or the Virgilian Dares, puts the lead-weighted gauntlets on hands as hard as they, and asks for an opponent, intimating that he would rather have had a Theban, whom he might fairly have killed, instead of being obliged to shed the blood of a citizen. Alcidamas, a young Spartan, rises at last, to the surprise of all but his compatriots, who know that he is a child of the palæstra, having been trained by Pollux : "Ipse deus posuitque manus et brachia finxit Sustulit exultans, nudumque ad pectora pressit." The passage is not altogether easy; but we suppose the meaning to be that Pollux had moulded the rudimentary gristle of his young favourite into bone and muscle, had stood up with him repeatedly, and had been so charmed with his spirit and endurance as to catch him to his breast and embrace him then and there. Now let us think of Virgil's notice of Dares' victory VOL. XL.-NO. LXXIX. L over Butes, or Entellus' companionship with Eryx, and we shall be better able to appreciate this unseasonable attempt to interest us by minute word-painting in the antecedents of a personage on whom the eye is only meant to rest for a second or two. Capaneus is indignant, scornful, and affectedly contemptuous; at length, however, his languid sinews swell, and he stands up to fight. They confront each other, the one like what Tityos would be if the birds would suffer him to rise; the other so young as to arrest the sympathies of the spectators, who tremble at the prospect of seeing him bleed. "Quem vinci haud quisquam, sævo nec sanguine tingi At first they are prudent and cautious, sparring rather than hitting: "explorant cæstus hebetantque terendo." Alcidamas continues this Fabian policy, and keeps his fury in reserve, “ differet animum:" Capaneus becomes enraged, and expends both his hands recklessly: "ambas consumit sine lege manus.' The young Spartan has the advantage, parrying his opponent's hits, while he sometimes goes into him (the word is Statius' own, "intrat,") like a wave breaking on a rock, and finally plants a wound on his forehead. Capaneus hears the shout of the spectators, but is unconscious that blood has been drawn; at last, however, he puts up his hand to his brow, when the sight of the stains makes him more furious than a wounded lion; he rushes on Alcidamas, who is driven before him, preserving his coolness nevertheless. "Non tamen immemor artis, Adversus fugit, et fugiens tamen ictibus obstat." The mad effort soon exhausts them both, and they pause to take breath; and the poet takes breath too in a short simile: "Sic ubi longa vagos lassarunt æquora nautas Brachia, vix requies, jam vox ciet altera remos." The giant makes another rush, but his nimble adversary first eludes him and then butts him over, 'sponte ruens mersusque humeris," knocking him down again as he is rising, till he is alarmed at his own success. The Argives raise a shout which the shores and woods but faintly echo; but Adrastus sees that Capaneus is not beaten, but only made more dangerous, and interposes to prevent murder from being done. Ite, oro, socii, furit: ite, opponite dextras, |