Table Of ContentElements of Tragedy in Flavian Epic
Trends in Classics –
Supplementary Volumes
Edited by
Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos
Associate Editors
Stavros Frangoulidis · Fausto Montana · Lara Pagani
Serena Perrone · Evina Sistakou · Christos Tsagalis
Scientific Committee
Alberto Bernabé · Margarethe Billerbeck
Claude Calame · Jonas Grethlein · Philip R. Hardie
Stephen J. Harrison · Stephen Hinds · Richard Hunter
Christina Kraus · Giuseppe Mastromarco
Gregory Nagy · Theodore D. Papanghelis
Giusto Picone · Tim Whitmarsh
Bernhard Zimmermann
Volume 103
Elements
of Tragedy
in Flavian Epic
Edited by
Sophia Papaioannou and Agis Marinis
ISBN 978-3-11-070952-0
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-070984-1
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-070997-1
ISSN 1868-4785
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020946868
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Editorial Office: Alessia Ferreccio and Katerina Zianna
Logo: Christopher Schneider, Laufen
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
www.degruyter.com
Contents
Acknowledgements VII
Sophia Papaioannou and Agis Marinis
Introduction 1
Antony Augoustakis
Republican Roman Tragedy in Flavian Epic 13
Neil W. Bernstein
Silius’ Punica and the Traditions of Greek and Roman Tragedy 25
Robert Cowan
Knowing Me, Knowing You: Epic Anagnorisis and the Recognition
of Tragedy 43
Sophia Papaioannou
Apollonius’ ‘Further Voices’: Cameo Appearances of Greek Tragedy in Valerius
Flaccus’ Argonautica 65
Gesine Manuwald
‘Herculean Tragedy’ in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica 91
Ruth Parkes
Finding the Tragic in the Epics of Statius 107
Kyle Gervais
Senecan Heroes and Tyrants in Statius, Thebaid 2 129
Agis Marinis
Eteocles and Polynices in Statius’ Thebaid: Revisiting Tragic Causality 149
Carole Newlands
Afterword 171
Bibliography 177
List of Contributors 195
VI Contents
Index Rerum et Nominum 197
Index Auctorum Antiquorum et Locorum 199
Acknowledgements
This volume has been a long time in the making, and has benefited from the gen-
erous help of a number of people. First and foremost, an immense debt of grati-
tude is owed to all contributors. We are grateful to them for their insightful read-
ings, their superb cooperation and above all their patience. The frequent
exchange of views with them was for the editors a particularly rich and rewarding
aspect of the project, while this ongoing discussion shaped the structure of the
volume in important ways. We are no less grateful to the two anonymous review-
ers for their valuable feedback on the whole volume.
We want to register our gratitude to Carole Newlands, who embraced the pro-
ject from the outset and offered her expert advice. Her critical reading of the chap-
ters leading to her contribution of the Afterword, which seals the volume, sum-
marizes in a succinct way the innovative character of the volume in hand. Thanks
are also due to Annemarie Ambühl and Federica Bessone, for kindly making
available their recently published work to us.
From Walter De Gruyter-Trends in Classics Supplementary volumes a num-
ber of people deserve our warmest thanks. Antonios Rengakos welcomed our pro-
posal and shepherded it from its early stages. Marco Michele Acquafredda, Anne
Hiller and Katerina Zianna followed through meticulously with the production of
the book.
A certain level of formatting standardization has been imposed to ensure
consistency across the volume, but individual stylistic distinctiveness has been
respected.
This book is intended for the specialist scholars of Flavian Epic but also for
the graduate students working in the fields of Classics and Literary History. All
long quotations of Greek and Latin are accompanied by English translation.
Athens and Patras, August 2020
Sophia Papaioannou
Agis Marinis
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110709841-203
Sophia Papaioannou and Agis Marinis
Introduction
When Vergil compares, in Book 4 of the Aeneid (465–468), the mental upheaval
experienced by Dido to the terror felt by Pentheus or Orestes ‘on the scene,’ he
clearly invites us to discern a ‘tragic’ aspect in his narrative. Yet ‘tragic’ in what
sense? Is the poet intent, for instance, on guiding us to an emotive response akin
to that engendered by tragedy? Through this emblematic Vergilian passage the
issue of the presence and role of tragedy in epic, namely of the crossing of the two
genres, is most forcefully posed. The depiction of Dido in the Aeneid effectively
highlights the fact that a prime locus of the tragic is the manner in which out-
standing characters are portrayed. Such characters may acquire a ‘tragic’ stature
since they arrive at fateful decisions while combining both positive and negative
elements in their behaviour. Within this framework, Dido has been regarded as
the ‘tragic heroine’ par excellence of the Aeneid — her story having, in fact,
prompted a number of scholars to regard her as guilty of hamartia (‘error’) in the
Aristotelian sense,1 namely a moral fault, which may eventually be considered as
the cause of her demise.2
Hamartia, a key notion in the Poetics, is indeed central because it introduces
the problem of the tragic agent and his or her intention; it essentially refers to a
fault, whereas it may also acquire a moral hue. According to Aristotle, it does not
befit tragedy to depict the suffering of someone totally innocent nor of someone
who has a distinctly evil purpose. In between we may discern the broader area
where, as a rule, tragic heroes act and commit the deeds that form the stuff of
tragedy.3 Hamartia is thus related, through either affinity or contradistinction, to
the notion of hubris, which can be regarded as frequently tainting the tragic pro-
tagonists’ demeanour. Hubris is not, of course, always as clear-cut and accentu-
ated as in the case of Capaneus in Statius’ Thebaid: a most conspicuous instance
of epic character possessing traits evoking the figure of a hubrist, in the manner
we are acquainted with in Greek tragedy. In this case, as well, Vergil offers us a
‘prototypical’ instance — the figure of Mezentius.4
1 Poetics 1453a7–12.
2 See esp. Wlosok 1976; E.L. Harrison 1989. Turnus may also be mentioned here as a further, not
totally dissimilar, instance; see Garstang 1950.
3 On hamartia see, among a large bibliography, particularly Stinton 1975; Halliwell 1986, 215–
226; Witt 2005; Schmitt 2008, 437–476.
4 La Penna 1980.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110709841-001
Sophia Papaioannou and Agis Marinis
Both hamartia and hubris effectively lead us towards the key question of
characterization. How are ‘tragic’ persons construed and what is essentially
‘tragic’ about them?5 Indeed, the very positing of hamartia in a character’s de-
meanour presupposes the existence of a moral dilemma within him or her and,
consequently, raises the question of the moral awareness of the human subject.
We thus inevitably enter the vexed issue — central to tragedy — of the relation
between human autonomy and the impact of supernatural agents: in other
words, of the connection between divine and human causality.6 A related ques-
tion is that of inherited guilt and its impact on human agents, an issue prominent
in Statius’ Thebaid, as a prime instance.
While hamartia refers to the actions of dramatic persons, the tragic plot is
primarily characterized by the transformation of their status. A critical factor in
realizing this transformation is human ignorance, which is sharply contrasted
with divine knowledge. The removal of the veil of ignorance results in anagnorisis
(‘recognition’), which in turn brings about the reversal.7 Such a momentous
change of fortune may indeed be deemed a central tragic motif. It does not occur,
however, through an arbitrary stroke of chance, but via the anguished struggle
of mortal agents, suffering from and inhabiting their human limitations. The
above discussion of hamartia and anagnorisis inevitably leads us to a further im-
portant question. Namely, what place should be awarded to Aristotelian theory
within our study of the ‘tragic,’ as conceived in broadly abstract terms — a ques-
tion also inevitably emerging with regard to modern theories of the ‘tragic.’ In-
deed, one of the key reasons why the quest for the presence of tragedy in epic is
challenging is because we need to contend with the vexed issue of genre, as well
as its ancient theorization.
Apart from the Aristotelian Poetics and the framework it establishes relating
to dramatic agents and plot, crucial for the assertion of intergeneric links between
tragedy and epic is, of course, the detection of clearly delimited intertextual rela-
tions between specific literary works, the evocation of particular scenes or even
5 On the influence of Greek tragedy in Vergil, see De Witt 1907; Fenik 1960 [on Euripides in the
Aeneid]; Maguiness 1963; E.L. Harrison 1972–3; Pavlock 1985; Hardie 1991 and 1997; Weber 2002;
Fernandelli 2002–3; Panoussi 2002 and 2009; Galinsky 2003; Polleichtner 2013; Mac Góráin 2013
[on the influence of Euripides’ Bacchae on, and the presence of Dionysiac element in, the Ae-
neid], and 2018 [on Sophocles’ Oedipus in the Aeneid]; Kircher 2018 on the ‘tragic’ element in
Homer and Vergil.
6 See esp. Duckworth 1956; Davis 1994.
7 On recognition, see pertinent reflections esp. in Halliwell 1987, 116–119. Also, among numer-
ous studies, Cave 1988 and Sissa 2006.
