Statius, Thebaid 2: Edited with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary

ISBN-13: 9780198744702 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 416 str.

Kyle Gervais

Opis

Composed towards the end of the first century CE, Statius' Thebaid relates the myth of the "Seven against Thebes": the assault of the seven champions of Argos on the ancient city in a bid to oust Eteocles, son of Oedipus, from his throne in favour of his brother, Polynices. Book 2 presents several key events in the build-up to the Theban war: Eteocles' haunting by the ghost of his grandfather Laius, the ill-omened weddings of Polynices and his ally Tydeus to the princesses of Argos, and Tydeus' failed embassy to Eteocles, leading to his famed victory over a Theban ambush.
This volume represents the first full-length scholarly commentary in English on Book 2 of the twelve-book Latin epic, greatly expanding on and updating Mulder's Latin language commentary published in 1954 by Groningen. An extensive introduction covers the poem's historical, textual, and literary contexts, with particular attention to Statius' adaptation of prior literary tradition and especially the epics of Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Valerius Flaccus, and Silius Italicus. The Latin text, accompanied by a clear translation and apparatus criticus, is newly edited to take advantage of the recent detailed editorial work on the poem by Hall, Ritchie, and Edwards and is supplemented by a comprehensive and incisive line-by-line commentary which addresses a range of textual, linguistic, and literary topics. The result is a keenly focused yet accessible critical edition that will be of interest both to specialist scholars of Latin poetry and to advanced graduate students studying Flavian epic.

Recenzje

...Gervais (Univ. of Western Ontario) continues to emerge as a conspicuously talented contributor to the current renaissance of Statian scholarship. The latest in the publisher's titles focusing on Flavian epic, this admirable work-an extension of Gervais's doctoral dissertation-incorporates a new, ancillary, idiomatic English prose translation of Statius's famously allusive poetry ... But the pièce de résistance and most rewarding component of this book is the extended exegetical commentary ... Offering the first commentary on Thebaid 2 in more than 60 years, Gervais's brilliant undertaking fills an analytical/interpretational lacuna and represents a major contribution to the understanding and reevaluation of an author whose literary reputation has fluctuated greatly in modern times.

O autorze

Kyle Gervais is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Western Ontario, where he teaches courses in Latin language and literature. He is the author of various articles on Latin poetry and classics in popular culture, and is also a co-editor of Brill's Companion to Statius (Leiden, 2015).