As A. observes in the opening of this book, night in epic conventionally signals a break from activity, and night-time ambushes such as the Doloneia of Iliad 10 and the Aeneid's sack of Troy and Nisus and Euryalus episode are consistently marked as departures from the open daytime warfare and pitched battles most characteristic of martial epic. Nevertheless, A. makes a compelling case for understanding clandestine nocturnal activity – primarily, but not only, ambushes – as a foundational building-block of epic. A.'s study of the elaboration of this epic narrative structure in the Thebaid shows how the exceptional or even deviant qualities that characterise clandestine nocturnal activities become central to the plot and poetics of Statius’ boundary-transgressing epic and how Statius transforms nocturnal exploits into a venue for defining his own participation and place in the epic tradition.
In an efficient introduction (Chapter 1) A. argues for the value of a dedicated, systematic study of clandestine nocturnal activities in the Thebaid. A. identifies six episodes in the Thebaid that, through shared features, motifs and structures, participate in a literary tradition originating with the Doloneia and the Nisus and Euryalus episode (p. 17). He divides these into ambushes (the Theban ambush of Tydeus, the Lemnian massacre and Thiodamas’ massacre of sleeping Thebans) and acts of pietas (Hypsipyle's rescue of her father, Hopleus’ and Dymas’ mission to recover Tydeus’ and Parthenopaeus’ bodies, and Argia's burial of Polynices).
In Chapter 2 A. surveys the Doloneia and the Nisus and Euryalus episode and suggests that, in these models, the kind of fighting required in an ambush (λόχος) is always understood in relation to and as a counterpart to the open warfare standard in epic (πόλεμος): either a legitimate complementary tactic or a degraded opposite. But, while interested parties complain about or advocate for the tactic in specific instances of ambush, neither epic offers unequivocal guidance on how to view λόχος as a category. A. then turns to the Thebaid's evaluation of λόχος in a compelling, comprehensive survey of the epic's three ambushes. In contrast to the agnosticism of the Iliad and the Aeneid about λόχος and the relative separability of such actions from the epics’ plots, A. charts a trajectory over the course of the Thebaid's ambushes of escalating and increasingly uncontainable nefas that acts as an immediate catalyst for war and culminates in the contamination of πόλεμος with the debased tactics and values of λόχος, rendering πόλεμος indistinguishable from λόχος. As sites of nefas and ground zero for the transgressions rampant in the Thebaid, these λόχοι do not just reflect but drive Statius’ civil war poetics, where all distinctions break down and any kind of war is inevitably nefas.
The next two chapters each focus on a particular way in which clandestine night-time activities facilitate the dissolution of the boundaries ordering the cosmos. Chapter 3 examines monstrous transgressions of the boundaries between human and animal and between genders, while Chapter 4 identifies elements of katabasis in clandestine night activities, which contribute to the ‘infernalization’ of the Thebaid's world. A.'s readings of individual passages in these chapters continue to be insightful, and they illustrate well how the cover of night enables otherwise unthinkable hypermasculine, bestial or monstrous behaviour, or creates a literary and literal ‘hell on earth’. A. argues that these transgressions are especially pronounced and widespread in such ‘extreme situations’ as nocturnal undertakings, but acknowledges that they are not unique to these episodes, but endemic to the Thebaid. The focus on the category of clandestine nocturnal activities is thus less readily apparent in these chapters, and so too the most novel and exciting element of A.'s intervention: reading clandestine nocturnal activities as a narrative structure uniquely revelatory of the Thebaid and its poetics. As a result, A.'s discussion of, for example, the monstrous potential inherent in Tydeus’ heroism, while capably executed, feels rather general.
The final chapter, in contrast, brings the focus back to clandestine nocturnal activities, and demonstrates the value of A.'s careful reading of Statius’ adaptation of this narrative structure from his models. Here, A. digs into the metapoetic stakes of Statius’ treatment of λόχος. The conditions, objectives and values of night-time ambushes in the Thebaid – limited visibility, secrecy, vastly unequal terms of combat – put λόχος in tension with, if not outright contradiction to, the values and fame-conferring function of martial-heroic epic. Ambushes challenge the epic narrator's authority: as the only ones left to tell the tale, survivors or victors of ambushes can assume the role of internal narrators and craft their own, tendentious narrative of events, thus perpetuating the conflict at the heart of Statius’ epic. Ambushes also confront the epic narrator with the dilemma of having to narrate nefas. It is thus all the more important for the narrator to ensure fama for participants who by death or defeat have been denied their due, affirming their pietas for his readers even if it goes unrecognised within the epic, as in the apostrophe to Hopleus and Dymas. With such explicitly self-referential gestures Statius makes clandestine night-time actions in the Thebaid a site of metapoetic encounter, much like epic underworlds, where Statius defines his relationship to his predecessors. In A.'s reading Statius’ ambushes express the strain that civil war as subject matter puts on the martial epic genre, but A. balks at accepting that, for Statius, as successor to Lucan, epic may have already buckled under that strain, becoming something else entirely (J. Masters, Poetry and Civil War [1992]; T. Joseph, Thunder and Lament [2022]). A. thus does not find as much use as other readers of Statius have for the concept of a Lucanian divided poetic voice or a Senecan tragic poetics that celebrates nefas (e.g. M. Malamud, Ramus 24 [1995]; R. Ganiban, Statius and Virgil [2007]). For A., Statius’ narrator speaks with one voice; nefas is nefas, and pietas remains pietas.
If there is one point on which A.'s readers may have reservations, it is his account of pietas in Statius’ epic, which seems less developed in comparison with his robust discussion of λόχοι. A. asserts from the outset a clear-cut distinction between nefas-motivated and pietas-motivated nocturnal exploits (pp. 4–6), which guides his examination throughout. But it is not self-evident (to me, at least) that there can be such a distinction, and the assumption seems at odds with A.'s demonstration of how thoroughly boundaries are transgressed and categories thrown into confusion in the Thebaid. A.'s suggestion of neat closure facilitated on a personal level by Argia's act of pietas and on a political level by Theseus (pp. 279–80) is unlikely to satisfy readers who find dissonance even in Statius’ narrator's most apparently glowing apostrophes or the seeds of further conflict in the deeds said to exemplify pietas most.
The scope of this volume – a narrowly-defined intertextual study limited to the Thebaid's six night-time exploits, the Doloneia, and the Nisus and Euryalus episode – occasionally feels restrictive. But A. widens his scope when appropriate, illuminating his readings of Statius’ Lemnian massacre with contrasts to Valerius Flaccus’, for instance. The Homero-Virgilian tradition also looks quite unitary. This simplification is perhaps necessary to establish the tradition in and against which Statius works, but I would welcome further distinction between the Homeric and the Virgilian traditions and their respective significance to the Thebaid. While A. does not engage with the historical, political or cultural contexts against which Flavian epic has been read productively in recent years (L.D. Ginsberg and D. Krasne [edd.], After 69 ce [2018]; S. Rebeggiani, The Fragility of Power [2018]; C. Newlands, Statius: Poet between Rome and Naples [2012]; A. Augoustakis, Motherhood and the Other [2010], to cite just a few), A.'s meticulous and perceptive readings will provide graduate students and scholars with valuable, thought-provoking material and ample potential for connections to such ‘bigger picture’ contexts. Ultimately, the study's limited scope is a worthwhile sacrifice for the rich detail that emerges.
