1. Many thanks to Philip Hardie and John Henderson for reading versions of this paper, and to audiences in Cambridge and Oxford for their input.

2. See Vessey (1973), 10f.; Dilke (1963); Vessey (1970b). Carole Newlands in her recent book credits Statius with inventing the genre of the stand-alone ekphrasis in his description of Domitian’s equestrian statue which forms Silvae 1.1 (Newlands [2002], 49f.); in the light of the introduction to this volume, it would perhaps be more appropriate to say that he makes a hyperbolic version of ekphrastic epigram, mixing it into his generically complex Silvae, hellenising the Roman as ever.

3. Taisne (1994) in her hugely comprehensive examination of visual imagery does little more than list the different examples.

4. Previous discussions: Von Stosch (1968), 151–53; Taisne (1994), 276–78; Vessey (1973), 216f. Von Stosch lists useful parallels; Vessey’s discussion is the fullest and reads the ekphrases, in line with his strategy for the whole episode of the games, as ‘prefiguration of doom to come’ (216). While this is certainly one aspect of the tone of the descriptions, more needs to be said; he mentions neither the Homeric crater nor the Virgilian chlamys and does not bring Ovid into his discussion of the decoration. On their interpretation in the wider context of the poem, his comments are extremely general (ibid.): ‘The Centaurs, as elsewhere in the The baid, symbolise the bestial useless madness that drives men to war: here the general slaughter anticipates the battles outside Thebes.’ Of the cloak he focuses on the ‘evocation of pathos and grief (217) and links Argia and Antigone to Hero.

5. See further Lovatt (forthcoming).

6. Hinds (1998), 136–42.

7. Taisne (1994), 276.

8. Although Aeneas does give out cups as part of the third prize in the ship-race, they are cymbia not crateres (Aen. 5.267); Statius thus uses a sort of Ovidian supplementation, taking the small and making it large, taking the third place and making it first.

9. It might be argued that Statius’ crater is gold, while that in the Iliad (and in Virgil’s third prize) is silver. However, there is a degree of ambiguity in aurum flguris terribile; the epithet terribile has been transferred from the shapes to the gold (see Von Stosch [1968], 151); this transference suggests to me the possibility that the shapes are in gold, which still leaves the possibility that the rest of the bowl is in silver. The shield of Aeneas contains contrasting gold and silver: e.g. Aen. 8.671–74 (gold sea with silver dolphins) and 8.655f. (silver geese through the golden porticoes). Alternatively, if we read the bowl as made from gold, not silver, it surpasses and trumps the Homeric and Virgilian drinking vessels.

10. Juhnke (1972) gathered a vast collection of Homeric reminiscences in Statius.

11. uix Mam famuli Phegeus Sagarisque ferebant/multiplicem conixi umeris; indutus at oliml Demoleos cursu palantis Troas agebat (‘Scarcely can the servants Phegeus and Sagaris as they struggle bear its many layers on their shoulders; but Demoleos once pursued the wandering Trojans at a run while wearing it’, Aeneid 5.263–65). Cf. Von Stosch (1968), 151.

12. The Sidonian makers and Phoenician merchants might be a link to the gifts of Dido which reappear with ominous overtones throughout the Aeneid: for instance at 11.72–75 when Pallas on his pyre is clothed in a uestis woven by Dido. There is also a strong connection between the description of the Statian cloak and the chlamys worn by Dido for the fatal hunting party at the beginning of Aeneid 4 (Sidoniam picto chlamydem circumdata limbo, ‘a Sidonian cloak surrounded by an embroidered border’, 4.137), as pointed out by Von Stosch (1968), 152 n.l.

13. Putnam (1998), 62–64, reads the cloak as primarily concerned with ‘art’s reproduction of art’, a ‘covert meditation on Alexandrian aesthetics’. But the erotic context, in which Jason is about to seduce and abandon Hypsipyle must also be important; see below on the erotics oifama. What is more, of the seven episodes portrayed on Jason’s cloak, one is the chariot race of Pelops (Argonautica 1.752–58), which is also portrayed in the pompa at the beginning of Statius’ games (6.283–85), the other half of the ekphrastic frame around the chariot race, with which we will engage below. Another is Phrixus talking to the ram (1.763–67); both Statius in his brief miniature and Ovid in the Heroides make much of the shared ground (or rather sea) between the story of Helle and Phrixus, and the story of Hero and Leander (uirginis aequor, ‘the virgin’s sea’, Heroides 18.117; cf. 18.139–46; 19.123–28, 163–64; Leander also uses a chariot image of himself at 18.165f.). Leander is the contemptor Phrixei aequoris (‘scorner of the Phrixean sea’) in Statius (6.542f); he seems to imagine himself in the role of Phrixus, surviving the sea, but he misreads his own story: he is in fact another Helle who will drown.

14. Taisne (1994), 277.

15. And this may read Virgil through Ovid’s Meander (Met. 8.162–68) which describes the contorted Labyrinth made by Daedalus, and has a strong metapoetic flavour. This moment itself looks to the Labyrinth metaphor in Virgil’s lusus Troiae (Aen. 5.588–95), where the other comparandum is dolphins playing in the sea; dolphins are also very important in Heroides 18 and 19. If Maeonio echoes Maeandro, then maybe there is a hint of Homer as Oceanus, flowing around the edge and all encompassing, like the sea on the shield of Aeneas.

16. This dramatisation of the repetition of intertextuality pervades the games: the chariot race includes many laps which wipe out the tracks of former laps; the running is actually run twice. See Hinds (1998), 114n.26.

17. Perhaps looking to Virgil’s own character Meliboeus in Eclogues 1 and 6.

18. For instance, Maeonium in Silvae 5.3.26, referring to Statius’ father associating with Homer and Virgil in Elysium.

19. Putnam (1998), 62f.

20. Taisne (1994), 276f.

21. See Kenney (1996); Rosati (1996), 11–21. There is a mention in Virgil Georgics 3.258–63 and a version in Greek by the fifth century CE poet Musaeus. Speculation abounds about lost Hellenistic models: the practice of the Heroides in taking a new perspective on old stories certainly suggests that Ovid must have had something to play with. This makes the tracing of Statius’ ever-complex intertextual negotiations more or less impossible, but there are enough similarities to suggest that Ovid’s version was the key one for Statius anyway.

22. See n.ll above.

23. Rosati (1996), 198. contemptor picks up 19.84: contemptumque prius nunc uereare fretuml (‘[What has happened]…that you now fear the sea you despised before?). Von Stosch (1968), 152 n.l, also notes 19.90, 182.

24. mutaturusque uideturlbracchia (Statius Theb. 6.544f.); cf. Her. 19.48 (lentaque dimotis bracchia iactat aquis, ‘and he is cleaving the waters by flinging his supple arms at them’); Von Stosch (1968), 152 n.l; Heroides 18.58. Rosati (1996), 148, uses Statius’ description of swimming with 18.215 (remis ego corporis utar, ‘I shall employ my body’s oars’).

25. Von Stosch (1968). 153 n.l.

26. On impossible objects of desire and epistemophilia see Hardie (2002b), 40–45.

27. Rosati (1996), 43: the name Sestias looks back to the way that Ovid first names Hero and Leander (Sesta puella, Abydenus, 18. If.). Ibid. 50: in speculis is transferred from Leander’s fellow citizens watching to stop him getting on a boat, to Hero watching out for him (Her. 18.12). This activates another ominous Dido reference: she watches Aeneas’ fleet departing from the look-out (e speculis, Aen. 4.586; Von Stosch [1968], 153 n.l). turre suprema adds to the physical location of Hero (in Her. 19.35 she puts lights in summo tecto, for instance) a hint that this is the last night of anxiety because she is close to death (the form suprema can also be a noun meaning the last moments of life).

28. Von Stosch (1968), 153 n.l; Rosati (1996), 99.

29. When Hero worries about the end of their love affair, she uses precisely this image of flame and ashes, foreshadowing the misread omen of the lamp: flammaque non fiat frigidus ilia cinis (‘may that flame not become cold as ash’, 19.94). Cf. 18.42; 19.129.

30. Taisne (1994), 276: ‘elle condense remarquablement le d^veloppement cdlebre qu’ Ovide y avait consacré dans les Metamorphoses.’

31. Keith (2000), 83.

32. The slaughter is mixta (mixta caede) in more than one sense. Ovid continually remarks on the mixed shape of the centaurs; the battle is mixed up with banqueting, blood mixed with wine; it might also hint at the extremes of stylistic variation which Ovid goes to in his descriptions of perverse epic death. The two uses of the word are at 255 (spitting out teeth mixed with blood) and 319 (of mixed wine).

33. The crater is the first weapon used in this improvised battle, when Theseus originally attacks Eurytus (Met. 12.235–40). The description of the crater (signis exstantibus asper, ‘jagged with high reliefs’, Met. 12.235) looks back to Virgil’s cymbia in Aeneid 5 (aspera signis, ‘jagged with reliefs’, 5.267).

34. First Gryneus uses a huge altar, still with its flames alight (258–64); then Rhoetus runs riot with a flagrantem torrem (‘flaming firebrand’ 27If.); Charaxus retaliates with a stone (saxea moles, ‘rocky mass’, 283). Rhoetus is even described as whirling his firebrand (igne rotato, 296). Perhaps also in the word order he evokes the ultimate death of Caeneus which is the point of the story: saxa trabesque super totosque inuoluite montes (‘roll rocks, tree-trunks, entire mountains over him’, 12.507).

35. A simile which also evokes the battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs in Book 2 (563f), pointed out by Von Stosch (1968), 151 n.3, compares Tydeus lifting’ a huge rock to the Centaur Pholus raising a crater: qualis in aduersos Lapithas erexit inanem/magnanimus cratera Pholus (‘just as when great-hearted Pholus lifted up an empty wine bowl against the opposing Lapiths’). This also displaces Theseus and puts Tydeus much more worryingly on the side of the Centaurs.

36. Barchiesi (1997), 276: Augustus is ‘both the central figure on and the ideal spectator of the shield’. Hardie (2002a), 337: he is ‘the perfectly informed viewer of the political artefact of which he himself is the maker’.

37. Like Statius (seu monstri uictor seu Marte, ‘whether victor over a monster or in war,’ 534), they divide his feats into monsters and war: ut prima nouercae/monstra manu geminosque premens eliserit anguis,lut bello egregias idem disiecerit urbes (‘how he squeezed to death the twin snakes with his hand, the first monsters of his stepmother, how the same man overthrew outstanding cities in war’, Aen. 8.288–90). Von Stosch (1968), 151, makes this her main intertext; there are verbal echoes in manu, geminos, monstra, but these are common words and not in the same case. More importantly, there is a reference to Hylaeus a few lines later: tu nubigenas, inuicte, bimembris/Hylaeumque Pholumque manu, tu Cresia mactaslprodigia (‘you, unconquered one, slaughter the cloud-born half-men, Hylaeus and Pholus and the Cretan prodigy’, 8.293–95).

38. See, for instance, Feeney (1991), 155–62; Morgan (1998). Cf. Hardie (1993), 22f.

39. On Hercules in the Thebaid see Hardie (1993), 66; Brown (1994), 32–38, 129, 193–96; Ripoll (1998), 132–63. Ripoll argues that readings of Hercules as a Stoic hero in the Thebaid exaggerate the Stoic elements of his portrayal at the expense of other elements (87). For instance at 10.646–49 there is a simile comparing the manifestation of the goddess Virtus as the prophetess Manto to Hercules dressed as a woman in the service of Omphale. In Statius too Hercules remains the complex and deeply problematic figure described in Loraux (1990). Cf. Taisne (1994), 131–35. Cyrino (1998) compares this cross-dressing Hercules with Statius’ portrayal of Achilles in the Achilleid. Cf. Galinsky (1972). For a critique of Vessey’s stoicising reading see Ahl (1986), 2810–11.

40. Even though he later appears in battle on the Theban side, supporting Haemon.

41. Especially important in the wrestling match between Tydeus and Agylleus, a son of Hercules. The games in particular are full of ‘wannabe’ Herculeses: Chromis in the chariot race is another son: alter satus Hercule magna (346); Herculeum Chromin (464); Tirynthius heros (489). Chromis does live up to his father when he overtakes Hippodamus (uiribus Herculeis et toto robore patris, ‘with Herculean force and the full strength of his father’, 480) but he gives up his chance of winning when he stops to save Hippodamus from being eaten by his horses. At 2.613–28, Tydeus fights (and kills) another Chromis who claims a Herculean role by wearing a lion skin and carrying a club (618–19). Mulder (1954), 318, calls this Chromis an alterum Herculem. Vessey (1970a), 437, makes another link to Tydeus’ aristeia in 2: lifting Agylleus at 890f. is like lifting the huge rock at 2.561–64.

42. As 1 have argued elsewhere (see Lovatt [forthcoming]), liquidity and supineness are un-masculine; men should be upstanding and dry. Excess can be as unmasculine as lack. See Gleason (1995). In Thebaid 10, Virtus dressed up as a woman is compared to Hercules dressed up as a woman for Omphale; this is the moment when Virtus inspires Menoeceus to commit glorious suicide on behalf of Thebes, in my opinion a problematic moment, with equally problematic consequences.

43. On drunkenness as motivation for battle: quam uino pectus, tarn uirgine uisalardet, et ebri-etas geminata libidine regnat (‘the wine inspired his breast as much as the sight of the maiden, and drunkenness twinned with desire ruled’, Met. 12.220f.); ‘arma, arma’ loquunturluina dabant animos (‘“Weapons, weapons!” they say and the wine gave them courage’, Met. 12.241f.).

44. Von Stosch (1968), 151 n.3.

45. Though Hardie suggests per litteras that ‘one could recuperate Herculean drunkenness as the legitimate intoxication of the celebrations after the victory in contrast to the disastrous confusion of fighting and banqueting in the battle of Lapiths and Centaurs.’ In response one might suggest that celebration after victory is not unproblematic in Virgil and certainly not in Statius, where it leads to the Theban massacre in Book 10 and another defeat for Thebes in Book 12. One would especially not want to celebrate after the death of Turnus, for instance.

46. Petraeus at 327–31 is killed in the process of trying to uproot a tree; Demoleon attacks Theseus with a pine trunk at 355–60. The trees piled on Caeneus are called congesta robora at 515. On the other hand, Theseus uses a club (robore) at 349f. against the Centaurs.

47. Lovatt(2001).

48. Also no doubt looking back to the problematics of war within the oikos at the end of the Odyssey. If ever there was an example of war within the oikos then the boundaries of Statius’ Oedipodae confusa domus (‘the disordered house of Oedipus’, Theb. 1.17) are certainly capacious enough to contain it.

49. Von Stosch (1968), 153. Vessey (1973), 217, and Taisne (1994), 278, add Antigone.

50. Von Stosch (1968), 153 n.l.

51. Hardie (2002a), 5 n.5, mentions this passage, although Statius seems to read Virgil more in the manner of Putnam.

52. Perkell (1997).

53. The cup can also be read against the story of Tydeus, Polynices’ co-bride-groom, who is an exemplar of the failure to achieve apotheosis, one redeeming feature of the Ganymede story according to Hardie.

54. Putnam (1998), 60, 65–67.

55. Hardie (2002a), 338–41.

56. Hardie sees this as a possible positive element in the myth; Nisus and Euryalus are linked to Ganymede by Barchiesi (1997), 280.

57. On Parthenopaeus and Virgilian virgins see Hardie (1990), 9–14.

58. See Lovatt (forthcoming).

59. He describes himself as a ship at Her. 18.148 (idem nauigium, nauita, uector ero, ‘I will be ship, sailor and passenger’) and 18.207f. (istic est aptum nostrae nauale carinaelet melius nulla stat mea puppis aqua, ‘There with you the dock is suitable for my ship and my ship lies at anchor better in no water’); his arms are oars at 18.215 (remis ego corporis Mar, ‘I shall use the oars of my body’) and at 19.185 (tu tuaplus remis bracchia posse putas? ‘Do you think your arms can be more effective than oars?’). He is a figurative ship-wreck at 19.185f. (quod cupis, hoc nautae metuunt, Leandre, natarejexitus hie fractis puppibus esse solet, ‘Leander, you desire what the sailors fear—to swim; this is the normal outcome when ships have been wrecked’) and more strikingly at 18.119f. (siqua fides uero est, ueniens hue esse natatorjeum redeo, uideor naufragus esse mihi, ‘If the truth can be believed, then as I come here I seem to myself to be a swimmer, but when I return, a shipwreck’).

60. Leander also imagines himself as a chariot at Olympia: ut celer Eleo carcere missus equus (‘just as a swift horse is sent out from the Olympian starting gate’, Her. 18.166).

61. Although one might notice that the ship deserves the harbour but Statius does not choose to tell us whether or not she actually reaches it.

62. On the necklace, see Mulder (1954). 195–210; Vessey (1973), 138f. Newlands (2002), 217, draws links with Silvae 1.5.

63. Vessey (1973) observes: ‘…it represents the hereditary evil of the Theban dynasty.’ Feeney (1991), 364, takes this further: ‘In Statius’ icon, however, we see no comprehensive vision of empire or of the rhythms of human life, but an internally bound miniature of pettiness and vice, a catalogue of lust and madness.’

64. Newlands (2002), 217, emphasises the importance of sexual jealousy and deceit: ‘Harmonia’s necklace is an artefact intimately connected with sexual jealousy, deceit, violence, and the treacherous politics of the divine.’

65. Newlands (2002), 217, citing McNelis (2000), ch. 2.

66. Feeney (1991), 364, says that it is ‘deliberately set against its mighty predecessors by Statius’ remark that the Cyclopes who made it were trained for bigger projects’. Vessey (1973), 138f., speculates that this passage might have been based on Callimachus and rejects Antimachus as the model.

67. There are, in fact, clear echoes of Seneca’s Medea: Legras (1905), 43; Mulder (1954), 195f.

68. On personifications in the Thebaid as essentially Statian, see Feeney (1991), 376–91.

69. Mulder (1954), 201, points to Aen. 7.346–48 where Allecto takes one the snakes from her hair to throw at Amata.

70. Thanks to John Henderson (per litteras) for this thought.