94 BRUCE GIBSON
What is striking here is how the poet at first treats the nocturnal kill-
ings without mentioning the names of those involved (in keeping with
his statement on the difficulties of matching names to the dead): we
can contrast this with Virgil, who in the night raid in Book 9 does give
the names of most of the victims of Nisus and Euryalus, so that it is as
if Statius is going back to the Homeric pattern, where we hear in the
Doloneia of the specific death only of Rhesus (who is referred to as
the king at the actual moment of being killed, Il. 10.494–7). In part the
Homeric pattern may seem a more realistic design for narrative, seen
from the point of view of the killers (who might not know the names
of their victims). Then, however, Statius gives the other method for a
night killing (Theb. 10.296–325), by describing the victims of
Agylleus and Actor, and then giving names of individuals in the Vir-
gilian fashion, Ialmenus the player of the cithara (Theb. 10.304–10),
and other named victims, rounded off with a final victim of Thio-
damas, as a means of uniting what are effectively simultaneous
strands of narration, before proceeding to the continuation of the nar-
rative with the approach of dawn and the withdrawal of all of the Ar-
gives apart from Hopleus and Dymas from the night action.
Statius’ two approaches to night narration in Book 10, first from
the point of view of the killers, and then from that of the victims, who
are therefore named, thus presents battle from the perspective of the
two sides. Similarly, in Book 12, when describing the remarkably
short war between Creon and Theseus, Statius sets a passage avoiding
individual details alongside an account of fighting which provides
precisely such information. After narrating the rather feeble prepara-
tions of the Thebans for yet another war (Theb. 12.721–5), Statius
gives an account of the flight of the Thebans. This effects a subtle
compression of the Homeric pattern of two sides meeting in combat
until the point when one side flees (phobos is a term used to denote
this in the work of Homeric scholars):^20 as soon as Theseus is seen by
his enemies, there is an instant rout on the Theban side, marked by the
simile where Theseus is compared to Mars warring in Thrace
(12.733–5). In keeping perhaps with a poem which has come close to
exhausting the possibilities of warfare in its narration, Theseus does
not even deign to fight against the fleeing Thebans:
20 For the phobos, see e.g. Willcock 1983, 87–8; van Wees 1997.