104 BRUCE GIBSON
Colchian war is compared to Tisiphone sending Roman legions to
civil war, Romanas ueluti saeuissima cum legiones / Tisiphone
regesque mouet (6.402–3), “just as when Tisiphone at her most savage
stirs up Roman legions and monarchs” should warn us against seeing
such words as necessarily insignificant.^35 We can note, too, the way in
which Statius uses words such as signifer at Theb. 10.555, suggesting
for a moment the legionary standard-bearer, as the word is found used
in Lucan and Silius, and perhaps echoing too the even more Roman
use of the word at Sen. Phoen. 390.^36
On several occasions, when it comes to weaponry and equipment,
we can see Statius taking over material which would have been en-
tirely appropriate in the contexts of some of his epic predecessors who
had written about Rome (I include Virgil here), but which in Statius
can only add an anachronistic undercurrent.^37 This practice is of
course not confined to Statius. One can note for instance the appear-
ance of the phalarica, an automated missile weapon in Aeneid 9.705,
which is attested in Ennius (Ann. 557 Sk.), and, as Skutsch notes,
seems to have been used in the second Punic War at the siege of Sa-
guntum, being mentioned subsequently by both Livy and Silius:^38
what is arguably historically accurate in Ennius and Silius might be
felt to be anachronistic in the pre-Roman context of the Aeneid. In
Statius there is rather more of this kind of thing. Consider the use of
the sling as a weapon. In the Iliad it is found at 13.599–600, while in
the Aeneid it is used by Mezentius at 9.586, and appears as one of the
weapons of the legio agrestis from the region of Praeneste at 7.686.
We also find various authors referring to the sling as a weapon of the
inhabitants of the Balearic isles (e.g. Verg. G. 1.309), sometimes in
similes (e.g. Ov. Met. 2.727–8, 4.709–10), while Balearic slingers not
surprisingly appear in the narratives of Lucan and Silius (Luc. 1.229,
Sil. 3.365) dealing with historical conflicts, just as they can be found
in prose authors such as Polybius or Caesar (see e.g. Plb. 3.33.11,
Caes. BG 2.7). When Statius, however, mentions the Balearic sling at
35 Cf. McNelis 2007, 3–4.
36 Sen. Phoen. 390 aquilaque pugnam signifer mota uocat.
37 For a recent treatment of anachronistic elements in the apparatus of siege-
warfare found in Virgil, see Rossi 2004, 180–8, especially 187 where she argues that
anachronisms can “generate an effect of narrative polychrony”.
38 Skutsch 1985, 702–3.