BATTLE NARRATIVE IN STATIUS, THEBAID 105
Theb. 10.857,^39 not in a simile, but in his account of how the Thebans
resisted Capaneus’ ascent of the walls, there is clearly something dif-
ferent going on. One could dismiss this as the poet simply taking over
something mentioned in his predecessors without regard for the his-
torical oddity of supposing that the inhabitants of Thebes in the gen-
eration before the Trojan war were in a position to use the Balearic
sling, but this is, I think, to miss the point: another Statian strategy for
amplifying the significance of his war is to evoke historical combats,
which had after all been on the grander scale.
And why should the poet not draw on the resources of historiogra-
phy? Poetry and historiography had been in conflict from as early as
Thucydides’ claim that the Trojan war was not on the same scale as
more recent conflicts (Thuc. 1.10.3). One way for epic poets to en-
hance their own work was to take on material from historiography.
This could take place in various forms, both in terms of histo-
riographical method, as Woodman’s discusion of how Virgil alludes
to various episodes from early Livy shows,^40 or in terms of actual
content, as Andreola Rossi’s book on Virgil’s adaptation in the Aeneid
of historiographical topoi such as the fall of a city shows.^41 In the case
of Statius, and to some extent Valerius Flaccus, both poets might be
said to be alive to the potential offered by Rome’s history of conflicts,
particularly in later periods. How else explain, for instance, the ap-
pearance of the scythed chariot in both poets? In Statius, this type of
chariot is used by Amphiaraus at 7.712 and Antheus at 10.544–51.
The fate of Antheus, who ends up being dragged along, suggests at the
very least an appreciation on the part of Statius of how dangerous and
indeed useless scythed chariots were in practice, something also re-
flected in Valerius’ longer episode of scythed chariots used by Arias-
menus during the Colchian war (V.Fl. 6.386–426), where the chariots
end up turning on their own allies and bringing Ariasmenus himself to
a messy end. In historical terms, the scythed chariot should not be
seen as a feature of contemporary warfare^42 , but as something which
39 Other instances of the sling in the Thebaid are found at 4.66, 7.338, 8.416.
40 Woodman 1989.
41 Rossi 2004; on the sacking of cities, cf. Ziolkowski 1993. See also Ash 2002;
Horsfall 2003, xiv–xv and 471–2 on Virgil and historiography.
42 SHA Alexander Severus 55 and 56 need not be taken seriously as evidence of the
scythed chariot's survival; it is more likely that the writer is simply taking the old
tradition of Persian scythed chariots and associating the much later Sasanians with
them. Note too Luc. 1.426, a reference to the Belgae using the couinnus, a kind of war