134 D. E. HILL
brief aside at 1.79–80: et uidet ista deorum ignauus genitor “And
does the idle father of the gods see these things?”
But to return to Jupiter: nunc geminas punire domos quis sanguinis
auctor ipse ego, descendo (1.224–5 “now I am descending to punish
two families of whose blood I am myself the founder”): why geminas
... domos? We have been led to suppose that Jupiter is responding to
complaints about the sins of Oedipus’ family; so what are these twin
houses? A cryptic answer is followed by a slightly less opaque one:
Perseos alter in Argos scinditur (1.225–6 “the other divides off into
Persean^3 Argos”), Aonias fluit hic ab origine Thebas (1.226 “this one
flows from its source to Aonian Thebes.”). With alter ... hic under-
stand sanguis “bloodline” from the previous clause, but why alter ...
hic “the other ... this one” rather than alter ... alter “the one ... the
other” or hic ... ille “this one ... that one” or even hic ... alter “this
one ... the other one”? The answer I suspect is that Jupiter, for some
reason, wishes to involve Argos in the ensuing punishment but ac-
knowledges that Thebes is the expected target. By using alter first he
immediately tells us that there are to be two sanguines “bloodlines”,
victims of his wrath, and he can hold our attention better by mention-
ing the Argive one, the surprising one, first and characterizing it as
alter, leaving the other one to round off the sentence with the Theban
hic sanguis we have been led to expect. To the possible objection that
we have not been told of any report to the other gods of what is afoot,
the obvious reply is that in circumstances of this kind the rumour mill
can normally be relied on. It is, of course, true too that the house of
Argos will be drawn deeply into the Theban tragedy.
But how can Jupiter claim to be the sanguinis auctor for Thebes
and Argos? Shackleton Bailey quotes Vessey (I have not been able to
trace from where):
The ancients did not agree on mythological stemmatics, and Statius is
of ten quite vague.Indeed, modern taste does find reference to obscure genealogies tedi-
ous but anyone familiar with e.g. the Iliad or the Old Testament
knows that ancient taste was different; Statius’ readers would expect
Statius to be able to say how Jupiter could claim to be the ultimate
origin of both Adrastus and Oedipus: according to Apollodorus, he is
3 Argos is Persean because Jupiter’s son, Perseus, was born there to Danaë, the
daughter of the Argive king, Acrisius.