STATIUS, THEB. 1 .72: IS JOCASTA DEAD OR ALIVE? 219
her former husband and the identity of Oedipus, her son and present
husband, Jocasta commits suicide by hanging herself; when he finds
her dead, Oedipus blinds himself. But if we would maintain that OT is
Statius’ main model in every detail mentioned here, we are forced to
interpret in matre in line 1.72 as ‘her corpse’. Oedipus in this line
reminds the Fury of the moment he blinded himself:
miseraque oculos in matre reliqui
le ft my eyes upon my hapless mother (tr. SB)In his footnote Shackleton Bailey indeed explains in matre as ‘her
corpse’ and adds: “As in Sophocles, Jocasta’s suicide here precedes
the blinding, whereas in 11.637ff. it is the other way round”. His “in
11.637ff. it is the other way round” can only mean that Jocasta’s sui-
cide in book 11 does not precede (as it would be the case in 1.72), but
follow the blinding. This obvious fact, however, would need no ex-
planation at all and, therefore, I assume that Shackleton Bailey’s ob-
servation is a restrained comment on the fact that Jocasta in the The-
baid seems to kill herself twice, in books 1 and 11, that is if his expla-
nation of in matre in 1.72 is correct.
If we follow this interpretation and accept that Jocasta is already
dead right at the beginning of the Thebaid, we must also be prepared
to go along with the implication of Shackleton Bailey’s statement and
consider Statius to be a careless or forgetful poet, who in book 11
seems to have forgotten what he wrote in book 1.^8 Such carelessness
could be forgiven in the case of an ordinary soldier killed in one book
and still alive in the next, a not uncommon phenomenon in epic po-
etry, but it is quite a different matter when it concerns one of the cen-
tral figures in Statius’ books 7 and 11. In my opinion, this is a very
unattractive point of departure in the interpretation of this otherwise
meticulous and never dozing poet. We should try to find a more con-
vincing explanation, as I will suggest in the following.
8 Lesueur 1990, 119 thinks that Statius perhaps was not aware of the contradiction
or deliberately chose a vague (“voilé”) phrase to evoke this monstruous bond. SB in
his Loeb-edition points at other ‘inconsistencies’, such as at Theb. 7.608, where see
my note (1994 ad loc.).