STATIUS, THEB. 1 .72: IS JOCASTA DEAD OR ALIVE? 227
other. Her weapon was a sword taken from her sons, the target her
throat:
ἄμφω δ’ ἅμ’ ἐξέπνευσαν ἄθλιον βίον.
μήτηρ δ’, ὅπως ἐσεῖδε τήνδε συμφοράν,
ὑπερπαθήσασ’, ἥρπασ’ ἐκ νεκρῶν ξίφος
κἄπραξε δεινά· διὰ μέσου γὰρ αὐχένος
ὠθεῖ σίδηρον, ἐν δὲ τοῖσι φιλτάτοις
θανοῦσα κεῖται περιβαλοῦσ’ ἀμφοῖν χέρας.
(Phoin. 1454–9)
Both thus together breathed out the last of their unblessed lives. And
seeing this the mother, in a fit of passion, snatched up a sword from the
corpses and did a dreadful deed. She thrust the iron blade through the
middle of her throat and now lies dead among her beloved sons, em-
bracing them both in their arms. (tr. Kovacs 2002)Earlier in this play, Jocasta stated that Oedipus, when he discovered
the truth about his marriage, blinded himself with “golden pins”:
μαθὼν δὲ τἀμὰ λέκτρα μητρῴων γάμων
ὁ πάντ’ ἀνατλὰς Οἰδίπους παθήματα
ἐς ὄμμαθ’ αὑτοῦ δεινὸν ἐμβάλλει φόνον,
χρυσηλάτοις πόρπαισιν αἱμάξας κόρας.
(Phoin. 59–62)
Now when Oedipus, who endured all manner of sufferings, learned that
in marrying me he had married his mother, he committed dreadful
slaughter upon his own eyes, bloodying them with brooches of beaten
gold. (tr. Kovacs 2002)These “brooches of beaten gold” (χρυσηλάτοις πόρπαισιν) with which
Oedipus blinded himself recall the χρυσηλάτους περόνας used by him
for the same purpose in Soph. OT 1268f. In Phoin. 62, however, we
are not told where Oedipus obtained these pins, and according to Mas-
tronarde (1994) at line 62, this fact would scarcely present any prob-
lem to a theatre-audience or average reader: “But the scholarly reader
is tempted to press too hard upon details which are ἔξω τοῦ δράμα-
τος”. Perhaps true, but in this case the use of the same rare epithet in a
very similar situation should not, I think, be taken as incidental. Eurip-
ides’ reference to Sophocles may escape a theatre-audience, the more
so after a lapse of probably some twenty years between the perform-
ances, but not the reader of these plays. Mastronarde considers
χρυσηλάτος a standard epithet for royal possesions. Actually, the epi-
thet occurs twice in Sophocles, the other occurrence being also of a