STATIUS, THEB. 1 .72: IS JOCASTA DEAD OR ALIVE? 231
pauitante gressu sequere fallentes uias;
suspensa plantis efferens uestigia
caecam tremente dextera noctem rege.
ingredere praeceps, lubricos ponens gradus,
i profuge uade—siste, ne in matrem incidas.
(Oed. 1047–51)
[To himself] With shaking step follow deceptive paths. As you drag
yourself away with each hesitant footfall, guide your blind night with
trembling hands. No, advance headlong, your steps slipping, go, flee
into exile—but stop, lest you fall upon your mother. (tr. Fitch 2004)Every element of Seneca’s highly original scene is meant to be fright-
ening on stage: Oedipus blinded, his face covered in blood, Jocasta
thrusting her son’s sword—the same with which he had killed his
father/her husband—into her womb (1039), and the son’s staggering
exit, almost stumbling over his mother’s corpse (1051). But most
dramatic of all, the mother’s suicide is now ‘witnessed’ by her sight-
less son.
As stated above, Seneca took the theme of the ‘identical murder
weapon’ from Phoin. and applied it here to both parents: Jocasta
commits suicide with Oedipus’ sword, the same with which he had
killed his father. This innovation inspired Statius to go one step fur-
ther. In Thebaid book 11, Jocasta commits suicide in her bedroom in
the royal palace, at the very beginning of the fatal duel, by throwing
herself into the sword that once belonged to Laius:
Olim autem inceptae clamore exterrita pugnae
re gina extulerat notum penetralibus ensem,
ensem sceptriferi spolium lacrimabile Lai.
(Theb. 11.634–6)
Some time earlier the queen, alarmed by the noise of combat begun,
had brought out from a hidden place the well-known sword, the sword,
lamentable spoil of sceptred Laius. (tr. SB)The phrase notum ensem (11.635) refers to Sen. Phoen. 106f. where
Oedipus specifies the sword he asked Antigone to hand over to him
as: sed notum nece/ ensem paterna. Jocasta in Seneca’s Oed. also
knows the history of this sword, as appears from hoc iacet ferro meus
coniunx (1034, above). In Statius, notum (635, above) is given yet a
further explanation: as we learn from spolium Lai (636), the sword
originally belonged to Laius, was seized by Oedipus during the fight
on the crossroads and then used by him to kill his father. In itself it is