232 JOHANNES J.L. SMOLENAARS
possible that Oedipus only seized the sword from his father yet killed
him with his staff, as in OT 811, but his own description of the killing
as secui ora senis in Theb. 1.65f. favours the interpretation of Laius’
sword as the weapon with which he was killed. So it is the sword of
Laius and the same with which he had been killed by his son that Jo-
casta deliberately brings out from “a hidden place” (penetralibus) in
the palace. As in Seneca, the same sword will kill both parents, but in
Statius it had, moreover, originally belonged to Laius himself.
Every detail in Statius’ subsequent description of Jocasta’s suicide
aims at maximum pathos: her physical weakness as it appears from
her failed attempt to plunge the sword into her breast (luctata dextra),
the need for a second and different attempt (prono pectore), her aged
veins (aniles), her (few drops of) blood “purging” the “hapless
couch”, and, finally, the wound in her skinny (exili) bosom:
multaque cum superis et diro questa cubili
et nati furiis et primi coniugis umbris,
luctata est dextra, et prono uix pectore ferrum
intrauit tandem: uenas perrumpit aniles
uulnus et infelix lustratur sanguine lectus.
illius exili stridentem in pectore plagam
Ismene conlapsa super lacrimisque comisque
siccabat plangens:
(Theb. 11.637–44)
Long complaint she made of the High Ones and the accursed bed and
her son’s madness and her first husband’s shade; then she struggled
with her right hand, and with breast leaning forward finally managed to
enter the steel. The wound breaks her aged veins and the hapless couch
is purged with blood. Ismene collapsed upon the blow that squeaked in
her meagre bosom and dried it with tears and hair as she lamented. (tr.
SB)Her—reported—lament in 637–8 on the divine will and her incestuous
marriage recalls the same scene in OT 1245–50, where she cries out
for Laius and likewise bewails her life and marriage in retrospect:
κάλει τὸν ἤδη Λάϊον πάλαι νεκρόν,
μνήμην παλαιῶν σπερμάτων ἔχουσ’, ὑφ’ ὧν
θάνοι μὲν αὐτός, τὴν δὲ τίκτουσαν λίποι
τοῖς οἷσιν αὐτοῦ δύστεκνον παιδουργίαν·
γοᾶτο δ’ εὐνάς, ἔνθα δύστηνος διπλοῦς
ἐξ ἀνδρὸς ἄνδρα καὶ τέκν’ ἐκ τέκνων τέκοι.
(OT 1245–50)