236 JOHANNES J.L. SMOLENAARS
Here, Jocasta uses this appallingly cruel phrase literally, in order to
keep Eteocles from going to war, whereas Jupiter thinks of a cruel
picture to convince his audience that Oedipus’ sons must be punished.
My interpretation of Jocasta being alive in Theb. 1.72 is confirmed
by two references in books 2 and 4, that is long before her attempt at
reconciliation in book 7.470ff.^23 In Theb. 2.438–42 Eteocles rejects
Tydeus’ request to him to leave Thebes and live in exile for a year in
turn. One of his arguments is that Argia, Polynices’ Argive bride,
would never get used to a life in the Theban palace:
anne feret luxu consueta paterno
hunc regina larem? nostrae cui iure sorores
anxia pensa trahant, longo quam sordida luctu
mater et ex imis auditus forte tenebris
offendat sacer ille senex.
(Theb. 2.438–442)
Will the queen accustomed to her father’s luxury endure a home like
this?—where our sisters would in duty spin anxious threads for her,
where our mother, unkempt in long mourning, and that accursed an-
cient, heard perhaps from lowest darkness, would offend her? (tr. SB)The queen is said to be “unkempt in long mourning” and therefore
ce rtainly alive. By the time we have reached this passage, we are
forced to reconsider our possible earlier assumption that Statius in
Theb. 1.72 followed Sophocles’ OT and OC (version A), and have to
decide in retrospect that Statius actually followed version (B) all the
time. This interpretation is then confirmed in Theb. 4.88–9, where
Polynices, still in exile, is said to yearn for his kingdom, mother and
sisters:
iam regnum matrisque sinus fidasque sorores
spe uotis tenet.^24
(Theb. 4.88–9)
Already in hope and prayer he possesses his realm and his mother’s
bosom and his faithful sisters. (tr. SB)23 I gratefully owe these references to my student Pieter van de Broek.
24 I agree with Micozzi 2007 ad loc. that the interpretation by D. Hershkowitz
(1998a, 278) of these lines is rather strained: “Polynices’ desire to return to his heredi-
tary kingdom is linked with his desire to regain the sinus matris, displaying his
equally hereditary sexual yearning for a return to the womb.” A son’s longing for his
mother’s embrace (sinus) should be distinguished from yearning for her womb.