88 BRUCE GIBSON
aristeia at 9.525–8, which really marks the first conventional battle
scene of the Aeneid.
By contrast, Statius compresses the Virgilian hiatus between the
confused phase of impromptu combat and the opening of real fighting,
so that once the tigers have been wounded, Statius narrates very rap-
idly in the space of five lines (Theb. 7.603–7) the incident where Ac-
onteus is killed by Phegeus, a priest of Bacchus. There is then a scene
of confusion in the camp, with Jocasta fleeing, and the armies become
enmeshed in a melee without any of the formal entry to battle which
characterises even the opening of battle in Iliad 4 after the truce is
broken. In Homer, Menelaus is wounded (Il. 4.146–7), but there is
then a long interval while Agamemnon urges on his commanders and
his troops, until the forward movement of the Achaeans and the Tro-
jans at Iliad 4.422–45, and the general evocation of the opening of
battle at 4.446–456. The first battlefield killing, of Echepolus by Anti-
lochus, takes place at Iliad 4.457. By contrast Statius is concerned to
stress the lack of order at the beginning of his combat, as reflected in
the lines where the chaos of the Argive camp as they prepare to enter
battle at the death of Aconteus is subtly merged into a confused en-
gagement with the Thebans (Theb. 7.608–27): nullo uenit ordine bel-
lum, “war comes with no order”, (Theb. 7.616). Statius’ emphasis on
the confusion of war seems far from the kind of situation described by
Hans van Wees in his discussion of the battle scenes in the Iliad,
where van Wees has shown how the dominant mode of battle narra-
tion is actually combat between the promachoi, the “fighters up
front”.^11
Comparison between the opening conflicts of Iliad and Thebaid
makes this plain: at Iliad 4.457–8 the poet remarks that “Antilochus
was first to take out an armed warrior of the Trojans, Echepolus Tha-
lysiades, a good man among the fighters up front (promachoi)”, be-
fore going on to describe how the man came to be wounded. The Ho-
meric battle thus emerges even from the chaos of Pandarus’ shot at
Menelaus with a clear-cut beginning: first, there is a large scale evoca-
tion of conflict and then there follows the death of Echepolus. Statius,
however, strikingly elides pre-battle moments with the death of Ptere-
11 Van Wees 1997, 680, 687. Cf. Sandbach 1965–6, 34, on Statius: “His battle
scenes, unlike those of Virgil, show no sign of generalship or strategy: infantry, cav-
alry, and war-chariots are committed pell-mell; the fighting is neither Homeric, nor
anything else.”