BATTLE NARRATIVE IN STATIUS, THEBAID 97
of a day according to the Homeric model, but he also replaces the
involvement of Zeus at the beginning of a day’s fighting with that of
Tisiphone.
The day that begins at this point in Book 8 then runs on until the
end of Book 9, with the death of Parthenopaeus. Not until the very
beginning of Book 10, however, does Statius actually describe night-
fall, which thus begins strikingly with the onset of the night that in-
cludes the raid made by Thiodamas and others on the Argive side
against the Thebans. As in Book 8, Statius again adopts a blurred dis-
tinction between night and the next day, with three indications of the
nearness of dawn during the narration of the night’s events (Theb.
10.326–7, 10.381–3, 10.390), but there is no direct depiction of dawn,
whose arrival has to be inferred from Amphion’s detection of the
slaughter of Thebans at 10.467–73. Once again there is no set piece
account of daybreak and the night merges into the next day’s fighting
with Amphion’s Thebans fleeing in terror back to the city.^26
This next day continues until the onset of night at the end of Book
11, and thus includes the deaths of Menoeceus and Capaneus, the
conflict of Polynices and Eteocles, the accession of Creon, and his
decision to banish Oedipus from the city. Here Statius does end a
book with the onset of night, which might be felt to be a more conven-
tional practice (cf. e.g. Iliad 7, which ends with the Achaean host tak-
ing the gift of sleep, or Iliad 8, which closes with the Trojans on the
plain waiting for dawn), but even here we see the poet using the forms
of day and night to a particular purpose: there is especial point to the
arrival of this night, since it allows the remnants of the Argive army to
retire under cover of darkness:^27
interea pulsi uallum exitiale Pelasgi
de stituunt furto; nulli sua signa suusque
ductor: eunt taciti passim et pro funere pulchro26 One may contrast Virgil in Aeneid 9, who similarly provides indications of the
imminence of dawn during the night action of Nisus and Euryalus (as at A. 9.355, nam
lux inimica propinquat, “for hostile daylight is approaching”), but also has a set-piece
depiction of Aurora bringing on the dawn at A. 9.459–60, marking out in Iliadic fash-
ion the divide between one day and night and the start of the next.
27 For the literary commonplace of battle being ended by nightfall, see e.g. Liv.
7.33.15 with Oakley 1998, 330–1, who notes examples in historiography where night
ends a battle and reveals which side has won.