102 BRUCE GIBSON
You would think that temples and the city were being seized and that
the Sidonian homes were burning with wicked torches, such a shout
arises when the gates of the walls are thrown open; they would rather
that the cradle of Hercules or the bedroom of Semele or the chamber of
Harmonia had collapsed.Here Sidonios, “Theban” but also “Phoenician” as a result of the
Thebans’ origins in Phoenicia, is probably to be seen as an acknowl-
edgement of Virgil’s simile of Tyre or Carthage. The opening of Book
11 affords another striking simile: at lines 7–8, Jove is congratulated
by the other gods as if he had been fighting his giant opponents at
Phlegra or at Etna: again the god is virtually compared to himself, but
in a different situation; and the result is surely to enhance our sense of
the opposition provided by Capaneus.^31
Statius’ employment of this type of simile is an important feature
of his approach to battle narrative. Arguably, this kind of simile actu-
ally pulls in the opposite direction to conventional epic similes which
take the audience away from the events being described, often through
some kind of analogy with the natural world. As the Homeric simile
used of the Trojans’ grief at Hector’s death shows, comparison of
something with something very similar is actually a device of intensi-
fication, rather than a means of providing relief, and thus in Statius the
simile where the horses are compared to what they would be like if
mingled with their masters amplifies and raises the tone to a higher
emotional pitch, just as Polynices’ pain at the death of Tydeus in book
9 is compared to the effects of a thousand wounds on him. Counter-
factual similes in the battle narrative are thus one means for Statius to
intensify the material he is covering, and the idea that similes are a
means for providing relief from the main narrative will not work for
these.
31 There are also examples of such counterfactual similes elsewhere in the poem, in
non-combat scenes: a memorable instance is the brief simile at the end of Book 11,
where Oedipus’ enraged facial reaction to Creon’s decree that he be banished is com-
pared to what it would have been if his eyes had been still intact (Theb. 11.673–4). On
Capaneus, see e.g. Criado 2000, 107–10; McNelis 2007, 140–5; Ganiban 2007, 145–
8.