ABSTRACT
The emperor Domitian (ruled AD 81-96) was a monster. That is what Suetonius believed (not so Jones 1972, 1973, 1974; or Waters 1964). But whatever else Domitian may have been responsible for, he did preside over a literary renaissance (Coleman 1986). Of the writers active in the 90s (amongst others Tacitus, Quintilian, Pliny, and Martial) there survive the epics of three important writers. Statius wrote in twelve books a Thebaid (composed between c. 79 and 91), a mythological epic dramatizing the conflict between Oedipus’ sons, Eteocles and Polynices. Silius Italicus wrote a long historical epic, the Punica (composed during the 90s), on the second Punic war. Valerius Flaccus took up the subject of Apollonius of Rhodes’ epic. Of this incomplete mythological epic (composed between c. 80 and 92/3) eight books survive.
