ABSTRACT
Although Statius’ Thebaid won instant recognition upon its publication in 96 A.D., it achieved its greatest popularity during the Middle Ages.1 In the medieval schoolroom, Statius ranked among Vergil, Ovid, Horace and Juvenal as a canonical author, and the Thebaid survives in over one hundred and sixty manuscripts, mostly dating to the twelfth century, when the rise of the cathedral schools and the revival of ancient learning generated new demand for classical texts.2 Most importantly, however, for the scope of the current study, Statius’ Thebaid is the only other Roman epic, apart from Vergil’s Aeneid, to engender its own literary tradition in the Middle Ages. The corpus of Thebes rivaled that of Troy from the twelfth century onwards, resulting in a series of paired vernacular narratives of Thebes and Troy: the OF Roman de Thèbes appears within ten years of the OF Roman de Troie in the mid-twelfth century, and the literary careers of Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Lydgate all include narrative poems of both Thebes and Troy. Moreover, unlike the medieval tradition of Troy, which derives from a variety of texts including Vergil’s Aeneid, the accounts of Dares and Dictys, and the works of Ovid, among others, the medieval tradition of Thebes emanates ultimately from the Thebaid alone, giving Statius that much more centrality to the Theban legend in the Middle Ages.
