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Thebaid, Books 8-12 / Achilleid
Statius published his "Thebaid" in the last decade of the first century. This epic recounting the struggle between the two sons of Oedipus for the kingship of Thebes is his masterpiece, a stirring exploration of the passions of civil war. The extant portion of his unfinished "Achilleid" is strikingly different in tone: this second epic begins as a charming account of Achilles' life.
Statius was raised in the Greek cultural milieu of the Bay of Naples, and his Greek literary education is reflected in his poetry. The political realities of Rome in the first century are also evident in the Thebaid, in representations of authoritarian power and the drive for domination. This two-volume edition of the epics, a freshly edited Latin text facing a graceful translation, completes D. R. Shackleton Bailey's new Loeb Classical Library edition of Statius. Kathleen M. Coleman contributed an essay on recent scholarship on the two epics.
Statius was raised in the Greek cultural milieu of the Bay of Naples, and his Greek literary education is reflected in his poetry. The political realities of Rome in the first century are also evident in the Thebaid, in representations of authoritarian power and the drive for domination. This two-volume edition of the epics, a freshly edited Latin text facing a graceful translation, completes D. R. Shackleton Bailey's new Loeb Classical Library edition of Statius. Kathleen M. Coleman contributed an essay on recent scholarship on the two epics.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1928
About the author
Publius Papinius Statius
271 books17 followersPublius Papinius Statius (Greek: Πόπλιος Παπίνιος Στάτιος; /ˈsteɪʃiəs/, Latin: [ˈstaːtiʊs];[a] c. 45 – c. 96) was a Latin poet of the 1st century CE. His surviving poetry includes an epic in twelve books, the Thebaid; a collection of occasional poetry, the Silvae; and an unfinished epic, the Achilleid. He is also known for his appearance as a guide in the Purgatory section of Dante's epic poem, the Divine Comedy.
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April 3, 2026
You wouldn't know it at first from the way Goodreads, and even Loeb Library, has titled it, 🤦🏼♂️, but this book is THE ACHILLEID. Even that title is tough for today's English speakers, most of whom have never read the Iliad, or wouldn't think that the Greek suffix applies.
One already gets a sense of the mediation needed to tackle the juicier aspects of Greek mythology. The reader today doesn't get a lot of help. On one hand you have the academic but often strangely compiled Loeb wing, and on the other you have the wildly popular YA bromantasies of Madeline Miller, where heroes are sunkissed and tanned to perfection, with just the right amount of stubble, and their skin smells like vanilla and sweat and teenage dreams.
If you choose the latter over stodgy ill-formatted homework, who could blame ye? I guess it depends on how you even heard about the story in the first place — the tale of Achilles' time on the Island of Scyros, where his mother the sea nympth Thetis hid him so that he wouldn't go off to Troy and die. Oh, and she dressed him up as a girl and made him go by the name Pyrrha as well. That's important.
Why? Because the idea of the most macho of dudes having to live as a girl has such obvious dramatic potential. Greek myth, any myth, is important only so far as it is relevant today. Macho warmongering man -- trans girl -- combined?! Need I say more? So much you could do with that, hence why I bristle a bit at the Bath & Body Works Mini-Epics of Miller, who uses Achilles on Scyros as just another episode in which he is secretly in love with Patroclus, cuz Achilles being gay for Patroclus is the end all and be all of the Achilles twist.
It's not about gay or straight, boy or girl. It's the way those things intersect and the points they illuminate, the emotional and psychological points, and it isn't even about specific points it's about the interpretation of them. Greek myth and tragedy offers so much by way of juicy exploration, so many flavors.
For instance: consider Achilles' greater story, the one that Statius tried to write but couldn't finish because he died.
Achilles is taken from Chiron (the awesome centaur) to Scyros by his mother and made to live as a girl. While there he falls in with princess Deidamia and her girlfriends, who all think Pyrrha is so hot (even though she's a girl, because she's not a girl, she's Brad Pitt). It's a paradoxical view of beauty but completely understandable: Achilles is Beauty. The way his beauty blends gender (doesn't even have to be about sexuality) argues for the ideal beauty being a kind of third gender, both male and female. How are SJ-Dubyas not shitting themselves over this? Where's the praise of the Western Canon for its deifying portrayals of progressive concepts?
But it's not about making a political point, either. Even that is secondary to the juiciness of the plot. Achilles and Deidamia fall in love. Is she attracted to him as a boy or girl? Left to be interpreted. Regardless, their love is true. See here described beautifully by Statius:
"Now he seizes her lips as she sings and twines embraces and praises her in a thousand kisses. Willingly she learns what peak is Pelion, who is Aeacides, wondering and wondering at the boy's name and deeds as she hears them, and sings of Achilles to his face. She too on her side shows him how to advance his strong limbs more decorously and how to draw out raw wool with his thumb's friction, repairing the distaff and the skeins that his rough hand has spoiled."
So as they fall in love, Achilles tells her masculine stories, about a hero, a grandson of Aeacus (Aeacides = Achilles), and his famous deeds and strength. And while Deidamia is thrilled to learn about masculine things she also teaches Achilles how to weave, properly, cuz his masculine hands are clumsy at the loom. They bond over each other's gender traits while praising each other with kisses. It's beautiful stuff.
But this is Greek myth, where peace is impermanent.
Soon, the scheduled Bacchanal arrives. We're in the shadow of Mount Cithaeron here, and the shadow of Euripides' Bacchus (the one where Pentheus is literally ripped apart by his mom and aunts). Rule number one of a Bacchanal: NO MEN ALLOWED. Still, Achilles DGAF, because he is Achilles after all!
"(his sex and his mother's lies are equally becoming), [he's as beautiful as a man and a woman at the same time]. No more is Deidamia the fairest of her throng, besides proud Aeacides (Achilles) her stature is surpassed by as much as she herself outtops her sisters."
Achilles, as the most beautiful, whisks Deidamia away from the rites and -- again, interpretation needed -- they make love (the cries are drowned out by those from the Bacchanal, what an image), and a baby is conceived. Some say Achilles rapes Deidamia here, but to me it doesn't read true. I see it as consensual, but also as the moment when Deidamia can no longer deny that this girl she fell in love with is a man, and yet it doesn't change her love or desire.... all while a bacchanal rages... intense!
Happily ever after? Nein. The hero son of Laertes draws near, with his m8, the other favourite of grey-eyed Athena, Diomedes. They have one mission: find Achilles and bring him to the army. The Greeks are stranded on Aulis and no wind will blow until Achilles arrives (there's also something else that has to happen too.... I think Euripides wrote about that as well....)
Odysseus easily tricks Achilles into giving himself up; he didn't really have to try. He tells Achilles as they sail away that he would have chosen this path anyway. Achilles didn't want to be a girl, it was just an episode, a summer fling, cuz when you're the embodiment of beauty it doesnt matter where you get dropped you're gunna find the hottest chick and have ye a romance. Achilles is a lil sad, but more excited to go off to war. He knows he's beautiful, but he wants GLORY.
And Deidamia? Pregnant, married (to someone she'll never see again), left alone. Luckily because Achilles is who he is and can get away with it she isn't killed for having a child out of wedlock. It's sorted. But she's alone, left to raise Pyrrhus by herself. That this scion of Achilles will one day, as Neoptolemus, also be taken away by Odysseus, and eventually take part in the sacking of Troy, take Andromache the wife of Hector as a warbride and father a child with the wife of his dad's greatest enemy...
Well that's just the juiciest stuff ever, aye?!
One already gets a sense of the mediation needed to tackle the juicier aspects of Greek mythology. The reader today doesn't get a lot of help. On one hand you have the academic but often strangely compiled Loeb wing, and on the other you have the wildly popular YA bromantasies of Madeline Miller, where heroes are sunkissed and tanned to perfection, with just the right amount of stubble, and their skin smells like vanilla and sweat and teenage dreams.
If you choose the latter over stodgy ill-formatted homework, who could blame ye? I guess it depends on how you even heard about the story in the first place — the tale of Achilles' time on the Island of Scyros, where his mother the sea nympth Thetis hid him so that he wouldn't go off to Troy and die. Oh, and she dressed him up as a girl and made him go by the name Pyrrha as well. That's important.
Why? Because the idea of the most macho of dudes having to live as a girl has such obvious dramatic potential. Greek myth, any myth, is important only so far as it is relevant today. Macho warmongering man -- trans girl -- combined?! Need I say more? So much you could do with that, hence why I bristle a bit at the Bath & Body Works Mini-Epics of Miller, who uses Achilles on Scyros as just another episode in which he is secretly in love with Patroclus, cuz Achilles being gay for Patroclus is the end all and be all of the Achilles twist.
It's not about gay or straight, boy or girl. It's the way those things intersect and the points they illuminate, the emotional and psychological points, and it isn't even about specific points it's about the interpretation of them. Greek myth and tragedy offers so much by way of juicy exploration, so many flavors.
For instance: consider Achilles' greater story, the one that Statius tried to write but couldn't finish because he died.
Achilles is taken from Chiron (the awesome centaur) to Scyros by his mother and made to live as a girl. While there he falls in with princess Deidamia and her girlfriends, who all think Pyrrha is so hot (even though she's a girl, because she's not a girl, she's Brad Pitt). It's a paradoxical view of beauty but completely understandable: Achilles is Beauty. The way his beauty blends gender (doesn't even have to be about sexuality) argues for the ideal beauty being a kind of third gender, both male and female. How are SJ-Dubyas not shitting themselves over this? Where's the praise of the Western Canon for its deifying portrayals of progressive concepts?
But it's not about making a political point, either. Even that is secondary to the juiciness of the plot. Achilles and Deidamia fall in love. Is she attracted to him as a boy or girl? Left to be interpreted. Regardless, their love is true. See here described beautifully by Statius:
"Now he seizes her lips as she sings and twines embraces and praises her in a thousand kisses. Willingly she learns what peak is Pelion, who is Aeacides, wondering and wondering at the boy's name and deeds as she hears them, and sings of Achilles to his face. She too on her side shows him how to advance his strong limbs more decorously and how to draw out raw wool with his thumb's friction, repairing the distaff and the skeins that his rough hand has spoiled."
So as they fall in love, Achilles tells her masculine stories, about a hero, a grandson of Aeacus (Aeacides = Achilles), and his famous deeds and strength. And while Deidamia is thrilled to learn about masculine things she also teaches Achilles how to weave, properly, cuz his masculine hands are clumsy at the loom. They bond over each other's gender traits while praising each other with kisses. It's beautiful stuff.
But this is Greek myth, where peace is impermanent.
Soon, the scheduled Bacchanal arrives. We're in the shadow of Mount Cithaeron here, and the shadow of Euripides' Bacchus (the one where Pentheus is literally ripped apart by his mom and aunts). Rule number one of a Bacchanal: NO MEN ALLOWED. Still, Achilles DGAF, because he is Achilles after all!
"(his sex and his mother's lies are equally becoming), [he's as beautiful as a man and a woman at the same time]. No more is Deidamia the fairest of her throng, besides proud Aeacides (Achilles) her stature is surpassed by as much as she herself outtops her sisters."
Achilles, as the most beautiful, whisks Deidamia away from the rites and -- again, interpretation needed -- they make love (the cries are drowned out by those from the Bacchanal, what an image), and a baby is conceived. Some say Achilles rapes Deidamia here, but to me it doesn't read true. I see it as consensual, but also as the moment when Deidamia can no longer deny that this girl she fell in love with is a man, and yet it doesn't change her love or desire.... all while a bacchanal rages... intense!
Happily ever after? Nein. The hero son of Laertes draws near, with his m8, the other favourite of grey-eyed Athena, Diomedes. They have one mission: find Achilles and bring him to the army. The Greeks are stranded on Aulis and no wind will blow until Achilles arrives (there's also something else that has to happen too.... I think Euripides wrote about that as well....)
Odysseus easily tricks Achilles into giving himself up; he didn't really have to try. He tells Achilles as they sail away that he would have chosen this path anyway. Achilles didn't want to be a girl, it was just an episode, a summer fling, cuz when you're the embodiment of beauty it doesnt matter where you get dropped you're gunna find the hottest chick and have ye a romance. Achilles is a lil sad, but more excited to go off to war. He knows he's beautiful, but he wants GLORY.
And Deidamia? Pregnant, married (to someone she'll never see again), left alone. Luckily because Achilles is who he is and can get away with it she isn't killed for having a child out of wedlock. It's sorted. But she's alone, left to raise Pyrrhus by herself. That this scion of Achilles will one day, as Neoptolemus, also be taken away by Odysseus, and eventually take part in the sacking of Troy, take Andromache the wife of Hector as a warbride and father a child with the wife of his dad's greatest enemy...
Well that's just the juiciest stuff ever, aye?!
Displaying 1 of 1 review