The Dark Side of Statius’ Achilleid: Epic Distorted

The Dark Side of Statius’ Achilleid explores systematically and for the first time the darker aspects of Statius’ Achilleid, bringing to light the poem’s tragic and epic dimensions. By seeking to position at centre-stage these darker elements, the book offers several new readings of the Achilleid in relation to its literary inheritance, its gender dynamics, and its generic tensions. This volume delves beneath the surface of a story that ostensibly deals with a ＂light＂ subject matter-the cross-dressing of a young Achilles on Scyros-to carry out an in-depth examination of the poem’s relationship to its epic and tragic precursors, and to explore its more serious themes. In this book, the poem is shown to challenge traditional epic narratives, and to display Achilles’ complex familial relationships, as well as his transgressive and unique heroism. The Achilleid also emerges as paying distinct attention to the tragic characterization of Thetis, who attempts to halt the horrors that the cataclysmic Trojan war promises to beget.

By looking into Statius’ wide-ranging dialogue with his literary predecessors, such as Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Seneca, as well as Statius’ previous epic magnum opus, the Thebaid, the multidimensional characterizations of Achilles and other key characters of the poem, such as Ulysses, Calchas, and Thetis are investigated. Far from simply representing a shameful but essentially humorous cross-dressing episode in Achilles’ life that is destined to be forgotten, the Achilleid can be seen to question the very fabric of epic by probing the validity and authority of its literary tradition, and displaying its highly innovative and experimental nature.

Julene Abad Del Vecchio, Lecturer in Classical Literature and Culture, University of Manchester

Julene Abad Del Vecchio is Lecturer in Classical Literature and Culture at the University of Manchester. She has published articles and chapters on Flavian poetry, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and on the reception of classical literature in the works of the dramatists of the Spanish Golden Age. She has also worked as a Research Associate in the AHRC Ancient Letter Collections project.