CLAS 353
October 3, 2024

Apollo & Artemis slay the children of Niobe (ca. 450 BCE)

Exam #1 KEY

Creative Projects: due October 15 (11:59pm in D2L)

apropos of Aeneas's shield, Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future (2024)

Thebaid 2 (cont.)

• cut to Argos after Laius' appearance (2.134ff.): double marriage/blushing brides (2.231ff.): Argia ~ Polynices, Deiphyle ~ Tydeus; omen of the shield & trumpet-blast at Athena’s temple (2.249ff.), guests pretend nothing happens!
  
  De Morgan, Cadmus and Harmonia (1877)
  
  
• ekphrasis of Harmony’s necklace (2.268ff.) created by Vulcan for Harmony (daughter of Venus & Mars & wife of Cadmus) mother of doomed daughters, worn by Argia, previously worn by Semele & Jocasta—what’s on "that luckless ornament" (2.266)?

• Tydeus's embassy to Thebes (2.374ff.); encounter with Eteocles (“. . . high on his throne, hedged round with bristling spears; counter to law / and beyond his term, well into his brother’s reign, the brute / was ruling the people with iron hand. Ready for any / crime . . .”, 2.385-7)
  
  Thebaid 2.410ff. (Eteocles's reaction to Tydeus's frankness)
  Though silent at first, the king could feel
  his fiery heart hiss in his breast the way, if you throw
  stones at a fierce serpent, she’ll strike—kept deep below the ground,
  Hidden away by a long drought, now wholly aroused, she calls
  all her venom up into her jaws and scaly throat . . .
  
  
  Tydeus (illustration from Ryabinin, Riddle of the Sphinx)

• Eteocles’s (self-)defense of tyranny (2.428ff., e.g. ". . . the people are schooled / to my yoke"; stability) & plan to ambush Tydeus (his aristeia, 2.496ff.); epic's first gore (Maeon sent back alive to Thebes)
  
  
  Paulus Bor, Bacchus (ca. 1630)
  
  Thebaid 3 (summary): Maeon's suicide; delays after Mars unleased on Argos; Amphiaraus & omens

• prophet Maeon spared by Tydeus, sent back to Thebes ("the war you've begun, you fiend, is unholy", 3.71)
  
  Thebaid 3.99ff. (narrator praises Maeon)
  Maeon: you outdid us all in death and resolve!
  never—and this is your due—will you suffer decay, for you
  dared scorn kings outright and make sacred a way whereby
  Freedom might come in full. With what hymn, what speech can I
  add to your virtues the fame they so richly deserve, augur
  beloved of the gods? . . .
  
  
• Maeon denied cremation; Theban grief (e.g. Ide, mother of speared twins) & negative reactions (e.g. aged Aletes, "What was the source of his freedom? His end was at hand, his life all / behind him", 3.216-17)
  
  
  Jupiter & Cupid (fresco from Herculaneum, 1st century CE)
  
  
• tyranny of Jupiter ("I've now sown /seeds of conflict", 3.235-6); Mars's task > war-frenzy in Argos; tyrannized gods silent
  
  Thebaid 3.253-9 (Jupiter reaffirms his commitment to destruction of both cities)
  He spoke, and the orders thunder-stunned them. You'd think they had
  mortal minds, the way they held their tongues and breath—hushed
  as those days when the winds' extended treaty lulls
  the sea, when beaches loll back in pacific slumber
  as breezes die and summer's motionless heat causes
  forest leaves and clouds to drowse; storm-loud lakes sink; pools
  and streams, baked dry by relentless sunlight, make no sound.
  

• Argos: Tydeus's return & call to arms; Adrastus advises caution as Mars inspires Anger, Rage, Panic, etc.
  
  
• Adrastus consults prophets, esp. Amphiaraus: haruspicium (sheep) + augury (Romanization: raptors & screech owls, omen of swans and 7 "victorious" eagles, 3.537-45)
  
  
• prophets silent, war-crazed Argives demand response: Capaneus the atheist ("Courage is my God"; "The first / creator was Fear: 'Let there be gods'", 3.598ff.); warnings from Amphiaraus ignored (3.620ff.)
  
  
• Argia's appeal to her father (3.678ff.), "Start the war, father"; Adrastus still hesitant
  
  
  Thebaid 4 (summary): three years passed (!), Argive & Theban forces muster
  
  
  L: Atalanta wrestling Peleus (ca. 550 BCE); R: Reni, Atalanta & Hippomenes (ca. 1625)

• catalogue of Argive warriors (Calliope, 4.39-343)
  
  
  GROUPS
  
  
  Trailer of 2016 remake
  
  
  
• cut to Thebes: simultaneous mustering of defense (Rumor), “. . . rather slowly, it must be said, / and ashamed of king and cause" (4.349-50)
  
  Thebaid 4.352-61 (lack of enthusiasm for Eteocles's cause; war's non-combatants)
  Dejected, low in morale, short on battle
  lust, they pledged shaking hands. One for a loving parent
  in feeble health made moan, one for his young wife's sweet youth
  and the poor, hapless baby now growing ripe in her belly.
  The War Lord made no man hot. The very ramparts
  —walls Amphion raised, once mighty, now weakened by long neglect—
  leaned to one side, already sapped by age . . .
  
  . . . Even so, a vengeful craze for iron
  swept through Boeotian towns. Ties of kinship moved them more
  than did the need for their help expressed by the unjust king—
  a man like a lone wolf that's attacked an abundant flock . . .
  
  
  Pentheus is torn apart by Ino and Agave (ca. 450 BCE)
  
  
• Eteocles summons Tiresias & Manto (blind father's guide): sacrifice, haruspicium, augury insufficient > necromancy/opening underworld at high noon ("recipe", 4.417ff.)
  
  
• bloodline of Cadmus, dark Theban past appear in parade of the dead (4.553ff.; cf. cf. Aeneid 6)
  
  Thebaid 4.553-74 (Manto describes Theban ghosts summoned to father; cf. Anchises to Aeneas)
  "First to touch his lifeless lips to the pool of blood is
  Cadmus, and right behind her husband hovers the child of
  Cytherea: twin snakes atop their heads sip too. [Harmonia]
  Sons of Earth, their comrades, surround them, the tribe of Mars
  whose lifetime lasted a single day: each hand holds
  weapons, each grips a sword hilt; they parry, they block, they attack
  with the frenzy of living men, nor do they care to guzzle
  from the grisly trench—they thirst to suck one another's blood! [Spartoi]
  Close by huddle Cadmus' daughters and the sons they lament:
  here we discern Autonoë bereaved; breathless Ino [Autonoë, Actaeon's mother; Ino, mother of Melicertes, harried by Juno]
  looking back at bowmen and pressing her sweet son and heir
  to her full breasts; arms outflung, Semele shielding her belly; [Semele, mother of Dionysus]
  thyrsus now shattered, her bare breast dappled with blood, God
  just now departed, the Cadmeian mother of Pentheus [Agave]
  chases him, wailing—he flees along Lethe's pathless tracts,
  even beyond the Stygian lakes, where his gentler parent,
  Echion, weeps and reassembles his dismembered corpse. [father of Pentheus]
  Sad Lycus I know, and Aeolides, right arm crooked behind [Lycus, killed by Hercules; Aoelides = Athamas, father of Learchus]
  his back, shoulder burdoned with dangling dead. Aristaeus' [Actaeon]
  famous son has not changed his face nor yet the rebuke
  of his transformation: his brow bristling with antlers, his fist
  with lances, he flings off hounds whose jaws gape wide to wound."
  
  
• Tiresias concludes dejected ghosts of Argos portend Theban victory (4.588ff.); Laius given blood
  


Pentheus dismembered (Attic red-figure kylix, 480 BCE)


Thebaid 4.636-44 (hateful Laius’s confusing prophecy to Eteocles)
"War on all fronts is coming, war
with troops beyond count, as the fateful Marcher urges
Lerna's sons with his lash. Earth's portents await them, as do
divine weapons, beauteous deaths, and heinous delays
of flames for cremation. Victory for Thebes is assured, have no
fear; your ferocious brother will not gain the kingdom . . . but
Furies will! And twofold sin, and by wretched blades
(just my luck!) your cruel father wins." When he’s said all this,
he slipped off and left them to puzzle his knotty riddle