Losing Half of the Team: Polynices’ Loss of Tydeus
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Name: Statius Date: 45 – 96 CE Region: Naples [modern Italy] Citation: Thebiad 9.82 – 85 |
Polynices
was led away [from his friend Tydeus’ body]
like
a bull who has just lost
its
yoke-mate, the companion of its labors.
It
walks away from the furrow it had begun,
leaving
the job unfinished,
with
lowered head; it
drags
the now empty half-yoke,
while
a weeping farmer struggles
to
hold up the other half.
Losing Half of the Team: Polynices’ Loss of Tydeus
Ducitur
amisso qualis consorte laborum
deserit inceptum media inter iugera sulcum
Taurus iners colloque iugum deforme remisso
parte trahit, partem lacrimans sustentat arator.
Statius [Publius Papinius Statius; 45 – 96 CE, modern Italy] was one of the most
influential epic poets of the so-called “Silver Age” [the generations of
authors who lived after the reign of Augustus and before the reign of the “Five
Good Emperors”]. Statius spent most of his life in Naples, Italy. His most
famous work, the Thebaid, is an epic poem that describes the civil war
between the descendants of Oedipus. He also wrote the Achilleid, a short
epic on the boyhood of Achilles.
