Letters from Tomis

Book Review

Statius. Thebaid, Books 8–12. Achilleid. Translated by D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Loeb Classical Library No. 498, vol. 2, Harvard University Press, 2004.

Publius Papinius Statius’s Achilleid—a late first-century CE Latin epic left unfinished at the time of the poet’s death—is a tantalizing fragment of what might have rivaled the Aeneid and the Metamorphoses had it been completed. Composed in dactylic hexameter and begun around 94 CE, the Achilleid survives in only about 1,100 lines, encompassing Achilles’ childhood, his concealment on Scyros, and hints of his future wrath and glory in the Trojan War. What exists is not a heroic epic in the traditional Roman mold but a witty, erotically charged, and playfully ironic text that interrogates heroism, gender, and fate.

Statius, best known for his Thebaid, here departs from martial grimness to explore the paradoxes of identity. Central to the surviving Achilleid is the episode of Achilles disguised as a girl among the daughters of King Lycomedes. This conceit, drawn from mythological tradition but enriched by Statius’s flair for psychological nuance, allows for an examination of gender fluidity that is both comic and unsettling. The godly Thetis—Achilles’ overbearing and prescient mother—drives the plot, desperate to shield her son from the Trojan War. Her efforts produce an image of divine motherhood that is at once tender, manipulative, and tragic.

What distinguishes the Achilleid from the epic tradition is its tonal play. It borrows the epic register but infuses it with the liveliness of Ovidian transformation tales, courtly romance, and erotic intrigue. Achilles, typically the emblem of masculine martial virtue, here becomes a protean figure—virile and vulnerable, sexually aggressive and theatrically coy, caught between destiny and disguise. Statius revels in the comic potential of the situation while never allowing readers to forget the war hero Achilles is fated to become. The contrast between this youthful episode and the eventual rage of Achilles at Troy heightens the sense of tragic irony.

Stylistically, the Achilleid is lush, rhetorical, and intertextual. It owes much to Ovid in its playfulness and narrative agility, yet retains the poetic density and gravitas familiar to readers of the Thebaid. The poem brims with vivid similes, dramatic dialogues, and psychological introspection—particularly in Achilles’ own reflections on masculinity and desire. Yet Statius resists the linearity of traditional epic, opting instead for a fragmentary and episodic structure that reflects the protagonist’s own instability.

The Achilleid invites interpretation through contemporary lenses. Its exploration of gender performance, maternal control, and the tension between personal identity and social expectation feels remarkably modern. It is a text about becoming—about a boy not yet a man, a hero not yet at war, a godling not yet immortalized in song.

The tragedy, of course, is that Statius did not live to complete the poem. We are left only with a prologue to what promised to be a radical reimagining of Achilles’s life. Nonetheless, what remains of the Achilleid is rich enough to sustain critical engagement and delight. It stands not only as a fascinating counterpoint to Homer but as a meditation on the instability of epic itself.

The Achilleid is a brilliant, unfinished jewel of Roman epic poetry—simultaneously subversive and traditional, comic and tragic, lyrical and ironic. It deserves a place alongside the great epics of antiquity and offers profound insights into identity, power, and the literary imagination.