Published in the early 90s AD, it contains 9748 lines arranged in 12 books, and recounts the clash of two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, over the throne of the Greek city of Thebes.

Although its source material derives predominantly from the Greek literary tradition, the Thebaid has close ties with other Latin texts such as Vergil's Aeneid and the tragedies of Seneca the Younger.

The poem's central themes include the relationship between politics and the family, civil war, and the amoral acts to which it gives rise.

The Thebaid was not widely read in antiquity, but was held in high esteem throughout the Middle Ages, when multiple adaptions of the poem were composed in vernacular languages.

While classical scholars of the 19th and early 20th century criticised the poem for a perceived lack of originality and taste, a resurgence of critical interest has since brought it closer to the centre of the literary canon.

He also explains that the feast commemorates a legend from his city's history: After Apollo defeated the serpent Python, he went to King Crotopus of Argos to purify himself.

She kept her pregnancy secret in fear of her father’s reaction and gave birth to a son (Linus according to other sources, but unnamed in the Thebaid),[1] whom she entrusted to a herdsman to be raised.

After several days, he bows to his allies' pressure and lets his seers Amphiaraus and Melampus find out whether a war is sanctioned by the gods.

The Argive princes attack the serpent in order to avenge the child's death; Capaneus succeeds in killing it and thereby incurs the enmity of Jupiter.

Keen to protect their saviour, the Argives initiate a commotion at Lycurgus' palace, from which Hypsipyle is saved by her sons Thoas and Euneus who had arrived in search of their lost mother.

Amphiaraus, aided by his patron Apollo, kills dozens of enemies in a frenzy until a large chasm opens up and absorbs him into the underworld.

Driven beyond sanity by hatred toward the man who fatally wounded him and the pain of dying, Tydeus cracks open Melanipus's skull and devours his brains.

Within the city, Tiresias consults the gods and is given an omen: Menoeceus, the son of the leading Theban, Creon, and nephew of Jocasta, must be sacrificed to attain peace.

On the Argive side, Capaneus climbs the walls himself and, in an excess of hubris, vows to challenge Jupiter himself; the god, in turn, strikes him down with a thunderbolt.

When they learn of Creon's decree, they decide to split up: Polynices' widow Argia goes to Thebes, the other women to Athens in order to seek the protection of King Theseus.

[5] In spite of this, three overarching sections are acknowledged by a majority of scholars:[6] According to the classicist Kathleen Coleman, the Thebaid displays "a particularly Roman preoccupation with the relationship between politics and the family".

[8] The politics of Thebes are inextricably linked with those of its royal family: the rupture between Eteocles and Polynices results in a split within the Theban polity and leads ultimately to civil war.

[9] Another aspect of this theme is the dominance of male actors over their female contemporaries which mirrors the patriarchal society of Flavian Rome.

The writer C. S. Lewis considered his development of this narrative device an important predecessor of medieval forms of allegorical writing.

[11] Lewis illustrates this point with his analysis of the portrayal of Mars in the Thebaid: instead of playing a mythological role, the god is always in a state of blind wrath and has come to represent the concept of warfare.

[13] The Thebaid, classicist Randall Ganiban writes, is unique in Latin poetry for the degree to which its protagonists indulge in such behaviour without serious moral opposition.

Hypsipyle's tale, embedded within the Nemean episode, introduces nearly an entire book of material extraneous to the Theban legend.

[19] Although the precise dating of the Thebaid is unknown, the poem is thought to have been written during the reign of Domitian (80s AD) and published in the early 90s.

A Thebaid may have formed part of the Epic Cycle, a group of archaic hexameter poems of which little first hand evidence survives.

[26] Euripides' Phoenissae and Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes, two plays which enjoyed great popularity at Rome, have recently been shown to have influenced Statius' depiction of the Theban war.

[28] Among the Latin literary tradition, the Aeneid, Vergil's epic about the travails of Aeneas, served as Statius' principal model.

[29] The poem also draws on various poetic texts from the first century AD, the most important of which are Ovid's Metamorphoses, Lucan's Bellum civile and the tragedies of Seneca the Younger.

[32] The poet Claudian, writing at the court of the emperor Honorius around 400 AD, imitated many of the stylistic features found in the Thebaid.

Their views were rooted in a distaste for Statius' perceived lack of originality and his ties to the autocratic regime of the emperor Domitian.

In 1973, David Vessey's Statius and the Thebaid provided a sympathetic study which still acknowledged some of the flaws traditionally ascribed by classical scholars.