This blog was researched and written by Visualising War and Peace student Elizabeth Walker; School of Classics, University of St Andrews, October 2023. It discusses Statius’ epic poem The Achilleid, looking particularly at how the narrative invites us to visualise Achilles’ time away from war while hidden by his mother on the island of Scyros. As Elizabeth explains, not-fighting and ‘unwarlike’ places are represented as feminine phenomena; but also as temporary options/states, always threatened by the return of violence. Her blog helps us think about ancient habits of visualising peace (pictured negatively, as a short-term ceasefire, a vacuum which war will always inevitably fill, even an aberration from the norm of from nature) as well as habits of visualising the kind of macho heroism which Achilles has come to embody.
In its very title, Statius’ Achilleid says from the outset that it will put the most famous warrior known in antiquity (and beyond) at the centre. Those things inextricable from his name – heroism, arms and war – we might expect to hold centre stage alongside him. Yet Statius’ epic never witnesses Achilles enacting what is so integral to his Homeric characterisation: Achilles does not ‘do war’, nor for that matter is he anywhere near where the tensions of the Trojan conflict are building. In fact, the bulk of the Statius’ epic will narrate Achilles’ time on Scyros, the island where Thetis his mother chose to hide him, in an attempt to delay his fated role in the Trojan War. Even the journeys to, and then eventually from, this island, frame the narrative focus around Achilles’s time on Scyros. This blog explores what it means for such a famous warrior to exist in a place depicted as distant from the epicentre of war and conflict. It will analyse how Statius uses physical spaces in particular to visualise the literal and metaphorical boundaries of war.
Firstly, it is clear that Statius creates certain physical spaces to hold distinct functions in his narrative. From the outset, the sea is identified as the space within which war is operating. The epic begins with Achilles’ nymph mother Thetis emerging from the sea in fearful response for her son’s fate. She witnesses Paris’ fleet reaching the Hellespont, a clear signal to the building momentum of the Trojan War. This immediately alludes to another time in which Thetis was alarmed at the sight of a ship – that of the Argo, as it sailed to regain the golden fleece, in Catullus’ carmen 64. Through this, Statius clearly sets his narrative within the epic literary tradition, which cycles round a paradigm of violence and conflict.[i] Yet here Statius also draws on the Aeneid, contrasting Venus’ use of a storm that delays Aeneas with Thetis requesting but failing to get Neptune to initiate one.[ii] This inversion of the expected direction of the narrative signals that Statius’ narrative is taking a different bearing, literally and thematically: Statius’ story of Achilles will turn away from where war is happening to places on land and on the fringes of war. In turn, different locations bring broader thematic spaces for Statius to visualise less war-filled parts of Achilles’ narrative. As Rimell puts it, Statius’ narrative ‘lingers in caves, valleys, homes, groves’.[iii] Statius will move Achilles between different remote physical landscapes to disrupt the narrative’s progression towards war, rather than utilise the pre-existing naval landscape of war.
Therefore, whilst Achilles inhabits mountains and islands, in contrast, the sea is occupied by activities of war. As Thetis leaves Achilles with King Lycomedes on Scyros, Statius shifts to where the hub of the war is, utilising language evocative of high epic register to describe it.[iv] The war preparations are depicted as all-consumptive of the natural elements: ‘the sea cannot support the vessels, and the sails devour every shred of wind’ (501-502). The earth and sea are even depicted as merging: ‘mountains were stripped bare to the sky, every forest now floated’ (481-482). The idea that the sea and land converge because of war distinctly visualises war as an all-encompassing and metaphysical phenomenon, which does violence to the environment, not just to people. It also anticipates that even Achilles’ refuge on land will not mean he is immune to the reaches of its power.
Yet, even if the island of Scyros is known to only be a temporary refuge, it is still depicted as physically distant from the epicentre of war. Purcell suggests that mountains and islands were perceived to be ‘naturally marginal’ in antiquity.[v] In this way, the focus on journeying helps us to visualise Statius’ use of peripheries. Thetis first travels to retrieve Achilles from Mount Pelion, then journeys to Scyros. Achilles’ reaction as he awakes on the beach of Scyros paints the scope of this physical distance for the reader:
He was stunned by what he saw.
What place is this, what waves, where is Pelion?
Everything he sees is changed and unfamiliar,
And he isn’t sure he recognizes his mother…
Statius, Achilleid, 280-283
This sense of Achilles’ utter disorientation not only works to create a cinematic effect that a large expanse of space has been crossed. It also draws out the changes this new place will bring. The warrior-like activities that Achilles was pursuing in Mount Pelion will be replaced with cross-dressing and dancing. Therefore, Scyros is both geographically far away, but also functions as a detached conceptual space within which an alternative narrative of Achilles disconnected from war can be explored. In this way, Achilles’ disorientation perhaps invites the reader to view the subsequent episode on Scyros with a similarly dream-like and detached lens alongside him, one that frees up analysis of the gender ambivalence he will undergo.
However, the thematic use of gender in Achilles’ cross-dressing is also coded in the language used to describe Scyros as a place:
But Thetis spent the night beside the roaring breakers,
trying to decide where she should hide her son,
in what land, what secret place. Thrace is nearest
but much too martial… Sestos and Abydos
are too accessible to ships…
she had heard bevies of girls from Lycomedes’
unwarlike palace screaming in play along there shore.
This she likes, the safest place for the fearful mother.
Statius, Achilleid, selected lined from 224-283
Thetis’ principal consideration is that Scyros is ‘unwarlike’, the Latin word for which (inbelli) is etymologically formed from the Latin word for war (bellum). The use of a negativized word invites contrast rather than complete antithesis, leaving ambiguous as to what degree Scyros is ‘without’ war, and leaving open the possibility that it could be ‘with’ war. Moreover, it is a word that denotes both the sense of a place being ‘without war’, but also could denote a lack of masculine strength.[vi] Therefore, this adjective fundamentally introduces gender into the characterisation of Scyros. The description that ‘bevies of girls (were) screaming in play along the shore’ expands on the island’s supposed inherent lack of masculinity by introducing the binary opposite – femininity. Scyros as an ‘unwarlike’ place is therefore also a domestic, feminine space. This is furthered as Achilles immediately catches sight of one of Lycomedes’ daughters, Deidamia, and desires her (lines 277-310). The language and metaphors Statius uses to describe this change is distinctly that of love elegy.[vii] Achilles’ cheeks ‘redden’, and it was as if he had ‘absorbed liquid fire’. Therefore, Statius even uses the language of a different literary genre to mark Scyros as a space where the ‘feminine’ abounds, in opposition to the ‘epic’, which is often synonymous with ‘masculine’ spaces where war abounds. In short, Statius perhaps visualises ‘femininity’ to be a boundary of sorts to war. It helps generate potential in the idea that Scyros could be a place which precludes war.
However, the gender overlap that results from Achilles’ cross-dressing ultimately reflects the way the ‘unwarlike’ space of Scyros will also come to overlap with its conceptual opposing counterpart – war. Statius blurs the polarity that the physical geography of island and sea engendered, destabilising the physical separation between Scyros and the epicentre of the war by bringing Ulysses and Diomedes to Scyros seeking Achilles out:
The closer they approached
the clearer it was Scyros, with Tritonia above
guarding the tranquil shore…
Statius, Achilleid, 777-779
The notion that Athena (Tritonia), the goddess of war, guards Scyros, is somewhat paradoxical. The need for a guard is inherently not peaceful. Scyros is a place which must actively prevent war from impeding, and a ‘feminine’ goddess as a guard does not have absolute power against the immense ‘masculine’ grip of war.
Furthermore, whilst war is encroaching on Scyros from the outside, this is underpinned by an internal assertion of violence. In his soliloquy, Achilles expresses frustration about Scyros as an oppressive place of confinement which renders him emasculated and far from his deep affinity for war (1.699-717):
How long will you endure
Your fearful mother’s schemes and waste the prime
Of your life in unmanly captivity? You are not allowed
to carry Mars’ weapons, or to hunt startled beasts?
Statius, Achilleid, 699-701
The phrase ‘unmanly prison’ (imbelli carcere) reflects Achilles’ perception of his situation on Scyros cross-dressed as someone forcefully hemmed in (a situation also brought about by a woman – his mother). The use again of the Latin word imbelli (‘unwarlike’) is here taken as ‘unmanly’. This choice of the translator corroborates an interpretation that gender is inseparable to understanding Statius’ conceptualisation of war. Furthermore, Julene Abad Del Vecchio interprets what here is translated as ‘captivity’ (carcere) to allude also to a horse’s ‘starting box’. The dual meanings of ‘captivity’ and ‘starting box’ contribute to Achilles and the reader’s viewpoints respectively: Achilles views his situation as a long-lasting ‘prison’, yet a horse’s ‘starting box’ anticipates for the reader his release from that space.[viii] Achilles’ cross-dressing will in fact be revealed to be a gender ambiguity that cannot be reconciled without reassertion of his masculinity. Achilles does this through violence: the rape of Deidamia (720). This is Achilles’ ‘first act as a warrior, and the first act of war’.[ix]As Rimell concludes, it is important to recognise that rape and war are fundamentally interrelated:
…rape is not just a crime that happens in war or on the edge of war, but what war does and is; that, in other words, those realms we are taught to view as separate, or to be separated (domestic and military violence, closed-in elegy and roaming epic, the mother and the man), are undividable and indeed symbiotic…[x]
Therefore, Statius uses conceptual overlap to visualise the all-consuming nature of war. Whilst Scyros is initially a place where war seems at its fringes, it becomes a place within which the ultimate act of war and violence arises; physical space cannot boundary out war.
Ultimately, in the Achilleid Statius constructs physical spaces to explore the boundaries of where war can operate – and what its absence looks like. Scyros is initially projected as the most feasible place in which war is unlikely to reach. Statius’ use of femininity as a defining quality attributed to Scyros, poses the possibility that this island is as ‘unwarlike’ as a place can be. It has literal and conceptual distance from conflict and violence, subsuming Achilles into the activities opposite to that of an epic hero – dressing as a girl. Yet, as aptly surmised by Rimell, the Achilleid proposes that ‘epic energy must ferment in enclosures, how – paradoxically – war must be avoided or postponed in order to catalyse amor ferri, the passion for war’.[xi] Scyros serves only as a temporary space of respite from the broader framing of Achilles’ epic narrative – a temporary break from war, which perhaps even increases Achilles’ passion for it. The feminine quality of the island does not make it invulnerable; it only strengthens the violence that surges from within. Statius’ use of vast expanses of space reflects the way that for Statius’ readership, the Roman empire had grown to its largest; it was plausible that war could be in one place and not another. Yet the fact that the first act of ‘war’ Achilles commits occurs on Scyros reflects the way that the civil wars of 69CE also generated from the central safe ‘haven’ of Rome.[xii]Similarly, the world of the Achilleid is one in which no one is immune to the far-reaching inevitability of war, even in those places most unlikely to have war cross the threshold.
The line numbers referred to throughout are taken from this translation: Lombardo, Stanley. Statius: Achilleid. (Indianapolis; Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2015)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abad Del Vecchio, Julene. ‘Subeunt Amazones: Tracing the Amazons in Statius’ Achilleid’, American Journal of Philology 144, no. 2 (2023): 321-349.
Abad Del Vecchio, Julene. “On the Use of carcer at Stat. Achil.1.625″ Philologus 165, no. 2 (2021): 326-330.
Augoustakis, A. ‘Achilles and the Poetics of Manhood: Re(de)fining Europe and Asia in Statius’ Achilleid’, Classical World 109, no. 2 (2015): 195-219.
Bessone, Federica. “Allusive (Im-)Pertinence in Statius’ Epic” in Intertextuality in Flavian Epic Poetry: Contemporary Approaches, edited by Neil Coffee, Chris Forstall, Lavinia Galli Milić and Damien Nelis (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020) pp. 133-168.
Boyle, A.J. “Introduction: Reading Flavian Rome” in Flavian Rome edited by Anthony Boyle and William J. Dominik, (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2003) pp. 1-67
Fantuzzi, Marco. Achilles in Love: Intertextual Studies (Oxford; New York: Oxford university Press, 2012)
Heslin, P. J. The Transvestite Achilles: Gender and Genre in Statius’ Achilleid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Heslin, Peter. “Introduction” in Statius: Achilleid by Lombardo, Stanley (Indianapolis; Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2015) pp vii-xxxi
McAuley, M. ‘Ambiguus Sexus: Epic Masculinity in Transition in Statius’ Achilleid’, Akroterion 55, no. 1 (2010): 27-60
Purcell, Nicholas. “Mediterranean Perspectives on Departure, Displacement, and Home” in The Returning Hero: nostoi and Traditions of Mediterranean Settlement edited by Simon Hornblower, and Giulia Biffis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) pp. 267-286
Rimell, Victoria. “Imperial enclosure, epic spectacle” in The Closure of Space in Roman Poetics: Empire’s Inward Turn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) pp. 231-275
[i] Heslin (2015) ix.
[ii] Ibid. x.
[iii] Rimell (2015) 253.
[iv] Heslin (2015) xvii.
[v] Purcell (2018) 273.
[vi] TLL s.v. “imbellis” II.
[vii] Fantuzzi (2012) 19.
[viii] Abad Del Vecchio (2021) 329.
[ix] Ibid.
[x] Rimell (2015) 258-259.
[xi] Rimell (2015) 253.
[xii] Boyle (2003) 51.