Helen Lovatt

Statius' Ekphrastic Games: Thebaid 6.531-47

Statius is the arch-describer. Even when it was universally agreed that his poetry was essentially second-rate hack-work, his ability to evoke the visual and his relationship to works of art provided fascination and interest. Yet the ekphraseis in the Thebaid have not received much detailed critical attention. This paper looks at the double ekphrasis of the prizes at the end of the chariot race in Thebaid 6. If ekphraseis tend to be ignored and passed over, if ekphraseis are moments outside narrative, still visions for the viewer in the text, interludes, as it were, then an ekphrasis within a set of games is doubly distant from the thrust of the text. For games themselves have suffered the same marginalisation: read as purely ‘decorative’ or ‘imitative’ their importance for understanding the wider realities of the text has often passed unnoticed. An ekphrasis, then, is indeed a sort of game, and, I would argue, this is particularly so in this case. For Statius uses this passage to make a new move in his poetic contests with his predecessors. He takes one Homeric object and one Virgilian object, decorates them with Ovid and sets them against each other. Hinds has read the Achilleid as an Ovidian epic but Ovid is also extremely important in the Thebaid and much more work is needed on this.

East, West, and Finding Yourself in Caroline Lawrence’s “Roman Mysteries”

Caroline Lawrence’s “Roman Mysteries” series uses an ancient Roman setting to explore themes of identity for her four young detective characters. While they do not visit Eastern Europe, ideas of East and West, centre and periphery, are important in making sense of their journeys, both literal and emotional. This popular series of detective novels for children aged eight and above was written in the United Kingdom between 2001 and 2009 by an American living in London, and has also become a well-received bbc television series.1 The theme of “finding yourself”—going away in order to grow up and gain self-knowledge—has a particular importance in children’s literature.2 While one can argue that it lies at the heart of much literature, children are seen as not-yet-complete humans, who need to develop more than adults. So E.L. Konigsburg, in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1967) sends Claudia Kincaid to live in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in order to better understand herself, to find the something different inside her which allows her to continue living her life. So Lucy goes through the wardrobe to Narnia, and Bilbo goes on a journey in The Hobbit. Arguably, this theme is already