Statius’ Nemea / paradise lost

This paper examines the Nemean episode of Statius’ Thebaid (4.646-7.104). It is argued, against recent interpretations, that the episodeis not simply a Callimachean digression from martial themes : the hostilities between Argives and Nemeans recall the bella plus quam ciuilia between Caesar and Pompey ; the incursion of the Argives violently destroys Nemea’s pastoral landscape ; and Nemea becomes the site of quintessentially epic events. The snake that kills Opheltes looks back to Vergil’s Calabrian water-snake in Georgics 3 (and the Culex) : Vergil’s didactic persona had warned not to fall asleep when dangerous snakes are around. The death of the child can also be read as a pessimistic inversion of Vergil’s fourth Eclogue. On a poetic level, we witness the epic dissolution of Nemea’s pastoral world. On a political level, the Nemean episode seems to suggest the impossibility of an Augustan Golden Age in the Flavian poem’s disturbing universe of nefas. Nemea is Statius’ paradise lost.