RT Journal Article
T1 The Guilt of Cadmus the Farmer in Statius’ Thebaid
A1 Criado Boado, Cecilia
K1 Statius
K1 Thebaid
K1 Cadmus
K1 Theban myth
K1 Agriculture and civil war
K1 Lucan
K1 Ovid
K1 Curse of Thebes
AB Statius’ Thebaid inverts the traditional positive reading of agricultural work. In the account of the founding moments of Thebes, the poet remains faithful to what is documented in the extant Greek and Roman literary material. However, as this article argues, Statius introduces two significant innovations with respect to his thematic precedents. First, Cadmus the founder is explicitly and emphatically pointed out as guilty of the internecine struggle that results from his farming. Second, he does not limit himself to sowing the soil but, previously, he plows it. The ploughing motif, although pivotal in the myth of Jason's trials in Cholchis, only appears referred to Cadmus in Ovid's Metamorphoses (3.104–5), albeit in a very succinct form. As will be examined, Statius amplifies the Ovidian suggestion, programmatically conferring negative connotations to this motif (tillage, bull, yoke, furrow, etc.) throughout his epic. Cadmus’ ill-fated tillage is unambiguously presented as the origin of the curse of Thebes and as the root cause of the present fratricidal war between Eteocles and Polynices. The dire fruits which agricultural labour invariably produces in the Cadmean farmlands echo Lucanean Thessalian fields from whose furrows, contaminated by the blood of Roman combatants, grow polluted crops. The blame that Statius places on the shoulders of Cadmus the farmer, the relationship he establishes between farming and fratricidal war, and his insistence on the perverse effects of agricultural work transform mythic Thebes into an exemplar of fratricidal Rome as apt as Lucan's historical Thessaly.
PB Cambridge University Press
YR 2024
FD 2024-01-01
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10347/47215
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10347/47215
LA eng
NO Criado, Cecilia. “The Guilt of Cadmus the Farmer in Statius’ Thebaid.” The Classical Quarterly, vol. 74, no. 1, 2024, pp. 1–18. DOI: 10.1017/S0009838824000193.
NO This article argues that Statius’ Thebaid systematically overturns the traditionally positive Roman valuation of agricultural labour by investing Cadmus’ ploughing with programmatically negative connotations. Through close intertextual analysis of Ovid, Virgil and, above all, Lucan, it shows that Cadmus’ tillage becomes the explicit origin of Thebes’ curse and of fratricidal warfare, while agricultural motifs (yoke, bull, furrow, accursed harvest) are transformed into markers of civil violence and ritual pollution.This is a work of literary criticism that re‑examines the figure of Cadmus as founder and farmer in the Thebaid against his Greek and Roman antecedents. It explores how Statius intertwines agricultural and foundation motifs with the Roman civil‑war tradition, so that Theban space and Cadmus’ ploughed fields emerge as a sinister counterpart to Lucan’s Thessaly and fratricidal Rome.
NO Cambridge University Press
DS Minerva
RD 8 jun 2026