The inevitable inconsistency in epic Zeus/Jupiter

Abstract

For years scholars have plunged headlong into looking for inconsistencies in Statius’ Thebaid and, obviously, they have found them profusely. Specifically, there is a degree of critical consensus that the inconsistent image of the Statian Jupiter are due to the poets’ negligence or carelessness. And, in fact, there is no denying that Jupiter contradicts himself in the Thebaid on those occasions when he alludes to his relationship to Fate. Nontheless, the Flavian poet will not be the sole object of my attention in this paper. Contemporary scholarship has a tendency to bring up Seneca’s theories (Dial. 1.5.8) whenever the post-Homeric Jupiter (even the Virgilian one) touches on what has come to be seen as an «incoherence». However, except for the Hesiodic epics, Zeus/Jupiter’s theological status is as unstable throughout the Greek literary tradition as in Statius. Hence, we should accept that, during centuries, the classical scholarship has forgotten the narrative authority and its power to manipulate pre-existing material in order to create new meanings and worldviews. Perhaps we, interpreters of ancient literature, have a tendency to interpret as inconsistences all those facts which do not meet our own expectations or prejudices.