Thebaid (Latin Poem) - Influence

Influence

In the late 12th century a French verse romance, Le roman de Thèbes, was composed by an unknown author, probably at the court of Henry II of England. Here the Thebaid is transformed into a chivalric epic. Giovanni Boccaccio, the 14th century Italian poet and author best known for writing the Decameron, also borrowed heavily from the Thebaid when composing his Teseida (which, in turn, was used heavily by Chaucer when composing The Knight’s Tale for the Canterbury Tales). Of particular importance is a scene in which Mercury is sent to the realm of Mars. All three of these works (as well as Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene) contain large tracts of allegorical figures that are housed in War’s realm and which represent the various futilities of war and violence.

Finally, one of the chief reasons that Statius is remembered today is because of the poet Dante Alighieri. Like Virgil, who is a character in the first two books of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Statius, too, plays a large role in the Comedy: Dante and Virgil meet Statius in Purgatory, and he accompanies the two to the Earthly Paradise at the summit of the holy mountain. Through the medium of Dante, Statius gets to meet his precursor, Virgil, and praise him personally. This scene is justified as the historical Statius devoted the closing lines of his Thebaid to praise of Virgil.