Notes on the epic poems of Statius

Extract

At their first meeting Polynices and Tydeus come to blows. They are reconciled by Adrastus, who expresses the hope that their quarrel will lead to loyal friendship between them, as it did.

Esse pro fuisse dixit, says Lactantius, more ingenuously than Klotz, who tries to make the same thing more palatable by saying esse est pro imperfecti quodammodo infinitiuo. Some have taken the accusative and infinitive to be a general statement, but Heuvel is clearly right in saying that it is Tydeus and Polynices whom the poet has in mind. The most favoured solution has been Grater's conjecture isse, but (as Helm says) that produces an unnatural expression (the passages adduced by Mueller are not parallels); Mozley renders it by ‘grew’, thereby translating not what stands in his text but what ought perhaps to stand there, namely <cr>esse, a conjecture of Gil, which has been almost entirely overlooked. This contracted form is found in extant literature only at Lucretius 3.683 and (concresse) Ovid, Met. 7.416 (at 3.200 Statius flesse). The first letters of a line are particularly liable to omission; despite Hill, I do not find it at all surprising that at 1.544 perseus lost its first letter and the remnant became aureus.