While Statius’ interventions in the poem seem to encourage a comparison between the poem’s characters and Virgil’s heroes, Chapter 2 shows that the Thebaid actually patterns its heroic narratives after some of the most politically charged myths of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, such as the stories of Cadmus, Perseus, Hercules, and Theseus. Statius’ descriptions of dysfunctional heroes, who re-tread the failure of their Ovidian ancestors to carry on the foundational mission of Virgil’s Hercules and Aeneas, seem to rework the anti-heroic paradigm set by Ovid’s Cadmus (Met. 3–4). By exploring the darker sides of the Aeneid’s gigantomachic discourse, these narratives open the Thebaid to a redefinition of traditional heroic paradigms that potentially questions the political significance of the heroes appropriated by the Flavian emperors in their refashioning of Augustan ideology. While offering new insights into Statius’ renegotiation of poetic independence from his predecessors, this exploration also illuminates the Thebaid’s sophisticated engagement with the material and ideological environments of Flavian Rome.

This chapter examines the festival’s stories, which explained why it was being held, who its multiple founders were and why a new cult was added at the end of the sixth century. These stories focus on the gods’ victory over the Giants as the reason for the festivities and on the founders Erichthonios and Theseus. They also explain the importance of the pyrrhiche and the apobatic contest, while another important narrative concerns the cult of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, the two men identified by Athenians as the slayers of the tyrant and the bringers of democracy. Collectively, these narratives make the Panathenaia a unified occasion as a victory celebration commemorating the gods’ martial success against the Giants, and they also bring out the importance of autochthony, democracy and what being an Athenian entailed; what narrative was told at what moment depended in part on what aspect was being emphasised. Together, these stories mark the Panathenaia as the most important occasion for working out and displaying Athenian identities.