The narrative of Adrastus in Statius’ Thebaid as a case study of intratextual poetics

The embedded narrative of Adrastus (Stat. Theb. 1. 577–668) is full of verbal repetition and is echoed in later parts of the epic, especially the Nemean episode (Theb. 4–6). This paper investigates these intratextual parallels and tries to pin down the effects of these echoes. The verbal repetition highlights motifs that play an important role in the Thebaid as a whole and connects characters, events, motifs and episodes. This intratextuality sometimes creates unity, sometimes — contrarily — discontinuity or ambiguity. This article is a case study of Statius’ intratextual poetics, a field that has thus far received little attention in scholarship on the Thebaid.