mission to retrieve their husbands' bodies. When they learn of Creon's decree, they decide to split up: Polynices' widow Argia goes to Thebes, the other women to Athens in order to seek the protection of King Theseus. Argia meets Antigone at the site of Polynices' body. After weeping over their shared loss, they burn his body on Eteocles' pyre. At Athens, the Argive women seek refuge at the Altar of Mercy. Having returned from an expedition against the Amazons, Theseus agrees to come to their aid. He directs his army towards Thebes where he routs the exhausted defenders and kills King Creon. Structure Following the model of Vergil's Aeneid, the Thebaid is divided into 12 books, each containing between 720 and 946 lines in the dactylic hexameter. There is no universally recognised theory about the poem's internal structure, though the existing approaches can be summarised as follows: 1) two equal halves along the lines of the Aeneid, 2) four quarters of three books ("triads") based on sense breaks between individual books, and 3) four asymmetrical, thematic sections. In spite of this, three overarching sections are acknowledged by a majority of scholars: Books 1–4: build-up to the war, preparations at Argos and Thebes Books 5–6: the Argive army at Nemea, sometimes described as mora ("delay") Books 7–11: war at Thebes, deaths of the seven princes Themes Politics According to the classicist Kathleen Coleman, the Thebaid displays a "a particularly Roman preoccupation with the relationship between politics and the family". The politics of Thebes are inextricably linked with those of its royal family: the rupture between Eteocles and Polynices results in a split within the Theban polity and leads ultimately to civil war. Another aspect of this theme is the dominance of male actors over their female contemporaries which mirrors the patriarchal society of Flavian Rome. Statius shares this concern with his epic predecessor Lucan, whose Bellum civile portrayed the civil war between Pompey and Caesar as failure of their marriage ties. Moral and theological outlook Statius' depiction of the gods marks a departure from the mythological anthropomorphism exhibited by Homer and Vergil towards allegory. The writer C. S. Lewis considered his development of this narrative device an important predecessor of medieval forms of allegorical writing. Lewis illustrates this point with his analysis of the portrayal of Mars in the Thebaid: instead of playing a mythological role, the god is always in