the Thebaid that has been described by the Latinist Michael Dewar as the "most sensitive and intelligent" among Statius' medieval admirers. The Thebaid played an important role in the work of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. Its influence on the Divine Comedy is, according to Dewar, "manifest and omnipresent". Dante's fascination for Statius, whom he erroneously considered to have been a Christian, is illustrated by his appearance, alongside Vergil, on the fifth terrace of the Purgatorio. Modern approaches Modern classicists held the Thebaid in low esteem for most of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Their views were rooted in a distaste for Statius' perceived lack of originality and his ties to the autocratic regime of the emperor Domitian. Representing such attitudes, the Latinist Robert Maxwell Ogilvie wrote in 1980 that "the Thebaid cannot be said to be about anything". Along with a general re-evaluation of imperial Latin texts, the second half of the 20th century saw a resurgence of critical interest in the poem. In 1973, David Vessey's Statius and the Thebaid provided a sympathetic study which still acknowledged some of the flaws traditionally ascribed by classical scholars. Towards the end of the century, a revisionist school of thought interpreted the Thebaid'' as a subtle criticism of autocratic government. The poem has since been rehabilitated to a place closer to the centre of the literary canon. References Works cited 1st-century Latin books Epic poems in Latin Poetry by Statius