for Puteaneus, is represented by a single manuscript written at Corbie Abbey and housed in Paris. The other, labelled ω, has spawned numerous descendants, though its original copy, known as the archetype, is lost. P and ω offer diverging text on many occasions with P being considered less corrupted by mistakes. The first printed edition based on these manuscripts was published in Rome around 1470. Influences Long before Statius wrote the Thebaid, the Theban legend had been present in ancient Greek literary culture. A Thebaid may have formed part of the Epic Cycle, a group of archaic hexameter poems of which little first hand evidence survives. A poem of the same name was written by the poet Antimachus, who lived in the 4th century BC. It is unknown whether Statius made use of his work since it only survives in a small number of fragments. The Athenian playwright Sophocles wrote three well-known plays about Thebes (Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone), though no sustained interaction with them has been proved. Euripides' Phoenissae and Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes, two plays which enjoyed great popularity at Rome, have recently been shown to have influenced Statius' depiction of the Theban war. Among the Latin literary tradition, the Aeneid, Vergil's epic about the travails of Aeneas, served as Statius' principal model. His debt to this particular poem is expressed near the end of the Thebaid, where the poet exhorts his poem "not to challenge the divine Aeneid, but to follow her at a distance and to always revere her footsteps". The poem also draws on various poetic texts from the first century AD, the most important of which are Ovid's Metamorphoses, Lucan's Bellum civile and the tragedies of Seneca the Younger. Reception Antiquity and the Middle Ages Writing a generation after Statius, the satirist Juvenal stated that the Thebaid still garnered steady attention from the Roman public. In spite of his testimony, there is little other evidence to suggest that the poem had much currency until late antiquity. The poet Claudian, writing at the court of the emperor Honorius around 400 AD, imitated many of the stylistic features found in the Thebaid. Preserved through the Carolingian Renaissance, the poem was widely read during the High Middle Ages, sparking adaptations such as the Middle Irish Togail na Tebe ("Destruction of Thebes"). Joseph of Exeter, nephew of archbishop Baldwin of Exeter, wrote poetry modelled on