Thebaid

“… [Tisiphone] without pause / took her well-known way to Thebes, for no road sees her / speed to and fro more often—she likes it better than home.” 

In myth and ancient literature, the Furies were the special agents of vengeance for interfamilial crime. Thebes is so infused with it, Statius posits, that Tisiphone thinks of the city as her home.

“One obsessive question / wracks the man night and day: When will he see his brother, humbled, / step down from the throne, find himself master of Thebes and all / her might? He’d gladly trade his life for that bright dawn!” 

Polynices’ strange obsessiveness here is early foreshadowing of his potential for tyranny. This is not how a hero behaves. 

“… They had come here, he felt, led / by the Gods’ clear design, the men prophetic Apollo’s riddling rhymes intended to be his sons-in-law—men / one mistook for beasts!” 

This line refers to Apollo’s prophecy to Adrastus, which promised him sons-in-law. Interestingly, Polynices and Tydeus are likened to beasts—and they will soon devolve into beastly behavior.