Occult(um) Aeaciden: Elisions of gender in Statius’ Achilleid

Abstract

Abstract In this paper I am discussing some passages in Statius’ Achilleid, including the opening words of the poem, where some elisions seem to effectively suggest how gender and identity of Achilles become destabilized during his stay on Scyros in women’s clothes. The elisions to be discussed affect word endings indicative of the masculine grammatical gender; in some cases, moreover, these endings are not just muted but also replaced, as it were, by their feminine equivalents. I also examine one passage where the masculine endings are emphatically not silenced despite elision; and a pair of passages where tension between the masculine and the feminine is introduced into the text by conjecture rather than by elision.