It is, however, possible for an epic to be structurally ineffective and yet possess high poetic merit. Statius' episodes do not cohere; how far have they any splendour in their isolation? The answer to the question must be on the whole unfavourable. The reasons for this are diverse. In the first place the characters for the most part fail to live. Statius can give us a vivid impression of the outward semblance of a man; we see Parthenopaeus and Atys, we see Jocasta and Antigone, we see the struggle of Eteocles and Polynices vividly enough. But we see them as strangers, standing out, it is true, from the crowd in which they move, but still wholly unknown to us. We cannot differentiate Polynices and Eteocles save that the latter, from the very situation in which he finds himself, is necessarily the more odious of the two; Polynices would have shown himself the same, had the fall of the lot given him the first year of kingship. Jocasta and Antigone, Creon and Menoeceus, Hypsipyle and Lycurgus, play their parts correctly enough, but they do not live, nor people our brain with moving images. We are told that they behaved in such and such a way under such and such circumstances; we are told, and admit, that such conduct implies certain moral qualities, but Statius does not make us feel that his characters possess such qualities. The reason for this lies partly in the fact that they all speak the same brilliant rhetoric,[560] partly in the fact that Statius lacks the direct sincerity of diction that is required for the expression of strong and poignant emotion. Anger he can depict; anger suffers less than other emotions from rhetoric. Hence it is that he has succeeded in drawing the character of Tydeus, whose brutality is redeemed from hideousness by the fact that it is based on the most splendid physical courage, and fired by strong loyalty to his comrade and sometime foe Polynices. His accents ring true. When he has gone to Thebes to plead Polynices' cause, and his demands have been angrily refused by Eteocles, who concludes by saying (ii. 449), nec ipsi, si modo notus amor meritique est gratia, patres reddere regna sinent, Nor will the fathers of the city, if they but know the love I bear them or if they have aught of gratitude, allow me to give back the kingship. Tydeus will hear no more, but breaks in with a cry of fury (ii. 452):