In this seminar, we will read Statius’ mini-epic, the Achilleid, a 1000-line curtailed poem dealing with the legend of the hero’s escape from the Trojan war in female disguise to the island of Scyros, postlude to his more substantial Thebaid and imagined prelude to Achilles’ fortunes in the Iliad. The poem received renewed attention in the 1990s from leading Latin scholars, who incorporated gender performance, sexuality, and Ovidian influence into the discussion, but thirty years on there is still much to explore, from intertextuality with other Greco-Roman literature to trans issues. Time allowing, we will also look at Statius’ other para-epic composition, the Silvae, his collection of “occasional” poems, which alludes sideways on to the delayed composition of Achilleid and touches on related themes, such as intimacy, castration, and miniaturized epic. We will read Silvae 2 in the edition of C. Newlands (2011) and Achilleid in the edition of O. A. C. Dilke (repr. 2005).