Profilers' Picks

Apollo, Augustus, and the Poets
Author: John F. Miller
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
$110.00 Cloth (408 p.)
ISBN: 9780521516839
B&T     MAJORS      YBP


Caesar Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, out-manoeuvred all possible rivals to absolute power to rule unchallenged for 44 years. His prosperous reign, hailed in after years as a Golden Age, achieved its stability partly through the Emperor’s canny self-presentation – his ability to employ the visual and literary arts to create an idealised public image. This new monograph focuses on one aspect of that Augustan imperial symbolism, namely, poetic representations of his close symbolic association with Apollo, the archer god of music, prophecy and colonisation.

Miller’s work complements the field of Augustan literary studies through a series of close critical analyses of the specifically ‘Augustan’ manifestations of the god in the major Latin poets. As Miller points out, however, ‘[t]o speak...of an Augustan imprint is not intended to suggest an utterly fixed ideology, which poets reflect in homage or against which they react’; it is anachronistic to conceive of a Soviet-style ‘party line’ on Apollo handed down by the Emperor, which poets simply mirrored. Rather, the dynamic nature of the ‘Imperial ideological project’, as Miller terms it, and particularly Apollo’s place within it, is shown by its continued evolution through the years of Augustus’ reign. What Miller highlights is how the poets used the poetic medium to applaud, interrogate and acknowledge the dominant themes of the Imperial ideology, in a discourse of collaboration and resistance. Equally, Miller shows that, while some instances of Apollo’s poetic figuration may have an Augustan subtext, other poems are apolitical, and intended only to evoke the god’s broader literary and religious associations.

Miller’s argument is structured over seven thematic chapters. Individually, each teases apart the finer nuances of a particular theme; collectively, they form a synoptic survey of the chronological development of the idea of Augustan Apollo during Augustus’ rule. Starting with the then-Octavian’s earliest years on the political scene, the first chapter surveys Octavian’s emergent claim to a special relationship with the god against the proliferation of similar claims from other prominent Romans amidst the turmoil of the last years of the Republic – what Miller terms ‘competitive divine self-imaging’. Early satires by Horace and an anonymous hostile lampoon are investigated as early evidence for Octavian cultivating the link between himself and Apollo.

Chapter 2 focuses on representations of Apollo at the epochal battle of Actium, where Octavian defeated Marc Antony and Cleopatra, supposedly with the aid of a divine epiphany at a critical moment of the clash. Virgil’s epic depiction of the battle in Book 8 of the Aeneid, and especially the central image which anchors the scene, of Apollo striking terror into the heart of Octavian’s enemies simply by bending his bow, is analysed at some length, becoming as it did an ‘instant classic’, and provoking imitation and responses from, among others, the elegist Propertius, two of whose poems are considered. Miller also shines an important light on two little-known Greek poems, which are of value both in their own right and also for their perspective, peripheral to the Augustan cultural hegemony, thus offering an important corrective to Roman military triumphalism.

The next chapter focuses on the role of Apollo in Virgil’s retelling of the ancient myth of Aeneas, moving from the close-up spotlight on Actian Apollo of chapter 2 to a panoramic view of the god’s complex figuration throughout Virgil’s epic. Miller conclusively shows that, while undoubted Augustan undercurrents colour the portrayal of the god in the text, Virgil in fact offers a finely shaded depiction of a god who resists simple political co-optation as a mere Augustan stooge, often reflecting the ultimately inscrutable nature of divine machinations.

Chapters 4 and 5 examine the poets’ responses to two events that placed Apollo – as Miller points out, hitherto a minor deity in Roman religion – at the forefront of the public imagination. First, the inauguration of Augustus’ spectacular Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill, which both visually dominated the Roman skyline and created an irresistible link between god and Emperor, since it was in fact built next to Augustus’ own house. The new temple, representing the cream of Augustan architecture and Greek art treasures, inspired both extended meditations and internalised asides in Propertius, Virgil, Tibullus and Ovid. Second, Apollo’s role in epochal-poetry is examined as part of contemporary concern with the dawning of a new age of peace and prosperity after the decades of civil war, centred on the Saecular Games of 17 BC, for which Horace wrote his magnificent Carmen Saeculare. As Miller notes, this festal paean gave ‘literary expression to one of the most spectacular religious celebrations that Rome had ever seen.’

The penultimate chapter examines the discursive interplay between poetics and politics, interrogating the depictions of Apollo as patron of song and literature, versus that of Apollo as patron of the head of state, in Virgil, Propertius, Horace and Ovid. Miller carefully shows that the frequent juxtaposition between warlike Apollo, the god of righteous vengeance, and Apollo the lyre-playing champion of erotic poetry, was by no means a rigid distinction.

The final chapter serves as a pendant to chapter 3’s extended critique of Virgil’s Aeneid, in that, following on from the general discussion of Ovid’s treatment of Apollo across several works, Miller both narrows and deepens the focus on Augustan Apollo in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, especially in his inversion of certain aspects of the Aeneas-myth. What Miller characterises as Ovid’s ‘destabilizing aesthetic’ serves to both compliment Augustus’s favourite deity and then to subtly undermine the dominant characterisation of Augustan Apollo; frequently, he draws disquieting attention to the god’s petty cruelty. Yet, although unhappy Ovid also creates Augustan-seeming political allusions, his provocative figurations defy coherent identification as definitively ‘Augustan’, remaining elusive.

Miller succeeds in showing that the Augustan Apollo was far from being a monolithic conception. The fluid dialogue between poets of disparate genres, of varying political leanings, created a literary construct constantly refined and challenged. Apollo’s longstanding multivalent symbolism in Greco-Roman culture – as terrifying healer god, civilised avenger, and warlike musician – produces an intertextual palimpsest, one ideally suited to the experimental ideological project of the Age of Augustus. Miller’s great strength is in his careful explication of the resonances of such intertextual allusions, whilst showing that sometimes, the poetry is not always political; sometimes, Apollo is not Augustan.

-- Clare Weightman, YBP/Blackwell