Julius Caesar in Jupiter's Prophecy, "Aeneid", Book 1

Julius Caesar in Jupiter's Prophecy, "Aeneid", Book 1Author(s): Robert F. DobbinSource: Classical Antiquity, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Apr., 1995), pp. 5-40Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25000141 .Accessed: 15/08/2011 14:26

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ROBERT F. DOBBIN

I L

Julius Caesar in Jupiter's Prophecy,

Aeneid, Book 1

nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar, 286 imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris, Iulius, a magno demissum nomen Iulo. hunc tu olim caelo spoifis Onrentis onustum accipies secura; vocabitur hic quoque votis. 290 aspera tum positis mitescent saecula bellis: cana Fides et Vesta, Remo cum fratre Quirinus iura dabunt; dirae ferro et compagibus artis claudentur Belli portae; Furor impius intus saeva sedens super arna et centum vinctus adnis 295 post tergum nodis fremet horidus ore cruento.

THUS JUPITER concludes his speech of consolation to Venus in the first of the Roman prophecies in the Aeneid (Book 1, lines 254-96). Readers will recall the occasion of the speech: Venus is distressed by the rough treatment her son and the rest of the Trojans have received at Juno's hands. She protests (229-53) that her father has forgotten his oath that a race would emerge from the remnants of Troy to rule a great empire. Jupiter calms her fears and in an extremely condensed survey lays out the destined future of Aeneas, the Trojans, and the Roman people. The prophecy mainly proceeds in five- or six-line increments: Aeneas, who is destined for immortality, will wage war in Italy and found Lavinium, where he will reign for three years (261-66). Ascanius, now Iulus, will succeed him and reign for thirty years in the new settlement of Alba Longa (267-71). Here his descendants will live for three centuries, until Romulus founds Rome (272-77). Jupiter goes on to

I wish to thank Professors Erich Gruen, Tom Habinek, Charles Murgia and Peter White, along with two anonymous readers, for their help at various stages in the preparation of this paper. Not all would agree with the conclusion, and any errors are my own.

? 1995 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

6 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 14/No. 1/April 1995

promise that Juno will come around to the Romans' side and with divine sanction they will enjoy "empire without limit" (278-82); they will conquer Greece and other lands (283-85). Then, quite suddenly, appear controversial lines on Caesar (286-90), followed by a concluding vision of universal peace (291-96). In tracing the trajectory of fortune in the career of Venus' descendants Jupiter concentrates on events toward the beginning and the end. That helps bring out parallelisms in Rome's long history (signalized, for instance, by the quoque in 290). It also means that certain details regarding the means that brought Rome to her glorious end are left for narration later.

The identity of the Caesar in 286 is a venerable problem.' Recently the case for deliberate ambiguity has been advanced, by O'Hara, Bishop, and others. The latest contribution to the debate, however, by Kraggerud, has defended the apparently still dominant view that Caesar is Augustus. In this paper I will argue the case for Julius Caesar: a view that prevailed in antiquity (to judge from the imitation of Ovid, and the commentary of Servius), and one that may again be gaining ground.2 That Caesar is the Emperor remains the communis opinio, however, supported in the present generation by the comment of R. D. Williams. He has lent the authority of his name to what has actually been the majority view since Heyne. But Williams

was hardly dogmatic about it, and my position is consistent with his insofar as I argue that, although the Caesar may not be Augustus, the passage is still about

the Augustan age. Argument for this involves exploring some byways of Roman religion in the turbulent period of the late Republic, with particular attention to the apocalyptic expectations attending Julius Caesar's death. My position draws on an important new study of Caesar in Augustan Rome, and expands on the neglected

note of Servius. Some thoughts, first, on the issue of ambiguity. One reason it has flourished of

late is the perception that straightforward exegesis has failed, the traditional choice between Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus having finally proven unsatisfactory. But in fact the case for Julius Caesar has not yet been properly made, in the way

Kraggerud, for instance, has defended Augustus. And as Kraggerud points out, there is at least a prima facie case in favor of clarity in a context, as he puts it,

1. Literature on the passage: Norden 273-75; Quinn 47 n. 1; G. Williams 1968, 427; Kenney 106; Austin 1971, 108-10; R. D. Williams 1972, 181-82; Clarke; Basson 28 n. 73; Kinsey; G. Williams 1983, 141; Sirago 753; Stahl 340 n. 46; Binder 1988, 269; Bishop 13-16; Koster 142-43; O'Hara 155-63; Horsfall 1991, 86-87; Powell 145-46; Kraggerud.

Most argue that the whole passage is in reference to Augustus. Austin, Kenney, Quinn, Koster and Horsfall are exceptions in at least suggesting the possibility that lines 286-290 refer to Julius Caesar. In the Index nominum to his OCT of Vergil, R. A. B. Mynors assigned the Caesar in 286 to Julius. Sirago asserts that these lines refer to Augustus, but invoked in terms more appropriate to his great-uncle. While prepared to find Julius Caesar here, Kenney and Austin finally argue for ambiguity in the passage. Bishop and O'Hara, too, argue that the whole passage is intentionally ambiguous.

Of the standard commentaries on the Aeneid, special mention should be made of Conway and Henry for their defense of Julius Caesar. A review of the older literature, which includes a thorough survey of the many commentaries, is provided by Basson.

2. E.g., Horsfall, and compare West 15-16.

DOBBIN: Julius Caesar in Jupiter's Prophecy 7

"of explicit revelation (cf. 262 volvens fatorum arcana movebo)."3 Like him, I am uncomfortable with the notion that Vergil would promise enlightenment on a fundamental point and then equivocate. We have to wonder, too, what possible reason he could have had for not being precise about events within the memory of his original audience. We need to distinguish on the one hand between questions of interpretation that arise from a vantage point 2,000 years removed, and the idea of intentional ambiguity on the other. As I hope to show, appreciation of the passage benefits from a study of factors historical, archaeological, religious, and literary that were familiar to Vergil's contemporaries but are inevitably less familiar to readers now. These factors have so far not been brought to bear on the problem.

The difficulties involved on either view of Caesar's identity have been set forth before, e.g., by Austin and O'Hara. It is worthwhile reviewing them. Four especially stand out: (1) the problem of nomenclature; (2) the problem of chronology; (3) the aptness of the epithets, especially spoliis Orientis onustum in 289; and (4) the rhetoric of the passage, insofar as that creates expectations that seem to go unfulfilled if one or the other Caesar is omitted. I will discuss each of these, then proceed to other considerations.

As indicated above, the prevailing view today favors taking Caesar in 286 as Augustus, but scholars have their hands full trying to explain why Vergil refers to him in 288 as Iulius. For the time at which he was writing, this would be an unexampled way to mention the Emperor. The evidence has been cited before and need not detain us long. A survey of all Augustan poets turns up no other instance where he is called Iulius.4 In a recent study C. Rubincam observes that not one historian of the Augustan era applies the nomen Julius to the Emperor.s Octavian had used it for a brief period after his adoption by the elder Caesar,6 but for our purposes it is important to realize that he had stopped doing so as early as 40 BC, if not before. The change coincided with his adoption of Imperator as a praenomen.

As Syme succinctly put it, "the Julius is discarded."7 Mommsen observed that all the early emperors avoided the family name and believed the practice was intended "to draw a dividing line between the ruling family and the other citizens." He traced the innovation to the young Octavian and also dates it to around 40 BC.8 Thenceforth

3. Kraggerud 105. 4. Checking Vergil, Horace, Gallus, Ovid, Propertius, Tibullus, Manilius, the Appendix

Vergiliana, and the relevant sections of Fragmenta Poetarum Latinarum and Poetae Latini Minores. 5. Rubincam 101-102. 6. He is designated C. ulius Cf Caesar at CIL IX 2142, soon after the adoption: see RE 10.276. 7. Syme1979,374. 8. T. Mommsen, Romisches Staatsrecht ii.2 (Berlin, 1887) 765-66.


Octavian was, with his full complement of titles, Imperator Caesar Divi Iuli Filius.9 After 27 he becomes Imperator Caesar Divi filius Augustus.

It is therefore somewhat misleading to say, with Austin, that Augustus "was Iulius by adoption." The Emperor had long shed Julius by the time Vergil wrote these lines, and this was simply not part of his nomenclature any longer. The name he continued to share with his adoptive father was Caesar. Whether for reasons of style, as Mommsen supposed, or just for clarification, Iulius was reserved to the Dictator."'

His case is simpler. He always remained C. Julius Caesar." Rubincam writes that when "a writer of the Augustan period needed to refer retrospectively without ambiguity to the elder Caesar, he would resort to the title 'divus' or the gentilicium 'C. Iulius.""'2 I would point out that, although the title divus is not expressly found in our passage, the divinity of the Caesar is stressed and the gentilicium Iulius thrown into high relief,'3 so that both criteria for invoking Julius Caesar are virtually met.

An explanation sometimes found for the putative aberration in his choice of names is that Vergil uses the gentile to underscore Augustus' descent from Iulus. He certainly does wish to make that connection, for whichever Caesar he intends. But if it is Augustus, why stress descent from Aeneas' son Iulus, why not Aeneas himself,'4 especially as the choice of lulus results in confusion with the Dictator, a circumstance Vergil could have foreseen? As Austin writes, "The name Iulius

must instantly have been taken of the dictator when the passage was heard or read by contemporaries."'" Let us therefore see if we cannot defend the plain meaning of the passage with its reference to Iulius Caesar.

9. As attested by the coinage: see Crawford RRC 535 (#534); and Reinhold 231 for additional testimonia.

10. Cf. W. H. Gross, "Ways and Roundabout Ways in the Propaganda of an UnpopularIdeology," in The Age of Augustus, ed. R. Winkes (Louvain, 1985) 29-45, esp. 32: "It is understandable that

Octavian never used the family name Iulius on coins, which, befitting the custom of his time, he limited to mean his deified adoptive father."

11. Dio 43.44.2 reports that in 45 BC he took the name Imperator "as a proper name," t)a7tEp -rt x6ptov (compare Suet. JC 76.1), but Syme 1979, 365-66, and Reinhold 231 argue that this is an anachronism retrojected from the practice of his successor. In Julius' case the title had not yet acquired the status of a name.

12. Rubincam 94. This applies, of course, only to the practice of Latin authors; in Greek authors of around the same time he is regularly distinguished as 'IoU6to; or Katcrap 6 06e6: cf. Diod. Sic. 1.4.7; 4.19.2; 5.21.2, etc.; Strabo 4.3.3; 13.1.27, etc.

13. By enjambment, hyperbaton, and position at the head of the line. Compare the reference to Julius at Man. 1.798-99 (in a roster of the divinized dead in the Milky Way): Venerisque ab origine

proles / lulia. 14. As, for instance, at Hor. Sat. 2.5.61-62, Tempore quo iuvenis Parthis horrendus ab alto /

demissum genus Aenea . . . Contrast Silius Italicus 13.862-64, verses modeled in part on Vergil's, and about the Dictator: ille deum gens I stelligerum attollens apicemn, Troianus lulo / Caesar avo.

15. Austin 1971, 109.


The second issue concems the chronology of the passage. Scholars on both sides of the debate face a problem here. In lines 286-96, Jupiter basically promises three things: (1) in the first three lines (286-88), the birth of an invincible Caesar; (2) in the next two (289-90), the deification of that Caesar, concluding with the assurance, vocabitur hic quoque votis; (3) in 291-96, the advent of an age of peace. The difficulty lies in determining the chronological relation among these three."6 Williams and Austin in their commentaries have focused attention on the adverb tum in line 291 as the crux, and rightly so. Williams: "With Servius' interpretation the word tum has to take us from Julius Caesar to Augustus." Austin: "If tum ... is backward-looking, then there is no case at all for referring 286-90 to Iulius, since . . . his death was followed by fifteen years of civil strife. But if tum is

forward-looking ('next', 'after that'), as it can be, the previous lines can refer to lulius, with the advantage that the chronological problem disappears." We want to build on these insights.

In view of its importance, a full discussion of the word tum is first in order. Two categories of usage appear potentially relevant. The first is tum as the demonstrative temporal adverb meaning "at that time," indistinguishable from, but more common than, tunc in this sense during the classical period.'7 The other is as an adverb (or quasi-conjunction) to indicate sequence, meaning "next" or "after that," the equivalent of deinde.'8 Respectively, they answer to what Austin has called the "backward-looking" and "forward-looking" senses of the word.

The job of cataloging all the appearances of tum in the Aeneid fell to A. Mandra, and though one could quibble with details of his analysis, the trend which he discovered is not in doubt.'9 Of 237 occurrences, 192 were found to have the sequential force and mean "after that." This use predominates, then, by a factor of over four to one. Certain facts favor this meaning in our passage also. Line 291 is a "golden line." Vergil was discriminating in his use of this device in the Aeneid, as it tends to disrupt the movement of the narrative. Where one does occur it is the

more notable, but usually does not exist for its own sake but rather to help articulate

16. The last two especially. One way to relate the items in the prophecy is to take tum with nascetur, i.e., tie the beginning of the peaceful age to the birth of Caesar. On such an interpretation we have to assume that the lines on deification, which stand between nascetur and tum, are parenthetical. This is how P. A. Brunt (1967, 64-65; 1990, 440) apparently reads the lines, and on this understanding says that they point to Augustus. But this is less natural than taking tum with what immediately precedes, the lines on deification, and in any case, though Brunt is right that Julius' birth in 100 (or 102) did not inaugurate an age of peace, Octavian's birth in 64 was hardly more auspicious. So this reading does not seem to decide the issue either way.

17. On the historical frequency of tum and tunc relative to one other see Leumann-Hofmann Szantyr 2.519-20.

18. In the OLD, s.v. tum the first or demonstrative use ("at that time") covers senses 1 through 3; the sequential use corresponds to their 8a.

19. Mandra 178-79.


the rhetorical structure of the passage in which it operates. T. Habinek has explored the context of these lines; by his count the majority of instances in the first six books

mark a major transition.' The presence of tum in 291 strengthens the assumption that this is the case here too, because as Habinek notes, the class of golden lines that indicate a transition can be identified "either by emphatic conjunctions such as tum or by a new paragraph" in the text (60). There is no paragraph break here as Jupiter is not quite finished speaking; but the formally imposing and self-contained golden line, complete with tum, alerts us to the fact not only that a new subject is pending, but that we have arrived at the rhetorical climax of the speech.

My view, in short, is that 291 is transitional, that tum means "next," or "afterward," and that, at this point, the prophecy moves from Julius Caesar to its culmination in Augustus.2" There is no question that the final six lines concern the Emperor. But the structure of the whole speech further argues for confining him to these alone. Jupiter does not linger over any one subject. His survey is extremely rapid, and composed, as Austin says (ad 257ff.), "with careful symmetry." Either five or six lines are assigned each stage in the historical pageant. These last eleven should be no different. They may be resolved into two units of sense: Julius Caesar in the first five, then (tum), in the last six, the end of the iron age (aspera . . . saecula) of wars and growing imperium,2 the era which Caesar had belonged to and even symbolized, and, after his death, an age of peace under his successor.23

Now, if this is right so far, we must next confront the chronological problem our reading entails. It seems to ignore the decade and a half between Caesar's death in 44 and Actium in 31, when peace actually materialized. Again, the possibilities of tum need to be canvassed. If it marks succession, must the events follow each other directly, or can a period of time intervene? Mandra believes that Vergil's practice in the Aeneid was to apply tum in such cases "only to connect an action to another that has just preceded." In other words, if sequence is indicated, tum must mean not just "after that," but "immediately after that."24 To this rule, however, he admitted a

20. Habinek 59-60, where 32 of 57 instances in the first half of the poem are so charac terized. Habinek does not provide comparable data for the last six books, but it seems fair to assume that the pattern holds, i.e., that roughly half the golden lines in the Aeneid function this way.

21. Although tum may contrast with the nunc some thirty lines earlier in 249 (Troia, nuncplacida compostus pace quiescit: see Wlosok 70), its meaning derives from its more proximate setting.

22. Cf. Wlosok 71: "Die aspera saecula entsprechen der Eisernen Zeit des Mythos, die Vergil in dem blutigen Geschichtsabschnitt der Zwischenzeit erkennt."

23. In this connection it is worthnoting that several ancient sources give 44 BC as the start of the Augustan Age: for references see V. Gardthausen, Augustus und seine Zeit (Leipzig, 1891-1904) i.524; J. Beranger, Recherches sur l'aspect idiologique du principat (Basel, 1953) 25-28; Reinhold 231. This is the year Augustus starts with in the Res Gestae. It is also when he chose to begin the account of his life in the Autobiography: cf. Nic. Damasc. vita Caes., based on this source, esp. ?? 18ff., and compare W. Eder, "Augustus and the Power of Tradition," in Raaflaub and Toher 72: "It is easier to accept Octavian's adoption in the year 44 B.C. as the point at which he began to exercise a long and continually growing influence over politics."

24. Mandra 33.

DOBBIN: Julius Caesar in Jupiter ' Prophecy 11

significant exception. At 8.328-30 tum is used twice in an account of the decline in Latium from the conditions of the Saturnia regna.35 Mandra remarks that "a very long time must have elapsed between the passing of the golden age and the deteriorated age."' A like situation could apply in our case, only with progress toward, rather than away from, a golden age. The gods Jupiter and Venus view history sub specie aeternitatis. Small or remote periods of time are foreshortened to insignificance. Or as Kenney put it, "the interval between the murder and Actium can be glossed over without embarrassment by tum ... mitescent ... in a speech in which time is measured by centuries."

So much for the moment in extenuation of Julius Caesar's time problem. We might just add that he had already been made a god in Vergil's lifetime, so that a reference to this is so far unobjectionable. Furthennore, taking Augustus' deification to mark the beginning of the peaceful trend involves difficulties of its own. Death precedes deification. So if peace is to attend Augustus' removal to heaven, Vergil will be wishing him a speedy demise. One scholar, at least, is prepared to accept this implication (Clarke), but most are probably not. The real problem, though, lies not in forecasting deification for Augustus, even if death is the pre-condition. Death is not final if you become a god soon thereafter.' The problem for the majority reading is that peace, it seems, will have to wait until after the Emperor dies. But peace in Augustus' reign was celebrated as an accomplished fact. [C]laudentur Belli portae in line 294 clearly describes closing the gates of Janus, which Augustus boasted of having done three times, and for the first time in almost two centuries in 29 BC.8 Scholars are close to unanimous in believing that these lines are about the

pax Augusta, the conditions of Vergil's own day, not some age in prospect when the Emperor is dead.

So both sides have some explaining to do. For my part, I would not deny a time problem in taking Caesar as Julius, but in an historical survey as summary as Jupiter's, tum, as noted above, can accommodate the ellipse of thirteen years. Here, as elsewhere in the poem, it may simply mean "after that," leaving it to the reader to infer that a brief hiatus ensues. Yet even if we take the adverb to mean "immediately thereafter," in line with its usual meaning in the Aeneid, I maintain

25. tum manus Ausonia et gentes venere Sicanae ... tum reges asperque immani corpore Thybris . . . Compare its use three times in an identical context at Geo. 1. 139-45.

26. Mandra 33 n. 83. In 4.622-23 tum vos, o Tyrii, stirpem et genus omne futurum I exercete odiis the tum again, I think, must signal succession and a lapse of time. Williams comments: "From her specific curse upon Aeneas Dido turns to the longer vista of history and undying hatred through the generations." This clearly implies a transition, and a significant stretch of time between the incidents that tum connects.

27. Austin writes that Conway's argument to the effect that a poet's promise of deification would be tactless because it presumes the subject's death "carries no weight," but this exaggerates somewhat. Cf. Hor. Odes 1.2.45-50 and Housman ad Manil. 1.926 for the way this delicate subject was often handled.

28. Again in 25: Res Gestae 13. Syme 1978, 25-26 speculates on the date of the third and final closure.


that one can still justify Julius' presence in the preceding five lines. I will offer reasons, in anticipation of arguments later in the paper. (1) It is a bit unfair to object that the civil wars of the 30s are left out of account, because in Jupiter's speech no notice is taken of Rome's civil troubles at all. Instead he concentrates on

what Rome (or Venus) could be justly proud of, her success in extending imperium over the world in externa bella. Nevertheless, the version of peace offered by the tableau in the last three lines is instructive: "Unholy Rage, sitting on savage arms, bound by a hundred bronze shackles, shall roar with blood-stained lips." This is an uncommonly violent image to convey so pacific a message. The background of civil war (Furor impius relates to civil war especially), including the ones set off by Julius' assassination, may be subtly acknowledged here. In visual terms, it illustrates parta victoriis pax, "peace secured through victories."' The final round of civil war is assimilated to the peace process insofar as it represents victory over the forces of disorder.?' (2) In criticism of this argument it might be argued that the ablative absolute positis . . . bellis gives a more precise fix on the chronology. This phrase in particular may seem to require a date after 31. But it is possible to take the participle as contemporaneous with the main verb mitescent, or as timeless in aspect. The perfect passive, as often, functions in lieu of a present passive participle, particularly when it specifies the circumstances accompanying the main verb, or in which the main verb consists.3' The line can be translated: "The rough ages then will soften, as wars are set aside."

Finally (3), it may seem that only a Pangloss could say that Caesar's apotheosis coincided with the birth of a golden age, but in fact there is no effort made in the poem to conceal that Jupiter is deliberately putting the best face on things for his daughter's sake. In its willful optimism it corresponds, on the divine plane, to the pep-talk pater Aeneas has just given his men. As C. Murgia remarks, "Jupiter does not tell Venus everything."32 He does not tell her that Aeneas will die before his time, only (lines 259-60) that he will be deified. Likewise he does not inform her that Julius will die prematurely, assassinated in the forum by his close associates, only that he will be worshipped in heaven beside her. (The parallel with Aeneas is not enough to identify the Caesar as Julius, but it helps.)33 Similarly, Jupiter does not choose to give Venus details of the civil wars among her descendants that will lead to the climactic period of peace, only that peace will be achieved eventually.

That omission will be made good, so far as readers of the Aeneid are concerned,

29. As Augustus described the conditions required to close the gates of Janus: cf. Res Gestae 13: lanum Quirinum, quem clausum esse waiores nostri voluerunt cum per totum imperium populi

Romani terra marique essetparta victoriispax.. . 30. This is an old, and perhaps still distasteful idea, but its vitality during the Augustan age is

demonstrated anew in Gruen 1985. 31. Cf. Kuihner-Stegmann 1. 757-59; Woodcock, New Latin Syntax 82; Eden ad Aen. 8.37, 407f.,

and 636; Fordyce ad Aen. 8.636. 32. Murgia 51. 33. That quoque in line 290 refers us back to Aeneas and the promise of his deification in lines

259-60 was the opinion of Servius. It is supportedby Conington, Williams et al. in their commentaries.


in the generic lament (as many read it) over Rome's civil wars at 6.826ff., and in the description of Actium on the Shield. The prophecy of Rome's future voiced by Dido before her death also supplies a few unpleasant facts omitted from this somewhat patronizing (olli subridens, 254) address to Venus. But whereas O'Hara and others see these discrepancies as signs that Jupiter's prophecy is corrupt and

misleading, I would prefer to regard it as one-sided, but nevertheless true as far as it goes.' Dido's speech, in tum, is distorted in its wholly negative view of events. I concede that my reading seems to entail an inconsistency, viz. overlooking the wars of Octavian's youth before he became Augustus and declared peace on land and sea. But (1) there is a degree of dissimulation on Jupiter's part that helps account for this; (2) tum is flexible in the amount of time it implies; and (3) for the Romans, peace and war pursued for worthy ends were quite compatible concepts.

In section V I will argue that there were religious reasons for dating the start of a new age from the time of Caesar's passing.

III

A third factor in the dispute is the relevance of the descriptive phrase in 289, spoliis Orientis onustum. Austin writes that this "undeniably points to Augustus, and can only be made to apply to Iulius by a not very convincing explanation, although he is not ruled out by it." Why undeniably to Augustus? "The words ... would at once, and pre-eminently, suggest the victory over Parthia in 20 B.C., as well as over other Eastem peoples." But Austin leaves the door open for Caesar. "The allusion might be taken to refer to Iulius' victories at Alexandria in 48 B.C. and over Phamaces in 47 B.C.; he held a triumph for both (Livy, epit. 115; Sueton. Iulius 37, where we learn that in his Pontic triumph 'praetulit titulum VENI VIDI VICI')."

To outline my own approach. I make the case for Julius on the grounds nearly all defenders of Julius have done (including Austin, at least for argument's sake): his triumphs in the Pontic region and around the Nile. An objection often raised is that these victonres were insignificant. But insignificant histonrcally or poetically?

Victories in the Orient were invested with a wealth of associations going back to Homer that are at least as relevant as the facts of history when they appear in Vergil's

epic. I suggest, in other words, that the lines be read as poetry first and foremost. But even if they are read as sober history I hope to show that Caesar could challenge comparison with his grandnephew on this point.

The historical record, particularly the record of triumphs celebrated by either Caesar, is the proper place to start (but not to end). Augustus' historical claim to the phrase in question rests on three things: the battle of Actium, the negotiated peace with Parthia, and a number of other minor operations in the East considered collectively.

34. O'Hara, esp. 161-63. Contrast the formulation of Murgia 51: "[Jupiter's] diction is selected to satisfy the rhetorical needs of his reassurance, but the prophecy is not otherwise deceptive."


It is unnecessary to review them in detail. But surely it involves more than a little good will on Vergil's, or anyone's part, to imagine the Emperor "loaded with spoils of the Orient" on the strength of these campaigns. It is well known, for instance, that the Parthian affair was not a victory at all. It was a diplomatic settlement distinguished mainly by the return of the standards lost in 53 BC. Augustus declined a triumph, hence there were no spoils. It would appear to have little connection, then, with the phrase spoliis Orientis onustum. If the spolia are the recovered Roman standards, why are they Orientis, of the East?35 But these negative considerations are only half the story. The Senate voted Augustus a triumphal arch in consequence of the event, and it is treated as a victory in contemporary sources and monuments.`6

The battle of Actium is similar. It was primarily a civil war Octavian waged against Antony and his nineteen Roman legions.37 But unlike the Parthian affair, it was an undoubted victory, complete with spoils.38 The essential consideration, though, may lie in the popular representation of the war as waged mainly against eastern forces. This is too well known to belabor. Vergil's description of the battle at Aen. 8.685-88 will suffice:

hinc ope barbarica variisque Antonius armis, victor ab aurorae populis et litore rubro, Aegyptum virisque Orientis et ultima secum Bactra vehit, sequiturque (nefas) Aegyptia coniunx.

The recurrence of Oriens here could support reading our passage as an allusion to Actium, although the geographical reference is vague and the resemblance slight enough.

The Emperor's subsequent progress through the Eastern provinces may be thought pertinent. In consequence of the battles of Actium and Alexandria Augustus boasted that he "added Egypt to the empire of the Roman people" (Res Gestae 27.1), and (27.3) that he "recovered all the provinces beyond the Adriatic sea towards the east, together with Cyrene, the greater part of them being then occupied by kings." He characterized his settlement of the areas assigned to Antony in the pact of Brundisium as another set of acquisitions for Rome that he made personally. Such a view of events could be questioned, but seems reflected in the poets, if only indirectly. At the end of the Georgics, for example (4.560-61), Vergil says that he is completing his poem, Caesar dum magnus ad altum / fulminat Euphraten, which hints at another round of campaigning in the Orient.'

35. Although he argues for Augustus, Kraggerud 109-10 is also inclined to discount Parthia as the source of the spolia Orientis for this and other reasons.

36. Cf. Hor. Odes 4.5.25; 4.15.6-8;Epodes 1.12.27-28; CAHx 263; Zanker 185ff. 37. "About 60, 000 to 63, 000 men, all Italians" (CAH x 100). Antony's force was supplemented

by a much smaller troop of Asiatics. 38. Res Gestae 4.3; cf. CAH x 107. 39. In Geo. 2.170-72 the poet addresses Augustus, qui nunc extremisAsiae iam victor in oris / im

bellem avertis Romanis arcibus Indum; cf. also 3.26-3 1.


A like discrepancy between facts and the heightened reality of panegyric applies to the Arabian and Ethiopian expeditions, in 25-24 and 24-22 BC respectively. They are mentioned with pride in the Res Gestae and Propertius lists the forner among

Augustus' gains.' But the Arabian expedition was an unqualified disaster, and the Ethiopian episode (if it was "Oriental" at all) did not lead to the occupation of that country but merely concluded with a peace treaty under which the Ethiopians were excused from the tribute that had been imposed on them.41

We need not go on. The point is that there is an element of exaggeration, or poetic license, involved in projecting the part of Oriental conqueror onto the Emperor. "Augustus took a sane view of Rome's Eastern question.... He clearly realized that what the empire needed was, not expansion beyond the Euphrates, but consolidation and peace."42 If Austin can say, in commenting on the phrase spoliis Orientis onustum, that readers would have thought first of Parthia, that just shows how precarious Augustus' claim to the epithet was, since, literally at least, he was decidedly not so encumbered as a result of this arrangement. Eastern operations, however, appealed to the imagination, so tended to be singled out and inflated beyond their real merit.43 We will now try to show that Julius Caesar earned or, partly on this basis, at least received, a reputation as conqueror in the East equal to the Emperor's.

Augustus celebrated his triple triumph in 29. In 46 Julius Caesar celebrated a triumph in four parts that has been regarded in some measure as a model for his adopted son's." On successive days he celebrated victory in Gaul, in the Pontic war with Pharnaces, in the African war against Juba, and against King Ptolemy in Alexandria. It is with the second and last of these that we have to do. His defeat

of King Pharnaces at Zela was memorialized by his boast of Veni Vidi Vici, a flourish intended to trade on the reputation of invincibility he had acquired especially since

40. Res Gestae 26.5; Prop. 2.10.16. 41. See CAH x 242. At Res Gestae 31-33 Augustus mentions ambassadors and suppliants from

India, Parthia and other points East. He implies that this amounted to a form of control over them. For just how insubstantial these pretensions to hegemony were see Brunt 1990, 435-38.

42. J. G. C. Anderson in CAH x 256. For a similar view see Syme, ibidem 340-42, who notes that the Emperor concentrated his warring activities in Europe. "The East might remain more or less as Pompey and Antony had left it" (341). Cf. also Gruen 1990, who argues that, in his propaganda, Augustus consistently advertised a policy of universal conquest, while actually pursuing a much more modest policy of consolidation. Of his approach to the Orient in particular he writes, "In the East generally Augustus affected war but practiced diplomacy" (397).

43. Besides Augustus' mopping-up operations after Actium, and the Arabian fiasco, compare his son Gaius' expedition against Parthia, represented as a clear victory in the Res Gestae (27.2), and envisaged by Ovid at AA 1.177-228 as a full-fledged campaign of conquest. A. S. Hollis (Ovid:

Ars Amatoria, Book 1 (Oxford, 1977) 72) remarks on "the ludicrous disparity between the language heralding the event and the final outcome."

44. Vell. 2.56.2; Suet. JC 37; Dio 43.19-22; App. BC 2.101-102; Plut. Caes. 55; Livy, epit. 11 5; CAl2 ix 436; Gelzer 284-85. DuQuesnay 33 calls the quadruple triumph in 46 "the all-important precedent for the triple triumph of Augustus" in 29.


Pharsalus.4s Now he proved it among the kingdoms of the East. Cicero in the Pro Murena had used Oriens of the Pontic region specifically, which shows that Vergil's spolia Orientis could apply to Zela.4

The war Caesarearlier waged on the Nile on behalf of Cleopatra, his long sojourn in Egypt in the company of the queen, the way his experience there transformed him and the way he looked at political power-all these are relevant too in considering his title to the phrase.47 The Orient affected him the way it had Alexander and would Antony. We are told that Caesar extracted a fortune from the Eastern states and can be sure that he appeared loaded with Oriental spoils in the Alexandrian and Pontic segments of his triumph.' There is no doubt, either, that the Romans could regard Egypt as part of the Orient, even if Oriens is a general term that does not admit of precise definition. The Roman geographers conventionally divided the world into the continents of Europe, Africa (Libya), and Asia. Egypt was assigned to Asia.49 And Egypt perhaps best represented the qualities associated with the exotic East, qualities it would be tedious to rehearse. The important point is, if Octavian's victories at Actium and Alexandria could be considered Oriental, then why not Caesar's at Alexandria and with greater cause, since he battled Egyptian forces exclusively?

Alexandria probably, but certainly Zela, was an Eastern victory. If that is the only issue, we can stop. But there are other factors to consider. Why should Vergil single these out? After all, it is probably fair to say that most of us do not think first of Eastern spoils in connection with Julius Caesar. Why not spoils of Gaul?

Considerable cash flowed into Rome in the wake of his activity there, as Catullus' attacks on Mamurra attest. But Gaul's wealth pales beside that of the gilded East. Spoils and the Orient go together. This is poetry before it is history, a poet's selective view of history to be exact; and in that other poetic passage whose relevance for our own can hardly be overestimated, Ovid gives a more detailed version of the same thing:'

45. The ease of his victory at Zela prompted Caesar to remark that if Pompey's reputation as a great general depended on his conquest of Asiatics he was fortunate indeed (Suet. JC 35.3; App. BC 2.91). But according to Dio (42.48.1) Caesar took great pride in this victory, an assertion supported by his decision to hold a separate triumph for it and by the ostentation of his Veni Vidi Vici. We should probably take his professed scorn for the enemy with a grain of salt. It was evidently a form of one-upmanship in his (ongoing) rivalry with Pompey, a sneer originally used against Alexander by those intent on proving his achievement inferior to Philip's conquest of the Greeks; it was, in other words, a topos. Cf. Quint. Curt. 8.1.37, and compare Livy 9.19.10-11; Gellius 17.21.33.

46. As pointed out by O'Hara 158, citing Pro Murena 89. 47. For the significance of the Egyptian interlude see Gelzer 277-78, 313. 48. Dio (42.49) reports that after Zela Caesar exacted a heavy toll on the Asian states in tribute

and (44.46.1, quoting Antony) that he bestowed on the Roman people the wealth that he earlier had acquired in Egypt. See E. Badian, Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic (Ithaca, 1971) 90.

49. Cf. Pliny NH 3.3; 5.47f.; Polyb. 3.37.3-5; Strabo 2.130; and Housman ad Manil. 4.27. 50. That the long passage on Julius Caesar's deification concluding Ovid's epic poem draws on

Vergil's disputed lines is acknowledged by Norden 387 (who writes that the episode is an "obvious


scilicet aequoreos plus est domuisse Britannos perque papyriferi septemflua flumina Nili victrices egisse rates Numidasque rebelles Cinyphiumque Iubam Mithridateisque tumentem nominibus Pontum populo adiecisse Quirini . . .

(Met. 15.752-56)

Gaul is overlooked in this survey of Caesar's career, but as Kenney remarks, "Is

there not Ocean, are there not Eastern triumphs here?" It is true we think of Pompey in connection with the East, Caesar with the

West, insofar as expansion of the empire in the late Republic is concerned. But Caesar challenged Pompey on his own ground, leading in turn to wars with Eastern potentates. His defeat of Pharnaces paralleled Pompey's victory over Mithridates, his father. Ovid again: Mithridateisque tumentem / nominibus Pontum populo adiecisse Quirini. After Pharsalus many cities and countries of the Orient that had previously supported Pompey defected to Caesar. By virtue of defeating him he replaced Pompey as the general who represented Roman imperium over the East in his person. The same pattern would be replayed in the careers of Octavian and Antony, largely establishing whatever claim the former had on Oriental spoils: which is to say, hardly more than Julius.5" But being so used to the rhetoric of Oriental conquest in the honorific poetry of the Augustan age we have come to take such exploits for granted in his case and not in Caesar's.

Other factors may be at work. The controversial phrase is part of the lines on

apotheosis: hunc tu olim caelo sPoliis Orientis onustum / accipies secura; vocabitur hic quoque votis. Not just any conquests but, as we know, Eastern conquests especially were required to scale heaven. This grew out of the legends of Heracles and Dionysus52 reinforced, in Vergil's day, by the example of Alexander.53 Whoever would attain immortality through victories ought, by convention, to have them in the Orient. In the Commentaries Caesar himself made light of the time he spent there (one reason, perhaps, that the scholars of today, relying mainly on the literary record,

imitation"); by Austin 1971, 109; by B6mer 1986, 459; and see now R. A. Smith, "Epic Recall and the Finale of Ovid's Metamorphoses, " MH 51 (1994) 45-53.

51. With Aen. 8.685-88, characterizing Antony's Oriental armament, compare 6.831, of Pompey "arrayed with hostile armies of the East (adversis instructus Eois)" against Caesar at Pharsalus; nearer the truth, in fact, since Pompey's army did consist largely of foreigners, to the chagrin of Cicero (Att. 9.10.3; 11.6.2).

52. Cf. Hollis ad Ov. AA. 1.187-90, where the assimilation of earlierRoman generals to Dionysus (Bacchus) or Hercules is noted; also J. Griffin, Latin Poets and Roman Life (Chapel Hill, 1986) 189.

That Vergil in the 5th Eclogue intended an identification between Caesar and Dionysus returned from the East in triumph is argued by DuQuesnay 32-34.

53. With whom Caesar was often compared. Strabo 13.1.27 shows that the comparison was current in Vergil's day. Plutarch pairs them in his Lives: cf. Alex. 1.1 and Caes. 11.3 (the auyxptatr is missing); also Suet. JC 7.1; Dio 37.52.2. For the complicated question of Caesar's precise relation to Alexander, see Green 1978 and literature cited by Woodman ad Veil. 2.41. 1.


tend to slight it in turn).S4 Vergil is led to the other extreme. He was in a position to witness personally Caesar's impressive eastern triumphs; but for reasons that have more to do with poetry than history, he focuses on the Asian campaign because Asian spoils are de rigueur in a passage on deification. The Dictator's Oriental affectations certainly hastened him to the grave; to those more sympathetically disposed to him than Brutus and Cassius the association with the East helped pave his way to heaven.

I do not claim that discerning the connection between these ideas is enough to identify the Caesar as Julius. The association of Eastern victory and deification is found in poetry praising Augustus (and others) as well, just as the parallel with

Alexander was revived on the Emperor's behalf.55 My point is that it was plausible for Julius by the time Vergil was writing and, what has often been denied, at least as apt in his case as in the Emperor's. Compare OvidAm. 3.8.51-52: templa. . . Liber et

Alcides et modo [Julius] Caesar habent. One reason these three are grouped together is, I imagine, their shared credential as despoilers of the East. Perhaps this seems to involve an error in emphasis. But there is an element of poetic conventionality to Vergil's (and Ovid's) language that puts it at odds with the version of events we expect from history. We need hardly point out that the lines on Caesar's divinity take us right out of the realm of history as we know it. The associated idea of Oriental conquest, while not inappropriate for Julius Caesar, is adapted to the context.

Some scholars have claimed that to describe the Dictator arrived in heaven as "loaded with spoils of the Orient" would be cruel irony, since his murder cut short the most grandiose Eastern enterprise of all, the projected march on Parthia.1 But

Caesar himself had originally planned that this should succeed his victory at Zela.57 He was emboldened to push further into Asia by the good fortune he had already met with there, just as the British episode encouraged him to contemplate another attack in the North, on the Dacians and Getae.m The fact that the assassination cancelled one war in the Orient cannot detract from what he had already achieved, including a victory at Zela swift and decisive enough to inspire visions of something, it is true, that might have been appreciably greater.

Let us consider now another phrase from the text. On line 287, imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris, Servius comments, apropos of Julius: aut ad laudem dictum est aut certe secundum historiam. re vera enim et Britannos, qui

in Oceano sunt, vicit. The phrase imperium Oceano, in contrast to spoliis Orientis onustum, has perhaps not received enough attention. It is a rhetorical commonplace,

54. Cf. BG 3.106,paucos dies in Asia moratus. The subsequent account of the Alexandrian war is merely a sketch. (The Bellum Alexandrinum, of course, is not his). See Gelzer 245 for speculation as to why Caesar chose to downplay his Eastern activities to his audience in Rome.

55. For other passages linking Eastern victory and immortality, cf. Aen. 6.789-805, of Augustus, and Ovid AA 177-228 (esp. 204), of Gaius, where the examples of Hercules and Bacchus are also cited.

56. See Grimal 2; Kraggerud 109 n. 19. This abortive campaign helps decide the identity of the Caesar in the new Gallus fragment: see R. D. Anderson et al., "Elegiacs by Gallus from Qasr Ibrim," JRS 69 (1979) 125-55, esp. 151-52; E. Courtney, The Fragmentary Latin Poets (Oxford, 1993) 265.

57. Dio 44.46.3; cf. CAH ix 713. 58. Suet. JC44.3;App. B.C. 2.110; 3.25;fortheconnectionwith Britain seeGelzer322.


and that is probably why. But it has special meaning for Julius. As Servius says, it recalls the celebrated campaign against Britain.59 Cicero was moved to write an epic on the expedition, and even Catullus was impressed.' If the final results came up short of expectations, that hardly affected the popular view of the thing.6' It caused a sensation. The legend survives in Ovid's account at Met. 15.752: aequoreos . . . domuisse Britannos, where aequoreos is an epithet transferred from the Britons' residence in Ocean.

Servius thinks Oceano recalls Britain, but the Gallic wars are relevant too. Caesar's proconsular command cleared the way to Ocean, the assault on Britain followed in consequence.' It helps in appreciating the nuance of Vergil's passage to be acquainted with the language customary in connection with Caesar's adventures. Cicero describes the result of the Gallic wars this way: Nihil est enim ultra illam altitudinem montium usque ad Oceanum, quod sit Italiae pertimescendum (De Prov. Cons. 34). In the Pro Marcello (28) he predicts that "future generations

will marvel at Caesar's imperia, provincias, Rhenum, Oceanum, Nilum . . ." Nicolaus of Damascus begins his obituary notice of Julius Caesar by describing him as "a man who drove toward the West as far as Britain and the Ocean" (vita Caes. 26). In other eulogies of Caesar Ocean comes up continually.' It was a topos in the language of empire,' but, as these citations show, became a fixture in descriptions of Caesar's career because he actually did reach and cross it in his combined Gallic and British operations. The Cicero citations prove that Caesar was linked to Ocean before the Aeneid was written, and Bnrtain especially evoked the connection.'

When applied to Julius, imperium Oceano is more than hyperbole.' Vergil refreshes traditional tropes by drawing on recent history. In section V I will argue that the second half of the line,famam qui terninet astris, escapes cliche by likewise functioning on a secondary historical (or quasi-historical) level. This is a real Ocean and these are real stars.

59. The expedition tookplace in 55-54 BC and is described at Caes. BG 4.20-38; 5.8-23. Cf. Tac. Agric. 30.4: omne ignotum pro magnifico. For just how ignotum Britain was at the time, cf. BG 4.20. For its air of great remoteness and inaccessibility, compare Verg. Ecl. 1.66.

60. Cf. Catul. 11.9-12; 29.4, 12 and 20; for references to the letters of Cicero mentioning this poem, see Gelzer 139 n. 4.

61. Cicero's letters reflect disappointment that the island proved no Eldorado (Att. 4.17.6); Plut. 23.2-3 represents the expedition's mixed success. But Suet. ;JC 25.2 indicates that the glory of the expedition survived undiminished, and compare Dio 39.53.

62. Caesar crossed the channel on the pretext that the Britons had aided the Gauls throughout his wars (BG 4.20), but as Brunt (1990, 312) remarks, "this hitherto unmentioned assistance cannot have been significant." The crossing was largely motivated by the exotic appeal of the island.

63. Cf. also Sen. Ad Marc. 14.3; Plut. Caes. 23.2; App. BC 2.150; Dio 44.42.4. 64. Cf. Catul. 115.6; Tibul. 4.1.147; Sen. Ep. 94.63; Tac. Ann. 1.9. 65. For the association of Britain with Ocean see also Caes. BG 3.7.2; Cic. Q. fr. 2.15.4; Hor.

Odes 4. 14.48. 66. For a discussion of how Vergil regularly invests such expressions with a unique, secondary

meaning, see P. Hardie, Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986) 241-92.


IV

A fourth element in the debate concerns the rhetoric of the passage. Most commentators think it impaired if Augustus is left out. He is featured in the two later Roman prophecies, he ought to be here as well. Explicitly or implicitly, comparison with the Heldenschau and the Shield seem largely to have controlled interpretation of our lines.67 While it is legitimate to bring them to bear, it is also essential to realize that Vergil need not have repeated himself. There are significant differences among the three scenes, which P. Grimal has registered in detail.68 But the overall purpose is not dissimilar. As Servius says of our lines: Omnis poetae intentio ad laudem tenditAugusti, sicut et in sexti catalogo et in clipei descriptione.

My view is that Servius is right in the sense that Augustus is here, though not by name and therefore not quite in the way he appears later in the poem, when he blazes forth in person (for the first time, as I think) in the emphatic hic vir, hic est, of book 6, line 791, and later in the scenes on Vulcan's shield. But if one concedes that the poem is in any way about Augustus, then this would be the place to indicate it. So I maintain that Vergil has chosen to acknowledge Augustus subtly by (1) referring not to him, exactly, but to the age he represents; and (2) doing that by spotlighting the event that marked its inception. We will speculate on his motives for that below. But first, there are considerations inherent in the rhetoric of the passage that weigh as

much or more in Julius' favor. One point in particular has already drawn comment.0 Venus provokes Jupiter's speech by complaining to him of the hardships her family has suffered. Jupiter's reply is in keeping. His survey of Roman history centers on prominent members of the Julian gens because Venus wants to hear of them and them only. As Austin observes, "Complete omission to mention [Julius] in this passage, with its special significance for the gens lulia, would have been remarkable."70 Now, any assertions as to his ancestry are going to apply equally well to Augustus, since the latter appropriated it as part of his adoptive legacy (cf. Dio 44.37.3). Still,

Augustus' membership in the gens Iulia was adventitious, while Julius' claim to be descended from Venus was very well known.71 Enemies and skeptics took to calling him simply "the offspring of Venus,"' a sarcastic tribute that mocked his own

67. As Basson (28) puts it, in those two scenes "the central place is given to Augustus. Why should it be given here to Julius Caesar, or even shared by him?"

68. Grimal 1989. Cf. also R. Girod, "Virgile et l'histoire dans l'lndide," in Pr6sence de Virgile, ed. R. Chevallier (Paris, 1978) 17-33; on 18 he notes how our passage, unlike the others, operates exclusively on the divine plane.

69. Cf. Horsfall 1982, 14. 70. Austin 1971, 109. Cf. Basson 10: the whole speech is "an enumeration of the most famous

members of the gens lulia and consequently an example of a genealogical catalogue." Wlosok 62-63 cites "der genealogische Aspekt dieses ersten Geschichtsabrisses." Henry remarks that omitting Julius here would be like omitting Napoleon in a review of famous Bonapartes.

71. On Julius' alleged ancestry Dio 44.37 gives the essentials. For the whole subject see now N. Horsfall, "Roman Myth and Mythography," in BICS Suppl. 52 (1987) 12-24, esp. 22-24.

72. Cf. Cael. apud Cic.fam. 8.15.2, Venereprognatus.


pretensions and, as Weinstock (83) says, "shows how strongly he stressed his claim." Among reminders and reinforcements in Augustan Rome of this affiliation were: the Temple of Venus Genetrix built by Julius in the Forum Iulium;73 a statue of the deified Julius set up by Octavian in 44 before this same temple;74 the temple of Divus lulius dedicated by Augustus in 29, modelled after the temple of Venus Genetrix and decorated with Apelles' painting of Venus Anadyomene;75 a statue of Divus Iulius alongside Venus and Mars in the Temple of Mars Ultor, built by Augustus and dedicated in the Forum Iulium in 2 Bc.76 It is true that this last postdates Vergil. But he lived most of his adult life surrounded by the other monuments, and collectively they attest to the Emperor's perpetuation of the idea.'

As will be clear by now, my interpretation inevitably touches on the issue of Julius Caesar's reputation in Augustan Rome. This is a large subject, which has generated its own bibliography.78 We cannot ignore it, because our passage was singled out by Ronald Syme as ideally suited to illustrate one of his best known views.' The Dictator, he always maintained, was an unwelcome figure in the Res Publica Restituta of his successor. Contemplation of him could only serve to remind Romans how far the Emperor's power depended on his great-uncle's, and how similar their governments really were. Syme further assumed that, as Vergil faithfully reflected the wishes of the princeps, the reference in our passage had to be to Augustus, could not be to the Dictator. Now, O'Hara believes our passage is ambiguous. But his discussion is influenced insofar as he argues that this ambiguity serves to confuse Augustus with the elder Caesar, the very thing Syme thought

Augustus tried to avoid by imposing a ban of silence.' Syme's thesis has been

73. See now Ulrich 66-71. 74. Dio 45.7.1 and 47.18.4; Suet. JC 88; Pliny NH 34.18. 75. Ulrich 65-66; for the painting cf. Strabo 14.2.19; Pliny NH 35.91. 76. See Zanker 193-97,21 1; T. J. Luce, "Livy, Augustus, and the Forum Romanum," in Raaflaub

and Toher 125. An altar of the Lares dating to around 7 BC shows Venus receiving Julius into heaven, a precise visual counterpart to what I believe Vergil is describing: see Zanker fig. 177.

77. It is implied in Vergil's choice of the epithet Dionaei at Ecl. 9.46, Idalio at Prop. 4.6.59, and Troianus in our passage, highlightingCaesar's connection to Venus by way of Aeneas. Lucan makes of this a separate episode, Caesar's pilgrimage to Troy (9.950-1004), and compare Strabo 13.1.27.

78. The topic is associated particularly with Ronald Syme. P. White (below) writes that he has noted at least ten places in Syme's euvre in which the idea comes up, but the principal discussions can be found at Syme 1939, 317-18; and Syme 1958, i.432-34. For further references see White 334 n. 3 and Ramage 223 n. 2. In line with Syme on this point are the following: W. H. Alexander, "Julius Caesar in the Pages of Seneca the Philosopher," Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 35 (1941) sec. II, 15-28; L. R. Taylor, Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (Berkeley, 1949) 179-80; and Ramage 223-45. White's is the first serious attemptto qualify Syme's thesis. The recent attempt by G. Herbert-Brown (109-29) to defend it on the basis of Ovid's Fasti alone is not quite convincing. Her narrow concentration on one work of the Augustan corpus, while providing a certain focus, as she claims, also inevitably yields a less comprehensive picture than White's broad survey; and even

within her self-imposed limits the reading of individual passages is often speculative. 79. Syme 1958, i.433; cf. Syme 1939,317-18. 80. See O'Hara 161, where Syme's position is adduced. O'Hara states that "[i]t is unusual for an

Augustan poet to mention Julius Caesar," an opinion derived from Syme, but now effectively challenged by White.


challenged, however, in a recent article by Peter White. He shows that Julius Caesar is actually a large and persistent presence in the culture of the Augustan age; that he is, after the Emperor himself, the figure most often mentioned by the Augustan poets, and that virtually all the references are favorable. But Syme himself admitted one exception to this supposed campaign of neglect: "It was expedient for Augustus to dissociate himself from Caesar: the one destroyed the Republic, the other restored it. How could that be done? Easily, and with the fairest pretext. Caesar had been deified, he was no longer a mortal man..."8' And again: "Only the Iulium sidus is there-the soul of Caesar purged of all earthly stain, transmuted into a comet."82

Let it be said that, although he interpreted the evidence a bit too cynically, Syme discerned a genuine pattern: both as regards a preference for the star imagery, and in other respects. The one weakness in his position is his inability to enter sympathetically into the cult of Divus Iulius that flourished in Augustus' day under

Augustus' direction. Historians are interested in the man, "the Dictator," the Caesar of modern political and military history. Caesar the god they just cannot take seriously. But Augustus did.83 Syme was aware that this was an exception to his view. But he treated it as a trivial exception, or as a subtle form of censorship, and so an exception that proved the rule. Once he wrote, "The deification of Caesar made it easy to de-personalize him."'4 Although there is an element of truth in this, Syme did not explain how far the depersonalization went, or could be expected to go. It is true that Augustus preferred to advertise Caesar as Divus Iulius, but he never lost touch with those exceptional qualities that brought him to the brink, if not the actual attainment, of divine honors even in his own lifetime.85 White has convincingly argued that Julius' deification was not arbitrary, it was based on his achievements as a man and had to be. To say that his cult "depersonalized" him is, without further qualification, misleading. It served instead to highlight aspects of his personality and career. It drew attention to qualities that Augustus promoted, especially through the medium of art.86 In the Forum Augusti, for example, galleries with statues of

81. Roman Papers vol. i (Oxford, 1979) 214. 82. Syme 1939,318. 83. Certainly the plebs did also: cf. Suet. JC 88 for the role they played in his deification; also

Nic. Damasc. vita Caes. 19: zXAov r p &V0pwno, &Ev tvatt, 'ro-iS ,v noXXoZt iO tu ero; and see Yavetz 185-213. For the place of Caesar's cult in the Augustan restoration see K. Latte, Rdmische

Religionsgeschichte (Munich, 1960) 302-303. For details relating to the cult see RE Supp. 4, 819; P. Herz in ANRW I. 16.2, 1150.

84. "Livy and Augustus," HSCP 64 (1959) 27-87; the quotation is on 58. 85. A controversial question, to be sure, whether he received divine honors in the last years of

his life. Besides Weinstock, passim, see V. Ehrenberg, "Caesar's Final Aims," HSCP 68 (1964) 149-61, E. Rawson, "Caesar's Heritage," JRS 65 (1975) 148-59, and CAN2 ix 749-55, siding with Weinstock against the scepticism of Syme (1939, 54) et al.

86. Of course the evidence of the visual arts is interesting because they addressed all segments of society. Syme did not reckon with the evidence of archaeology. That omission is repaired by Ramage, but his interpretation of the material, as everywhere tending to "remove" or "neutralize" the Dictator, is rather idiosyncratic. For a more balanced view of the cult of the emperors and of the deified dead generally, which shows that they were regarded as living presences or efficacious gods and honored


heroes from Rome's past flanked the temple of Mars Ultor on either side."' As Zanker writes, "Individuals singled out for inclusion were above all those 'who had brought the Roman people from its modest beginnings to its present position of greatness and world rule' (Suet. Aug. 31). By this criterion, the greatest Romans were the imperialists, generals, and triumphators."

Certainly Julius Caesar was at home in such company. The rest of Zanker's remarks on the monument are worth quoting: "The display of statues in the sanctuary of Mars suggested a coherent overall view of Roman history. Onetime enemies stood united in this national Hall of Fame: Marius beside Sulla, Lucullus beside Pompey.... Only the dictator Julius Caesar himself was missing from the gallery of Julian worthies, for as a god he could not be included among the mortals. Instead, a place within the [adjacent] temple was reserved for the Divus Iulius."88

This prompts a pair of reflections. The announcement of a restored Republic was merely one element in Augustus' propaganda. It occupies only a small part of the Res Gestae (34), for instance. The theme of imperium bulks much larger (e.g., RG 26-33).Y As an exemplum Caesar could hardly be bettered in this regard. Jupiter's prophecy in the Aeneid is all about imperium (sine fine dedi, 279), and so inclusion of Caesar, featured now as a god, is of a piece with Augustus' programme.

Second, it has been alleged by scholars who find evidence of a tolerant attitude in Augustus' Rome toward Caesar's enemies, Pompey and Cato in particular, that this entailed some slight to Caesar himself.90 But insofar as Augustus rewrote the past, or cast the future using historical typologies, the message was not partisan at all but eirenic. If a sympathetic view of Pompey or Cato is countenanced in the new regime, it is not necessarily at Caesar's expense: the focus is on concordia (adopting in a thematic way Caesar's own policy of conciliation as urged by Cicero and Sallust).

That is the message of Remo cum fratre Quirino / iura dabunt in Vergil's passage. In the new order old enemies are reconciled or, as Zanker says, "united"; this in contrast to the falling out of Caesar and Pompey which Vergil deplores in the lines on the triumvirs in the Heldenschau.9Y The only persona absolutely non grata from the past was Antony, still marginalized as leader of a traitorous faction.Y2 In any case, Caesar did not have to compete with Cato (or Pompey, or Cicero) for favor because they could be honored for different things.93 Certainly the fact that, as

accordingly, see D. Fishwick, The Imperial Cult in the Latin West (Leiden, 1987); S. R. F. Price, "Between Man and God: Sacrifice in the Roman Imperial Cult," JRS 70 (1980) 2843; Fishwick, "Ovid and Divus Augustus," CP 86 (1991) 36-41; our passage is cited on p. 38 of the last publication (though Fishwick reserves judgment on the identity of Caesar).

87. See Zanker 194, fig. 149; also Gruen 1990, 412-13. 88. Zanker21. 89. The centrality of the imperialist theme in Augustan Rome is emphasized in Gruen 1990. 90. Cf. Alexander, passim, and Ramage 234-35. 91. Likewise a plea for concordia: cf. lines 827-29: concordes animae nunc ... heu quantum

inter se bellum . . . quantas acies stragemque ciebunt... 92. Cf. Res Gestae 1.1; Dio 51.19.3-5;Plut. Cic.49.4;Ant. 86.5; Reinhold 146-48with literature. 93. As demonstrated by Sallust at Cat. 53-54.

24 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 14/No. 1 /April 1995

Syme puts it, Caesar "destroyed the Republic," was not made the centerpiece of Augustus' treatment of the man. There were other qualities he could commend to what, evidence suggests, was a far from unreceptive audience.'

To turn now to evidence of immediate relevance for Vergil's passage. White has collected forty references to Julius Caesar in the Augustan poets.' These findings challenge Syme's contention that the poets preserve a discreet silence on the subject of Julius in deference to the Emperor's unease. Two points can be objectively made, both important to bear in mind in connection with our lines. Most of the citations involve reference to his deification, especially his katasterism. To be precise, 25 of the 40 passages that White counts as certain references to Julius Caesar in the Augustan poets concern the Dictator's divinity.' Evidently this was an approved way to speak of him, not surprising when we consider that it was Augustus himself who sponsored the cult (a fact duly noted in some of the references).' Thus Servius' reading fits in with a pattern traceable throughout the literature of the era. The conclusion of Ovid's Metamorphoses is the fullest example. It illustrates the other pattern, the way treatments of Caesar's deification prepare for laudatory references to the Emperor himself. This movement can even be found in our passage in the way tum takes us from Caesar's deification to the Augustan era.

Finally a word about the one passage of the Aeneid in which Julius Caesar un mistakably appears, and is lectured by Anchises for his part in civil war (6.826-35). These lines especially have been pressed to prove that the dominant attitude toward Caesar was hostile,' and that the Caesar in Book 1, who is most respectfully treated, cannot be the Dictator.9 The lines are eloquent of disappointment, it is true, but how far are they really damning? The final two verses (834-5), tuque prior, tu parce,

94. On Julius Caesar's popularity see especially Yavetz 192-213. 95. White 346. To his list add Ov. Pont. 4.8.63. 96. A majority, then, but not all, as Syme's thesis requires. Caesar is a god, or a star installed in

heaven, at: Verg. Ecl. 9.46-50; Aen. 6.792; 8.681; 9.642; Hor. Odes 1.12.47; Ov. Fasti 1.510, 530; 2.144; 3.157; 3.697-704; 5.567-78; Pont. 2.2.84; 4.5.21; 4.8.63; Met. 15.745-818; 840-51; Amores 3.8.52; Prop. 3.18.34; 4.6.59-60; Manil. 1.9,926; 4.57,934; Epic. Drusi 245; Eleg. Maec. 178.

Of the Augustan poets, Ovid has the most references to Divus Iulius; Horace, the former Pompeian, the fewest (Odes 1.2.44; 1.12.47; Sat. 1.9.18). But I wonder if it is mere fancy to detect in Horace's apparent reference to the deified Heracles (not actually named) at Sat. 2.1.10-14 an indirect allusion to the deified Julius. The context (prelude to praise of Augustus) supports it, and the reform in attitude that Horace discusses, or admits to, makes little sense in relation to Heracles, while the view that the Dictator was undone by invidia (line 12), or by the unreasonable ambition of his friends, was widespread in Augustan circles and afterward among supporters of the imperial power. Augustus himself promoted it in the Autobiography (cf. Nic. Damasc. vit. Caes. 19-20); and compare Vell. 2.56; Dio 44.1.1; and DServ. ad Aen. 1.286 (Caesaris processibus invidebant). The fulgorin line 13 may be the Julium sidus of Odes 1.12.47 (comparefulgura, Geo. 1.488); with the exstinctus in 14 compare

Verg. Ecl. 5.20 and Geo. 1.466. 97. Ov. Fasti 2.144; 5.567-78; Manil. 4.934. 98. E.g., Syme 1939, 317; Ramage 231. White 349-51 offers a more balanced appreciation. 99. Austin 1971, 110: "Virgil's feelings about Tulius Caesar were tinged with deep unhappiness,

as 6.834f. show"; R. D. Williams 1972, 182: "on the one occasion when Julius Caesar is certainly referred to (6.834f.) it is in a context of sorrow."


genus qui ducis Olympo / proice tela manu, sanguis meus, were characterized by Syme as a "veiled rebuke." But this, again, is one-sided. Anchises presumes on the familiarity of direct address because Caesar is related to him, as sanguis meus shows. And his words are actually flattering: "you who descend from Olympus." As

D. Little remarks, "Even while making the plea, [Anchises] endorses the Julian myth of divine descent."10'0 Caesar is singled out, not because he is held solely responsible for Rome's internal wars, but because, as the outstanding representative of Rome's first family, more is naturally expected of him. And neither he nor Pompey is referred to by name. White reads these verses as a general lament for Rome's recent past, involving Marius and Sulla, Octavian and Antony, no less than Caesar and Pompey. I would add that, in their capacity as gener and socer, Caesar and Pompey best reflect the horror of all civil war, unnatural conflict between members of the same (extended) family; and that is another reason Anchises directs his remarks at them specifically. Caesar is still a hero here, not a villain, but like Hercules or Ajax, or Achilles perhaps, he erred because his great strength did not stop short of harrning family and friends. But that is the fault of tragic heroes; and the tragedy of Rome, that its virtus, embodied above all in Julius Caesar, was misdirected. If it is a rebuke it is aimed at many, but I would prefer to call it a plaintive appeal; whose poignancy depends, in part, on being addressed to a figure Vergil otherwise admired. Neither Anchises, nor Vergil speaking through him, is disowning Caesar. Far from it: he is family, he is the pride of the Julian gens, he is one of Rome's great heroes. It is to his greatness that the appeal is made. Just by virtue of his appearance in the Heldenschau Caesar is valorized, more so indeed than Pompey, who remains in Caesar's shadow. Certainly there is an element of reproach, entirely missing from Jupiter's optimistic speech, but then it would not be in place there. Cumulatively such otherwise similar passages complicate the moral outlook of the poem. The prophecies do not duplicate, but build on one another.'01 Alone these verses in Book 6 cannot prove that the Caesar in Book I must be someone else. I would suggest instead that the scene in Book 1 prepares for this passage by supplying the terms in which Anchises makes his plea to Caesar, heightening the consequent mood of regret.

It is time to do what was promised earlier, and speculate on a corollary of our argument: why the Emperor is absent from a passage written, as Servius said (and nearly all modem scholars agree), ad laudem Augusti. In essentials our reading will be thought "neo-Augustan." But note at least that it depends upon reading Augustus out of lines he has long been thought to occupy. The omission may be made up in books 6 and 8, but that does not really explain his absence here. The assumption all along has been that this is a doublet of the Heldenschau or Shield, where Augustus is given pride of place. If we are to understand our passage, we have to rid ourselves of that assumption. Like the others, it culminates with the

100. Little 262 n. 23. Note, too, no trace here of Caesar the Republic-wrecker. 101. For a discussion of this principle see Murgia, passim.


Age of Augustus. But the tum? What does that imply? Not that the Caesar in question will usher in the new age by his own efforts, as at 6.791ff.: Augustus Caesar divi genus aurea condet saecula.... By itself tum implies no more than coincidence between the deification, or mere appearance of Caesar, and the new order. Heyne's comment on saecula aspera mitescent is perceptive: "Tribuitur tempori, quod hominum est." Now, Heyne thought the Caesar in question, in other

words the person of most consequence, was Augustus. But he saw that in this passage, at least, Vergil makes saecula the subject of change, not the Emperor or anyone else. Jupiter's prophecy is impersonal to a degree that contrasts sharply with other surveys of Roman history in the poem, especially the Heldenschau.102 Here history is the product not of personalities but of destiny. In the dialectic of divine and human will, the accent now is all on the former, identified for present purposes with fate, thefata of Jupiter. Human agency recedes in importance. Note that, after mentioning the founding of Rome under Romulus in lines 276-77, no more names are named until we come to Caesar in 286, a lapse of some 700 years. There are, in fact, no histonrcal figures at all in Jupiter's prophecy, only gods, allegories (cana Fides, Furor, etc.) and heroes of legend. Caesar is the one apparent exception.

We may think there was sufficient reason to make this exception in the Emperor's case. But I think Vergil included Julius Caesar for the same reason that Ovid ended his epic poem with Caesar's apotheosis, because he wanted to link the mythical past with the historical present, and he found that a contemporary form of legend, katasterism, would suit his purpose. Julius Caesar was the first Roman in centuries, i.e., since Romulus, to have been honored with deification, and the first Roman ever to whom the Hellenistic fashion for katasterism was extended. 103

Fabor, Jupiter says, et volvens fatorum arcana movebo. These program matic words hint at a degree of mystification. That there are arcana here has been recognized before in connection with the number symbolism underlying the passage.'04 We find, not obfuscation exactly, but oracular language and lore that has contributed its share to the confusion over who Caesar is. This is anything but a straightforward version of the past. As noted earlier, Jupiter's sketch of Rome's prehistory in lines 261-72 is built up from segments of three, thirty, and 300 years respectively: a schematic and highly arbitrary account. The ensuing lines trace the progress of world dominion (277-85), focusing especially on the theme of revenge in the conquest of Greece by Troy's descendants. They are based on Cassandra's prophecy in Lykophron 1226-80, and adopt an Alexandrian style of

102. With lines 284-85 in our passage compare 6.836-40. 103. Factors in weighing the force of quoque in 290. For the popularity of katasterism in the

Hellenistic age as a form of contemporary, creative mythology see M. Nilsson, Geschichte der Griechischen Religion (2nd ed., Munich, 1961) 2.2.58-61; on katasterism elsewhere in the Aeneid and its pre-history in Roman culture see S. Skulsky, "Invitus, regina . .. : Aeneas and the Love of Rome," AJP 106 (1985) 447-55; A. F. Segal in ANRW II.23.2, 1333-94.

104. Cf. Austin ad 267; Horsfall, 1974.


reference in regard to personal and place-names.105 Then the lines on Troianus Caesar, continuing the vengeance theme but enhancing the oracular manner by the use of nascetur and the reference to saecula, etc. What was Vergil's model here? Lykophron, again, but more immediately the Sibylline oracles, a source Vergil had already demonstrated an affinity for in the Eclogues.'"

In the Sibylline style god is the master of history and people are his instruments. Caesar is present, but not doing anything, not effecting anything, or if he is, only by virtue of being displaced to make room for something even better. It is, I submit, futile to try to work out a formal system of saecula at work in these lines, but that

is their subject, the pre-ordained progress of eras. That secular hopes and fears were npe at the time of Caesar's passing, excited, in fact, by that event, is demonstrable.

We will return to that in the next section."0 Syme can help us. Julius Caesar's appearance hardly disrupts the impersonal

manner of Jupiter's prophecy because by this time he was, as Syme says, deperson alized: first by being made a god, and second, a comet; and as a comet, thirdly, the

omen of a new era. This is known, but deserves to be better known. Caesar had been

identified with a star, the sidus Iulium. Which does not mean that he was completely replaced or mythologized, but that his already legendary status had acquired another dimension. It is this astral imagery that is crucial for the understanding of our passage. Here is another point of contact with the oracles, several of which feature signs in heaven, comets especially, as evidence of imminent, momentous change.108

And the comet appearing soon after Julius' death certainly functioned that way.

V

In what follows I propose to survey all of Vergil's references to Julius Caesar, references that concentrate, as it happens, on his death or enhanced status as a star and god in heaven. That the poet's earlier allusions to Divus Iulius might provide relevant background has been suggested before,109 but never pursued in any detail. In fact this is probably more important than the factors considered thus far. I imagine

105. On Vergil's debtto Lykophron, and to the literature of prophecy generally, see S. West, "Notes on the Text of Lykophron," CQ 33 (1983) 114-35, esp. 132-35; N. Horsfall, "Virgil and the Poetry of Explanations," G&R 38 (1991) 203-11, esp. 206; and now W. Stroh, "Horaz und Vergil in ihren prophetischenGedichten," Gymnasium 100 (1993) 289-322.

106. With nasceturcompare the use of yvtatrot at Oracula Sibyllina (ed. Geffcken) 11.69,276; 2.12; 3.779. Line 286 recalls Cat. 64.338 nascetur vobis expers terroris Achilles. It is well known that the long prophecy at the end of Catullus' poem influenced Vergil in his 4th Eclogue. At points our passage recalls the 4th Eclogue. All three draw on the language of oracular forecast.

107. Horace's Secular Hymn is a fit comparandum for our lines, and Augustus is not directly named there either. The impersonal style can be paralleled in much art of the period: Zanker 79 100. Cf. Pomathios 252: "Au livre 1, la personne du Prince s'efface meme derriWre son ceuvre." See also the remarks of Powell 144 about the Aeneid's comparative reticence with regard to the Emperor.

108. Cf. Orac. Sib. 2.34f.; 3.334f.; 5.155f.; 8.190f.; 14.270f. 109. See Powell 145-46.


Vergil was motivated to recur to the subject in part by the attention he had earlier paid it. Internal allusion was much in his manner, as readers are aware."' I will attempt to show that we have here an overlooked instance.

On line 287, after the mention of Caesar's British expedition, Servius continues, in reference to the second half of the line: et post mortem eius, cum ludi funebres ab Augusto eius adoptivofilio darentur, stella medio die visa est, unde est "ecce Dionaei processit Caesaris astrum. " "And after his death, when funeral games were being given by his adoptive son Augustus, a star appeared in the middle of the day, whence the line 'Behold the star of Dionaean Caesar has come forth' " (Ecl. 9.47).

If you read the available literature, you would learn that Servius supports Julius Caesar in 286, but would never guess that he did so in part because he found here a (covert) reference to the star of Caesar. Scholars are pretty nearly unanimous in passing over this scholium in silence. Either it touches on an area of ancient religion they would prefer to ignore, or it merely reflects Servius' overactive imagination.

Both seem implied by the almost complete lack of attention accorded his comment. Although Servius was sometimes too quick to find topical references and secondary meanings in his Vergil, we might do well to give his opinion a hearing if sense is ever to be made of these lines.

Students of Augustan literature are familiar with the star of Caesar, or sidus lulium (to use Horace's designation which has become almost standard in modem discussion), as a recurrent symbol in the poetry of the age.'1' It will be worthwhile recounting its history. In 46 BC Julius Caesar had created games in honor of Venus

Genetrix, ancestral goddess of the Romans but of the Julian house especially."2 These were instituted in conjunction with the temple to the goddess that he vowed on the eve of Pharsalus."13 Caesar entrusted their supervision to a non-priestly college, but after his assassination there was reluctance to proceed with them. At this point in July of 44 Octavian, recently arrived in Rome, stepped forward to

110. For a discussion of this Vergilian trait within the context of literary allusion generally see R. Thomas, "Virgil's Georgics and the Art of Reference," HSCP 90 (1986) 171-98, esp. 182-85.

111. For ancient sources on the sidus Iulium cf. Dio 45.7.1-2; Julius Obsequens 68; Pliny NH 2.94; Plut. Caes. 69.3; Seneca NQ 7.17.2; Servius ad Ecl. 9.46, Aen. 6.790, and Aen. 8.681; Suet. JC 88; Val. Max. 3.2.19; 6.9.15. For literary references in the Augustan poets, cf. Verg. Ecl. 9.47,

Aen. 8.68 1; Hor. Odes 1.12.47; Prop. 4.6.59; Ov. Met. 15.745-870, Fasti 3.697-704. For the evidence of contemporary coinage see Weinstock 377-81; Zanker 35-36; Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik: Exhibition Catalogue (Berlin, 1988) 500-502,506-507, 513-14,520. For modem literature on the subject see RE 10, 282-83; RE 11, 1186-87; RE Suppl. 4, 819; T. Mommsen, Gesammelte Schriften vol. iv (Berlin, 1906) 180-82; Taylor 89-92; Pesce; Scott; B6mer 1952; Cramer 78-80;

Wagenvoort 6-18; Klingner 96-99; Binder 1971, 226-32; Weinstock 370-84; Zanker 34-36; Hahn 13-16; Hall 2575-78; Kyrieleis; additional references in Bdmer 1986, 480.

112. CIL 1.1.225, 244. These were combined with the ludi Victoriae Caesaris: cf. Cic. Fam. 11.28.6: ludos quos Caesaris victoriae Caesar adulescensfecit. Cf. RE Suppl. 5, 629-30; Weinstock 91, 156; Bomer 1952,27.

1 13. Cf. Dio 43.22.3; Appian BC 2.102; on the chronology see now Ulrich 66-71.


take control and see that the games were performed.'14 Evidence suggests that he combined them with funeral games for his adoptive father;"'1 for this display of loyalty he won the admiration of the common people, and gained support from

Caesarians who had been lying low."6 It signalled his intention now to represent Caesar and the Julian family. And his determination to assume that role (in the face of Antony's opposition) was evidently strengthened by what he and others saw as a supernatural occurrence. For it was during these games that an especially bright comet appeared in the sky over Rome for seven days. The account of Pliny the Elder is worth quoting, as he reports Octavian's own published account of the event, together with his private response:"17

Cometes in uno totius orbis loco colitur in templo Romae, admodum faustus divo Augusto iudicatus ab ipso, qui incipiente eo apparuit ludis quos faciebat Veneri Genetrici non multo post obitum patris Caesaris in collegio ab eo instituto. namque his verbis id gaudium prodit: "Iis ipsis ludorum meorum diebus sidus crinitum per septem dies in regione caeli quae sub septentrionibus est conspectum est. id oriebatur circa undecimam horam diei clarumque et omnibus e terris conspicuum fuit. eo sidere significari volgus credidit Caesaris animam inter deorum immortalium numina receptam, quo nomine id insigne simulacro capitis eius, quod mox in foro consecravimus, adiectum est." haec ille in publicum: interiore gaudio sibi illum natum seque in eo nasci interpretatus est; et, si verum fatemur, salutare id terris fuit.

(Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 2.94)

Which may be translated:

The only place in the whole world where a comet is worshipped is in a temple at Rome. It was judged very propitious by divine Augustus himself, as it had appeared early in his career at some games which, not long after the death of his father Caesar, he was celebrating in the college founded by Caesar in honor of Venus Genetrix. In fact he made public the joy it gave him in these words: "On the actual occasion of my games a comet was visible for seven days in the northern part of the sky. It would rise about the eleventh hour, and was bright, visible from all lands. The crowd believed this star signified that the soul of Caesar had been received into the divine

114. Dio 45.6.4; Suet. Aug. 10; App. BC 3.28; Nic. Damasc. vita Caes. 28. For the political background to the appearanceof the comet see Syme 1939, 116-17.

1 15. Servius ad Aen. 1.287 (quoted above); also ad Ecl. 9.46 and ad Aen. 8.68 1. 116. Dio 45.6.4. Cf. Cic. Famn 1 1.28.6 forthe co-operationthat Matius, a Caesarian, gaveOctavian

in the performance of the games on this occasion. Matius is obliged to defend himself to Cicero, who disapproved; cf. Au. 15.2.3 ludorumque eius apparatus et Matius ac Postumus mihi procuratores non placent. As Shackleton Bailey remarks ad Fam. 11.27.7, the support of Matius et al. supports the supposition that Octavian combined the traditional games with some sort of ceremony in Caesar's honor, for "filn the latter character especially they would attract the assistance of Caesar's friends."

117. The Pliny passage comes from the Autobiography and is registered among the collected remains of Augustus' writing, Malcovati fr. vi section XII.


company of the immortal gods; and on this account the emblem of a star was added to his bust that soon afterward we dedicated in the forum." This was his public statement; but privately he rejoiced because he interpreted it as meaning that the comet had been born for him and he in the comet; and, to tell the truth, it did prove beneficial to all lands.

Pliny distinguishes two interpretations of the comet: the spontaneous popular view that this was Caesar's soul en route to heaven, which arose because it appeared during the rites of Venus Genetrix, at the same time funeral games in Julius' honor were being put on; and Octavian's own view of the matter, which is somewhat hard to follow but evidently related to him personally and pleased him. The two are not incompatible. Octavian's immediate reaction, as Pliny indicates, was to set up in the temple of Venus a bronze statue of the Dictator with a star above his head."8

This served to endorse the common reaction. But if the young Octavian fostered this view of the comet he inferred some additional meaning for himself. This private interpretation is harder to construe. In particular the phrase sibi illum natum seque in eo nasci interpretatus est in the last sentence above has given trouble. "9 Possibly it reflects the language of astrology."20 The star later appears in contemporary art as an astrological symbol in conjunction with Capricorn, Augustus' sign of conception.'21

From other sources we learn that at least two other interpretations of the comet were current. As was customary in such cases, the portent engaged the attention of professional seers and led to the consultation of the Sibylline books.'22 DServius reports that an Etruscan haruspex named Vulcanius took the comet to indicate that the ninth saeculum was ending and the tenth about to begin.'23 In Etruscan lore the tenth was the last in the cycle of ages.'24 This interpretation is therefore important for its apocalyptic implications.

Finally, comets were apt to set off a flurry of unofficial prophetic speculation, most of it dire in nature, because comets were usually, though not always, regarded as unfavorable omens.'25 This negative interpretation thrived in later years owing

1 8. Cf. also Dio 45.7.1; Suet. JC 88; DServ. ad Ecl. 9.46. 119. See Rose 191: "whatever these words may mean." 120. Cf. Cic. De Fato 12; Manil. 4.371, cuius signi quis parte creatur, eius habet mores atque

illo nasciturastro; 4.5 18, etc.; Petronius 39.7-9. 121. See Zanker 84 fig. 66. G. Bowersock in Raaflaub and Toher 385-87 and 393 positions

astrology in the mainstream of Augustan religious concerns. 122. See G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Romer (2nd ed., Munich, 1912) 538-43. 123. DServ. ad Ecl. 9.46: Vulcanius aruspex in contione dixit cometen esse, qui significaretexitum

noni saeculi et ingressum decimi. 124. Serv. ad Ecl. 4.4; see Hall 2564-89. 125. See RE 10, 1147-50. Cf. Dio 45.7.1, where the popular interpretation of the prodigy as

manifesting Caesar's apotheosis is contrasted with the view of the comet as "portending the usual things" (7poaove1vstv oto itou dwo0), which must mean famines, floods, wars, and the like. For the dread aspect of this particular comet cf. Verg. Geo. 1.488; Tibul. 2.5.71. But the emphasis that

Augustus in his version of events put on its brightness (clarumque) may have been intended to show that it was benign: see C. Gruzelier, Claudian: De Raptu Proserpinae (Oxford, 1993) 138 for the background to such beliefs.


to the civil wars, and because the comet of 44 came to be grouped with a rash of prodigies that appeared around the same time, some of which, famously, preceded the assassination itself.L2 But the same omens that bode ill could also be regarded as signs of better things to come;"2 and when the comet was brought into relation with the Etrascan belief in the tenth and final age, it could be seen as marking the end

of the old, decadent age of saecula, and heralding the imminent return of a more welcome age in the not too distant future. In Rome many evidently chose to interpret this declaration of the ultimate saeculum in such positive terns.'28 J. Hall has charted the effort to coordinate this expectation with traditional Etruscan belief regarding the ten ages: some juggling of dates was required. But he concludes (2578): "Not in technical terms, but in the more powerful language of public opinion, the portent of 44 had, in fact, caused the inception of a new saeculum at Rome, in a particular sense, that of the sidus Iulium and Octavian Caesar." 129

The Secular Games put on by Augustus in 17 BC represent the culmination of this millennial spinrt. Vergil, of course, did not live to see the games. But their celebration, long delayed,'30 only gave formal recognition to what had been officially implied and popularly supposed for some time, namely that the new saeculum started around the time Caesar died and the comet appeared at his memorial service. Support for this comes mainly from archaeology. Rather than review the monuments one by one we quote Zanker's summary remark: "Soon the star appeared as a symbol of hope on ... finger rings, and seals.... The star later appeared repeatedly on coins, especially together with celebrations of the saeculum aureum."'3l Taylor's review

126. See Gelzer 325 n. 2 for references in prose to these omens; Mynors ad Geo. 1.469ff. for the references in poetry.

127. Cf. Calp. Sic. 1.77-81, where it is asserted of the comet of AD 54 (in Nero's reign) that it portends only good. DServ. ad Aen. 10.272 lists conditions under which comets may bode well; compare Serv. ad Geo. 1.488. A comet appeared at Mithridates' birth, and again at his succession: both good omens for him (Weinstock 371).

128. Hall 2577. See, however, Coleman 130-31, and Cramer 79, for the willful optimism of this interpretation; the anticipation of the final age could just as readily be cause for alarm.

129. Hall 2578. As indicated earlier this system of ten ages was subject to different interpretations and distributed among various dates accordingly; it seems never to have been formalized. See Weinstock 191-97; Horsfall 1974, 115.

130. On the delay of the Secular Games see Fraenkel 366; R. Merkelbach, "Aeneas in Cumae," MH 18 (1961) 83-99, esp. 90ff.; Weinstock 191-97, esp. 196; Hall 2577.

131. Zanker 35, with illustrations of the relevant monuments 34-35. Of particular significance in this regard is the coin issued on the occasion of the Ludi Saeculares in 17 Bc depictingthe youthfulhead of Caesar with the comet above. The moneyer was one Sanquinius. It is illustrated and discussed in KaiserAugustus und die VerloreneRepublik520-21; Raaflaub and Toher 303, 352, and 362; Zanker 168 and 193. Obsequens 71 reports anothercomet in 17 Bc, which has complicated the interpretation of this coin in the past. Recently, however, P. J. Bicknell has argued that what appeared in that year was not a comet and has no bearing on the iconography of the coin. He writes: "Given that no comet was observed at Rome in 17 B.C. it is clearly necessary to identify the tailed star placed above the head of Julius Caesar on coins of Sanquinius solely as that which appeared in 44 B.C., not long after the dictator's assassination on the Ides of March within that year" ("The Celestial Torch of 17 B.C.," AHB 5.5/6 (1991) 123-28. The quotation is on 126.). A similar conclusion is reachedin KaiserAugustusund die verlorene Republik 520-21: "Der Stern auf dem Schild des Herolds mag den Kometen meinen,


of the material led her to the conclusion that "the comet was interpreted as a sign that a new age was at hand."'32

To return now to Eclogue 9. Vergil's brief reference to the sidus Iulium is probably the earliest in the Augustan canon; brief but much to the point, because it suggests that under its influence the earth and all its crops will thrive, which, we recall, is what the conclusion of the Pliny passage says actually did occur (salutare id terris fuit). Lines 47-49 read: ecce Dionaei processit Caesaris astrum, / astrum

quo segetes gauderent frugibus et quo / duceret apricis in collibus uva colorem "Look, the star of Caesar, Venus' son, has come forth, that star at which the crops

might rejoice in their fruit, and the grape draw her color on the sunny hills." We should guard against taking this too literally. Vergil is using poetic imagery suited to the context, but the star's appearance heralds a time of happiness politically as

much as agriculturally.'33 The symbol comprehends not only Julius but the man who would replace him, since the comet appeared at Octavian's public debut and since he saw in it some meaning for him personally. He gloried in the light reflected from the image: he adopted the title of divifilius and used the symbol as his coat of arms.'34 There is an obvious connection here with the Aeneid passage if Servius is right in finding a veiled reference in the latter to Caesar's star, in that both present the deification of Julius (and emergence of the new Caesar) as conducing to a better era.

Eclogue 5, a lament over the death of Daphnis, has been regarded since antiquity as an allegory of the death of Julius Caesar because the poem, besides mourning his death, also celebrates his deification in terms that seem more appropriate to Caesar than to a humble shepherd. This interpretation, of course, has been the subject of endless debate.'35 Literary scholars tend to resist such a reductive approach to poetry, and in the tranquil world of pastoral find incongruous the glorification of a political figure and man of arms like Julius Caesar. Some point out that Daphnis is called a puer (54), whereas Caesar was 56 (or so) at the time he died. But the

der 17 vor Chr. zu de Sakularspielen erschein; er erinnert aber doch auch sehr an den 'caesarischen' Stern.. . Der Stern Uber dem Kopf der Rtickseite ist eindeutig das sidus lulium."

132. Taylor 91. The comet did not create this millennial climate by itself, but did its part to sustain it. Cic. Cat. 3.9.19, Sallust (or whoever wrote the second letter to Caesar) and Lucan 1.564-65 all

witness to this mentality and attendant prophetic activity during the Republic's last years. 133. Compare Hor. Odes 4.5.18-19; 4.15.4-5; CS 29-32; 59-60; and see Zanker 172-83. 134. Cf. Aen. 8.68 1, patriumque aperitur vertice sidus and Servius ad loc: in honorem patris

stellam in galea coepit habere depictam. See Klingner, Rfmische Geisteswelt (Munich, 1965) 278: references to the star of Caesar in Vergil stand for "die weltgestaltende Macht des Divus lulius, vermittelt durch seinen Sohn Octavianus." This complex image, comprehendingCaesar and Augustus both, helps explain the ambiguity some have found in our passage. The Caesar is Julius. But references to his deification relate closely to the onset of the Augustan Age. A similar ambiguity is at work in the eponymous reference at Hor. Odes 1.12.47: see Fraenkel 296 and Nisbet-Hubbard ad loc. Both take it as a reference to Augustus, and the latter cite Syme in support but Syme always assumed that this was an oblique reference to the Dictator (Syme 1939, 318; 1978, 191 n. 1). See now West 6-7.

135. A bibliography on the question by W. W. Briggs is available in ANRW II.31.2, 1326-27; it should be supplemented by Sirago's in the Enciclopedia Virgiliana vol. 1, 756.


emphasis on Daphnis' youth is intended to heighten the pathetic theme of premature death, a fate he shared with Julius. Such stylization is consistent, too, with the rejuvenated image of Caesar that emerged after his death and that can be traced in the posthumous portraits.'" The poem also owes something to Bion's Lament

for Adonis,'37 and in Caesar's case the companison with Adonis was assisted by the close relationship he claimed with Venus. We cannot go into all the arguments for or against the allegorical reading here; but we side with Griffin, Coleman et al. in adopting a compromise position and supposing that, even if it is a loose match, the poem must have evoked memory of Julius in contemporaries and thus have at least partial reference to him and the events of 44.138 In that case some of its language can be interpreted, like the astris in our passage, as a literal description of Julius' installment in heaven, rather than as mere figures of speech: cf. Daphnis... usque ad sidera notus (43); and especially: Daphnimque tuum tollemus ad astra; Daphnim ad astraferemus (51-52; cf. 56-57). Compare Caesar ... famam qui terminet astris in our passage.'39 By itself this resemblance proves little. But Vergil also echoes the formula he had used earlier to forecast the worship of Caesar: compare the end of line 290, vocabitur hic quoque votis, with the conclusion of line 80 in the Eclogue, damnabis tu quoque votis. Again, it could be coincidence, but cumulatively such similarities go some way towards reinforcing the identification of the Caesar in our passage with the Dictator."4 The connection is important because in lines 56ff. the elevation of Daphnis to the stars is cited as the cause of rural prosperity, just as the star of Caesar was in Eclogue 9. And, mutatis mutandis, the effect of Caesar's apotheosis in Aeneid 1 is cast in a similarly favorable light.

In considering the passage in connection with Vergil's expectations of a golden age we cannot turn from the Eclogues without a consideration of the Fourth. But here the evidence is more problematic, as is practically everything else connected with the poem.

The relevance of the 4th Eclogue for our passage is suggested initially by the similarity of language. Both announce a change of saecula (lines 5 and 291 respectively). Furthermore, the Sibylline style prevails in both: one notes in

136. Cf. Toynbee 2-9; also her Roman Historical Portraits (Ithaca, 1978) 32-33. An eternally youthful image symbolizes immortality: Michel 99.

137. Cf. DuQuesnay 22: "Virgil has ... assimilated his Daphnis to the well-known figure of Adonis."

138. Cf. Coleman 15-16 on the dating of the poem, 28-29 for its relevance to Caesar, and his comment on 173: "It is incredible that anyone in the late 40s could have read a pastoral poem on this theme without thinking of Caesar." See also Griffin, Latin Poets and Roman Life 186-87; and The Oxford History of the Roman World (Oxford, 1991) 249, where he supports the view that the 5th Eclogue indeed has some connection with Caesar.

139. And et modo, Caesar, avum, quem virtus addidit astris (Ov. Pont. 4.8.63). The avus is Julius. 140. The similarity of the two formulas has been remarked before, e.g., by Taylor 112. Coleman

268 notes that the choice of Daphnis as the observer of the astrum Caesaris in Ecl. 9.46ff. underscores the connection between Eclogues 5 and 9. Together we get a network of references to Caesar and the astrum Caesaris.


particular the resonant "o" sounds, which Austin has drawn attention to as a feature of this type of oracular poetry:'4'

magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo. iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Satumia regna; iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto. tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum desinet ac toto surget gens aurea mundo ... (Ecl. 4.5-9)

Compare Aen. 1.286-90:

nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris Iulius, a magno demissum nomen Iulo. hunc tu olim caelo, spoliis Orientis onustum accipies secura; vocabitur hic quoque votis.

Not only the sound of the verse but certain fonnal similarities heighten the sense that we have been here before. This is noted by Austin; of line 291 he writes: "In pattern and style it recalls the Golden Age of the fourth Eclogue."'l42 For our reading of the Aeneid passage, it is necessary to bear in mind the expectation of a change in saecula that the comet of 44 brought; and helpful if we can relate this to the subject matter of the 4th Eclogue. Coleman regards the connection as likely: "It is probable that the appearance of the famous comet, sidus Iulium, in July 44 B.C. led to an official consultation of the Sibylline books as well as a wave of unofficial prophetic speculation.... Some of the optimistic interpretations current may well be alluded to in the apocalyptic imagery of [Ecl. 4, lines] 5-10, and the Golden Age symbols of caduceus, cornu copiae and Sol are common on coins of the late 40s."'43 It is impossible, however, to prove that there was a direct connection between comet and poem, and, for our purposes, unnecessary to hypothesize one. Line 4, ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas, recalls the prediction of Vulcanius that the tenth and ultimate age was at hand. Much beyond this we cannot go. There is otherwise no reference, direct or indirect, to Julius' star.

Two points, however, are worth making in connection with the poem, both chronological. The first is quite simple. On a strict interpretation of the Aeneid passage as we read it, the age of peace begins in 44 or not long after. This, of course, is also around the time Vergil composed his Eclogue. The exact date is a matter of considerable dispute, but even though our argument requires only approximate agreement, one point in particular seems to favor a date closer to 44 than to 40 BC.

Murgia and others point out that it was the very scelus of the age that inspired

141. See Austin 1927, 100-105; also Nisbet 12. 142. Austin 1971, ad 291. 143. Coleman 130. Cf. also 134 and 141-42. For reference to the coins he mentions, see

Crawford, RRC 502-11, 740; Taylor 91. Others who connect the 4th Eclogue with the sidus lulium include Wagenvoort(at length), Klingner 1967, 75, and W. Krauss in ANRW II.31.1, 611.


apocalyptic visions of peace in Vergil, Horace (Epode 16) et al., not the Peace of Brundisium. This psychological insight is grounds for dating the poem earlier than the end of 40; the very insupportability of the situation forced the imagination to find an idealized altemative. Any proposed date must be tied to Pollio's consulship (cf. te consule dignus in line 11), but as Murgia points out (27): "As early as 43 Pollio was known to be consul designate for the year 40."'"`

The second point concerns the reckoning of time inherent in the poem itself. It can help with the main problem involved in our reading, that the deification of Caesar in 44 does not seem to have precipitated or coincided with an age of peace. The feature of the 4th Eclogue we draw attention to is the schedule Vergil envisages for the anrival of the golden age. He shapes it, of course, on the organic model, invoking the image of the child who will grow along with it. There will be a formative period.

The new age will not come suddenly, but needs time to develop: incipient magni procedere menses (12). The language hints that the transformation is gradual. In contrast to many another apocalypse, this one will not happen overnight.'45 The same cautious outlook is reflected in Jupiter's words, carefully chosen by the poet to hint at process: aspera tum mitescent saecula. The inceptive, mitescent, is important. And considering that Caesar's assassination actually set off another dozen years of civil war, lines 31-36 of the Eclogue are particularly relevant, with their (grudging) prediction of altera bella, "other wars," before the peaceful age begins. We are not arguing for Vergil's powers of prescience. But when he came to write the Aeneid, he had good reason to invoke the substance of his earlier poem in view of the fact that his instincts had proved correct.

It is for this reason that I cannot fully agree with R. Thomas when he writes that, by the time Vergil came to write the Georgics, "the fantastic solutions of the fourth eclogue, with its promise of a tranquil golden age, were exposed as such.'9"6

Vergil's optimism had been qualified from the beginning by intimations of a dark future, and the 4th Eclogue is not wholly utopian. But in the Georgics the mood is certainly grimmer. And it is this period when they were composed that poses the biggest challenge to our reading of the Aeneid passage and the chronology it assumes: the decade and a half of civil war after Caesar's murder.

144. C. Murgia, Virgil's Fourth Eclogue (Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture 1975) 27. See also J. Griffin, "Virgil," in The Oxford History of the Roman World (Oxford, 1991) 250, who would also detach it from the circumstance of the peace treaty and push the date of composition back closer to Caesar's death.

145. But an interim or formative period is an acknowledged feature of much apocalyptic: cf A. Y. Collins, The Apocalypse (Wilmington, 1979) 56-75. Wlosok 71 designates the time in troduced by tum in our lines as the "Zwischenzeit." For the idea, compare John Milton, "On the

Morning of Christ's Nativity," 165-68, "And then at last our bliss / Full and perfect is, / But now begins," lines I have the impertinence to quote only because they are modelled on our own (often imitated) passage, as the subsequentverses (167-72) indicate, being an adaptation of the Furor image to

Christian iconography. CompareManil. 1.922-26 for anothervariation: the way Divus lulius is alluded to in 926 is potentially significant in reflecting on the original. Other imitations at Ovid Fasti 1.702;

Calp. Sic. 1.46; Edmund Spenser EQ. 2.4.15. 146. Thomas vol. i, 16-17.


In tracing the source of the troubles, it is to the murder that Vergil turns. This itself is significant. The incident did lead logically to Philippi and then to Actium.

But in describing it, he reprises the apocalyptic language of the late 40s, which suggests that, for the purposes of his poetry anyway, his view of the event continued to be shaped by some of the old associations. Toward the end of Book 1 Vergil

is discussing signs in heaven, and cites the omens attending the affair. This serves as a transition to a jeremiad on conditions of his own day. The style anticipates the

Aeneid passage (and recalls the 4th Eclogue):

ille etiam exstincto miseratus Caesare Romam, cum caput obscura nitidum ferrugine texit impiaque aeternam timuerunt saecula noctem.

(Geo. 1.466-68).

The final line in particular deserves note. A "powerful golden line," with interlocking word order,147 it resembles line 291 in our passage, aspera tum positis mitescent saecula bellis, especially with its reference to saecula in penultimate position. What had been implied in the Eclogues is more evident here, that Vergil associated Caesar's death with fundamental changes in the order of things. Thomas (ad line 268) states that "saecula is used with the same reference to the metallic ages at... Aen. 1.291."

While it may be questioned whether the Hesiodic conceit of metallic ages should be assumed there, Thomas is right to see that in both passages a similar concept

involving cosmic ages (whether Hesiodic, Etruscan, or whatever) is at work; and my claim of course is that not only is the style of the passages similar but the subject is the same: Julius Caesar.

The sun sympathetically mourns with Rome for his death: ille etiam exstincto miseratus Caesare Romam. The implied attitude toward the Dictator is wholly favorable, as I imagine it to be in our passage. But the mood of the passages is

different. There is no mention of Caesar's deification in the Georgics, whereas in the Aeneid passage not only is this emphasized but the tragic circumstances of his death are suppressed. And whereas in the Aeneid Vergil hints that Caesar will take his place among the stars, here in the Georgics there is only a grim, passing reference in

488 to fulgura and dirae cometae among the prodigies witnessed around the time of the assassination; no allusion, in other words, to the sidus lulium as such, with the bright promise earlier attached to it. Do not the Georgics, moreover, contradict the Aeneid passage most obviously in that the former associate Caesar's death with

war, the latter (on our reading) with peace? Yes, but the same event is still charged with apocalyptic significance, whether for good or ill, and described in comparable terms. Both focus on saecula, as Thomas has noted. Both invoke Romulus (or

Quirinus) and Vesta, as indigites dei; both refer obliquely to civil war through the

147. Thomasad468.


trope of Mars (or Furor) impius.'O The vatic organ notes are sounded again in lines such as armorum sonitum toto Germania caelo / audiit, insolitis tremuerunt motibus

Alpes (474-75), and so on. We have here, I suggest, another case of Vergilian self-reference.

Admittedly the similarities could be explained on other grounds. But that the passages can refer to the same event, even though the implications seem different, stems from the nature of the evidence. Weather signs and other omens were ambiguous. What one person sees as dreadful, threatening doom, another could regard as promising. As Mynors observed: "phenomena which in ordinary life

would have to be treated as prodigies . . . in happier circumstances might even have been symptoms of a return to a golden age."149

Thus it was with the comet. Vulcanius had parsed it as the start of the final era, itself tidings of a decidedly dubious character. Crisis and dissolution seem implied before things improve. In the generally optimistic 4th Eclogue this is called another heroic age, but while Vergil actually experienced such conditions in the 30s it seemed more like an age of iron. He nearly convinced himself that Caesar's death and the attendant omens portended disaster after all. But following Actium, peace arrived. With the benefit of hindsight in writing this vaticinium ex eventu Vergil was able to revert to the spirit of the Eclogues because his earlier hopes were now realized. The Georgics passage is an interim report on the consequences of Caesar's passing. Jupiter's prophecy is the follow-up. 50 They compare with each other not unlike the way Dido's speech compares with Jupiter's prophecy, for as O'Hara has pointed out, the mood of the latter is projected at some cost to sincerity and full disclosure. In consideration of his audience Jupiter only hints at the price of peace and the difficulties Venus' descendants will have to come through in the meantime. But he does hint at it. The historical background to his ultimately sanguine message can even be read in Venus' frustration: quem das finem ... laborum? (241). Jupiter consoles her with the statement, manent immota tuorum Ifata tibi (257-58). We can postulate some earlier promise made to Venus extra scaenam to account for this assurance, but we might even detect in these words the voice of the poet speaking to his generation as he had once spoken for them when articulating the hopes widespread in the late 40s; and now vouching for their validity. He is able to do so by putting the prophecy into Jupiter's mouth, for (ostensibly) Venus' edification, because this is a prophecy literally Olympian in its range. The deep-focus perspective of the gods illuminates connections that are obscure or simply nonsensical on the human scale of time. In secular, or apocalyptic terms, we would have to say that our reading involves making the end of the old order correspond to the beginning of the new: war conduces to peace only as the war

148. See 498 in the Georgics, 292 in the Aeneid passage for Romulus and Vesta; lines 468 and 511 in the former, 294 in the latter, for the specter of civil war; and see Mynors ad 511 on this image.

149. Mynors ad 3.537-40. 150. Epode 16 and the Carmen Saeculare taken together reflect a similar reversal of mood.


to end all wars. The realization of such hopes is predicated on the attitude messages like Jupiter's instill. That it takes patience and endurance, that a lapse of time is always involved between a promise and its delivery, are themes of the whole Aeneid it would be otiose to dwell on.

In Aeneid 6.791ff., Anchises speaks of Augustus Caesar founding a golden age:

Hic vir, hic est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis, Augustus Caesar, divi genus; aurea condet saecula qui rursus Latio, regnata per arva Saturno quondam ...

It has often been remarked that this represents the fulfillment of Eclogue 4.1S1 For most scholars, this implies that Caesar is Augustus in Aeneid 1 too. But we might consider the possibility that in Aeneid 1 Vergil claims that the new age began when he originally said it would. As Rose has written, the prophecy of peace expressed in the Eclogues "never was falsified in the poet's lifetime.... Times were bettering, little by little, paulatim, as Vergil had said, and the fears which for a while succeeded his optimism proved unjustified."'52 Those fears are glossed in Jupiter's address to Venus. But, to repeat what was said earlier, he is not obliged to tell her everything.

My view, then, is that the passage makes most sense viewed on a continuum going back to the 40s, to the 4th Eclogue, to Julius Caesar's death and deification. Servius cited the 9th Eclogue to support his comment on the line. What I have tried to do in this section is extend the scope of (self-)reference a bit further.

In conclusion: the lines in question concern Julius. But the passage is also about Augustus, and is all the more elegant for being indirect, in keeping with the change from the straightforward poem of praise Vergil contemplated when composing the

Georgics, to the more complex, allusive pattern of the Aeneid. Owing to the circumstances of its appearance the image of the sidus Iulium came to include both Caesars in its range of allusion. But rather than insoluble ambiguity I find levels of meaning in our passage, and this paper has been an effort to sort them out.

Seattle, Washington

151. Cf. H. Mattingly, "Virgil's Golden Age: Sixth Aeneid and Fourth Eclogue," CR 48 (1934) 161-65; M. Manson, "L'enfant et l'Age d'or," in Prisence de Virgile, ed. R. Chevallier (Paris, 1978) 49-62; Wilamowitz, "Vergil: On the Occasion of his 2000th Birthday," translated and reprinted in Vergilius 34 (1988) 115-27, esp. 118.

152. Rose 212.


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Julius Caesar in Jupiter's Prophecy, "Aeneid", Book 1

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