The Classical Review http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR Additional services for The Classical Review: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here Virgil, Priest of Apollo? W. Warde Fowler The Classical Review / Volume 27 / Issue 03 / May 1913, pp 85 - 87 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00004790, Published online: 27 October 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00004790 How to cite this article: W. Warde Fowler (1913). Virgil, Priest of Apollo?. The Classical Review, 27, pp 85-87 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00004790 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 130.216.129.208 on 10 Apr 2015 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW VIRGIL, PRIEST OF APOLLO ? NOTES ON MR. RAPER'S RECENT Thrace. But in the story of these three, PAPER. as we have it in Ovid, there is hardly a mention of Thrace, and the scene is not MY old friend Mr. Raper will, I know, laid there. Then in Georg. 2. 37, forgive me for these notes. Let me Virgil ' shows wild joy at the thought assure him that he gave me excellent of re-arraying his ancestral Ismarian employment during one of the many mountain-sides with the glory of the wet days of last February. He took vine': ' iuvat Ismara Baccho Conserere ' me through a number of passages, none . but go on, and you read ' atque the less delightful for being familiar: olea magnum vestire Taburnum.' Now and what better occupation can a man Taburnus was not in Thrace, but in have than the leisurely contemplation Campania, and if Virgil loved Thrace, of old friends' faces, even if he be unable he loved Campania at least as much. to trace in them the expression that And if we are to believe in some another feels sure he sees ? special joy in Thrace, we must admit it Mr. Raper thinks that Virgil had also of Lacedaemon: for when Mr. persuaded himself that he was the priest Raper quotes Georg. 2. 488, ' O qui me of Apollo in a double sense: first, the gelidis convallibus Haemi Sistat,' he priest of the old well-worn deity of has forgotten the ' O ubi campi Sper- song, and secondly, the priest of the cheusque et virginibus bacchata Lacae- last new deity, Augustus, who posed as nis Taygeta' of lines 486 ff. In the the new Apollo. What put this into tale of Orpheus and Eurydice we of the poet's head ? Simply a line of the course find frequent mention of Thrace. ninth Odyssey, in which is mentioned But does this imply any peculiar pre- one Maron, son of Euanthes, priest of dilection for that country ? Apollo, protector of the Thracian Next Mr. Raper goes on to show that Ismarus. Was not Virgil himself a quite apart from his belief in his Maro, and both by his devotion to Thracian ancestry Virgil took on him- poetry and his devotion to Augustus self the priesthood of Apollo in the one meet to be also priest of Apollo ? double sense indicated above. For This idea possessed him, according to Augustus, in his view, seemed to pass Mr. Raper's theory, and we find traces into and become the Actian Apollo, of it everywhere in his poems. and their deities to be merged in one: To begin with, we find him constantly and Maro's task was thus complete. referring to Thrace with special en- For this strange union of Augustus and thusiasm. Mr. Raper gives us several Apollo he refers us to Aen. viii. 679: passages to prove this, but I am sorry ' Hinc Augustus agens Italos in praelia that I cannot see more in them than Caesar, Cum patribus populoque, Pena- the faintest suggestion of any peculiar tibus et magnis dis, Stans celsa in fondness for that home of wine and puppi,' etc. There is here a plain verse. Take Eel. 6. 30: ' Nee tantum reflection of Aeneas (iii. 12), who is the Rhodope miratur et Ismarus Orphea!' real prototype of Augustus in the Good, but why not quote also the Aeneid : but I can find nothing to previous line, ' Nee tantum Phoebo suggest the notion of an identity of gaudet Parnasia rupes' ? Parnassus Augustus and Apollo, except line 720, and Delphi are here placed in front of about which I will add a word Rhodope and Ismarus, and no special later on. devotion to the latter is proved. So Mr. Raper next proceeds to take us with the next passage quoted, Eel. 4. through a number of passages in which 55"57» which is immediately followed he sees Virgil ' raising Augustus, the by the two lines about Pan and Arcadia. earthly Apollo, to heaven, or bringing Again, in Eel. 6. 78-81, Mr. Raper down the heavenly Apollo to earth.' claims that Tereus, Philomela, and In the Eclogues he quotes 1. 6-8 and 5. Procne are ' happy movers in that high 65 ff., in neither of which, so far as I company,' i.e. among the great ones of can see, is there anything more than 86 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW what can be fully paralleled from mind, but he mixes it up after his Horace, of whom no one will say that manner with the Olympic games, which he wished to be a priest either of are to be transferred from the banks of Apollo or of Augustus. Of the fourth the Alpheus to those of the Mincius, Eclogue I will say nothing, since every and with the building there of a temple point in it is matter of controversy, and to Augustus which he himself will the share in it of Augustus and Apollo dedicate. is very far from clear. Both in this Et viridi in campo templum de marmore ponam Eclogue, and in the invocation at the propter aquam, tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat beginning of the first Georgic, I do not Mincius et tenera praetexit arundine ripas. see that we need find anything more In medio mini Caesar erit templumque tenebit: than the poet's well-known gratitude and devotion to Augustus: he could but here, just when he had an admir- only personify the new age, and the able chance of painting himself as the hopes of Italy in a member of the priest of the new deity, he represents family of the Caesars. I can see himself as victor, robed in purple (which nothing to suggest a priesthood: in the surely does not mean the toga praetexta second of the two passages Apollo does of the priest, but the wholly purple not appear among the gods at all. If robe of the victorious consul), and as we ask why, the answer is simply that doing what no priest of Apollo would he was not a god of agriculture, the ever do, engaging in, or superintending subject of the first Georgic. At the chariot-races. Lastly, by a fine device beginning of the third Georgic he is used elsewhere by our poet, his vision just mentioned, though not by name passes to the glories of Augustus (Pastor ab Amphryso), because in the wrought on the temple walls. But in legend he had a share in the keeping of all this not a word of Augustus-Apollo! live stock; but on the whole I think it Lastly, Mr. Raper invokes the three may be fairly said that one might read famous passages in the Aeneid, of which through the Georgics without ever the theme is Rome, ilia incluta Roma, guessing that there was any special with her imperium to be perfected by connexion between the poet and the Augustus, divi genus: but in all the god. But the striking passage at the three passages (i. 257 ff., vi. 756 ff., beginning of the third Georgic is Mr. viii. 626 ff.), Rome and the Romans Raper's best bit of evidence for Virgil's come first, Augustus following in their priesthood of Augustus. Yet I am wake. If each passage be read and almost sure that Virgil is here picturing thought of as a whole, I do not see himself not as a priest, but as the how the reader can avoid the conclu- old Roman victor in the ludi Romani sion that their true theme is rather • Tyrio conspectus in ostro,' i.e. in the Rome than Augustus. But Mr. Raper purple robe of the triumphator, who characterises the finest of the three as presides at the chariot races (which ' a hymn of exultant salutation from the belong in origin to this festival), and hereditary Ismarian priest of Apollo at then deposits his spoils in the temple the thought of the coming re-incarnation not of Apollo but of Jupiter, the deity of his god.' who in Virgil's poetry always means Let me remark on these words the protecting power of Rome. The (1) that in two out of the three passages sacrifice of that day is the victim of the ' there is no mention of Apollo at all; Jupiter-religion: (2) that in the third (viii. 720), on which Mr. Raper relies to prove that Augustus iam nunc sollemnis ducere pompas l was in the poet's mind identical with ad delubra iuvat caesosque videre iuvencos. Apollo (or Apollo incarnate in him ?) That is the picture Virgil has in his because ' he takes his seat in the snowy temple of gleaming Phoebus, and 1 Serv. Aen. iii. 21: 'ubique enim Iovi iuven- reviews the offerings of all nations,— cum legimus immolatum.' But it is fair to say he has forgotten the word ' limine': that iuvenci were also sacrificed to Apollo (Macrob.