Virgil, Priest of Apollo?
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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
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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. iii. 10. 4), and that Virgil may have Ipse sedens niveo candentis limine Phoebi been thinking of the ludi Apollinares. dona recognoscit populorum. THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 87 Augustus was not pictured as sitting in god of live stock (but faintly so) in the the temple, but in front of it, looking Georgics : in the Aeneid no more than out on the great area Apollinis, and on a god of prophecy, presiding over the nations bringing their gifts. For a various oracles.1 deity the proper place would have been Is it like Virgil to make so much of a the cella of the temple, certainly not deity who had never been a really im- the limen. And to say the truth, I portant one at Rome, and who had doubt if there is a single passage in the been reduced by the literary allusion of Aeneid which can be taken as treating the Hellenistic period to a symbol for Augustus as a god: to do so would the art of poetry ? Owing to what have been inconsistent with his treat- may be called Augustus' Apollinism ment as the anti-type of Aeneas. On (in my opinion much exaggerated of the contrary, he is expressly called late), of which the great feature was a man in the ' Heldenschau' of the the building of the splendid temple sixth book : ' Hie vir, hie est, tibi quem on the Palatine, with its area and its promitti saepius audis.' library, the Greek god seems to recover I confess, too, that I can see nothing something of his old vitality at this in these magnificent passages to recon- period. Augustus could get a little cile me to the idea that Virgil fancied more tone than others out of the old himself a priest, or gave himself ' a string, but it had no permanent reso- sacerdotal programme,' either fancifully nance. Apart from the fourth Eclogue and half-humorously, or seriously and and the Carmen saeculare, the Augustan religiously. If the idea really occurred poetry shows Apollo as a plaything to him when reading the ninth Odyssey, only. ' Sic me servavit Apollo,' said why did he not take the opportunity in Horace when he was his own self, his third book, when he takes Aeneas to before Augustus made him serve the Thrace, of making some deft allusion cause of the religious revival—before (such as he knew so well how to make) the simultaneous exaltation of the deity to Maro, priest of Apollo ? And as for and the princeps. And the very fact Apollo himself, his role in the A eneid is (if such it be), which I think must have hardly weighty enough to support first suggested Mr. Raper's theory, that Mr. Raper's theory. I have been read- Augustus once played the part of ing the A eneid for the last half century Apollo at a court dinner-party,2 shows and more, but it never occurred to me conclusively, to me at least, that as a that Apollo played a very important real power for good or evil Apollo was part in it. But knowing how blind dead. The Sun-god of the later some mortals are—myself, as I know Empire revived his memory: but too well, among them—I open the Jupiter remained throughout the first book about Virgil nearest at hand on two centuries the characteristic deity of my shelves (Mr. Glover's Studies in Rome. Virgil) to convict myself if need be. W. WARDE FOWLER. The index gives me one reference only to Apollo, in which we are reminded 1 Such he is at the beginning of the sixth that ancient critics thought that he was book, where (in 11. 69-70) Aeneas promises him one of the Penates. As far as I can see, and Diana a temple and ludi in the manner of Apollo is only the oracle-deity, dis- a Roman consul making a votum. closing the will of Jupiter and the 2 There are suspicious features about this Fates, as may be seen in iv. 346. story of Suetonius (Aug. 70). It is given as an example of the scandal spread about Augustus Jupiter is the great god of the A eneid, by Antonius; and then ' auxit cenae rumorem and it is he who at the crucial moment summa tune in civitate penuria ac fames, ad- of the whole poem, when Aeneas is clamatumque est postridie, omne frumentum about to succumb to Dido, comes to deos comedisse, et Caesarem esse plane Apol- linem, sed Tortorem : quo cognomine is deus the rescue of the hero. Apollo is a god quadam in parte urbis colebatur.' What faith of pastoral song in the Eclogues: a are we to put in all this ?