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1 J. Miller, Apollo, Augustus, and the Poets (Cambridge 2009) : Augustan J. Miller, Apollo, Augustus, and the Poets (Cambridge 2009) : Augustan Apollo and the Literary Past. D. P. Nelis, Philadelphia, 7 January, 2012 “There are very few books on Apollo.” Graf (2009) 181. John Miller’s book, which appeared in the same year as Fritz Graf’s excellent introductory study of the god, offers seven rich studies, arranged more or less chronologically, taking us from “Octavian and Apollo” via Actium, the Aeneas legend, Apollo, the Palatine and the ideology of a New Age, to reflections of all this material in the poety of Propertius, Horace and Ovid. The first text that Miller discusses in detail is the prologue to the third book of Vergil’s Georgics, and specifically Georgics 3.36, where Apollo is described as Troiae Cynthius auctor. In terms of Miller’s overall historical approach, the Georgics is an interesting poem : it is completed after the victories at Actium and in Alexandria, but appeared before the completion of the Palatine Temple of Apollo. Miller argues that reading of the text and examination of the painting can be viewed as analagous experiences, given that Vergil’s mention of Apollo clearly evokes Octavian and looks forward (in some way) to the Aeneid, in which the connections between Augustus and Apollo will play such an important role. Here too, there can be little doubt that Miller is perfectly correct, and I would like to focus on his discussion of Apollo at Georgics 3.36 here, because it seems to me to provide a perfect example of the ways in which study of this rich book consistently prompts readers to return to much studied texts and to see them in a new light. And so, with a strong sense of trying to climb up onto the shoulders of a giant, I would like to offer here some reflections arising 1 from my reading of Miller’s Apollo, with particular reference to the fascinating ways in which this book invites us to think again about Augustan poetry and the literary past, with particular reference to Vergil’s Georgics (with one brief glance at the Eclogues) and Callimachus. Unlike Miller, who starts with the period leading up to Actium and moves forward in history, I will be looking backwards. My approach is based on one simple question : given the important role played by Apollo in both official Augustan political discourse and in Augustan texts, what possible models or sources did the poets have at their disposal for their elaborate construction and investigation of this particular symbiosis ? To put it simply, are the poets (and especially Vergil) to be seen as reacting directly to an ongoing process of representation of Apollo in Rome, or are they also reacting to representations of Apollo in earlier poetry and their political subtexts? REPUBLICAN APOLLO(S) As Miller well notes (p.3), before the Augustan age, Apollo “was a relatively minor deity in Roman religion,” His presence in literature too, was correspondingly modest. Miller writes that “Extant pre-triumviral poetry yields few references to Phoebus Apollo, and these are overwhelmingly Hellenic in orientation — most commonly the Delphic oracle is in view” (p. 4). This is in general perfectly correct, and of course it is not Miller’s purpose to study the pre-Augustan Apollo in any detail. But inevitably the contrast that he draws between Republican and Augustan Apollos arouses one’s curiosity about the relatively few pre-triumviral passages in 2 which Apollo does appear. And, precisely because they are not legion, it seems worthwhile to begin with a brief review here. As we shall see, consideration of these earlier passages will not only leave Miller’s main points — about the much greater prevalence of Apollo in Augustan poetry, about his much more multifarious character — very much intact, but may even have the effect of heightening one’s sense of the contrast between the two periods. Apollo is named several times by the early epic poets, either directly (Ennius Ann. 241 Sk), by periphrasis (Liv. Od. 10 Mariotti filius Latonas), or both (Naevius BP 30.2 Stz Pythius Apollo). Two of these passages, from Naevius and Ennius, involve catalogues, probably relating to conclilia deorum, and we have no indication either from them or from other fragments of the Bellum Poenicum or the Annales that Apollo played any great role in either poem. Our third passage, from Livius, is of course a close translation of the Homeric Odyssey, in which Apollo plays a much smaller role than he does in the Iliad. In fact, his comic cameo alongside Hermes in the second song of Demodocus — the adulterous tale of Ares and Aphrodite — is his only real appearance in the poem ; and Livius may actually have removed a quasi-appearance of Apollo from another passage, in which Odysseus tells Demodocus that he must be the pupil of the Muse, Zeus’s daughter, or of Apollo (ἢ σέ γε Μοῦσ’ ἐδίδαξε, Διὸς πάις, ἢ σέ γ’ Ἀπόλλων 8.488 ; cf. 482 ; our Livian passage has instead nam diva Monetas filia docuit, fr. 12 Mariotti). Even though we can’t be sure whether Apollo’s name appeared in the following line, it would make sense if it did not, purely as a repsonse to the difficulties that Livius faced in converting his Greek model into something that a Roman audience might understand. Already he 3 innovates not only in assimilating the Greek Muses to the Roman Camenae, but also in introducing a Hesiodic genealogy that does not appear in Homer, specifying that the Camena is the daughter of Moneta just as the Muse is the daughter of Mnemosyne. To bring Apollo Musagetes into the picture as well would be an additional and perhaps confusing complication for a third-century audience. Notably, however, if Livius did in effect remove Apollo from this passage, he would also have removed the only reference to Apollo Citharoedus that had stood in his model, leaving his readers with a simpler conception of the god as an archer (and, in particular, one powerfully associated with untimely death) and as a prophet. These, presumably, would be the god’s avant-garde literary associations in the third century, introduced alongside his more familiar cultic role as a healer. A glance at Apollo’s appearances in Roman tragedy confirms that archery and especially prophecy, but not poetry, are his principal spheres of influence.1 Notably, however, the god is named but seldom (Ennius trag. 28, 36, 56, 59, 303 Jocelyn; Accius 153, adesp. 13 W[armington]), and his relatively modest presence on the Roman tragic stage contrasts with his pervasive influence in the Attic models. He is in fact named more often in Roman comedy, sometimes merely in oaths taken in Greek, not Latin (µὰ τὸν Απόλλω Plaut. Capt. 880, Most. 973), as if to emphasize the notionally Greek setting of Roman comedy by referring to a foreign god. 1 Livius’ Equus Troianus, Pacuvius’ Chryses, Dulorestes (cf. fr. 133 Warmington), Hermiona, and Periboea (cf. fr. 334 Warmington), and Accius’ Agamemnonidae, Alcmaeon, Alphesiboea, Epigoni, andTelephus are all plays in which Apolline prophecy may have played an important role. 4 In fact, one could almost say that Apollo is principally a figure of fun in early Roman poetry, and not the fearsome and powerful divinity that he was in Greece. The Odyssey passage that Livius translates shows Apollo at his most frivolous, and we have just seen that he is very much at home in comedy. Lucilius, as if to deflate any pretensions to which the god might cling by virtue of his appearances in Naevian and Ennian epic, singles him out for ridiculous treatment in his Satires. What is probably the most famous passage of this work, the concilium deorum, not only parodies similar passages in Naevius and Ennius — the only surviving passages of the Bellum Poenicum or the Annales, let us remember, in which Apollo actually appears — but he further mocks Apollo by making him register the silly complaint that, while all of the other gods are given the honorific epithet “father” (pater 24–27 W), he alone is normally called “pretty” (pulcer 28–29 W with Servius in Aen. 3.119) instead! Other fragments of the concilium mock Apollo’s prophetic ability (30–32 W) and, again, his effeminacy (33 W). A passage from book 6 (267–68 W, imitated by Horace, Serm. 1.9.78 sic me servavit Apollo: Porph. ad loc.) quotes (in Greek) the Homeric clausula τὸν δ’ ἐξήρπαξεν Ἀπόλλων (Il. 20.443), again to ludicrous effect. And in book 29 (852–53 W), Apollo is apparently introduced as a voluptuary, possibly in a way that anticipated Lucilius’ subsequent treatment of the god in book 1. So whatever august associations Apollo may have enjoyed in early Latin poetry were few, to the point that his ready availability to be mocked is the most impressive thing about him. Finally, a passage from Lucilius’ third book does not name Apollo, but refers to the town of Puteoli is “lesser Delos” (Delumque minorem 118 W). Pompeius Festus, who preserves the passage, explains it by noting that 5 Delos was at one time the greatest commercial center in the world, and that Puteoli eventually surpassed it (109.17–21 Lindsay). This is perfectly correct: in fact, Delos’ ascendancy, which was promoted by Rome against Rhodian interests, lasted from 168 to 88 BC, when the island was sacked by Mithridates’ general Menophanases. When Lucilius was writing book 3, then, in about 120 BC, Delos was probably more familiar to his Roman readers as a commercial center than for its religious and mythological associations as the birthplace of Apollo.
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