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. We should probably bear this in mind, as well, when we try to take the measure of what Apollo might have meant even to the most literate element of society during the time of the Republic.

Miller observes that “Apollo’s participation at divine councils in Lucilius and

Cicero pointed the way towards Roman contextualizations” (p. 4). I have just been suggesting that, as far as Lucilius is concerned, this idea may need modification.

But Miller is right to admit some degree of continuity between the Republican and

Augustan Apollos. In this conncetion, it seems perfectly possible to distinguish between Lucilius and Cicero — not surprisingly, in view of the generic differences between them, but in other ways, as well; and these may clarify a more general contrast between the Apollo of the first century BC and his earlier Republican avatars, while simultaneously revealing Apollonian continuities across the divide between the late Republican and the Triumviral and Augustan periods.

Miller’s focus on Cicero’s De temporibus suis is very much to the point, because it proves to be the tip of a very interesting iceberg.2 Cicero’s plan to insert

2 In this work, as Miller notes, “Apollo predicted the shameful returns to Rome by Gabinius and Piso, two of [Cicero’s] political enemies” (p. 4)

6 an episode of Apollonian prophecy into his epic of self praise (Qfr 3.1.24) is the only evidence we have that the god ever appeared in Cicero’s poetry. But Apollo’s presence in Cicero’s oeuvre as a whole is rather impressive. The god makes his earliest appearance in the second action against Verres where, in part 1, Cicero narrates Verres’ plundering of the temple to Apollo on Delos. “There,” Cicero tells us (2.1.46) Verres “]stealthily stole by night from the most highly revered shrine of

Apollo some very beautiful and very ancient statues, and he had them loaded onto cargo ship belonging to himself.” The next day, of course, the Delians were very upset: “for,” as Cicero puts it, “in their eyes the holiness of this shrine and its antiquity are so great that they think Apollo himself was born in the place.” And, as if to justify the Delians’ reverence, Cicero tells his jury that “an enormous storm suddenly arose,” so that the criminals “not only were unable to set sail, though they very much wanted to do so, but they could hardly stay in the town, so great were the waves being hurled out of the sea.” The upshot of this cautionary tale is that the ship broke up, the statues of Apollo were found on the shore and put back in the temple, the storm subsided, and the chastened would-be plunderers made their escape from Delos.3 In the next two paragraphs Cicero continues to develop the

3 Verr. 2.1.46 Delum venit. Ibi ex fano Apollinis religiosissimo noctu clam sustulit signa pulcherrima atque antiquissima, eaque in onerariam navem. suam conicienda curavit. Postridie cum fanum spoliatum viderent ii qui Delum incolebant, graviter ferebant; est enim tanta apud eos eius fani religio atque antiquitas ut in eo loco ipsum Apollinem natum esse arbitrentur. Verbum tamen facere non audebant, ne forte ea res ad Dolabellam ipsum pertineret. Tum subito tempestates coortae sunt maximae, iudices, ut non modo proficisci cum cuperet Dolabella non posset sed vix in oppido consisteret: ita magni fluctus eiciebantur. Hic navis illa praedonis istius, onusta signis religiosis, expulsa atque eiecta fluctu frangitur; in litore signa illa

7 theme of Delos’ enormous sanctity and great distinction as Apollo and Diana’s birthplace.4 In doing so, he paints a very different picture from the one that

Lucilius conjured for his readers when he called Puteoli a “little Delos.” But Verres’

Delian misadventures took place in 80 BC or shortly thereafter, about a decade after the island had been sacked and had lost its commercial pre-eminence. Under those circumstances, the looting of a few statues might not seem like such an outrage. But by 70 BC, the date of Cicero’s prosecution of Verres, the faded position of the island as a commercial center may have given Cicero greater scope to emphasize its religious and mythological importance.5

Apollinis reperiuntur; iussu Dolabellae reponuntur. Tempestas sedatur, Dolabella Delo proficiscitur. 4 47 Non dubito quin, tametsi nullus in te sensus humanitatis, nulla ratio umquam fuit religionis, nunc tamen in metu periculoque tuo tuorum tibi scelerum veniat in mentem. Potestne tibi ulla spes salutis commoda ostendi, cum recordaris in deos immortalis quam impius, quam sceleratus, quam nefarius fueris? Apollinemne tu Delium spoliare ausus es? Illine tu templo tam antiquo, tam sancto, tam religioso manus impias ac sacrilegas adferre conatus es? Si in pueritia non iis artibus ac disciplinis institutus eras ut ea quae litteris mandata sunt disceres atque cognosceres, ne postea quidem, cum in ea ipsa loca venisti, potuisti accipere id quod est proditum memoria ac litteris, Latonam ex longo errore et fuga gravidam et iam ad pariendum temporibus exactis confugisse Delum atque ibi Apollinem Dianamque peperisse? 48 Qua ex opinione hominum illa insula eorum deorum sacra putatur, tantaque eius auctoritas religionis et est et semper fuit ut ne Persae quidem, cum bellum toti Graeciae, dis hominibusque, indixissent, et mille numero navium classem ad Delum adpulissent, quicquam conarentur aut violare aut attingere. Hoc tu fanum depopulari, homo improbissime atque amentissime, audebas? Fuit ulla cupiditas tanta quae tantam exstingueret religionem? Et si tum haec non cogitabas, ne nunc quidem recordaris nullum esse tantum malum quod non tibi pro sceleribus tuis iam diu debeatur? 5 Cicero alleges that Verres stole two other statues of Apollo, one from a private citizen, Lyso of Lilybaeum (2.4.37.16) and another, signed in silver by the sculptor Myron, that had been dedicated in the shrine of Aesculapius at Agrigentum by P. Scipio (2.4.93.2); and he accuses him of having designs on another at Naples (2.4.119.13). Finally, he returns to the theme of Verres’ crimes against Apollo (and Diana) in his peroration, where he summarizes a number of similar outrages

8 The prosecution of Verres is an early example of what may be a different attitude to Apollo in the last century of the Republic. It is hardly the only

Ciceronian instance of this phenomenon: I have already cited John Miller’s remarks on a concilium deorum featuring a prophecy by Apollo, which Cicero was planning in

54 BC to insert into his De temporibus suis. What I think we can also see is that the spirit of Cicero’s concilium was actually quite different from that of Lucilius, and that his treatment of Delos and of Apollo generally in the Verrines provides some context for assessing this difference. A fuller examination of Apollo’s many other appearances in Cicero’s works would very probably repay the effort, but my purpose here is to raise such possibilities, not to exhaust them. And so I just pass rapidly over Lucretius, Catullus, Varro, and a few other late Republican authors who name Apollo in ways that might further elucidate our understanding of the pre-Augustan Apollo.

GREEK PRECEDENTS

But even if there were, or are, some continuities between the Republican and

Augustan versions of the literary Apollo, Miller is surely right to see the Augustan version(s) as making a departure from previous Roman conceptions of the god as well as dramatically increasing his importance. This fact alone, of course, tends to

(2.5.185 teque, Latona et Apollo et Diana, quorum iste Deli non fanum, sed, ut hominum opinio et religio fert, sedem antiquam divinumque domicilium nocturno latrocinio atque impetu compilavit; etiam te, Apollo, quem iste Chio sustulit; teque etiam atque etiam, Diana, quam Pergae spoliavit, cuius simulacrum sanctissimum Segestae, bis apud Segestanos consecratum, semel ipsorum religione, iterum P. Africani victoria, tollendum asportandumque curavit).

9 usher us towards possible Greek precedents, since Apollo clearly had manifold connections with Greek communal and political life.6

It will be useful to begin by following Miller’s example and taking notice of the wider context. Here I return to the Georgics and to the “Cynthian founder of

Troy” in relation to the the passage in which he appears, Georgics 3.1–48.

The immediate context in which Vergil mentions Apollo is the following :

stabunt et Parii lapides, spirantia signa, Assaraci proles demissaeque ab Ioue gentis 35 nomina, Trosque parens et Troiae Cynthius auctor. Inuidia infelix Furias amnemque seuerum Cocyti metuet tortosque Ixionis anguis immanemque rotam et non exsuperabile saxum.

And breathing forms of Parian marble there Shall stand, the offspring of Assaracus, And great names of the Jove-descended folk, And father Tros, and Troy’s first founder, lord Of Cynthus. And accursed Envy there Shall dread the Furies, and thy ruthless flood, Cocytus, and Ixion’s twisted snakes, And that vast wheel and ever-baffling stone.

Life-like statues in Parian marble will depict the Assaraci proles, by which Vergil presumably includes (but it is noteworthy that he names explicitly only Tros parens and the Cynthius auctor), Assaracus himself, Capys (his son), Anchises (his grandson), Aeneas (his great-grandson), and so on. Tros himself was the great- grandson of Jupiter, which explains the ab Iove of line 35. Given the much- discussed question of the relationship between the prologue to Georgics 3 and the composition of the Aeneid, it is interesting (and on this subject more below and see

Miller p. 140, 147–148) that Vergil returns to this material in Aeneid 6, when the

6 See for example Graf (2009) chap. 5.

10 Sibyl, the Phoebi longaeva sacerdos (the elderly priestess of Apollo, 6.628), guides

Aeneas towards Anchises in the Elysian Fields, where their Trojan ancestors are described as follows:

hic genus antiquum Teucri, pulcherrima proles, magnanimi heroes nati melioribus annis, Ilusque Assaracusque et Troiae Dardanus auctor. 650

Here Trojans be of eldest, noblest race, Great-hearted heroes, born in happier times, Ilus, Assaracus, and Dardanus, Illustrious builder of the Trojan town.

But the important point is simply that the ultimate source for this genealogical information is Homer, Iliad 20.199–241, where it is Aeneas who is the speaker. This amounts to an important revision of the persepctive from which Livius Andronicus had inaugurated the tradition of Homeric epic at Rome. Instead of an Odyssean orientation (as remarked upon earlier in conncetion with Livius Andronicus),

Vergil here presents an Iliadic one that ignores the theme of nostos in preference for that of translatio imperii. It seems clear enough that in writing the Aeneid 6 passage

Vergil had the prologue to Georgics 3 in mind, just as in composing that passage he had Iliad 20 in mind. Later, in Aeneid 6.648–50, he returns to this same idea:

...proles ...... Assaracusque et Troiae Dardanus auctor

This line clearly reworks Georgics 3.35–36:

Assaraci proles demissaeque ab Ioue gentis 35 nomina, Trosque parens et Troiae Cynthius auctor.

11 And it is the rewriting of the line-ending Troiae Cynthius auctor as Troiae Dardanus auctor, that helps to bring into focus Vergil’s use of the original Iliadic passage.

There, Aeneas says (Iliad 20.215–18, trans. Murray-Wyatt):

Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, first begot Dardanus, and he founded Dardania, since not yet was sacred Ilios built in the plain to be a city for mortal men, but they still dwelt on the slopes of many-fountained Ida….

Homer here, in a passage which goes on to include mention of Tros, Assaracus and

Aeneas’ Trojan ancestry, refers to Dardanus and the foundation of both “Dardania” and “Ilios.” Vergil, in Georgics 3, in a passage in which he mentions the Trojan lineage of Tros and Assaracus and which in some way foreshadows the Aeneid, refers to the founding of Troy by Apollo. He then goes on to rework this same material in the Aeneid itself, where he names Assaracus and another son of Tros,

Ilus, and mentions the ancient lineage of Troy as a whole (genus antiquum Teucri,

6.648), before naming Dardanus and crediting him with the founding of Troy. So the Aeneid 6 passage is a case of two-tier allusion, in which Vergil alludes to both the prologue to Georgics 3 and also to its model in Iliad 20.

Apart from Iliad 20.215 and 219, Dardanus is named on only one other occasion in the Iliad, at 20.304, in the famous passage in which Poseidon decides to save Aeneas from death at the hands of Achilles,

so that will rule over the Trojans and so that the race of Dardanus may not perish without seed..and his sons’ sons who will be born in days to come….

This crucial passage, in which, despite the total destruction of the city of Troy, the whole question of the survival of the Trojan line through Aeneas is first mentioned, was obviously of central concern to Vergil. It lies at the very heart of the whole

12 project of the Aeneid, and indeed at Aeneid 3.97–98 he all but translates it into

Latin, with Apollo speaking. It is no surprise, therefore, that it should also be influential in another passage (i.e. the prologue to Georgics 3, the proem in the middle) in which Vergil is looking forward to the composition of an epic poem which will involve Roman’s Trojan origins, and then again in another passage in which the Trojan descendants actually appear in the epic he eventually went on to write after the completion of the Georgics, (i.e. near the middle of the Aeneid, in the sixth book).

The close connections which can be established between the three passages in question here can profitably be approached from two different angles. First, attention can focus on intertextual connections at the level of detailed verbal analysis. Second, it can focus instead on much broader strategies. Were we to concentrate on the latter, it would be interesting to tease out the implications of the links between the prologue to Georgics 3 and the Anchises episode in Aeneid 6.

Detailed consideration of further similarities between these two texts reveals that the kind of artistic project Vergil seems to be evoking in the former (a poem about

Roman history which looks back to Trojan origins) appears most prominently in the

Aeneid in three very special contexts, the Jupiter’s prophecy in book 1, Anchises’ speech in book 6 and Vulcan’s shield in book 8.7 This coherent pattern helps to reveal that what should be at stake in scholarly discussion of the prologue to

Georgics 3 is not a final decision on whether or not this passage is a faithful

7 For further discussion see Nelis 2004. Overall, of course, the Aeneid is a poem about Trojans which looks forward to Roman history ; see Miller p. 140.

13 foreshadowing of the epic poem Vergil went on to write, and indeed was probably already planning even as he was completing the Georgics. Instead, what should be of greater interest is how in this passage Vergil is dramatizing his own analysis of the different poetic options open to him as he thinks about embarking upon the composition of an epic poem in the period circa 30/29 BCE.8 Allusion to Ennius

(3.9) evokes the possibility of a historical epic in the wake of Annales, bringing

Roman history down to the early Augustan period. Allusion to Pindar (3.7) and dense triumphal imagery raise the question of the role of encomium in such a poem and of the relationship between poet, his laudandus and contemporary politics. The vision of bringing the Muses from Greece to Italy (3.10–12) and mention of cuncta Graecia (3.19–20) raises the whole question of the relationship between Latin poetry and Greek literary traditions. Evocation of Callimachus (e.g.

Molorchus, 3.19) raises the question of the history of the epic tradition, particularly the rejection of cyclic narrative, and the issue of the very viability of the high ambition to choose the epic genre in light of Aristotelian and Callimachean criticism of those who had failed to live up to the challenge of competing with

Homer. The prominence of Apollo demonstrates that already in 29 BCE (if we assume that the prologue to the third book is one of the latest parts of the poem to be composed) it was inconceivable for Vergil to think of an epic about Octavian in which Apollo would not play a pivotal role. And it is at this point that consideration of this rather general kind bring us back to the actual words of the text and to

Vergil’s poetics.

8 See again Nelis 2004.

14 But what does the expression Troiae Cynthius auctor actually mean ? We will look first at the epither Cynthius, and then at Troiae…auctor.

CYNTHIUS

This rare epithet has provoked considerable discussion. As an adjectival form of the name Cynthus it evokes a mountain in Delos associated with the cult of Apollo.

But the word is also taken by Latinists to be of intense literary significance, some believing, for example, that the very name of Propertius’ elegiac puella, Cynthia, would immediately have been interpeted as a marker of poetic significance in relation to style, genre and intertextuality. There seems to be general agreement among commentators that here, as elsewhere, it evokes Callimachus, who uses this epithet three times of Apollo : Hymn 4.9–10, Aetia fr. 67.6 (Pfeiffer = 166.6

Massimilla) and Aetia inc. lib. fr. 114.8 (Pfeiffer = 64.8 Massimilla ; in either book 1 or 2 ?). See Thomas (1988) ad loc. and Clausen (1976) and (1977). Vergil had already used it at Eclogue 6.3–4, Cynthius aurem vellit et admonuit, in a pasage which is a very close imitation of the Aetia prologue, and which is also a direct model for its reappearance at Georgics 3.33.9 Once again, Vergil is involved in two-tier allusion, imitating both the opening of Eclogue 6 and its model, the prologue of the Aetia. As

John Miller writes (p. 3):

Cynthius not only points honorifically to Apollo’s birthplace Delos, but, as a recognizably Callimachean epithet, it makes this statue a token of the speaker’s literary ambitions.

9 In relation to the Eclogues, it is worth mentioning in passing the suggestion that the iuvenis of Eclogue 1 should be seen as a prophetic Apollo ; see Hunter (1999) 148-9 for discussion.

15 The choice of the epithet Cynthius, therefore, suggests the importance of

Callimachus in relation to the temple/poem Vergil is imagining.10

TROIAE...AUCTOR

Again, there is general agreement among commentators. The word auctor here means “founder,” and Vergil is referring to the tradition by which Apollo was involved in the building of the walls of Troy for Laomodon. This is certainly the case. For Apollo as the god of foundations, Callimachus’ Hymn is an obvious source, and there is no doubt that Vergil has this poem in mind (cf. 3.37, Invidia and Hymn 2.105–7, Phthonos ; also lines 28–9, undantem bello magnumque fluentem/

Nilum… recall the muddy Assyrian river of the end of the Hymn), but there is no evidence, as far as I know, that Callimachus anywhere referred to the deity as founding Troy.11 The connection in Vergil’s mind between the founding of Troy and Callimachus must be sought elsewhere. As well as evoking the idea of Apollo as the founder of Troy, this expression Troiae Cynthius auctor can be read on a metapoetic level as meaning “the Callimachean (Cynthius) author (auctor) of (a) Troy

(poem), i.e. a poem about Troy (Troiae)”.12 This reading is, I take it, in agreement with John Miller’s pregnant statement (p. 5) that :

Virgil makes politics and poetics converge perfectly in the rich phrase Troiae Cynthius auctor. He glances at Octavian and the imminent Apollo Palatinus while pointing towards his own future epic about Trojan heroes, their gods, and their Roman descendants and his own Callimachean poetic ideals.

10 In general on this passage and its relation to the Victoria Berenices at the opening of Aetia 3 see the classic article by Thomas (1983) = (1999) chap. 2 ; important also are Thomas (1985) = (1999) chap. 3 and (1993) = (1999) chap. 7. 11 On Callimachus’ avoidance of the Trojan War in the Aetia see Harder (2003) ; in general see Sistakou (2008). 12 This way of looking at the expression was first suggested to me by John Moles.

16

In the prologue to Georgics 3, therefore, Vergil is thinking hard about Octavian and

Octavian as Apollo, about Trojan Aeneas and the Aeneid, and about the epic genre and Callimachus. Miller’s insightful formulation raises directly the question of the relationship in Vergil’s thinking between the various elements mentioned :

Octavian, Apollo, the Aeneid and Callimachus. Obviously, it is possible to approach this question in terms of opposition : Octavian and the epic Aeneid on one side,

Callimachus and Apollo on the other, Callimachean poetics and the epic genre being presented on some level, via the Aetia prologue (or via Roman manipulations of it) in particular, as incompatible. However, it is also possible to search for continuity and coherence and to emphasize the epic colouring and ambitious political and cultural outlook of Callimachean narrative in the Hecale, the Aetia, and the Hymns. This approach of course involves setting out to look for a politicized rather than a purely poetic Apollo in Callimachus. Before offering some brief thoughts along these lines, however, it is necessary to pose a crucial question about

Vergilian poetics: how does the metapoetic reading of Troiae Cynthius auctor fit into the context of the prologue to Georgics 3 ?

As I have already mentioned, Vergil here imagines a new poetic trajectory

(temptanda via est, 3.8) which, through allusion to Ennius, seems to suggest that he is thinking of writing a historical epic in which a person referred to as “Caesar” will

17 play an important role.13 This poetic project is then figured as a marble temple, in the centre of which will appear Caesar (3.16):

in medio mihi Caesar erit templumque tenebit

Amid my shrine shall Caesar’s godhead dwell

Richard Thomas translates thus: “I will have Caesar in the middle” — taking mihi as a “strongly felt dative of interest” emphasizing the parallel between poet and Caesar which runs through the whole prologue. “Caesar” here must of course be imagined as a cult statue. When Apollo appears soon after, introduced by the words stabunt et

Parii lapides, Vergil is punning on the etymological link between stare and statua

(see O’Hara ad loc.) and thus has statues of Caesar and Apollo feature as the “first and last among the figures represented in the temple” (Miller p. 3). This neat point raises the question of precisely where in the temple these two statues stood.14 As far as regards Caesar, the answer is obvious enough: he is “in the middle” (in medio). In his commentary ad loc., Mynors mentions that this is usually taken to mean in the middle of the temple, before going on to offer another possibility, that we could have here a reference to the middle “of a sacred enclosure in front of it (i.e. the temple), as the statue of Julius stood before the temple of Venus Genetrix in the

Forum Iulium”. Support for this suggestion comes from the fact that we go on in the passage, according to the reconstruction of Vergil’s ecphrastic technique proposed defended by Gros (1993), to look first at the doors of the temple (3.26–33)

13 Cf. Georgics 3.9-10 and Ennius, Var.17-18. 14 Note also that Apollo is the pastor ab Amphryso of 3.2, thus creating a further ring structure within the prologue. As Apollo Nomios he is important in book 3.

18 and then upwards to the pediment (see Erren (2003) 581). Accepting that the statue of Caesar is to be imagined inside the temple means that we are first taken inside and then have to come outside to view the doors and the pediment. On the alternative interpretation, we see the temple as a whole, looking first at a statue in the enclosure, then the doors and then the pediment. This assumes of course that the Parii lapides are in fact figures on the pediment and not free-standing statues in the temple or its precinct (again, see Gros 1993). But whatever interpretation of the architectural image one accepts, it is obvious that for Miller’s study of Augustan

Apollo the prologue to Georgics 3 is a foundational and profoundly influential text.

It is all the more important, therefore, despite the fragmentary nature of much of the evidence, to push arguments to breaking point, and beyond, in order to try to come to grips with both Vergil’s poetics and politics and the literary traditions which underpin them. I would like to suggest briefly, some lines of thought.

1. With Thomas, I am convinced that it is Callimachus who is the key to the

full understanding of Vergil’s strategy in the prologue to Georgics 3. In

various ways, the text is steeped in allusion to the prologue to Aetia 3,15 and

15 Advances in work on Callimachus will continue to shed light on Vergil ; see for example Massimilla (2011) 59, “In Book 3 (and he is talking about stories near the beginning of Aetia 3 : DPN) two consecutive poems concern statues of Apollo” : cf. also p. 51 and Hunter (2011) 258 : “Probably in Book 3 of the Aetia Callimachus presented a conversation with the cult statue of Apollo on Delos in which the god- statue explained the symbolic significance of why he was represented carrying the Graces in his right hand and his bow in the left”. Scholars working on Hellenistic poetry are paying ever greater attention to politics, and while it is clear that Vergil studied closely the poetic and metapoetics strategies of Callimachus’ Hymns to Apollo and Delos, it is obvious that he will also have read them as studies in kingship, power and politics ; see Barbantani (2011). For religious aspects see Petrovic (2011) and in general the essays in Acosta-Hughes, Lehnus, Stephens

19 also the Hymn to Apollo, as we have seen. As I have suggested elsewhere,

therefore, it seems probably that in a passage which is generally interpreted

by critics as relating to the writing of epic in reaction to Callimachus’ views

on epic in the Aetia prologue, that Georgics 3.48, Tithoni prima quot abest ab

origine Caesar, the prologue’s concluding verse, beginning with Tithonus,

ending in Caesar and including the word origo, encodes a poetic statement of

some interest: Vergil’s intention to compose a Callimachean epic about

Augustus in aetiological mode, i.e. his desire to write a poem about Augustus

which would be both Homeric in style, scope and ambition, while at the

same time respecting Callimachus’ criticism of post-Homeric epic and his

attempt to offer new criteria for artistic excellence, as put into practice in the

Aetia (= Origines).16 The combination of Trojan and Callimachean (from the

cicida of the Aetia prologue) Tithonus, Caesar and the word origo

(2011). Indicative of the importance of this volume for study of Hellenistic Apollo is this sentence by Prauscello, pp. 292-3 : “Callimachus, if anything, always sides with Apollo : his whole poetic production is crossed by a network of poetic, religious, and political associations that constantly assimilate his poetry and his persona to Apollo,” 16 A. Cameron: Callimachus and his Critics, (Princeton 1995) argues for a very different view. I would argue that my interpretation of Vergil’s strategies of engagement with Hellenistic poetry suggests that Cameron goes too far in denying the important role played by the epic genre in the Aetia prologue and in attempting to minimise the importance of, or even deny the existence of, a specifically Callimachean poetics. That said, Cameron’s emphasis on elegy is useful, and I believe that it may help to explain one aspect of Vergil’s reaction to Callimachus at the opening of Georgics 3. When Vergil surveys topics handled by Callimachus, among others, and writes (Geo. 3.4f) cetera, quae vacuas tenuissent carmine mentes,/ omnia iam vulgata, he is not rejecting Callimachus, but he is suggesting the inability of elegy and epyllion to carry the weighty themes of his new poetic, and necessarily epic, via (Geo. 3.8f). This is not to deny, however, that elegy and epyllion could explore profoundly serious themes ; Callimachus had demonstrated that in his Aetia and Hecale.

20 corresponds precisely to Tros, Troy, Callimachean Cynthius and the word

auctor just a few lines earlier. Vergil’s poetic temple involves Troy, Apollo

and Caesar and they will be linked via a mythic/historical narrative of

aetiology and foundation. This reading of Tithonus and line 3.48 coheres

perfectly well with Miller’s brilliant analysis of the poetic temple which

opens Aeneid 6 on p. 140, 148f, which he sees as an intertextual decoding of

the metapoetics of the Georgics 3 passage.

2. Miller’s study reveals the need for a detailed study of Apollo in Hellenistic

poetry, and one which combines both poetics and politics. The former,

especially in relation to the Aetia prologue (whoch of copurse draws on a

Pindaric paean in honour of Apollo) and the closing section of the Hymn to

Apollo (again Pindaric) have been much studied. Much work has also been

done on Apollo in the Argonautica of Apollonius. A collection of all the

available material would provide a fascinating context for Miller’s study. Here

is just one example.

On p. 71, Miller discuss the vision of Apollo at Actium at described on

the sheild of Aeneas in Aeneid 8. In my book on Vergil and Apollonius

Rhodius (p. 354–59 I argued that one model for Apollo’s appearance at

Actium was his sudden appearance at Arg. 4.1694–70 to rescue the

Argonauts from primeval darkness. Since then, Anatole Mori (2008 : 59),

following up on Richard Hunter’s (1993 : 58) reading of the passage, has

revisited this Apollonian scene and the subsequent foundation of a cult to

Apollo Aegletes in terms of both metapoetics (the water libations for Apollo

21 are distinctly Callimachean) and in terms of the importance of love and strife

as key themes throughout the Argonautica. It is tempting to accentuate the

specifically Empedoclean element in this Apollonian nexus and its

subsequent influence on the Aeneid, where Empedoclean influence has been

traced in light of Philip Hardie’s Cosmos and Imperium (1986 ; see Nelis 2001 :

index s.v. Empedocles ; Schiesaro, forthcoming), and to note that Oliver

Primavesi (2006) has recently argued that in Empedocles the Sphairos is

identified with Apollo. If it is indeed the case, as argued in Nelis (2001) 339–

59 that the shield of Aeneas is distinctly Empedoclean, then Primavesi’s

suggestion takes on great significance. Aeneas’ shield may be in some way be

related to the specifically Apolline Sphairos of Empodocles.

3. A final suggestion relating to etymological wordplay. Miller p.48 discusses

very well the fact that Augustus relates etymologically to augur. There may be

another closely related example of wordplay . Octavian’s first mention in the

Georgics is as follows (1.24–27):

tuque adeo...

... Caesar ... te ... auctorem frugum tempestatumque potentem

The commentary of Richard Thomas on line 27 reads thus:

auctorem frugum: a curious coincidence (but probably no more), in that auctor and Augustus (the title was not conferred until early in 27 B.C.) are both from augeo.

But perhaps it is possible to read line 27 thus:

AUctorem fruGUm tempeSTatUMque potentem

22 Whether we wish to decide to down-date the poem or prefer to allow Vergil

knowledge of debates concerning the new title Octavian wished to assume as

part of the new dispensation (as best reflected at Suetonius, Aug. 7), the fact

remains that the handling of Octavian in the Georgics offers us a very

influential meditation on Roman history in the crucial years just before and

after 31 BCE.17 It is a foundational text also for Miller, and he makes brilliant

use of it in his profoundly impressive book. As they say where I (don’t) come

from : Chapeau !

Works Cited

B. Acosta-Hughes, L. Lehnus, S. Stephens, Brill’s Companion to Callimachus (Leiden 2011). M. Erren, P. Vergilius Maro, Georgica (Heidelberg 2003). F. Graf, Apollo, (Abingdon 2009). J.B. Greenough, Vergil. Bucolics, Aeneid, and Georgics Of Vergil, (Boston 1900). A. Cameron: Callimachus and his Critics, (Princeton 1995) P. Gros, “Stabunt et Parii lapides: Virgile et les premiers frontons augustéens d’après Géorgiques, iii, v.34,” in M.-M. Mactoux and E. Geny (edd.) Mélanges Pierre Lévêque, (Besançon/Paris, 1993) vol. 7, 155–59. A. Harder, “The Invention of Past, Present and Future in Callimachus’ Aetia,” Hermes 131 (2003) 290–306. P.Hardie, Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford 1986). R. Hunter, The Argonautica of Apollonius : literary studies (Cambridge 1993). R. Hunter, Theocritus : a selection (Cambridge 1999). A. Mori, The Politics of Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica (Cambridge 2008). D.Nelis, Vergil’s Aeneid and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (Leeds 2001). D. Nelis, “From Didactic to Epic: Georgics 2.458–3.48,” 73–107 in M. Gale (ed.), Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry: Genre, Tradition and Individuality (Swansea 2004). O. Primavesi, “Apollo and Other Gods in Empedocles,” 51–77 in M. Sassi (ed.), La costruzione des discorso filosofico nell’ età dei Presocratici (Pisa 2006). E. Sistakou, Reconstructing Epic. Cross-Readings of the Trojan Myth in Hellenistic poetry (Louvain 2008).

17 Professor Joshua Katz has informed me that the presence of the anagram was noticed by F. de Saussure in his unpublished notes and papers held in the Bibliothèque de Genève (Ms. fr. 3964/15, pp. 3-4).

23 R. Thomas, Virgil, Georgics, 2 vols. (Cambridge 1988). R. Thomas, Reading Virgil and his Texts (Ann Arbor 1999).

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