Apollo, Augustus, and the Poets (review)

From regnat Apollo in Pollio's consulship (Ecl. 4.10) to Phoebe domestice in the house of an aging autocrat (Met. 15.865), the archer god enjoyed an astonishingly prominent position in the works of all the great poets of the Augustan age. For good reason: thanks to the young Caesar's rise to power, Apollo now had a temple on the Palatine that housed him as magnificently as the Capitol housed his father Jupiter. It is surprising that this literary and historical phenomenon has not been studied systematically before. Miller has a great subject, and he has done it full justice. He writes with clarity and grace; he has an enviable mastery of the huge modern bibliography; he handles complex Homeric, Pindaric, and Callimachean intertexts with all the subtlety they require; and above all, he just loves these texts. If you care about Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid, this is a book you must have.

As a historian I have a few reservations: First, Miller's constant reference to Augustus' "imperial compound" on the Palatine, as if his property were a military site; for the evidence, see JRA 22 (2009) 527-33.

Second, the inconsistency between Miller's excellent discussion of the Sun-god's view of Rome and Apollo's view of the Palatine at Carmen saeculare 7-12 and 65 (249-52) and his interpretation of the hymn's performance on the traditional assumption that the Apollo temple faced southwest: "While standing before Apollo's temple on the Palatine hill, singers and audience are within clear view of the Aventine . . . and of the Capitoline" (278). But the Capitoline would not be in clear view at all: they would be looking downstream, with the Aventine on one side and Trastevere on the other. It is hard to imagine why Horace should have phrased the hymn the way he did, if Apollo and the Sun-god on his roof had their backs turned to the city.

For the topography of the Augustan Palatine see Tristia 3.1.29-66, where Ovid's book, coming from the Vesta temple and the Regia, sees first the Palatine gate, then the uestibulum of Augustus' house, then the high steps leading to Apollo's temple, then the portico of the Danaids, and finally the library. That implies that the temple faced northeast, with the portico and library behind it, which makes better sense not only of the Carmen saeculare, but also of Aeneid 8.720-22 (below), where the procession of uictae gentes needs room to deploy. See now Amanda Claridge, Rome, 2nd ed. (Oxford 2010) 143: "better if the temple faced the sun rising rather than setting."

Finally, Aeneid 8.714-22. Miller translates (207):

But Caesar, entering Rome's walls in triple triumph, was solemnly making an undying vow to Italy's gods—three hundred mighty shrines throughout the city. The streets resounded with gladness, games, and applause; in all the temples were groups of matrons, in all were altars; and in front of the altars slain bulls strewed the ground. He himself, sitting in the snow-white threshold of Apollo's gleaming temple, reviews the gifts of nations and affixes them to the shrine's proud portals. A long line of conquered peoples processes by.

This takes inuectus as the equivalent of a present participle, describing a simultaneous action as if the whole passage referred to the triumph. Miller infers "Virgil . . . boldly staging Octavian's triple triumph at Apollo's new temple rather than at the procession's customary end point in front of Jupiter Capitolinus" (372-73), and more generally "the Principate's consolidation of triumphal focus into a single domus on the Palatine hill" (346). But why should the procession be a triumphal one? The triumph was for paying prior vows, not making new ones; the games took place after the triumph, not during the procession; triumphatores did not sit receiving gifts as the procession went by; the fixing of...