Divinization and the Inevitability of Augustan Rome

Abstract Focusing mainly on Virgil’s Aeneid, but also bringing into discussion Horace’s Carmen Saeculare and Propertius 4.6, this chapter argues that the poets’ formulation of Augustus’ divinization as the predestined culmination of Roman history both reflects and interrogates the teleological thinking and ideological distortion that underpin the regime’s claim to supremacy. Primarily, this chapter demonstrates that prophecies of Augustus’ divinization in the Aeneid may be read as the poem’s critique of its own involvement in the Augustan reinvention of history. It will be argued that the tension between inevitability and contingency in the poem’s prophetic scenes may be interpreted as Virgil’s way of showing to the reader that there are different ways of viewing Augustus’ rise to power. It will be argued further that, in these prophetic scenes, Virgil emphasizes that the perception of history as ‘fate’ relies heavily upon representation—including and especially his epic. By doing so, Virgil gestures at how his poetry is implicated in the reframing of ideological construct as imperial fact. The Aeneid’s interrogation of its own role in the reinvention of history as destiny thus not only serves to draw the reader’s attention to the slippage between reality and representation in contemporary political discourse, but also encapsulates the frictions and complicities between art and power in the ‘post-truth’ age of Augustus.