Divinization and the Transformation of Rome from Republic to Principate

Abstract This chapter focuses on the poetry produced around the time of the battle of Actium, and argues that the poets’ deployment of divinizing imagery is synchronized with the dawning realization that a new political order is about to emerge in Rome. The chapter begins by examining Horace’s Epode 9 and Satire 2.1, and suggests that the language of ‘aboveness’ in these poems not only underlines the emergence of a power gap between Octavian and the rest but also reflects an attempt by Horace to work out and reconcile with the new regime. Then this chapter presents a reading of the shifting relationship between poet and Caesar in Virgil’s Georgics, and argues that the interactions between these two figures in the course of Virgil’s poem dramatize Rome unstoppable drift towards autocracy. The final part of this chapter fleshes out a recurrent theme in Horace’s and Virgil’s representations of Octavian around the time of Actium—namely Octavian’s growing stature as a legal authority. This theme is explored further with a reading of Propertius 2.7 and 4.11, both of which deal with Augustan marriage legislation. Here it is argued that Propertius’ divinizing language in these poems highlights the extent to which personal speech and individual action are increasingly coming under state control as Rome steps out of the shadows of the civil war.