Vera Iouis proles(?). Anchoring Domitian’s divinity

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Abstract

This article argues that Virgil’s designation of Hercules as uera Iouis proles (‘true offspring of Jupiter’) in the Salii’s hymn to the hero (Aeneid 8.301) played a significant role in Flavian epic poets’ stance on the em-peror’s divinity. A close intertextual analysis of Valerius Flaccus’, Statius’, and Silius’ reuses of Virgil’s for-mula shows how its original use as an anchor for the emperor’s claim to divine parentage evolved through-out the Flavian dynasty into a progressively more disenchanted and potentially subversive approach to the subject. In a new political context where two brothers, Titus and Domitian, could both aspire to diviniza-tion, the broader implications of Virgil’s formula, with its veiled allusion to Iphicles, Hercules’ mortal and cowardly half-brother, called attention to the possible existence of a false offspring of Jupiter and urged Flavian epic poets to explore critically the validity of some mythic models as anchoring devices for the emperor’s divinity.