title: Vera Iouis proles(?). Anchoring Domitian’s divinity
creator: Busti, Francesco
subject: ddc-930
subject: Alte Geschichte, Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Archäologie
subject: Greece (Antiquity) [R938]
subject: Italy and adjacent territories (Antiquity) [R937]
subject: History of the ancient world to ca. 499 [T930]
subject: Ancient History [FAG]
description: 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.
publisher: Propylaeum
date: 2024
type: Preprint
type: info:eu-repo/semantics/preprint
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
identifier: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdokhttps://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/6361/1/Busti_Vera_louis_proles_2024.pdf
identifier: DOI:10.11588/propylaeumdok.00006361
identifier: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-propylaeumdok-63615
identifier:   Busti, Francesco  (2024) Vera Iouis proles(?). Anchoring Domitian’s divinity.       
relation: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/6361/
rights: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights: Please see front page of the work (Sorry, Dublin Core plugin does not recognise license id)
language: eng