eprintid: 6361
rev_number: 15
eprint_status: archive
userid: 3
dir: disk0/00/00/63/61
datestamp: 2024-07-30 12:34:03
lastmod: 2024-10-17 16:39:41
status_changed: 2024-07-30 12:34:03
type: preprint
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Busti, Francesco
title: Vera Iouis proles(?). Anchoring Domitian’s divinity
subjects: ddc-930
divisions: i-209
cterms_swd: Flavier <Dynastie : 69-96>
cterms_swd: Vergilius Maro, Publius
cterms_swd: Herakles
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.
date: 2024
publisher: Propylaeum
id_scheme: DOI
id_number: 10.11588/propylaeumdok.00006361
ppn_swb: 1905999429
own_urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-propylaeumdok-63615
language: eng
vgwort_code: c136490d2a014bfbadcc02b8565c933f
bibsort: BUSTIFRANCVERAIOUISP2024
full_text_status: public
place_of_pub: Heidelberg
faecher: FAG
themen: T930
oa_type: gold
laender: R938
laender: R937
citation:   Busti, Francesco  (2024) Vera Iouis proles(?). Anchoring Domitian’s divinity.       
document_url: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/6361/1/Busti_Vera_louis_proles_2024.pdf