Apollo, Augustus, and the Poets
Published on 1. October 2009
Book
Hardback
422 pages
978-0-521-51683-9 (ISBN)
Description
Apollo's importance in the religion of the Roman state was markedly heightened by the emperor Augustus, who claimed a special affiliation with the god. Contemporary poets variously responded to this appropriation of Phoebus Apollo, both participating in the construction of an imperial symbolism and resisting that ideological project. This book offers a synoptic study of 'Augustan' Apollo in Augustan poetry. Topics explored include the divine self-imaging of late Republican rivals for power, poetic imaginings of Apollo's intervention at the pivotal battle of Actium, how poets 'read' Augustus' new Palatine Temple of Apollo and the deity's role in the reconstituted Saecular Games, and Apollo's key position in the emerging dialectic between poetics - as traditional divine patron of music and literature - and politics - as patron of Augustus. Discussions encompass the major Latin poets (Horace, Virgil, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid) as well as anonymous voices in poetic lampoons, encomia, and contemporary Greek verse.
Reviews / Votes
"Apollo, Augustus, and the Poets offers learned and engaging readings of many of the central works of Augustan poetry. It overlooks no relevant Augustan or Republican evidence and provides an ample account of relevant Greek literary tradition, even including the less-familiar responses to Actium by contemporary Greek poets. ...allows considerable openness to a multiplicity of interpretations, including ones fully resistant to dominant Augustan ideology. ..this book comes highly recommended to all readers of Augustan poetry. --BMCRMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
10 b/w illus.
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 29 mm
Weight
832 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-521-51683-9 (9780521516839)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
John F. Miller
Apollo, Augustus, and the Poets
Book
10/2011
Cambridge University Press
€55.70
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
John F. Miller is Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia, where he has been Chair of the Department of Classics for many years. He is the author of Ovid's Elegiac Festivals. Studies in the Fasti and of numerous articles on various Roman poets, especially Ovid.
Content
Introduction; 1. Octavian and Apollo; 2. Apollo at Actium; 3. Apollo and the legend of Aeneas; 4. Apollo Palatinus; 5. Apollo and the New Age; 6. Apolline poetics and Augustus; 7. Ovid's Metamorphoses and Augustan Apollo.