Caesar’s Comet, the Julian Star, and the Invention of Augustus
Octavian is credited with turning a comet seen in 44 b.c.e.  into a symbol of Julius Caesar’s divinity and using it to advance his own political aims. Yet historical evidence argues against this account. Moreover, representations of the sidus Iulium (Julian star) on coins and in poetry adopt diverse and autonomous perspectives on the princeps. The idea that Augustus circulated the sidus as part of an image campaign seems instead to originate with Ovid, whose deification narrative at Metamorphoses 15.745–851 retrojected the princeps ’s mature power onto his early career and fueled the belief that Augustus gained and maintained power through propaganda.
Ovid and the Politics of Reading
What did Ovid think of Augustus? Did he off end the emperor? Did he intend to? Why was he exiled (assuming that he was!)?1 These are questions which haunt modern (and not so modern) scholars, fascinated as we are by the biography of those we consider great. This will be no new investigation, in that I shall be addressing a question as old as the work it concerns: rather, it seeks to offer a fresh look at the issue, with the aid of some modern theory. Throughout this paper, in the manner of academie discourse, I appropriate the first person plural for rhetorical purposes, imposing my readings on you. But not because Fm a rotten cheat: rather because any use of the term 'we' involves such appropriation, and indeed because the act of reading my text involves you (and me) in playing the role of my reader, whatever other roles such as that of a dissenting reader you may wish to play as well2. The question is: was the Ars Amatoria 'anti-Augustan'? Now, as is becoming increasingly realised, this question is not as simple as it seems3. One of the difficulties with discussions of this nature is that they necessitate confrontation with the rhetoric of 'parody' and 'irony'. A text can (always?) be appropriated into a reading opposite to some other reading by being declared 'ironie'. This, moreover, is only one of many ways in which texts may be appropriated to various readings. One might, for example, say that text χ displays something y which 'we' ail agree is bad, and that although χ seems to condone y, it must in fact hâve the effect of condemning it, because it exposes it as bad. But how can an author be sure to escape complicity with the thing supposedly parodied? One point should be clarified: by saying that 'texts
Roman Historical Myths: The Regal Period in Augustan Literature
This book offers an enlivening and sophisticated analysis of the pervasive use of historical myth in some of the best-known writers of the Late Republic and Augustan periods - from Cicero in the De Republica and the first book of Livy to Propertius IV and Ovid's Fasti. The chapters on prose narrative uncover an uneasy tension between the desire for accurate historical representation and the legendary character of traditional stories. In the light of modern theories of historical truth, the book argues that the narrative itself expresses a kind of belief in myths, and that this belief is in turn conditioned by historical circumstance. In this way, the accounts of Rome's regal period in both prose and verse bear witness to the uncertainties and upheavals at the end of the republic. At the same time, Dr Fox argues for a more sophisticated relationship between political and textual reality, and concludes that interpretations of political subversion need to be balanced by the sense of destiny and desire for the reinterpretation inherent in recounting the origins of Rome.