‘The golden age is proclaimed’? the<i>Carmen Saeculare</i>and the renascence of the golden race

Barker, Duncan

doi:10.1093/cq/46.2.434

Cited by 87 publications

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References 4 publications

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“….saeclo); it has even been speculated that had Virgil not died two years earlier, he would have been the princeps' first choice for the commission. 31 Whatever the truth of that, there are a number of places in Horace's hymn where comparison appears to be invited with the language and subject matter of the fourth Eclogue: 32 we have an invocation to the Parcae (Carm. saec.…”

Section: Tibullus and Horacementioning

confidence: 99%

EARLY RESPONSES TO VIRGIL'S FOURTHECLOGUE

Houghton¹

2018

Greece & Rome

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The fourthEcloguepresents itself explicitly as a political poem, a loftier intervention in the humble world of pastoral poetry (4.1–3). This grander type of pastoral, moreover, is singled out as possessing a specifically Roman political significance: these ‘woods’ are to be ‘worthy of a consul’ (silvae sint consule dignae, 3), and the coming Golden Age is set within a precisely identifiable political context, the consulship of C. Asinius Pollio in 40bc(te consule, 4.11). Beyond that, however, the details of the relationship between the miraculous child, whose growth to maturity will be accompanied by the fabulous portents of the new era, and the contemporary political setting at Rome are left tantalizingly, perhaps prudently, vague. It was no doubt with a view to promoting his own political interests that Pollio's son, ‘the rash and ambitious Asinius Gallus’, claimed to have been the originalpuerof Virgil's poem. If so, he was very far from being the last public figure to appropriate the resounding cadences of the fourthEclogueto endorse his own position: it was not long before (in Harry Levin's words) ‘The Pollio eclogue had virtually created a minor genre, a means for the court poet to flatter his sovereign, as well as a device for balancing the moderns against the ancients.’ But even before the opportunistic assertions of Pollio's son, the poem's prophecies of a new age had already been re-appropriated to tie down the oracular generalities of the eclogue to a particular individual and a definite set of political circumstances, in a move that was to have significant repercussions for the later fortunes of Virgil's essay in pastoral panegyric.

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Section: Tibullus and Horacementioning

confidence: 99%

EARLY RESPONSES TO VIRGIL'S FOURTHECLOGUE

Houghton¹

2018

Greece & Rome

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The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Nero

2017

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In the year 64 during the Principate of Nero, in the night between July 18 and 19, a fire broke out in Rome that within nine days destroyed or badly damaged a substantial part of the City, leaving many dead or homeless. Rumors circulated that the fire had been set by Nero, who, it was claimed, sought to divert blame from himself by holding responsible a new sect of aggressively proselytizing Jews, known as Christians. Most recent scholarship has rejected the popular view of Nero as an arsonist "who fiddled while Rome burned." 1 Largely ignored, however, has been the question of whether the Christians, generally regarded as innocent scapegoats of Nero, might in fact have played some role in the fire. This chapter considers the problematic nature of Christianity and Roman attitudes toward Christians in the first century CE and suggests based on this evidence that Christian involvement is not out of the question. NERO AND THE FIREOf the few surviving ancient accounts of the Great Fire of 64, the most detailed is that of Tacitus (Ann. 15.38-44), who wrote in the early second century. Most sources contemporary with Nero say nothing * Too late to be incorporated and discussed in extenso in my essay is a new article by B.D. Shaw, "The Myth of the Neronian Persecution," JRS 105 (2015) 73-100. I do not agree with Shaw's major premise that it is most unlikely that Christians were specifically targeted as arsonists, but that they instead suffered punishmentor rather "persecution"for their faith. Tacitus notes that Christians were punished for arson, but carefully and skillfully leads us to deduce that the real culprit was indeed Nero. In my opinion, the reason that other elite post-Neronian authors omit reference to early "Christianized Jews" in connection with the conflagration is that they were intent upon laying the blame for it at the feet of the tyrannical Nero, rather than the new heretical Jewish sect.

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2017

The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Nero

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‘The golden age is proclaimed’? theCarmen Saeculareand the renascence of the golden race

Cited by 87 publications

References 4 publications

EARLY RESPONSES TO VIRGIL'S FOURTHECLOGUE

EARLY RESPONSES TO VIRGIL'S FOURTHECLOGUE

The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Nero

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