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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2020
This is an investigation of an aspect of Virgil's Aeneid—ultimately, of the ways in which the poet guides his reader's response to Aeneas’ stay in Carthage—and, while it touches on Roman religious practice, clothing codes, late antique Virgilian commentary and Augustan ideology, it hinges on a single word in Aeneid Book 4 and its implications for Virgil's depiction of his hero in this book. That word is laena, and it features in one of the most celebrated scenes of the poem, when Mercury descends to earth to find Aeneas busily engaged in founding Carthage (Aen. 4.259–64):
As soon as Mercury with winged feet touched the Carthaginian huts, he caught sight of Aeneas founding the citadel and raising new buildings: his sword was studded with stars of yellow jasper, and a laena, hanging from/let down from his shoulders, blazed with Tyrian purple, a gift that Dido with her wealth had made, interweaving in the web a subtle cross-thread of gold.
My thanks are due to Nicholas Purcell, a comment from whom after a talk about Aen. 4.462–3 set the mental dominoes toppling; to Josephine Quinn for fascinating bibliography on tophet; and to Roberta Stewart, who generously shared her immense expertise on the early first century b.c. A number of anonymous readers have seen and commented on this article in its extended gestation, and I am grateful to all of them.
2 The implications of demissa ex umeris, and the possible interpretations of the expression, are discussed at pages 201–3 below.
3 O'Hara, J.J., Vergil Aeneid 4 (Newburyport, 2011)Google Scholar, ad loc.
4 Hom. Od. 5.43–148, with Knauer, G.N., Die Aeneis und Homer (Göttingen, 1964), 209–14Google Scholar; Ap. Rhod. Argon. especially 3.156–7 and 4.757–69 with Nelis, D., Vergil's Aeneid and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (Leeds, 2001), 155–9Google Scholar; Aen. 1.297–304; and see also Hardie, P.R., Virgil's Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986), 276–9Google Scholar for the points of contact and contrast between Mercury and Virgil's earlier depiction of Fama. Feeney, D.C., ‘Leaving Dido: the appearance(s) of Mercury and the motivations of Aeneas’, in Burden, M. (ed.), A Woman Scorn'd: Responses to the Dido Myth (London, 1998), 105–27Google Scholar discusses the interventions of Virgil's Mercury in relation to each other and Virgil's models in Homer and Apollonius.
5 See especially Feeney, D.C., The Gods in Epic (Oxford, 1991), 173–5Google Scholar.
6 Hardie (n. 4), 373–5.
7 Hardie (n. 4), 278–9.
8 Feeney (n. 5), 112 draws out Mercury's related role as the ‘adversary of forgetfulness’.
9 Gordon, P., ‘Phaeacian Dido: lost pleasures of an Epicurean intertext’, ClAnt 17 (1998), 188–211Google Scholar with the quotation from 203. Cf. Dyson, J.T., ‘Dido the Epicurean’, ClAnt 15 (1996), 203–21Google Scholar.
10 J. Edmondson, ‘Public dress and social control in Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome’, in J. Edmondson and Keith, A., Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture (Toronto, 2009), 21–46Google Scholar, at 34.
11 Edmondson (n. 10).
12 Hardie, P., Virgil Aeneid Book IX (Cambridge, 1994), 616Google Scholar relates Numanus Remulus’ account of Trojan dress to the locus classicus for Roman clothing codes, Cic. Cat. 2.22. See also Hardie (this note), 614 for further examples of meaningful clothing sported by characters in the poem.
13 Edmondson and Keith (n. 10), 13, 29.
14 Zanker, P., The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor, 1988), 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar fig. 98.
15 Edmondson and Keith (n. 10), fig. 1.5.
16 The ricinium mentioned by Varro as a comparably ancient item of clothing was a fringed shawl associated with widows, and thus again of high formality: see Sensi, L., ‘Ornatus e status sociale delle donne romane’, APer 18 (1980/1), 53–102Google Scholar, at 65.
17 RE 6.2485.9–14.
18 On fibulae, see further n. 80 below.
19 Nippel, W., Public Order in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, 1995), 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Edmondson (n. 10), 29.
20 Lyne, R.O.A.M., Words and the Poet: Characteristic Techniques of Style in Vergil's Aeneid (Oxford, 1989), 188–9Google Scholar.
21 Reed, J.D., Virgil's Gaze: Nation and Poetry in the Aeneid (Princeton, 2007), 85–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. 200.
22 Both scholars assume that of the two garments mentioned at 11.72, Aeneas only uses one to wrap Pallas’ body, and thus not only has retained tokens of Dido and the ‘orientalness’ she brings with her even as far as this late stage of his mission to establish Rome, but also will continue to do so. Horsfall, N., Virgil, Aeneid 11: A Commentary (Leiden, 2003)Google Scholar suggests in a rich note on lines 11.72–7, with further bibliography, that lines 76–7 may be less definitive than that, indicating that one uestis is used for Pallas’ body and one for his head. In either case, the poet returns us forcefully to a moment of intense crisis earlier in the poem.
23 J.H. Starks, Jr., ‘The transference of Punic stereotypes in the Aeneid’, CJ 94 (1999), 255–83, at 273–4 n. 43.
24 Franko, G.F., ‘The characterization of Hanno in Plautus’ Poenulus’, AJPh 117 (1996), 425–52Google Scholar, at 443.
25 Cf. Enn. Ann. fr. 303 Skutsch with Skutsch, O., The Annals of Quintus Ennius (Oxford, 1985), 480Google Scholar, citing (in addition to Plautus) Gell. NA 6.12 (who cites in turn both Enn. Ann. 303 Skutsch and Aen. 9.616), Cic. Cat. 2.22, Verr. 2.5.31, Hor. Sat. 1.2.25, August. De doctr. Christ. 3.12.20. On Aen. 9.616, cf. Hardie (n. 12), ad loc.
26 Weber, C., ‘The Dionysus in Aeneas’, CPh 97 (2002), 322–43Google Scholar, at 337: ἄγαλμα Διονύσου δεκάπηχυ σπένδον ἐκ καρχησίου χρυσοῦ, χιτῶνα πορφυροῦν ἔχον διάπεζον καὶ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῦ κροκωτὸν διαφανῆ· περιεβέβλητο δὲ ἱμάτιον πορφυροῦν χρυσοποίκιλον, ‘a statue of Dionysus ten cubits high pouring a libation from a golden goblet and wearing a purple tunic falling down to its feet and a diaphanous saffron robe over it. A purple cloak spangled with gold was wrapped around its shoulders.’ The relevance of Hom. Il. 10.133–4, where Nestor ἀμφὶ δ’ ἄρα χλαῖναν περονήσατο φοινικόεσσαν | διπλῆν ἐκταδίην, οὔλη δ’ ἐπενήνοθε λάχνη, ‘then buckled around a purple χλαῖνα, of double fold and broad, and the woolly nap was thick upon it’, is less clear; however, for the notion of an etymological connection between laena and χλαῖνα, seemingly a kind of cape (DNP s.v. chlaina), see Juba at Plut. Num. 7.5 (= GRF 453.5), and it presumably also lies behind Nonius Marcellus 541 Lindsay, citing this moment in the Aeneid, uestimentum militare quod supra omnia uestimenta sumitur, ‘a military garment worn outside other clothes’, a better account of the χλαῖνα than of the laena. For a brisk, modern refutation of the etymological link, see TLL s.v. laena, but we cannot rule out a false etymology influencing Roman application of the word.
27 Cf. Serv. Auct. on 4.262, quidam muliebrem uestem quasi amatori aptam uolunt, ‘Some take it as womanly clothing suitable for a lover.’
28 Nelis (n. 4), 158. How unusual a laena thus adorned would seem, of course, depends somewhat on the standard appearance of the flamen's laena, and that is obscure. Marquardt's assumption at Marquardt, J. and Mommsen, T., Handbuch der römischen Altertümer 2 VI (J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung III) (Leipzig, 1878), 317Google Scholar is that the praetexta to which we hear that the flamen Dialis had a right (Livy 27.8.8; Servius on Aen. 8.552) was identical with the laena that he was obliged to wear at least at sacrifices and perhaps permanently. In that case, the flaminal laena was white with a purple border, and Aeneas’ laena a much more opulently coloured garment. Comparable, potentially, is the elaborate sword that Aeneas is carrying, since the secespita or sacrificial knife of the flamen was also elaborate (Servius on Aen. 4.262, repeating a description that Festus, Gloss. Lat. 4.437 derives from M. Antistius Labeo, a jurist of the Augustan Era) but again less luxurious than Aeneas’ weapon (for jasper, see Martial 9.59.20).
29 O'Hara (n. 3), 262.
30 Comprehensive descriptions of the priesthood may be found in RE 6.2484–92 (E. Samter); Jullien, C., ‘Flamen, flaminica, flamonia’, in Daremberg, C. and Saglio, E. (edd.) Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romains: d'après les textes et les monuments (Paris, 1877–1919), 2.1156–88Google Scholar; Vanggaard, J.H., The Flamen: A Study in the History and Sociology of Roman Religion (Copenhagen, 1988)Google Scholar; DiLuzio, M.J., A Place at the Altar: Priestesses in Republican Rome (Princeton, 2016), 17–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There is a concise but helpful summary of the flaminate and of the sources of our information on it in Starr, R.J., ‘Aeneas as the flamen Dialis? Vergil's Aeneid and the Servian exegetical tradition’, Vergilius 43 (1997), 63–70Google Scholar, at 63–4. If the central thesis of Dumézil, G., Flamen-Brahman (Paris, 1935)Google Scholar is no longer credited, it offers nevertheless much interesting insight into this priesthood.
31 Plin. HN 28.146 refers to the flamen Dialis as the flamen sacrorum.
32 Vanggaard (n. 30), 27.
33 Vanggaard (n. 30), 90.
34 DiLuzio (n. 30), 36.
35 Varro, Ling. 7.45; Cic. Rep. 2.26; Livy 1.20.1–2. Servius on Aen. 2.683 traces the priesthood to Ascanius in Alba.
36 On the oddity in a Roman context of a cooperative priesthood constituted by a mixed-gender pair, see DiLuzio (n. 30), 42–3. Of the flamines only the wife of the flamen Dialis discharged priestly functions, and the word flaminica without qualification (rather like flamen without qualification) denotes the wife of the Dialis, RE 6.2490.23–7.
37 Pötscher, W., ‘Flamen Dialis’, Mnemosyne 21 (1968), 215–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar makes the clear centrality of the flamen and flaminica's marriage to their cultic function a basis for arguing their role in maintaining fertility, their matrimony an enactment on the human plane of the hieros gamos. The fundamentally cooperative nature of the priesthood is a central theme of the chapter on the flaminica in DiLuzio (n. 30), 17–51, Plut. Quaest. Rom. 50, 276D being a key text.
38 See page 211 below.
39 Linderski, J., ‘Religious aspects of the Conflict of the Orders: the case of confarreatio’, in Raaflaub, K. (ed.), Social Struggles in Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Conflict of the Orders (Malden, MA – Oxford, 2005), 223–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar makes a persuasive case for confarreatio as an invented tradition, designed to restrict access to the patrician class in the context of the Conflict of the Orders.
40 Gai. Inst. 1.110, with Treggiari, S., Roman Marriage (Oxford, 1991), 16Google Scholar; Linderski (n. 39), 227 and 235 n. 32; Liou-Gille, B., ‘César, “flamen Dialis destinatus”’, REA 101 (1999), 433–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 444 for the societal significance of confarreatio.
41 Serv. Auct. on Verg. G. 1.31 with Linderski (n. 39), 233 n. 20; DiLuzio (n. 30), 31–2.
42 For indications that diffarreatio was at least theoretically available for other farreati couples, see Treggiari (n. 40), 24.
43 Which rendered the flaminal bed—for Pötscher (n. 37), 227–9—‘das eigentliche Kultzentrum’. The house of the flaminal couple, the flaminia, was a sacred space, Festus terming it an aedes, 79 Lindsay: DiLuzio (n. 30), 25; and on their bed: DiLuzio (n. 30), 34.
44 RE 6.2487.3–16; Liou-Gille (n. 40), 443; Ov. Fast. 6.232; Tert. De exhort. cast. 13, De monog. 17; Jer. Ep. 123.8, Adu. Iouinian. 1.49; Serv. Auct. on Aen. 4.29. This emphasis on the female party to a marriage is typical of ancient accounts; cf. Treggiari (n. 40), 5: ‘There is a tendency, then, to stress the woman's position in relation to marriage, not the man's.’
45 DiLuzio (n. 30), 29–31.
46 Cf. DiLuzio (n. 30), 31.
47 Boëls, N., ‘Le statut religieux de la Flaminica Dialis’, REL 51 (1973), 77–100Google Scholar; Boëls-Janssen, N., ‘La prêtresse aux trois voiles’, REL 67 (1989), 117–33Google Scholar; ead., ‘Flaminica cincta: a propos de la couronne rituelle de l’épouse du flamine de Jupiter’, REL 69 (1991), 32–50.
48 On the bridal flammeum worn by the flaminica, see DiLuzio (n. 30), 40–2, 50.
49 Treggiari (n. 40), 21 ponders whether Augustus may have had a hand in abolishing usus marriage, while insisting that the general move away from manus marriage in the Late Republic was the primary cause of its disappearance. For some of the implications of manus marriage in the case of the flaminica, see DiLuzio (n. 30), 19–20.
50 DiLuzio (n. 30), 44.
51 Palmer, R.E.A., ‘The deconstruction of Mommsen on Festus 462/464 L., or the hazards of restoration’, in Lindersky, J. (ed.), Imperium Sine Fine: T. Robert Broughton and the Roman Republic (Stuttgart, 1996), 75–101Google Scholar, at 86.
52 Palmer (n. 51), 90 n. 69.
53 CIL I2 1.10 = 6.1288 = CLE 8 = ILS 4 = ILLRP 311 = E. Courtney, Musa Lapidaria: A Selection of Latin Verse Inscriptions (Atlanta, 1995), no. 11. This by way of contradicting one thread of the compelling discussion of Caesar's near-inauguration by Liou-Gille (n. 40): an anomaly in Caesar's story that requires explanation, she suggests, is his age at the time of these events (see Liou-Gille [n. 40], 438, 458). On the contrary, a flamen inaugurated at the cusp of manhood seems to have been the norm.
54 RE 6.2486.33–5.
55 Shi, V.S.-R. and Morgan, L., ‘A tale of two Carthages: history and allusive topography in Virgil's Libyan harbor (Aen. 1.159–69)’, TAPhA 145 (2015), 107–33Google Scholar, at 124–5.
56 J. Henry, Aeneidea II (Dublin, 1878), 684.
57 Reckford, K.J., ‘Recognising Venus (I): Aeneas meets his mother’, Arion 3 (1995–6), 1–42Google Scholar.
58 Jullien (n. 30), 1167–9.
59 Cf. the lanigeri apices on Aeneas’ shield (Aen. 8.664), in effect a gloss on the word flamen, which was supposed to derive from this woollen filum: Maltby, R., A Lexicon of Ancient Etymologies (Leeds, 1991)Google Scholar, s.v. flamen.
60 λέγεται δ’ οὗτος ὁ ἱερεὺς φλαμέντας καὶ πιλοφορεῖ μόνος αἰεί, ‘This priest is called a flamen, and alone wears a cap at all times’, App. B Ciu. 1.8.65; cf. Varro, Ling. 5.84; Gell. NA 10.15.17. Liou-Gille (n. 40), 439 n. 37 interprets Appian's comment as a reference to the especially pious character of the flamen Dialis L. Cornelius Merula (on whom, see pages 207–9 below), but in fact Appian is clearly referring to the priesthood of the flamen Dialis in general. The flaminate could be evoked on coins by the apex alone: Vanggaard (n. 30), 71–2.
61 At 12.492 Aeneas’ helmet has an apex that is knocked off in advance of what Tarrant, R., Virgil Aeneid XII (Cambridge, 2012), 494–9Google Scholar calls ‘a critical moment in the narrative’, a potential parallel to this significant change in status.
62 The arguments of Palmer (n. 51) towards reconstructing the text of Festus (and the events of 223 b.c.) to some extent hang upon the rules regarding the headwear of a flamen Dialis. For the avoidance of death, see Gell. NA 10.15.24, locum, in quo bustum est, numquam ingreditur, mortuum numquam attingit, ‘he never approaches a place where there is a funeral pyre, nor touches a corpse’; and for related taboos on touching (or in some cases even naming) raw meat, fermented bread, beans, dogs and horses, or overhearing the flute accompaniment to a funeral, see Jullien (n. 30), 1157.
63 Lyne (n. 20).
64 Serv. Auct. on 12.120; DiLuzio (n. 30), 37.
65 Hardie (n. 4), 369–76.
66 Hardie (n. 4), 372. The clear distinction Hardie draws at n. 112 between Atlas the mountain and Atlas the Giant perhaps gives inadequate weight to the careful ambiguity of Virgil's description.
67 Livy 5.52 records a prohibition against the flamen even spending a single night away from Rome; Gell. NA 10.15.14 speaks of a ban on three days away from his bed and Plut. Quaest. Rom. 40, 274C of more than three, while Tac. Ann. 3.71.2–3 allows for two days’ absence twice per year in case of illness, but absence from ritual duties rather than necessarily from the city, it seems: Vanggaard (n. 30), 64–6.
68 See page 199 and n. 43 above.
69 Scheid, J., Religion et piété à Rome (Paris, 2001), 56Google Scholar; Dumézil (n. 30), 56.
70 DiLuzio (n. 30), 32.
71 L. Cornelius Merula was seemingly the only flamen Dialis to hold a consulship under the Republic (Liou-Gille [n. 40], 437), and that was under the most unusual circumstances. After Cinna's expulsion from Rome, Merula assumed the consulship largely, no doubt, because as flamen Dialis it was felt that no one would dare lay a finger on him, as brilliantly explained to me by Professor Roberta Stewart in person. Tac. Ann. 3.58–9 and 3.71 detail the attempts of Servius Cornelius Lentulus Maluginensis, Augustus’ appointee as flamen Dialis, to enjoy some of the benefits of a conventional career. He had been consul in a.d. 10.
72 Vanggaard (n. 30), 82. The dictator Sulla made something of the fact that his ancestor the first Sulla was also flamen Dialis: Gell. NA 1.12.16 = FRHist 22 F 2; Bassignano, M.S., ‘Il flaminato nella politica romana fino all'età di Tiberio’, AIV 125 (1966/7), 241–90Google Scholar, at 252–3.
73 Linderski (n. 39), 228 and 236 n. 41; Gell. NA 1.12.15–16, with Liou-Gille (n. 40), 447 and 452 n. 116. capere is used of the selection of C. Valerius Flaccus by the Pontifex Maximus at Livy 27.8.
74 Cf. Rehak, P., ‘The fourth flamen of the Ara Pacis Augustae’, JRA 14 (2001), 284–8Google Scholar, at 287: ‘Each of the foreground flamines’ on the south frieze of the Ara Pacis ‘occupies his own space and is not overlapped by other figures, in keeping with the special sanctity of his office.’
75 The seminal account of the versions of Servius that have come down to us remains Goold, G.P., ‘Servius and the Helen episode’, HSPh 74 (1970), 101–68Google Scholar.
76 Cf. Starr (n. 30), 64–5.
77 Lhommé, M.-K., ‘Pontifes et flamines dans le commentaire de Servius à l’Énéide’, in Garcea, A., Lhommé, M.-K. and Vallat, D. (edd.), Fragments d’érudition, Servius et le savoir antique (Hildesheim, 2016), 369–94Google Scholar, at 374. One consequence of the commentary's preoccupation with the priesthood is that Servius is, alongside Plutarch and Gellius, a major source of information on the flaminate.
78 Vanggaard (n. 30), 31.
79 Lancel, S., Carthage, a History (Oxford, 1995), 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar finds in the myth of Dido's death ‘the outlines of the religious practice of self-sacrifice which a Phoenician king or queen was obliged to carry out in a grave crisis’, of which ‘the sacrifice of children by fire in the tophet was perhaps only a ritual derivation’, comparing Appian's account of the death of the Carthaginian commander Hasdrubal's wife after the city's capture in 146 b.c.: she killed her children and threw them into a burning temple, then jumped in herself (App. Hann. 8.131). Davidson, J., ‘Domesticating Dido: history and historicity’, in Burden, M. (ed.), A Woman Scorn'd: Responses to the Dido Myth (London, 1998), 65–88Google Scholar, at 72–7 identifies the ‘grave crisis’ that might have motivated Dido's original self-sacrifice in Punic myth as a threat ‘from outside by the African king’, in response to which ‘Dido offers up herself in return for the city's salvation’, and plays down the difference between the child sacrifice most associated with Carthage and an adult's self-immolation: ‘Is not the offering up of one's own children the greatest act of self-sacrifice?’ The most striking thing about Virgil's take on this mythic and historical material is, as Davidson insists, his resistance to the impulse to demonize Carthage and its queen, but Carthage becomes recognizably Rome's most threatening rival by the close of Book 4, and well before then the poet already appears to be manipulating his readers’ assumptions about Carthage and its religious practices: Venus’ concern for Ascanius’ well-being in Carthage, for example, would seem to echo anxieties the Roman reader might harbour about the safety of children there. Saturnia as a name for Juno, apparently coined by Ennius (fr. 53 Skutsch), might indeed suggest the future favour the goddess would show the Saturnia terra (Skutsch [n. 25], ad loc.), but Iuno Saturnia is also quite close to TNT PN B'L, ‘Tanit face of Baal’ (Saturn was the Roman identification for Baal, as Juno for Tanit), the name commonly given the goddess at the tophet in Carthage: Lancel (this note), 199.
80 For Dido represented as flaminica we have her weaving of Aeneas’ laena in the manner of a self-sufficient flaminica. But there may also be a hint at 4.139, where Dido wears a purple garment underpinned with a golden fibula. We have encountered fibulae already in the costume of the flamen: see page 194 above. Boëls-Janssen, N., ‘La prêtresse aux trois voiles’, REL 67 (1989), 117–33Google Scholar, at 125 discusses the uenenatum worn by the flaminica, relating it to the suffibulum worn by the Vestals (Festus 474 Lindsay), the name of the latter garment deriving from the fibula that gathered it on the Vestal's chest. Boëls-Janssen also remarks on the originally sacred character of the fibula itself.
81 For a detailed analysis of four such notices in Servius, see Starr (n. 30), 66–8.
82 Jones, J.W., ‘Allegorical interpretation in Servius’, CJ 56 (1961), 217–26Google Scholar; Starr (n. 30); Sharrock, A., ‘Aemulatio: the critic as intertext’, in Casali, S. and Stok, F., Servio: stratificazioni esegetiche e modelli culturali (Brussels, 2008), 7–23Google Scholar; K. Fanciullacci, ‘Aeneas as the flamen and flaminica in the Servian commentary on Vergil's Aeneid’ (M.A. Diss., University of Kansas), 2012; Lhommé (n. 77), 394: ‘Cet ensemble de commentaires témoigne de l'existence d'une communauté de savants qui spéculent, de façon parfois très sophistiquée (mais aussi maladroite), sur la religion romaine archaïque, sentie comme culture commune.’
83 Stok, F., ‘Commenting on Virgil, from Aelius Donatus to Servius’, Dead Sea Discoveries 19 (2012), 464–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 469–74 considers the different emphases of Servius and Donatus, the latter being the presumptive source of such additional material introduced in the Servius Auctus commentary as the flaminal material of Book 4 and elsewhere. Servius’ exclusion of this material betrays his target audience of schoolboys and his primary aim of teaching the Latin language, whereas Donatus was ‘the one who taught the advanced classes’: Goold (n. 75), 135. In addition, however, between Donatus and Servius fell the edict of Theodosius in a.d. 391, banning all expressions of pagan cult. Servius’ commentary, even though its author was not Christian, ‘not only refers to the pagan rites as a phenomenon of the past, but shows much less interest in them than Donatus had’: Stok (this note), 473.
84 See most recently V. Panoussi, ‘Aeneas’ sacral authority’, in J. Farrell and M.C.J. Putnam, A Companion to Vergil's Aeneid and its Tradition (Chichester, 2010), 52–65, which however states incorrectly that Augustus became both Pontifex Maximus and flamen Dialis (at 53), rejects the possibility that Aeneas evokes the latter priesthood (at 54), and in its book-by-book survey of the poem sidelines Aeneid Book 4 (at 56).
85 Liou-Gille (n. 40); Vanggaard (n. 30), 51. It is unclear by precisely what procedure Caesar's inauguration was prevented: Liou-Gille (n. 40), 456. It is also a reasonable suspicion that the long hiatus in the priesthood after Merula's death had something to do with Caesar's deposition: Liou-Gille (n. 40), 438.
86 Rehak (n. 74).
87 Bowersock, G., ‘The pontificate of Augustus’, in Raaflaub, K.A. and Toher, M. (edd.), Between Republic and Empire (Berkeley, 1990), 380–94Google Scholar.
88 Suet. Aug. 31.1–2.
89 Haselberger, L. (with responses by Heslin, P.J. and Schütz, M. and additional remarks by Hannah, R. and Alföldy, G.), ‘A debate on the Horologium of Augustus: controversy and clarifications’, JRA 24 (2011), 45–98Google Scholar, at 69. This collection of articles captures well the history and current state of this highly controversial subject. What is uncontroversial is that Pliny the Elder (HN 36.71–3) describes a monument associated with an Egyptian obelisk as a gnomon, designed for ‘observing the shadows of the sun, and thus the lengths of both days and nights’, which also in some manner tracked the passage of the year by the length of shadow cast, and that Pliny's account is broadly compatible with archaeological discoveries. The obelisk was erected, as the identical inscriptions on two sides of its pedestal indicate, by Augustus as Pontifex Maximus in 10/9 b.c. (Haselberger [this note], 47–8).
90 Beard, M., North, J. and Price, S.R.F., Religions of Rome (Cambridge, 1998), 1.131Google Scholar.
91 Suet. Aug. 31.4 includes the Diale flamonium among rituals including the Lupercalia and the Secular Games that Augustus had rescued from disuse.
92 Mark Antony, an acknowledged presence in the portrayal of Aeneas in Book 4, had been immortalized by Cicero in the Second Philippic as a notably disreputable flamen designatus (110–11), in his case flamen of the deified Caesar, although Dio Cassius (44.6.4), for what it is worth, claims that Antony as flamen Iulialis was a kind of distorted flamen Dialis, broadly comparable to my reading of Aeneas. See Vanggaard (n. 30), 85 and Cole, S., Cicero and the Rise of Deification at Rome (Cambridge, 2013), 170–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
93 Liou-Gille (n. 40).