Virgil

Abstract

Abstract What emerges most stunningly in Virgil is his ability to help us see the world and human history through many different eyes. The poet never allows us either to rest confident in the morality of empire or to ignore its manifold benefits, not least of which is the poetic art itself. Characterizing “Jupiter in Virgil” is as difficult as characterizing Virgil himself. The portrayal of the god in the Eclogues is fairly conventional, with only the whisper of an association with Octavian; if anything, it is Asinius Pollio who is the “Jupiter figure.” The Georgics presents everything from the menacing architect of the Iron Age to a baby fed by bees. In the Aeneid, Jupiter’s concerns are reduced to fama and imperium, with his complexity deriving mainly from that of those concepts. While we should be cautious about attributing these shifts in focus and tone to changes in Roman society—the three poems, after all, have different genres and purposes—the god’s Virgilian trajectory at least demonstrates some of the ways Augustan poets could use Jupiter as a focus for complex reflections on the centralization and consequences of power.