Vergil and Authoritarianism

When Virgil published his First Eclogue (c.35 BC), in which a young man (iuvenis, 1.42) is deified for having restored freedom (libertas, 1.27) to Tityrus and released him from enslavement (servitio, 1.40), the poet could not have foreseen that some fifty years later Augustus, on the verge of divinisation, would open his Res Gestae with the sentence:

annos undeviginti natus exercitum privato consilio et privata impensa comparavi, per quem rem publicam a dominatione factionis oppressam in libertatem vindicavi.

Vergil’s Victores: A Study of the Epithet Victor in the Georgics

Vergil’s fear that Octavian will become an authoritarian ruler is a primary concern of the poet in

the Georgics . Indeed, Vergil’s concern for the nature of Octavian’s rule provides an overarching

frame for the narrative. In the proem to Book 1, Vergil advises Octavian to consider carefully

which domain of the universe he wishes to rule, lest too dreadful a desire of ruling should take

Although seen as primarily a goddess of the hunt today, to the native Italians and Romans, Diana had many political associations. Glinster notes that “Diana’s remit thus embraced strong political and civilizing elements” (Glinster 2020, 52), and Dumezil suggests that she might be the Latin equivalent of an Indo-European “celestial god who was not and could not himself be either king or father, but who guaranteed the continuity of births and provided for the succession of kings” (Dumézil 1970, 409).

Nec legitur pars ulla magis: Vergil’s Aeneid 4 from Ovid’s Exile

In Tristia 2.533-36 Ovid famously claims that no part of the Aeneid is more read than the affair

of Dido and Aeneas - non legitimo foedere iunctus amor - and that this is prima facie an

argument against his sentence of exile by Augustus. Nevertheless, Ovid's deployment of Vergil

as a defense against authoritarian suppression both ostentatiously presents him as an imperial

One of the great classicists of the twentieth century, Sir Ronald Syme (1903-1989) was among the earliest

to compare the consolidation of power by the Emperor Augustus with the rise of authoritarian regimes in

contemporary Europe. In light of his famed ability to process and present documentary evidence, it is all to

easy to overlook the fact that Syme was also a philologist of the highest order, with an exacting knowledge

of Latin and of Roman literature. In fact, his best works are marked by the intricate weaving of traditional