Bobby Xinyue (UCL)

Presented to the PGWiP seminar on Friday 7th October 2011

Stars and arrows: Vergil’s Aeneid and the divinity of the gens Iulia

The focus of this paper is the stars and arrows in Vergil’s Aeneid, especially ones which seem to have significant politico-genealogical connotations. To this extent, the following discussions will cover some of the same ground as earlier articles by De Witt, West, and Williams; but I hope to point out one thing in particular which my predecessors seem to have overlooked. That is, a possible link between star-and-arrow images and the poem’s discourse on the divinity of Julius Caesar and Augustus. In the following pages I hope to show, firstly, that this link comes in the form of repeated allusions to the sidus Iulium — the comet appeared during Caesar’s funeral games in 44 B.C.; and, secondly, that allusions to the sidus Iulium constitute an important part of Vergil’s representation of the divinity of Augustus.

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