184 GIANPIERO ROSATI
the currency by which one will be judged oneself, and is a way of
appropriating him, replacing him and inheriting his role).^24
In other words, the discussion of the place to be assigned to Virgil
is part of a process of canonisation (let us not forget that the Flavian
age is marked by the figure of Quintilian, who carried out the most
systematic and lucid process of canonisation of all Latin literary cul-
ture).^25 As Glenn Most puts it, “it is not accidental that questions of
canonisation tend to be raised in moments of political fragmentation
and conflicts of legitimacy”;^26 and we know that throughout the
Flavian age there is a serious problem of political legitimacy for the
family which had succeeded to the Julio-Claudian dynasty, after the
civil conflicts of the ‘year of the four emperors’, a family which was
obscura ... quidem ac sine ullis maiorum imaginibus “obscure and
without family portraits” (Suet. Ves. 1). The problem of the lack of
auctoritas is the one which creates the most trouble for Vespasian,
immediately after his unexpected rise to power (Auctoritas et quasi
maiestas quaedam ut scilicet inopinato et adhuc nouo principi deerat
“Vespasian as yet lacked prestige and a certain divinity, so to speak,
since he was an unexpected and still new-made emperor” Ves. 7.2).^27
2) Phaethon and paternal legitimacyThe problem of succession, and consequently of legitimacy, leads us
to examine another point in the Thebaid, which I find particularly
significant from this point of view. Let us go back to the proem, and
to the homage that the poet renders to the emperor. In announcing the
topic of his work, he justifies the choice of a mythological subject by
confessing his own inadequacy to celebrate the warlike achievements
of Domitian (this is the typical recusatio that Augustan poets had used
in order to avoid any obligations of political poetry): a task that is
postponed to an indefinite future (which will never arrive), when the
poet feels “more inspired”. The embarrassment of the refusal is dis-
24 “The Thebaid’s successful imitation of the Aeneid may result in a measure of
self-divinisation”, Hardie 1993, 110.
25 That things, as Barchiesi 2001b, 316 observes, have gone differently from their
intentions – i.e. that Virgil’s ‘sanctification’ has relegated Flavian epicists to a minor-
ity and epigonal position – is of course another matter.
26 Most 1990, 54.
27 Translation by Rolfe 1914.