192 GIANPIERO ROSATI
Oedipus): he tries to abandon his Theban past, and to integrate himself
into the house of Adrastus, his father-in-law, but realizes that he is
cursed by his own paternity.^55 First of all, therefore, Phaethon’s myth
was to appear as linked with the idea of the legitimacy of imperial
power: as Newlands puts it, “for a post-Neronian reader [...] the usur-
pation of the Sun’s chariot must surely have linked the concept of
imperial majesty with transgressive power and fear of civic dissolu-
tion.”^56
Within this framework, then, Statius’ specification that it is the Sun
who crowns his young son and successor is probably an attempt to
satisfy the desire of Domitian to see his legitimacy as emperor recog-
nised, and to dispel possible malignant insinuations about the way in
which he rose to power. We know from Suetonius that after the sud-
den death of his father Vespasian, he
numquam iactare dubitauit relictum se participem imperii, sed fraudem
testamento adhibitam
(Suet. Dom. 2.3)
he never had any compunction about saying that he had been left a
partner in the imperial power, but that the will had been tampered
with.^57And we also know that for the whole of the brief reign of Titus, he
continued to plot against his brother, with the aim of becoming his
successor on the throne.^58 It comes as no surprise, therefore, that he
should have been particularly concerned about the problem of his
legitimation as the emperor on the throne of Rome; and that Statius,
with his tools as a poet, should have seconded this sensitivity of the
emperor. The gesture of the Sun who crowns his son is thus an act of
investiture, a ‘ceremony of succession’ and transmission of power,^59
55 “For both Phaethon and Polynices, it is not only their own identity which is at
stake: their struggle over their paternities draws in the whole world”: Lovatt 2005, 34.
56 Newlands 2002, 315.
57 Translation by Rolfe 1914.
58 Cf. also Suet. Tit. 9.3 and Dom. 13.1 principatum uero adeptus neque in senatu
iactare dubitauit et patri se et fratri imperium dedisse, illos sibi reddidisse. On cold
relationships between the two imperial brothers, and in particular Domitian’s impa-
tience with Titus, see Jones 1992, 19–21 (who insists however on tendentiousness and
bias of our sources) and, better, Gsell 1894, 26ff. and 39f.
59 The idea of a reassuring family continuity, from Vespasian to his two sons, is an
important issue of Flavian propaganda: cf. Girard 1987; Levick 1999, 184ff.; Leberl
2004, 58–60 and 154. Cf. also Jos. BJ 4.596f. “for neither senate nor Roman people