I. Text and translation

The prologue is quoted above in the ‘canonical’ text of Ehlers (Reference Ehlers1980) 1, whose apparatus can be supplemented from that of Liberman (Reference Liberman1997) 8–9. Other editors (and commentators) occasionally depart from Ehlers’ text. Three variations in particular may be noted: the initial words of lines 11 (sancte pater) and 13 (namque potes) are sometimes switched; and many texts retain potes in line 13 rather than printing potest, required for sense if the initial phrase of line 13 is left in place; finally genti in line 15 has occasionally been emended to centum. However, none of these textual variations affects the proposals of the present paper.

It might muddy the waters if I offered my own English version at this point, so I quote the elegant translation of Andrew Zissos.Footnote ¹ But, where Zissos has departed from Ehlers’ readings, I have substituted (in emboldened italic) renderings of Ehlers’ text.

II. Objectives

The Argonautica prologue has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, and certain interpretations of lines 5–9 have become so established that they are sometimes simply stated as facts. Thus (as shown in detail below, §iii) it is often asserted that Valerius Flaccus was a xvvir sacris faciundis, that the cortina of line 6 is one standing in/in front of Valerius’ house as a symbol of his quindecimvirate, and that the Caledonius … | Oceanus of lines 8–9 is a reference to an early exploit of Vespasian during Claudius’ invasion of Britain. Clearly, if these assertions are correct, they are important factors in our assessment of Valerius’ status and biography, and for our understanding of the prologue as a whole. I shall, however, argue on historical, linguistic and literary grounds (with particular attention to the meaning of lines 59) that Valerius’ quindecimvirate is a mirage and that the cortina stands in a quite different ‘house’. I shall also contend, mainly on the basis of historical evidence, that the ‘Caledonian Ocean’ refers to an event or events much closer in time to the composition of the Argonautica.  The alternative interpretations which I shall propose alter radically our perceptions of the prologue.

One established view will, however, be accepted throughout: I believe, in accord with the current consensus of Valerian scholarship,Footnote ² ‘that the Argonautica was composed almost entirely within the reign of Vespasian’,Footnote ³ and that the prologue addresses Vespasian as still alive. The definitive arguments in favour of this view are those of Stover (Reference Stover2008), reiterated at Stover (Reference Stover2012) 16–26. Stover's conclusion is further confirmed by §xi below.

III. Was Valerius a xvvir sacris faciundis?

According to a long-standing tenet of many Valerian scholars, lines 5–7 show that the poet was a xvvir sacris faciundis, a member of one of the four highest Roman priesthoods. This view goes back to the sixteenth-century humanist Giovan Battista Pio, and it was revived and elaborated by Pierre Boyancé.Footnote ⁴ More recently it has been espoused inter alios by Denis Feeney, Antonio Río Torres-Murciano, Daniela Galli, A. J. Kleywegt, Andrew Zissos and W. Jeffrey Tatum.Footnote ⁵ A few scholars have rejected the conclusion that Valerius was a xvvir, notably John Kevin Newman and François Spaltenstein,Footnote ⁶ who held that lines 5–7 simply underline the poet's inspiration by Apollo. But acceptance of the fact, or probability, of Valerius’ quindecimvirate has predominated in Valerian scholarship: and it received a friendly reception from two contributors to a recent composite volume on the poet.Footnote ⁷ Valerius is even listed as a probable (‘wohl’) xvvir in the major modern reference work on the Roman priesthoods.Footnote ⁸ Nevertheless, it must be underlined that Valerius’ supposed quindecimvirate is based entirely on these three lines of the Argonautica: there is no external evidence for it, and Valerius’ biography is a historical blank. The quindecimvirate will be the first inference from lines 5–9 to be challenged.

IV. Cortinae

The priestly college of the xvviri had fifteen members by the Flavian age, having been enlarged from ten by Sulla; it was charged with the care and consultation of the Sibylline books, the transmission to the senate of the findings of the haruspices, the regulation of some ‘foreign’ cults and the organisation of the Ludi Saeculares. The proof of Valerius’ quindecimvirate has been thought to lie in two elements of lines 5–7, the Cumaean Sybil's cortina and the laurel crown. The cortina was the basin on top of Apollo's sacred tripod in which the Sibyl and the Delphic priestess sat to receive inspiration from the god.Footnote ⁹ Those who believe that Valerius was a xvvir assert that each xvvir kept a cortina in, or in front of, his houseFootnote ¹⁰ as a symbol of his priesthood,Footnote ¹¹ and wore a laurel wreath.

However, there are flaws in the reasoning which has led to these beliefs. The passage linking xvviri with cortinae often quoted apropos of the first belief is:

Servius Danielis says here that the xvviri had cortinae and a dolphin – presumably a metal image of one – which was placed on top of, or above, the cortinae, and that this dolphin was ritually carried in procession on the day before the xvviri sacrificed. Nothing is said about each of the xvviri having a cortina in, or in front of, his house; and indeed, since the procession referred to by Servius Danielis involved all of them, and probably took place in or around the Palatine temple of Apollo, it seems much more likely that the cortinae and dolphin were stored there centrally. That cortinae and xvviri were associated does, however, emerge from Servius Danielis’ remarks; and this linkage will also be visible when the coinages of attested and possible xvviri are discussed below (§vi). But it must be stressed that the theory holding that each xvvir had a cortina in/in front of his house is based entirely on the reading of Argonautica 1.5–7 which this paper disputes: it has no foundation in Servius Danielis, who describes only the rituals of the xvviri, or indeed anywhere else.

V. Laurel crowns

A text and some coins have been adduced in support of the further claim that the xvviri wore laurel crowns.Footnote ¹² The text is a dedicatory verse inscription on an altar of the Magna Mater found in Rome at the Phrygianum and dated to c. 350–400 (IGUR i.108–10 no.126 = IG xiv.1020), but now lost:Footnote ¹³

For the Mother of the gods

Flavian xvviri supervised foreign cults, including that of the Magna Mater,Footnote ¹⁵ but they did not as part of their official duties engage in the rituals of those cults. By the fourth century the boundaries between Roman and foreign cults had become more porous, and the xvvir Crescens, acting here as a private individual, has teamed up with the non-xvvir Leontius to conduct rituals which had nothing to do with the xvviri as such. στεφανηφόρος does not, in any case, specify the type of wreath worn by the xvvir Crescens. So these verses offer no proof that xvviri wore laurel wreaths.

VI. Some numismatic evidence

The numismatic evidence proffered to show that the xvviri wore laurel crowns is useful in another respect: it confirms the link between xvviri and tripods/cortinae, and shows (particularly when emperors’ coins advertise their membership of all four major priesthoods) that the tripod and cortina could symbolise the quindecimvirate. But that same evidence is relatively weak and ultimately unpersuasive when it comes to the laurel. The coins of certain men known, or plausibly thought, to have been xvviri exhibit a tripod, sometimes accompanied by its cortina, and/or by laurel branches or a laurel wreath or/and a dolphin. But coins of men who are not independently attested as xvviri also exhibit a tripod etc. These latter men may also have been xvviri, although in one case at least – Sex. Pompeius (below) – that seems dubious. Hence the association between xvviri and the laurel is not strong: it does not demonstrate that it was a symbol of their priesthood, and even less that they wore laurel crowns. First, coins of some certain or plausible xvviri:

Second, coins of some possible, but not independently attested, xvviri with a tripod are:

Third, coins of some men unlikely to have been xviri or xvviri s.f., but with a tripod on them:

It is understandable, then, that Gerhard Radke could write even of Torquatus and Cassius: ‘Von beiden Männern nimmt man deshalb Zugehörigkeit zum Kollegium der Qu. an …, was möglich, aber nicht sicher ist.’Footnote ²⁴ Clearly not every numismatic tripod identifies the man named on the coin (or his father) as a xvvir. Nevertheless, the weight of numismatic evidence indicates that a tripod and cortina could symbolise the quindecimvirate; however, it does not support the idea that the xvviri wore laurel crowns. Moreover, laurel crowns are never mentioned elsewhere in contexts focused exclusively on xvviri; the reason may be that the Sibylline Books were first associated with Jupiter (whose plant was the oak, not the laurel),Footnote ²⁵ and only later came to be linked with Apollo.

VII. The standard associations of the laurel

The standard associations of the laurus (bay tree) are victory, Apollo and poetry.Footnote ²⁶ Triumphatores and Roman emperors (see above, §vi, especially in connection with Vitellius, and below, §x) wore a laurel crown in celebration of their victories. So did Apollo, victor over Pytho; two of the passages quoted below in connection with Aeneas’ visit to Delos comment on his laurel. Again poets, in virtue of their dependence on Apollo, are often spoken of and depicted as wearing laurel crowns; and Apolline prophetic inspiration and vatic status are possible referents of a laurel crown, as is obvious from a number of poetic texts. For example, Virgil describes how earth movements and the bellowing of the oracular cortina of Delos precede a voice from the temple which delivers a prophecy to the Trojans; and the god's laurel also features in this context:

Ovid's version of the same event also includes both laurel and basin, and it clarifies or (more probably) ‘corrects’ Virgil: the voice is that of the cortina:

Later in the Aeneid Palinurus, responding to Aeneas in the underworld, assures him of the veracity of the Delian oracle, and refers to the cortina as having spoken: ‘neque te Phoebi cortina fefellit’ (6.347). Ovid obviously took that hint. Propertius too makes the cortina, this time that of the Sibyl, speak: si modo Avernalis tremulae cortina Sibyllae | dixit Aventino rura pianda Remo (4.1.49–50). One of the severalFootnote ²⁷ etymologies of cortina may lie behind this trope: cf. e.g. alii cortinam quasi ortinam tradunt, quod inde vox oriatur (Servius ad Verg. Aen. 3.92). The speaking cortina of these passages is clearly relevant to the present discussion, as is the status of the Sibyl as ‘priestess of Apollo’, already firmly established by Virgil in his descriptions of her as Phoebi Triuiaeque sacerdos (Aen. 6.35) and Phoebi longaeua sacerdos (Aen. 6.628).Footnote ²⁸

VIII. Valerius’ self-imaging

Quite apart from the dubiety or invalidity of the evidence adduced to show that Valerius was a xvvir, his alleged reference to his quindecimvirate in lines 5–7 is problematic in another way: the level of self-promotion which it supposes is out of keeping with the behaviour of other Latin (and Greek) poets. Valerius’ announcement of his ambitious literary enterprise in the first four lines of his epic is of course justified by literary precedents, epic and other, going back to Homer and exemplified by Apollonius and by Virgil in both the Georgics and the Aeneid. But assertions of personal extra-poetic status are not found in the prologues of other Latin (and Greek) poets. Poets are also in general careful to damp down their own personae in order to boost those of their patrons. However, on the current ruling interpretation of lines 5–7, Valerius precedes his praise of the emperor and his two sons, who are the dedicatees and hence the patrons of his Argonautica, with a self-satisfied portrait of himself as a xvvir who keeps the Sibyl's cauldron in his own chaste house.Footnote ²⁹ No doubt the counter-argument could be offered that Valerius’ supposed procedure in lines 5–7 is primarily a means of authenticating his vatic inspiration, which on any interpretation those lines certainly do (see below, §xii). It might also be argued that, if Valerius was a xvvir, then he was unique among Latin poets in being an official state priest charged with responsibilities connected with the temple of Apollo, the protector and inspirer of poets, which might justify his boast. Nevertheless, the civic precedence which Valerius, on the current interpretation of lines 5–7, gives himself over the imperial family remains highly anomalous.

IX. Some linguistic considerations

Before an alternative rendering of lines 5–7 is proposed, some areas of my unease with current renderings may usefully be explored:

1. (1) Those seeing in the lines evidence that Valerius was a xvvir (e.g. Zissos, in his translation quoted above, §i) seem to take mihi closely with stat, and to interpret mihi … stat as ‘stands in my’ (or even to make mihi … stat equivalent to est mihi, i.e. ‘I possess’), so that mihi is being understood as possessive – along the lines of tibi … stat in … neque in tenero stat tibi corde silex (Tib. 1.1.64) and illi | … stat in illi | uirgineus teneras stat pudor ante genas (Tib. 1.4.13–14). But whether this is necessarily the correct rendering of Argonautica 1.5–6 can be questioned. In the Tibullan parallels silex is a metaphor and pudor an emotion, and cor and genae are corporeal parts, and so can only be those of tibi/illi. On the other hand the cortina of line 6 is a material object, and a domus is not a body part but an external location. It is doubtful whether this sense of mihi … stat can be maintained in lines 5–6.

2. (2) Elsewhere mihi stat/stat mihi appears to mean either ‘X costs me’, or ‘I am resolved’, i.e. to do something. The first meaning is visible in stat mihi non parvo virtus mea (Ov. Fast. 4.885), and the second in id vos ignorare nolui: nam mihi stat alere morbum desinere (Nepos, De viris illustribus: Atticus 21.5). The only other example of the second meaning is Argonautica 2.61–2:

Neither of these meanings would be appropriate for mihi … | stat in lines 5–6 of the Argonautica prologue; so the question must be raised whether mihi … stat should in fact be taken together.

1. (3) A third unease arises from conscia (5). The majority rendering of lines 5–7 understands conscia as linked only with Cumaeae … vatis. But there is an overwhelming tendency for parts of conscius and dative pronouns, if they stand in the same clause, to be construed together, particularly when, as in line 5, they are juxtaposed, which they mostly are,Footnote ³⁰ and even more when, as here, they form a unit, enclosed within Cumaeae … vatis, words which quite certainly go together. It is hard, then, to divorce mihi from conscia. Tibullus 1.8.3 (nec mihi sunt sortes nec conscia fibra deorum) might at first look like a counter-example supporting the majority interpretation of Argonautica 1.5–6. But there mihi and sunt go together to indicate possession, and the Tibullan commentators (who cite in support Prop. 4.1.104: fibra locuta deos) correctly interpret conscia … deorum as ‘acquainted with the will of the gods’ (Murgatroyd), ‘that know the will of the gods’ (Maltby). But the analogous rendering of the supposed Valerian word-complex as ‘the cauldron that knows the will of the Cumaean prophetess’ would not make sense: the Sibyl had no will of her own, being only a conduit through which Apollo's will was revealed. The translation offered by Zissos (above, §i), ‘a tripod sharing in the knowledge of the Cumaean prophetess’, comes near to what the Latin means, but it fails to take mihi into account.

X. A different approach

For these reasons I believe that a different approach to Argonautica 1.5–7 is required, one which bypasses these problems inherent in the current majority understanding of the lines, and at the same time brings them into better accord with their overall intellectual context, and into harmony with the structure of lines 5–11. If mihi conscia is understood as a phrase, then this points us towards the sort of translation espoused by Spaltenstein, viz. ‘si … la cortina de la prophétesse de Cumes m'est complice’, which has Valerius designating the cortina as (in effect) ‘my accomplice’.Footnote ³¹ I shall suggest a more nuanced rendering at a later point, but for the time being this translation allows us to detach the cortina from Valerius and move forward without the supposition that it belongs to him. The (pseudo)-conditional clauses si Cumaeae … (5) and si laurea … (6), neither of which express any doubt, and in which si means ‘since’ (cf. OLD s.v. si 6),Footnote ³² are both subordinate to mone [me] (5), which addresses Apollo; mone is followed by two parallel imperatives, eripe [me] (10) and fave [mihi canenti] (11), both addressed to tuque (7), i.e. Vespasian, with whom the sentence continues. The lines contain the personal pronouns mihi (= Valerius, 5) and tu(que) (= Vespasian, 7), but domo (6) and fronte (7) are not accompanied by personal pronominal adjectives: so we are not explicitly informed whose house and whose brow is in question.

Lines 5–7 therefore present two candidates – apart from Valerius – for the ownership of the house and brow, Apollo and Vespasian. At first sight Apollo might look like the more attractive of the two since tripods and cortinae were kept in his temples and since in his standard representation he wears a laurel crown.Footnote ³³ But in fact Apollo is a poor fit: it would have been both otiose and impertinent for Valerius to have noted that laurel ‘greens’ on Apollo's ‘worthy’ brow given the origin of the tree as Apollo's beloved Daphne, and given Apollo's ‘ownership’ of the laurel. Moreover, despite the claim of Spaltenstein that ‘Castus peut s'appliquer à un temple’,Footnote ³⁴ gods do not have chaste houses or chaste temples in extant Latin poetry. The collocations castum/-a … templum/-a etc. and casta/-ae … aedes etc. are not found there; and, of the Latin poetic examples of casta/-ae domus, one refers to heroes,Footnote ³⁵ and the rest, with one quasi-exception, to humans.Footnote ³⁶ Spaltenstein cites two passages in support of his claim:Footnote ³⁷ castos … postes (Ciris 94), but there the ‘clean doorposts’ of the Muses are being ‘stained’ by the smoke of sacrifice; and Silius, Punica 13.62, but there Diomedes is told to ‘return the fillets and chaste image of the ancestors’ (huc vittas castumque refer penetrale parentum), i.e. the Palladium (cf. OLD s.v. penetrale 3a), to the Trojans, who are now in Latium.

The one quasi-exception just mentioned is:

The speaker here is Virtus, who is allegorised and personified; she is addressing Scipio the Younger as part of a dialogue between her and Voluptas. Virtus has a casta domus, and Triumphus, who catasterises Virtus, wears a laurel crown; this passage, it should also be noted, despite containing two of the three ingredients of Argonautica 1.5–7, has nothing to do with the quindecimvirate.

So Apollo must be ruled out as the owner of the house and brow of the Argonautica prologue. That leaves Vespasian, who is addressed immediately after viret with tuque (7). Before they met tuque etc. first-time readers of lines 5–7 must have wondered whose house and whose brow were being lauded; now they know. So the translation continues: ‘since the laurel greens on a/the worthy brow, and you [Vespasian] …’ (6–7). This translation does not associate the ‘chaste house’ (casta … domo, 6) or the ‘worthy brow’ (digna | fronte, 6–7) with mihi (the poet), and it therefore continues to give no comfort to the view that Valerius was a xvvir.

When in Latin tuque is accompanied by a vocative and either an imperative or a jussive subjunctive, the addressee is usually someone new; this can be illustrated freely from Flavian epic (cf. e.g. V. Fl. 1.87, 1.215, 1.791, 7.550; Stat. Theb. 1.57, 4.34, 4.474, 4.831; also Silv. 1.2.269 etc.). It is also the case in an important predecessor text which certainly influenced Valerius, Virgil, Georgics 1.1ff. There the dedication to Maecenas and the programmatic summary of the Georgics’ contents (1–5) are followed first by a detailed (5–20) and then by a general (21–3) invocation of the gods of the countryside. Next Octavian is introduced as a human ruler who is god-to-be, and he is addressed with tuque:

Speculation about Octavian's future role as a god continues in lines 26–39, and he is asked to speed Virgil in his composition of the Georgics (40–2). There is no trace of Octavian in the Georgics 1 prologue before he is addressed with tuque … Caesar (24–5).Footnote ³⁸ Moreover, apart from the structural similarities of the two prologues, the influence of Virgil on Valerius can be seen clearly in the analogy between Valerius’ description of Vespasian as a future god of sailors (1.16–20) and Virgil's speculation that Octavian might become a sea-god (G. 29–31). It might therefore be argued that readers of the Argonautica who were aware that Virgil had moved sequentially from one god to another in the Georgics 1 prologue would have been disinclined to see any reference to Vespasian before he is explicitly introduced at Argonautica 1.7.

However, the undoubted influence of the Georgics prologue on the Argonautica prologue cannot be supposed per se to have prohibited Valerius from introducing any hint of Vespasian before addressing him with tuque: other earlier prologues also influenced Valerius,Footnote ³⁹ and imitatio cum variatione and imitatio cum aemulatione are standard techniques of ancient poets. Nor does the doctrine that tuque introduces a new addressee seem to hold good under all circumstances: it is breached at Germanicus, Aratea 16, in another hexameter prologue influential on the Argonautica. Tiberius is addressed there with tuque adsis, but he has already been already honoured conspicuously in lines 2–10 as Germanicus’ genitor and the Jupiter-like maximus auctor of his work (2), as the ‘divine’ dedicatee of the Aratea (3) and as the champion of peace who makes navigation by the stars possible. tuque is then used at line 16 to invoke Tiberius’ aid to Germanicus because Germanicus has interposed himself in line 15:

The doctrine is also breached in a Flavian epic prologue to some degree indebted to the Argonautica prologue, namely that of Statius’ Thebaid – provided tuque Footnote ⁴⁰ is read there in line 22. After a rapid summary of Theban mythistory prior to Oedipus (1.1–16), Statius declares that he will begin with the house of Oedipus (16–17), ostensibly because he ‘would not yet dare’ to sing of the various military achievements of Domitian:

It is perfectly clear that Domitian is the subject of these lines, yet he is introduced immediately after bella Iouis with tuque/teque, o Latiae decus addite famae (22): and he is eventually (but still in the same clause) urged with the jussive subjunctives maneas (30) and dones (31) to remain in charge of mortal affairs and to pass up control of the stars, despite the heavens’ eagerness for his presence and the willingness of Phoebus and Jupiter to hand over or share their powers with him.Footnote ⁴¹ Apart from tuque/teque, o in the same sedes in both texts, and Statius’ immediately subsequent imitatio cum aemulatione in decus addite Footnote ⁴² famae (16) of Valerius’ fama (8), the stellar futures of the two emperors, Vespasian and Domitian, are also parallel.  Further passages with a similar usage of tuque can be adduced:Footnote ⁴³ notably, at Propertius 3.10.11–12 Cynthia is addressed with tuque … | surge even though she has already been mentioned at line 3. The usage of tuque cannot, then, be employed as an argument against the interpretation being offered here.

When Valerius mentions Vespasian's casta domus, he is implicitly contrasting the household of this elderly and conventional emperor with Nero's incesta domus, tainted by its sexual excesses, including the alleged incestuous relationship between Nero and his mother Agrippina, who is described by Tacitus as incesto paratam.Footnote ⁴⁴ The laurel now ‘greens’ on the worthy forehead of Vespasian, victor in the East with a triumph de Iudaeis (Suet. Vesp. 8.1), and, like all Roman emperors, shown regularly wreathed in laurel on his coins and images. Here too there is an implicit contrast with Nero, who never in his life saw a battlefield, much less gained a victory, and on whose brow the laurel might be thought to have withered; and there is possibly also an implied contrast with Vitellius, unworthy of the laurel because he was defeated by Vespasian in the civil war.

If lines 5–7 are read as I suggest, Valerius is proclaiming that the Sibyl's cortina is kept in Vespasian's house. This was indeed the case. Suetonius, Augustus 52.1 records, among other steps taken by Augustus to avoid damaging his public persona, that he melted down the silver statues erected in his honour, and from the proceeds dedicated golden cortinae in the Palatine temple of Apollo (perhaps the very ones mentioned by Servius Danielis): argenteas statuas olim sibi positas conflavit omnis exqu<e> iis aureas cortinas Apollini Palatino dedicavit. Augustus erected the temple of Apollo on part of his house on the Palatine: templum Apollinis in ea parte Palatinae domus excitavit, quam fulmine ictam desiderari a deo haruspices pronuntiarant (Suet. Aug. 29.3).Footnote ⁴⁵ The Domus Augusti was the property of Augustus’ successors, so Valerius could credibly say that Apollo's cortina was located in the house of Vespasian. On the only evidence available, that of Dio Cassius,Footnote ⁴⁶ Vespasian seems in fact to have lived mostly in the Gardens of Sallust, but Dio also notes that he did occasionally reside on the Palatine, i.e. in his official residences, the Domus Augusti beside the Apollo temple on the Palatine and the Domus Tiberiana behind it. Moreover, there is an indirect indication that Vespasian was familiar with the Domus Augusti, and this too implies that he sometimes resided there: Suetonius, employing the same expression to refer to the Domus Augusti as at Augustus 29.3 (above), mentions at Vespasian 25.1 that Vespasian dreamed of a balance placed media parte vestibuli Palatinae domus. There is, of course, a further reason why the cortinae dedicated by Augustus (or one standing for all of them) could be described as the cortina of the Cumaean Sibyl: the Sibylline Books were originally kept in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, but Augustus moved them to the Palatine temple of Apollo, where they were stored in the base of the cult statue of Apollo; the date of the move is controversial, but there are good reasons for assigning it to 19 BC.Footnote ⁴⁷

Valerius’ self-advertisement extends, then, only as far as the parenthetic mihi conscia (5), which links him with the cortina of the Cumaean prophetess (Cumaeae … vatis). This is yet another instance of Valerius’ self-identification as a vates, and an example of a poet's legitimate self-glorification within his prologue. Valerian scholarship understands that Valerius’ adoption of the vates role was a conscious attempt, in the wake of Lucan's Bellum civile, to reconnect Roman epic with the traditions of Augustan poetry.Footnote ⁴⁸ But the bulk of lines 5–7, viz. si Cumaeae … vatis | stat casta cortina domo, si laurea digna | fronte viret, consists, as reinterpreted, of two compliments to Vespasian – his house is casta, and his laurel crown is merited. These two compliments lead into a third, which occupies lines 7–9: Vespasian's fleet was the first to sail the ‘Caledonian Ocean’.

The process described above, in which the reader is first presented with uncertainties which are then resolved, is analogous to a Valerian tendency which Tim Stover has characterised as ‘disambiguation’, and which he has illustrated through detailed analysis of several major examples. Disambiguation manifests itself in Valerius’ resolutions both of Lucan's ambivalence over civil war and Gigantomachy,Footnote ⁴⁹ and of various ambivalences created by Valerius himself. Into the latter category falls Valerius’ initial representation of the Doliones and Argonauts in similar terms in Argonautica 3, so that the Greeks might seem, equally with the Phrygians, to be Gigantomachic opponents of the gods. However, Valerius subsequently disambiguates, and clearly distinguishes between the Doliones as enemies of the gods and the Greeks as equating with the Olympians.Footnote ⁵⁰ Within the same conflict a second example of disambiguation stands out: the Dolione Phlegyas and his opponent Hercules are at first described in terms which might seem to assimilate Phlegyas to Hercules or even to Jupiter. Then Valerius disambiguates with a simile which makes it clear that Phlegyas is in fact the Giant Typhon in conflict with Jupiter.Footnote ⁵¹ A third example is summarised by Stover as follows: ‘ … Valerius initially problematizes Jason's manliness in Book 5 only then to disambiguate matters by offering his audience a conspicuous display of Jason's martial virtus during his aristeia in Book 6.’Footnote ⁵²

XI. Sailing the ‘Caledonian Ocean’ (7–9)

The eulogies of Vespasian for his cortina and his laurea in lines 5–7 are oblique, and the associated derogation of the last of the Julio-Claudians, Nero, is implicit. In contrast the third laudation offered to Vespasian in lines 7–9 is direct, and it explicitly elevates him above all his Julio-Claudian predecessors: the ‘Caledonian Ocean’, which spurned ‘the Phrygian Iulii’, has borne on its waves a ship (or fleet) belonging to Vespasian. This achievement of Vespasian is the climax of the ascending complimentary triad, and it has three significant additional functions: it links Vespasian with the theme of Valerius’ epic, the heroic voyage of the Argonauts; it provides a basis for Valerius’ prayer to Vespasian to favour and spread the fame of his Argonautica, a prayer which places Vespasian, as the epic's promoter, on an equal standing with Apollo as its inspirer; and it permits Valerius to assign to Vespasian the posthumous role of deified protector of seafarers.

Given the climactic nature of the compliment and the importance of its theme for the prologue and the entire Argonautica, the historical events identified by current Valerian scholarship as Vespasian's great feat of seafaring seem much less impressive. One fairly popular approach has seen lines 7–9 as referring to Vespasian's participation in Claudius’ invasion of Britain (for which he received triumphalia ornamenta and two priesthoods).Footnote ⁵³ Another approach has concentrated on Vespasian's sailing across from the British mainland to the Isle of Wight and conquering it in 43. Valerius’ slighting remark of line 9 about the ‘Phrygian Iulii’ is then taken as an allusion to all or some of the following: the failed invasions of Britain by Julius Caesar; Augustus’ supposed frustrated intent to conquer Britain; Germanicus’ shipwreck in the North Sea; and the aborted British expedition of Caligula. I have no quarrel with how Valerian scholars deal with the Julio-Claudians, but I find their explanations of Vespasian's feat weak: all Vespasian's military successes in Britain were achieved under Claudius’ auspices, and hence they were Julio-Claudian, not Flavian, successes. Vespasian's crossing of the Solent to the Isle of Wight might have allowed Valerius to write tua carbasa. But it was a nugatory voyage: today the Solent is 1.6 to 8 km wide. It was even narrower in the first century AD: rising sea levels and sinking land levels have continually widened it since prehistoric times.Footnote ⁵⁴

Of course it could be argued that Flavian writers have a tendency to exaggerate when Britain is involved;Footnote ⁵⁵ and indeed this can be documented elsewhere with respect to Vespasian's achievements.Footnote ⁵⁶ For example, a passage which Silius places in the mouth of Jupiter and which clearly draws on Valerius’ prologue seems to be such an exaggeration: hinc pater ignotam donabit vincere Thulen | inque Caledonios primus trahet agmina lucos (‘The father from that race will give [Rome] victory over unknown Thyle, and will be the first to lead his columns into the Caledonian groves’, Pun. 3.597–8). If Silius is referring here to Vespasian's personal participation in Claudius’ invasion of Britain, and is using Caledonius loosely as ‘British’ to award Vespasian a different sort of ‘first’, the exaggeration can be explained by its context (very different from that of the Argonautica prologue): Silius, writing under Domitian, is composing an extended catalogue (3.597–629) of the military and other achievements of all three Flavian emperors, introduced by the statement:

Silius starts by implicitly acknowledging that for most of Vespasian's career his victories were won under the auspices of the Julio-Claudians, and that his governorships were held under them. Silius concentrates on Vespasian's land-battles in Britain, which involved more than his campaign on the Isle of Wight, and with Caledonios, clearly influenced by Valerius’ prologue, he enters the realm of hyperbole, which continues to characterise his catalogue.Footnote ⁵⁷ Valerius’ ‘Caledonius Oceanus’ is thus not on a par with Silius’ Caledonios lucos, which is a poetic exaggeration justified by its larger context.

A further consideration is that (as noted) the Julio-Claudians had indubitably achieved sea-crossings of the ‘Ocean’ to Britain, two in the person of Julius Caesar and one in that of Claudius;Footnote ⁵⁸ the latter elevated his voyage into a major event, and he even displayed a corona navalis on the palace. It would have been absurd for Valerius to have ignored these established facts by overpraising Vespasian's crossing of the Channel as Claudius’ subordinate, or by calling a strait less than one mile wide at its narrowest the ‘Caledonian Ocean’ – and some veterans who had taken part in the conquest of the Isle of Wight will still have been alive in 79. If the ‘Caledonius Oceanus’ is neither the English Channel nor the Solent, it must be a further-off stretch of sea, either the North Sea off eastern Scotland or the Atlantic Ocean off western Scotland. In this case the easy alternative is to connect the naval achievement of lines 7–9 with the campaigns in Britain in the late 70s and early 80s by the then provincial governor, Julius Agricola, under the auspices of the ruling Flavian emperor, who up to 79 was Vespasian.Footnote ⁵⁹

If we are looking to the activities of Agricola for a Flavian naval achievement that would appear particularly spectacular, what immediately hits the eye is a feat claimed by Tacitus as a ‘first’ for the Flavian age, and one certainly never achieved by the Julio-Claudians. This is the circumnavigation of Britain by the Roman fleet on the orders of Agricola during his governorship.Footnote ⁶⁰ However, chronology at first seems to bar this feat from being a plausible referent for the naval achievement of lines 7–9. As already noted (above n. 2), the latest datable element of the Argonautica is the eruption of Vesuvius of 79,Footnote ⁶¹ and Vespasian is addressed in the prologue as still alive. Hence Valerian scholarship has concluded, in my opinion correctly, that the composition of the Argonautica cannot have extended far into 80.Footnote ⁶² But Agricola's circumnavigation of Britain is usually dated, on the basis of Tacitus’ account, to 83, when Domitian was emperor, whereas Valerius ascribes the feat of navigation of lines 7–9 to Vespasian, which means that it cannot have taken place after Vespasian's death on 23 June 79.

Tacitus’ Agricola, our main source for the life and actions of Julius Agricola, merits closer scrutiny. At three points (10.4, 28 and 38.3–4) Tacitus describes a circumnavigation of Britain without coordinating his accounts. The first and third accounts in fact refer to the same circumnavigation, but the three are best dealt with in their order of appearance:

10.4:

tunc primum gives no year, and iussum indicates only that Agricola ordered the circumnavigation. et hiems adpetebat dates the turning back of the fleet to late in the year.

28:

Here Tacitus relates that a cohort of German auxiliaries from the Usipi killed a centurion and some Roman soldiers, stole Roman naval vessels, and tried to sail home. Tacitus describes their initial activities on their voyage and then writes of them: atque ita circumvecti Britanniam (28.3). Their departure point is not given, and Tacitus does not tell us in which direction they circumnavigated Britain, although Dio's account of the same incident (below) indicates that they circumnavigated the north of Scotland from west to east on their way home. After various misadventures the mutinous Usipi were enslaved in Suebia and Frisia, from where some were eventually resold into Roman territory and revealed their journey. Tacitus places this event in 82 (eadem aestate, 28.1), thus dating it to before the year (83) to which he dates Agricola's circumnavigation. But, since the Usipi were mutineers and their feat fortuitous, Tacitus does not count it as a Roman achievement or see it as detracting from the glory of Agricola's (on his account, later) success.

38.3–4:

This account clearly refers once again to the circumnavigation ordered by Agricola and already described in 10.4. Further information is now given about the timing of the voyage within the year: cf. esp. exacta iam aestate in the preceding section (38.2); lento itinere (38.3); and simul (38.4). The voyage, then, on Tacitus’ two accounts of it, began at the beginning of autumn, and ended at the beginning of winter. Since ‘portus Trucculensis’ cannot be identified, and proximo Britanniae latere is capable of several interpretations, the direction of this circumnavigation cannot be determined.

If this circumnavigation of Britain really took place in 83, it cannot be the referent of Argonautica 1.7–9 – and Tacitus definitely dates it to that year. Might he, however, have been mistaken, or might he have deliberately falsified the date? Ignorance on Tacitus’ part is perhaps less likely, since he had access to Agricola in person during his life and to his commentarii after his death. But it cannot be ruled out; nor can alteration of the chronology by Tacitus, particularly since the Agricola is, formally speaking, not a work of annalistic history but a biography aimed primarily at eulogy and defence of Tacitus’ father-in-law. A well-known and disturbing aspect of Tacitus’ account of Agricola's circumnavigation must also be taken note of: Kraus commented on ‘A's extraordinary decision to command a circumnavigation so late in the year’;Footnote ⁶³  and Woodman opined that ‘it seems extraordinary that A. would have issued such an order in northern and uncharted waters in the autumn’.Footnote ⁶⁴

I suggest that Tacitus is unreliable both on the timing of the circumnavigation within the year, and on the year in which it took place. A naval undertaking of this sort is much more likely to have been initiated at the beginning of spring, when better sailing conditions could be expected. Moreover, a dangerous scouting expedition of this type would have been otiose at the end of Agricola's conquests. It would surely have been more appropriate in advance of Agricola's Scottish campaigns. Having pacified Wales and the north of England, he may well have wanted to know how far Britain extended to the north, and indeed have wanted to be sure that Britain was an island, so that he had a finite task still in hand. Agricola perhaps also intended his fleet to identify safe harbours from which it could support his land army as it moved north, and to gather information about the populousness or otherwise of the terrain into which he intended to move.

All this would be mere speculation but for the existence of another source which actually dates Agricola's circumnavigation of Britain to 79, hence within the lifetime of Vespasian, and within the time-scale of Valerius’ composition of his prologue.

Dio's account has usually been dismissed in favour of Tacitus’ version,Footnote ⁶⁶ but a number of factors suggest that it is more credible, despite having probably been subsequently abbreviated throughout. First, whereas Tacitus says that the Usipi killed a centurion and some Roman soldiers, Dio, although he describes the mutineers more vaguely as ‘soldiers’, specifies that they killed ‘centurions and a military tribune’. This is more plausible since the Usipi were able (so Tacitus) to seize and escape on three ships, which implies a greater breakdown in the command structure than would have been caused by the death of a single centurion. Second, Tacitus does not seem to know the Usipi's point of departure or the direction of their voyage. But Dio makes it clear that they left from a port in western Britain, sailed round the north of Britain and then put in at a Roman camp somewhere on the eastern side. This makes more sense of their travel, and it also explains how word of their circumnavigation reached Agricola. Tacitus’ alternative story, in which the Usipi kill two of their three steersmen, raid the coast for food, are reduced to cannibalism and are enslaved on the Continent of Europe, is much more novelistic/declamatory; and the time-lag in the Romans’ learning of their feat implied by the way in which Tacitus claims the information about the Usipi reached Roman territory, while it may have helped Tacitus to place the incident to 82, hardly allows it to have motivated Agricola's circumnavigation.

But the most telling part of Dio's account, which most clearly implies its superiority, is the sentence ἐν μὲν τῇ Βρεττανίᾳ ταῦτ’ ἐγένετο, καὶ ἀπ’ αὐτῶν ὁ μὲν Τίτος αὐτοκράτωρ τὸ πεντεκαιδέκατον ἐπεκλήθη. Its precision gives it intrinsic authority, and its mention of Titus’ fifteenth imperatorial salutation, which can be dated very exactly, confirms Dio's veracity. An inscription from Baetica (CILA-02-04.1052 = EDCS-10102150) shows, and a military diploma from Crocodilopolis in Egypt (CIL xvi.24 = EDCS-12300228) confirms, that on 7/8 September 79 Titus still had only fourteen imperatorial salutations. A number of other inscriptions then show that by 80 Titus had fifteen salutations.Footnote ⁶⁷ But in fact he had already received his fifteenth salutation in 79: a coin of Titus bearing the legend IMP XV was found at Pompeii among the belongings of one of the victims of the earthquake.Footnote ⁶⁸

The traditionally accepted date for the eruption of Vesuvius is 24 August 79; but for many years archaeological evidence has been pointing to its occurrence at a later date in October/November 79: ‘the large quantities of figs, chestnuts, walnuts, and pomegranates’ discovered on nearby sites, the ‘berries found upon a laurel tree outside the Stabian Gate’ and the ‘mostly filled and double-sealed’ wine-jars from Boscoreale, together with excavated braziers and cold-weather clothing (and of course the coin of Titus) – all this indicates a post-August date. Mostly recently and quite definitively, media reports of 16 October 2018 revealed the discovery during new excavations at Pompeii of a charcoal graffito dated 17 October. Given its transitory nature, this graffito must have been scrawled a few days before the eruption, and it confirms what was already the favoured date for the event: 24 October 79.

Agricola's official report of his year's military successes in Britain will therefore have reached Rome in the time-slot 7/8 September–early October 79, with Titus’ imperatorial salutation following closely upon it. Dio's subsequent remarks in this paragraph are either fantasy or error: he does not seem to have been well-informed about the later life and the death of Agricola. But Dio's next paragraph starts with the eruption of Vesuvius, another indication that the circumnavigation previously described also took place in 79. The only other contemporary text referring to sailing in British waters speaks neither for nor against Dio's version. Two passages of Plutarch's De defectu oraculorum (Moralia 410a, 419e–420a), a work dated to 83/4, tell of the rhetorician Demetrius of Tarsus, who has returned from Britain, where he had been sent by ‘the emperor’ to visit various outlying islands. Plutarch's account is imprecise, and it is impossible to identify the islands or to be sure that Demetrius’ activities were connected with those of Agricola's fleet.Footnote ⁶⁹

If Tacitus deliberately switched the date of Agricola's circumnavigation of Britain from 79 to 83, this would not be unparalleled in his works. Pliny the Elder (HN 10.2) and Dio (58.27.1) report the appearance of the phoenix in Egypt in 36, whereas Tacitus (Ann. 6.28) dates it to 34. Keitel proposed that this was not due to confusion within Tacitus’ sources, but to his conscious alterations of the date both for structural reasons within book 6 (which she discussed in detail) and for thematic reasons, among them ‘to highlight two important concerns in book 6: the destruction of the nobility, and the unnatural cruelty of Tiberius and his heir, Gaius’.Footnote ⁷⁰ Most recently Woodman has seen a different structural motive in Tacitus’ date-change: ‘the episode forms a ring with the story of Gaetulicus (30.2–4)’.Footnote ⁷¹ Tacitus’ motives in the case of Agricola may have been analogous: he wanted to provide a climactic finale to his account of Agricola's career as governor of Britain, which he presents as one of unalloyed and increasingly impressive military success. The battle of Mons Graupius is featured as Agricola's achievement of complete victory over Britain on land while his circumnavigation becomes the complete pacification and intimidation of Britain by sea. It is hard not be reminded of Augustus’ claim in his Res gestae to universal victory on land and sea: [cum p]er totum i[mperium po]puli Roma[ni terra marique es]set parta vic[torii]s pax (2.43–4).

A possible scenario into which Valerius’ prologue can be integrated would therefore run as follows: Agricola's fleet circumnavigated Britain in the spring–early summer of 79, i.e. when Vespasian was still alive, and news of the circumnavigation, or even of its inception, reached Rome soon enough for Valerius to incorporate a reference to it into his prologue. It should be noted that Dio does not link Titus’ fifteenth imperatorial salutation solely to Agricola's circumnavigation of Britain, but relates it also to Agricola's victories there: τά τε τῶν ἐκεῖ πολεμίων …᾿Αγρικόλας πάντα κατέδραμε (20.1). It was Titus’ first solo salutation, all earlier ones having been shared with Vespasian. The opportunity provided by Agricola's successes must have been taken up eagerly by the new ruler, particularly since there were no concurrent wars anywhere else in the imperium Romanum.

A less dramatic hypothesis which would also enable Valerius to have written Caledonius postquam tua carbasa vexit | Oceanus by 79 is that by that time Agricola's fleet had sailed further north in British waters than Roman ships had done previously; that would fit Tacitus’ claim that the third year (79) novas gentes aperuit (Agr. 22.1). So, even without the circumnavigation, Valerius could still have had a Flavian nautical achievement to praise, albeit a less impressive one.

XII. Conclusions and consequences

I have proposed first that Valerius’ quindecimvirate is a chimaera, second that lines 5–9 should be retranslated so that the cortina and laurel are those of Vespasian, and third that the Flavian ships sailing the Caledonian Ocean are a reference either to the circumnavigation of Britain by Agricola's fleet in 79 or to the movements of his fleet in British waters in that and previous years.

A more exact translation of lines 5–7 than was suggested above (§x) will further underpin the first and second of these contentions. An illuminating parallel to the use of mihi conscia in line 5 can be found in book 9 of Lucan's Bellum civile. There Cato's soldiers are complaining about conditions in Africa; at line 860 they address ‘whatever god’ has barred off the area they are in. The barriers are then briefly sketched (861–2), and the address to the god continues as follows:

Hence lines 5–7 (Phoebe, mone, si Cumaeae mihi conscia vatis | stat casta cortina domo, si laurea digna | fronte viret …) can now be translated: ‘Phoebus, instruct me, since the basin sharing with me knowledge of the Cumaean Sibyl stands in a chaste house [i.e. that of Vespasian], and since the laurel greens on a worthy brow [i.e. that of Vespasian], and you [Vespasian] …’

These conclusions visibly tighten the logic of the Argonautica prologue, and, to the themes already patent there, they add new strands and internal links; these are worth summarising and integrating with traditional assessmentsFootnote ⁷² of lines 1–21. But, before this is done, the multiplicity of the literary influences on Argonautica 1.1–21 proposed by earlier scholarship needs to be addressed. Claims have been advancedFootnote ⁷³ for the actual or possible impact on the prologue of numerous texts, among them: Catull. 64.1–11; Lucr. 1.33–79; 3.1–30; Verg. G. 1.1–42; Hor. Carm. 1.1.29–36; 1.3.9–12; 1.6; 3.2.21–4; Prop. 2.2.16; Ov. Am. 2.11.1–4; Culex 25–6; German. Arat. 40–7; Sen. Med. 301–2; Herc. f. 1202 and Luc. 1.1–66; 3.171–6; 3.193–219 (in addition, of course, to Ap. Rhod. Argon. 1.1–4, and Eur. Med. 1–2 and Andr. 864–5).

Can Valerius really have had all these individual texts in mind? Or are many of the alleged allusions the product of over-imaginative scholarship? I believe that a distinction must be made: it is reasonable to think that, when composing his prologue, Valerius had before him Lucan's Bellum civile 1, the dedication of which Valerius at once imitates and subverts – and perhaps also Virgil's Georgics 1 and Germanicus’ Aratea. Moreover, other striking and famous passages such as Horace, Odes 1.1.29–32 were perhaps imprinted on Valerius’ memory. In these cases Valerius’ allusions may indeed reveal aspects of his intentions. But Valerius surely cannot be imagined as composing with multiple scrolls open around him, or as trawling through the Palatine Library in search of a word here and a phrase there. The many topoi of the Argonautica prologue noted and documented by Lefèvre (Reference Lefèvre1971) and Zissos (Reference Zissos2008) suggest a better concept of Valerius’ compositional method; and ancient poetic prologues had their ‘generic’ conventions too.Footnote ⁷⁴ Much in Argonautica 1.1–21 which earlier scholars regarded as Valerian imitation of specific texts may simply show the poet conforming to those commonplaces and conventions. Hence it is perilous to rely on fleeting similarities between the Argonautica prologue and earlier texts as clues to Valerius’ intentions.

On the other hand the enhanced perceptions of lines 5–9 set out above can reliably contribute to a better understanding of the themes being pursued by Valerius in the prologue and throughout. The first theme to benefit is that of victory. It is already present in the triumphal voyaging of Vespasian's fleet (7–9) and in Titus’ conquest of Palestine as sung by Domitian (12–14). To these can be added the multiple associations with victory which surround Apollo, his temple on the Palatine and the laurelFootnote ⁷⁵ (now seen to be that of Vespasian), and which serve to further glorify the imperial family.

Another set of themes enhanced by the new interpretations of lines 5–9 are those concerned with prophecy and poetic inspiration. The Argo is fatidica (2): she literally ‘spoke what was fated’ to the Apollonian Argonauts. This ability makes the Argo parallel to the prophetic cortina of the Sibyl: as illustrated above (§vii), various Latin poetic texts have the cortina ‘speaking’, i.e. uttering prophecies and giving prophetic instructions.Footnote ⁷⁶ Thus the themes of ‘speaking’ and ‘prophesying’ explicit in the description of the Argo as fatidica blend with those same themes as evoked by mention of the Sibyl; and, since the Sibylline Books were in verse and since they prescribed the singing of a hymn at the Saecular Games, the Sibyl is for Valerius a vates in both senses, ‘prophet’ and ‘poet’.Footnote ⁷⁷ So, when he claims her cortina as conscia with himself (5), he is asserting that he shares the Sibyl's vatic/prophetic powers, and that his own capacities in these areas, which are inherent in his poetic status, are boosted by his intimacy with the cortina, and by implication also with the Sibylline Books. Valerius is in effect declaring that his Argonautica, which is highlighted at the beginning and end of his prologue, possesses that vatic knowledge of the past which was an important element of ‘prophecy’ in antiquity, and that his epic is therefore the uniquely true account of the Argonauts’ voyage, in contrast to other, earlier Argonautic epics. Valerius is also asserting that his Argonautica, and he as its author, know the future, i.e. not just the coming apotheosis of Vespasian, but also the exact details of his eventual powers as a god. The Cumaean Sibyl would be an even more relevant and effective source of inspiration for the author of an Argonautica if we could be sure that Valerius had in mind various learned myths: Virgil, Aeneid 6.36 names the Cumaean Sibyl as Deiphobe, daughter of Glaucus.Footnote ⁷⁸ Glaucus was a prophetic sea-god;Footnote ⁷⁹ he encountered the Argonauts on their outward voyage to Phasis and prophesied to them at Apollonius, Argonautica 1.1310–25;Footnote ⁸⁰ and one account even made Glaucus the builder and steersman of the Argo, and so a full-blown Argonaut.Footnote ⁸¹

In combination ‘Argo fatidica’, the cortina and the Sibylline Books also explain Vespasian's interest in Valerius’ Argonautica and Vespasian's catasterism. The Argo was the first ship, she facilitated the voyage of the Argonauts, and she became the homonymous ancient constellation; similarly Vespasian's fleet was the first to sail the Caledonian Ocean, and he too will be catasterised after death in flammifero … Olympo – ‘the star-bearing sky’ (4). Vespasian's nautical exploit has spurred Valerius to compose an epic about sailing; and Vespasian's implied willingness to disseminate the poet's work relates to his having the Sibyl's cortina and the Sibylline Books in his house (see above, §x), and so owning the ultimate source of poetic inspiration. Vespasian's nautical feat and his possession of the cortina and Sibylline Books in addition justify Vespasian's future, post-apotheosis functions as guide and protector of sailors, and as a prophet able to give signs to mariners, informing them in advance about the weather and other factors affecting their voyages.

Finally, there is the question of Valerius’ separation from men and the earth (10). This is not a catasterism, since Valerius naturally cannot expect posthumous deification, and it does not place Valerius on the same level as Vespasian. Valerius hopes only for that less prestigious form of elevation above the human race which a poet can be granted by his patron: Horace similarly envisaged Maecenas’ approval of him as a lyric poet as elevating him to the stellar sphere: quodsi me lyricis vatibus inseres, | sublimi feriam sidera vertice (Carm. 1.1.35–6).Footnote ⁸² By imagining themselves as separated from the human condition both poets may be aspiring to enjoy the heroic status and posthumous heroic honours granted to many Greek poets by their own cities, and to VirgilFootnote ⁸³ and LucanFootnote ⁸⁴ privately in the Flavian age.Footnote ⁸⁵ The analogy between the futures which Valerius sketches for himself and Vespasian gives his own aspirations greater plausibility; it also enhances Valerius’ status by parading his client–patron relationship with Vespasian. Throughout, however, Valerius scrupulously maintains the proper separation and status distinction between himself and the emperor. He makes it clear that his elevation and his achievement of his ambition to be read and recognised as a great poet throughout the Roman world will be entirely due to Vespasian's favour (fave, 11) and assistance (iuves, 21); and that, while Valerius’ voice ‘will fill the cities of Latium’ (21), the catasterised Vespasian will ‘shine from every part of the sky’ (16–17).