The genius saeculi is one of those enduring notions that continue to shape entire fields of scholarship without ever needing to state its name. Whereas eras were once defined in terms of metals, nowadays it is more common to latch onto some prominent historical figure (preferably a monarch), thereby avoiding any overtly mystical appeal to an era's ‘spirit’ or Geist. In the field of Roman studies, the ‘Age of Augustus’ stands out as a preeminent example, attested by a flurry of publications from the 1980s and ’90s offering various degrees of synthesis of the art, literature, architecture, politics and culture produced during the reign of Rome's first princeps. In all things, however, one finds lumpers as well as splitters: witness the comparable, albeit more diffuse, effort to apply this paradigm to the epoch of the Flavian dynasty during the first decades of the twenty-first century. Although the quarter-century separating Nero's suicide from Domitian's assassination is arguably already a more manageable slice of time than the four-plus decades of Augustus’ supremacy, the two volumes under review herald a new, more focused project, in which Domitian stands as master of his own era, distinct from that of his father and brother.
God on Earth is the companion piece to an exhibition presented at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden and the Musei Capitolini in Rome. This attractive and lavishly illustrated volume invites comparison with another catalogue, Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik (1988), which helped to crystallise scholarly interest in Augustus and his age. God on Earth is a different sort of book, which foregoes the encyclopedic thoroughness of that predecessor in favour of a format more congenial to the general reader/gift shop patron (223 pages in colour against KA's 638 of black-and-white). The scope is nevertheless capacious, with chapters on the background to the rise of the Flavians as well as discussions of Domitian's posthumous reputation stretching through Late Antiquity and into the Middle Ages. Even so, the extreme brevity imposed upon the contributors leaves little room for anything beyond up-to-date surveys and/or recapitulations of material published elsewhere.
After a preface and introduction, a total of twenty-six contributions, mostly from Dutch and Italian scholars, provide a broad but by no means comprehensive range of perspectives on Domitian and his principate. As one would expect, the primary emphasis is on material culture, especially the art and archaeology of Rome (plus Domitian's Alban Villa at Castel Gandolfo). There is a surprising degree of overlap between some of these essays, which leaves the reader wondering whether space that might have gone to provide a more rounded view of the Domitianic era has been sacrificed to repetitiousness. In the end, the architect Rabirius comes across as a more consequential figure than Antonius Saturninus or Arulenus Rusticus, as issues of administrative policy and senatorial politics, once central to modern debates about whether Domitian's posthumous condemnation as a tyrant was justified, are almost entirely ignored.
Literature does receive some limited attention, as do aspects of social history. The provincial experience is represented by two discussions of the archaeological impact of legionary forces (in Britain and Germania Inferior) and a brief survey of Domitian's depiction as pharaoh in Egyptian temple reliefs. Perhaps the most substantively interesting contribution is a discussion of the Capitoline Games by Onno van Nijf, Robin van Vliet and Caroline van Toor, which places these contests in their wider imperial context as an enduring fusion of Greek and Roman cultural practices. Readers hoping to find sustained discussion of the exhibition's provocative title will come away disappointed; despite some contestable assertions in Frederick Naerebout's chapter on ‘Domitian and Religion,’ the idea that this emperor thought he was a god is happily not among them.
Domitian's Rome and the Augustan Legacy takes the framework of an emperor and his age and doubles-down on it by focusing attention on the ways in which Domitianic culture drew upon and responded to the era of Augustus. Emerging from a symposium hosted at the University of Missouri in 2017, this collection of thirteen papers offers a more discursive and nuanced exploration of Domitian's age, albeit one that is still constrained in various ways. The ‘balance’ between literary and art-historical approaches is more even: by my count, five chapters fall into the former camp and four into the latter, with three others that successfully straddle the line between the two. The scope of these topics is strictly limited, however, to poetry on the one hand and the monuments of Rome on the other. An excellent discussion of the SC Ninnianum by Egidio Incelli stands as something of an odd man out in this milieu, although it is in keeping with the greater attention to the actual policies of Domitian's principate found in some of the other papers, notably those by Megan Goldman-Petri and Emma Buckley.
What does one accomplish by framing a discussion of Domitianic Rome in terms of its engagement with the legacy of Augustus? The theme's importance would seem to speak for itself: as the founder of the principate, Augustus laid down an example that each of his successors would be forced to confront in one way or another, just as later poets had to contend with the literary accomplishments of their Augustan predecessors. Although the editors in their Introduction speak of ‘a veritable Augustan renaissance’ (1) under Domitian, there is no reason why the same framework could not just as easily be applied to any of a number of other emperors. And in fact, Nathan Elkins’ concluding chapter on ‘Aftermath’ demonstrates that Nerva's coinage resurfaced explicitly ‘Augustan’ themes to a far greater degree than Domitian's had ever done.
If every post-Augustan emperor and cultural figure of necessity reckoned with the exempla of this earlier age, the question is not really the extent to which the Romans of a particular era grappled with these precedents, but rather how this engagement was characteristic of its moment. What we find in Domitian's Rome is not so much imitation (that proverbially ‘sincerest form of flattery’), but rather emulation, which is rooted in a drive to outdo and supersede. As Megan Goldman-Petri shows, Domitian himself followed the model of his father's Templum Pacis in building massive temple complexes that expropriated the themes of freestanding Augustan altars. In a particularly important contribution, Daira Nocera points out that Domitian in fact demolished two of the four original hemicycles of the Forum of Augustus to make room for his own forum complex and that his massive equestrian statue in the Forum Romanum similarly deviated from Augustan precedents in telling ways. Chapters on the literature of the period likewise reveal poets who boldly overcame the anxiety of influence to redeploy Augustan models in playful and innovative ways, producing what Jean-Michel Hulls (in a discussion of Statius’ fourth book of Silvae) describes as ‘a new sense of power and authority both for himself and for his regime’ (230).
It is worth noting that, although the Augustan era was certainly an important watershed, it was by no means the only meaningful source of precedents with which later generations had to contend. To emphasise the Augustan legacy in isolation is to risk adopting a blinkered perspective on the cultural ramifications of any given act. Take, for example, the odeum and hippodrome that Domitian built to the west of the Baths of Agrippa on the central Campus Martius. Diane Conlin characterises these structures as one half of a building programme that ‘acted in effect as the colonnades of a pseudoporticus, enclosing the Augustan edifices … within a new, grand Flavian architectural museum’ (19). This is an interesting perspective, but it seems strange not to mention the massive Theatre of Pompey, which stood directly to the south along the same axis and obviously shared an important functional similarity with Domitian's buildings as a venue for public entertainment.
Similarly, intervening efforts to engage with Augustan models ought to be taken into account when considering their relevance in a Domitianic context. The Secular Games of 88 c.e. responded not only to Augustus’ declaration of a new era in 17 b.c.e. but also to Claudius’ attempt to do the same in 47 c.e., which was after all still within the living memory of many of those who participated in the celebration of Domitian's new age. This is an issue that the volume does a much better job of addressing, as several contributors make a point of juxtaposing Augustan material with more recent precedents. Claudius features prominently in chapters by Clayton Schroer and Egidio Incelli. Virginia Closs shows that Nero was just as important as Augustus in contemporary assessments of Domitian's rebuilding of Rome. Lisa Cordes reflects on the influence of Calpurnius Siculus as well as Virgil in Statius’ prophetic panegyrics, while Ludrovico Pontiggia considers Lucan alongside Virgil when discussing divine providence in Silius Italicus.
Given the nature of the topic, I had hoped to find at least some cursory discussion of theories of cultural memory and/or reception studies. Apart from a throwaway reference to the Quirinal as a site of engagement with ‘Augustan lieux-de-memoire’ (50), however, no effort has been made to engage substantively with these concepts or with the larger questions of how or why societies situate themselves in relationship to an authoritative past. As it happens, these issues receive more attention in some of the contributions to God on Earth, which grew out of a project sponsored by the Dutch Research Council's ‘Anchoring Innovation’ initiative. This turned out to be one of the more unexpected ways in which the two volumes benefit from being read as complements to one another.
It remains to be seen whether the ‘Age of Domitian’ will ultimately achieve the same degree of scholarly validation as that bestowed upon its Augustan counterpart. If these volumes are any indication, however, it appears that we are well on our way.
