Vera Iouis proles(?). Anchoring Domitian’s divinity

This article argues that Virgil’s designation of Hercules as uera Iouis proles (‘true offspring of Jupiter’) in the Salii’s hymn to the hero (Aeneid 8.301) played a significant role in Flavian epic poets’ stance on the em-peror’s divinity. A close intertextual analysis of Valerius Flaccus’, Statius’, and Silius’ reuses of Virgil’s for-mula shows how its original use as an anchor for the emperor’s claim to divine parentage evolved through-out the Flavian dynasty into a progressively more disenchanted and potentially subversive approach to the subject. In a new political context where two brothers, Titus and Domitian, could both aspire to diviniza-tion, the broader implications of Virgil’s formula, with its veiled allusion to Iphicles, Hercules’ mortal and cowardly half-brother, called attention to the possible existence of a false offspring of Jupiter and urged Flavian epic poets to explore critically the validity of some mythic models as anchoring devices for the emperor’s divinity.