None but dry-eyed, calculating, angular little gentlemen can take much delight in the studies of the University.
(Tennyson on Cambridge)

Hard to believe. We are told something obvious, something reassuring, something foundational by Servius at the outset of the Aeneid:

Any Roman rhetoric graduate knew that the surefire way to subvert all arguments is to argue that they prevaricate: clearly, since texts are systemically interpretable, there is always a gap between the ‘multifarious’ moves they make and their ‘totality’, there is always a point passed by which could, so arguably should, have been featured; copiousness is always interested distraction. Thus, as a display of love supreme for all Italy, the Aeneid revels in wholesale incuria, acknowledging the guilt of pretention in massive, genocidal, proportions.

The titles Parens Patriae and Pater Patriae seem to have been employed controversially in ideological battles of the late Republic, especially from the consulship of Cicero onwards. It seems clear that, among other ideas, these polyvalent titles were capable of evoking the traditional Greek antithesis between the good king (who behaves as a gentle father to his people) and the tyrant, but whereas it is the tyrant who kills citizens in Greek thought, at Rome there was an understanding that the father could execute grown-up dependants who were threatening the state. This ambiguity both complicated and energised debates about the autocratic behaviour of the leading men of the late Republic. In other words, the father analogy was intended as a positive characterisation of the warlords and other leaders but its prominence in the first century BCE shows how anxious the Romans were about limiting and justifying the killing of citizens only as a last resort for the good of the state. Noticeably, Julius Caesar advertises the title Parens Patriae on his coins, and he was evidently invoked as Parens in the Forum cult which flourished for a time after his death. When Cicero speaks of his behaviour in 63 BCE and the positive interpretations put upon it by his friends, he tends to use the terms parens and pater synonymously. We ought to follow this cue and think that there is a fair degree to which the two can be synonymous. On the other hand, Caesar's supporters might have intended a contrast with his ideological rival Cicero, who had executed the Catilinarian conspirators without a trial. Their aim might have been to emphasise connotations of state benefactor and saviour rather than coercive aspects to do with patria potestas and the ius uitae necisque. The form Parens Patriae appears on the face of it to be less potentially threatening than Pater Patriae and more inclined to stress ideas of lifegiving, nurturing, and the like.

The occasional poems of Statius are an enticing field for critics interested in topics like the interaction of Greek and Roman culture or the relationship between public activities like government and private activities like writing poetry. Most recently John Henderson has explored these issues in Statius' poem for the consular Rutilius Gallicus (Siluae 1.4). In this paper I will discuss Siluae 5.3, an epicedion for Statius' own father. Statius uses the occasion of writing the epicedion to celebrate his father's life as a teacher, writer and performer and, by extension, his own life too. In his poem Statius develops a portrait of himself and his father as Greeks in close sympathy with Roman values. Against a backdrop of teaching and performing Greek literature they value above all filial duty and the skills of Roman government. Yet literature does not remain consistently in the background. Because Statius' father was also his teacher and model in literature, Statius as the dutiful son celebrates his father's literary skill and defers to it. By extension, Statius defers also to the subjects of his father's teaching, the famous masters of Greek and Latin literature.

‘sophos’ uniuersi clamamus et sublatis manibus ad cameram iuramus Hipparchum Aratumque comparandos illi homines non fuisse…
(‘Fantastic!’ we all cry, and raising our hands to the ceiling we swear that not even Hipparchus and Aratus could have been put on a par with him.)
Petronius Satyricon
This then is the visible work of Menard, in chronological order….I turn now to his other work: the subterranean, the interminably heroic, the peerless.
Jorge Luis Borges, ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote’

The Flavians needed a poet. When Octavian established the Julio-Claudian dynasty he had in his hands a usefully exploitable victory over the forces of chaos and oriental despotism, a spin on Actium and its aftermath that was given full epic representation in the Aeneid's description of Aeneas' shield (Aen. 8.671-713); Antony was compromised by Cleopatra and years of propaganda, and it all took place far enough away for the final act in what everyone knew was a civil war to be portrayed as defeat of a foreign power and celebrated as such in the traditional manner (Caesar triplici inuectus Rotnana triumpholmoenia…, ‘Caesar, borne within the walls of Rome in triple triumph’, Aen. 8.714f.). By contrast the Flavian ascendancy was achieved through assault on these selfsame walls, and involved the desecration and burning of the Capitol (Tac. Hist. 3.69-74, who remarks id facinus post conditam urbem luctuosissimum foedissimumque rei publicae populi Romani accidit, ‘this was the most deplorable and outrageous crime to befall the republic of the Roman people since the foundation of the city’).