This article argues that Virgil's First Eclogue naturalises the power discourse of the future Augustan Principate. Throughout the poem, Virgil not only presents the iuvenis as a libertas-restoring benefactor who is treated as a god by his beneficiaries, but even imagines his elevated status as crucial to maintaining social cohesion and civic stability, and idealises the beneficiaries’ dependence on his efficacious authority. The poem thus produces the grammar of the discourse of authoritarianism, subtly articulating what will eventually become the central tenets of Augustan ideology. I suggest that it is precisely this process of naturalisation which has led readers since antiquity to identify the iuvenis of Virgil's First Eclogue as the future Augustus. However, in this paper I am interested in transcending this question of individual identification to focus instead on how Virgil's poetic anonymisation is no simple pastoral obfuscation, but rather does the hard graft of ‘soft launching’ a new political system.

中文翻译：

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(Un)Seeing Augustus: Libertas, Divinisation, and the Iuvenis of Virgil's First Eclogue

本文认为维吉尔的第一牧歌使未来奥古斯丁原则的权力话语自然化。在整首诗中，维吉尔不仅展现了尤文尼斯作为一个自由- 恢复被受益人视为神，但甚至将其提升的地位想象为对维持社会凝聚力和公民稳定至关重要的恩人，并将受益人对其有效权威的依赖理想化。因此，这首诗产生了威权主义话语的语法，巧妙地表达了最终将成为奥古斯都意识形态核心原则的东西。我认为，正是这种归化的过程使自古以来的读者认识到尤文尼斯维吉尔的第一牧歌作为未来的奥古斯都。然而，在本文中，我有兴趣超越个人认同的问题，转而关注维吉尔诗意的匿名化如何不是简单的田园迷惑，而是“软启动”新政治体系的硬嫁接。