LUCRETIA THE GODDESS: DEIFICATION AND APOTHEOSIS IN OVID'S FASTI.

Ovid's Fasti is full of stories of apotheosis, that is, the supernatural process by which mortals are inducted into the community of gods. Typically, these stories involve a divine agent or sponsor who effects the change (consider Julius Caesar, Anna Perenna, Romulus, Hippolytus, Ino and Melicertes). Deification is a separate event, namely the process by which mortals receive divine honors and worship from other mortals. Among the deification narratives in the Fasti, the story of Lucretia (2.721-852) demands attention, as Brutus commemorates Lucretia's suffering and death by declaring her manes a numen. Brutus celebrates the dead Lucretia as a founding hero of the Roman republic, someone who, like Julius Caesar, makes herself a casualty of something greater than herself, and will be honored by her survivors because of the sacrifice she made for the state. Yet while Caesar's apotheosis in the Fasti is sponsored by Vesta, no god sponsors Lucretia, no apotheosis is attributed to her. This article argues that Lucretia's deification without apotheosis articulates the disjunction between apotheosis and deification, and simultaneously highlights the importance of deification even without apotheosis. The heroic Brutus in Ovid's narrative serves to endorse Augustan deification practice as a means to positive social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]