ABSTRACT
The emperor balked at the idea, so instead Agrippa set up statues of Augustus and himself in the pronaos with one of “the former Caesar” in the temple. The ritual that lay behind these iconographical commutations is clear enough. The normal place to set such a statue was in the porch, as inscriptions sometimes state explicitly. Venus was revered as the founder of the Julian family, which claimed decent from Aeneas of Troy, while according to another legend Rhea Silvia had been seduced by Mars, who could thus be represented as the father of Romulus and Remus. Genealogical sleight of hand then combined the two cycles to make both gods central to the myth of the imperial family, if by different routes. Whatever the truth of the matter — the point is best left open — it is at any rate clear that the standard view of the arrangements at the Pantheon should be revised.
