ABSTRACT
The evidence of the poets is of particular interest to the social historian in that poetry seems often to provide the clearest reflection of popular attitudes and practices. Ovid, for example, makes frequent allusions to the emperor's divinity in terms that add up to a clear case of special pleading, the hope that by extravagant metaphor he can touch the emperor's heart and secure his own return from exile. For the notion that Divus Augustus in particular was open to prayer we have in the first place the verses of Ovid. The supposed sacrifice of a calf and a lamb to Augustus must be a confusion on Prudentius' part, but the term placavit certainly seems to put Divus Augustus on equal terms with a "real" god who needed to be appeased, as does the prostration of the worshiper in an attitude of supplication at the god's sacred pulvinar.
