Which scholar attributes Servius's claim that the poet imitates Homer to praise Augustus through ancestors?

• A. Cox - Homeric influence
• B. Thomas - Book 8
• C. Richard Rutherford - Homeric influence
• D. Ian Du Quesnay - Homeric influence

Answer: (D)

The idea being tested is who explicitly ties Servius’s remark about Homeric imitation to a political aim of praising Augustus through ancestral lines. Ian Du Quesnay is the scholar who makes this connection, arguing that Servius’s claim isn’t just about literary influence but about Vergil’s technique serving Augustan propaganda. In this reading, Vergil imitates Homer to elevate Augustus by embedding his lineage and the epic tradition of Homer within the Aeneid, thus praising the emperor through ancestral prestige.

The other scholars discuss Homeric influence in the poem more generally or focus on particular parts (like Book 8), but they do not foreground Servius’s claim as a deliberate strategy to praise Augustus via ancestral connections in the way Du Quesnay does.