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History Notes Augustine and the Last Days of Rome: 370-450 Notes

Symmachus And Paganism Revision Notes

Updated Symmachus And Paganism Revision Notes

Augustine and the Last Days of Rome: 370-450 Notes

Augustine and the Last Days of Rome: 370-450

Approximately 142 pages

A comprehensive, yet concise, set of notes on all the major sources and texts relating to the Roman Empire in the age of Augustine of Hippo.

The notes have commentary of all the set texts in excellent detail. These include the works of Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, Symmachus, Gerontius and the Theodosian Code. ...

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Augustine and the Last Days of Rome: 370-450 Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

Symmachus and Paganism Revision

R. H. Barrow, Prefect and Emperor, The Relationes of Symmachus A.D. 384 (Clarendon, 1973).

  • Introduction to Symmachus

  • Urban prefect

    • Held by Symmachus in 384.

      • Answerable only to the emperor.

    • Role

      • Administer justice and keep the law.

        • Prefect is supreme judge

        • Police force

        • Religion

          • He would oversee state religious ceremonies

      • Maintain food supply

      • Maintain balance between guilds, religious cults, finances.

    • Limited power:

      • Can’t make law, can only apply it.

      • The vicarious also has great power and had his own networks of patronage.

      • Climate of opinion

        • Emperor’s attitude

          • Is he anti-pagan, anti-senatorial?

            • Valentinian I may have given neutrality to different religious groups (according to Ammianus) but he also officially recognised Easter.

          • Gratian

            • Refused to be Pontex Maximus, confiscated the revenues and immunities of temples and priesthoods and rejected protest.

            • Separates state from pagan practice.

      • Symmachus was succeeded by a Christian urban prefect, Pinianus

    • Games

      • Way of courting the favour of the rowdy public.

  • Symmachus

  • Prefect from 384-385

    • A long, illustrious public career

      • Quaestor Proconsul (373) Urban prefect

      • Famed orator

        • Delivered panegyric to Valentinian and Gratian.

    • In 384, Praetextatus secured from Valentinian II an order to restore temple ornaments.

    • In December 384, Praetextatus dies.

Relationes 3: To our Lord Theodosius (actually Valentinian), For Ever Augsutus, Greeting from Symmachus of the Distinguished Order of Senators, Prefect of the City.

Context to the Altar of Victory:

  • Augustus build it to celebrate triumph of Roman spirit, a symbol of official state-cults.

  • Constantius

    • Removes the altar but allowed all other cults to continue

  • Julian

    • Restores the Altar

  • Valentinian I and Valens

    • Leave it in position and permit sacrifice, but forbade nocturnal rites

  • Gratian

    • Removed the altar

  • The Work Itself

  • ‘law had gained upper hand over wickedness’1

    • Reference perhaps to Praetextatus’ obtaining of an order from Gratian to restore the ornaments Christians had stolen from temples.

  • Asks Valentinian to restore state funding to pagan cults.

    • Why?

      • Precedence

        • Emperors since Augustus venerated the cults, while later Christian emperors tolerated them.

        • Constantius

          • The removal of the Altar by Constantius was quickly reversed one should never follow precedence quickly put aside. V, your name, will be tarnished

          • Did not know he was committing mistake

          • He did not remove privileges of Vestal Virgins.

        • In the past, VV’s were honoured and were given a moderate livelihood and reasonable privileges.

      • Gratitude

        • The Altar of Victory has led Roman emperors to great victory in the past; Valentinian would do well to keep it in place.

      • Protection

        • ‘We are not on such good terms with the barbarians that we can do without an Altar of Victory’2

  • (5)

  • Importance of Altar of Victory to the Senate

  • ‘Where else are we to take the oath of allegiance to your laws and ordinances?’3

    • Makes men speak the truth

    • Harmonises the Senate as a group.

  • (8)

  • It’s all the same religion?

  • ‘Everyone has his own customs, his own religious practices’ the divine mind has assigned to different cities different religions to be their guardians. Each man is given at birth a separate soul’ in the same way each people is given its own special genius to take care of its destiny’

  • Proof of God

    • Good Fortune

      • Guaranteed by religious cults keep them.

  • (9)

  • Rome is begging Valentinian

    • Worshipping pagan gods brought the world under my laws, drove back Hannibal.

    • Why, in my old age, am I being reprimanded?

  • (10)

  • We all worship the same religion

    • ‘We gaze up at the same stars, the sky covers us all, the same universe compasses us’.4

      • Truth is the same

        • There are many avenues by which we can reach it.

  • (11)

  • Vestal Virgins plight

    • What benefit is there in taking away their privileges?

      • Financial argument

        • State taxes on Vestal Virgins is a trifling amount.

      • Their glory lies in their chastity, but their outward expression of this is freedom from state-services

      • They live in poverty

        • Hence, they can’t make the payments.

  • (12)

  • ‘Let the exchequer under good emperors be enlarged by spoiling the enemy, not by mulcting priests’.5

  • (13)

  • Emperors are not greedy

    • They keep their hands off other people’s property.

  • Roman law.

    • Against law, unprecedented

    • Freedmen receive legacies; proper benefits under the terms of wills are not refused to slaves’ so why are noble virgins excluded from an inheritance?

  • Emperor’s duty

    • What’s the point of being a religious emperor, if you can’t protect the Virgins

      • Why protect them?

        • They serve the religious institutions directly involved in our destiny.

  • (15)

  • Do this, and God will not act kindly

    • Look at precedence

      • When part of the privileges were removed a famine was sent by the pagan gods.

        • A bad harvest in Africa in 383.

    • Look after the priests

      • Acts as insurance for yield and harvest.

        • Nothing happened when virgins were given free corn.

  • (18)

  • Public money shouldn’t pay for non-state religion, people will say

  • When emperor gives money out, once it leaves the emperor it is owned by the individual to whom it is given.

  • Likewise

    • When an individual gives money to the state, it is the state’s money and they can decide what to do with it.

Relatio 10: Symmachus reports the death of Praetextatus

  • Who is Praetextatus

    • A champion pagan.

      • Paulina was his wife

        • She dedicated a long poem to him in praise of their 50 year marriage

    • Quaestor praetor – corrector consul of Lusitana Urban prefect (367-368) Praetorian Prefect (374).

  • (2)

  • In ‘public life he has left behind him a deep longing for himself’

    • Upon his death,

      • People refused ‘the usual pleasures of the theatre’6

  • (3)

  • Symmachus talks of how his death will prevent him from ‘sustaining my office with equanimity’.

    • He has lost a major pagan ally

    • ‘other reasons’

      • Enmity of the vicar of Rome and barrister of the...

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