Cristiana sogno
“the only good barbarian is a dying barbarian” might be a crude but accurate paraphrase of the attitude of the late Roman senator Q. aurelius symmachus (and of many of his contemporaries) toward the peoples living beyond the frontiers of the Roman world.1 For citizens of the empire “barbarian” was synonymous with “non-Roman” and, therefore, “uncivilized,” as exemplified by a famous passage in his third Relatio (3.4), in which Symmachus claimed that only those entirely “assimilated to the customs of barbarians” could be hostile to a symbol of Romanitas as revered as the altar of Victory. Because barbarians posed a threat to civilization, the spectacle of their death in the arena was always welcome to Roman spectators.424 425 and, when barbarians refused to comply with the expectations of their Roman masters—as in the case of a band of unfortunate saxon prisoners, who preferred suicide to fighting in the arena, thus spoiling the celebrations for the questorian games of Symmachus’ son Memmius (393 CE)—cultured aristocrats such as symmachus could draw on a vast array of philosophical and historical exempla that allowed them to show “the forbearance of socrates” in the face of adversity (symm. Ep. 2.46).
The defense of the frontier against the barbarian menace was a subject dear to imperial propaganda and popular with taxpayers, and was in fact the main theme of symmachus’ second panegyric in honor of Valentinian 1. In that oration, barbarians appear both as a threat to the security of Rome and as part of a spectacle orchestrated by the emperor for the benefit of his senatorial guest, thus offering us some interesting insights into the relationship between senate and court vis-a-vis the barbarian question.
World History
