The age of Theodosius I is especially important for an analysis of our subject, because of the interlocking evidence that is available from different pagan sources. Libanius of Antioch, although he almost outlived Theodosius, was born a full generation earlier, just after Constantine’s conversion; an ardent admirer of Julian, he long outlived his hero to die at the age of 80 in ad 393. A professional sophist, he was thoroughly immersed in the Homeric world that was his livelihood; he produced his long autobiography, a detailed record of his feuds with professional rivals and provincial governors, in ad 376, but successive updates take us deep into the reign of Theodosius.
Libanius has been comfortably incorporated into narratives of pagan decline, but also serves to illustrate how provisional any such narrative must remain. Conventional modern judgments have been based upon writings that are surprisingly difficult to contextualize. In old age, Libanius certainly strikes a note of elegiac bitterness, wearying his fellow citizens with his talk of the old days, when ‘‘sacrifices were many, and the temples were full of men doing sacrifice, and there were flutes and songs and garlands, and wealth in each temple, a bulwark for those in need’’ ( Or. 2. 30). But he nowhere suggests that his religion had suffered defeat. His most celebrated commentary on the contemporary situation, Oration 30 (‘‘On the Temples’’), complains to Theodosius about the depredations of Christian monks, the harassment ofthose suspected ofbreaking the laws regulating sacrifice, and (above all) the involvement of an imperial official in the destruction of one particular temple. The text has become a standard source for the vulnerability of pagan cult sites under Theodosius I, when fanatical iconoclasts held high office (Petit 1951; Fowden 1978); although addressed to the emperor, it has been seen as devised initially as a fictive showpiece, in which Libanius vented his frustrations among like-minded friends and behind safely closed doors (Wiemer 1995: 123-9). However, such readings require us to stretch the obvious sense of the text, which can instead be treated as a serious (and possibly even successful) response to a single specific case, where a government official had overstepped the limits of the law (McLynn 2005: 111-17). Libanius paints a convincing picture ofbrutal Christian gangs and extortionist officials abusing their power; but this should be balanced by his belief in the possibility of redress. The Autobiography, moreover, nowhere suggests that Libanius’ worldview was under serious strain. Although the additions take us in stages past the crucial dates in the standard chronology of antipagan repression, Libanius’ world remains as full of gods as ever, their powers undiminished. Demeter enjoys the final word, unleashing famine upon Constantinople in a reenactment of the opening scene of the Iliad (Or. 1. 284-5).
The Roman senator Symmachus, a generation younger and significantly higher on the social scale, reached the consulship (and flattered Libanius with a letter) in the very year that Theodosius I issued the first of his sacrifice laws. His religious universe is more opaque than Libanius’, for he left no autobiography to supply a framework for a letter collection whose chief characteristic is its ‘‘formal reticence’’ (Matthews 1974). But the letters show both Symmachus’ diligence in attending to his gods and his easy facility in keeping both Christianity and obstreperous Christian correspondents in their proper places (Matthews 1986; McLynn 1994: 263-75). Symmachus, moreover, exhibits the same suave one-upmanship toward his pagan friends, not least toward the two most conspicuous figures in the supposed ‘‘pagan reaction,’’ Nicomachus Flavianus and Agorius Praetextatus, both of whom are twitted for missing pontifical college meetings.
Symmachus earned his place in Christian historiography as a petitioner on behalf of the traditional cults of Rome, which had been deprived of their funding in ad 382. As city prefect in ad 384, Symmachus sent to Theodosius’ colleague Valentinian II his third Relatio (official dispatch), which is often compared to Libanius’ Oration 30, and similarly regarded as a forlorn plea for a cause long lost, ‘‘still haunted by the literary shades of Hannibal and the Senones’’ (Matthews 1975: 208). And indeed, Symmachus’ petition was voted down in the imperial consistory, despite the care that he lavished on his prose and the publicity that he gave to an initiative that was presented as a formal embassy on behalf of the whole Senate. So oddly dissonant has the even, dispassionate tone sounded that Symmachus has even been reduced to merely a (perhaps reluctant) front man, providing sonorous phraseology for his more radically reactionary friends Praetextatus and Flavianus (O’Donnell 1979: 65-83) - the authentic ‘‘last pagans of Rome.’’
But we easily misread Symmachus. A wickedly deceitful framework has been constructed by Ambrose, bishop of Milan, who obtained a copy of the text and took full advantage of the opportunity to match Symmachus’ effete elegance with the uncompromising muscularity of the new Christian order, in what has become a definitive diptych. Symmachus’ petition, however, was not designed for any such contest; nor (more important) would the audience that most interested him ever have known it in this form. The ‘‘Altar ofVictory Debate’’ is presented to us through the distinct manuscript tradition inspired by Ambrose, where Christian triumphalism has been packaged for internal consumption. Symmachus’ collected Relationes, on the other hand, were published after the author’s death, a private edition to be savored by his relations and admirers rather than a tawdry propaganda exercise, and with the third Relatio showcased as the jewel in a distinguished statesman’s crown (Vera 1977); to these readers, such vulgar considerations as its effectiveness in influencing policy were immaterial.
We must ask whether this tradition might not reflect Symmachus’ own perspectives. For this is a more curious text than is usually acknowledged. Uniquely in his
Relationes, Symmachus here leaves the emperor still uncertain after the first three sentences about what he was asking. Only after a long preamble does he request the restoration of ‘‘that religious position which long benefited the state’’; he initially seems to identify this exclusively with the Altar of Victory in the senate house (Rel. 3. 3-7), and seems to mark his conclusion with his justly famous words on religious pluralism (8-10). However, he then resumes a passing remark concerning the Vestals (7), to introduce an elaborate plea that their privileges and allowances, and incidentally the emoluments of the pagan priests, be restored (11-19). Modern scholars have sought an argumentative coherence that the speech in fact lacks (Vera 1981: 19-20). Just as Theodosius’ role in Libanius’ Oration 30 has been understated, so here we might have overestimated Symmachus’ concern to persuade Valentinian II. The text provides a compendium of the grievances of different Roman constituencies, who might reasonably be seen as Symmachus’ primary intended audience; the prefect would thus be exercising patronage at Rome rather than fumbling for the levers of power at Milan. His high-sounding phrases certainly seem to have resonated locally, and would subsequently be echoed (somewhat to his eventual embarrassment) by the then academically detached teacher Augustine (Rel. 3. 10; August. Soliloquia 1. 13. 23, retracted at Retract. 1. 4. 3; see De vera religione 28. 51).
We must ask what Symmachus expected from the imperial government. The charge that he was driven by mercenary self-interest (Paschoud 1965) is now properly discredited; but hardly less fragile is the current interpretation that he was concerned for the formal validity of the traditional cults, which depended in turn upon their maintenance through public funds (Baynes 1955). Symmachus certainly never hints at such a consideration; and the senatorial class was already semi-detached from the imperial regime, and would comfortably survive its disappearance three generations later. Both Symmachus and his gods could therefore afford to shrug off an emperor’s bad decisions. It was Ambrose of Milan who seized upon the narrowly political implications of the issue, and who moreover played the Altar of Victory card again a decade later (Ambrose, Ep. 57. 2) - thereby creating the caricature of a Symmachus obsessively preoccupied with turning back the clock. The effect was to make Symmachus appear a serial petitioner, repeating his plea in embassies sent to Gaul (according to Ambrose’s biographer: Paulinus, Vit. Ambrosii 26) and to Theodosius (Quodvultdeus, Liber Promissionum 3. 41); Prudentius, too, portrays him as a clear and present danger to Honorius (Prudent. C. Symm. 2. 6-7, 760-1). These initiatives are phantoms, but they have shaped our assumptions. Instead, the most striking thing about Symmachus, as about Libanius, is how little the changes that loom so large in our narratives of ‘‘christianization’’ seem to have affected him; even the ad 384 petition is as invisible in his letters as is Pro templis in Libanius’ autobiography. This has been interpreted as a lack of commitment to a ‘‘losing cause’’ (Cameron 1999: 112); but Symmachus seems blithely unaware that any such cause existed, and his perspectives deserve to be taken seriously.
Ammianus Marcellinus, the ‘‘former soldier and Greek’’ who published his history on the very eve of the destruction of the Serapeum, provides a link between Symma-chus’ Rome and Libanius’ Antioch. Ammianus openly professes his paganism and makes Julian his hero, but describes a world where Christianity is thoroughly entrenched. He has been variously interpreted: as a robust secularist who consigned religion to his digressions (Matthews 1989b: 426-32); a genuine multiculturalist capable of doing justice to other religions (Hunt 1985); or else an embittered apostate haunted by his Christian past, who subtly but systematically denigrated his former fellow believers (Barnes 1998: 79-94). The most recent study of Ammianus’ religiosity, however, presents a man concerned less with Christianity than with paganism, who created a cosmopolitan synthesis of traditional religious views, which brought coherence to the experience of his generation (Davies 2004: 226-85). And we look in vain, certainly, despite Ammianus’ rich fund of indignation and gloom, for any sense of persecution or religious defeatism. Although the emperor’s stern pronouncements on sacrifice were circulating through the empire, Ammianus could still quietly insist on the continuing applicability of a traditional religious framework, and could still assume that his views would find an audience.
All three of our pagans thus shared a capacity to accept the prescriptions imposed by the Christian empire, while leading comfortably unchristian lives within it. Their social status, of course, makes them entirely untypical of any pagan majority, but it exposed them more directly to the workings of the imperial machine. The contrast between the resolutely undramatic religiosity evoked in their works and the fulmin-ations of contemporary legislation is therefore instructive.
World History
