Keeping the Faith – Symmachus and his Time

 

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Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (340 – 405 AD) was born into the 3rd generation of hereditary peers. His birth decided his station in life; he was to be a senator and orator.

No longer the capital of the empire, the city of Rome was still the hub of the world, a metropolis like New York. The imperial administration, with the intention of sidelining the prerogatives of the Roman Senate, had moved away to Milan, Constantinople and Vienne. The House was no longer the assembly of imperial powerbrokers and of the big interests. Instead we are looking at a club of dynasts of almost princely standing, who prefer to keep things together by marrying into the family of the peer sitting next to them. Not war or famine, but inbreeding became the common cause for the extinction of senatorial families, which did lead to the concentration of ever more wealth in ever fewer hands. One senator said he could travel from Rome to Sicily without setting foot outside of his own estates. He was not joking. Symmachus, too, owned stately manor houses at the Via Appia and the Vatican, villas at Ostia, Praeneste and Lavinium, and sheltered against the heat in a summerhouse at Tibur. There was a farm at Formiae, a townhouse in Capua, and other estates in Samnia, Apulia and even Morocco, all fully staffed with stewards, notaries, accountants, masons, and messenger services. The farmhands populated entire villages; the first soil bound serfs on record (Symmachus, Letters VI: 67; 79). Such prestigious opulence, although deprived of real power, worried the heads of state and they burdened Symmachus and his colleagues with costly "honors" and ever more frequent billeting (Symmachus, Letters I: 5; 10; II: 52; VII: 66; IX: 40; 48). In addition to his annual tax a senator was obliged to pay into the imperial coffers four pounds of gold bullion. The price of gold was on a steep climb. In 305 AD, one pound of gold was worth 100,000 denarii. In 472 AD, the same pound of gold, according to a calculation by the US treasury, was on the market for 2,120,000,000 denarii (two billion and one hundred-twenty million). Despite their enormous resources, Symmachus and his colleagues were often strapped for ready cash. The public of course saw only the front, the flowing silk robes and the train of retainers – a cook, a pastry chef, the dressmaker, the secretaries, the maidens for his lordship’s pleasure, a prompter, the security detail of retired gladiators and of course the inevitable eunuchs. His Lordship would address you by your first name and with unfailing condescension mete out the exact degree of affability called for by an owner of chariots, estates, and traditions. The next day not even his prompter remembered you. Despite the lighthearted banter flying between his lordship and the crowds in the street, there was only one thing these aristocrats had in common with the riffraff, an obsession for gambling, “differing in the pursuit of their passion only,” a friend of Symmachus used to say, “as brigands do from common thieves” (Ammianus Marcellinus, 325 – 391 AD).

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Meanwhile the imperial masters in Milan, Vienne and Constantinople, were constantly putting out fires. An emperor couldn’t afford to preoccupy himself too much with a crisis in Armenia without paying attention to what was brewing in the Austrian Alps. The regent needed colleagues to watch his back, while he was watching theirs. Together this junta exercised jurisdiction over four prefectures, with the emperor in Constantinople controlling two of them. Each coregent had his own center of administration, his own troops and his own staff of bureaucrats – a menagerie of exotic peacocks, addressing each other as “Your Sincerity,” “Your Gravity,” “Your Excellency,” “Your Eminence,” “Your Sublime and Wonderful Magnitude,” or “Your Illustrious and Magnificent Highness.”

The four praetorian prefects were arguably the most powerful individuals in the empire. They were civil servants with authority over the military. Answerable only to the emperors, such deputy controlled an excessive bureaucracy and between changes at the helm he was the custodian of continuity, expected not to raise his own claims. An emperor not satisfied with the role of a mere figurehead was well advised to frequently rotate the appointments of these ambitious and gifted men.

The most prestigious was the Prefecture of the East with the seat in Constantinople. It included the Hellespont, Anatolia, Armenia, a small stretch of Iraqi soil, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, the breadbasket and economical powerhouse. The least prestigious prefecture, the Prefecture of Gaul with seat in Vienne, covered the most territory: France, Spain, Britain, the Rhineland and Morocco. The Prefecture of Italy, governed from Milan, included the provinces of Italy, Sicily, Algeria, Libya, Tyrol, Austria and Slovenia. The Prefecture of Illyricum with seat in Thessalonica covered the territories south of the Carpathian mountains, Bosnia and the Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, Greece and Bulgaria, together with uncertain possessions towards the Black Sea. Altogether the prefectures covered twelve dioceses and 102 provinces.

Our source for the nominal strength of the Roman army is the Notitia Dignitatum, a Roman manual from 400 AD, listing civil and military installations. Because of frequent raids from abroad, the local levies were very hesitant to leave their home ground undefended, which fomented the trend for regional separatism. It was the mounted guards and personal retainers of the commander who fought the campaigns of the period. The “magister utriusque militum” Flavius Stilicho (359 – 408 AD) was the last chief of the joint imperial forces. He had just about 5,000 men to police Italy, the Rhineland, France and Britain. Pitched battles would put at risk the only tactical reserve available, so, given the choice, the high command rather paid off the intruder.

This didn’t pass unnoticed. The Roman army began to realize that treason had its rewards. The armor for horse and rider in mail was costing a farm a piece, but this was nothing compared to the costs for the cavalryman’s loyalty. We look at the forerunner of the medieval knight. With every soldier came a flock of bureaucrats, each with his fingers in the cash register. The overheads were enormous. If the early empire had the appearance of a stout figure on stumpy feet, it now staggered along like an encephalitic on spindly legs.

The revenue resorted to farming out the collection of taxes to the highest bidder. It was atrocious. “The regime in Constantinople,” wrote the Greek historian Zosimus, “did not attend to the sufferings of Macedon and Thessaly, but sent their tax collectors as if nothing had happened. Whatever had been spared by the humanity of the Barbarians was seized, even the ornaments of the women, and their clothes, reducing them almost to nakedness. Every town was therefore filled with tears and complaints, everybody calling out for the Barbarians, and desiring their assistance.” The “Barbarians” didn’t need a gilded invitation. The invading tribes, says the historian, “were greatly encouraged by the multitude that came daily into their camp to join them: runaway slaves and many others who were suffering from severe poverty, a not inconsiderable number, of whom many were skilled in the arts and trades, but unable to endure the heavy burden of their taxes“ (Ammianus, XXXI, 7: 3-6). What the textbooks depict as “The Wandering of Nations” was a social upheaval, the beginning of a revolution. The arrivals often were anything but barbaric. Wulfila (311 – 383 AD) was a bishop of the Goths when they were still on the move. He invented a new alphabet and translated the Bible into Gothic well before St Jerome (347 – 420 AD) finished work on the Vulgate. This is not surprising if we consider the Safaitic graffiti in southwest Syria and the north of Jordan, an epigraphic collection of 12,000 rock-cut graffiti. Covering the period from the 1st to the 4th century AD, the inscriptions belonged to a nomadic (sic!) population and there are so many, it raises intriguing questions about ancient literacy.

The immigrants relied on a network of already naturalized kinsmen who were making their bid for a greater share in the political franchise. The empire didn’t require an invasion to be run by “barbarian nations” and tribal lobbyists jockeyed for the top positions. In 388 AD the chief of the joint imperial forces was a Count Richomer, a noble of the Franks. He was an educated man, well read in the classics, an admirer and patron of the Gentile publicist Libanius. From among the same clique of Frankish nobles in high positions, the Empress Aelia Eudoxia († 404 AD) was married to the man on the throne in Constantinople. She made it her mission to keep a tight watch on appointees from the other Germanic nations in her service, and she did everything in her power to obstruct the successor of Count Richomer, the powerful Vandal Stilicho.

Stilicho had become a rising star when Emperor Theodosius had entrusted him with a diplomatic mission to the Persian Court. The king of Persia controlled the Iraq, Iran, wide stretches of Afghanistan and inner Asia and kept diplomatic ties with the Chinese. King Shapur III was an unassuming man, preferring to pass his days in a traditional tent pitched on the lawns before the shining marble of his palace. For Stilicho the negotiations were a resounding success. The treaty from 384 AD would outlive the regime and bought his imperial master the time he needed to sort out his troubles in the West.

The right to issue law in the name of the sovereign, the "popolus romanus," still rested with the emperor’s power as tribune of the people, which only the Senate of Rome could bestow on him; a constitutional paradox. In actual fact it was the military that made and unmade emperors, while the man wearing the purple tentatively tried to secure his and his colleagues’ position by claiming a dynastic right of succession.

Theoretically every position in the imperial civil service was open to a senator, but far more frequently a professional from the imperial staff would fill the position. The municipal budgets were subject to imperial auditing and even in the city of Rome the candidate had to finance every step of his career from his own resources. The first rung in the “cursus honorum” – the public service – was the office of the exchequer (“quaestor”) followed by the offices of “praetor” (suburban commissioner of the police), augur of the Sybellines, and superintendent of public works (“aedile”). A cynic could say that the first office opened access to the public funds, the second office an opportunity to erase all traces of embezzlement, and the following offices unlimited opportunities for receiving bribes. It had to be substantial bribes. In the capital cities the magistrates continued handing out foodstuff to the citizenry, a handout irrespective of actual need. The vast public baths, the games in the arena, the theatre, the races in the hippodrome continued on the public budget. In Trier, Carthage and Rome, the people, although mostly Christians, remained convinced that the occult power of the games in the arena protracted the survival of their city. With insane expenses to their private purse, the sponsors accommodated ever more grandiose displays of water battles and wild beast hunts. As part of his election campaign for the position of Rome’s praefectus urbis – the chief of police – Symmachus, too, entertained the populace with circus games (Symmachus, Letters IV: 8; V: 62). He employed artisans from Sicily and, at enormous costs to his own purse, imported rare and exotic animals, “Dalmatian bears and lions from Libya, Scottish dogs, even crocodiles.” As pièce de résistance he hired a stable of gladiators, a bunch "worse than the band of Spartacus." The law frowned on it, but fighting in the arena was still popular. Symmachus himself frequently visited the games (Symmachus, Letters II: 46; 76; 77; IV: 12; 33; 42; 63; 8; 58; 59; 60; 62; V: 56; 82; VI: 42; 43; VII: 59; 100; 121; 122; IX: 20; 24; 125; X: 10; 13; 15; 19; 20; 26; 28; 29). His investment paid off; Symmachus won the election. As praefectus urbis he policed the streets and was accountable for the maintenance and construction of aqueducts and roads, and also for the repair of the temples. This turned out to be a problem.

Symmachus was a Gentile, but he was the officer of a Christian regime that had outlawed the maintenance of pagan shrines (Codex Theodosianus XVI.10.10). A circular to the provinces decreed, “by pain of death,” to destroy all pagan groves, temples, and temple precincts, and to erect crosses in their place (Codex Theodosianus XVI.x.24). The Imperial Revenue withdrew subsidies to the temples; cult objects were exposed to systematic destruction (Codex Theodosianus XVI.x.16).

Orders arrived to remove nude statues from bathhouses and public places (Codex Theodosianus XVI.x.19). St Chrysostom (347 – 407 AD) railed against the rich “who call themselves Christians but keep nude statues strutting their stuff in the garden.” Everywhere Christian clerics encouraged their parishioners to overthrow the statues and hack away the noses and genitalia, not because of the sculpture’s immodest nudity, but because of the foxy superstition that statues, in a ghostly way, were living things, with a demon nesting inside.

A legislative snowstorm bore down on the attendance to Gentile solemnizations. The legislator prohibited sacrifices, even the use of candles, wine and devotional images. (Ironically these soon became paraphernalia in the Catholic mass.) In 391 AD the legislator decreed that “no person shall pollute himself with sacrificial animals; no person shall slaughter an innocent victim; no person shall approach the shrines, shall wander through the temples, or revere the images formed by mortal labor, lest he become guilty by divine and human laws" (Codex Theodosianus XVI.10.10). The law-abiding gentile was reduced to sitting “in silence on the temple-floor, clasping the knees and bending his head, so as not to rest his eyes upon the images or utter a single word of supplication” (Libanius, Autobiography). A magistrate, ignoring cases of clandestine entry into closed down shrines, faced a hefty fine. Decorating the doorway to your home with wreaths and pouring wine from libation bowls could get you in serious trouble (Novellae Theodosiani III). Chrysostom, the old Taliban, made himself a mortal enemy in Aelia Eudoxia when he berated the chief of police in Constantinople, for not only erecting a silver-plated statue of the empress, but also inaugurating it with “pagan celebrations, dancing and music.” The empress was livid. The saint responded with a sermon on Jezebel: “Among all savage beasts, none is found as harmful as a woman.” In every household there were informers to squeal to the authorities about infractions. The penalty was loss of property. If of curial rank, the offender faced a fine of 1,800 solidi in gold (Codex Theodosianus XVI.x.12), the expenses for a sizable cavalry unit in full armor. The economic motive in much of the anti-pagan legislation is all too obvious, and while the financial resources of a senator could still keep the bailiff at bay, the have-nots had nowhere to hide.

In 396 AD, the hierophants of the mysteries lost all privileges, even in Eleusis, the most prestigious of the mystery cults (Codex Theodosianus XVI.x.14). The “Maiuma,” a water festival with fun and naked women, had long been a thorn in the eyes of the Christian clergy. The legislator now demanded the observance of decorum and banished the festivities to the rural areas (Codex Theodosianus XV.vi.1). (“Pagan” and “peasant” come from the same root-word.) Three festivals later this seemed not nearly enough and the “foul and obscene spectacle" was banned entirely (Codex Theodosianus XV.vi.2).

In the end the terror did reach the privileged.

In Alexandria, in open daylight, the mob ambushed an elderly woman, stripped her naked and dragged her on her back into a church, where Peter the Lector bludgeoned her with his club until her mangled body showed no sign of life. With shells and potshards the holy mob scraped the flesh from the bones of the corpse, feeding it to the dogs. “This happened in the month of March during Lent, in the fourth year of Cyril’s episcopate, under the tenth consulate of Honorius, and the sixth of Theodosius II” (Socrates Scholasticus VII: 15). The victim’s name was Hypathia (355 – 415 AD). She was a mathematician and Gentile philosopher. Unaware of Paul’s command not to “suffer a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man” (1 Timothy 2: 12) she had had the temerity to instruct Christian clerics in the sciences.

The murder was never prosecuted; the instigator of the crime, the notorious anti-Semite Bishop Cyril still figures as a saint on the Greek Orthodox calendar. One of Hypathia’s students was the admirable Bishop Synesius of Cyrene (373 – 414 AD), a scholar and gentlemen, if ever there was any. In his hours of leisure he wrote allegorical satires about the corruption of Roman officials. He was a married man, when a committee of Christians invested him as Bishop of Ptolemais in 409 AD. Apparently Synesius neither received holy orders nor was he ever baptized. This didn’t prevent him from becoming an efficient cleric. Yet before taking up office, he insisted on written guarantees from the Bishop in Alexandria, allowing him to differ in his opinions on the creation of the soul, the literal belief in the resurrection and the end of the world. In other words he never abandoned his Gentile beliefs. Synesius had the good fortune to end his life unmolested from the fanatics and doctrinaires. Most people in his position were not so fortunate.

Fanatically unwashed and flea infested – even brushing your teeth was an offense (Jerome, Letters CXLVII) – the people of the calling either camped out in a solitary makeshift shelter or incarcerated themselves in a monastic compound where they received daily floggings to the point of sepsis. “It is usual in the monasteries of Egypt and Syria for virgins and widows who have vowed themselves to God to ask the mothers of their communities to cut their hair, for they wear a close-fitting cap and a veil. No one knows of this in any single case except the shearers and the shorn, but as the practice is universal, it is almost universally known. The custom is designed to save those who take no baths and whose heads and faces are strangers to all unguents, from accumulated dirt and from the tiny creatures which are sometimes generated about the roots of the hair” (Jerome, Letters CXLVII). In Antioch, Martha, the mother of Simeon Stylite the Younger trained her seven-year-old son to perch like a bird on a tall pillar. He became the first of a whole gaggle of child saints, crapping and peeing on the gawking rubbernecks underneath. The pillars overlooked wide stretches of desert where the wind carried from the remote monasteries the hollering and wailing of monks and hermits suffering from involuntary hallucinations. It was not uncommon for these athletes of asceticism to hear during the star-studded nights the distant voices of “wailing infants, the lament of women, the roar of lions, the stomping feet of an army on the march.” To draw a line here between asceticism and mental instability is almost impossible. The writer and poet Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963) was institutionalized for thinking that “it seemed so silly to wash my clothes and my hair one day when I would have to wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it. I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it” (Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar). Living on “one grain of spelt a day, picked from the dung of a camel” (Jerome), one of these unfortunates was heard to scream on the top of his voice when he felt “a tormentor spring upon his back and drive his heels into his sides” (Jerome, Vita Hilarionis); a scene as if from J.K. Rowling’s novel.

The sight made the passing tourist pause: “Fleeing from the light,” says Namatianus, “these men call themselves monks or solitaries. They fear the gifts of fortune, and from the apprehension of losing them embrace voluntary wretchedness. Unable to support the blessings of the human condition, they exercise on their own bodies the tortures which the hand of justice is inflicting on fugitive slaves" (Itinerary I: 439-448). Poverty was the mark of Cain for the sins of the human race, yet fortunately delegated to be born only by the destitute on behalf of the less fortunate, the rich – poor things – who wait for Judgment Day in a penthouse suite. “In their gorgeous houses,” Chrysostom said, “the doors are made of ivory, the ceilings lined with gold, the floors inlaid with mosaics; the halls and bedrooms are walled in marble. The rich is reclining the pampered flesh on a bedstead of ivory and solid silver, while bony Lazarus, sleeping rough, doesn’t know on which sore to turn. He can smell the dainty dishes prepared by a chef from Persia, and it makes his stomach rumble, while inside the perfumed revelers ogle half naked girls playing the flute.”

To the Christian ayatollahs the word of scripture was unequivocal: “Whosoever of you has not forsaken all his possessions, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke, 14: 33).

In Sicily “grazing saints” walked about with not a stitch of clothing on them but carried a sickle or scythe to mow the sheep’s pastures and eat the grass for food. The genuine have-nots, the goatherds, threw stones at them, but the laity preferred to give their alms to these “ceremonial poor,” whose prayers were more likely to be effective than those of the noisy and repulsive lot roughing it out in the streets. From the donor’s point of view, the symbolism of the poor as a dark mirror of Adam after the fall, made every handout an entry in the celestial bookkeeping, while actual poverty was already the invisible bank draft, a treasure waiting in heaven. Some, however, reaped these rewards already here on earth.

Symmachus’ mentor in the senate was his father in law (Symmachus, Letters I: 2), the courageous Consul Vettius Agorius Praetextatus (328 – 384 AD). It was the same Praetextatus, who is on record as the chief of police at the election of Pope Damasus (305 – 384 AD) and whom the Saturnalia mention as the first and only ancient advocate for universal manumission (Macrobius, Saturnalia, I, 11: 2-50).

Gone were the days of lowlifes hiding in the catacombs; the Roman successor of a meek fisherman, now dressed in princely regalia and with the haughty airs of a man “sitting on a mountain, where the voices from lower down can’t reach” (Ambrose of Milan), was carried about in a golden chair. As a symbol of status, a retainer held the reins of a pair of sleek horses in the pope’s entourage, pulling an empty chariot. The papal residence was a marvel of late Roman architecture, the holy books were “dyed in purple, with gold on it molten into lettering and jewels decking the book cover, while Christ lies at the door naked and dying” (Jerome). Praetextatus wasn’t kidding when he said: "Make me bishop of Rome, and I will be a Christian tomorrow." Yet the Roman parish was a fragmented community trapped in an unending cycle of “anger, indictments, disagreements, separations, violence, war, dissolution, reunion and precarious peace” (Pope Damasus). Since the eloquent Novatian had opposed the election of Cornelius the bishop of the “the fair-weather-Christians, who after one or several lapses ask you to be received again in the fold” (Optatius, II: 3), the followers of Novatian, “the pure,” who had remained true to their faith during the persecutions, kept to themselves for the same reason as the Donatists in Africa.

The conflict carried on through the generations; themselves unmolested, the grandchildren took pride in their steadfast ancestors and continued drawing the line between them and lesser Christians. In 366 AD a new election was due. On polling day the hired hooligans of the one candidate besieged the hired hooligans of the other candidate in the basilica of Sicininus (now Santa Maria Maggiore). “The tempers flew high and in a pitched battle many men were wounded and killed. The ferocity of the violence compelled the chief of police and his men to withdraw to the suburbs." (Ammianus, XXVII, 3: 11-13). At last, Praetextatus and his men forced entry. They counted 137 corpses.

When Praetextatus didn’t put thieves in jail and enforced fire regulations – no cooking in your flat of a high rising eight-storey apartment block – his pet-project was the restoration of paganism.

Treading a fine line with the law, he made formal inquests in the desecration of pagan temples and set out to restore closed down shrines. Supported by his friends and family – his wife Aconia Fabia Paulina, his son in law Symmachus, the grammarian Servius, the senators Virius Nicomachus and Flavianus – Praetextatus set out on a heartrending mission that threatened to ruin his fortunes. Many senators in the assembly offered tacit backing. Recruiting qualified hierophants remained almost impossible. Praetextatus himself officiated at eight different cults simultaneously. Some senators became initiates in every mystery cult known to exist, joining even by proxy. The Greek travel writer Pausanias (130 – 179 AD) said that every square-foot of Greece once had been hallowed ground and bore testimony to some or other epiphany of the numinous. This religious cottage industry was now in recession. The Corybantes no longer lifted snakes to the sky, or in sudden madness tore with shining teeth the raw meet from the shank of a living goat.

Not everything of course was madness and psychedelic intoxication. Symmachus remembered from his childhood how he and the other boys had lain in hiding, hoping to catch a glimpse at a group of women beating their bare breasts.

They had wept for Attis, the Phrygian version of Tammuz, whose shrine was located in Bethlehem and still active when the intrigued St Jerome paid it a visit. Adonis, Orpheus, Mithras, Jesus and Apollonius of Tyana, they all seemed to read their act from the same script. Mithras was born of a virgin and lying in a manger when the shepherds came to worship him. It was a Christian who in his own defense pointed out the similarity: "When we say that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem the sons of Jupiter" (Justin Martyr, 100 – 167 AD, First Apology, 21). Miracle working was the ultimate credential: “If I with the finger of God cast out devils, how can you doubt” (Luke, 11: 20). Already for over a century the wide spectrum of cults and religions in the empire had been heading towards a syncretistic monotheism, a system where the supreme light was believed to pour out into numerous manifestations, a complicated hierarchy of gods, stars, angelic beings, demons and heroes, with us lesser mortals feeding at the bottom, but ultimately all seen as a manifestation of one and only source. The highbrow looked for answers in the occult doctrines of Neo-Platonism, the lowbrows held on to their amulets. Baptized or not, everybody shared a universal dread of blood sucking Lamias and demons "whose hearts do not know how to be touched by human prayer" (Virgil, Georgics). The Christians in Africa continued celebrating the pagan cult of daemon coelestis (Salvian, I, c, and lib VII, VIII). Even the emperors held semi-demonic status. Hell was the place “where trees and undergrowth duck under the horror of a great darkness" and the tormented souls are driven about, "as if winter-storms chase myriads of birds into the twilight of greenwood boughs” (Virgil).

The virtuous Gentile lived in hope of a hereafter among the stars, somewhere in the constellation Cassiopeia. The marvelous and wonderful captured everybody’s imagination.

People told stories of a traveler who’d lost his way in the desert and delirious with thirst was found by a satyr, walking on hoofs, with pointy ears and hairy thighs. The strange creature provided food and water and the traveler repaid kindness with kindness, inviting this descendant of Pan to be his guest in Alexandria. At the traveler’s home the satyr suddenly fell ill and died. Pickled in salt the corpse was sent to Antioch, presented to the Emperor and held on display there for many years. This was widely believed to be true. Even the eminent Jerome kept an open mind whether such creatures indeed existed – perhaps somewhere in the remote reaches of the antipodes, hanging there upside down like bats in a cave? Messengers from the unseen world were thought to take on human form. The philosopher Sosipatra was raised by no less than three of these angelic beings; her father had hired them, thinking they were farmhands. Sosipatra became the Madam Blavatsky of her time and married the Neo-Platonic philosopher Eustathius of Cappadocia. In 358 AD, Emperor Constantius II sent the couple on a diplomatic mission to Persia. It seemed a safe haven from the Christian ayatollahs at home and the two settled there for good.

"Gnosis" – knowledge – alone no longer guaranteed salvation; the minutes of painstaking ritual became all important. A ritual sometimes practiced to wake the dead. In 359 AD the emperor’s prosecutor Paulus, nicknamed the Hellhound, prosecuted high-ranking officials on charges of necromancy (Ammianus, XIX: 12). Two years later, under Emperor Julian the Apostate, the chief of police in Rome prosecuted a popular charioteer on the same charge (Ammianus, XXVI: 3); the chief’s deputy, Maximinus, furthered his career holding séances with a slave from Sardinia, who conjured up the dead to predict the future (Ammianus, XXVIII: 1).

Christians, too, were practicing necromancy. The notorious incident at Bethany (Jn 11: 1-45) was not the only of its kind. St Severin, recalled his recently deceased presbyter, yet the walking corpse beseeched him to be left in peace (Eugippius, Vita S. Severini, XVI). Spyridon of Trimithousa in Cyprus was one of the bishops attending the first Ecumenical Council in Nicene. Back from the synod, he was grieved to learn, that his daughter Irene had passed away. A neighbor claimed he had left in her safekeeping a piece of jewelry. After searching his house in vain the bishop went to the sepulcher of his daughter and turning east in silent prayer called upon God to show him the promised resurrection before its proper season. He was not to be disappointed. Still wrapped in her shroud, Irene walked out of the tomb and told him where she had hidden the ornament and then returned to her grave (Sozomen, Hist. Eccles. I: 11; Socrates Scholasticus, 1: 12; Rufinus, I: 5).

In 384 AD, Symmachus’ father in law passed away. For St Jerome this was a cause for celebration. “What a change!” he wrote, “a few days ago the highest dignitaries bowed before him, now he’s a prisoner to the foul darkness, and not, as his unhappy wife likes to think, residing in the royal abode of the Milky Way. Among the tormented we see the consul now, not in his triumphal robe, but begging for a drop of water” (Letters XXIII). Not exactly Jerome’s finest hour. He was an astute storyteller and theological hardliner, successfully hiding the nihilism sloshing in the dregs of his heart: “I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no regard for death, but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men are; neither are they plagued like other men. And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered” (Jerome, Letters CXLVII). Although lacking the gift of faith, he propagated unconditional obedience to the dogma as the last line of defense against chaos and anarchy. To him the deceased Praetextatus was the Lord of Darkness incarnate.

After presiding over the funeral of his father in law, Symmachus kissed his wife goodbye and took passage to Africa, for his next assignment as Proconsul of Numidia.

On his arrival it turned out, the most pressing task was to prevent the Christian factions – Arians, Catholics and Donatists, Montanists and Tertullianists – from coming to blows with each other. Christianity was the state religion, but dying for one’s faith was still widely regarded a shortcut to heaven. Armed bands of “Circumcellions” roamed the province and cheerfully announced the hour and day when they would come to vandalize the local shrine or church, thus hoping to receive the “crown of martyrdom” by the hands of an outraged population. Yet whenever Symmachus could afford a break he was on the lookout for new talent, for people who could be useful to the Gentile cause. When passing through Madaura, he was introduced to a dazzling young man. Himself graced with the intellectual’s hemorrhoid, Symmachus was intrigued.

The young man would later be known as St Augustine (354 – 430 AD). Symmachus found him an opening as professor of rhetoric in Milan and carried the expenses for his passage. On arrival, Augustine forgot all obligations to his benefactor and queued up for an audience with Bishop Ambrose of Milan (337 – 397 AD).

Augustine never realized that the Bishop had looked right through the narcissism of his visitor. This young man was not exactly leadership material. Ambrose baptized Augustine and sent him back to Africa where he withered away a long life as the prelate of Hippo – modern Annaba – in Tunisia. Augustine couldn’t decide what was worse in this godforsaken place: that he couldn’t find a single copy of Cicero’s speeches or that he was kept waiting in the antechamber of a local landowner, while his lordship’s gamekeeper, with a grin on his face, walked right through. In 429 AD, the Vandals invaded North Africa and knocked at the gates of Hippo. This should have been Augustine’s moment to make history. He missed it. All that his inflammatory appeals accomplished was perpetuating misery and division between the creeds for generations to come.

St Ambrose was a scary judge of character.

It seems nobody among his contemporaries has ever taken the full measure of Ambrose. He was the mastermind behind the coup of February 27, 380 AD. As the son of the praetorian prefect of Gaul, Ambrose had received an excellent education, studied the law, and became head of the administration in Northern Italy (J.R. Palanque, Saint Ambroise et l’Empire Romaine, 1933). He was present when the Arian bishop Auxentius of Milan passed away. In 374 AD, within weeks, Ambrose received the baptism and holy orders and was consecrated as bishop of Milan.

During the next five years, “steering in the teeth of the waves,” St Ambrose confronted the predominantly Arian creed of the Christians in his own diocese, then gradually extended his influence to the imperial courts “for we are grieved that the fellowship of Holy Communion between the East and West is interrupted” (Ambrose of Milan, Letters XIV). Under his coaching Emperor Theodosius I, an otherwise rather approachable person with a soft spot for the pleasures of the table, developed into a Catholic hardliner, making sure that his “reign might have the additional glory of having restored unity to the Churches” (Ambrose of Milan, Letters XIV). On February 27, 380 AD, “according to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel,” Emperor Theodosius decreed to “believe in the one deity of the father, Son and Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians.” Christians who had the temerity of begging to differ were branded “with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give their gatherings the name of churches, since they are foolish madmen” (Codex Theodosianus XVI.1.2). February 27 is the birthday of Catholicism.

It entered the scene with a minority coup, a bid for power in an already Christian state, comparable to the Bolshevik’s October revolution in Russia, which, as we remember, was not a revolution against the Tsar, but overthrowing the socialist government of Alexander Kerensky. For the people affected – the Jews, the dissenters, the educators, the scientists and the artists – the consequences were about the same in both instances, except for the persecution of homosexuals and the intrusive surveillance of the marital bedroom that Catholicism has thrown in for good measure.

In an approximation of habeas corpus, Emperor Gordian in 244 AD had prohibited the use of torture for everyone, “whether free or slave,” without a conviction in a court of law. Now the legislator threatened that the heretic “will suffer the punishment which authority, in accordance with the will of heaven, shall decide to inflict.” The Inquisition was already looming on the horizon.

The coup caused an almost universal outcry, even in the churches.

In Antioch the Christians overturned the statues of Emperor Theodosius and fought his soldiers in the streets. It took Bishop Chrysostom all the powers of his exceptional eloquence to prevent a massacre. Another native of Antioch, the Gentile publicist Libanius (314 – 394 AD), defamed the decree as an “evil law by a sacrilegious legislator” (Libanius, Autobiography). The protesters could overturn the statues they could not bend the will of Ambrose. Under the mantle of unbending politeness this melancholy and aloof anti-Semite was a man of more consequence for the course of history than Jesus Christ himself. Bishop Ambrose, if anybody, deserves the appellative of “Rock of the Church.” The door to the saint was always open, yet it opened to a zone of submissive hush. The prelate was seated in front of an open Bible, the first man on record to read, or pretending to read, in silence. His visitors shuffled their feet with respectful little coughs.

“Ambrose’s eyes kept running over the page,” noted Augustine – always the sharp observer – “and after waiting for a long time in silence we used to go away. We supposed that in the hubbub of other people’s troubles, he would not want to be invited to consider more problems. We wondered if he read silently perhaps to protect himself” (Augustine, Confessions Book VI).

In his correspondence with the emperors, Ambrose combined threats and blackmail with allegations, innuendo and solicitous interpretations, giving us a master-class in how to blackball even the high and mighty into submission. In 385 AD, the local bishop of Callinicum (modern Raqqa) in Syria had taken the lead in an act of vandalism against the local synagogue. Emperor Theodosius I (347 – 392 AD) demanded an inquest and restitution. Knowing that he was setting a legal precedent, the prelate of Milan sent the emperor a memo, laying the foundation for European anti-Semitism of millennia to come.

Ambrose begins with a thinly veiled threat:

“I have never been in such anxiety as at present, since I see that I must entreat you to listen with patience, for, if I am unworthy to be heard by you, I am unworthy to offer the Eucharist to you (sic!), as well. You are now involved in the risk of my silence (sic!), but silence and dissimulation on my part would not set you free. I am obeying the commands of God, speaking out of love for you. As the holy Apostle Paul says, who’s teaching you cannot controvert (sic!): "Whether asked or unasked for, be prompt to reprove, entreat, and rebuke with all patience and doctrine.” In the cause of God whom will you listen to, if not to the priest, at whose greater peril sin is committed?

“A report was made by the commander of the armies in the East that a synagogue had been burnt, and that this was done at the instigation of the local Bishop. You gave command that the accessories to the incident should be punished, and the synagogue be rebuilt by the Bishop himself. Are you not afraid this prelate might oppose you with a refusal? You will then be obliged to make him either an apostate or a martyr, either of them equivalent to persecution.

“I think you can see where this is going. Suppose the said Bishop had indeed kindled the fire and gathered the crowd, in order not to lose an opportunity for martyrdom: would he not say “why not do what will not find a reward in heaven if it remains unpunished?” Suppose he declared that he set fire so not to leave a place where Christ is denied. If you think the Bishop to be firm, don’t make a martyr of a firm man; if you think him vacillating, avoid causing his fall, for he who causes the weak to fall carries a heavy responsibility.

“But let it be granted that no one will bring the Bishop to book, for I have asked this of Your Grace, and although I have not yet read that this edict is revoked, let us notwithstanding assume that it is revoked (sic!).

“What if there are some timid officials who already offered to restore the synagogue at their own costs; or if the commander of the East already has ordered it to be rebuilt from the funds of Christians? Then Your Majesty will have an apostate general, and to whom will you then entrust your victorious standards (sic!)? Shall, then, a place of unbelief be made out of the spoils of the Church? Shall the patrimony, which by the favor of Christ had been gained for Christians, be transferred to the treasuries of unbelievers? We read that in the old days the spoils from defeated enemies were used to build temples and idols. Shall the Jews write this inscription on the front of their synagogue: "The temple of impiety, erected from the plunder of Christians? But, perhaps, it is the cause of law and order moving you. Which, then, is of greater importance, law and order or the cause of religion?

“There is, then, no adequate cause for punishing the burning of a building, much less since it is a synagogue, a home of unbelief, a house of impiety, a den of thieves braying like donkeys when they pray, condemned by God Himself. For this is what we read, when the Lord our God speaks by the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah: "And I will do to this house which is called by My Name as I have done to Shiloh, and I will cast you forth from My sight, as I cast forth your brethren, the whole seed of Ephraim. And do not pray for that people, do not ask mercy for them, for I will not hear you." So God himself forbids intercession on behalf of the Jews. Shall I remind you how many churches the Jews had burnt in the time of the Emperor Julian? The two at Damascus, one now scarcely repaired at the costs of the Church – not of the Synagogue – the other still in ruins? Churches burnt at Gaza, Ascalon, Berytus, and no one has demanded punishment. What of the basilica in Alexandria, burnt by heathen and Jews? It was never prosecuted; shall the Synagogue not enjoy this "privilege" as well? The judge was ordered not to merely report the deed, but punish it, and to demand the return of the money chests carried away. This is a town with barely anything, what great possessions could possibly be carried away from a Synagogue there? What could these scheming Jews possibly have lost by the fire? These are dissimulations by the Jews, and how can they not refrain from calumny, having calumniated Christ himself? Will you allow the Jews to triumph over the Church of God? Allow the Synagogue to rejoice in this sorrow to the Church? If so, the Jews will add to their solemnities the memory of their triumph over the people of Christ. And what will Christ say to you afterwards? "I have chosen you, the youngest of your brothers, to rise from a private man to become emperor, I conferred victory on you, and this is how you pay me back?”

Now the legal clincher:

“Jews reject that they themselves are bound by Roman law and yet they seek redress by invoking this law? Where were those laws when they were the ones to set fire to our churches? If Emperor Julian did not permit restitution for the injury done to the Church because he was an apostate, will Your Majesty permit redress for the injury done to the Synagogue, because you are a Christian?" Since the Church shut out the Synagogue, why is it that again the Synagogue should exclude the servant of Christ from the bosom of faith? The gods (sic!) shall avenge the injury done to them on their own. So, who is to avenge the Synagogue? Christ, whom they slew, whom they denied? Will God the Father avenge those who do not receive Him since they do not receive the Son?”

At this point Ambrose is done with the subtleties and brandishes his ultimate weapon:

“Should I fail to enjoy Your Majesty’s trust, by all means call together those bishops whom you think fit, and let it be discussed, but what am I supposed to say, if it is discovered that your authorities endorsed Christians to be slain? How am I supposed to explain it? How shall I excuse it to those bishops? I, have done what could be done consistently with honor to you, that you might rather listen to me in the palace, lest (sic!), if it were necessary, you should listen to me in Church" (Ambrose of Milan, Letters XL). Emperor Theodosius decided not to test the saint’s resolve and complied with all his demands. But five years later the emperor was not spared a taste of what it means to sit at the sharp end of the saint’s wrath. In Thessalonica a popular race driver was arrested on charges of raping the wife of a soldier. The mob in the arena demanded the charioteer’s release, killed the injured soldier and dragged his body through the streets.

Theodosius called in the army, things got out of hand, and 6,000 civilians were massacred. It created a general outcry. By penalty of excommunication, Ambrose summoned the emperor to Milan. Theodosius "the Great" had a choice: he certainly could find some or other bishop, who in case of an excommunication would gladly have taken the emperor’s side, but this could only mean another schism, and this after the emperor himself had put his name to the laws decreeing unity of church and empire. The calculating Ambrose knew this. He made Theodosius kneel in sackcloth before him and all the people in the cathedral. Dressed beneath his status, with stubbles on his chin, the emperor was to wait in full public view for the gesture of reconciliation. Ambrose was on the summit of his powers. It seemed an ill chosen moment for Symmachus to challenge the saint on an issue of embarrassment for the Christian clergy.

Of all the forms of patronage, to which the Christian episcopate had been exposed, the most odious in the eyes of the Gentiles, was their dependence on wealthy women. St Paul had not a single good word for the opposite sex, but already had found lifelong support in Priscilla, Aquila, Phoebe, and another widow from Ephesus, women who brought food to his table and delivered the mail. Even Jesus himself was seen with “Mary called Magdalene, Joanna the wife of Herod's steward, Susanna, and many others," all married women who – what is the expression – "ministered unto him of their substance" (Luke, 8: 1). For generations the wealth of virgins, widows, and deaconesses continued to weave close ties of patronage with the clergy and many of these women came from the senatorial aristocracy. “Their houses are filled with flatterers and with guests. The very clergy, who ought to inspire them with respect by teaching and authority, kiss these ladies on the forehead, and putting forth their hands (so that, if you knew no better, you might suppose them in the act of blessing), take wages for their visits. They, meanwhile, seeing that priests cannot do without them, are lifted up into pride; and as, having had experience of both, they prefer the license of widowhood to the restraints of marriage, they call themselves chaste livers and nuns. After an immoderate supper they retire to rest to dream of the apostles” (Jerome, Letters XXII). It provided the ideal environment for ecclesiastic leaches like Sabinianus, or “The Postman,” as Jerome was calling him. As others before him, this Sabinianus had realized that there are two careers that allow you to freely cross the barriers of class and privilege, a realization that hadn’t escaped St Jerome a well: “if God were to stand forth on the moment as the avenger of iniquity, the church would lose many of its saints” (Jerome, Letters CXLVII).

From what Jerome is letting on, Sabinianus was the son of a prelate. “Remember who was the bishop ordaining you; you who uses to boast that you had been reared in the church” (Jerome, Letters CXLVII); in some dioceses clerical positions were already becoming hereditary sinecures. Sabinianus held the rank of a sub-deacon. Jerome says he had the looks of a groom on the way to his bride, wearing not sackcloth but silk and fine linen and loading his fingers with rings: “you use toothpowder for your teeth, you arrange the stray hairs on your brown skull to the best advantage. Your bull’s neck bulges out with fat, you are redolent of perfume, you go from one bath to another, you wage war against the hair that grows in spite of you, you walk through the forum and the streets as a spruce and smooth-faced rake.” (Jerome, Letters CXLVII). Every morning he inspected his polished leather shoes for creases and then eased in as careful as he could to avoid the shoes from bending. Sabinianus was ready to visit his “clients.”

Arriving at the crack of dawn when the mistress of the house was having a private moment with her own genital, he forced his way past the domestics into the bedchamber to catch her ladyship on her “infidelity” – preferably one of the flesh, but a “sin of the mind” would do just fine.

Exclaiming, “do you really think you can walk on glowing coals and not get burned,” he would avert his eyes, as if he couldn’t bear the sight, fidget about and in apparent embarrassment stammer words of praise for Her Ladyship’s elegant table-cover, or indeed anything in the room catching his fancy. The mistress, taking the hint, would think it smart to buy Sabinianus’ silence and offer him the object of his desire as a “gift to the poor.” What most of these women failed to realize was that in the hands of Sabinianus such token opened the door to further blackmail. Over time Sabinianus was thought to be the author of every salacious rumor, and people imagined this postman of scandal changing his exhausted horses every other hour, inventing scandals even “concerning those who are God’s servants. All this may perhaps seem to him a matter for jesting, seeing that he takes so much pleasure in comedies and mimes” (Jerome, Letters CXLVII).

At last Emperor Valentinian I (321 – 375 AD) stepped in.

His law told clerics and monks of every denomination in no uncertain terms to stay clear from the houses of orphans and widows, and not to receive from them “any gift, legacy, or feoffment in trust.” This did not really stop the likes of Sabinianus. Ten years later, St Jerome admitted that “by a fiction of trusteeship we set the statute at defiance; as if imperial decrees outweigh the mandates of Christ, we fear the laws and despise the Gospels. I do not complain of the law, but I grieve that we have deserved a statute so harsh” (Jerome, Letters LII). And harsh it was indeed; the Gentile patron of the Vestal virgins was to discover that the Valentinian legislation could also be turned against the funding of paganism.

As a man of independent means, Symmachus took it upon himself to speak for an unpopular cause and face possible recriminations (Symmachus, Letters I: 29; II: 39; III: 33-36; IV: 42; X: 34). As his deceased father in law would have done, he went to Milan and addressed the son of Emperor Valentinian.

“The treasury,” said Symmachus, “has lately retained the estates bequeathed on virgins and hierophants in deeds and wills. What good does it do for Your Graces’ revenue if the privileges of the Vestal Virgins are diminished? Does the most bountiful emperors refuse what before even the most parsimonious of the emperors have granted? The virgins’ sole honor is their chastity. Like the ornaments they wear, it is this distinction that gives them the right to officiate to the sacrifice. In return they receive immunity, a small privilege for someone taking the vow of poverty and not being allowed to charge a fee. So, inasmuch as virginity, when dedicated to the public good, is its own reward, the worshippers’ contribution out of their substance can only increase these women’s prestige. I entreat you, you priests of justice, to restore the lost right of inheritance to the people of the cloth and to the places of worship. Let people draw up their wills without anxiety, and let it be known that what has been written over shall be safe from the greed of the princes. Let this last happiness for a man in his dying hour give also pleasure to you.

“Is not the religion of Rome protected by the law and itself a patron of the law? What name should be given to unlawfully taking away property without cause or reason? Freedmen accept legacies, slaves are in their rights to make a will; only the noble virgins and the ministers of sacred solemnities are not allowed to inherit property? What would be the point to take the vows of chastity and commend the empire to the guardianship of heaven, what is the point to invoke the friendly powers to assist your war efforts, if the holy vows taken in the service of the public, deprive the priest of constitutional rights? And let no one think that I am defending the cause of religion only.

“From deeds of this kind, have repeatedly arisen all the misfortunes of the Roman race. The law of our ancestors honored the Vestal Virgins and the ministers of the gods with a modest maintenance and sensible privileges. This grant remained un-assailed until some degenerate money-broker turned the fund into a collateral for loans to porters and sewage cleaners. Should it surprise us when this did lead to a general famine, affecting all the provinces? No fault of Mother Earth, no evil influence from the stars did blight the crops, nor did wild oats destroy the corn. The harvest was failing because of the sacrilege, and by refusing to religion our dues everything else was made to suffer as well.

“A good prince should not suppose that the revenue has a claim on common property. A state is a corporation of individuals and what individuals pay from their property into the treasury becomes again the property of individuals when it leaves the revenue in the form of public expenditure. Your Highnesses rules by the mandate to protect what is each individual’s own. That is the difference between arbitrary tyranny and you, weighing in with justice.”

The teenage emperor Valentinian II handed the case over to his chief councilor, the bishop of Milan, and without as much as looking at the petitioner, Ambrose swatted the deposition off like a pesky fly: "The Christian virgins consecrated to God have no privileges from you, so what claim do you have on behalf of the Vestal Virgins? Why don’t you ask for the priests of God, what you are forwarding here in a profane petition on behalf of heathens only? The Lord Jesus said, “You cannot serve two masters.” Therefore don’t expect us to take up a share of the errors of others" (Ambrose of Milan, Letters XVII).

Yet what seemed an easy dismissal became a major embarrassment for Ambrose and the Christian establishment. Sabinianus had gone over to the dark side. St Jerome found out when he got hold of Sabinianus’ correspondence: “It is true, in these letters you swear that you have never led a chaste life,” Jerome noted, and it generated a lot of bad publicity. “Your face has become the face of a harlot,” said St Jerome in his indictment, “you know not how to blush. What obscenities! What blandishments! What exultant triumph in the prospect of a virgin’s dishonor. A deacon should not even know such things much less speak of them. Where have you learned them, you who used to boast that you had been reared in the church. Now all Italy is aware of your evil life; and it is everywhere a subject of lamentation that you should still stand before the altar of Christ. You have neither the cunning nor the forethought to conceal your vices. Like a dog in heat you glory in each intrigue as a triumph and emerge from it bearing palms of victory. The fire of incontinence seized you even in the quarters of a man of influence and power, and still you were not afraid to commit adultery in a house where the injured husband might have punished you without calling in a judge’s aid. You lured your quarry to suburban parks and gardens; and, in the husband’s absence behaved as boldly and madly as if you supposed your companion to be not your paramour but your wife. Now she is dishonored and exposed, while you have escaped through an underground passage and at last took your departure from Rome. In the company of brigands and thieves you managed to elude the aggrieved husband and yet did not think yourself safe until your ship slipped moors. You were rather willing to face a tempest at sea and like an apostle of the Antichrist, when found out in one city, you pass on to another. Now you have reached Syria and extend your visitations to Jerusalem as if to serve the Lord. Not knowing you, who would refuse to welcome a fellow prelate with all these letters of commendation by your bishop? You transformed yourself into an angel of light, while you are in reality a minister of Satan, a wolf in sheep’s clothing (Jerome, Letters CXLVII).

“Having played the adulterer towards the wife of a man, you desire now a spouse of Christ. You promised to marry your unhappy victim; in that venerable cave of Bethlehem you took from her, as a pledge of the engagement, locks of hair, a handkerchief and a girdle, swearing an oath that you would never love another as you loved her. The congregation was proclaiming Christ as its Lord when you squeezed your love-notes into a cavity by the altar, as if it still was the manger of the Lord, choosing this place in order that your victim may find and read them when she kneels to worship there, while you take your place among the singers, and with impudent nods communicate your passion to her. Oh! crying shame! As a token of her readiness to sleep with you, you even dared to accept that hair, which at Christ’s command she had cut off in the cave of His birth. You held vigils beneath her window from the evening till morning, conveying things to her and she to you by the aid of a rope. You already prepared ladders to fetch the virgin from her cell; you already made travel arrangements, already booked a passage at see and apointed a day” (Jerome, Letters CXLVII).

The scandal drew circles and encouraged Symmachus to call out Ambrose for a rematch; he also may have known that something else was in the making, a development beyond the reach of the saint. This time the matter was of concern for the House itself. Every morning before session, the eyes of the Senators fell on the bare pedestal of the statue of Victory. It was a constant reminder for the insult to the dignity of the senate. In 365 AD, Emperor Constantius II had ordered the statue’s removal, and since then the goddess had been in and out, depending on the inclination of the sitting bearer of the purple. Emperor Julian restored the statue; Emperor Gratian removed it again. In 385 AD, Symmachus approached the imperial courts with a plea for the return of the idol, the plea of a religious man.

"In the exercise of two offices,” he said, “I am attending to public business as your prefect and as the Speaker of the Senate, and I recommend to your notice the charge laid on me by the citizens. This is not an expression of dissent, but it is my task to watch out on behalf of Your Graces. What could be more appropriate in the institutions of our ancestors, and the rights and destiny of our country?

“We therefore demand the restoration of that condition of religious affairs which had been advantageous to the state for times immemorial. Are we on such good terms with the barbarians that there is no longer any need for the altar of Victory? If so, we shall be careful and withhold it from the public eye. But at least let us pay homage to the title, which is refused to the Goddess, the source of your greatness whose fame will last forever, and will be even greater after more victories to come. Will Your Graces desert a patronage, which is benign to your triumphs? For a power that is wished for by everybody, let no one deny the liberty to follow what is generally recognized the common desire. Allow us, we beseech you, as old men to leave to our children what we have received from our fathers.

 “By what symbol shall we be sworn in to obey your laws and commands? By what religious deterrent shall the irresolute mind be terrified, so as not to give false testimony? All things are indeed filled with God, and no place is safe for the perjured, but to be urged under the religious protocol has great power to impress on the mind a fear of sinning.

“Victoria’s altar is the corner stone for the concord of us all, an appeal to everybody’s good faith, and nothing gives more authority to our decrees than to have them issued by the Senate as it were under the sanction of an oath. We ask then to leave in peace the gods of our fathers and of our country. All forms of worship should lead to unity. We look up to the same stars, one sky looks down on all of us, and we share the same world. What difference does it make if each of us is seeking the truth in his own way? Truth is such a vast affair, how can it be achieved by taking only one road leading to it?

May the unseen guardians of every religion favor you, and may especially those, who in the old days have assisted our and your ancestors, defend you and listen to our prayers. We ask to restore the state of religious matters which has secured the empire for your Highnesses’ divine parent as well."

The address was never delivered, but Symmachus knew his opponent well enough to be expecting this. Ambrose would not permit the Speaker of the House ever again to create a public spectacle. An audience with the emperor was refused, and Symmachus had to submit his speech to the antechambers like every other petitioner. The saint wrote a brusque dismissal: “At his own admission Symmachus does not know which of his beliefs is leading to the truth. All men, living under the Roman sway, are liable to military service. Is it not by the same token that Your Graces, too, owe service to Almighty God and our holy faith? Salvation is not a sure thing, unless everyone, sincerely and with conviction, worships the true God, that is the God of the Christians, under whose sway are all things. He alone is the true God. The gods of the heathen, as scripture says, are devils. The return of the altar cannot be decreed without committing sacrilege” (Ambrose of Milan, Letters XVII). Ambrose may have thought, this is it, but for once he was out of his depth.

In 387 AD the troops in the West deserted Ambrose’s personal protégée, the emperor Valentinian II (375 – 392 AD), and raised the Gentile sympathizer Magnus Maximus (335 – 388 AD) to the purple. In the nick of time the teenager escaped on a fishing-craft to Constantinople. Emperor Theodosius was hesitant. He didn’t relish the prospect of all out civil war. On the other hand, even he felt, that between the three of them – Valentinian, Maximus and himself – the adolescent Valentinian had the best claim to legitimacy. Magnus Maximus, however, remained confident. Like Emperor Theodosius, he was a Spanish national. Before Theodosius had become emperor Maximus had served with him in Britain; he believed to know the man. There should be some kind of understanding. Ambrose was completely sidelined. Symmachus delivered the coronation address to the new emperor and statue and privileges were restored to the senate.

That is, until Emperor Theodosius made his move and the armies of Maximus were beaten in three battles and surrendered. On August 28, 388 AD, Maximus was court-martialed for treason and executed. Emperor Theodosius reinstated Valentinian II in Vienne in France – away from Ambrose, who took this as an affront, but for now kept bidding his time – and appointed the Frank General Arbogast as Valentinian’s chief of staff. The statue of Victory was removed again, this time for good.

In 391 AD, Symmachus became consul of Rome and upholding traditions, he introduced to the senate his ten-year-old (sic!) son, Quintus Fabius Memmius Symmachus. The lad was present when his father cautioned the assembly in a new conflict between the emperors, three years later.

Tired of General Arbogast’s intrusive guardianship, Emperor Valentinian II had handed him a note of dismissal. The general simply tore up the document. Valentinian had no authority to dismiss him because Arbogast had received his commission from the Emperor in Constantinople. The next morning Valentinian was found hanging from a noose in his bedroom. Arbogast denied all allegations of foul play, yet to fill the vacancy, he didn’t wait for orders from Constantinople. Instead he offered the purple to a personal friend, Eugenius, a mild mannered man of letters with friends in the senate. To the horror of the Christian ayatollahs, Eugenius issued edicts of toleration for his Gentile subjects, yet Symmachus, assessing the actual balance of power, did not hold his breath. Everywhere the clerical spin-doctors were cranking up the heat and spoke of the final showdown between Christians and Pagans. This was hardly true; the soldiers in both camps were mainly Christians. For the last time, a Roman emperor was leading his troops from the front.

In the battle of the Frigidus, on September 6, 394 AD, the unfortunate Eugenius was slain in his tent and his head held aloft on a pike, signaling to his troops that there was nothing more worth fighting for. Emperor Theodosius announced a general amnesty, yet General Arbogast preferred not to test the emperor’s clemency, escaped into the Austrian Alps and committed suicide in a public bath.

Emperor Theodosius installed in Milan the younger of his two teenage sons, Honorius (384 – 423 AD), as Emperor of the West. Honorius remained childless, the only good thing to be said about this creep. His brother, Arcadius (377 – 408 AD), was already Emperor of the East. He had Down syndrome but managed to produce heirs. On January 17, 395 AD Theodosius fell ill and the dying emperor entrusted “the empires of both sons” to the care of his chief of the joint imperial forces, Count Stilicho (Zosimus). The imperial corpse was still warm when things began to unravel.

Seemingly out of the blue, the governor of Africa declared a trade embargo on Italy and offered to place his province under the jurisdiction of Constantinople. The move threatened Italy with famine. Honorius’ administration could not afford to yield, even if this should mean open war between the brothers. Caught in the middle of what seemed a turf war between civil administrations, Stilicho, the supreme commander of the armies, was facing a dilemma: how could he possibly take sides in such a conflict?

He looked for the ancient equivalent of an UN resolution and turned to the Senate of Rome. The senate obliged and declared the governor of Africa a public enemy. Immediately the regime in Constantinople retaliated with recriminations against Stilicho. Embassies went to and fro between Italy and Constantinople (Symmachus, Letters IV: 5; Claudianus; Orosius, VII: 36). Keeping himself in the background, Stilicho delegated operations to his chief of staff, a general of Gothic stock “who knew as well how to command as to preserve his troops,” and was known to “voluntarily spare the prisoners of war and allot to them some or other district around the Italian towns for cultivation” (Ammianus). A fleet of transports assembled in the port of Pisa. The expedition force counted barely 2,500 men under arms. Without firing a single shot they landed in Africa and dispersed the rabble confronting them. The governor of Africa tried to escape to Constantinople but unfavorable winds threw his vessel back to the African coast. He opened his veins to avoid arrest and the crisis seemed resolved. During Honorius’ minority Stilicho became the de facto regent in Milan.

In Constantinople, however, he was losing all his influence. This was no accident.

Slow but unstoppable the formidable Praetorian Prefect of Constantinople, Anthemius (346 – 414 AD) had become the power behind the throne of Arcadius. His not very spacious office overlooked the Bosporus. Surrounded by shelves bending under piles of paperwork, he managed the affairs of the East in the style of William Pitt, the 1st Earl of Chatham. And like Pitt he had come to his post with a solid grounding in the finances. Historians have called him the second founder of Constantinople. Emperor Justinian’s “renovatio imperii” was later putting the sound-bite to the political blueprint of Anthemius strategy: to isolate the prefectures of Illyricum and Africa from Italian influence, while throwing the prefecture of Gaul to the wolves – the marauding tribes from the Eastern border – and so eventually take over the strangulated prefecture of Italy as well. We see the shadow of the Byzantine Empire rise on the horizon; the religious schisms were a reflection of the political trend (Duchesne, Eglises séparees, 1892). It was a plan with a long view. The prefect had a lot on his plate. Lack of shipping space had created food shortages in Constantinople. Anthemius offered tax incentives for the shipping industry and subsidized the purchase of grain from Egypt and from the lands on the Black Sea. He created storage facilities and an emergency fund for the procurement and distribution of milled wheat to the public. Anthemius reformed the revenue and tightened the auditioning of public expenses, thus restoring confidence in the state. To get through with his program the prefect used every trick in the book. As the Empress Eudoxia gave birth to Theodosius II, the baby was immediately proclaimed emperor and new decrees and laws announced in his name, not by Emperor Arcadius or Eudoxia, but by the person holding the baby at the baptismal fount. The dumbfounded Arcadius stood by and had no idea what was happening, Eudoxia pretended not to notice; it was all part of a plan.

Stilicho’s wife and children were still living in Constantinople. Stilicho sent Serena a message. Except for the man at the window overseeing the port of Constantinople, nobody looked up when a lonely but luxurious vessel left the Hellespont and hoisted sail to cross the Adriatic Sea towards Italy.

It was a symbol. East- and West Rome were parting ways for good.

Back home, in the seclusion of his study, the best gift for a friend Symmachus could think of was a corrected copy of Livy’s history (Symmachus, Letters IX: 13). The poet Virgil became an object of worship, the Aeneid a dispenser of sortileges (Symmachus, Letters III: 11; 13; IV: 34). Many senators drew comfort from reading the satires of Juvenal and very little else, but Symmachus never tired of consigning to memory entire passages from the canon of the Gentile classics: Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Livy and Pliny. Pliny the Younger was his literary model, yet he knew of course why in his day and age there could be no second Pliny. The imperial police routinely inspected the mailbags. The intelligentsia responded with apathy. Except for the official dispatch, no Gentile author would care to mention any matter from after the fall of the Republic. With a nod of approval, Symmachus quoted the philosopher and statesman Seneca: “The rivers run shallow and the mountains have shrunk; the entire cosmos is in decline.” From Constantinople, news arrived of an earthquake. Standing on top of the ruins of the severely damaged Cathedral, St Chrysostom shouted: "the vices of the rich have caused this calamity, but the prayers of the poor have averted worse to come."

This was the golden age of the sermon, the age of the bloodcurdling exhortation. The urban Gentile responded with Ciceronian eloquence (Symmachus, Letters II: 35; I: 45; IV: 28; V: 86; VII: 9), but lacking the platform of a congregation at church, he was prevented from bringing his nuanced and well-reasoned plea to a wider audience. The finest minds of the period explored the prosodic characteristics of every word in the dictionary and occupied themselves with the all-important question whether to begin a sentence with an anapest or a spondee. Syntactic intricacies for which we no longer have names became the subject of voluminous tomes. Every gesture, down to the toss of the cloak's hemp, was part of a formalized etiquette; every sentence was meant to recall the “the old days of beauty and philosophy” (Symmachus, Letters II, 3; III: 51).

The idiom in Symmachus’ letters is a mix of archaic simplicity interspersed with abstract terminologies borrowed from the sciences and crafts (Symmachus, Letters III: 22; 44). The man had more dictionaries than friends for company and his reader better has many dictionaries as his friends if he wishes to keep up with the author’s bitter reflections on his own political impotence, which became painfully apparent when in 400 AD Marshal Stilicho delivered to the senate the inaugural address for his first term as Consul of Rome, celebrating the high point of his career. His propagandist has depicted him as the gentle giant, giving the empire a last reprieve in a rapidly fading Indian summer, “geminos dextra tu protege fratres:”

“Was ever so noble a face? What heart but yours is strong enough to bear so many troubles? Seeing you standing out in the crowd everybody says: 'This is Stilicho!' A commanding aspect without arrogance and pomposity, and white hair has increased the reverence your face inspires. Never has your sword spilled a citizens’ blood. No cruelty on your part arouses animosity; favoritism has never stained your administration” (Claudianus, Epithalamius). The young cavalry officer crossing the dusty Plaines of Persia to sue for peace had come a long way.

Symmachus and the senators were invited to attend the betrothal of Stilicho’s ten-year-old daughter Maria to Emperor Honorius, who was seventeen at the time.

At nightfall the bride was conducted in a veiled sedan chair to the house of the bridegroom. Troops of dancing-girls followed her into the house, entertaining the guests. “Never before felt the groom this fire, nor did he know what made him sigh when he carved the girl’s name into the bark of a tree. Red flowers festoon the standards of war, this day the flute shall sound instead of the bugle. Unfold the yellow-dyed silks from China, roll out the carpets of Sidon” (Claudianus, Epithalamius). Stilicho’s battle hardened veterans filed in left and right of the imperial couple, men with scars in the face and wide gaps in the toothy grin. They wore long white robes, holding nothing more threatening in their hands than a small basket filled with the petals of red roses. It’s true. We have it from the master of ceremony himself.

Out of a quaint sense of tradition Symmachus used to put his numerous daughters to carding and spinning, yet when he came home from a visit to the imperial court, only the maidservants kept carding the wool. The daughters clustered around Symmachus, grilling daddy about every lurid detail of the haute couture at court. The high heels, buskins so tall, that only the helping hand of an attendant would keep the woman steady. The actual dress was a tight fit of printed fabrics underneath a bodice of gold embroidered bandages, barely taming the torrential overflow of the mutton leg sleeves. And “this is only one dress out of a chest full for every day of the year!” The girls looked at their father with dreamy eyes. As usual, Symmachus didn’t take notice; he said: “Your mother was so different!” The daughters nodded with a sigh. Symmachus went for a last holiday to the paradisiacal coast of Naples, the gulf of Bajae – the Romans' favorite spa. He owned a yacht there, a colorful barge rigged with a scarlet lateen sail. From the Avernian lakes, the wind carried him into the gulf towards Puteoli where “from other vessels and form villas at the shore, a gentle breeze carried music, laughter and the splashing of swimmers in the water” (Symmachus, Letters VIII: 23).

On the way back to Rome he spent a night at Campania to avoid "the congested traffic in the metropolis” (Symmachus, Letters I: 8). The people celebrated Stilicho’s victories over the Goths at Pollenzo and Verona. For the first and only time in his life Emperor Honorius entered the city of Rome. 150,000 people fringed the streets to the Capitol, watching the parade. It was autumn, "the new wine is ready to be crushed and consigned to the care of oak barrels. Stepladders reach into the top of the fruit trees; we now press the olive. Later we shall go hunting the boar with baying hounds sniffing the track" (Symmachus, Letters III: 33).

In the senate Stilicho delivered the address for his second consulate with – guess who, guess again – the Praetorian Prefect Anthemius as his colleague. The prefect’s election in absentia was part of a scheme to turn the tables on Constantinople. On October 6, 404 AD, the gilded gates to the palace on the Golden Horn had opened to receive a throng of professional mourners. The Empress Eudoxia was dead. Hearing this, Emperor Honorius got it into his head to move his seat of government from Milan to Constantinople and assume guardianship over the two emperors there, his ailing brother Arcadius and the three-year-old nephew Theodosius II. During his long and useless reign, Honorius was never anything else than the mouthpiece of just about anybody who was standing in his earshot. The plan came to nothing, of course, and Stilicho saw to it that Honorius was transferred to a place of greater security. The imperial court moved from Milan to the impenetrable fortifications of Ravenna.

The first decree arriving from the new capital commanded to burn the Sibyllines, ancient books of prophesy; perhaps the most treasured cult object for any Gentile in Rome. In silence people watched the scrolls been carried out of the temple and tossed onto the flames; the custodial college of the fifteen augurs, of which Symmachus was a member, was summarily disbanded. Short after, the people of Rome mourned for her finest poet. Claudius Claudianus (370 – 404 AD) was a native from Alexandria. He had adopted a foreign language as his medium of expression and excelled in it with an Ovidian felicity, superior to any writer native to the language at the time.

The next send-off was for Symmachus himself. His son presided over the solemnities.

Everywhere the world was falling to pieces. The senators in Rome projected themselves as a Masonic brotherhood; the last custodians of culture and learning in the entire world, "asylum mundi totis" (Ammianus XVI: 20; Symmachus, Letters I: 89; V: 62 VI: 55; VIII: 41; IX: 67). The big monasteries began recruiting the very young. These adolescent monks and nuns did not simply vanish behind the cloister walls. Years later, they reappeared as the new clerical elite with a Christian education based exclusively on liturgy and the Bible. What this means we see these days in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Education is mandatory but the state will not spend a single penny on public schools. So the pauper, who can’t afford the fees for private schooling, will send his kids to the Maddrassas where the only item on the curriculum is the Quran and nothing but the Quran. This has become the breeding ground of the Taliban. Not unlike the intellectual dissident in modern Iran, the cultured Gentile retreated to the privacy of his home. The son of Symmachus entertained his guests with recitals from his father's correspondence, 900 letters and extracts from the speeches. Senator Macrobius published in 430 AD the Saturnalia. Without as much as mentioning Christianity, the book covered religion, grammar, oratory, the etymology of names, even nutrition and medicine. There are more epistolary collections from the 5th century than since the beginning of time. It was the age when the autobiography was born. Travelers have left us their itineraries. Proclus (412 – 485 AD), the last in the golden chain of Neo-Platonic philosophers, was a mathematician of note; there was an Indian summer of outstanding poetry. In Africa, after the invasion of the Vandals, Martianus Minneus Felix Capella single-handedly invented the medieval curriculum of grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music. He wrote a book On the Wedding of Philology and Mercury and of the Seven Liberal Arts. A dissident on death row, Boethius (480 – 524 AD), wrote an all time golden book, The Consolation of Philosophy. It remained the most loved book throughout the medieval ages. The author hat passed a life of lip service to Christianity, but in his hour of distress the Consolation is taking recourse exclusively to Gentile philosophy. In Constantinople an immigrant from Africa, Nonnos of Panopolis (400 – 476 AD), the most versatile poet in the Greek language ever, composed the Dionysiaca, a story about the life and exploits of the god Dionysus. A work of sheer genius, baroque, complex, and of insufferable monotony; the Finnegan’s Wake of ancient times. After 21,000 hexameters of unrelenting mythology, Nonnos finally got fed up and went to the church next door for a dip into the baptismal basin. He took holy orders and later published a poetic paraphrase of the Gospel of John. By now, refusing to get wet in the baptismal font would not just lose you your inheritance.

You were ordered to present yourself and your family at the church next door to receive instruction (Codex Iustinianus I.xi.8), Failing to comply risked losing everything you owned and left you and your family homeless and destitute (Codex Iustinianus I.xi.9; XVI.x.12). In 434 AD, the son of Symmachus received the baptism.

© – 7/16/2009 – by michael sympson, 14,000 words, all rights reserved