Keeping the Faith – Symmachus and his Time

 

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 Senate of Roman, 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, dressmakers, secretaries, maidens for his lordship’s pleasure, a prompter, the security detail of retired gladiators and of course his lordship’s chamberlain, the inevitable eunuch. They called you by your first name and with unfailing condescension, meted out the exact degree of affability called for by an owner of chariots, estates, and traditions. On the next day not even the master’s prompter remembered you. Despite the witticism of lighthearted repartees 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 325 – 391 AD).

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, yet not expected 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 already 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 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 lid on the Goths in her service and to obstruct the powerful Vandal Stilicho.

The right to issue law in the name of the sovereign, the "popolus romanus," rested with the emperor’s power as tribune of the people, which only the Senate of Rome could bestow on him; a constitutional paradox. 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 auditioning 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 public money, 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. As part of his election campaign for the position of Rome’s praefectus urbis – the chief of police – Symmachus 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.” For infractions your own domestics were expected to report you to the authorities. 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. The holy mob cut the corpse to pieces and scraped the flesh from the bones with shells and potshards, 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 instructed Christian clerics in the sciences. The admirable Bishop Synesius of Cyrene, a scholar and gentlemen, if ever there was any, was one of her students.

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.

When Emperor Aurelian (214 – 275 AD.) was introducing the cult of the “Deus Sol Invictus,” with December 25 as the highest holiday, he had followed a universal trend. The wide spectrum of cults and religions in the empire headed 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. Christians and Gentiles shared a universal fear of demons "whose hearts do not know how to be touched by human prayer" (Virgil, Georgics). 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. Messengers from the unseen world could 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 as his ambassadors to the heathens in Persia, where they decided to stay on for the rest of their lives. "Gnosis" – knowledge – alone no longer guaranteed salvation; the minutes of painstaking ritual became all important. A ritual sometimes meant 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, like the Witch of Endor, conjured up the dead to predict the future (Ammianus, XXVIII: 1). To cover his trail Maximinus became an impersonation of Roland Freisler and unleashed a ferocious prosecution of Roman senators on trumped up charges. 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 Nicene. Back from the synod, Bishop Spyridon was grieved to learn, that his teenage daughter Irene had passed away. During her father’s absence a neighbor 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).

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).

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. In the pope’s entourage a retainer held the reins of a pair of sleek horses pulling an empty chariot as a symbol of status. 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, continuing to draw 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). When Praetextatus and his men finally forced entry they counted 137 corpses.

When Praetextatus didn’t have to put thieves into jail and enforce fire regulations his project was the restoration of paganism. Treading a fine line with the law, he dared to make formal inquests in the desecration of pagan temples and set out to restore the 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) says that every square-foot of Greece is hallowed ground, bearing 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 in a manger worshipped by shepherds. His devotees consumed the Eucharist. 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).

So it would be wrong to think of Praetextatus and his friends as a circle of shriveled Tories who simply had missed the train. And when it came to matters of social conscience it was not the Christians who brought freedom to bonded labor. In the Saturnalia, Praetextatus is on record as the first and only ancient advocate for universal manumission (Macrobius, Saturnalia, I, 11: 2-50).

In 384 AD, Symmachus’ father in law passed away. For Saint 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 lurking in his heart. 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 boarded a navy cruiser, waiting to carry him to his next assignment as Proconsul of Africa.

On his arrival it turned out, the most pressing task was to prevent the Christian factions – 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. He was passing through Madaura on an inspection tour, when he was introduced to a dazzling young man of great intellectual powers. Himself graced by the intellectual’s hemorrhoid, Symmachus was intrigued.

The young man would later be known as St. Augustine (354 – 430 AD), but at the meeting he hadn’t converted yet. Symmachus found him an opening as professor of rhetoric in Milan. On his arrival Augustine queued up for an interview with St. Ambrose.

Augustine never realized that Bishop Ambrose had looked right through the narcissism of his visitor. The Prelate of Milan had no need for men of intellectual brilliance; he was looking for leadership. Without much ado, Ambrose baptized the young man 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, was walking right through. In 429 AD, King Gaiseric and his Vandals knocked at the gates of Hippo. This was Augustine’s moment to make history, and he missed it. All he accomplished with his inflammatory appeals was misery and division 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. 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,” wrote Augustine in his autobiography, “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 had a way of combining threats and blackmail with allegations, innuendo and solicitous interpretations. The correspondence of Ambrose is a master-class in how to blackball somebody into submission. In 395 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 worthy of a Nazi ideologue.

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 the emperor was not spared a taste of what could have been, when ten years later a popular race driver was arrested on charges of raping the wife of a soldier. The mob in the arena of Thessalonica 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.

Like every other penitent the emperor had to wait his turn among fishmongers and shopkeepers in a specially designated area at the back of the church, furthest from the apse. 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.

Of all the forms of patronage, to which the Christian clergy was exposed, the most odious in the eyes of the gentile observer, was their dependence on wealthy women. St. Paul had not a single good word for the opposite sex, but 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). 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. 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 his 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 gaze at half naked girls playing the flute.” The word of scripture is unequivocal: “Whosoever of you has not forsaken all his possessions, he cannot be my disciple” (Lk, 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 streets. 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. 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.

The other career is that of a prostitute. From what Jerome is letting on, Sabinianus was the son of a prelate. In some dioceses clerical positions were already becoming hereditary sinecures. Sabinianus had risen to the rank of a sub-deacon. Every morning he generously masked the body odors with expensive perfumes and pulled out unwanted hair with a pair of tweezers, before moving on to the hair he wished to keep. An iron tong was heated to burn curls into the crest of his hairs, the rest falling straight to his shoulders. He decided against braiding his hair like the Huns, but massaged aromatic oils into his black goatee, to give it the desired pointy shape. He even applied mascara to have his eyes look at you with a searing penetration. Before pulling over a tight fitting cassock of printed fabric with strands of silver woven in, he inspected his polished leather shoes for creases and then eased in as careful as he could to avoid the shoes from bending. Jerome says, “he had the looks of a groom on the way to his bride.” Sabinianus was ready to visit a “client.”

Arriving at the crack of dawn, preferably 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 of the flesh, but of the mind will do.

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.

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

His law told clerics and monks 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. “By a fiction of trusteeship we set the statute at defiance,” wrote Saint Jerome. “I do not complain of the law, but I grieve that we have deserved a statute so harsh.” Yet for the Gentile hierophant and the Vestal virgins the Valentinian legislation turned out to be a double-edged sword. It could just as well be applied on them and their patrons.

By then, Symmachus was already used to expose himself to recriminations. As a grandee of independent means he felt he could speak up for whatever cause he chose (Symmachus, Letters I: 29; II: 39; III: 33-36; IV: 42; X: 34). He therefore took it upon himself to bring this to the imperial court’s attention.

“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.”

As usual the regime in Milan was pressed by chronic insolvencies, so the reply was rather curt: "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).

Symmachus certainly was ill advised to challenge St. Ambrose for a rematch, yet every morning, before the senate went in session, he couldn’t help resting his eyes on the bare pedestal of the statue of Victory, a constant reminder for the insult to the dignity of the House. After Emperor Constantius II had ordered her removal, 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. His speech is 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. Ambrose advised against permitting the Speaker of the House an audience and Symmachus had to submit his speech to the antechambers like every other petitioner. Without as much as facing his opponent, Saint Ambrose wrote the 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).

And that was that, yet there was an unexpected break for Symmachus. In 387 AD the troops in the West deserted the boy emperor Valentinian II (375 – 392 AD) to the purple. In the nick of time the teenager escaped on a fishing-craft to Constantinople and asked for redress. 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. He had served with Theodosius in Britain and believed to know the man; there should be some kind of understanding. Ambrose had no influence with Maximus, Symmachus delivered the coronation address to the new emperor and the statue and the privileges were restored to the senate. That was until his armies surrendered to Emperor Theodosius and it was all over for Maximus. On August 28, 388 AD he faced his executioner. Emperor Theodosius reinstated Valentinian II in Vienne in France, leaving him there at the mercy of his Frankish chief of staff, General Arbogast. 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 advised caution to the assembly three years later. After an altercation with General Arbogast, Emperor Valentinian II had been found hanging from a noose in his bedroom. To fill the vacancy, Arbogast didn’t wait for orders from Constantinople and 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. 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.

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. It was also the last time a Roman emperor was leading his troops from the front.

Emperor Theodosius I was an amiable and approachable person. A long train of cooks and butlers attended to his table and the eunuchs in his service gave cause to countless scandals. Theodosius could appear indolent and slow to act, but he never lost sight of the bigger picture. The kingdom of Persia was Rome’s most powerful adversary in the East. Without a secure border Theodosius would be incapable of dealing with his problems in the West.

He decided to send a trusted flag officer on a diplomatic mission to Ctesiphon, the Persian capital. His choice fell on his commander of the mounted guards, Count Stilicho, the son of a Vandal cavalry officer.

The count was sent to meet a monarch who not only controlled Iraq and Iran, but wide stretches of Afghanistan and inner Asia and held diplomatic ties with the Chinese. King Shapur III of the House of Sassan was an unassuming and intelligent politician, who preferred to pass his days in a traditional tent, pitched on the lawns before the impressive palace. Stilicho returned from his mission with a resounding success. The treaty from 384 AD bought Emperor Theodosius the time he needed. The grateful emperor betrothed his adopted niece Serena to Stilicho. He then installed in Milan the younger of his two teenage sons, Honorius (384 – 423 AD), as Augustus of the West. Honorius remained childless, the only good thing to be said about this creep. His brother, Arcadius (377 – 408 AD), was already Augustus of the East. He had Down syndrome but managed to produce heirs. Emperor Theodosius fell ill. On January 17, 395 AD the dying emperor promoted Count Stilicho to the highest position in the imperial forces and entrusted to his care “the empires of both sons” (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 the chief of the joint imperial forces was facing a dilemma. Stilicho looked for the ancient equivalent of an UN resolution and turned to the Senate of Rome. The senate complied and declared the governor of Africa a public enemy. Immediately the regime in Constantinople replied 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 went on the run. Unfavorable winds threw his ship back to the African coast, and he opened his veins to avoid arrest. The crisis seemed resolved. During Honorius’ minority Stilicho became the de facto regent in Milan. In Constantinople, however, he'd lost all his influence. This was no accident.

Slow but unstoppable the formidable Praetorian Prefect of Constantinople, Anthemius (346 – 414 AD) became the man 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 vision of Anthemius: 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 ceremony. The dumbfounded Arcadius stood by and had no idea what was happening, Eudoxia pretended not to notice.

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 had parted ways for good.

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 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 whole cosmos is in decline.”

This was the golden age of the sermon; some of the greatest preachers of the faith made the barreled ceilings of their churches reverberate with bloodcurdling exhortations. 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 start a sentence with an anapest or a spondee. Syntactic intricacies for which we no longer have names became the subject of voluminous tomes. In public deliveries, every gesture, down to the toss of the cloak's hemp, was part of a formalized code; every sentence was meant to be reminiscent of “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 Stilicho delivered to the senate the inaugural address for his first term as Consul of Rome. The marshal celebrated 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).

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. From Constantinople, news arrived of an earthquake that had inflicted severe damage on the Great Cathedral when Symmachus went for a last holiday on 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 received 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 in Constantinople opened to a throng of professional mourners. The Empress Eudoxia had died of a miscarriage. In Milan Emperor Honorius got it into his head to move his seat of government 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 got out of the way of his advisors. The imperial court moved from Milan to the strong fortifications of Ravenna.

The first decrees 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, Rome lost her finest poet. Claudius Claudianus (370 – 404 AD) was a native from Alexandria who not only had adopted a foreign language as his medium of expression, but also excelled in it with an Ovidian felicity, superior to any writer native to the language at the time.

The next funeral was that of Symmachus himself. His son presided over the solemnities.

All around the world was falling to pieces and the Senate in Rome saw itself as a Masonic brotherhood; the last refuge for 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). 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, a book modeled on Cicero's Conversations in Tusculum. Without as much as mentioning Christianity, the book covered religion, grammar, oratory, the etymology of names, even nutrition and medicine. By now, refusing the baptism would lose you your inheritance.

Failing to present yourself and your family at the church next door to receive instruction (Codex Iustinianus I.xi.8), 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, 11,600 words, all rights reserved