Latin Literature of the Fourth Century (Routledge Revivals)

J. Binns

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317808572
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient Languages
• Index: Literature

This volume, offering an insight into the literary world of Rome in the fourth century AD, reflects an increased interest in the writers of the 150 years before the collapse of the Western Empire, who have long been over-shadowed by the pre-eminence accorded since the eighteenth century to the Golden and Silver ages.

Among the writers examined are Ausonius, the poet, Imperial official and tutor to Gratian; Claudian, the last major 'classical' poet; Prudentius, and Paulinus of Nola, two of the founders of Christian Latin poetry; Symmachus, the letter writer and supporter of die-hard paganism; and St. Augustine, whose influence on Christian thought and the Middle Ages is incalculable. These essays consider how such writers responded to a world where vitality was ebbing from the old forms of political life, religion and literature, giving way to new institutions, modes of life and horizons of reflection.

III

The Letters of Symmachus

J. F. Matthews

I

In the winter of 401/2, Q. Aurelius Symmachus travelled from Rome for the last time, as an envoy of the senate to the imperial court at Milan. His journey, which he briefly described in two letters to his son, was beset by inconvenience.¹ The direct road to Milan was unsafe for travellers, enforcing a laborious detour by way of Ticinum (Pavia). The rigours of the journey itself, always considerable at that time of year, were aggravated by Symmachus’ poor state of health; now an old man of sixty, he had for some years been troubled by a bad liver and attacks of gout (which it would doubtless be uncharitable to regard as the natural consequences of an aristocratic life). Arriving at Milan, he was received graciously by the emperor, Honorius, but obliged to await the return of Stilicho, the effective political eminence of the day, before he could present the petition which he had brought from the senate.² Symmachus returned to Rome early in 402, the emperor’s courtesy fresh in his mind; but he had to inform the court that his health was not restored.³ From the abrupt cessation of his letters, which were in their most intensive phase during the last few years of Symmachus’ life, it is safe to infer his death soon after his return to Rome.

From other sources, we can reconstruct in greater detail the background of Symmachus’ visit to Milan. The direct road to the court city was rendered unsafe by no less an event than the first invasion of Italy by Alaric the Visigoth (in 401–2).⁴ The absence of Stilicho was caused, according to his propagandist Claudian, by the need to recruit troops and to repel a Vandal incursion in Raetia.⁵ Indeed, Claudian would suggest that Milan itself was threatened, and that the return of Stilicho, with the reinforcements that Symmachus too had anticipated in one of the letters to his son, was barely in time to save the city from Alaric: his picture of its inhabitants, crowding the walls for a sight of their returning saviour, lends an entirely new dimension to the anxieties of Symmachus’ visit.⁶ At the same time, north Italian bishops were prevented by the invasion from attending the dedication of a new church by Gaudentius of Brescia⁷ and when Symmachus returned to Rome, it was to a city recently – perhaps even during his absence – re-fortified by the direct initiative of the imperial court.⁸ And finally: had Symmachus survived to visit the court again a year later, he would have found himself travelling from Ariminum, not along the familiar Via Aemilia through Bononia to Milan, but along the coastal road to Ravenna. For the court, thoroughly scared by the previous winter’s experiences, had taken its refuge behind the shifting lagoons and marshes that would also, in time, protect the Ostrogothic kings of Italy and the Byzantine Exarchate.⁹

This reconstruction of the last episode of Symmachus’ life well illustrates the feature of his correspondence which has caused most irritation among its modern readers: his apparent lack of response to the most pressing political events of his day. Sym-machus’ later years were overshadowed by the threat of barbarian invasion. He ended his life with the threat realised in actuality – and to meet it, the Roman court of Milan under the control of a half-Vandal regent; yet the course of these events can scarcely begin to be told from the letters of the most prolific correspondent of the time. It had been the same a quarter of a century earlier. In the last months of 378, Symmachus had written to an acquaintance from the imperial court, Eutropius, in the aftermath of the greatest military disaster of the late empire – the battle of Hadrianople, in which the eastern emperor Valens had been killed and most of his army destroyed. Symmachus alluded in his letter to the precarious situation of the Roman state, and to the strenuous efforts of the surviving western emperor, Gratian, to sustain it.¹⁰ Now this was no more than courteous, since it can be shown that Eutropius was himself playing an important role in the crisis – he was involved in the political manœuvres and negotiations that brought the new emperor, Theodosius, to the eastern throne in place of Valens.¹¹ But Symmachus declined to pursue this topic, consigning it instead to Eutropius’ proven abilities as a historian (he was the author of the highly successful Breviarium, dedicated to Valens); and he reverted to more intimate concerns – the state of his own health, which had been bad but, Eutropius would be reassured to know, was now improved. This too was an appropriate remark to make to Eutropius, whatever we may think of its suitability to the political events in which he was involved: for Eutropius was known as an expert on medicine as well as on Roman history.¹² Meanwhile, Eutropius was encouraged to assist Symmachus’ convalescence by granting him the benefit of a letter from his pen.

These reactions of Symmachus to political events of his day are typical of what can perhaps be called a ‘systematic reticence’ concerning them: a tendency to evade the unpleasant or excessively dramatic, an unwillingness to allow the surface of his correspondence to be clouded by mention of disturbing events. For he cannot be held unaware of their significance. He was evidently alive to the importance of the battle of Hadrianople – in other letters to Eutropius he recommended men who would soon appear as supporters of the new emperor Theodosius, and he welcomed the imperial victories which he personally was honoured to announce to the senate in 379:¹³ nor can he have been unconscious of any of the circumstances surrounding his journey to Milan in the winter of 401/2.

It was confronted by this persistent evasiveness on Symmachus’ part that his great editor, Otto Seeck, was moved to comment wryly on his labour, that if an author of such limited talent was likely to find few readers in his own right, yet many might be drawn to consult him on one particular point or another.¹⁴ It is a judgment which, made in passing but allied to an edition of monumental authority, has found few dissentients. The letters of Symmachus have been consistently characterised: as ‘words without content’, ‘the dullest epistles in the Latin language’.¹⁵ ‘Never’, wrote one critic (by no means the least sympathetic), ‘has any man written so much to say so little.’¹⁶ For the disappointed historian, Symmachus simply ‘tells us less than might have been expected of the events of his day’ – while at the same time, according to the harshest recent opinion, being utterly devoid of literary merit.¹⁷

It is not difficult to understand these sentiments. Symmachus lived through an age of military crisis and religious diversity, perhaps the most tumultuous (certainly, for a modern student, the most richly documented) age since that of Cicero. Yet he is far from casting Cicero’s light on it. In a correspondence of nine hundred letters, extending from the middle 360s to 402, political highlights are few, moments of real personal involvement sparingly offered. Instead of the colour, the variety and descriptive vigour that we might have expected from a contemporary, we are shown the repetitive routine of upper-class life, reduced to its most monotonously undemonstrative: estate administration, the sale and purchase of property; travel with its petty inconveniences, the polite exchange of invitations to stay on the estates of senatorial colleagues or to entertain them on one’s own; interminable petitions for the social and political advancement of clients, for their protection in litigation by sympathetic governors, in professional difficulties by indulgent officials. The majority of the letters are notes of a mere few lines, expressed in a language as artificially wrought as it is often tantalisingly allusive. Over a quarter of the nine hundred concern the recommendation of protégés to well-placed acquaintances, brief notes for which the reputation of the writer was clearly of greater significance than anything he actually said of the candidate. Thus, taken at random:

The merits of Sexio, formerly governor of Calabria [cf. ILS 790], are well spoken of by many, who have therefore requested that I should recommend him to your patronage (suffragium). It is part of the generosity habitu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• I. Paganism, Christianity and the Latin Classics in the Fourth Century
• II. Decimus Magnus Ausonius: The Poet and His World
• III. The Letters of Symmachus
• IV. The Two Worlds of Paulinus of Nola
• V. Claudian
• VI. Prudentius
• Subject Index
• Name Index