Christian Emperors and Roman Elites in Late Antiquity

Rita Lizzi Testa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000591231
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This book brings together a number of case studies to show some of the ways in which, as soon as the Roman Senate gained new political authority under Constantine and his successors, its members crowded the political scene in the West.

In these chapters, Rita Lizzi Testa makes much of her work – the fruit of decades of research –available in English for the first time. The focus is on the aristocratics' passion for aruspical science, the political use of exphrastic poems, and even their control of the hagiographic genre in the late sixth century. She demonstrates how Roman senators were chosen as legates to establish proactive relations with Christian emperors, their ministers and military commanders, and Eastern and Western provincial elites. Senators wove a web of relations in the Eastern and Western empires, sewing and stitching the empire's fabric with their diplomatic skills, wealth, and influence, while lively and highly litigious assembly activity still required of them a cultured rhetoric. Through employing astute political strategies, they maintained their privileges, including their own beliefs in ancient cults.

Christian Emperors and Roman Elites in Late Antiquity provides a crucial collection for students and scholars of Late Antique history and religion, and of politics in the Late Roman Empire.

1 Constantine and the Senatorial Aristocracy: The Men and Women He Could not Ignore

DOI: 10.4324/b22863-1

Constantine remains a fruitful topic, even after the numerous works published during the modern celebrations for his proclamation in Trier (306), the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (312), and the Edict of Milan (313).¹ Many of his actions continue to be debated, essentially because the ancient sources are numerous but not exhaustive, and have conflicting perspectives, leading to interpretations often conditioned by scholars’ own religious or political convictions.² Constantine's relationship with the senatorial aristocracy offers a good example. In the sixth century, Zosimus wrote that, when Constantine refused to ascend the Capitoline Hill with the army to perform the customary rites, he aroused so much hostility within the Senate and in the people of Rome that he felt the urge to look for “a city that would counterbalance Rome, where he built his Palace”.³ The emperor himself, on the other hand, addressing the shipmasters of the Orient in 334, proclaimed that he had built a new city on the orders of God: “For the advantage of the City which We have endowed with the name Eternal by God's command …”.⁴ While Constantine believed that such an important decision had been inspired by God, a hostile pagan tradition assumed that he had been driven out of Rome and needed to set up his home somewhere else. In fact, the relationship between Constantine and the Roman aristocrats has long been examined on the assumption that the noble families of Rome, being still pagan, hated the new emperor, who had recently converted to Christianity.⁵ But scholars have found also more positive motivations for his transforming Byzantium into Constantinople. After 20 years of ruling only in the West, founding a new city on the Bosporus and a new Senate there was the best way to control an Eastern empire that he had conquered by force.⁶ This impressive building activity freed up economic energies after years of crisis.⁷ The creation of new governing bodies, and a Senate in particular, rekindled a wish for social advancement among the provincial upper classes. That desire proved the main driving force behind the political and ideological cohesion of the empire through centuries of prosperity, as well as a formidable stabilising factor, thanks to the devotion to the empire that the ruling classes instilled in their subordinates. Strategic and economic motives as much as political expediency drove Constantine to found Constantinople.⁸ If God suggested all that, he was a very good adviser.

The pagan tradition, however, was to a large extent wrong. Constantine's relations with most of the nobles in Rome were good. Prosopographic data have confirmed that after Constantine entered Rome at the end of October 312 some great aristocrats – already in charge under Diocletian and Maxentius – maintained their offices, even though they were pagans. One might mention the example of the three-time urban prefect Aradius Rufinus, who was urban prefect for the first time in 304 and for the second time from 9 February to 27 October 312 under Maxentius, having been also his consul in 311. The victorious emperor appointed him urban prefect for the third time from 29 November 312 to 8 December 313, and he was still celebrated in the next generation by Avianius Symmachus, who mentioned his service under both good emperors and tyrants.⁹ But it is interesting to see that Constantine also left in office C. Annius Anullinus, the last urban prefect of Maxentius (from 27 October to 29 November 312), who had been appointed the day before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and two days before Constantine entered Rome.¹⁰ His son, Anullinus, became proconsul of Africa in 313, and after having personally discussed with the new emperor the restoration of property to the Christian church, he received an imperial letter and helped Constantine against the Donatist opponents of Caecilian, the Bishop of Carthage.¹¹ As pontifex maximus, Constantine appointed one of the sons of Aradius Rufinus, L. Aradius Valerius Proculus signo Populonius, pontifex Flavialis, who was the priest in charge of the new cult of the gens Flavia in Rome.¹² Like Trajan, the optimus princeps, he had the Senate dedicate “to his merits” the basilicas and temples that Maxentius had wanted to build or restore: the temple of Venus and Rome and the Maxentian basilica, and perhaps also the circular “temple of Romulus” in the Forum.¹³ The other son of Aradius Rufinus, Quintus Aradius Valerius Proculus, being governor of the African province of Byzacena in 321, was coopted as patron of a college of priests of the imperial cult in the city of Zama Regia.¹⁴ Another surely pagan noble, C. Ceionius Rufius Volusianus, obtained the urban prefecture after Aradius Rufinus. He held it for more than two years, while Constantine was occupied on the northern frontier, and was consul again in 314. He too had been consul of Maxentius in 311 with Aradius Rufinus.¹⁵ Having a different religious faith, especially at the beginning of Constantine's reign, did not present a problem.

In fact, there were other reasons why Constantine enhanced his collaboration with the great families of Rome. For a long time it had been believed that almost the entire class of nobles had disappeared during the third-century crisis: either that many of them had voluntarily withdrawn from office-holding, or they were excluded while the more efficient equestrians (equites) were increasingly employed in the administration and the army.¹⁶ The difficulties experienced during the third century, even if not uniformly throughout the empire, surely had some effect on the senatorial elite.¹⁷ Aurelius Victor, writing under the Emperor Constantius II and publishing his work under the Emperor Julian, identified the main cause of the political decline of the senatorial class in the edict of the Emperor Gallienus, which excluded senators both from military command and provincial government.¹⁸ Chastagnol thought that Gallienus's law was issued to counter the political inability of Roman aristocrats. In his view, Aurelius Victor says that senators were removed from command of the armies due to their indolence (“crainte de leur incurie”). That passage, however, does not support this interpretation, as it reads: “first (Gallienus) because of fear of his own indolence [and not of the senators’ indolence] precluded military command to the Senate”.¹⁹ It was typical of ancient historiography to connect political choices to the character of emperors (whom fourth-century authors catalogued as boni and mali principes), often being reluctant to find institutional or economic motivations. A literary tradition hostile to Gallienus, which Victor echoes, depicted him as lazy, and explained his reform by claiming that he preferred to remove the military command from generals of senatorial origin, instead of competing with them, for fear of being overthrown. While Victor's passage does not offer information on the military inefficiency of the senators, clearly it alludes to the fact that they aspired to be acclaimed (and had good chances of becoming) emperors by their armies.

In general, Gallienus may have tried to put into practice an experiment already attempted by Commodus, whose praetorian prefect (Perennis) had replaced the senatorial legati of the legions settled in Britannia with equestrian officials,²⁰ in the interests of greater efficiency in the military management of the empire.²¹ But we would need to know more about the consequences of his reform to understand the effects it had on the political power of the senatorial aristocracy. In the epigraphic evidence senatorial legates disappeared after the capture of the Emperor Valerian.²² In the second half of Gallienus's reign, only propraetores legati placed at the head of provinces guarded by a single legion are still attested.²³ Furthermore, under Gallienus, along with the post of legatus legionis, that of tribunus laticlavius disappeared from the normal senatorial cursus: the senatorial legate was increasingly replaced by a praefectus agens vice legati. This seems to confirm that Gallienus, regardless of the reasons, wanted to remove the traditional military privileges from the senatorial order, promoting professional soldiers to positions of highest command even when they came from the ranks. It is not difficult to understand why he had such a bad reputation in the literary tradition, which remained strongly influenced by senatorial attitudes. Nevertheless, not all the aristocrats who sat in the Roman assembly lost their political potential. The worst consequences of Gallienus’s reform would have been felt in the government of provi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Ancient Sources
• 1 Constantine and the Senatorial Aristocracy: The Men and Women He Could not Ignore
• 2 Julian and the Pagan Tradition on Constantine
• 3 Quintus Aurelius Symmachus in Bauli: Literary Genres and Political Projects
• 4 Roman Senators and Imperial Officials At the Court of Valentinian I
• 5 The Brooms in Bloom: The Roman Aristocracy and the Haruspices
• 6 Ammianus, Phrynichus and Ancient Historians' Self-Censorship
• 7 Pagan Senators and Christian Bishops: The Roman Senate at Work (382–384 AD)
• 8 Just Before the Sack: Between Political Crisis and Religious Anxiety in Rome
• 9 Saint Valentine and the Symmachi
• Conclusion
• Index