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Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 340–c. 402), the cultured and prominent son of a prominent father, Lucius Aurelius Avianius Symmachus, in the patrician gens Aurelia, held the offices of proconsul of Africa in 373, urban Prefect of Rome in 384 and 385, and consul in 391. A pagan representative of the traditional cursus honorum who had received his education in Gaul, Symmachus was an opponent of Ambrosius, archbishop of Milan.
On his return to Rome from his term in the province of Africa, Symmachus was rewarded with a gilded statue erected in the Forum. In 382, the emperor Gratian, a Christian, ordered the Altar of Victory removed from the Roman Senate house in the Forum. Symmachus protested, and was banished. Two years later, Gratian was assassinated in Lugdunum. Symmachus was able to return to Rome and was promoted to Prefect. He took advantage of the moment to implore the new emperor, Valentinian II, to restore the famous Altar of Victory, symbolic of traditional Roman civil religion, to its accustomed place in the Senate.
Writings
His Relationes on this occasion survive, simply because they have been appended to Ambrosius' Christian answer; Symmachus perhaps won the altar's reinstatement, very temporarily, not long before his death. In an age when all religious communities credited the divine power with direct involvement in human affairs, Symmachus argues that the removal of the altar had caused a famine and its restoration would be beneficial in other ways. Subtly he pleads for tolerance for traditional cult practices and beliefs that Christianity was poised to suppress in the Theodosian edicts of 391.
He was also engaged in the preparation of an edition of Livy's Ab Urbe Condita. This edition is the source of a series of subscriptions with his name found in some of the surviving texts of the first Decade — and is thought to be the ancestor of one manuscript tradition of Livy's text.
After the model of the Younger Pliny, the letters he had written to his numerous influential friends were collected in ten books, which form a valuable source of historical information for the Roman Empire in the later fourth century. This collection inspired Sidonius Apollinaris to create a similar collection.
Works
- Q. Aurelii Symmachi quae supersunt, ed. by Otto Seeck (Berlin, 1883; reprinted Munich, 2001, ISBN 3921575192) All surviving writings of Symmachus: letters, speeches and official reports, in the original Latin. This volume is one of the series Monumenta Germaniae Historica.
References
- T. R. Glover, Life and Letters in the Fourth Century (London, 1901)
- Martin Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Litterature volume iv, part i (second edition, Munich, 1914)
- M. S. Dimsdale, A History of Latin Literature (New York, 1915)
Further reading
- J.F. Matthews, "The Letters of Symmachus" in Latin Literature of the Fourth Century (edited by J.W. Binns), pp. 58-99. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974.
- J.F. Matthews, Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court, AD 364-425. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. ISBN 0198144997
External links
- Medieval Sourcebook: Symmachus' memorial on behalf the Senate, petitioning the three emperors
- Ambrose, Epistle xvii and xviii
- Relatio III of Symmachus, in Latin
- Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911: "Symmachus"
Quintus Aurelius Symmachus | Symmaque, Quintus Aurelius | Quinto Aurelio Simmaco | Symmachus | Quintus Aurelius Symmachus
"Quintus Aurelius Symmachus"