Rome Personified, Rome Epitomized. Representations of Rome in the Poetry of the Early Fifth Century

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Rome Personified, Rome Epitomized: Representations of Rome in the Poetry of the Early

Fifth CenturyAuthor(s): Michael RobertsSource: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 122, No. 4 (Winter, 2001), pp. 533-565Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

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ROME PERSONIFIED, ROME EPITOMIZED:

REPRESENTATIONS OF ROME IN THE POETRY

OF THE EARLY FIFTH CENTURY

Michael Roberts

The last years of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth

century (the reigns of Theodosius and his sons) mark a crucial stage in

the Christianization of Rome.1 The hold of the city and all it stood for onthe imagination of the ruling classes was as strong as ever. But Theodosian

legislation had definitively established the dominance of Christianity in

the empire, and even in Rome the aristocracy was becoming progres?

sively more Christian.2 These changing circumstances find expression in

the way Rome was represented in contemporary literature. While still

indebted to the traditional language of the laudes Romae and to well-

established literary traditions, the authors of the period find new ways to

inflect the image of Rome that mirror their differing religious and cul?tural allegiances.

Three poets make the largest contributions to that evolution in the

representation of Rome. Claudius Claudianus was born in Alexandria (c.

370) but came to Rome in 394. His first Latin poem celebrated the

consuls of 395, Probinus and Olybrius, but thereafter most of his poems

served the interests of his patron and the emperor Honorius' chief min-

ister, the Vandal general Stilicho. Of particular importance for the repre?

sentation of Rome are his consularpanegyrics,

for theconsulships

of

Honorius (396, 398, and 404) and Stilicho (400), and his two historical

epics on the campaigns against the African warlord Gildo (De bello

Gildonico 398) and against Alaric in 401-402 (De bello Getico 402).

Claudian wrote his last dated poem in 404. Nothing is heard of him after

that date and it is likely he died soon thereafter.

Claudian's Christian contemporary, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens,

was born, according to the verse preface he wrote to his collected works,

in 348. After a successful career in the

imperialadministration, he

1Fuhrmann 1968, 532.1Brown 1961 = 1972,161-82.

AmericanournalfPhilology22 2001)33-565 2001 yThe ohnsHopkinsniversityress







534 michael roberts

withdrew from public life to devote his poetic talents to the service of

God. Two works are especially relevant to the representation of Rome,

the Contra Symmachum, in two books, completed in 402 or early 403,

though book 1 may have been written earlier, and the Peristephanon, a

collection of poems on the martyrs, including the Roman martyrs

Lawrence (Perist. 2), Hippolytus (Perist. 11), Peter and Paul (Perist. 12),

and Agnes (Perist. 14). Peristephanon 9 and 11 refer to a journey the poet

took to Rome, generally dated to 401/402, but it is quite possible that this

was not his first trip to the capital.3

The third poet, Rutilius Namatianus, a traditionally minded pagan,

was praefectus urbi in 414. His poem, the De reditu suo, which does not

survive in its entirety, describes his return from Rome to his native Gaul

in 417.4 It is haunted by the destruction caused in northern Italy and

Gaul by the recent barbarian invasions, but it begins with an extended

paean of praise to Rome, the eternal city, which always grows stronger by

its reverses. Rutilius' patriotic devotion to the city and the idea of Rome

provides an optimistic counterpoint to the evidence of destruction and

desolation that runs as a leitmotif through the poem.

Rome figures in the three poets in two guises. It may appear per-

sonified as a woman, whose attributes index the power and status of the

city and empire as well as the contemporary circumstances of the Roman

state.5 As an alternative to this metaphorical representation of Rome, the

city may be encapsulated by certain, especially charged details of topog?

raphy, in an epitome of its urban geography that stands in a metonymic

(or synecdochic) relationship to the city as a whole. Thus, to take an

example from a later period, when Paulinus of Pella came at an ad-

vanced age to write his life story in the Eucharisticos, he mentions a trip

that he took to Rome in the company of his parents in a.d. 379. At the

time he was not yet three years old; he admits he recalled nothing of the

visit. Instead of personal recollection he fails back on the language of

3See Lana 1962, 23-32, and Palmer 1989, 29-30.

41 follow Cameron 1967 for the date of the journey.5In this article I am concerned to trace the poetics of Rome, how the city figures and

is figured in my chosen texts, and how such representations bear on the religious and

cultural issues at stake in the period and on the attitudes of the poets to the contemporarysituation and hopes for the future of Rome. (I owe my distinction between the metaphori?cal and the metonymic ultimately to Roman Jakobson's identification of these as the two

fundamental axes of discourse.) I do not primarily address the broader ideological

significance of Rome, its relation to the larger empire, or the ideals of imperial rule for

which the city can stand. These aspects of late Roman patriotism have been amply dis?

cussed by other scholars.







ROME PERSONIFIED, ROME EPITOMIZED 535

Virgil and describes "the walls of glorious Rome, made famous by the

city's hills" ("urbis / inclita culminibus praeclarae moenia Romae," Euch.

36-37). The epithet inclita (Aen. 6. 781) and the line-ending moenia

Romae (Aen. 1.7) are both Virgilian. Rome is metonymically embodied

by a cluster of physical features, walls, and hills, given resonance by the

evocation of the great Roman epic. This combination of epitomizing

detail and Virgilian reminiscence is typical of the poets studied in this

article. Paulinus' only view of the city was in the irrecoverable past of

infancy, but he shares the techniques he uses to summon up that city with

poets who knew weil the real Rome.

ROME PERSONIFIED

Of the two strategies, personification-metaphor is the better studied, and

here I can be briefer. The goddess Roma appears as an agent in the

narrative in five of Claudian's poems: Panegyrcus dictus Probino et Olybrio

consulibus (Prob.) 75-173, De bello Gildonico 17-212, In Eutropium

1.371-513, De consulatu Stilichonis 2.223-407, De sexto consulatu Honorii

6.356-493. In the earliest of these poems, on the consulship of Probinusand Olybrius, she appears dressed in the manner of Minerva, but with

the exposed breast of an Amazon (Prob. 84-89), the so-called Mischtypus

of the goddess familiar from ancient art.6 Claudian's Roma shows the

pronounced influence of such artistic representations. The poet lingers

over the goddess's appearance?her bearing, dress, and the weapons she

carries?as the metonymic index of Rome's status. When, famine-stricken,

she appeals to Jupiter for aid against the African rebel, Gildo, her ap?

pearancefits her state: drawn

cheeks,wasted

limbs, ill-fitting helmet,broken-down shield, and rusty spear (Gild. 21-25). When Jupiter grants

her petition, her vigor is miraculously restored (Gild. 208-12). ThoughRoma had spoken of herself as grown old in military campaigns ("emeri-

tae ... senectae," 115), she now enjoys restored youth ("meliore iuventa,"

208). The topos of Roma as an old woman, corresponding to the antiq?

uity of the city and its empire, finds its fullest exposition in Ammianus,

though it goes back to the first century a.d. (14.6.3-6).7 The image, with

its ambiguous connotations of reverent status but also enfeeblement,

6Mellor 1981,1015-16. See, too, Cameron 1970,274-76 and 364-66, for parallels inthe art of late antiquity.Klein (1985,114-28) considers Claudian's representations of Roma

from a political and ideological perspective.7Cf. Luc. 1.188, Mart. 5.7.3, and Florus Pr. 4.







536 michael roberts

recurs repeatedly in the literature of the late fourth and early fifth

centuries to encode the tension between decline and renewal. Already in

the famous debate over the restoration of the Altar of Victory to the

senate house in 384, Symmachus and Ambrose introduce a personified

Rome as mouthpiece of their arguments; how to show proper respect for

her years becomes a bone of contention (Symmachus Relat. 3.9; Ambrose

Ep. 18.7). In Claudian the fullest exposition of this motif is De bello

Getico 50-53. The poet bids Roma arise ("surge, precor, veneranda pa?

rens," 52) and lay aside the humiliating fearfulness of old age ("humilem-

que metum depone senectae," 53), for Stilicho has freed the city from the

threat of Alaric and the Visigoths. Rome remains old, but is now the

object of the veneration appropriate to a parent rather than of pity.

Claudian displaces the effect of rejuvenation or reinvigoration onto the

empire as a whole: "Vitality has spread among all the limbs of the realm

and the flush of life has come back to its ailing cities."8

On each of the five occasions on which Roma appears as an actor

in Claudian's poetry she delivers a speech. Her speeches show affinities

with the rhetorical tradition of prosopopoeiae, as exemplified by the

speeches of Rome in Symmachus and Ambrose, as well as in Cicero's

first Catilinarian (17-18?speech of the patria) and in an anonymous

panegyric of Maximian and Constantine (Pan. Lat. 1.10.5-11.4). In ac?

cordance with the general tenor of his poetry the majority of Roma's

speeches in Claudian contain a large element of praise or blame. Only

De bello Gildonico 17-127 stands somewhat apart. As a historical epic,

rather than a work of panegyric or invective, De bello Gildonico is closer

to the norms of epic. Roma's speech seeks to arouse indignation and pity

in its hearer, Jupiter, for her enfeebled state. It is the only one of this

group of speeches delivered in heaven to a god rather than to a human

on earth, though Jupiter immediately activates a parallel sequence of

events in the human realm by sending the emperor Theodosius and his

father (also Theodosius) to appear in dreams to Arcadius and Honorius,

urging them to take measures against Gildo.

In the other four poems Roma appears as a suppliant before a

human (or humans): Theodosius (in Prob.), Honorius and Stilicho to?

gether (in Eutr.) and individually in De consulatu Stilichonis and De

consulatu sexto Honorii. The subservient relationship of the goddess toher addressees, as their petitioner, reflects the panegyrical intent of the

8"Ut sese pariter diffudit in omnia regni / membra vigor vivusque redit color

urbibus aegris" (Get. 436-37).








poems and finds precedent in the similar stance of Roma in an early

fourth-century panegyric (Pan. Lat. 7.10.5). Claudian is careful to create

a narrative structure, bridging the divine and human, in which the god?

dess can act. Roma is imagined to reside in her temple in Rome. She

travels through the air to Theodosius, on the battlefield of the River

Frigidus (Prob. 100-12), to Stilicho and Honorius encamped north of the

Po (Eutr. 1.375-77), or to Stilicho alone in the palace of Milan (Cons. Stil.

2.270-74). Her arrival is accompanied by manifestations of her power:

when she appeared to Theodosius, "the rocks resounded three times in

consciousness of her presence and the dark grove trembled in awe at her

divinity" (Prob. 125-26); in Milan "the palace shimmered with her bril?

liant shield and the top of her helmet-crest reached to the panelled

ceiling" (Cons. Stil. 2.276-77). To Honorius, too, encamped beyond the

Po, she shows herself as superhumanly large, once she has thrown off the

mist that conceals her (Eutr. 1.390).9 The ideas, and often the language,

derive from the tradition of divine epiphanies in epic. But the employ-

ment of a divinity to elevate and lend superhuman status to human

action also serves an important panegyric purpose. The easy interchange

between divine and human and the promotion of terrestrial actions by a

god are reminiscent of the role of divinities in late Latin epithalamia,

from Statius on.10 In Claudian's own epithalamium for Honorius and

Maria, the daughter of Stilicho, for instance, the goddess travels by sea

and air to the imperial palace to urge Maria to wed her royal groom.

Roma, though a more august goddess than Venus, has functionally an

analogous role. While Venus flies in a chariot drawn by swans, Roma's

chariot is yoked by her attendants Attack and Fear (Impetus and Metus).

The divine machinery of epic shades into the celebratory function of the

mythological masque of other epideictic poetic genres.11

In Claudian's Roma, the rhetorical prosopopoeia, artistic traditions

of personification and the copresence of the divine and human in impe?

rial relief sculpture, and epic and epideictic poetics coincide.The goddess

9"Conscia ter sonuit rupes et inhorruit atrum / maiestate nemus" (Prob. 125-26);"tremit orbe corusco / iam domus et summae tangunt laquearia cristae" (Cons. Stil. 2.276-

77); "dimovit nebulam iuvenique apparuit ingens" (Eutr. 1.390).10Roberts 1989b. For the parallel with such epideictic forms see Dopp 1980, 32-39

(especially 36). In his epithalamium Statius, like Claudian in his panegyrical poetry, createsa narrative scenario that motivates and provides a context for the easy exchange betweendivine and human (in Statius' case between Venus and Violentilla).

11Compare, for instance, the role of nymphs and other minor deities in Statius'

Silvae and Ausonius' Mosella.







538 MICHAEL ROBERTS

is a literary creation, not the object of cult. As such, the personified

Rome, once shorn of her aspirations to divinity, easily accommodates

herself to the Christian poetry of Claudian's contemporary, the Hispano-

Roman patriot, Prudentius. In book 1 of the Contra Symmachum Pru-

dentius criticizes the cult of the goddess Roma (1.217-25): like other

forms of sacrifice and ceremonial it has served to perpetuate belief in

pagan divinities by its effects on the impressionable young. But this does

not prevent the Christian emperor Theodosius, fresh from his victory

against the usurpers Maximus and Eugenius, from framing his own speech

to personified Rome, addressed as "faithful parent" (flda parens, 416)

and "queen" (regina, 430). At his urging and through his edicts she

throws off past errors and her wrinkled face takes on, implicitly, new

lineaments (1.506-8).12 The poet objects to Roma as a divinity-receiving

cult, but as a literary personification she is unexceptionable.

In book 2 of the poem, Prudentius engages directly with the argu?

ments given by Symmachus in the Relatio of 384 for the restoration of

the Altar of Victory. Symmachus had introduced an aged Roma calling

for respect for her ancestral religious practices. The Christian poet re?

jects the argument but not the literary device. Indeed he adopts it for

himself. Symmachus, he says, adopted a persona to lend weight to his

falsehood, like a singer of a tragic myth putting on a mask. (The use of

the word persona shows that Prudentius thinks of the speech as a proso-

popoeia, for which one Latin translation was fictio personae, Quint. 9.2.29.)

In Prudentius' view the Roman empire had been the providential vehicle

for the coming and spread of Christianity.13 Theodosius' reforms repre-

sent the final triumphant stage in this process. He, therefore, rejects

Symmachus' representation of Rome as a debilitated figure who must

petition the emperors in demeaning fashion (2.640-48). Roma's counter-

speech, addressed to her two alumni (2.769), Arcadius and Honorius,

celebrates the conversion of the city and in particular the victory re?

cently won by Christian armies at the battle of Pollentia. It begins with

Prudentius' own version of the personified city. Like Claudian he em-

ploys visual imagery and metonymic detail to index the city's status. Her

gray hair has grown golden again, as she is reborn under Christian

emperors (2.656-58).14 She still wears a helmet, but it bears olive leaves

12"Talibus edictis urbs informata refugit / errores veteres et turbida ab ore vieto /

nubila discussit."Although the theme of rejuvenation is not explicit here, the implication of

physical change in informata contributes to the sense that Roma experiences a face-lift.13Charlet 1986, 41-42.14"Senium omne renascens/deposui vidique meam flavescere rursus / canitiem," C.

Symm. 2.656-58.








and a wreath of green foliage covers her sword belt. Prudentius gives

these details of her armor an allegorical reading. She still carries arms for

external wars, but her weapons are swathed in greenery because they are

no longer used in the persecution of innocent Christians (2.661-68).15

Prudentius' use of such a figure is all the more surprising since

earlier in the book he had criticized another personification, of Victory,

as the foolish contrivance of poets and painters (2.31-60), who "fashion

beings lacking physical form with invented limbs" ("res incorporeas

simulatis fingere membris," 2.58).16 Military victory, he argues, comes not

from a goddess but from the warlike efforts of the Roman soldiers. In a

similar vein Prudentius identifies the city of Rome with its people (1.569-

71 and 2.443-44), and particularly with the senatorial class.17 But his

attitude is not consistent. The imaginative resonance for a Roman patriot

like Prudentius of the figure of Roma is too strong. She is not a goddess

nor is she an actor in the narrative, as she is in Claudian, who follows epic

and epideictic precedents. But as a mouthpiece for Prudentius' argu?

ments, personified Roma remains a powerful rhetorical instrument. In

reimagining her physical appearance in accordance with his Christian

argument, Prudentius avails himself of the semiotic convention whereby

the metonymic detail of Roma's bearing, dress, and armor is available for

a metaphorical and ideological reading.

For Rutilius, Roma is once more a goddess (1.79), the most beauti?

ful queen of the world (1.46). Although she does not speak, she is ad-

dressed in an extended hymn expressing an emotional devotion to the

goddess that far exceeds anything in Claudian. The emotional force

derives in part from the situation of the speaker: he is bidding a tearful

farewell to his beloved city. But the circumstances of the time must also

lend poignancy to this evocation of Rome's greatness. After the capture

of Rome by Alaric and the invasion of Rutilius' native Gaul, the ready

optimism of a Prudentius, writing in the first few years of the century, was

no longer available. Rome's greatness, represented by its founding leg?

ends (1.67-72), imperial achievements (1.71-92), buildings and monu-

ments (1.93-114), and the tribute of produce paid by personified rivers

15"Nunc, nunc iusta meis reverentia conpetit annis, / nunc merito dicor venerabilis

et caput orbis,/cum galeam sub fronde oleae cristasque rubentes / concutio viridi velansfera cingula serto/atque armata Deum sine crimine caedis adoro," C Symm. 2.661-65.

16On this passage see Gnilka 1991,16-33.17"Si persona aliqua est aut si status urbis, in his [sc. domibus nobilium] est, / si

formam patriae facit excellentior ordo, / hi faciunt,"C.Symm. 1.569-71; "Romam dico viros,

quos mentem credimus urbis, / non genium, cuius frustra simulatur imago," C. Symm.2.443-44.







540 MICHAEL ROBERTS

and nations (1.145-54), becomes an article of faith rather than an un-

troubled conviction.18

Rutilius' praise of Rome ends with a prayer that he be granted

smooth sailing back to Gaul (1.155-58). Although this is the ostensible

purpose to which the whole hymn is leading, the greater weight of signifi?

cance lies on the previous section, calling for the resurgence of Rome

after its recent reverses. The section begins with the traditional, meto-

nymically detailed description of a personified Roma:

Erige crinales lauros seniumque sacrati

verticis in virides, Roma, retinge comas;

aurea turrigero radient diademata cono

perpetuosque ignes aureus umbo vomat.

Abscondat tristem deleta iniuria casum;

contemptus solidet vulnera clausa dolor. (1.115-20)

Raise up, Rome, your laurel headdress and color once more your aged

holy head with fresh and youthful hair. May a golden diadem shine bright

with tower-crowned peak and a golden shield continually flame forth its

brilliance. Forget your injury and wipe away your bitter suffering; by scorn-

ing your pain your wounds close and heal over.

Hair and armor again index Rome's status. In the first couplet, Rutilius

deliberately conflates the laurel appropriate to the victor with the full

and vigorous hair of youth: crinales lauros can mean either "laurel in the

hair" or "laurel hair" (i.e., hair consisting of laurel); virides . . . comas,

either "youthful hair" or "green foliage." (Ernst Doblhofer [1972-77,

2:73] cites the evidence for the metaphorical sense of viridis and its

cognates.) In so doing Rutilius associates Rome's rejuvenation specifi?cally with her renewed military supremacy, symbolized by the trium?

phant laurel wreath. Roma has attributes both of warrior and queen in

the next couplet: a mural crown and a shield.19 Their golden brilliance

18On the tension in Rutilius' poem between optimism and pessimism see Doblhofer

1970,14-15, and 21, n. 18, and Roberts 1988,186-87.

19The mural crown finds a literary parallel in Lucan 1.188. Otherwise, in poetry,Roma is represented wearing a helmet. Both forms of headgear are found in art, the mural

crown being associated particularly, though not exclusively, with city Tyches:Shelton 1979,30-35. By using the word cono, regularly used of the top of a helmet in Latin poetry,Rutilius again conflates two distinct attributes, the mural crown and the warrior's helmet.

Claudian (Cons. Stil. 2.21A) emphasizes the brilliance of Roma's shield. It reflects the Po as

she flies to Stilicho in Milan ("Eridanus clipei iam fulgurat umbra").








again conveys her majesty and status, the aurea Roma of Ausonius (Ordo

Nob. Urb. 1), Claudian (Fescennina de Nuptiis Honorii Augusti 2.19), and

Prudentius (Apotheosis 385, C. Symm. 2.1114).20 Finally, in line 120, Rutilius

contributes a new detail to the personification of Rome, specific to the

circumstances of the city and empire in the disturbed times in which he

was writing. Claudian (Gild. 21-25) had represented Roma as famished

and enfeebled by the threat Gildo posed to her grain supply. But once

Jupiter grants her petition, her symptoms are immediately reversed (Gild.

208-12). In Rutilius, the injury (119) the city has suffered is like a wound

to her body, which will close in time and then heal. The comparison with

the natural healing process suggests the recovery could be long drawn

out and, depending on the severity of the wound, unsure. It is certainly

not susceptible to the quick fix of Claudian's poem. As Doblhofer points

out (1972-77, 2:74), Rutilius interprets the metaphor psychologically:

abscondat has the sense of "forget," while contemptus ... dolor empha?

sizes the proper mental attitude needed for renewal. The grammatical

and syntactical parallelism with deleta iniuria suggests that that phrase

too should carry a psychological sense. Rome needs time to heal. Rutilius'

poem can be seen as a contribution to this psychological project, though

a somewhat ambiguous one. The poet does not proudly proclaim the

certainty of the city's renewal, but expresses himself in more qualified

fashion with imperatives, jussive subjunctives, or wishes for the future.

The pattern of past history?Rome has always grown stronger from

reverses?provides reasons for confidence.21 Rome is to hold her head

high, thereby regaining the erect and towering posture appropriate to

the caput orbis (1.194). The figure of Roma, here detached from imperial

politics or religious controversy, remains a rallying point for a Gallo-

Roman aristocrat such as Rutilius. But the personification bears the

ominous traces of recent sufferings, wounds that have not yet healed.

Both Claudian and Prudentius had spoken in panegyric contexts of

wounds to the Roman state that only Stilicho (Cons. Stil. 2.204-5) or

Theodosius (C. Symm. 1.14-18) could heal. Rutilius has no such expecta?

tions of an individual leader. He must pin his faith on the resilience and

recuperative powers of the personified Roma.

20See Gernentz 1918, 58-59, for other examples of aurea Roma.21The passage culminates in the much-quoted couplet "Mud te reparat quod cetera

regna resolvit: / ordo renascendi est crescere posse malis,"1.139-40 ("What destroys other

kingdoms restores yours: your capacity for rebirth depends on being able to be strength-ened by misfortunes"). For parallels see Gernentz 1918, 93-95.







542 MICHAEL ROBERTS

ROME EPITOMIZED:

METONYMY, SYNECDOCHE, AND TOPOS

The Walls and Hills of Rome

When, in the mid-fifth century, Paulinus of Pella wanted to evoke the

topography of Rome he needed only to refer to two features, its walls

and its hills; they could stand for the city as a whole. The combination

goes back to Virgil, Georgics 2.534-35, "a single city surrounded its seven

hills with a wall" ("septemque una sibi muro circumdedit arces"; cLAen.

6.783). It finds its most succinct formulation in the first century A.D. in

Statius' epithalamium for Stella and Violentilla, "the walls of seven-fold

Rome" ("septemgeminae . . . moenia Romae"), a city Venus there de?

scribes as "Latin head of the empire" ("imperii Latiale caput," Silv.

1.2.191-92).22 Paulinus is probably influenced also by his grandfather

Ausonius' phrase "superbae / moenia Romae" ("the walls of proud Rome,"

Prof. Burd. 6.15-16).23 In fact, in the poetry of the late fourth and early

fifth centuries, the metonymic use of moenia is rare, perhaps because the

feature was not distinctive of Rome; many cities in late antiquity were

walled. Although Claudian, for instance, praises in De sexto consulatu

Honorii Stilicho's rebuilding of the Aurelian walls, he otherwise typically

associates the walls with the founding or early history of the city.24

Prudentius only twice speaks of the walls of Rome: when Theodosius

looks down on the walls of the city in triumph (C. Symm. 1.410-11) and

in Peristephanon 11, when the persecutor, "not content continually to

dye with the blood of the just the walls of lofty Rome," takes Hippolytus

out of the city for martyrdom ("non contentus humum celsae intra

moenia Romae / tinguere iustorum caedibus adsiduis," Perist. 11.43-44).Prudentius represents the persecution as a derogation from Rome's high

standing. While the phrase "celsae intra moenia Romae" is in the tradi?

tion of laudes Romae, the juxtaposition of humum with celsae and the

demeaning periphrasis "humum ... tinguere" represent the persecutor's

22The height of hills and walls implicitly legitimates Rome's claim to the title of

"imperii... caput."23Paulinus of Nola (writing to Ausonius) has "superba ... moenia Romae" (Carm.

10.247).246 Cons. Hon. 531-36; for the association with the founding and early history of

Rome see Gild. 28 and 109. By associating Stilicho's rebuilding of the walls with Virgilian

language of the founding of Rome, Claudian represents the actions of his patron not onlyas a rejuvenation (iuvenescere) but as a refounding of the city.








actions as bringing the city low. Finally, in Rutilius Rome's walls are

referred to only in the narrow context of introducing aqueducts into the

city (1.101-4).

The hills of Rome carry more extensive associations. Already in

Virgil's account of the settlement of Evander on the future site of Rome

hills are a prominent aspect of the topography (8.53,216,305). As Dewar

(1996, 357) observes, Statius' frequent references to the hills of Rome

probably influenced Claudian's use of similar language.25 One feature of

Virgil's topography, though, finds special resonance in later writers. He

describes the hymn of praise the Salii sing to Hercules reechoing off the

surrounding hills ("consonat omne nemus strepitu collesque resultant,"

Aen. 8.305), the same hills, presumably, that had once sounded to the

lowing of the hero's cattle (8.215-16). The concentus of nature, respond-

ing to the Salians' hymn, communicates the consensus of divine worship.

This unanimity of human and natural, of sound and location, lent

itself to panegyric. Horace provides an antecedent, recalling "when the

banks of his paternal river and the playful echo of the Vatican mount

sounded back the praise of Maecenas."26 In the Latin panegyrics nature

often responds in sympathy to the presence of an emperor (e.g., 6.22.6,

11.9.1-4, and 15.4). But it is Claudian, in his consular panegyrics, who

most fully exploits the potential of this topos. Already in his earliest

Latin poetry on the consulship of Probinus and Olybrius, he elaborates

on Virgil's description of the song of the Salii. Theodosius sends a mes?

senger to Rome to announce the consulship. Immediately choirs break

out in chant, their rhythmic applause echoing sevenfold from the sur?

rounding hills ("Extemplo strepuere chori collesque canoris / plausibus

inpulsi septena voce resultant," Prob. 175-76). Claudian takes the Virgilian

line-ending collesque resultant (Aen. 8.305) and, while preserving the

position in the line of each word, extends the clause over two verses.

Nature and human voices combine in an acclamation that unites the

whole of Rome, schematically represented by its seven hills, in a chorus

of sound and evokes a typological relationship between the proto-Roman

ceremony of the Salii in the Aeneid and the circumstances of the late

fourth-century city.

25For references in Statius see Silv. 1.1.64-65,1.2.144-45 (with the Tiber), and 191-

92,1.5.23-24 (Tiber), 2.7.45 (Tiber), 4.1.6-8, 4.4.4.; in Claud. Prob. 175-76; Fesc. 2.19-20;Cons. Stil. 2.401-2, 3.30-31,65-66,136, and 284; Get. 51; 6 Cons. Hon. 11-12,35-36,40-41,529-31, 535-36, and 615-17.

26"Ut paterni / fluminis ripae simul et iocosa / redderet laudes tibi Vaticani / montis

imago" (Carm. 1.20.5-8).







544 MICHAEL ROBERTS

In other poems Claudian uses the same topos in a more fully

realized ceremonial setting. In De sexto consulatu Honorii Honorius

appears before the people in the Circus Maximus:

adsensuque cavae sublatus in aethera vallis

plebis adoratae reboat fragor unaque totis

intonat Augustum septenis arcibus echo! (6 Cons. Hon. 615-17)

The roars of the people he has honoured rise into heaven and resound in

unison with the hollow valley and a single echo thunders the name Augustus

from all seven hills.

The two clauses that constitute the passage emphasize distinct elements

of the scene. The first is organized according to elevation, emphasized by

the clausula aethera vallis: the sound reaches from low to high; the

second stresses the unifying effect of the acclaim (the clausula unaque

totis). Virgil twice describes the founding of Rome as "a single city

surrounding the seven hills with a wall" ("septemque una sibi muro

circumdedit / circumdabit arces"). In Claudian "a single echo" thunders

the name of Augustus "from the seven hills." In this formulation late

Roman ceremony reenacts and derives its legitimacy from the founda-

tional act of the city's origins, as authoritatively formulated by Virgil.

Stilicho's adventus is to arouse similar enthusiasm. "How often,"

the poet asks, "will the Murcian valley [i.e., the Circus Maximus] carry to

heaven your name, echoing off the Aventine and Palatine hills?" ("ad

caelum quotiens vallis tibi Murcia ducet / nomen Aventino Pallanteoque

recussum!" Cons. Stil. 2.404-5). The ceremony imagined is the same, and

there is the same emphasis on the sound ascending to heaven from the

valley floor. The topographical specificity is new. By referring, for in?stance, to the Palatine and Aventine rather than to all seven hills, Claudian

sacrifices the idea of the occasion as unifying the whole of the city.

Instead he emphasizes the love the population feels for Stilicho and their

suspense as they await his arrival. Suspense finds expression in chrono-

logical, and hence topographical, extension: the Flaminian Way (397),

Pincian Heights ("Pincia culmina," 401), theater of Pompey ("Pompeiana

... proscaenia," 403), and finally the Murcian valley. The mini-itinerary of

Rome draws out the expectation and communicates the emotional in?vestment of the populace in the general's adventus.27

27See especially 398-99: "fallax o quotiens pulvis deludet amorem / suspensum,veniens omni dum crederis hora!" For the idea see Verg. Ecl. 8.108. Auson. Ep. 24.116-24,uses a similar mini-itinerary in a similar context to build up suspense, concluding with the

quotation from Virgil.








In Christian poetry Paulinus of Nola exploits the same topos for

the purposes of Christian apologetic in his eleventh Natalicium, written

for the festival of Saint Felix (a.d. 405). Paulinus describes the divine

service for the martyrs Peter and Paul in Rome.

Laudibus aeterni domini ferit aethera clamor

sanctus et incusso Capitolia culmine nutant.

In vacuis simulacra tremunt squalentia templis

vocibus icta piis inpulsaque nomine Christi. (Carm. 19.67-70)

The holy chorus strikes the heavens with the praise of our eternal Lord

and the Capitol heights tremble with the shock. In deserted temples the

decaying images shake, buffeted by sacred voices and overthrown by the

name of Christ.

In Paulinus the singing of the liturgy reaches to heaven, strikes on, but

does not echo back from, the Capitol (incusso; cf. recussum, Cons. Stil.

2.405), and proclaims the name of Christ, as opposed to that of Augustus

or Stilicho (6 Cons. Hon. 617; Cons. Stil. 2.405). Each detail evokes the

topos familiar from Claudian. But although the passage exploits a sche-

matic topography of Rome?temples totter and images quake?it does

so in the service of antipagan Christian triumphalism.

Rome in Overview

In his poem celebrating Stilicho's triumphal adventus into Rome, Claudian

presents another synoptic vision of the city, addressed to the triumphant

general

himself:

septem circumspice montes,

qui solis radios auri fulgore lacessunt,

indutosque arcus spoliis aequataque templa

nubibus et quidquid tanti struxere triumphi.

Quantae profueris, quantam servaveris urbem,

attonitis metire oculis. (Cons. Stil. 3.65-70)

Look round at the seven hills, which rival the sun's rays in their golden

brilliance, the arches clad in spoils, temples reaching to the clouds, and all

that so many triumphs have built. Measure with your astonished gaze the

greatness of the city whose benefactor and savior you are.

Claudian's "temples reaching to the clouds" ("aequataque templa / nubi?

bus," 67-68) evoke Virgil's comment on the scattered dwellings of







546 MICHAEL ROBERTS

Evandrian Rome, a city whose rooftops Roman power had now (i.e., in

Virgil's day) raised to the heavens ("tecta ... quae nunc Romana poten-

tia caelo / aequavit," Aen. 8.99-100). Claudian's epitomizing cityscape

derives authority from the Virgilian reference, while laying claim to a

continuous tradition with Augustan Rome and, before it, with the leg-

endary first settlement of Evander.

The brilliance of Rome's buildings, and especially their gilded roofs,

rivals the rays of the sun or, later in the same poem, "challenge[s] their

near neighbours, the stars" (Cons. Stil. 3.133-34).28 The observer is dazzled

("attonitis ... oculis," Cons. Stil. 3.70). In the later panegyric on the sixth

consulate of Honorius, Claudian reworks the two passages from De

consulatu Stilichonis 3 and describes the effect of such brilliant architec?

ture more fully: "Vision is stunned by the flash of metal; confused it loses

its capacity to discriminate in the profusion of gold" (6 Cons. Hon. 51-

52).29 The effect is akin to that experienced in the presence of a god, or

an emperor, an otherworldly aura of divinity. In panegyrics typically

Rome's splendor redounds to the greater glory of the subject of the

panegyric. Already in De consulatu Stilichonis 3.65-70, although the

general is astonished by the sight of Rome, he, nevertheless, is the bene-

factor and savior of the city.30 The relationship between city and general

finds more unambiguous expression in a later, complementary passage

praising the city: "Consul, close-companion of the gods, who look out for

so great a city ('proxime dis consul, tantae qui prospicis urbi'), a city

more powerful than all lands that the heaven embraces; no eye can

encompass its extent, no inspiration its beauty, no voice its praise; the

golden light of its rooftops it sets among the stars as their rivals and near-

neighbours" (Cons. Stil. 3.130-34). Behind the figure of Stilicho lies Lucan's

Jupiter "who looks out over the walls of the city from the Tarpeian rock"

("O magnae qui moenia prospicis urbis / Tarpeia de rupe," 1.195-96).

Claudian's description of Stilicho as proxime dis, "closest to the gods"

(i.e., most godlike), confirms the allusion to Lucan's invocation of the

supreme god, Jupiter. But the two poets employ the verb prospicis differ-

ently. In Lucan it governs an accusative, in the sense of "look out over"

28"[Urbi] quae luce metalli/aemula vicinis fastigia conserit astris."29"Acies stupet igne metalli/et circumfuso trepidans obtunditur auro."For this dazzle

effect see Roberts 1989a, 73-75.30In Pacatus' panegyric for Theodosius Roma herself looks down in joy from her

seven hills over the harmonious scene of Theodosian Rome: "spectabas haec e tuis collibus,

Roma, et septena arce sublimis celsior gaudio ferebaris," Pan. Lat. 2.46.1. (I owe this

reference to an anonymous reader of this paper.)








(i.e., "view"), in Claudian a dative, in the sense of "look out for" (i.e.,

"protect"). Not that the first sense oiprospicis is entirely excluded from

Claudian. Consul implies oversight and governance and therefore ac-

cords with the literal sense of the verb when it takes the dative. But

proxime dis can be understood in a local sense, of proximity to the gods,

implying elevation?a prospect from which to overview the city (the

sense of prospicio with the accusative).31 There is a homology between

the elevation of Rome and of her consul, but also a clear hierarchy,

according to which the city's eminence depends on the oversight her

general provides from his commanding height.

Such high-level cityscapes, in which the brilliance of Rome's gilded

roofs merges with the clear air over the city, frequently make reference

to an elevated viewer taking in the panorama. When Claudian reworks

the passages of De consulatu Stilichonis 3 in De sexto consulatu Honorii,

it is the imperial palace, standing by metonymy for the emperor himself,

which looks out over the forum and shrines of the city (6 Cons. Hon. 42-

44).32 In the first book of the Contra Symmachum, Prudentius takes the

same topos, but gives it an antipagan turn. Theodosius views the city, but

it is swathed in a pall of darkness, its polluted air preventing the bright

light of heaven from reaching the seven hills.33 When the emperor turns

to address the city, Prudentius translates his account of urban pollution

into a phantasmagoric personification of Rome, clad in gold and precious

stones but scarcely visible in the swirling mist that surrounds her figure:

the thick air and gloomy light dull the magnificence of her jewels, smoke

from pagan sacrifices obscures her diadem, and round her flit dark spirits

and black idols of pagan worship (C. Symm. 1.415-24). Theodosius bids

Rome stand up tall and raise her head to the bright heavens; that is,

abandon pagan cult for Christianity (C. Symm. 1.425-26).

Prudentius' polemical redeployment of the topos gives some sup?

port for a post-400 date for the first book of the Contra Symmachum?

that is, after the third book of Claudian's panegyric on Stilicho.34 Though

31Compare Statius' description of Domitian's statue,which by metonymy stands for

the emperor himself: "ipse autem puro celsum caput aere saeptus/templa superfulges et

prospectare videris,"Silv. 1.1.32-33.32"Attollens apicem subiectis regia rostris / tot circumdelubra videt tantisque deorum/

cingitur excubiis."33"Nubibusobsessam nigrantibusaspicit urbem;/ noctis obumbratae caligine turbidus

aer/arcebat liquidum septena ex arce serenum" (C Symm. 1.412-14).34For useful summaries of the controversy over the dating of C Symm. 1, see

Bastiaensen 1993,127-28, and Garcia 1996,102-8.







548 MICHAEL ROBERTS

it is possible Prudentius is simply reworking a familiar topic, parallels

with Claudian's poem suggest a close relationship: Prudentius recognizes

the abundance of gold and rich spoils that feature too in Claudian, but

while for the panegyrist the seven hills are flooded with brilliant light, for

the Christian apologist they are plunged in gloom.35 When Claudian

came to rework the passages from De consulatu Stilichonis 3 in De sexto

consulatu Honorii (A.D. 404), he introduced details that respond to the

Prudentian text. Prudentius had spoken of dark spirits and black idols

flying round the figure of Roma ("caeruleasque animas atque idola nigra

volare," C. Symm. 1.424). When Claudian revisits the phrase from De

consulatu Stilichonis 3 that speaks of "temples reaching to the clouds"

("aequataque templa / nubibus," 3.68-69), his language betrays the

influence of Prudentius: "statues flying among the clouds and the heaven

thick with a throng of temples" ("mediisque volantia signa / nubibus et

densum stipantibus aethera templis," 6 Cons. Hon. 46-47). Claudian re-

places Prudentius' sinister idola nigra with statues, presumably on the

roofs of temples. Prudentius had complained that the air was "murky"

("turbidus," C. Symm. 1.413) and "thick" ("spissus," C. Symm. 1.421); for

Claudian too the heavens are "densely packed" ("densum"), but with "a

throng of temples" ("stipantibus . . . templis"), not the pollution of

paganism. The force of Prudentius' polemic derives in part from its

fantastic personification of the figure of Rome. By comparison, Claudian

describes the physical city and its material splendors, statues, and temples,

without personification, although the participles?volantia and stipanti?

bus?animate the scene by describing architecture with metaphors from

living creatures.36 Claudian's attitude to the city's monuments, as aesthetic

objects rather than places or objects of cult, is consistent with Pruden?

tius' perspective. At the end of Theodosius' speech in Contra Symmachum

1, the emperor calls for statues to be cleansed of their pagan associations

and for artistic monuments to be divorced from cult practice and become

instead "ornaments of the state" ("ornamenta . . . patriae," C. Symm.

1.504).37

Rutilius' account of the splendors of Rome is in the Claudian

35Compare Cons. Stil. 3.66 "auri fulgore" with C. Symm. 1.418 "multo circumfluisauro"; Cons. Stil. 3.67 "indutosque arcus spoliis" with C. Symm. 1.417 "spoliisque insigne

superbis";and Cons. Stil. 3.65-66 "septem circumspice montes,/ qui solis radios auri fulgorelacessunt" with C.Symm. 1.413-14 "turbidusaer / arcebat liquidumseptena ex arce serenum."

36On this passage see Dewar 1996,96-97. The verb stipo is regularly used of crowds

of people, often thronging round an individual.37Prudentius voices similar sentiments in Perist. 2.481-84; cf. CTh 16.10.15.








tradition. He speaks of "heights thickly adorned with trophies" ("densis

decora alta trophaeis," 1.93), which he likens to stars (94), and describes

the disorienting effect so many brilliant sights have on the viewer: "the

gleaming shrines confuse the distracted vision" ("confunduntque vagos

delubra micantia visus," 1.95).38 In personifying Roma (passage quoted

above) he responds to the account of Prudentius (C. Symm. 1.412-26).

Both poets bid Rome raise her head ("sublimem tollas .. . vultum," C.

Symm. 1.425; "erige crinales lauros," Rutilius 1.115), in Prudentius' case

above the pollution of pagan cult, in Rutilius' after the recent sack and

military reversals. Rutilius' description of the brilliance of Rome's golden

diadem and of the fires that stream continually from her golden shield

re verses the situation in Prudentius, where Rome's diadem is obscured

by the smoke of pagan sacrifice (C. Symm. 1.421-22).39 But it is in de?

scribing his last look back to the city of Rome from Portus Augusti,

shortly before he embarks, that Rutilius provides his most original

cityscape of Rome and one that contrasts strongly with Prudentius'

vision. Rome is a shimmering mirage that gradually fades on the horizon.

As the physical outline of the city disappears from the poet's view, a halo

of light remains, at least in the mind's eye, over the city.

Nec locus ille mihi cognoscitur indice fumo,

qui dominas arces et caput orbis habet

(quamquam signa levis fumi commendat Homerus,

dilecto quotiens surgit in astra solo),sed caeli plaga candidior tractusque serenus

signat septenis culmina clara iugis.

Illic perpetui soles, atque ipse videtur,

quem sibi Roma facit, purior esse dies. (1.193-200)

Although Homer praises the signs of eddying smoke, when it rises to the

stars from a beloved household, no smoke indicated to me that placewhich holds the heights of empire and is the head of the world, but a more

38Decora alta trophaeis can refer to spoil-clad arches (cf. Claudian, Cons. Stil. 3.67and 6 Cons. Hon. 50-51)?so Doblhofer 1972-77,2:62. Alta, though, may hint at the seven

hills of Rome, while densis recalls the air thick (densum) with temples of 6 Cons. Hon. 47.

For the comparison with stars see Cons. Stil.3.134. Vagos,perhaps,corresponds to Claudian'strepidans. For the inability of the viewer to concentrate on a single object when distracted

by so many visual stimuli cf. Sidonius, Carm. 2.420-21. Fuchs (1943,51-58) associates thebrilliance of the light over Rome with passages that identify Roman imperial rule with a

bright heaven or more benign climate (Pliny, HN 3.5.39, Florus 2.30).39See Doblhofer (1972-77, 2:73^1), who cites the Prudentian parallel. For the pos?

sible influence of Prudentius on Rutilius see also Helm 1931,16-20.







550 MICHAEL ROBERTS

radiant tract of sky and expanse of clear air signals the brilliant rooftops on

the seven hills. There suns are continual and the very daylight which Rome

creates for itself seems brighter.

No smoke over Rome, but a clear expanse of sky and unusually

intense daylight. The language again suggests a contrast with Prudentius'

account of Rome, where polluted air ("turbidus aer") prevents the light

from reaching the seven hills ("septena ex arce," C. Symm. 1.413-4; cf.

Rutilius 1.197-98).40 Rutilius here alludes explicitly to a passage in the

Odyssey (Od. 1.57-59) describing Odysseus' intense longing for his home-

land and for the smoke from domestic fires. But in the context it is likely

that Rutilius' denial of smoke over Rome is also influenced by Prudentius'vision of a pall of smoke over the city caused by pagan cult. Rutilius'

view of Rome differs also from his predecessors' because it is seen from

a distance. Rutilius describes himself as continually looking back at the

city and following its receding profile of hills with ever-failing vision

("respectare iuvat vicinam saepius urbem / et montes visu deficiente

sequi," 1.189-90). The posture is that of the lover of elegy who watches

her retreating beloved until he is out of sight. The only difference is that

in this case it is the lover who is being forced to leave the object of hislove rather than the beloved who is departing.41 It is a datum of such

passages that a lover's senses are preternaturally acute. In Rutilius' case

his eyes remain trained on his beloved city, though he admits his belief

that he continues to see her outline may be an illusion, fueled only by

desire ("[oculi] dum se, quod cupiunt cernere, posse putant," 1.192).

Similarly, his ears imagine they still hear the applause from the Roman

circus or the theater echoing from the heavens, "whether it really does

reach his hearing or is the fiction of love" ("vel quia perveniunt [voces]vel quia fingit amor," 1.204).42 Earlier poets had celebrated the brilliance

of the light over Rome and the concert of sounds at its civic festivals.

Rutilius invests this language with a special emotional charge; the scenes

40Compare also Rutilius 1.200purior dies with Prudentius,C Symm. 1.421spissusque

dies.41Cf. Ovid Her. 2.91-100, 5.53-58, 6.65-72,10.25-36, and 13.15-24; Met. 11.463-73;

Statius Ach. 2.23-26. For the same situation in a later Latin poet see Venantius FortunatusCarm. 6.5.193-200.

42As Doblhofer notes, the language derives from Verg. Ecl. 8.108 ("credimus? an

qui amant, ipsi sibi somnia fingunt?"), also describing a lover longing for a beloved.

Ausonius imitates the same Virgilian line in an epistle lamenting the absence of Paulinus of

Nola (Ep. 24.124). For the line en&irxgfingit mor see Ov. Pont. 1.9.8. For a lover's vision as

preternaturally acute see Ov. Her. 6.71-72; Venantius Fortunatus Carm. 6.5.194.








and sounds are perceived from a distance by a departing lover. His

emphasis on the fallibility of perception accords with the ambiguity of

the poem as a whole: is the De reditu suo a celebration of Rome's

continuing greatness or an elegy for an era that is passing?

The Tiber

The River Tiber occupies a privileged place in the symbolic geography of

urbs Roma. Statius three times combines the hills of Rome with the Tiber

as synecdoche for the city as a whole (Silv. 1.2.144-45,1.5.23-24,2.7.45).

A passage from an anonymous panegyric of Constantine, celebrating theemperor's victory at the Milvian Bridge, demonstrates some of the asso?

ciations the river had for a late antique audience. The orator addresses

the "sacred Tiber, once adviser of your guest Aeneas, next savior of the

exposed Romulus"; the river provides nourishment for Rome by trans-

porting supplies and protection by encircling its walls (Pan. Lat. 12.18.1.)43

Far from being just a topographical feature, the river summons up the

most treasured legends of Rome's early history. In the Aeneid, as the

panegyrist recalls, the river god had appeared to Aeneasin

adream and

bid him seek an alliance with Evander (Aen. 8.31-67). The Tiber is also

closely associated with the birth and infancy of Rome's founders, Romulus

and Remus, who, when ordered to be drowned in the river, were left high

and dry by its receding waters (Livy 1.4.3-6). In a version of the legend

Ilia (= Rhea Silvia), the mother of the twins, becomes the wife of the

river god (Hor. Odes 1.2.17-20).

In Claudian's panegyric on Probinus and Olybrius he shows him?

self sensitive to the associations of the Tiber. Personified Roma carries a

shield depicting Romulus and Remus, Mars, the Tiber?described by

antonomasia as the "devout river" (pius amnis)?and the wolf who suck-

led the twins (Prob. 96-97). The whole makes an iconographic ensemble

that encapsulates the legend of Rome's founding. By carrying a shield

with such a device the goddess Roma recognizes the derivation of her

greatness from that foundational sequence of events.

Later in the same poem Claudian personifies the Tiber exulting in

the consular ceremonies for the brothers Probinus and Olybrius. In

attributing a speech to the river god, the late antique poet is following

43"Sancte Thybri, quondam hospitis monitor Aeneae, mox Romuli conservator

expositi_Tu Romae tuae altor copiis subvehendis, tu munitor moenibus ambiendis."I use

the translation of Nixon and Rodgers 1994, 321.







552 MICHAEL ROBERTS

Virgil's example. His account of Tiber's appearance owes a detail to his

Augustan predecessor?both gods have reeds in (or in place of) their

hair?although in spirit the passage is more akin to Ovid's description of

the south wind in the Metamorphoses.,44 The river here plays no direct

part in the human action; his role is to serve the poet's panegyric pur?

pose. He summons his fellow rivers to a banquet celebrating the broth?

ers' consulship, a banquet that parallels on the divine level the festivities

for the two consuls in the city. As synecdoche for the city, and bearer of

the historical memory of Rome's legendary past, the Tiber is an appro?

priate god to honor Probinus and Olybrius and to embody the continuuity

between present and past. As a metonymic expression of continuity, the

god is imagined wearing a cloak woven by his wife Ilia, the mother of

another pair of brothers, Romulus and Remus (Prob. 224-25).

Elsewhere in Claudian the river is assimilated to, and to some

degree stands for, the city of Rome (Get. 578; 6 Cons. Hon. 11 and 365; cf.

Prudentius, C. Symm. 2.871). In Rutilius the Tiber again makes his ap?

pearance as a personified god. The poet interprets the god's headdress of

reeds as a triumphal wreath, consistently with his emphasis on Rome's

past military greatness ("ipse triumphali redimitus arundine Tibris,"

1.151).45 And alone of the late Latin poets he echoes the panegyrist of

Constantine in envisaging the river as nurturer and supplier of the city:

he prays it will carry to Rome rich provisions, downstream from the

countryside and upstream from the sea (1.153-54).46 In the uncertain

conditions of Rutilian Italy normal commercial activities cannot be taken

for granted; the poet expresses the hope that the river will serve the

needs of Rome ("Romuleis famulas usibus aptet aquas," 1.152). In so

doing he uncouples the city and river, refusing the metonymic identifica?

tion of the two that is found in Claudian.

44Compare Claudian, Prob. 217 "vertice luxuriat toto crinalis harundo" with Verg.

Aen. 8.34 "et crinis umbrosa tegebat harundo" (cf. Ov. Fast. 5.637 and Sid. Apoll. Carm.

2.333-34). Although there are no exact correspondences in language between Claudian

and Ovid, both describe only the upper torso of the god?head/face, beard, forehead, and

chest?and both gods are soaked and dripping with water (Claud. Prob. 220-23; Ov. Met.

1.264-67).45Doblhofer 1972-77, 2:88, compares Ov. Met. 9.3 "inornatos redimitus harundine

crines," also of a river god, Achelous. For Rome's military triumphs see 1.77, 93, and 115.

Rutilius also interprets the datum that the river god is horned ("fronte bicorni," 1.179) as

an allegory for the two mouths of the Tiber.46

"Atque opulenta tibi placidis commercia ripis / devehat hinc ruris, subvehat inde

maris."








ROME, CITY OF THE MARTYRS

Paulinus of Nola settled at Cimitile in A.D. 395. Each year he would

travel from the shrine of Felix to celebrate the annual festival of Saints

Peter and Paul in Rome on June 29. In his letters he refers frequently to

the annual pilgrimage; in his poems written for Saint Felix's day, Rome is

regularly a point of comparison for Paulinus' new foundation at Nola.47

Already in the second Natalicium, and the first written after his arrival

at Nola, he praises his new native city as second only to Rome; Rome,

which previously enjoy ed primacy "in empire and victorious arms," now

does so "in the tombs of the apostles" ("quae prius imperio tantum et

victricibus armis, / nunc et apostolicis terrarum est prima sepulchris,"

Carm. 13.29-30).

Military language is often used in speaking of the protection the

martyrs provide for Rome.48 In particular, the relies of the martyrs serve

as defensive fortifications, walls, and towers. When Constantine founded

Constantinople, Paulinus writes, he deliberately imitated Rome, endow-

ing the new foundation with the bodies of two apostles, Andrew and

Timothy (corresponding to Peter and Paul), to be "twin towers" ("geminis

ita turribus extat / Constantinopolis," Carm. 19.337-38); the bodies of the

apostles protect the literal walls of the city with a second spiritual forti-

fication ("ut sua apostolicis muniret moenia ... / corporibus," 335-36), as

Peter and Paul provide spiritual defence for Rome (339-42). There is

here an implicit epitomizing topography of Rome; the martyrs play the

role that Constantine's anonymous Gallic panegyrist had attributed to

the River Tiber: they protect the city by encircling its walls ("munitor

moenibus ambiendis," Pan. Lat. 12.18.1). Moreover that protection finds

expression in physical structures, the striking new basilicas of the martyrs

built outside the walls of Rome. Prudentius, writing of the Roman virgin

martyr Agnes, points up the contrast between the religious and secular

buildings, both of which protect the citizens of Rome.

Agnes sepulcrum est Romulea in domo

fortis puellae, martyris inclytae.

Conspectu in ipso condita turrium

servat salutem virgo Quiritium. (Perist. 14.1-4)

4714.65-70, 21.25-35. See Naf 1997.48Cf. Prosper, De ingratis 40-42 "sedes Roma Petri, quae pastoralis honoris / facta

caput mundo, quicquid non possidet armis / religione tenet."







554 MICHAEL ROBERTS

Agnes' tomb is in the home of Romulus, a brave maiden and glorious

martyr. Established here in the sight of its towers, she, a virgin, secures the

safety of Rome's citizens.

A young girl more truly protects the city ("servat salutem") than its

towers and fortifications.

Christian writers regularly move between the martyr him- or her?

self, the body or relics of the martyr, and the building/tomb where those

relics are housed.49 The saints are simultaneously present both here on

earth and in heaven, to intercede for the cities they protect with Christ.

After Stilicho's defeat of the Ostrogoths at Faesulae in 406, Paulinus

gives thanks to Felix and the other martyrs at the annual festival of his

patron the following January for averting the threat to Italy. Preeminent

among these martyrs are Peter and Paul who "kept watch with their

insistent prayers" ("impenso duxere precatu / excubias," Carm. 21.33-34)

over the safety of Rome. The efficacy of the martyrs' prayers depends on

their immediate access to Christ, understood as deriving from their pres?

ence with him in heaven; on the other hand, the idea that they "kept

watch" suggests a more physical presence, akin to literal security mea?

sures on earth. Metaphorically, buildings could keep watch. Claudian in

De sexto consulatu Honorii describes the temples circling the Palatine as

"so many watch posts of the gods" ("tantisque deorum / cingitur excubiis,"

43^4). It is tempting to imagine that Claudian's language is influenced

by contemporary Christian advocacy of the martyrs and the protection

they/their shrines provided for the city. At the same time, the Claudian

passage indicates that Paulinus' "duxere ... excubias" can carry spatial or

topographical connotations: the martyrs' shrines, like Claudian's temples

of the gods, ring the city with watch posts. Rutilius, in the praise of Italywith which he begins book 2 of the De reditu, has a similar understanding

of, in his case, landscape as fortification. The wisdom of god ("consilium

dei") has erected the Apennines as a barrier, to serve as "watch posts

over Latium" ("excubiis Latiis," 2.33); Rome is "encircled by multiple

fortifications" ("multiplici... munimine cingi," 2.39). In Rutilius' account

a Stoic divine providence has organized the geography of Italy to pro?

vide the security for Rome that the Christians attributed to God and the

martyrs.

49For instance, the verb condita in Prudent., Perist. 14.3. The verb regularly means

"buried,"but it is also used of the setting up of a religious structure, a temple or an altar

(OLD, s.v.10b). The effect in the present passage is to elide the distinction between Agnesthe martyr and the basilica/tomb which houses her body.








Jerome, writing in A.D. 400 to the Christian aristocrat Laeta, pre?

sents a starkly differentiated account of the new Christian Rome:

Auratum squalet Capitolium, fuligine et aranearum telis omnia Romae

templa cooperta sunt; movetur urbs sedibus suis, et inundans populus ante

delubra semiruta currit ad martyrum tumulos. (Ep. 107.1)

The golden Capitoline decays, all Rome's temples are covered with soot

and spiders' webs; the city has changed its orientation, and a flood of

people hurries past the half-ruined shrines to the tombs of the martyrs.

Jerome exaggerates, but it is significant that he speaks of the conversion

of the inhabitants as a reorientation of urban geography.50The city is now

oriented toward the surrounding martyr shrines rather than the pagan

temples of its monumental centre. Prudentius, roughly contemporaneously,

presents a similar picture in the first book of the Contra Symmachum:

Iamque ruit paucis Tarpeia in rupe relictis

ad sincera virum penetralia Nazareorum

atque ad apostolicos Evandria curia fontes. (C Symm. 1.547^9)

Now, leaving only a few behind on the Tarpeian rock, the senate house of

Evander hurries to the holy precincts of the Nazareans and the apostolic

springs.

Earlier in the poem Prudentius had shown himself sensitive to the indoc-

trinating effect that exposure to pagan cult and the religious ceremonies

of the city?especially the worship of Venus and Roma?had on the im-

pressionable young (1.199-244).51 Now the focus of worship has changed.

With the exception of a few holdouts, still wedded to the religion of the

Capitoline and the Tarpeian rock, Rome's senatorial aristocracy hurries

50Lim (1999,265-66) emphasizes that Jerome's account here of the reorientation of

civic life, as well as the similar passages in Prudentius, is not to be taken at face value. The

reality is that the games in particular continued to provide a primary focus of Roman civic

identity well into the fifth century.At stake in the texts discussed in this paper are imagina-tive structures and signifying practices that are in an uncertain relationship with the reality

of urban life in late antique Rome. It is striking, though, that both Jerome and Prudentiusemphasize not just new buildings and monuments, but the movement of people and theceremonial activities associated with those monuments. The validation of Christian sacred

topography depended to a significant extent on its enactment in movement and procession,if it was to take a hold on the imagination of the plebs Christiana (cf. Carruthers 1998,54-

57).51On this passage see Gnilka 1994.







556 MICHAEL ROBERTS

eagerly (ruit) to the Christian churches and basilicas of the apostles.

Metonymy?curia, the building, for its occupants, the senate?anchors

the confessional reorientation of its inhabitants in the topography of the

city. Under the influence of curia, fontes evokes not just the waters of

baptism, associated with the apostle Peter in Peristephanon 12, and the

sources of apostolic teaching to which the Roman converts now turn, but

also the physical embodiment of the apostles' presence in the city, the

basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Word order reflects sense: the

apostolici fontes now embrace the Evandrian curia. Curia, like rostra,

regularly serves as a metonymy for Roman public life;52 the epithet

Evandria links Prudentius' passage with Virgil's prestigious account of

the prehistory of Rome. While celebrating a fundamental change in con?

fessional status, the Christian poet is eager to use the secular traditions of

the imperial city as triangulation points for mapping the new Christian

Rome.

Prudentius, in his Rome poetry, frequently returns to the Hieronym-

ian image of the plebs Christiana thronging to Christian basilicas: the

Vatican tomb of Peter and the Lateran (C. Symm. 1.583-86), martyr

shrines generally and especially that of Lawrence (Perist. 2.512-28), the

catacomb of Hippolytus (Perist. 11.189-94 and 199-202).53 At Hippolytus'

festival even the impressive church built to accommodate devotees of

the saint has difficulty taking in the "flood" of worshipers ("undas,"

Perist. 11.227; cf. Jerome, Ep. 107.1 "inundans populus"). The basilica

enfolds its foster-children (i.e., the devotees of the saint) in its maternal

and nurturing embrace ("maternum pandens gremium quo condat

alumnos / ac foveat fetos adcumulata sinus," 229-30). The metaphor

recalls the traditional characterization of Rome as mater (first in Livy

5.54.2). In De consulatu Stilichonis 3 (150-52), in a passage of Rome

panegyric, Claudian speaks of the city as "alone receiv[ing] into her

embrace ("in gremium . . . recepit") the conquered, and nurtur[ing]

("fovit") the human race with a common name in the manner of a

mother, not mistress" ("matris, non dominae ritu"). Prudentius employs

and elaborates the same metaphor; saints or their shrines regularly pro-

52Curia:Stat., Silv. 1.4.41 and 5.2.27;Pan. Lat. 2.47.3 and 4.35.2; Claud., 4 Cons. Hon.10 and 6 Cons. Hon. 52; cf. Prudent., C Symm. 1.599. Rostra:Pan. Lat. 2.47.3; Claud., Cons.

Stil. 2.390,3.106, 201; Get. 82; 6 Cons. Hon. 42,587, 644 ; Prudent., Perist. 11.45.53Prudentius here alludes to Virgil's account of the morning salutatio, a regular part

of the urban rituals of social life in Augustan Rome. In Christian Rome attendance on the

martyrs at their shrines takes the place of the, to Virgil, offensive social obligations of the

pre-Christian period. See Roberts 1993,165-66.








vide parental protection and nurturing for the Christian community in

the Peristephanon.54 In so doing they replicate on a smaller scale the

ideal relation of city and empire in Claudian's poem. At the end of

Peristephanon 11, troops of worshipers from throughout Italy and from

all social classes congregate for the festival of the saint, where they enact

annually a ritual of community in the maternal embrace of the martyr's

Roman basilica.

It is characteristic of Prudentius' Rome poetry to combine descrip-

tions of buildings with accounts of individual worship or group ceremo-

nial. In his poem for Lawrence (Perist. 2) he celebrates the recent conver?

sion of the Roman aristocracy:

Quidquid Quiritum sueverat

orare simpuvium Numae,

Christi frequentans atria

hymnis resultat martyrem.

Ipsa et senatus lumina,

quondam luperci aut flamines,

apostolorum et martyrum

exosculantur limina. (Perist. 2.513-20)

All the citizens who had been accustomed to pray to Numa's holy ladle

throng the halls of Christ and celebrate the martyr in hymns. The brightest

lights of the senate, once priests of the Lupercal or other rites, lovingly kiss

the thresholds of apostles and martyrs.

The first stanza (513-16) describes a communal ceremony of worship,

with the singing of hymns in praise of the martyr; the second (517-20),

acts of individual devotion to the apostles and martyrs. In both cases

Prudentius includes language (atria and limina) that reminds readers of

the material structures where worship takes place. Atria is used of church

buildings elsewhere in the Peristephanon, and that is its primary meaning

here. But the word also can refer to domestic space. Prudentius imagines

the throngs of devotees in the halls of Christ as the equivalent of the

throngs of clients in the reception hall of an influential Roman at the

morning salutatio. This comparison is also made in Peristephanon 11

54See also Perist. 2.569-72, 4.94-96, 7.5; Roberts 1993, 22-24. Prudentius typicallycombines the language of maternal nurturing with paternal protection. In elaboratingClaudian's metaphor Prudentius emphasizes the maternal embrace and the relation of

offspring to mother. For mater of Roma see Gernentz 1918,127-28.







558 MICHAEL ROBERTS

(189-90 and 227-28), in that case by allusions to Virgil, Georgics 2.458-

64. Here the language is less distinctive, but Seneca provides a parallel.

In characterizing a rich man, he speaks of, among his other blessings, his

frequens atrium ("crowded reception hall," Ep. 76.12). The Roman aris-

tocracy in Prudentius' account now turns for patronage to the martyrs,

whose alumni and alumnae they become and whose churches they at-

tend in a religious ritual that takes the place of the social ritual of the

classical period.

The second act of worship Prudentius describes involves a personal

act of devotion before the martyrs' shrines. The play on lumina-limina

emphasizes the salutary humility the "bright lights" (lumina) of the sen?

ate display in kissing the thresholds (limina) of the saints. Such devo-

tional acts find fuller development in other poems in the Peristephanon.55

Here a single gesture encapsulates the spiritual transformation of the

senatorial aristocracy.

Peristephanon 12, on the apostles Peter and Paul, is the most con-

centrated exercise in Prudentius' poetry in re writing the city of Rome as

Christian sacred space. The poem contains only brief accounts of the

martyrdoms of the two apostles (thereby diverging from the typical

pattern in the other poems of the Peristephanon). Its dramatic setting is

the communal celebration of the saints' festival and it contains architec-

tural descriptions of buildings associated with each of them: a baptistery

associated with Saint Peter (31^4) and the new basilica of S. Paolo fuori

le mura (45-56).56 Prudentius emphasizes that the buildings are situated

on opposite banks of the Tiber. The river flows betwen the two memoriae

and unites them in a single symbolic geography:

Dividit ossa duum Tybris sacer ex utraque ripa,

inter sacrata dum fluit sepulcra. (Perist. 12.29-30)

The holy Tiber divides the bones of the two on either bank, as it flows

between their sacred tombs.

The Tiber remains sacred ("Tybris sacer"), as it is in Virgil's Aeneid

("flumine sancto," 8.72). But whereas in Virgil the river is a personified

divinity, participating in the action, in Prudentius its sanctity derives from

its association with the holy tombs ("sacrata . . . sepulchra") of the

55Roberts 1993,19-20.56The baptistery has traditionally been identified as a construction of Pope Damasus

at Saint Peter's, but the identification has been questioned by Smith 1988.








apostles. Prudentius' sense of the special role of the Tiber in the symbolic

topography of Rome finds a striking parallel in Ammianus Marcellinus.

There the historian regrets that the emperor Julian is buried in Tarsus

rather than in the city of Rome.57

[Eius] suprema et cineres . . . non Cydnus videre deberet, quamvis

gratissimus amnis et liquidus, sed ad perpetuandam gloriam recte factorum

praeterlambere Tiberis, intersecans urbem aeternam divorumque veterum

monumenta praestringens. (25.10.5)

The River Cydnus, however attractive and clear, should not see his last

remains and ashes, but to perpetuate the renown of his great deeds the

Tiber should flow past them, which cuts its way through the eternal city

and laps against the memorials of past emperors.

Both Ammianus and Prudentius view Rome schematically in terms of

the river and the tombs on its banks; in Ammianus' case they are the

tombs of the divinized emperors of the past ("divorum . . . veterum

monumenta"), in Prudentius' of the apostolic martyrs. The process of

creating symbolic topography is identical, but the significance of that

topography has changed. In Prudentius it encodes the Christian rather

than the imperial history of urbs Roma.

Peristephanon 12 celebrates the concord of the Christian Roman

empire, united under the sway of the apostolorum principes, Peter and

Paul. The slogan of concordia apostolorum was frequent in the propa-

ganda of the Roman church in the second half of the fourth century: the

apostles' common martyrdom at Rome on the same day of the year

assured the unity of the Church and the preeminence of the city of their

deaths.58 At the same time, concordia had long been a catchword ofRoman imperial ideology: the Roman empire assured an ideal harmony

for its subject peoples. Prudentius' poem unites papal and imperial pro-

paganda in a charter text for the Christian Roman empire, combining

ritual enactment of that ideal concordia on the saints' common feast day,

a schematic sacred topography of Rome?the two religious edifices on

571owe this reference to my former student Bret Mulligan.58On concordia apostolorum see Pietri 1961 and 1976,2:1537-1626, and Huskinson

1982. On Peter and Paul as principes see Perist. 2.459-60 ("hic [i.e., in Rome] nempe iam

regnant duo / apostolorum principes") and Maximus of Turin, Hom. 68 ("Illi ergo sunt

beatissimi Petrus et Paulus qui... sua corpora in illius urbis arce reconderent, quae totius

orbis obtinuerat principatum; quatenus potentiam virtutis suae Christus ostendens, ubi

mundus caput habebat imperii, ibi regni sui principes collocaret" [PL 57.396B]).







560 MICHAEL ROBERTS

either side of the Tiber?and a foundation history of Christian Rome, in

the martyr narratives of the two apostles, the fundatores Ecclesiae.59

Prudentius' foundation legend for Christian Rome gains resonance

from its association with the River Tiber. The poet emphasizes that "the

Tiber marsh knows weil" the location of the martyrdoms, which are

"washed by the nearby river." The reference to the river and its marshy

valley recalls the foundational event of Roman history, the exposure and

discovery of the children Romulus and Remus by the banks of the Tiber.

The foundation legend of Christian Rome takes place in the same loca?

tion. In both classical and Christian tradition, as formulated by Prudentius,

the Tiber takes on almost iconic significance. An implicit parallel be?

tween Peter and Paul and Romulus and Remus probably also informs

Prudentius' decision to begin each of the two books of the Contra Sym-

machum, a work devoted to celebrating Christian Rome, with a preface

dedicated to one of the two apostles.60 It is only with Pope Leo, however,

in a sermon for the festival of the apostles (a.d. 441), that the compari?

son becomes explicit. Leo addresses Roma:

Isti [sc. Peter and Paul] sunt sancti patres tui verique pastores, qui te regnis

caelestibus inserendam multo melius multoque felicius condiderunt quam

illi quorum studio prima moenium tuorum fundamenta locata sunt; ex

quibus is qui tibi nomen dedit fraterna te caede foedavit. Isti sunt qui te ad

hanc gloriam provexerunt, ut gens sancta, populus electus, civitas sacer-

dotalis et regia, per sacram beati Petri sedem caput orbis effecta, latius

praesideres religione divina quam dominatione terrena. Quamvis enim

multis aucta victoriis ius imperii tui terra marique protuleris, minus tamen

est quod tibi bellicus labor subdidit quam quod pax Christiana subiecit.

(Serm. 82.1; SC 200:48)

These are your holy fathers and true shepherds, who established you to

take your place in the heavenly kingdom in a much better and more

fortunate manner than those by whose energies the foundations of your

walls were first laid. Of them the one who gave you his name also defiled

you with a brother's bloodshed. These are they who advanced you to this

glory so that as a sacred nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal state,

made capital of the whole world by the blessed Peter, you may enjoy wider

sway by your godly religion than by earthly dominion. For although you

advanced your imperial power by many victories on land and sea, yourefforts in war have subjected fewer to you than has Christian peace.

59Roberts 1993, 182-87. Gaudentius of Brescia terms Peter and Paul "duo vero

mundi lumina, columnae fidei, ecclesiae fundatores" (Sermo 20.5; CSEL 68:182.31-32).60Cf. Buchheit 1966,133; Paschoud 1967, 227-28; and Cacitti 1972,423-24.








The opposition between Rome's past achievements in war and its present

primacy, secured by the patronage of the apostles, recalls Paulinus of

Nola in the last decade of the previous century (Carm. 13.29-30). Leo, as

a preacher, spells out what is implicit in Prudentius, both what the two

foundation legends have in common and how they differ. As "true fa?

thers" the apostles aspire to the title pater patriae traditionally attributed

to Romulus (Livy 1.16.3 and 5.49.7); as "true shepherds" (veri pastores)

Peter and Paul provide a Christian counterpart to Romulus and Remus,

who as young men had tended the flocks of their adopted father.61 The

pope's version lacks the metonymic/synecdochic schematization of the

earlier poets. He is a Christian preacher, writing in prose in a quite dif?

ferent genre. Yet traces of the metaphorical/rhetorical tradition of per-

sonifying Rome remain. In the introductory section to his sermon he

addresses Roma directly: the city that had once been "the mistress of

falsehood" (magistra erroris) has become "the student of truth" (disciplina

veritatis). Rome remains an emotionally charged idea to which his Chris?

tian congregation, especially on the feast day of the apostles, can be

counted on to respond.

Richard Lim (1999, 267), writing of the role in the fourth and fifth

centuries of civic spectacle in the contested topography of Rome, distin?

guishes two processes, "secularization" and "Christianization." Both can

be illustrated from the representations of Rome we have been studying.

Already for Claudian, writing in a Christian court and for a Christian

patron, the goddess Roma is no longer the object of cult. Instead she

serves his panegyrical intent, as an active agent in the divine machinery

of the historical-panegyrical epic. The confusion of divine and human

realms conduces to his purpose by representing the individuals praised

as operating at a more than human level and lending universal signifi?

cance to their particular actions. As in the visual arts, the attributes of the

goddess encode her power and status, but they also provide a flexible

medium for registering the specific circumstances that give rise to a

particular poem. In Prudentius the process of secularization goes one

step further. Roma is no longer a goddess and plays no role in initiating

action in his poetry, but she does have a part to play as a personification

61For the use of verus in Lactantius when reinterpreting passages from pagan poetry

(Div. Inst. 4.10.7, 5.11.5, and 6.24.29) see Goulon 1978, 144-45. Leo proposes a similar

Christian reinterpretation of a classical source. For Peter as the founder of Christian Rome

in Leo's writings see McShane 1979,109-69, and for Leo's attitude to Rome Inglebert 1996,635-38.







562 MICHAEL ROBERTS

of Rome's greatness, delivering a rhetorical prosopopeia and visually

imagined with a wealth of metonymic detail. Roma continues to figure in

fifth-century authors; in a sermon of Leo the Great, as we have seen, or

in the imperial panegyrics of Sidonius Apollinaris in the middle of the

century.62 Still later, in the sixth century, Ennodius of Pavia concludes his

Libellus de Synodo, a work of polemic supporting Pope Symmachus in

the Laurentian schism, with three successive prosopopeiae, spoken by

the apostles Peter and Paul and by Rome, the "parent of the world"

(49.96-139 Vogel); his panegyric for the Ostrogothic king Theoderic

speaks of an aging city, mater civitatum, who has been rejuvenated by

Theoderic's building projects (263.11.56 Vogel). Now secularized, mother

Rome can serve either to promote the claims to primacy of the Roman

church or to praise in traditional terms the latest ruler of Italy and the

revival he brings to the ancient capital.

The schematic topographies of our three poets provide readily

accessible shorthand images of the city that can be employed for panegy?

ric or polemical purposes. At least one motif, "Rome in overview," be?

comes the vehicle for an exchange between two of the poets, Claudian

and Prudentius, which is later picked up by Rutilius. Prudentius shows

himself particularly sensitive to the value of such schematic topography

to provide a Christian mental image of the city. In the Contra Symmachum

he emphasizes that the Roman populace, especially the senatorial class,

is turning from the sites in the monumental center of Rome to the

Lateran and the basilicas of the martyrs. His most systematic mapping of

the city, though, is in Peristephanon 12: there the city is conceived in

schematic terms as united by the Tiber and by the basilicas of the two

apostles, which stand on either bank of the river to the north and south.

Prudentius provides an emotionally charged, readily recollectible system

of coordinates for the Christian map of Rome.63 Their resonance derives

from the past history of the martyrdom of the apostles Peter and Paul?

the bloodshed on the Tiber banks?but also from the associations of the

river in Roman legend and in the Aeneid. In moving between the two

basilicas during the annual festival of the apostles worshipers experi-

enced in their own persons the ideal unity of Prudentius' version of

Rome. His model was to be influential. Translated to Gaul, Prudentian

62Sid. Apoll. Carm. 2.391-523; 5.13-53, 63-106, 351-67; 7.45-138. In his panegyricsSidonius conforms to the Claudian model.

63Prudentius' mapping of the city of Rome can be understood in terms of ancient

memory systems. He is constructing a network of locational memory cues, charged with

cultural associations. See Carruthers 1998,10-16,40-44, and 54-57.








language informs Paulinus of Perigueux' account (mid-fifth-century) of

the city of Tours, with the two sites of the cult of Saint Martin, his burial

place and his monastery of Marmoutier, located on either side of the

River Loire (Vita S. Martini 6.71-75).

The poets of the turn of the fourth century and the early fifth

century return repeatedly to the image of Rome, metaphorically imag-

ined as a queen or goddess, and metonymically represented by a series of

historically and culturally charged locations. Their portrayal of the city

reflects the tensions of the period: how were Rome and its traditions to

be viewed now that Christianity was triumphant? where did its greatness

now lie? and, particularly pressing for Rutilius after the shocks of the

first decade of the fifth century, was Rome in decline or would it revive

once more? Rome?at least the image of Rome?was resilient; long-

established patterns of thought did not easily change with an individual's

change in religious status. But the process of secularization and Chris-

tianization evident in the poetry of this period in many ways defined the

terms of the debate for a century or more.64

Wesleyan University

e-mail: [email protected]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Brown, Peter. 1961. "Aspects of the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy."

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Cacitti, Remo. 1972. "Subdita Christo servit Roma Deo: Osservazioni sulla teologia

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Cameron, Alan. 1967. "Rutilius Namatianus, St. Augustine, and the Date of the

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64This article is based on a talk given at Brown University, 24 February 2000. Mythanks go to my hosts on that occasion and to the audience for the valuable questions and

discussion that followed the paper.







564 MICHAEL ROBERTS

-. 1970. Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius. Oxford:

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Documents

Rome Personified, Rome Epitomized. Representations of Rome in the Poetry of the Early Fifth Century