The Antiquity of the Symmachi

The Antiquity of the SymmachiAuthor(s): Alan CameronSource: Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Bd. 48, H. 4 (4th Qtr., 1999), pp. 477-505Published by: Franz Steiner VerlagStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4436559 .

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THE ANTIQUITY OF THE SYMMACHI

That the Symmachi were one of the most important families in Rome from the fourth to sixth centuries is common knowledge.1 It is also commonly asserted that the family is no older than the fourth century,2 and that its first distinguished representative is the Symmachus who was consul in 330. It has even been argued that this man was a barbarian.3 That at least is demonstrably false.4 Moreover, a text of the first importance has been left out of the picture, taking the Symmachi back in power and fame to the beginning of the third century.

I

In his commentary on the Isagoge of Porphyry, the sixth-century Alexandrian Neoplatonist Elias5 offers unexpected information concerning the distinguished senator at whose invitation Porphyry claimed to have written the work:6 a certain Chrysaorius, "a leading man in the senate of Rome, for he was descended (a&ioyovo;) from that Symmachus of whom it was written [sacrificing the puns], 'Symmachus, son of Symmachus, man of many allies, ally of Rome'

(19tIiaXe luggaX4i8X1, nokuo4LpR.LaXe, cigaXeW)c)."

1 This is a drastically revised version of a paper originally written in 1970, but put on one side for a book long deferred (The Last Pagans of Rome) in which there is now no room for it. Over the years it has benefitted from comments by Roger Bagnall, Tim Barnes (who cited it in his New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine [Cambridge, Mass. 19821, 103-04), Tony Birley, Ted Champlin and Domenico Vera, and I have drawn on its conclusions in one or two published works of my own in abbreviated form.

2 From 0. Seeck, preface to his edition of Symmachus (MGH, AA. vi. 1, 1883), xxxif.; to F. Paschoud, "Reflexions sur l'ideal religieux de Symmaque," Historia 14 (1965), 228; id. Roma Aeterna (Rome 1967), 73; M.T.W. Arnheim, The Senatorial Aristocracy in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford 1972), 19, 164.

3 So Seeck, followed by Paschoud (as in n. 2). 4 The only basis for this strange fancy is Julian's criticism of Constantine for making

barbarians consul (Amm. Marc. xxi. 10. 8). In fact there were no barbarian consuls under Constantine, and rather than invent them we must simply accept that Julian (if correctly reported) was exaggerating or mistaken.

5 On whom see L. G. Westerink, Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy (Am- sterdam 1962), xx-xxiii.

6 Comm. in Isag. Porph. 15 (CAG xviii. 1), ed. A. Busse (Berlin 1900), p. 39. 8-11; included in PLRE i (1971), 204, but omitted from PIR and Barbieri's Albo Senatorio.

Historia, Band XLVIII/4 (1999) C Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, Sitz Stuttgart



478 ALAN CAMERON

This passage implies that already by ca. 270 (the approximate date of Porphyry's commentary),7 the Symmachi had been a prominent Roman family for three generations. cirotyovo; is an imprecise term, but implies remote rather than immediate descent: it is used of a great-granddaughter (and beyond),8 and could presumably be used of a grandson or granddaughter, but hardly of a son. So the Symmachus of whom the verse was written must have been at least the grandfather of Porphyry's friend Chrysaorius; and he is already "Symmachides."

Had the verse been quoted out of context, it would certainly have been assigned to the fifth century at earliest, when three or four uncontroversially recorded generations of Symmachi had distinguished themselves. Is it possible that Elias has somehow put it in the wrong context? Could it be that the verse was written in the fourth or fifth century and mistakenly applied to an ancestor of Porphyrius's dedicatee? A Greek poet called Andronicus sent some of his poems to Symmachus cos. 391,9 and Aurelius Memmius Symmachus cos. 485 visited Constantinople, where he won dedications from the grammarian Pris- cian.10 But panegyrics on local grandees had a very limited circulation, and even supposing a Greek poet wrote one on either Symmachus, it is most unlikely that a copy reached Alexandria.

On the basis of a new text giving Elias the title of praetorian prefect, Westerink identified him with Elias prefect of Illyricum in 541."1 But this would be much too late for the consul of 485, nor is it likely that a praetorian prefect in the age of Justinian ended his days as a professor of philosophy. It was surely an honorary prefecture for "services to scholarship," not uncommon at this period (Evagrius the church historian, for example). '2 There is no reason to believe that Elias ever left Alexandria, where he was first pupil and eventually successor of the Alexandrian Olympiodorus.13

Even if we allow the possibility that a Greek panegyric on one of the fourth or fifth century Symmachi found its way to Alexandria, why should anyone have connected it with Porphyrius's dedicatee? The only way this could have happened is if there had been some peg in Porphyry on which to hang such an

7 J. Bidez, Vie de Porphyre (Gand 1913), 58-60. 8 LSJSuppl. (1968), s.v. 9 Ep. viii. 22; cf. PLRE i. 65-66.

10 A. Momigliano, Studies in Historiography (London 1966), 186-87. l1 The title is attested in the heading to part of a commentary on the Prior Analytics

published by L. G. Westerink in "Elias on the Prior Analytics," Mnemosyne 1961, 126; for the prefect of 541, Justinian, Novel cliii.

12 Evagrius himself records receiving the "codicils of the prefecture" (5UXxou; iv6pX(Ov) for one of his works (Hist. Eccl. vii. 24). So too probably the 'lIoivvqv T6v pinTopa t6v

dtiix ri xi xv ir6pXov a6iq UtpdiEVOV of Sophronius, Miracula SS. Cyri et Johatnnis 70 (PG lxxxvii. 3. 3673 A).

13 Westerink, Anonymous Prolegomena (as in n. 5), xiii-xix and id., "Ein astrologisches Kolleg aus dem Jahre 563," Byz. Zeitschr. 64 (1971), 6f.



The Antiquity of the Symmachi 479

identification. In other words, if Porphyry had mentioned someone called Symmachus. One Symmachus might have been confused with another. But that would still leave us with a third-century senatorial Symmachus.

Simpler and more satisfactory to accept that the verse really was written about a third-century Symmachus. Porphyry and Plotinus moved in Roman senatorial circles. It is clear from the various details about Chrysaorius reported, not just by Elias, David and a later anonymous, but by the more reliable Ammonius, that Porphyry must have said a fair amount about the man in his various dedications.14 Not only the Isagoge but two more of Porphyry's works are dedicated to Chrysaorius. In the late third century Greek culture was still thriving in Rome, and panegyrics by itinerant Greek poets must still have been common.

The gap of a generation in our records for the Symmachi between Chrysao- rius ca. 270 and the consul of 330 need occasion no surprise. It is a dimly attested period, with neither the literary nor epigraphic sources that cast so much light on the late fourth-century aristocracy. We only know of Chrysao- rius, important though he evidently was, because he happened to be interested in Aristotle and knew Porphyry. Prosopographers sometimes need reminding that our best source for the late third century Roman aristocracy is Porphyry's Life of Plotinus.

There can be no question that the age of Constantine saw the emergence of a new aristocracy of office, with the Symmachi (it has been generally assumed) a prime example. But at the same time it saw the reemergence of senatorial families excluded from high office during the last third of the third century. In the absence of secular narrative sources for these years, we are largely depend- ent on inscriptions, at just this period notoriously (for whatever reason) less common than before. Gaps in our documentation for senatorial families between the early third and early fourth centuries are therefore not uncommon.

With a family documented before ca. 250, we simply postulate a couple of lost generations: for example, between L. Egnatius Victor Lollianus, prefect of Rome (PVR) in 254 and Q. Flavius Maesius Egnatius Lollianus PVR 342;15 or between the third-century L. Turcius Faesasius Apronianus and L. Turcius Apronianus PVR 339.16 We find the same gap in the record of the Rufii Festi of Volsinii, otherwise documented from as early as the first century down into the fifth. 17

The exact reverse of this argument has played an important role in research

14 All sources quoted in PLRE i. 204. 15 A. Chastagnol, Fastes de la Prefecture urbaine de Rome au Bas-Empire (Paris 1962), 114

[hereafter Fastes]. 16 Chastagnol, Fastes 106. 17 John Matthews, "Continuity in a Roman Family: the Rufii Festi of Volsinii," Historia 14

(1967), 484-509; Arnheim, Senatorial Aristocracy (as in n. 2), Ch. V (useful material poorly put together); John Morris, "Munatius Plancus Paulinus", Bonner Jahrbucher 165



480 ALAN CAMERON

on the Historia Augusta. It was the occurrence of names not otherwise attested before the mid-fourth century that first set Dessau on the track that was to lead to his denunciation of the entire work as a forgery of the Theodosian age.18 The same line found a more recent and eloquent advocate in Ronald Syme. The notion "that the families in question had ancestors of note in the age of Constantine.. .has found cheap and easy support, appealing to doubt on any single item, with neglect of convergence and cumulation." 19 Undoubtedly there are a great many bogus names in the HA.20 But it is another matter whether they have any bearing on the date of the work. The fact remains that we simply do not have the material to warrant confident ex silentio inferences that families were not prominent half a century or more before we happen first to hear of them. One such family (I suggest) was the Symmachi.

II

There are two reasons why Symmachus cos. 330 has often been supposed of non-senatorial birth. The first is the (mistaken) belief that no senatorial Symm- achus is attested before the fourth century. The second is that the consul has been identified with M. Aurelius Nerius Symmachius (not Symmachus, as we shall see) vir perfectissimus (i.e. of equestrian rank) attested by CIL vi. 1747; and with Symmachus vicarius of Moesia (so it is alleged) in 318 or 319 (vicars, it has been assumed, were not of senatorial rank under Constantine).21 But now that we know there were senatorial Symmachi already in the third century, the identification of the consul with these other two Symmachi becomes less self- evident. It is not as if it were merely a question of either identifying or refusing to identify three exact homonyms. Only the supposed vicar is just "Symma- chus." the v.p. is M. Aurelius Nerius Symmachius and the consul (as now seems clear) Aurelius Valerius Symmachus Tullianus.

The consul has been roughly handled in the past. Chastagnol, for example,

(1965), 88-96 (to be used with caution); T. D. Barnes, "Two Senators under Constan- tine," JRS 65 (1975), 44-46.

18 "Uber Zeit und Personlichkeit der S.H.A.," Hermes 24 (1889), 349. 19 Ammianus and the Historia Augusta (Oxford 1968), 154 n. 1. 20 "more than two hundred characters redolent of fraud," Syme (as in n. 19), 165; for a

critical survey of names in the HA from the last half of the third century, T. D. Barnes, "Some Persons in the Historia Augusta," Phoenix 26 (1972), 140-82.

21 Chastagnol (" Les l6gats du proconsul d'Afrique au Bas-Empire," Libyca 7 [1959], 191) placed the opening of the post to senators shortly before Constantine's death; Arnheim (Senatorial Aristocracy [as in n. 2], 64f.) concluded that "just under half his vicars whose origins are known were nobles." No senatorial vicar is so far recorded as early as 318, but this is the sort of gap that one new inscription could fill. From vicar to consul in 12 years would be a plausible enough career in itself (e.g. Pacatianus, vic. Britt. 319 and cos. 332; Ablabius, vic. Asia 324/6 and cos. 328), but (as we shall see) Symmachus was not a vicar.




dismissed the "Tullianus" as a "forme aberrante... inexpliquee" and the "Valerius" as a confusion with "Aurelius," so that (he concludes) "il y a toute chance" that we are dealing with one and the same man: namely, M. Aurelius Nerius Symmachus.22 Neither claim really stood up on the evidence available when Chastagnol wrote, and a good deal more has accrued since.

The (admittedly surprising) Tullianus is now attested by no fewer than three papyri, all omitting the Symmachus altogether and offering the form Valerius Tullianus.23 Silvani corrected the last name in an ill-spelled Roman inscription dated pridie nonas Jenuaras Fl. Gallicano et luiliano conss. to Iuliano, but there was never any such consular pair as Gallicanus and lulianus (only Gallicanus and Bassus in 317). In the light of the papyri it is now clear that De Rossi's Tulliano was correct. The lapicide misread as I a T and an L in a script with short horizontal strokes. More important still, Chastagnol over- looked a passage in Firmicus Maternus refering to a Tullianus whose severitas won him "in our own times" an ordinary consulate (ordinarii consulatus insig- nia).25

Firmicus's book was written between 334 and 337, more precisely perhaps in 337 itself,26 so it is certainly to the consul of 330 that he alludes.

Yet there can be no doubt that the consul of 330 also bore the name Symmachus. This is the only name given in all extant consular lists, including the earliest, the so-called Chronographer of 354. It is also the only name given in a Roman inscription dated 14 May 330, and in the seven surviving laws of the year.27 There are also five papyri from later in the year (September to Decem- ber) that give Symmachus.28

One possibility (it might seem) is that we are dealing with two different men, one called Valerius Tullianus and the other Aurelius Valerius Symma-

22 Chastagnol, Fastes 1 12; but note the more cautious formulation in Libyca 7 (1959), 197 n. 15, where the vicar only "semble pouvoir etre identifie" with Nerius Symmachus.

23 SPP xx. 86. 26 (31 i); BGU xiii. 2252. 13 (16 ii); and an Oxyrhynchus papyrus (so far as I know still unpublished) shown me by Peter Parsons. I am grateful to Roger Bagnall and Klaas Worp for drawing my attention to three other papyri published since R. S. Bagnall, Alan Cameron, Seth R. Schwartz and K. A. Worp, Consuls of the Later Roman Empire (284-541) (Atlanta 1987), 195 [hereafter CLRE].

24 ICVR i. 37 = ICVR n. s. i. 1417 = ILCV ii. 4667. 25 Math. viii. 15. 4, first recognized by Seeck, ap. Boll, RE vi. 2366, but not gaining general

currency till PLRE i s.v. Symmachus 6. By a remarkable oversight PLRE also quotes the passage with the reading "Lollianus" s.v. Lollianus 5 (p. 5 13). But a) this variant has no authority (an incomplete printed edition of 1488), b) the subject of this chapter cannot be the Lollianus to whom the work is dedicated, and c) Lollianus did not become consul till 355, long after the work was published.

26 Barnes (as in n. 17), 40. 27 ICVR n.s. i. 2804 = ILCV 4941; CLRE 194. 28 PSI iii. 224. 5 (4. ix), P. Oxy. 4082 (9. ix) and P. Col. 288. 18 (31. xii), all Valerius

Symmachus; SB V. 7666. 9 (27. x) and P. Kell. i. 29, both Aurelius Symmachus.



482 ALAN CAMERON

chus, one succeeding the other in the course of the year (the latest datable Tullianus document is 16 February). Yet even in the case of death or deposition with damnatio memoriae, it was exceptional for a new ordinary consul to be appointed. Only one case is reliably documented. In 325 the original prior consul Proculus must have been deposed for some reason, and the original consular formula Proculus et Paulinus was replaced by Paulinus et lulianus, with Paulinus moving up to prior consul.29 But the possibility that Tullianus (undoubtedly the earlier of the two) was deposed can be excluded, because the Tullianus to whom Firmicus refers with such respect was evidently still alive and in good standing seven years later.

There is one close and instructive parallel: Strategius Musonianus, whose distinguished career under Constantine and Constantius II was crowned with the prefecture of the East from 354-58. Strategius was a man bilingual in Greek and Latin who assisted Constantine in the theological researches of his later years. In recognition of these literary talents Constantine himself is said to have dubbed Strategius "Musonianus."30 This origin of the name seems to be con- firmed by an allusion in Himerius, Or. lxii to the man who was the "[eponym"] of the Muses. Greek friends such as Libanius continued to call him Strategius, but in most other sources he appears as Musonianus.31

Another likely case is the celebrated calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filo- calus. It would be a remarkable coincidence if Filocalus had been the name given him by prophetic parents. It was surely a name given (or assumed) later in recognition of his skill. In the surviving Damasian tituli and copies of the Calendar of 354 he styles himself by all three names, but in the inscription to some African baths of the elder Melania he used just Filocalus.32

I suggest that Tullianus, like Musonianus and Filocalus, was neither a regular given name nor a signum, but a literary sobriquet, what the grammarians of late antiquity called an agnomen. That is to say, a name acquired ex aliqua

ratione aut virtute and peculiar to the individual, normally added after the

cognomen.33 It is surely no coincidence that the only other datable examples of

the name Tullianus in late antique Rome are the granddaughter and great- granddaughter of the famous mid-fourth century Ciceronian scholar Marius Victorinus.34 The likelihood is that in all these cases the name was chosen for

29 Barnes, "Three Imperial Edicts," ZPE 21 (1976), 280; CLRE 184. 30 Amm. Marc. 15. 13. 2. 31 0. Seeck, Die Briefe des Libanius (Leipzig 1906), 282-84, PLRE i. 611-12. 32 A. Cameron, "Filocalus and Melania," CP 87 (1992), 140-44. 33 See the texts from the grammarians discussed by B. Doer, Die romische Namengebung

(Stuttgart 1937), 68-75; cf. J. Linderski, "The Surname of M. Antonius Creticus and the cognomina ex victis gentibus," ZPE 80 (1990), 157-64; B. Salway, "What's in a Name? A Survey of Roman Onomastic Practice from c. 700 B.C. to A.D. 700," JRS 84 (1994), 127.

34 ILCV 104, with P. Hadot, Marius Victorinus: Recherches sur sa vie et ses aruvres (Paris




its literary associations. In Tullianus's case the reason was surely his fame as an orator. Q. Aurelius Symmachus's fame among his contemporaries was as an orator, and his father, Avianius Symmachus, was also celebrated as an orator (praised on a commemorative dedication for his eloquence).35 Last in the roll of honour comes Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, cos. 485, also celebrated for his oratory and praised in the Anecdoton Holderi as antiqui Catonis novellus imitator. Firmicus Maternus compared Symmachus Tullianus to Cato. It goes without saying that such a reputation is not likely to have been won by a man who had risen from the lower ranks of society.

Like Strategius Musonianus and Furius Dionysius Filocalus, Symmachus Tullianus may have been generally known by his agnomen, of which he was no doubt understandably proud. Carefully compiled consular lists will have given his nomenclature in full.36 But there were many contexts in which it was sufficient to use only one of those names, the so-called diacritical, normally the last and always (of course) the same name.37 One complicating factor here was the signa, nicknames of Greek formation, by which many aristocrats were widely known (several cases are discussed below). It was generally accepted that signa were not used in official contexts, such as the addresses of imperial rescripts,38 and I know of only one case admitted to a consular formula: Proculus signo Populonius appears as Populonius Proculus in the dating formula of a number of papyri. But all surviving consular fasti and eight Roman inscriptions give Acindynus et Proculus as indeed do two later papyri from Panopolis.39 That is to say, the signum never appears as the sole name in a consular formula.

1971), 16-17. The only other example I know is the grammarian Statius Tullianus, cited by Macrobius, Sat. iii. 8. 6 and Servius auctus on Aen. xi. 543, of uncertain date (not necessarily as late as the fourth century). Given his profession, the same explanation may offer.

35 ILS 1257. I am not persuaded by Chastagnol's thesis (Fastes 112-13) that Aurelius Celsinus, PVR 341 and 351, was the son of Tullianus and father of Avianius. There is no need for an extra generation, and the relationship (if there is one) is better explained in PLRE i. 192 and 1 146; see too W. Kuhoff, Studien zur zivilen senatorischen Laufbahn im 4. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Frankfurt 1983), 385 n. 14.

36 The Augustan Fasti Capitolini, for example, regularly include honorific agnomina: e.g. s.a. 205, P. Cornelius P. f P. n. Scipio qui postea African(us) appell(atus) est (for other examples, Linderski [as in n. 33], 158-59). For the tendency of later consular documents to list a plurality of cognomina, H. Thylander, ttude sur l'epigraphie latine (Lund 1952), 69-70. The papyri often include offices currently held as well (CLRE passim).

37 A. Cameron, "Polyonomy in the Late Roman Aristocracy: the case of Petronius Probus," JRS 75 (1985), 164-78.

38 A. Cameron, "Avienus or Avienius?" ZPE 108 (1995), 255-59. 39 For all the documents, CLRE 214-15. There is also the puzzling "Ionius" lulianus cos.

325 (CLRE 629).



484 ALAN CAMERON

Agnomina functioned in much the same way as signa, but being more honorific, it would not be surprising to find them used in the sort of context normally closed to signa. The fact that no inscription or papyrus with Tullianus is later than 16 February suggests the possibility that the consul himself changed his mind. After first deciding to use Tullianus for the short form of his consular formula, he later thought it more appropriate that the year should be known, as it was to be known again on four future occasions (391, 446, 485, 522), by the family cognomen Symmachus rather than his personal sobriquet. If Strategius Musonianus had become consul, we might have found a similar variation.

III

One last detail of nomenclature. The Valerius is now attested by six papyri and the Syriac heading to the second Paschal letter of Athanasius.40 Until recently the Aurelius was attested by only one papyrus. But the publication of a second is enough to put it beyond reasonable doubt.41 The fact that some papyri give Valerius and some Aurelius is certainly surprising,42 but it looks as if we have

to accept that the consul bore both names. For the combination43 we may compare M. Aurelius Valerius Valentinus,

consularis of Numidia precisely in Symmachus's consular year of 330.44 He

has both the Aurelius and the by now almost extinct traditional praenomen, both of which turn up in generation after generation of Symmachi. A connec-

tion with the Symmachi finds further support in the nomenclature of Avianius Valentinus, consularis of Campania between 364 and 375, generally (and no

doubt rightly) identified as a son of L. Aurelius Avianius Symmachus, prefect of Rome in 364-65, consul designate for 377, and father of Q. Aurelius Symm- achus cos. 391.45 To him must be added a third, a Valentinus expressly de-

40 According to Bagnall, the irregular cursive of P. Col. 288 could be deciphered as Obak or

TvAA, but since the combination Tullianus Symmachus is nowhere found, he rightly

preferred the former, much the best attested form. The formula in Athanasius is translated

"sous le consulat de Gallikinos et de Valerios Symmachos," in Annik Martin and Micheline

Albert, Histoire "Acephale " et index syriaque des lettresfestales d'Athanase d'Alexanidrie

(Paris 1985), 321 (the so-called Festal Index [p. 229] omits the Valerius). Chastagnol was

misled here by the Latin translation in Migne.

41 SB 7666. 9 (27 Oct.); and now P. Kell. i. 29, a postconsulate with Fl. Gallicanus et

[Aure]lius Symmachus. 42 What is surprising is less the polyonomy than the varying selection of names from the

total. 43 Also found in the official style of Diocletian and Maximian (Salway [as in n. 33], 139).

44 CIL xi. 5381; Cod. Theod. xvi. 2. 7.

45 CIL x. 1656 = ILS 764; Chastagnol, Fastes 160.




scribed as "kinsman" (propinquus) in letters of Q. Aur. Symmachus dating from ca. 401.46 This recurrence of the name in three successive generations of the family after Aurelius Valerius Symmachus Tullianus strongly suggests that the first (the only Aurelius Valerius) was indeed his son.

If so, then L. Aurelius Avianius Symmachus and M. Aurelius Valerius Valentinus must have been brothers. Since in later generations of the family it seems to have been only the first-born (or eldest surviving) son who bore the cognomen Symmachus,47 Avianius is likely to have been the older brother.48 But their exact relationship is immaterial. More significant is the fact that they have different praenomina, to which we can add the Quintus borne by Symma- chus cos. 391, his son Q. Fabius Memmius Symmachus, and grandson Q. Aurelius Symmachus cos. 446.49 That is to say, we are dealing with a family that used three different praenomina. By the fourth century, the praenomen had long since fallen out of general use even among the ranks of the Roman aristocracy.50 For some time before then even in families that continued to use them they were often reduced to a fossilized prefix to the nomen, to the extent that we find two or even three brothers with the same praenomen. The family of the Emperor Vespasian is a conspicuous early example of this.51

According to a full recent survey of the abundant epigraphic evidence by 0. Salomies, individual praenomina continued sporadically up to the beginning of the third century, but disappeared soon after. He concluded with the categorical, if premature, assertion that there were no more such families after Severus Alexander (222-35).52 He missed at least two examples from a full century later: the Aradii Rufini (below) - and the Symmachi. Even if we set the

46 PLRE ii. 1139; S. Roda, "Supplementi e correzioni alla PLRE, Vol. 1," Historia 29 (1980), 105.

47 Symmachus cos. 391 seems to have been the only one of four brothers to bear the family name: one was certainly Celsinus Titianus; the others probably Avianius Valentinus and Avianius Vindicianus (n. 65 below).

48 Valentinus's first known post falls nearly a decade earlier (330) than Avianius's first post (337-40), but that need not be significant.

49 The entry in PLRE (ii. 1042-43) for the consul of 446 gives him as just Symmachus, overlooking the consular formula to Nov. Val. 21. 1; presumably the Symmachi v. c. on the Flavian amphitheatre seat CIL vi. 32162, less plausibly identified with the consul of 485 in PLRE ii. 1044 (cf. A. Cameron and D. Schauer, "The Last Consul: Basilius and his Diptych," JRS 72 [19821, 144). There is no direct evidence that the consul of 485 bore a praenomen.

50 One of the clearest proofs of this is the fact that by the fourth century the very word praenomen came to be used for the gentile name (for example, Ammianus xxviii. 4. 7; Ep. Bob. 8, with P. Veyne, "Le 'prenom' de Naucellius," Rev. de Phil. 38 [1964], 253-57); presumably because in the old Roman style gentile name came directly after praenomen.

51 Thylander (as in n. 36), 66-69; 0. Salomies, Die romischen Vornamen: Studien zur romischen Namengebung (Helsinki 1987), 364-77; Salway (as in n. 43), 1994, 130-31.

52 Salomies (as in n. 51), 366-77.



486 ALAN CAMERON

conjecturally linked M. Aurelius Valerius Valentinus on one side, there can be no question that L. Aurelius Avianius Symmachus was the father of Q. Aurelius Symmachus. It is most unlikely that a family ennobled in the age of Constantine would use praenomina at all, let alone two (much less three) different ones. Nor would it be plausible to object that they were parvenus aping the ways of their betters, since it was a style that the nobility themselves had largely abandoned.

Despite their late date, at least one and probably both of the cases Salomies missed nonetheless fit the rest of his conclusions. His material makes it clear that the part of the Roman world where praenomina lingered longest was North Africa.53 The second securely documented case of individualized praenomina comes in the Aradii Rufini, an African family that rose to prominence in the mid-third century, with Q. Aradius Rufinus Optatus Aelianus of Bulla Regia, proconsul of Africa perhaps as early as 217-18.54 Q. Aradius Rufinus Valerius Proculus and L. Aradius Valerius Proculus were brothers (eleven of the inscriptions that document their careers were found in the family house on the Caelian hill in Rome), sons of Q. Aradius Rufinus cos. 31 1. Quintus became governor of Byzacena in 321, followed soon after by his younger brother Lucius. Quintus died young, but Lucius went on to become consul in 340 and have two sons, unfortunately known to us only as Proculus and Aradius Rufinus.55 There is also a famous example of a praenomen in one branch of the Anicii, another African family that rose to fame and power in the course of the third century: Sex. Anicius Paulinus cos. 325, descended from Sex. Anicius Faustus Paulini- anus, a legate of Alexander Severus, son of Q. Anicius Faustus of Uzappa, a legate of Septimius Severus whose career is documented by more than 50 inscriptions.56 At a lower level there are the Granii, with the Constantinian Q. Attius Granius Caelestinus and his exactly homonymous son, evidently descended from Q. Granius Caelestinus of Lepcis Magna.57

To return to the Symmachi, Seeck, followed by Paschoud,58 thought the recurring Valerius a pointer to a grant of citizenship from Diocletian. In fact the

53 Salomies (as in n. 51), 376. 54 B. Remy, "La carriere de Q. Aradius Rufinus Optatus Aelianus," Historia 25 (1976).

458-77; M. Christol, "A propos des Arcadii. Le stemma d'une famille s6natoriale au Ille

siecle ap. J.-C.," ZPE 28 (1978), 145-50; id., Essai sur l'evolution des carrieres senatori-

ales dans la 2e moitie du Ille s. ap. J.-C. (Paris 1986), 139-42; A. Beschaouch, Tituli 4

(1982), 471-74. 55 PLRE i. 747 and 749; Chastagnol, Fastes 96-102 and Antiquites africaines I ( 1967), 124,

nos. 3 and 4. For his sons, Chastagnol, Fastes 102, 196-98, 21 1; the fact that praenomina

are not attested need not mean they did not have them, especially since we have no

epigraphic evidence. 56 M. Christol, "A propos des Anicii: le IIIe siecle," MEFRA 98 (1986), 141-46; P. I. Wilkins,

"The African Anicii - a Neglected Text and a New Genealogy," Chiron 18 (1988), 377-82.

57 M. Corbier, Tituli 5 (1982), 722.

58 Paschoud 1965 (as in n. 2), 228.




most idiosyncratic recurring element in the family nomenclature is the Q. Aurelius, not otherwise attested since the beginning of the third century. Q. Aurelii are exceptionally rare at all periods, the only area they are at all common being, precisely, Roman Africa.59 The first of any standing are two Flavian consuls from Cirta, Q. Aurelius Pactumeius Fronto (suff. 80) and his brother Q. Aurelius Pactumeius Clemens. Fronto was actually the first consul from Africa.60 The two most important from a later generation (and the last known before the fourth-century Symmachi) are Q. Aurelius Polus Terentianus (governor of Dacia in 193 and later proconsul of Asia) and his son, Q. Aur. Polus Syriacus. For various reasons Tony Birley plausibly conjectures that this family too derives from Africa.61

Various details in their nomenclature suggest that the fourth-century Sym- machi derive from one of the many families who made their fortunes in second- or third-century Africa, rising first to local and finally to imperial office.62 None of these people (of course) were indigenous Africans. They descended from Italian colonists arriving perhaps as far back as the age of the Republic. The Pactumeii, for example, derive "from a commercial family in Campania which may have emigrated with P. Sittius in Caesarian days."63

Another such family is the Avianii from Sicca and Hippo Regius. This name too "harks back to an Italian commercial family in the last age of the Republic, notably represented by Cicero's friend C. Avianius Flaccus, a grain- dealer at the Campanian port of Puteoli."64 This may have been the original family nomen, eventually displaced in importance in what turned out to be the most successful branch of the family by the cognomen Symmachus (for a similar Greek cognomen compare Q. Aur. Polus Syriacus). Avianius Symma- chus passed the name down to perhaps two of his four sons (Avianius Valenti- nus and Avianius Vindicianus),65 but both died young, and Avianius, like Valerius (not attested after the age of Constantine), died out in the main branch of the family.

59 See the complete list in A. R. Birley, "The Coups d'Etat of the Year 193," in Bonner Jahrb. 169 (1969) 267.

60 CIL viii. 7057-58 = IL Alg 642-44; M. Le Glay, "Senateurs de Numidie et des Maureta- nies," Tituli 5 (1982), 766-67. Although these brothers share the praenomen Quintus, we also find descendants named Publius (Le Glay, 767).

61 Ann. Epigr. 1965, 240 (from Mainz), with A. R. Birley, The Fasti of Roman Britain (Oxford 1981), 261-62.

62 On the sources of the wealth accumulated by these African elites, Corbier (as in n. 57), 696-99, 753.

63 R. Syme, Roman Papers i (Oxford 1979), 230; Le Glay (as in n. 60), 760. 64 Syme (as in n. 63), 229, citing 35 examples of the name in the index to CIL viii. 65 It is generally accepted that Avianius Vindicianus was another of these sons (PLRE i.

968). He was consularis of Campania a year or two after Avianius Valentinus, a post largely restricted to aristocrats (Chastagnol, "L'administration du diocese italien au Bas-



488 ALAN CAMERON

Q. Aurelius Symmachus called his only son Q. Fabius Memmius Symma- chus, after his mother's father and his own father-in-law.66 His grandson bore the same names as himself, Q. Aurelius Symmachus; and his great-grandson was (? Q.) Aurelius Memmius Symmachus. Aurelius Anicius Symmachus PVR 418-20 was evidently the son of one of his brothers and an Anicia.67

IV

Now for M. Aurelius Nerius Symmachius and the vicar Symmachus. First Nerius Symmachius, of equestrian rank (v. p.). He can be promptly and deci- sively dissociated, not only from the consul of 330, but from the Symmachi altogether. Remarkable though it might seem, generations of scholars have simply misread the inscription which tells us all we know about this man.68 From the reference on the back of the stone to industria comprobato... [SymmJachio v. p... it should have been clear that, in AVRELI NERI SYM- MACHI on the front, the final -i of all three names (and not just the first two) represents a contracted genitive; that is to say our man was not called Symma- chus at all but Symmachius.

Furthermore, the inscription gives us enough of the man's career to prove conclusively that he could not under any circumstances be identified with either Symmachus the vicar or Symmachus the consul. He served the Emperor Con- stantine for twenty years beginning in Rome and thereafter in Spain (or Campa- nia) and Sicily. If his twenty years' service began in Rome, it cannot have begun before Constantine's capture of Rome in 312. So the earliest possible date for the inscription is 332, two years after Symmachus's consulate. At that date Symmachius was still a minor civil servant of equestrian rank.

P. Sabbatini Tumolesi has recently linked the munerarius Symmachius celebrated on one of a pair of mosaic panels found in the ruins of some baths on the Appian Way with both Nerius Symmachius and the fourth-century Sym-

Empire," Historia 12 [1963], 362, 364). The fact that none of the inscriptions that attest

his governorship (five fully preserved) give him a praenomen does not prove that he did

not have one. The same is true of Avianius Valentinus, and one inscription each ot

Avianius Symmachus and Q. Aurelius Symmachus omit their praenomicna. Only two out

of eighteen inscriptions preserve the praenomen of Sex. Petronius Probus. Even among

families that perpetuated them, it is clear that praenomina were no longer used. Scrupu-

lous antiquarian that he was, while normally styling his interlocutor Aurelius Symmachus

or just Symmachus, on one occasion Macrobius calls him Q. Aurelius (Sat. i. 5. 17).

66 Chastagnol, Fastes 159, 219. 67 No doubt Celsinus Titianus, who died in 380: Chastagnol. Fastes 279-8 1; PLRE ii. 1043-

44. 68 CIL vi. 1747, quoted in full in PLRE i. 870.




machi.69 The date of the mosaic is uncertain, and ordinary stylistic criteria are complicated by the fact that the Symmachius panel is of a lower technical competence than its pair. But most authorities agree on the early fourth century.70 Date and place would therefore suit Nerius Symmachius, but the munerarius was surely a man of higher status. On the other hand, the fact that his name is Symmachius rather that Symmachus is enough to exclude any connection with the family of the consul of 330.

Symmachus the vicar is more of a problem than most scholars have been disposed to admit. He is known only from two constitutions in the Theodosian Code: ii. 15. 1, addressed to a Symmachus vicarius of a dioecesis unspecified on 25 July 319; and ii. 4. 1, addressed to a Symmachus, office unspecified, on 4 February 319 and received at Corinth on 8 March. If we make the reasonable assumption that both concern the same man holding the same office, then a vicar resident at Corinth at this period would have to have been vicar of Moesia (not Macedonia, as Seeck assumed).71

But this office was held by another man between at any rate 13 January and 26 November 319: a certain Januarinus, attested in office at Corinth on 28 July. His office is not specified, but a governor resident at Corinth must have been either vicar of Moesia or proconsul of Achaea, and since Januarinus's next office, in the following year, was another vicariate, he cannot have held the senatorial post of proconsul in 319.72

Such clashes between the laws of the code are common enough and have to be eliminated in one or another of several well tried ways.73 PLRE, claiming to follow Seeck, emended the date of both Symmachus's laws to 318. In fact Seeck redated only ii. 4. 1 to 318, and for quite another reason (having mistakenly identified Januarinus as a comes rerum privatarum he was not faced with a clash in Moesia). His argument (which was not cogent)74 need not concern us since he left ii. 15. 1 undisturbed in July 319, assuming that Symmachus's vicariate extended from 318 into 319. Quite apart from the improbability of the assumption that both laws were misdated by a year, ii. 15. 1 cannot be put in 318. It was sent from Naissus on 25 July and whereas on 25 July 318 (indeed all summer 318) Constantine was in Italy, on 25 July 319 he was, precisely, at Naissus.75

69 Epigrafia anfiteatrale dell'occidente romano: 1, Roma (Rome 1988), 103-08, no. 114, Tav. xxix. figg. 1-2.

70 Sabbatini Tumolesi (as in n. 69), 107; K.M.D. Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa (Oxford 1978), 214 n. 78.

71 G. Polara, Parola del Passato 157 (1974), 261 n.4. 72 PLRE i. 453; Barnes, New Empire (as in n. 1), 103. 73 0. Seeck, Regesten der Kaiser und Papste fur die Jahre 311 bis 476 n. Chr. (Stuttgart 1919),

1-158; A.H.M. Jones, "The Career of Flavius Philippus," Historia 4 (1955), 232-33. 74 Seeck, Regesten (as in n. 73) 56, refuted by Polara (as in n. 71), 262-63. 75 Cod. Theod. ii. 16. 2 to Bassus, evidently as prefect of Rome, and so redated with



490 ALAN CAMERON

So we are left with the vicarius Symmachus's office securely dated no less than Januarinus's to 319. If the year is sound, then the office must be in error. Both could not have been vicar simultaneously, but one could have been vicar and the other proconsul of Achaea. We have seen that Januarinus could not have been proconsul; but Symmachus could,76 especially if he is to be identified with the consul of 330 and even before then (as I am arguing) of senatorial rank.

Seeck long ago abundantly demonstrated how often the offices recorded in the titles of the Code are mistaken, and in this case a palaeographical argument can be added. Vicarius is normally abbreviated vic, and in something approach- ing half the passages in the Code where vicars are mentioned, some MSS offer the (usually mistaken) variant v. c., the standard designation of senatorial rank.77 The original address of ii. 15. 1 perhaps ran as follows: ad...Symmachum v(irum) c(larissimum) proconsulem Achaiae. It may be that the office, as so often, was dropped, and v. c. mistakenly expanded to vic(arium). If so, then this particular Symmachus, whether or not he was the future consul of 330, was of senatorial rank.

G. Polara produced an attractive if more speculative argument in support of the same conclusion.78 Two epigrams, one from Megara and the other from Argos, commemorate a proconsul of Achaea called Phosphorius.79 Now Phos- phorius is the signum of Avianius Symmachus. But since Avianius Symmachus (whose career is known in full) never held a proconsulate, he cannot be identified with the proconsul Phosphorius. Most have dated Phosphorius's proconsulate to ca. 380,80 but there is no concrete objection to a date as early as 319.81

The weak point in the argument is that the signum Phosphorius is not actually attested for Symmachus Tullianus. But the name is otherwise very rare, and signa were often handed down in families (Asterius, for example, in the Turcii Secundi; Mavortius in the Lolliani).82 The Symmachi evidently liked

certainty by Seeck (Regesten [as in n. 73], 55. 2) from 315 (Const. 1111 et Lic. 1111) to 319

(Const. V. et Lic. C.).

76 Barnes, New Empire (as in n. 1), 104. 77 That there are such variants for ii. 15. 1 is less significant than Polara (as in n. 71) thought,

since the same MSS offer much the same variants elsewhere; e.g. for vicarios (abbrev.

vicos) at xi. 6. 1 S offers virum clarum consulem.

78 Polara (as in n. 71), 264-6. 79 IG iv. 1608 and vii. 96 = L. Robert, Hellenica iv (1948), 60 and 23.

80 E. Groag, Reichsbeamten von Achaia in spatromischer Zeit (Budapest 1946), 54-55;

PLRE i. 700. 81 Polara found confirmation in Jouguet's restoration of the name Phosphorius in the

damaged P. Thead. 12. But this papyrus must now be eliminated as evidence for the

consuls of 330; it has been reedited (as P. Sakaon 65) and dated securely to another year

(328). On the basis of the photograph provided, Roger Bagnall agrees with this verdict.

82 On the use of signa in the aristocracy, see 1. Kajanto, Supernomina (Comm. Human. Litt.

Soc. Sci. Fenn. 40. 1), Helsinki 1966, 66-67.




signa. Q. Aurelius Symmachus was known as Eusebius, and we have already encountered what must be another example. If the dedicatee Porphyry addressed as Chrysaorius was a Symmachus, he must in addition have had a full set of proper Roman nomina. Chrysaorius will have been his signum (it is in fact securely attested as a signum lower down in society, for a freedman and his son).83 I know of only one later example of this remarkable name in the ranks of the Roman aristocracy, on the late senatorial seats in the Flavian amphitheatre.84 In the circumstances it is tempting to conjecture that this fifth-century Chrysaorius was also a Symmachus.

There are parallels for the use of a governor's Greek signum in classicizing epigrams. Vettius Agorius Praetextatus signo Agorius85 is celebrated as Ago- rius in a Greek epigram found at Thespiae commemorating the very same office, the proconsulship of Achaea.86 C. Caeonius Rufius Volusianus signo Lampadius, PVR 365-66, is honoured as Lampadius in a Greek epigram found in Rome.87 There are many examples of men known by nomen in one context and signum in another: the early fourth-century poets Publilius Optatianus signo Porphyrius and Postumius Rufius Festus signo Avienius; Q. Flavius Maesius Egnatius Lollianus signo Mavortius (PVR 342) and Clodius Celsinus signo Adelfius (PVR 351).88 The case of Volusianus signo Lampadius is particularly well documented: in more than a dozen Latin inscriptions and as many laws he is invariably known by one or more of his Roman names; for Ammianus and (most relevantly) in the Greek epigram he is just Lampadius.

If Phosphorius the proconsul was a Symmachus, then he must have been the Symmachus who held office in Corinth in 319 and the future consul of 330.

83 CIL vi. 13093: M. Aurelio Fausto qui et Chrysaor(io) filio dulcissimo M. Aurelius Aug(usti) lib(ertus) Chrysaor(ius) pater b(ene) m(erenti) fecit. In an early paper Syme pounced on "Xiphidius" (Aur. 12. 1) and "Toxotius" (Maximin. 27. 6) as pointing "to a later age, in which the most peculiar cognomina or signa had come to proliferate among the aristocracy" ("The Bogus Names" [1966], reprinted in Emperors and Biography [Oxford 1971], 8). But Chrysaorius, an even more fanciful name evoking a sword, was already borne by a senator of the mid-third century. After discovering a mid fourth- century example in Libanius, he later dropped Xiphidius, but to the end of his days he insisted that Toxotius was "redolent of a much later age" (Ammianus and the HA [Oxford 1968], 167; Historia Augusta Papers [Oxford 19831, 213).

84 CIL vi. 32167 and 32186. Rather than assume two different men, we should follow Chastagnol in assuming that Chrysaorius had a new seat engraved for himself after his promotion (so PLRE ii. 294). There is also a wealthy voluptuary of the name mentioned a century later again by Pope Gregory the Great (Dial. iv. 38 = PL 77. 391 C; PLRE iii. 314).

85 That Agorius was both signum and nomen is shown by CIL vi. 1778, set out in the standard style with so-called detached signum in the genitive (Agorii. Vettio Agorio Praetextato v. c....); on detached signa see Cameron (as in n. 38), 255-58.

86 Ann. tpigr. 1928, 48, quoted in Chastagnol, Fastes 175. 87 Chastagnol, Fastes 165. 88 See their entries in PLRE and Chastagnol, Fastes, with Cameron (as in n. 38), 254-58.



492 ALAN CAMERON

A (? Q.) Aurelius Valerius Symmachus Tullianus signo Phosphorius who was proconsul of Achaea and ordinary consul was not a new man.

It is also worth examining the offices held by M. Aurelius Valerius Valen- tinus, consularis of Numidia in 330 and before that corrector of Flaminia- Picenum. Both were prestigious posts. Flaminia-Picenum had an equestrian governor (v. p.) in 325, but all subsequent governors were of senatorial rank,89 Valentinus's immediate successor being Fabius Titianus, the father-in-law of Avianius Symmachus.90 Numidia was virtually the monopoly of the Roman aristocracy: at least a dozen of the twenty-odd governors known from the fourth century belong to the great Roman families.91 Chastagnol rightly supposed that Valentinus owed his Numidian post to his kinsman (surely father)92 Symma- chus, consul that year. This is likely enough. Things worked that way. But what of the other command, another senatorial post, held by Valentinus when (on the common supposition) the future consul of 330 had as yet risen no higher than the rank of vicar, still an equestrian v. p.? Of course, the fact that Valentinus's career runs parallel with aristocrats does not in itself prove that he was one himself. But when we add in the various other arguments assembled so far, it certainly lends welcome further support.

V

There is also another consideration: the wealth of the Symmachi. While there is no direct or necessary connection between the wealth and the antiquity of an aristocratic family, it is generally assumed that the vast fortunes of the richest late Roman aristocrats were accumulated over centuries rather than decades.93 On the basis of a fragment of the Materials for a History of Olympiodorus of Thebes (finished ca 427) it has been inferred that Symmachus cos. 391 was a

89 Chastagnol (as in n. 21), 196; G. Clemente, "Le carriere dei governatori della diocesi italiciana dal III al V secolo," Latomus 28 (1969), 640. According to PLRE ii. 936, CIL xi. 5381 gives his offices "in reverse order, and places "c.v." between them, from which it would appear that he was vir perfectissimus when governor of Flaminia ... and subse-

quently entered the senate and became governor of Numidia." This apparently precise observation is unfortunately not true: the offices are indeed given in reverse order, but "c.v." immediately follows "Valentino" and precedes both offices. There is nothing to suggest that Valentinus was anything but a senator when he became corrector of Flamin- ia-Picenum.

90 Chastagnol, Fastes 107-11, 113, 159. 91 Chastagnol, "Consulaires de Numidie," Melanges Carcopino (Paris 1966), 219. 92 Brother, according to Chastagnol (Fastes 294), but a consular would normally be a man

near the beginning of his career, at any rate in a noble family, hardly the brother of an

ordinary consul; more probably the son. 93 A.H.M. Jones, Later Roman Empire ii (Oxford 1964), 555; E. Champlin, "The Volcei

Land-Register (CIL X 407)," AJAH 5 (1980), 16.




man of only moderate wealth. Though hardly amounting to proof, this would lend some slight support to the assumption that he was a relatively new member of the landed elite. It is time to take a more critical look at this famous text:94

"Many of the Roman households received an income of four thousand pounds of gold per year from their properties, not including grain, wine and other produce which, if sold, would have amounted to one-third of the income in gold. The income of the households at Rome of the second class (XXCv 6?e gtla rto; ip(orou; 5wrEpov oiKov) was one thousand or fifteen hundred pounds of gold. When Probus the son of Alypius celebrated his praetorship during the reign of the usurper John, he spent twelve hundred pounds of gold. Before the capture of Rome, Symmachus the orator, a senator of middling wealth (GvyicXlltuct6; xv xxv pXrpiwv), spent two thousand pounds when his son, Symmachus, celebrated his praetorship. Maximus, one of the wealthy men (etC5 v eulcopo)v), spent four thousand pounds on his son's praetorship. The praetors celebrated their games for seven days."

These figures pose more than one sort of trap. For example, Keith Hopkins has recently drawn far-reaching conclusions from a comparison of Symmachus's income of 2000 pounds per year with the income of Pliny the Younger, "a senator of middling wealth at the end of the first century A.D." Duncan-Jones estimated Pliny's annual income at around 1.1 million HS,9s and Hopkins translates Symmachus's 2000 pounds of gold into approximately 9 million HS. "If these figures are roughly indicative," he concludes, "aristocratic fortunes had risen.. .five to eightfold between A.D. 100 and A.D. 400."96 While conced- ing that the figures (like all ancient figures for sums of money) are uncertain,97 Hopkins failed to see that the most vulnerable point of his comparison was the equation of Pliny and Symmachus as "senators of middling wealth."

No one will quarrel with this characterization of Pliny. Duncan-Jones estimated the value of his estates at somewhere in the region of 20 million HS, and we know of at least six men said to have been worth between 300 and 400 million HS, with another six worth 200 million.98 Though clearly a wealthy man, Pliny was not one of the super-rich, nor was he a member of the highest

94 F 44M = 41. 2B; for the text, preferring the reading Alypius to Olympius (or the emendation Olybrius), A. Cameron, "Probus' Praetorian Games. Olympiodorus fr. 44," GRBS 25 (1984), 193-96.

95 Richard Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire2 (Cambridge 1982), 17-32. 96 "Rome, Taxes, Rent and Trade," Kodai 6/7 (1995/6), 50. 97 See also W. Scheidel, "Finances, Figures and Fiction," CQ 46 (1996), 222-38, pointing

out that such figures are not just exaggerated and unreliable but stylized and conventional.

98 Duncan-Jones 1982 (as in n. 95), 343-44, with Scheidel (as in n. 97), 1996, 230-31.



494 ALAN CAMERON

social and political elite. But most of our evidence suggests that Symmachus was indeed a member of this elite. It is only Olympiodorus who describes him as "a senator of middling wealth." Most scholars have been surprised at such a description, but have assumed that he found it, together with his figures, in some register where landowners were divided into different categories on the basis of income. Accordingly, like Hopkins, they have taken it as a documented indication of the quite extraordinary landed wealth of the senatorial aristocracy as a whole, assuming that Symmachus's income and expenditure alike were typical of his class.

Paradoxically enough, Olympiodorus's figures (however approximate and conventional) may be more reliable than his categories. It is customary to claim that the figures are corroborated by the revenues attributed to Melania and Pinianus in Gerontius's Life of S. Melania.99 Things are not quite so simple. According to ? 15 in the Greek version of the Life, Pinianus had revenues of "twelve myriads [= 120,000] of gold," not counting Melania's revenues.100 It should be noted straightaway that the Latin version puts it the other way round: these were Melania's revenues, not counting Pinianus's. Since Melania came from a much grander family, the difference is not insignificant.'01 Both versions leave it unclear what the figure refers to. Pounds of gold, or gold solidi (72 of which weighed one pound)? Some argue for pounds, on the grounds that 120,000 solidi (1666 pounds) would put the fabulously wealthy Melania in what Olympiodorus identifies as the second class.'02 Others (more plausibly) insist that 120,000 pounds of gold is simply incredible, and argue for solidi on the grounds that 1666 pounds of gold come within Olympiodorus's limits and that, if we double the figure to allow for the revenues of the other spouse, bring us close to his top limit.103

But whichever we choose, the key fact is that both interpretations presuppose rather than corroborate Olympiodorus's figures. Not only this. They presuppose that Melania was fabulously wealthy (as Gerontius assumes) and Symmachus only moderately wealthy (as Olympiodorus alleges). On this basis, it is simply assumed that Melania and Pinianus had more estates than than Symmachus. Maybe they did. But once again the evidence presupposes rather establishes the assumption. In the first place, as Elizabeth Clark rightly under-

99 D. Vera, "Basti un solo esempio. Pinianus...," OPVS 2 (1983), 489.

100'Ev npoa66&p ivlauntaicj 7tkOV 9kaXcTov Xpuxoi .Upptai5a; 68xEKa/centurn viginti mil-

lia annuales reditus; for the Greek text, D. Gorce, Vie de Sainte Meanie, Sources

chretiennes 90 (Paris 1962); for the Latin text, Cardinal Rampolla del Tindaro, Santa

Melania giuniore senatrice romana (Rome 1905).

101 Elizabeth A. Clark (The Life of Melania the Younger [New York 1984], 5-15) cautiously

concludes that the original version was Greek, but rightly accepts the general consensus

that neither of the extant versions reflects the original text exactly.

102 Lellia Ruggini, Economia e societa nell'italia annonaria (Milan 1961), 108.

103 D. Vera (as in n. 99), 489-91, 522-23, with earlier bibliography.




lines, Gerontius's "emphasis on the couple's staggering wealth serves mainly to highlight the spectacular nature of their renunciation."'04 In the circumstances, can we really be sure that Melania had substantial estates in Britain, one of the traditional boundaries of the known world? Second, the rational grouping of their possessions by modern scholars gives an authoritative impression distinct- ly missing in the original texts.105 Palladius lists "the Spains and Aquitania and Tarraconensis and the Gauls," as if unaware that Aquitania and Tarraconensis were provinces of Gaul and Spain respectively; and Gerontius describes "Spain and Campania and Sicily and Africa and Mauretania and Britain" as "foreign cities."'06 On Symmachus's side we only know what he happens to mention in his letters (outside Italy, estates in Sicily and Mauretania).107 Even if we accept that Melania and Pinianus had estates in Gaul and Spain and (ex silentio) that Symmachus did not, does that justify the conclusion that their holdings were of an altogether different order from his?

The earliest and fullest study of Melania's wealth fell into Olympiodorus's trap: it is astonishing, remarked P. Allard, that a senator of the second class could spend 2000 pounds of gold on his games.'08 Once again, it is not the figure itself that is in question. According to Procopius, consular games in sixth-century Constantinople cost more than 2000 pounds of gold and Justinian is said to have spent 4000 pounds on his. 109 But Procopius adds that most of the money came from the imperial coffers. According to Olympiodorus again, the generalissimo Constantius spent 2000 pounds on his consulship in 414. But this sum came from the treasury of the usurper Heraclian, not his own pocket." 0 These figures are no doubt rounded up to stylized totals (2000/4000),1"' but the very recurrence of these totals in the same context in different writers suggests a credible order of magnitude. It is not incredible that a few private landowners were able to pay out such sums. What is incredible is that second-class private

104 Clark (as in n. 101), 97. 105 For example, D. Vera, (as in n. 99), 523 n. 11 (with the more precise style "Africa

proconsularis" for "Africa"). 106 Palladius, Hist. Laus. 61 (p. 156. 20 Butler); ?v Tadc; 9w it6X?Etv, Gerontius 11 (p. 147

Gorce). 107 D. Vera, "Simmaco e le sue proprietA: struttura e funzionamento di un patrimonio

aristocratico del quarto secolo d. C.," Symmaque a l'occasion du mille six centieme anniversaire du conflit de l'autel de la Victoire, ed. F. Paschoud (Paris 1986), 231-70. In keeping with the very different nature of his correspondence, Symmachus's letters are far less informative about such matters than Pliny's.

108 P. Allard, "Une grande fortune romaine au cinquieme siMcle," Revue des questions historiques41 (1907), 5-30 atp. 17.

109 Proc. Anecd. 26. 13; Marcell. Chron. s. a. 521, with Brian Croke, The Chronicle of Marcellinus (Sydney 1995), 122.

110 Olymp. F 23, p. 186 Blockley. IlI For many examples of this sort of stylizing in early imperial financial figures, Scheidel

(as in n. 97).



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landowners did so, at any rate on any plausible definition of a second-class, a definition that implies a first class consisting of a substantial number of substantially richer men.

Let us look more closely at the way Olympiodorus presents his figures. There are two different sets: annual revenues, divided into two classes (4000 and 1500/1000 pounds of gold); and sums spent on praetorian games, with three examples (4000, 2000 and 1200 pounds of gold). Apart from the obvious fact that those who earn more can afford to spend more, there is no reason why such disparate sets of figures should be related. It must be coincidence that the largest sum spent on games matches the largest annual revenue (4000 pounds). While a particular praetor might happen to spend a sum equivalent to one year's revenue from his estates, it would be absurd to suppose that all praetors were expected to do so. Yet Olympiodorus clearly implies such a correlation.

Even if we accept, on the lower interpretation of the Melania/Pinianus figures, that Olympiodorus's figures for aristocratic revenues are of the right general order of magnitude,' 12 even so they are of little value so long as we have no idea how many were in his two classes. If we take a case where we have precise and detailed information, the revenues of the landed gentry of late nineteenth-century Britain, the historian can select and group his figures in different ways depending on his purpose. For example, if he wants to give some idea of the wealth of the upper classes as a whole, he might divide them into two groups with revenues of more than ?100,000 and more than ?30,000 respectively, giving a first group of 17 and a second of 250.113 But if he wants to underline the truly enormous wealth of the very richest, he might be tendentious enough to group them in two classes with revenues of more than ?200,000 and more than ?100,000 respectively. That would give a top class of only three, and put the fourth richest man in Britain (the Duke of Devonshire) in the second class.

Olympiodorus defines his first class as "many of the Roman households." Did he have a hundred in mind, or twenty - or just three? That his purpose was rhetorical rather than strictly historical is strongly suggested by a closer exam- ination of the preceding fragment, evidently part of the same description of Roman wealth and extravagance. Here he describes the mansions of the aristocracy in Rome, culminating in a verse of his own composition: "one house is a

1 12 We do in fact have one other figure for senatorial estates. According to Liber Pontificalis

34. 29 (p. 68 Mommsen), a certain Gallicanus gave four estates (identified in some detail)

with a combined annual revenue of 879 solidi (= 12 pounds of gold) to the Basilica of

Saints Peter, Paul and John the Baptist at Ostia. E. Champlin plausibly identifies this man

as Ovinius Gallicanus cos. 317 ("Saint Gallicanus, consul 317," Phoenix 36 [19821, 71-

76). Obviously these are likely to have been only a portion of Gallicanus's entire

holdings. 113 Figures from David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New

Haven 1990), 10-11, 710-11.




town; the city holds ten thousand towns" (eJ; 60oo; daov irkX&, ot6Xt da&T?a giupta cUt0E).114 The verse should alert us, in a writer who claims to have been "a poet by profession" (F 1), to expect exaggeration. For example, his claim that "each" of these mansions "contained everything a medium-sized city could hold, a hippodrome, fora, temples, fountains and different kinds of baths." Private shrines, fountains and baths we may accept readily enough. And also courtyards, though the use of Latinforum (06pou;) implies something the size of a public square complete with shops. But the idea of a plurality of private urban houses large enough to accommodate hippodromes is preposterous. There can (I think) be no doubt that what he had in mind are gardens known as hippodromi laid out in the form of a circus. Pliny had one in his Tuscan villa, and many others are recorded. Only one is known to have existed inside Rome itself, in Domitian's palace on the Palatine.1 15 There may have been one or two others, but surely smaller than this one (160 x 50 m.), secluded gardens intended for strolling or possibly riding, but certainly not for racing chariots.

How large was the city that contained such huge palaces? It is surely no coincidence that Olympiodorus gives an absurdly inflated figure for the circuit of the Aurelian wall, 21 miles, almost double the 12 miles of its true length. Nor can this be just a careless guess, since he expressly cites a survey made in 408 by the "geometer" Ammon. F. Hultsch ingeniously suggested that, like Pliny, Olympiodorus also gave the measurement of each main road from the Milliari- um Aureum in the Forum to each of the main gates, as it happens just under 21 miles.116 Hultsch himself thought that the error was produced by Photius's abridgment. This may be too charitable. I suspect that, here as elsewhere, Olympiodorus was manipulating his statistics. This is not to impugn his accura- cy or honesty as a historian. Like Ammianus's famous diatribes against the senate and people of Rome, where "the element of satirical distortion in Ammi- anus's portrayal needs no emphasis," 17 this was a set piece on the Roman elite.1 18 Their wealth was an obvious motif: according to Ammianus, the senators themselves "held forth unasked on the immense extent of their family property, multiplying in imagination the annual produce of their fertile lands,

114 F43M=41. 1 B. 115 All known references are collected and analyzed in John H. Humphrey, Roman Circuses

(London 1986), 568-71; see too P. Grimal, Les jardins romains 2 ed. (Paris 1969), 249- 53. For the hippodromus in Domitan's palace, W. L. MacDonald, The Architecture of the Roman Empire i 2 ed. (New Haven 1981), 68-69.

116 Pliny, NH iii. 66; F. Hultsch, RE i. 1857; E. A. Thompson, "Olympiodorus of Thebes," CQ 38 (1944), 45 n. 2.

117 John Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London 1989), 416. 118 Overly impressed by the precision of the figures, Thompson (as in n. 116), 50 concluded

that "this excursus was more factual, less rhetorical and subjective than those of Ammi- anus."



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which extend, they boast, from the rising to the setting sun." 1 19 The rules for digressions in a history were rather different from those for the main narrative:120 the statistics, like the hippodromes and fora, are not invented, but they are presented in a misleading and sensational manner. Olympiodorus's purpose was to entertain and amaze rather than instruct his Greek readers, unfamiliar with the extravagance of a hereditary ruling class.

He implies rather than states that Symmachus fell in his second revenue class by his misleading correlation of the two sets of figures. But his three examples of expenditure on games cannot be accommodated to the two revenue classes. Probus's 1200 pounds of gold fit the parameters of the second revenue class (1000-1500 pounds), but Symmachus's 2000 pounds exceed them. It is often inferred that Olympiodorus places Symmachus in his second class, but he certainly does not say so directly, nor does "middling" fit a division into two classes.'21 In fact the obvious explanation of "middling" on Olympiodorus's own figures is that Symmachus's 2000 pounds fall between Probus's 1200 and Maximus's 4000. It is also significant that, of his three examples, two are close to the time Olympiodorus was writing,'22 while Symmachus's games come from an earlier generation. If 2000 pounds was standard for less wealthy senators, why go back 25 years to Symmachus? If Symmachus's 2000 pound praetorian games were still remembered a quarter century later, this was surely because they were exceptional rather than typical.

Nor should we forget that Memmius's praetorian games (401) took place only eight years after his quaestorian games (393) and ten after Symmachus's own consular games (391). We have no figures for these other games, but as Symmachus himself anxiously wrote at the time, "I must outdo the fame of my earlier displays, which after the consular magnificence of our house and the quaestorian exhibition of my son portend nothing mediocre from us." And again, "we must satisfy the expectation which has increased because of our examples," and "make your preparations, so that the second magistracy of my son may surpass the magnificence of his quaestorship."'23 Even if he spent

119 Nullo quaerente...patrimonia sua in immensum extollunt...multiplicantes annuosfructus,

quae a primo ad ultimum solem abunde iactitant possidere, xiv. 6. 10 (Hamilton's

Penguin translation, adapted). 120 Roger Pack identifies rhetorical patterns in Ammianus's two digressions on Rome in

"The Roman Digressions of Ammianus Marcellinus," TAPA 84 (1953), 181-89. 121 According to Thompson (as in n. 116), 50, Olympiodorus "set himself to find out the

exact income of the great landowners." I myself suspect that his figures for both annual revenues and expenditure on games are anecdotal, deriving ultimately from family boasting (see n. 119) rather than any official documents.

122 Alypius's games are expressly dated to 423-25, and if Maximus was (as usually assumed) the father of the future emperor Petronius Maximus, his games cannot have fallen later than 414 (Chastagnol, Fastes 282-83).

123 Epp. iv. 60. 2; iv. 58. 2; iv. 59. 2.




much less on the other games, his combined expenditure on all three may have approached Maximus's 4000. I suggest that 1200, 2000 and 4000 pounds were the only figures Olympiodorus knew. It was on that basis that he ironically characterized Symmachus as "a senator of middling wealth." In reality he was (of course) one of the super-rich. It was not the size of average senatorial estates that increased exponentially between the first and fourth centuries, but the size of the estates of the super-rich.

It may also be significant that, instead of the straightforward gFaio, Olym- piodorus used the more elusive term ?t,ptpo. In the papyri, for example, so far from denoting people unmistakably below the top rank, ,kTpt0o is the self- characterization of choice for "people who are clearly members of the tiny curial elite."124 In much the same way, self-depreciatory formulas like i ?,u ge,ptoT; and its Latin equivalent mediocritas nostra are prominent in the letters of popes (Innocent I), aristocrats (Sidonius, Ennodius)125 and even emperors.126 It would not be surprising if Olympiodorus was underlining his irony by using just the sort of word millionaires affected to play down the size of their fortunes, much as nowadays they affect to be "comfortably off."'127

VI

One of the factors that complicates any attempt to compare the estates of Symmachus and his peers is the fluctuation of family fortunes. In the absence of the principles of primogeniture and entail by which the English gentry handed down their patrimonies more or less intact from generation to generation, the size of Roman landholdings was drastically affected by death and marriage.

For example, in the judgment of contemporaries Sex. Petronius Probus was the wealthiest man of his age. But he had five children, four of them sons who lived to marry, three of them future consuls. Even if they married well, none can have been even half as wealthy as their father. If Melania's estates were unusually extensive, a major factor must have been the fact that she was the

124 Roger S. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton 1993), 227. 125 Sister M. B. O'Brien, Titles of Address in Christian Latin Epistolography to 543 A.D.

(Washington 1930), 74-75. 126 For example, a letter of Constantine quoted in Gelasius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 7. 8. As it happens,

while often using the word mediocritas (14 examples cited in V. Lomanto's Concordance to Symmachus [Hildesheim 1983], 520), Symmachus himself applied it to his writings rather than his person.

127 There is no inconsistency between such false modesty and the outright boasting pilloried by Ammianus. It is easy to believe that those with ancestral fortunes stretching across centuries and continents used diminutives when referring to their estates, while letting it be known they had spent 2-4000 of pounds of gold on a week's games.



500 ALAN CAMERON

only child128 of a father who was the sole survivor of three brothers and himself died young. As a consequence she inherited the entire fortune of her grandfather at the age of twenty. '29 Symmachus cos. 391, on the other hand, was one of four sons who, if they did not make old bones, at any rate lived to hold office (and at least two to marry and have children). Symmachus himself may have inherited only a quarter of his father's wealth. The family estates in Spain and Gaul may have gone to his brothers.

Let us forget about Olympiodorus's two classes. It is enough that Symma- chus and Melania and Maximus were members of a very small elite, at the time of Symmachus's death (402) no more than a score or so families, reduced to perhaps half as many by the end of the century. The fact that the Symmachi were so clearly one of the dominant houses in the aristocracy of ca. 500 strongly suggests that they were already in the front rank by ca. 400.

In a provocative early paper, Paschoud argued that Symmachus was obsessed with money,'30 one of Paschoud's proofs that he was a nouveau riche. But how can the son and grandson of consuls131 be identified as a typical novus homo? Most modern readers will share Paschoud's distaste for this arrogant, shallow man. But what we find so unattractive in Symmachus is surely the attitudes of the class rather than the man. According to contemporary critics, blue-blooded grandees like Sex. Petronius Probus were just as obsessed with money, even more grasping than any evidence we have for Symmachus.

Paschoud suggests the possibility that Symmachus's undeniable wealth was the result of "good management" by a recent ancestor.'32 But "good management" is an anachronistic notion. The wealth of late Roman landowners was measured by the amount of land they possessed rather than how they managed it. As in Cicero's day,'33 there was a lot of buying and selling of estates and a certain amount of outright landgrabbing.134 But there were just

128 On the possibility that she had a brother, see the careful discussion of Clark (as in n. 101).

90-92. Even if she did, there is no indication that he lived long enough to inherit.

129 But Pinianus had a brother who (not surprisingly) opposed the sale of family properties

(PLRE ii. 1001; Clark [as in n. 101], 101-(02). 130 His argument turns in large part on the treatment of Gratian's withdrawal of state

subsidies from the Roman cults in Rel. iii. According to Paschoud 1967 (as in n. 2), 90-

91, Symmachus constantly recurs "aux questions pecuniaires." But this was above all a

financial issue. How else was he to treat it? 131 Only death robbed Avianius of the consulship for 377, for which he had already been

designated. 132 Vera 1986 (as in n. 107), 239-43, with Paschoud's comment, ib. 274.

133 E. Rawson, Roman Culture and Society (Oxford 1991), 204-22.

134 Ep. ix. 30 reveals Symmachus's irritation at being preempted by a friend in the purchase of a

desirable estate. The landgrabbing tactics of Probus's father-in-law Clodius Hermogenianus

Olybrius cos. 379 are described in Symm. Rel. 28, with Chastagnol, La prefecture urbaine a

Rome sous le Bas-Empire (Paris 1960), 105-06. Melania's hasty liquidation of her estates

must have presented a great opportunity to those with the requisite spare cash.




two major ways of substantially increasing one's holdings: marriage, and public office, above all holding office at court and winning imperial favour.

A vivid passage of Ammianus claims that, while it was Constantine who "opened the greedy jaws of his supporters," it was Constantius II who "rammed the wealth of the provinces down their throats" (xvi. 8. 12-13). Among civil- ians he singles out the praetorian prefect Vulcacius Rufinus and "in Rome itself the family of the Anicii, whose younger members, in an attempt to rival their ancestors, refused to be content with even greater possessions than their forbears." 135 Rufinus held four long prefectures,136 and even in old age, according to Ammianus, "never let pass any opportunity of enriching himself if he could hope to do so undetected" (xxvii. 7. 2). As for the Anicii, it must be primarily Sex. Petronius Probus he had in mind, famously compared to a fish out of water when not holding one of his four praetorian prefectures, one lasting eight years.'37 Already under Constantine three of the most powerful men of the age were Anicians: Sex. Anicius Paulinus cos. II 325 and PVR 331-33; Amnius Anicius Paulinus cos. 334 and PVR 334; and above all Amnius Anicius Ju- lianus cos. 322 and PVR 326-29, represented in a poem by Avianius Symma- chus as the richest and most powerful man of his age.'38 The Anicii had been prominent since Severan times, but it was apparently during the second and third quarters of the fourth century that they acquired the spectacular wealth that was to become the stuff of legend.

If Paschoud were right, Tullianus and Avianius Symmachus should have been among those who profited from serving the house of Constantine. Only imperial favour could explain such rapid acquisition of such huge and wide- spread estates (we have already seen that Avianius's fortune must have been four times the size of his son's). Yet Avianius's career, which is known in full, was quite different from such as Vulcacius Rufinus and Petronius Probus. Not counting embassies, his entire administrative career was spent within the walls of Rome: praefectus annonae (339/40);139 vicarius urbis Romae (date unknown but presumably by ca. 350); and city prefect (364-65).140 Not more than one year in office in each decade of his adult life. A newly published inscription in which the name of Constantine II was erased and replaced by the name of Constans has revealed that he held his first office under an emperor who

135 xvi. 8. 13 (Hamilton's translation, modified); the text is uncertain. 136 PLRE i. 782-83. 137 Amm. xxvii. 11. 1-6, with Matthews 1989 (as in n. 117), 277-78. Probus was not by birth

an Anician, but after marrying into the clan he at once established himself as its leading light and champion.

138 Symm. Ep. i. 2. 5; Chastagnol, Fastes 79. 139 The more precise date is given by Ann. Epigr. 1988, 217, first published by L. Gasperini,

Miscellanea greca e romana 13 (1988), 242-50. 140 PLRE i. 863-65.



502 ALAN CAMERON

suffered damnatio memoriae, and it has been suggested that this caused a setback in his career.141 But another inscription (ILS 726) shows him still in office under Constans, nor is there any actual evidence for such a setback. It is characteristic of the careers of less careerist aristocrats to hold no more than two or three posts separated by long periods devoted to private affairs.142 Ammi- anus describes him as "a man of exemplary learning and restraint (modestia)." 143 Modestia is a vague concept, but does not suggest the sort of greed he denounces in Rufinus, Probus and the Anicii.

As for Tullianus, his only attested post is that governorship in Achaea (319). We know that he was never prefect of Rome, since we have a complete list of prefects between 254 and 354. And so far as we know, he was not praetorian prefect either, though our information here is much less complete. 144 He surely held some other office, and to have won a consulship he must have been in Constantine's good graces. But there is no indication that he was one of the emperor's most trusted - and correspondingly rewarded - servants.

Avianius made an advantageous marriage, to the daughter of Fabius Tit- ianus, who was in office most of his life. After three provincial governorships and the consulship for 337, he went on to two tenures of the prefecture of Rome (339-41; 350-5 1) and a nine year term as prefect of Gaul (341-49). Those years of service were no doubt lucrative, but we cannot be sure that Avianius's wife was his sole heir.

Symmachus himself had a career much like his father's: governor of Luca- nia-Bruttium (365) at the age of 25; proconsul of Africa (373) at 33; and finally the prefecture of Rome (384) at 44 - less than three years of office during his entire adult life (his prefecture lasted less than nine months). Of course, the Symmachi will have exploited whatever opportunities their brief tenures of office offered (Symmachus visited his Mauretanian estates while in Africa as proconsul - apparently his only visit). But it does not look as if they sought them out.

Symmachus married the daughter of the famously uncouth Memmius Vitra- sius Orfitus, who rose to power at the court of Constantius II and later enjoyed two profitable terms as prefect of Rome (353-55; 357-59).145 So profitable,

141 Gasperini (as in n. 139), 249-50; against, G. A. Cecconi, Studia et Doc. Historiae et luris

62 (1996), 343-55. 142 A notable case is the Turcii Secundi: Cameron, "The Date and the Owners of the

Esquiline Treasure," AJA 89 (1985), 142 n. 32; see too Cecconi (as in n. 141), 349-55.

143 xxvii. 3. 3. 144 On Constantine's praetorian prefects see Chastagnol, "Les prefets du pretoire de Constan-

tin," REA 70 (1968), 321-52 and in Atti del III convegno di studio, Sassari, 13-15

dicembre 1985 (Sassari 1986), 263-73; Barnes, New Empire (as in n. 1), 123-39 and (for

the prefects of Constantius II) ZPE 94 (1992), 249-60.

145 PLRE i. 651-53; Chastagnol, Fastes 139-47; Barnes, "The Capitulation of Liberius and

Hilary of Poitiers," Phoenix 46 (1992), 257-59; Cameron, JRA 9 (1996), 295-301.




indeed that he was prosecuted for embezzlement. The money was never repaid, and during his own prefecture (384) Symmachus was obliged to declare that his wife had not inherited a penny from her father. This claim was not (of course) disinterested (there was pressure on Symmachus to repay the debt himself) nor even quite frank (an estate of Orfitus that had once belonged to the famous orator Hortensius certainly passed into his hands).146 But the marriage may not have turned out as profitably as he had hoped.

At a time when heiresses like Melania were available, Symmachus chose to marry both his own children into the (by Roman standards) rather minor family of the Nicomachi Flaviani. His daughter (whose name is unknown) married the younger Nicomachus Flavianus ca. 388.147 And in 401 Memmius married a granddaughter of the elder Flavianus, Symmachus's oldest friend. The two dowries must have cancelled each other out. It is presumably no coincidence that Memmius's praetorian games fell in the same year 401;148 Symmachus may have been counting on the dowry to help pay for the games. But he could surely have found more advantageous matches for both his children if that had been his main concern.

Nothing we know about the careers and marriages of Tullianus and Avian- ius Symmachus makes plausible the sudden accumulation of wealth in the first half of the fourth century that Paschoud's hypothesis requires. More reasonable to suppose a gradual accumulation over a longer period, perhaps originally (as suggested above) in N. Africa. If Tullianus was proconsul of Achaea, then he was already a senator a decade before his consulship.'49

Another factor to be taken into account is the priesthoods held by both Q. Aurelius and Avianius Symmachus. Both were pontifices Vestae, and Avianius in addition a quindecimvir sacris faciundis; Celsinus Titianus was pontifex Solis as well as pontifex Vestae.150 Given the unremitting focus of so much modern scholarship on pagan/Christian conflict among the ranks of the Roman aristocracy, little attention has been paid to these priesthoods except as proof of the well-known paganism of the fourth-century Symmachi. But the qualifica- tions for cooption into the old sacerdotal colleges were birth and connections rather than religiosity or expertise. In the first and second centuries some priesthoods went to new men, an effective way of expanding the Roman elite,

146 Chastagnol, "Un scandale du vin sous le Bas-Empire," Annales 5 (1950), 166-83 (sum- mary in his Fastes 139-47); on the date, H. Sivan, "Ammianus at Rome: Exile and Redemption?," Historia 46 (1997), 118.

147 On the date, A. Marcone, Commento storico al libro vi dell'epistolario di Q. Aurelio Simmaco (Pisa 1983), 50-5 1.

148 They had originally been planned for 400, but then so may have been the marriage. 149 Vettius Cossinius Rufinus was proconsul of Achaea before 315, having previously held a

number of senatorial governorships and curatelae: PLRE i. 777. 150 ILS 2946 and 1257; Symm. Ep. i. 68.



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but by the third (when the emperor seldom visited Rome) and fourth (especially after the conversion of Constantine), imperial approval must have become more and more a formality and the membership of the colleges more and more exclusive and self-perpetuating. Already in the first century something like a third of all holders of major priesthoods inherited them from forbears.151 All other known fourth-century holders of priesthoods are clearly men of noble birth.152 It is impossible to believe that Avianius Symmachus could have won two of them if his father had been a new man.

Writing (probably) in 337, Firmicus Maternus cites Tullianus as typical of those born with Cepheus rising in Capricorn: "serious, austere men, feared for their severity, with expressions ever reflecting the integrity of their character, enthusiastic followers of the Stoic philosophy. Such among the ancients were the Catos, such in our own days is Tullianus, whose severity was rewarded with the rank of consul."153 Naturally we need not assume that this is an accurate portrait of the consul of 330. But it is the (idealized) description of a Roman aristocrat rather than of a new man.

If so, then Tullianus's father will also have been a senator. This father's floruit will have fallen somewhere in the period ca. 270-310. It was ca. 270 that Porphyry addressed his Isagoge to Chrysaorius, a "consul of Rome" (evidently suffect) according to the commentator David,154 grandson and great-grandson of Symmachi. One reason none of these early forbears have been identified, over and above paucity of evidence, is no doubt that not all of them bore the cognomen Symmachus, even in the fourth and fifth centuries restricted to one son in each generation. It would be unreasonable to postulate two quite separate senatorial families known by the same rare cognomen. Tullianus could easily be the grandson of Chrysaorius. The information supplied by the Alexandrian commentators dovetails perfectly with what we already knew from Porphyry's own Life of Plotinus about the senatorial circles in which the two philosophers moved at Rome.

Chrysaorius was not himself a man of letters. According to an anonymous scholiast he "devoted more time to generalship than literature" (atpa-rryiat;

gakXov ii X6yot; ~vaaXokXoievo). 155 This is an intriguing remark. For whether

or not Gallienus issued a formal "edict" banning senators from military com-

151 J. Scheid, "Les pretres officiels sous les Julio-Claudiens," ANRW II. 16. 1 (1978), 631.

152 For a list of holders of the traditional Roman priesthoods in the late fourth century, see the

table appended to H. Bloch, "A New Document of the Last Pagan Revival in the West,

393-394 A.D.," Harv. Theol. Rev. 38 (1945), 199-244; Matthews, "Symmachus and the

Oriental Cults," JRS 63 (1973), 182.

153 Math. viii. 15. 4. 154 David, In Porph. Isag., ed. Busse (CAG xviii. 2, Berlin 1904), p. 92. 18.

155 Scholia in Aristotelem coll. C. A. Brandis (Berlin 1836), p. II b. 14.




mands, no senators commanded troops after about 262.156 The works dedicated to Chrysaorius must have been written later than this, since it was not till 263 that Porphyry entered Plotinus's school in Rome. According to Ammonius and Elias, the commentary on the Eisagoge was written while he was in Sicily,157 that is to say between 268 and 270 or during his second stay a few years later.158 Gallienus may have allowed one or two senators he trusted to continue to hold military commands. But if Chrysaorius was in his middle years when Porphyry knew him, his military days might have fallen well before 262. Furthermore classicizing Greek writers sometimes used acpaTTjyia to represent Latin pro- vincia.159 Porphyry might have meant no more than that Chrysaorius was often away from Rome on service in the provinces.

According to Ammonius, Chrysaorius wrote to Porphyry asking for guid- ance when unable to make head or tail of Aristotle's Categories, and Porphyry sent him the Isagoge by way of reply.'60 We should allow the possibility that this is an imaginative inference from the fact of the dedication,'6' but there is no call to deny Chrysaorius genuine philosophical interests. The twin traditions of public service and enthusiasm for letters that are the hallmark of the Symmachi from the fourth to the early sixth centuries may now be traced back to the third. And the family itself, if we are to accept the three generations implied by "grandson of Symmachus son of Symmachus," to the age of the Severi. It looks, then, as if Q. Aurelius Symmachus's evident and exorbitant pride in the blue- ness of his blood162 is better grounded than hitherto supposed.

Columbia University, New York Alan Cameron

156 The fullest study of this question is M. Christol, "Les reformes de Gallien et la carri&re s6natoriale," Tituli 4 (1982), 143-66; cf. Birley (as in n. 61), 34-35.

157 Ammonius p. 22. 15-19 Busse; Elias p. 39. 12 Busse. 158 On Porphyry's Sicilian period, T. D. Barnes, "Scholarship or Propaganda? Porphyry

Against the Christians and its Historical Setting," BICS 39 (1994), 60-61. 159 H. J. Mason, Greek Terms for Roman Institutions (Toronto 1974), 86, 137. 160 Comm. in Isag. Porph. (CAG iv. 3) ed. A. Busse (Berlin 1891), 22. 161 For many examples of the motif of the dedicatee soliciting the work in question, see A.

Gudeman, Tacitus Dialogus2 (Leipzig 1914), 41; 0. Weinreich, Die Distichen des Catull (Tubingen 1926), 99.

162 Seeck, Symmachus (1883), xxxix.



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The Antiquity of the Symmachi