Quintus Aurelius Symmachus Article Index for
Quintus 		Website Links For
Quintus 		 

Information About

Quintus Aurelius Symmachus
  CATEGORIES ABOUT QUINTUS AURELIUS SYMMACHUS
   
340 births
   
symmachus aurelius quintus
   
402 deaths
   
urban prefects
   
imperial roman consuls
   
symmachus
   
aurelii
   
symmachus, quintus
   
ancient roman proconsuls
   
roman governors of africa
   
SHOPPER'S DELIGHT
 
Shop For:  
Department
Price Minimum:
Price Maximum:
      



On his return to Rome from his term in the province of Africa, Symmachus was rewarded with a gilded statue erected in the Forum. In 382, the emperor Gratian , a Christian, ordered the Altar of Victory removed from the Roman Senate house in the Forum . Symmachus protested, and was banished. Two years later, Gratian was assassinated in Lugdunum . Symmachus was able to return to Rome and was promoted to Prefect. He took advantage of the moment to implore the new emperor, Valentinian , to restore the famous Altar of Victory, symbolic of traditional Roman civil religion, to its accustomed place in the Senate.


WRITINGS

His ''Relationes'' on this occasion survive, simply because they have been appended to Ambrosius' Christian answer; Symmachus perhaps won the altar's reinstatement, very temporarily, not long before his death. In an age when all religious communities credited the divine power with direct involvement in human affairs, Symmachus argues that the removal of the altar had caused a famine and its restoration would be beneficial in other ways. Subtly he pleads for tolerance for traditional cult practices and beliefs that Christianity was poised to suppress in the Theodosian Edicts Of 391 .

He was also engaged in the preparation of an edition of Livy 's ''Ab Urbe Condita''. This edition is the source of a series of subscriptions with his name found in some of the surviving texts of the first Decade — and is thought to be the ancestor of one manuscript tradition of Livy's text.

After the model of the Younger Pliny , the letters he had written to his numerous influential friends were collected in ten books, which form a valuable source of historical information for the Roman Empire in the later fourth century. This collection inspired Sidonius Apollinaris to create a similar collection.


WORKS

  • ''Q. Aurelii Symmachi quae supersunt'', ed. by Otto Seeck (Berlin, 1883; reprinted Munich, 2001, .



REFERENCES

  • T. R. Glover, ''Life and Letters in the Fourth Century'' (London, 1901)

  • Martin Schanz, ''Geschichte der römischen Litterature'' volume iv, part i (second edition, Munich, 1914)

  • M. S. Dimsdale, ''A History of Latin Literature'' (New York, 1915)



FURTHER READING

  • J.F. Matthews, "The Letters of Symmachus" in ''Latin Literature of the Fourth Century'' (edited by J.W. Binns), pp. 58-99. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974.

  • J.F. Matthews, ''Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court, AD 364-425''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. ISBN 0198144997



EXTERNAL LINKS