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ORATORY AND EPISTOLOGRAPHY
in 313 to congratulate Constantine on his victory over Maxentius (No. 9).
Some of these anonymous speeches are probably by Eumenius, the author of
No. 4, but proof is impossible. There is great similarity in style and arrangement
between all the speeches. All of them strike a note of almost absurd adulation.
Everything their hero does is superhuman, his very faults are turned into
virtues. The splendour of the emperor's outward appearance is vividly described.
His meanest achievements are compared with the greatest exploits in
myth or history, to the detriment of the latter. All the devices of the trained
rhetorician are made use of to enhance the speaker's message, the content of
which is as much emotional as factual. The language is in general classical and
Ciceronian, without any of the archaism of Apuleius or the swollen verdosity
of contemporary legal enactments. The speakers had evidently learnt the art of
rhetoric from such classicizing manuals as those listed on pp. 7 5 5—6. Only Claudius
Mamertinus, in his speech to Julian, makes frequent use of poetic words. The
speeches are a mine of information for the historian of the period, but of
information which must be critically examined; the speakers were not on oath.
The collection is also an interesting document of the classicizing culture of the
Gaulish upper classes, parallel to that provided for a somewhat later period by
Ausonius. Both are marked by a curious unwillingness to look long and seriously
at the real world. This very remoteness from everyday circumstances
was itself one of the factors which enabled Claudian to replace the prose
panegyric by the verse panegyric, which offered greater scope for imagery,
adornment and suggestiveness (cf. p. 707).
Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, known also as Eusebius, belonged to one of
the most distinguished senatorial families of Rome. His father L. Aurelius
Avianius Symmachus, his father-in-law Memmius Vitrasius Orfitus Honorius,
and probably his maternal grandfather, had all held the office of Prefect of the
City, the normal culmination of a senatorial career at this period. The family
owned vast estates in Africa, Numidia, Sicily and southern Italy. Symmachus
was born c. 345, studied rhetoric at Rome under a teacher from Bordeaux,
perhaps Tiberius Victor Minervius who is mentioned in Ausonius' poem on
the professors of Bordeaux. We do not know when he held the quaestorship
and praetorship, the duties of which were by now limited to giving lavish
games. In 365 he was probably corrector (governor) of Bruttium, then spent
a short time at Valentinian's court in Gaul. In 373—4 he was Proconsul of
Africa for eight months. In 384—5 he was Prefect of the City. In 391, as a result
of special circumstances, he was appointed one of the consuls of the year, a
dignity at this time more often held by generals or court officials than by
senators. Twice he took the side of a usurping emperor, first of Maximus in
383 then of Eugenius in 392—4. On both occasions he succeeded in ingratiating
himself with Theodosius after the defeat and death of the usurper. His position
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