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ORATORY AND EPISTOLOGRAPHY
been described as verbose but empty of content. This is a little harsh. Symmachus
well knew that the epistolary genre calls for brevity and compression.
And their content was not meant to consist of factual information, but of the
affirmation and cultivation of amicitia, naturally within a very limited section of
late Roman society. The editorial activity of the younger Symmachus may be
responsible for some of the bland emptiness of the letters. His father had made
many political misjudgements in a long life, which called for excisions and covering
of tracks. But the editor cannot have changed the basic tone of the correspondence,
which was concerned with social relations and not with information. If
information had to be conveyed, it would be conveyed verbally or in a separate
enclosure. The letter itself was primarily a work of art. Within the limitations
imposed by the rules of the art Symmachus skilfully varies his tone to suit the
addressee, striking a philosophical note with Praetextatus, with others affecting
archaism, with others a racy informality, with others an irony which sometimes
approaches self-parody. But the letters are always studied, never spontaneous.
They provide an interesting picture of the intellectual and social interests of
a cultivated and idle aristocracy. They contain scarcely any references to the
momentous events of the age, in some of which Symmachus was himself
involved, though never in a decisive role. The tenth book, the Relationes, is
a different matter. It contains forty-nine official dispatches sent by Symmachus
to the emperor. Some are formal greetings. Many are on complex legal questions
involving conflict of laws, which came before the Senate and which were
referred to the supreme legislator. Many were in their original state accompanied
by dossiers of documents, summaries of evidence and the like, which
have not survived. They give an insight into the obsessionally conscientious
mode of operation of late Roman government in certain fields. But it must be
borne in mind that Symmachus himself was not a bureaucrat. For him office
and its responsibilities were fleeting and in some ways regrettable interruptions
in a life of otium and amicitia.
The most striking of the Relationes is the plea for the restoration of the altar
of Victory in the senate-house. Ever since the days of Augustus senators had
offered a pinch of incense on this altar at the outset of the proceedings of the
Senate. When Constantius II visited Rome in 357, he had the altar removed,
as an offence to Christianity, but it was soon restored to its place, presumably
under Julian. In 381 the young emperor Gratian, a devout and even bigoted
Christian, the first emperor to drop the title of Pontifex Maximus, had the
altar removed once more and the revenues of the Vestal Virgins and other
Roman priesthoods confiscated. The next year the Senate petitioned for the
reversal of these decisions, but Pope Damasus and Ambrose, bishop of Milan,
succeeded in persuading Gratian to stick to his decision. After Gratian's death
in 383 another petition was organized, and it is this which Symmachus reports
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