Consul all but peer of the gods, protector of a city greater than any that on earth the air encompasses, whose amplitude no eye can measure, whose beauty no imagination can picture, whose praise no voice can sound, who raises a golden head under the neighboring stars, and with her seven hills imitates the seven regions of heaven; mother of arms and of law, who extends her sway over all the earth, and was the earliest cradle of justice: this is the city which, sprung from humble beginnings, has stretched to either pole, and from one small place extended its power so as to be coterminous with the light of the sun. … ’Tis she alone who has received the conquered into her bosom, and like a mother, not an empress, protected the human race with a common name, summoning those whom she has defeated to share her citizenship, and drawing together distant races with bonds of affection. To her rule of peace we owe it that the world is our home, that we can live where we please, and that to visit Thule and explore its once dreaded wilds is but a sport; thanks to her, all and sundry may drink the waters of the Rhone and quaff Orontes’ stream. Thanks to her we are all one people.36
The grateful Senate raised a statue to Claudian in Trajan’s Forum “as to the most glorious of poets,” who had united Virgil’s felicity with Homer’s power. After further verses in honor of remunerative subjects, Claudian turned his talents to The Rape of Proserpine, and told the old tale with haunting pictures of land and sea, and a tender note that recalls the Greek love romances of the time. In 408 he learned that Stilicho had been assassinated, and that many of the general’s friends were being arrested and executed. We do not know the remainder of his story.
In Rome, as in Athens and Alexandria, substantial pagan minorities survived, and 700 pagan temples were still standing at the end of the fourth century.37 Jovian and Valentinian I do not seem to have closed the temples opened by Julian. The Roman priests still (394) met in their sacred colleges, the Lupercalia were celebrated with their old half-savage rites, and the Via Sacra now and then resounded with the prescient bellowing of oxen driven to sacrifice.
The most highly respected of Rome’s latter-day pagans was Vettius Praetextatus, leader of the pagan majority in the Senate. All men admitted his virtues—integrity, learning, patriotism, fine family life; some compared him to old Cato and Cincinnatus. Time remembers better his friend Symmachus (345–410), whose letters paint so pleasant a picture of that charming aristocracy which thought itself immortal on the eve of death. Even his family seemed immortaclass="underline" his grandfather had been consul in 330, his father prefect in 364; he himself was prefect in 384, and consul in 391. His son was a praetor, his grandson would be consul in 446, his great-grandson would be consul in 485, his great-great-grandsons would both be consuls in 522. His wealth was immense; he had three villas near Rome, seven others in Latium, five on the Bay of Naples, others elsewhere in Italy, so that “he could travel up and down the peninsula and be everywhere at home.”38 No one is recorded as having grudged him this wealth, for he spent it generously, and redeemed it with a life of study, public service, blameless morals, and a thousand acts of inconspicuous philanthropy. Christians as well as pagans, barbarians as well as Romans, were among his faithful friends. Perhaps he was a pagan before he was a patriot; he suspected that the culture that he represented and enjoyed was bound up with the old religion, and he feared that the one could not fall without the other. Through fidelity to the ancient rites the citizen would feel himself a link in a chain of marvelous continuity from Romulus to Valentinian, and would learn to love a city and a civilization so bravely built through a thousand years. Not without reason his fellow citizens chose Quintus Aurelius Symmachus as their representative in their last dramatic struggle for their gods.
In 380 the Emperor Gratian, won to a passionate orthodoxy by the eloquent Ambrose, proclaimed the Nicene Creed as compulsory “on all the peoples subject to the governments of our clemency,” and denounced as “mad and insane” the followers of other faiths.39 In 382 he ordered an end to payments by the imperial or municipal treasuries for pagan ceremonies, vestal virgins, or priests; confiscated all lands belonging to temples and priestly colleges; and bade his agents remove from the Senate House in Rome that statue of the goddess Victory which Augustus had placed there in 29 B.C., and before which twelve generations of senators had taken their vows of allegiance to the emperor. A delegation headed by Symmachus was appointed by the Senate to acquaint Gratian with the case for Victoria; Gratian refused to receive them, and ordered Symmachus banished from Rome (382). In 383 Gratian was killed, and the hopeful Senate sent a deputation to his suecessor. The speech of Symmachus before Valentinian II was acclaimed as a masterpiece of eloquent pleading. It was not expedient, he argued, to end so abruptly religious practices that had through a millennium been associated with the stability of social order and the prestige of the state. After all, “What does it matter by what road each man seeks the truth? By no one road can men come to the understanding of so great a mystery” (uno itinere non potest perveniri ad tam grande secretum).40
The young Valentinian was moved; Ambrose tells us that even the Christians in the imperial council advised the restoration of the statue of Victory. But Ambrose, who had been absent on a diplomatic mission for the state, overruled the council with an imperious letter to the Emperor. He took up one by one the arguments of Symmachus, and countered them with characteristic force. In effect he threatened to excommunicate the ruler if the plea should be granted. “You may enter the churches, but you will find no priest there to receive you, or you will find them there to forbid you entrance.”41 Valentinian denied the Senate’s appeal.
The pagans of Italy made a last effort in 393, risking all on revolution. The half-pagan Emperor Eugenius, refused recognition by Theodosius, and hoping to enlist the pagans of the West in his defense, restored the statue of Victory, and boasted that after defeating Theodosius he would stable his horses in Christian basilicas. Nicomachus Flavianus, son-in-law of Symmachus, led an army to support Eugenius, shared in the defeat, and killed himself. Theodosius marched into Rome, and compelled the Senate to decree the abolition of paganism in all its forms (394). When Alaric sacked Rome the pagans saw in the humiliation of the once lordly city the anger of their neglected gods. The war of the faiths broke the unity and morale of the people, and when the torrent of invasion reached them they could only meet it with mutual curses and divided prayers.
IV. THE BARBARIAN FLOOD
As a postscript to the assassination of Stilicho, Olympius ordered the slaughter of thousands of Stilicho’s followers, including the leaders of his barbarian legions. Alaric, who had awaited his opportunity behind the Alps, seized it now. He complained that the 4000 pounds of gold that the Romans had promised him had not been paid; in return for this payment he pledged the noblest Gothic youth as hostages for his future loyalty. When Honorius refused, he marched over the Alps, pillaged Aquileia and Cremona, won to his side 30,000 mercenaries resentful of the slaughter of their leaders, and swept down the Flaminian Way to the very walls of Rome (408). No one resisted him except a solitary monk who denounced him as a robber; Alaric bemused him by declaring that God Himself had commanded the invasion. The frightened Senate, as in Hannibal’s day, was stampeded into barbarism; it suspected Stilicho’s widow as an accomplice of Alaric, and put her to death. Alaric responded by cutting off every avenue by which food could enter the capital. Soon the populace began to starve; men killed men, and women their children, to eat them. A delegation was sent to Alaric, asking terms. They warned him that a million Romans were ready to resist; he laughed, and answered, “The thicker the hay, the more easily it is mowed.” Relenting, he consented to withdraw on receiving all the gold and silver and valuable movable property in the city. “What will then be left to us?” the envoys asked. “Your lives,” was the scornful reply. Rome chose further resistance, but starvation compelled a new offer of surrender. Alaric accepted 5000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver, 4000 silk tunics, 3000 skins, 3000 pounds of pepper.