Ebook: The Memorial of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (Relationes III Q. Aurelii Symmachi)

I made a promise to the manes of Symmachus in 1981 shortly after I read Gore Vidal's historical novel Julian. I was historically naive about the goings-on in the fourth century CE until then; this was compounded by the fact that I had spent ten years under the thrall of an American fundamentalist cult, a local Baptist church with which I had become disenchanted because of the cult's lack of historical veracity concerning many of its doctrines: the imminent return of Jesus, the notion that every word of the King James Bible, and only that version, was the true Word of God; and the increasingly fascist attitudes of the cult's leadership, among them the late Jerry Falwell, Jack Hyles and John Rice. I had met all of these men and found them repugnant, Falwell especially so. He gave me the creeps.

In my ensuing enlightenment, I learned of the similar fascist actions of the then-still-new Church, which started shortly after Constantine ascended the throne in 306 CE and who made Christianity the default religion of the Empire in 313. It didn't take long for the Church leaders to take over and to start persecuting the Pagans.

Vidal's novel was set in the years following 361 CE and described the short reign of the emperor Julian, who tried to reinstitute the Classical Pagan religions of the Empire. Although Symmachus is not mentioned in the story, it is told principally by two of his contemporaries, Priscus of Epirus (305 - 395 CE) and Libanius (314 - 392 CE). Priscus was a Neoplatonist philosopher and Libanius was an orator; both wrote in Greek. As I had just begun building my library of ancient literature, I soon found mention of Symmachus in the volume of Nicene and Post-Nicene writers which contained the surviving texts of Ambrose, bishop of Milan, a fascist in clerical garb if ever there was one. He was bent on destroying the Pagan religion, and his close access to the emperors went a long way in achieving his goals.

Symmachus, on the other hand, was from an old aristocratic family and held many high positions with the government. Dignified and elegant, he made two entreaties to the emperors Gratian and Valentinus II to have the Altar of Nike ('Victory') restored to the Roman Senate; Gratian had, among other heinous moves, removed it in 382, and those Senators who still followed the old religions entrusted him to make an appeal to the emperor to have it restored. Gratian refused to see him, and two years later, he made a second attempt to persuade the new emperor Valentinus II to restore it. Ambrose interfered, and wrote a mocking, but hardly credible, rebuttal to Symmachus' Memorial, (more properly, a Realtione) to Valentinus.

The quiet dignity of the man may be felt in the most well-known part of his Memorial:

"We gaze up at the same stars; the sky covers us all; the same
universe encompasses us. Does it matter what practical
system we adopt in our search for the Truth? The heart of so
great a mystery cannot be reached by following one road only."


Roy Waidler

Outlands Community

Clifton

2019

The Latin text is from Otto Seeck's edition of 1883.