In her latest book, Rita Lizzi Testa analyses in nine chapters several aspects of the social status, the religious afflatus, and the cultural and political importance of Roman elites between the fourth and the sixth century AD. While the vitality of the Roman Senate as an institution has often been neglected in late-antique studies, the author aims to restate its overall influence over imperial policy, the acclamation of usurpers, and, last but not least, the increasing relevance of bishops in Rome. This is clearly stated in the introduction to the book: “When confronted with policies that implied the renunciation of some of their privileges, the senators of Rome willingly appointed usurpers, and took on a competitive role vis-à-vis the imperial government, thus actually pushing the West towards the end” (p. XVI). By showing the Senate’s various strategies of resilience enacted to counter its otherwise “endemic lack of fertility” (p. 58), the author points out that the Roman senators lived through periods of transformation by virtue of their networking ability and their capacity to assimilate non-traditional cultures and religions. Lizzi Testa pays tribute to Cameron 2011 (The Last Pagans of Rome) and Brown 2012 (Through the Eye of a Needle) for their analysis of the cultural and religious identity of the senatorial class of Rome, Vera 2020 (I doni di Cerere) for that of its persistent economic capacity, and Porena-Huck 2021 (La préfecture du prétoire tardo-antique) for that of the senators’ juridical expertise and therefore their political role as governors and magistrates, which resisted the most radical changes in the empire without ever reducing the Senate’s role to that of a municipal council of limited influence.[1] By challenging the limits of Mommsen’s interpretative analysis of the Senate as a weak political authority in Late Antiquity, each chapter contributes from different perspectives to a multifaceted, layered, and complex analysis that the author unravels in a solid volume that is the latest outcome of her long-lasting, in-depth research made available for the first time in English.
The volume shows a keen chronological and thematic approach from its beginning. It opens (chapter one) with the aim to topple the bias dominating scholarship about Constantine and his reform of elite orders, allegedly prompting the late-antique decline of the Roman Senate. Although targeted elections allowed many members of municipal and equestrian elites into the highest ranks, the assimilation of equestrians and senators only came to effect within a century, and Constantine certainly did not deny those who attained senatorial rank by birth to hold the highest posts. On the contrary, the author proves with convincing arguments the resilience of the noblest pagan Roman families to whom the emperor never denied his favour, despite being a recent Christian convert. Lizzi Testa shows how the “conservative reshaping of social morphology” (p. 10), for which Constantine is the author, heightened the hostility from provincial elites that would eventually pervade the provincial literary tradition by the time of the emperor Julian.
This provides material for the second chapter of the book, which focuses on Julian’s principate. The testimonies of Ammianus (21.10.8), Aurelius Victor (Caes. 41.12), Eutropius (10.8.1), and Zosimus (2.32.1) are interpreted as giving voice to a general posthumous hostility to the memory of Constantine as novator et turbator of previous orders and laws. The author proves how such hostility did not stem exclusively from the Roman Senatorial aristocracy, certainly hostile to the promotion of alleged ‘barbarians’ into the highest echelons of the imperial administration, but also from municipal (especially Eastern) elites that nourished a strong resentment towards Constantine for having exacerbated economic and social imbalances within cities.
The point of view of the Roman senatorial elite, as Constantine shaped it, is considered in chapters three to nine, spanning from the words of the well-known orator Quintus Aurelius Symmachus to this latter’s latest descendants of the sixth century, whose familial validation passed through the celebration of the proto-martyr and saint Valentine. In chapter three, the author analyses the proclivity of the Roman senators for verse poems as a way to demonstrate their wealth and restate their political qualities and nobility of lineage during the difficult time under Valentinian I in Rome.
Aiming at reversing the stereotype of Valentinian I as despotically whipping the Roman aristocracy through his Pannonian officials, chapter four employs network analysis to rebuild a prosopography of the senatorial networks that enabled Symmachus to deliver his First Oration to Valentinian I, so bringing to Trier senatorial political messages. In this section, the author proves that, throughout the fourth century, the Senate not only still held many functions (e.g., the issue of senatusconsulta, the exercise of judicial authority in trials, the deification or abolitio memoriae of a deceased emperor) but also aspired to maintain a relevant position vis-à-vis the central power of the emperor and to present its consensus as crucial for the good outcome of the imperial policies. While late-antique literary studies have recently focused on the provincial panegyrics collected in the Gallic corpus of Panegyrici Latini, the author points out how “the senatorial panegyrics, if more specimens had survived, would make it clear just how different the Roman aristocrats’ approach to ‘their’ emperor was from that of certain provincials such as Eumenius, Nazarius, Claudius Mamertinus, Latinus Pacatus Drepanius and other, anonymous, panegyrists” (p. XI).
In chapter five, the author focuses on the ancient art of haruspicina, still traditionally practised in the fourth century. Treatises on haruspicy were still jealously held in the libraries of the greatest senatorial families, who made part of their cultural survival to retain the memory of such ancient rites. With a close (but not exclusive) focus on Ammianus (28.1.41ff.), dealing with the ominous blossoming of brooms before the appointment of men mostly despised by the historian and by the Roman nobility, the chapter demonstrates how the narration of prodigies was more than a literary device and served the political purpose—shared with the senatorial class—to express a sense of uncertainty under the reign of Valentinian I and Valens. The restoration of public haruspicina enacted by Valentinian I (CTh 9.16.9) to accommodate senatorial requests (Amm. 28.1.24) represented to the Roman aristocracy a praesidium dignitatis, i.e., a guarantee of the senatorial privileges in times when haruspicy was confused with (black) magic.
Following on the consequences of such misunderstanding, chapter six analyses Ammianus’ account of the Roman trials for magic and adultery in the late fourth century, esp. books 26 and 28 of the Res Gestae, which mostly dealt with the Roman aristocracy as it survived in the reign of Valentinian I. In this section, the author reprises her earlier contribution (Ammiano e l’auto-censura dello storico, in F. E. Consolino (ed.) Letteratura e propaganda nell’Occidente latino da Augusto ai regni romano-barbarici, Roma 2000, 67-105). Textual and literary features of Ammianus’ work point towards a strong belief that he publicly recited parts of his books in front of Theodosius I when in Rome between 389 and 390 AD. Support for this hypothesis is found in Libanius (Ep. 1063) (392 AD) whose interpretation has inspired different exegeses, which Lizzi Testa convincingly reassesses to confirm that public recitation was the first form of publication of a written work throughout antiquity. Ammianus conformed to this tradition to gain Theodosius’ approval and present to him a specific picture of the Roman aristocracy.
Chapter seven focuses on the relationship between Roman senators and Christian bishops as it emerges from a parallel reading of Symmachus’ Third Relatio and the Epistulae 72 and 73 written by Ambrose of Milan to Valentinian II, “On the Altar of Victory”. After highlighting the limits of the abundant European and Anglo-Saxon scholarship on the controversy (p. 143), Lizzi Testa enriches her contributions of 2007 and 2015 and navigates the reader through Symmachus’ words with a political perspective, so as to pinpoint the exact senatorial privileges attacked by Gratian with his decree (from the stipendium castitatis and the sacra castitatis alimenta to the Vestals’ immunity from public duties or their ancient right to receive and hold fundi bequeathed to the Temple of Vesta). Dated to the years 382-384, the controversy between the Senate of Rome and the emperor to which Symmachus gave voice represented a desperate attempt to prove that the traditional religion of Rome was an expression of politics and an essential form of public life whose preservation was to the pagan Roman aristocracy a guarantee of the fate of the empire itself (cf. Symm. Rel. III 3 and 19).
Moving to the fifth century, chapter eight reappraises the rise of the usurper Priscus Attalus, during the Gothic siege of Rome by Alaric, as a deliberate choice of the neglected senatorial aristocracy of Rome, grown increasingly hostile to the princeps puer Honorius and his mismanagement of the empire from Ravenna. Whereas scholarship has generally interpreted Attalus as a puppet usurper raised by a barbarian Keisermacher, Lizzi Testa proves how this interpretation fails to take account of the senatorial intolerance of Honorius’ general policy and his ban of non-Catholics from both military commands and court offices. Through a close reading of the ancient sources—which favours Philostorgius’ account, as did Seeck and Stein—the author traces the cracking of Honorius’ support to the three embassies to Ravenna from Rome between 408 and 409, whose dynamics and prosopography she unravels with detailed insight. Attalus is presented as an educated senator, son of a former governor of Greece, unwilling to recognise Honorius as emperor upon his election or to be recognised as the latter’s co-ruler. Lizzi Testa interprets Sozomenus (9.8.2), where Attalus is said to have expressed his will to revive the ancient rights of the Senate, as possibly an allusion to Attalus’ intention to revive the Senate’s traditional right to appoint the emperor (p. 190). Such a Senate-focused program had its setback with the rebellion of the comes Africae Heraclianus and his final twist in favour of the Theodosians, which caused the failure of Attalus’ first usurpation. Going beyond the religious interpretations of the usurpation of Attalus (stemming from his Arian baptism and his alleged favour for pagans), the author brilliantly shows how the traditional vulgata of usurpers’ upheaval in Late Antiquity can be upturned through a close study of the inner dynamics of a collegiate order that had never suffocated its aspirations and that still searched for a stable alternative to the imperial power represented by Honorius.
The final appendix of the book arouses the reader’s curiosity about the universally known Saint Valentine, whom Lizzi Testa considers from a peculiar angle. Attested in Rome and in the ancient Interamna Nahars (nowadays Terni, in the Italian region of Umbria), Valentinus is identified by the author with the fourth-century consularis Campaniae Junius Valentinus, whom the author reconnects to the Symmachi family through pages dense with names and prosopographical hypotheses (based on archaeological, hagiographical, and epigraphical evidence spanning from the fourth to the sixth century). In particular, Junius Valentinus seems to belong to a branch of the Symmachi that suffered from the succession of Constantius II at the expense of his brother Constans (to whom Junius had shown support).
While the handy bibliography following each chapter provides the reader with fundamental and specific references made necessary by the complexity of the argumentations and the breadth of the analysis, the author maintains clarity throughout the volume—see e.g., the introduction to studies on Symmachus at the beginning of chapter 3. The combination of clarity with the depth and breadth of the issues addressed makes the volume extremely thought-provoking, enriching, and enjoyable to historians acquainted with late-antique studies (and the biases surrounding them).
Notes
[1] The volume recalls, in some respects, M. R. Salzman, The “Falls” of Rome: crises, resilience, and resurgence in late antiquity, Cambridge 2021. Through different argumentations, perspectives, and time frames, each volume highlights the resilience and influence of late-antique Roman senatorial aristocrats.