Quintus Aurelius Symmachus

Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345–402) was the last great champion of Rome's pagan aristocracy — a senator, orator, and prolific letter writer who treated correspondence the way a modern politician treats networking. Born into one of Rome's most powerful families, he served as proconsul of Africa, urban prefect of Rome, and consul, always moving in the circles where old money and old religion still held sway. His most famous moment was the appeal to restore the Altar of Victory to the Roman Senate house in 384, a cause he lost to Ambrose of Milan — but one that crystallized the final confrontation between paganism and Christianity at the highest levels of Roman government. His surviving letters — nearly 900 of them, the largest collection from any late Roman figure — are a masterclass in aristocratic self-presentation. They are polished, elegant, and almost pathologically discreet: Symmachus rarely says anything controversial, rarely reveals strong emotion, and almost never discusses politics directly. What he does, constantly, is maintain relationships. He recommends friends for appointments, congratulates colleagues on promotions, exchanges literary compliments, and arranges the spectacles for his son's praetorian games with almost obsessive attention to detail (including a memorable disaster involving crocodiles). His correspondents include nearly every important figure of late fourth-century Rome. What makes Symmachus historically significant is precisely what makes him frustrating to read: the letters reveal how Rome's elite actually functioned. This was a world held together by favors, recommendations, and carefully maintained social networks — and Symmachus was its supreme practitioner. His letters are the closest thing we have to watching the Roman aristocracy work in real time, and they show a class of people who believed, right up to the end, that civilization meant keeping up appearances.