At Peristephanon 2.549-560, Prudentius depicts St. Laurence as consul in a heavenly Rome. This extraordinary passage achieves two purposes. First, it links the celebration of Rome’s conversion to the concluding prayer. By looking toward the martyr in heavenly glory, Prudentius can make his prayer heard despite his separation from the martyr’s body. Laurence’s exaltation also qualifies aristocratic ambitions. Prudentius glories in the Senate’s conversion, but senatorial lifestyles were at odds with his ideals (as Laurence’s denunciation of the rich underscores). By (...) putting Laurence at the apex of the afterlife for which both senators and ascetics longed, Prudentius can rejoice in the conversion of Rome’s élite and still maintain the superiority of ascetical to worldly lifestyles. (shrink)

A recent study has argued from theological and classicizing parallels that the first, anti-pagan book of Augustine’s De consensu euangelistarum belongs between 406 and 412 CE. This article defends the traditional dating ca. 400–405 CE, implied by Retractationes. Uncertainty over the dating of parallels in De trinitate 1–4 cautions against reliance on theological peculiarities (a variant of John 5:19 and the phrase unitas personae, both otherwise paralleled in the 410s CE or later), while a close review of the patterns of (...) classical citation proves resemblance to De ciuitate dei to be superficial. Not only does Augustine demonstrably cite the same classical texts on widely separated occasions, De consensu euangelistarum 1 evinces little of Augustine’s later knowledge of Porphyry and Varro. The crowning proof comes, however, in a brief rebuttal to pagan complaints over contemporary misfortunes. Although he focuses on Rome’s religious history, Augustine omits any hint of Alaric’s sack (410 CE), the religious-political instability of 408–409 CE, or Radagaisus’ invasion of Italy (405–406 CE), all of key importance for later works. The book’s method, scope, and tenor place it neatly within the span 400–405 CE, as our first testimony to the interreligious milieu for which De ciuitate dei would later be aimed. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has held that De ciuitate Dei was aimed primarily at Christians. Through a comprehensive study of Augustine’s correspondence with known readers of De ciuitate Dei, this article argues that he in fact intended it for practical outreach. Beginning with the exchange with Volusianus and Marcellinus, it argues that the “circle of Volusianus” was not comprised of self-confident pagans but of a dynamic group of locals and émigrés, pagan and Christian, who had briefly coalesced around Volusianus and Marcellinus. The (...) Carthaginian social situation did not greatly change, therefore, after Marcellinus’s execution and Volusianus’s departure. Neither did Augustine’s aims, of which the same picture emerges from Augustine’s later correspondence with Macedonius, Evodius, Peter and Abraham, Firmus, and Darius, and from Orosius. Augustine intended, from the first inception of De ciuitate Dei to the eve of his death, to use it to equip Christians with arguments and, through those Christians’ efforts in turn, to convince once-reluctant pagans to embrace the truth of its claims. (shrink)

We are ruled by judges whom we know, we enjoy the benefits | Of peace and war, as if the warrior Quirinus, | As if peaceful Numa were governing.With these words the poet Claudian lauds the Emperor Honorius on the occasion of his fourth consulship in 398 by comparing him to Rome's deified founder, Romulus-Quirinus, and to Numa Pompilius, its second king, who was proverbial for wisdom and piety. Claudian's panegyric stands in a long literary tradition in which the legendary (...) Roman kings were depicted as models of statesmanship. This exemplary tradition left its mark on a broad array of late antique works, including historical compendia such as the pseudo-AurelianDe uiris illustribus, which narrates the kings’ deeds as soldiers and statesmen, and the writings of antiquarians such as Macrobius and Servius, who collected information on the kings’ invention of cults and calendars. Servius’ interest in the kings implies that they featured in the teaching provided by other late antiquegrammaticias well, and thus that most literate Latin-speakers would have had some knowledge of their deeds. Advanced education in rhetoric likewise drew on Virgil and other school texts for historicalexemplaincluding Romulus and Numa, who appear in panegyrics and in brief histories, such as Eutropius’Breviary, that probably served as reference texts for the political elite. The kings thus loomed large in Roman perceptions of the founding of their empire, which began with the heroic Romulus, was strengthened by Numa's establishment of the Roman cultic system, and was secured by the later kings’ political and military successes. (shrink)