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Two Senators under Constantine*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

T. D. Barnes
T. D. Barnes
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

A handbook of astrology seems an improbable source of information about Constantine's dealings with the Roman Senate. Yet if the work were contemporary, and if both author and addressee were senators, then a few passages might betray a hint of transactions either not otherwise attested or not elsewhere documented in any detail. Such is in fact the case with the Mathesis of Julius Firmicus Maternus Junior v.c., of which one passage in particular can be made to disclose specific facts of some historical importance. Maternus discusses the horoscope of a man, whose father was exiled after twice being ordinary consul, and whose own career advanced from exile to the urban prefecture of Rome. Neither is named; they were familiar to both the author and the addressee of his work.

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Type
Research Article
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The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 65 , November 1975 , pp. 40 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © T. D. Barnes 1975. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Math, ii, 29, 20: ‘cuius haec genitura sit, Lolliane decus nostrum, optime nosti’. The horoscope received no discussion in Thorndike, L., ‘A Roman Astrologer as a Historical Source: Julius Firmicus Maternus’, CP viii (1913), 415–35Google Scholar.

2 F. Boll, RE vi (1909), 2362.

3 Math, i, 10, 13: ‘dominus et Augustus noster ac totius orbis imperator pius felix providus princeps, Constantinus scilicet maximus divi Constantii filius augustae ac venerandae memoriae principis, qui … apud Naissum genitus a primo aetatis gradu imperii gubernacula retinens, quae prosperis nanctus fuerat auspiciis, Romanum orbem ad perennis felicitatis augmentum salubri gubernationis moderatione sustentat’. For the necessity of emendation, cf. F. Boll, RE vi, 2366. The fact that W. Kroll and F. Skutsch printed ‘divi Constantini’ occasionally misleads scholars (Teubner ed., i (1897), 37, cf. ii (1913), 547).

4 He was from Syracuse (Math, vi, 30, 26, as emended by Skutsch) and lived in Sicily (i, pr. 4).

5 PLRE i, 512–14. But ILS 3425 might belong to another Lollianus, cf. Phoenix xxvii (1973), 145.

6 ILS 8943.

7 But not that ‘possibly Lollianus fell from imperial favour owing to the dedication to him of this work on astrology’ (PLRE i, 513).

8 Friedrich, T., In Iulii Firmici Materni de Errore profanarum religionum libellum quaestiones (Diss. Giessen, 1903; pub. Bonn, 1905), 53Google Scholar.

9 On ‘antiscium’ as an astrological term, cf. Bouché-Leclerq, A., L'astrologie grecque (1899), 161 f.Google ScholarTLL registers no other occurrence of the word in Latin literature (ii, 184).

10 Compare Math, iii, 12, 6: ‘absconsarum litterarum facient peritos, magos philosophos et caelestia saepe tractantes’; iv, 12, 4: ‘absconsarum aut inlicitarum litterarum actibus inhaerescunt’.

11 Koch, W., ‘Ceionius Rufius Albinus,’ Astrologische Rundschau xxiii (1931), 177–83Google Scholar. The article is not registered by K. Ziegler in the ‘Addenda Addendis’ to the reprinted second volume of the Teubner edition of the Mathesis (ii (1968), 559 f.). I am grateful to Professor G. P. Goold for procuring me a photographic copy from the library of the Warburg Institute, London.

12 O. Neugebauer, ‘The Horoscope of Ceionius Rufius Albinus’, AJP lxxiv (1953), 418–20, cf. Neugebauer, O. and van Hoesen, H. B., Greek Horoscopes. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society xlviii (1959), 161, n. 5Google Scholar.

13 Private letter, 12 April 1974.

14 Goldstine, H. H., New and Full Moons 1001 b.c. to a.d. 1650 (1973), 109Google Scholar; at the longitude of Babylon, the full moon occurred at precisely 0.35 a.m. on 20 March 303.

15 See the conspectus (44 B.C.–A.D. 613) provided by T. Mommsen, MGH, Auct. Ant. xiii (1898), 499 f.

16 MGH, Auct. Ant. ix, 66 f. (certainly complete from 291 to 354).

17 For precise bibliographical details, see Br. Mus. Cat. of Printed Books, lxxiii (1961), 432Google Scholar.

18 Kroll, W. and Skutsch, F., ‘In Firmicum Sittelianum emendationum centuriae duae primae’, Hermes xxix (1894), 517–29Google Scholar. T. Mommsen was brief in the extreme, but still more devastating (ib. 618–19).

19 Pruckner's edition (1533, 1551), p. 42.

20 Including Borghesi, B., Oeuvres complètes iv (1865), 521Google Scholar, and, less excusably, MacMullen, R., Ancient Society ii (1971), 106Google Scholar.

21 It finds no mention in his edition, not even in the apparatus criticus (i (1894), 71 f.). Sittl, however, continued to adhere to the false identification, and printed the words ‘Achaiae … Romae’ in italics as ‘vestigia editionis alterius a. 354 confectae’ (ib. 72, cf. Archiv für lot. Lexicographie iv (1887), 610Google Scholar).

22 Hermes xxix (1894), 471 f.Google Scholar = Ges. Schr. vii (1909), 449 f.

23 Moore, C. H., Julius Firmicus Maternus, der Heide und der Christ (Diss. Munich, 1897), 3 f.Google Scholar; Bouché-Leclercq, o.c. (n. 9), 164 f.; Friedrich, o.c. (n. 8), 53; F. Boll, RE vi (1909), 2366; Schanz-Hosius, , Gesch. d. röm. Litt. iv, i2 (1914), 131Google Scholar. There is no mention, however, in O. Seeck's treatment of the Ceionii, RE iii (1899), 1858 f.

24 Wiener Studien xlv (1926–1927), 108Google Scholar.

25 Die Reichsbeamten von Achaia in spätrömischer Zeit. Diss. Pann., Ser. i, 14 (1946), 16 f.Google Scholar

26 Certified as a second consulate by contemporary evidence: CIL vi, 2143; IGRR iii, 1268; P. Flor. 3; PSI 1037.

27 Registered as a second consulate by Degrassi, A., Fasti Consolari (1952), 79Google Scholar. But contemporary documents bearing the consular date of 325 record no iteration: ICUR i, 35; P. Oxy. 52; 1626; P. Lond. 977; Thead. 7; 35; Sammelbuch 8019; 8020.

28 Groag, o.c. (n. 25), 18.

29 ibid. 20.

30 Alföldi, A., The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome (1948),74, n. 2Google Scholar; Chastagnol, A., Les Fastes de la Préfecture de Rome au Bas-Empire. Études prosopographiques ii (1962), 65–8Google Scholar.

31 The Later Roman Empire iii (1964), 17, n. 64Google Scholar. Malcus, B., Opuscula Atheniensia vii (1967), 98 f.Google Scholar, rejected Groag's identification, but offered a list of proconsuls of Asia under Constantine which fails to register anyone else who can be the proconsul of the horoscope (ib. 141).

32 PLRE i, 1004, Anonymus 1; 1006–1008, Anonymus 12. The entry for Ceionius Rufius Albinus makes no reference at all to the horoscope (i, 37).

33 PLRE i, 1008: ‘Optatianus is the most probable subject of the horoscope’.

34 PLRE i, 1004: ‘Paternus [i.e. Noniu s Paternus, cos. II 269] and Tiberianus are thus left by elimination; dates make Tiberianus more likely; a consul of 281 without patrician ancestry should have been born about 240; a Praefectus Urbi of 329 … would have been born between 260 and 270.

35 As does Chastagnol, o.c. (n. 30), 95: ‘Nous avons vu que Groag pense plutôt—avec raison, nous-semble-t-il—à Vettius Rufinus, préset en 315–16, et à son père homonyme. Dès lors tombe entièrement le raisonnement mathématique spécieux de O. Neugebauer.’

36 Phoenix xxvii (1973), 307Google Scholar.

37 ILS 1217.

38 Porfyrius, Carm. i, 1 f.

39 On the chronology of Porfyrius' political and literary career, see now AJP (forthcoming).

40 ILS 1222. For writers name d Albinus, who might be identical with Ceionius Rufius Albinus, see Teuffel, W. S., Gesch. d. röm. Litt. iii 6 (1913), 231. §407. 5Google Scholar; PLRE i, 33 f.

41 Kroll and Skutsch note: ‘sc. Sol de quo etiam sequentia solo dicuntur’ (edn. i (1897), 82).

42 The addition of ‘et’ is due to E. Badian (verbally, on 21 February 1974). Elsewhere in his discussion, Maternus consistently uses ‘ipse’ to distinguish the son from the father: ‘eius geniturae pater …, sed et ipse’ (10), ‘patrem … de ipso’ (11), ‘et ipsi et patri eius exicitavit inimicos’ (12), ‘ipsum vero’ (14).

43 Hence the mistaken attempt to force the sense of ‘paternum genus ostendit ignobile’ in Phoenix xxvii (1973), 306 fGoogle Scholar.

44 Groag, E., Reichsbeamten (1946), 17Google Scholar; Chastagnol, A., Fastes (1962), 66Google Scholar; PLRE i, 1004.

45 E. Groag, RE xvii (1937), 1409–11; Barbieri, G., L'Albo senatorio da Settimio Severo a Carino (193–285) (1952), 298, no. 1674Google Scholar; PLRE i, 35, Albinus 9. H. Dessau was more cautious (PIR 1 N 180; 185).

46 Morris, J., Bonnet Jahrbücher clv (1965), 91 f.Google Scholar; PLRE i, 978; M. T. W. Arnheim, The Senatorial Aristocracy in the Later Roman Empire (1972), 130 f. Morris prints a stemma (o.c, Beilage) which makes Rufius Volusianus the grandson of the cos II ord. 263 and the latter a direct descendant of L. Ceionius Commodus, cos. ord. 106.

47 HA, Clod. Alb. 4, 1 f; 6, 1. For a probable Ceionius Postumianus in the late fourth century, see PLRE i, 718–9, Postumianus 3.

48 HA, Sev. 13, 3.

49 HA, Aurel. 9, 2.

50 R. Syme, Ammianus and the Historia Augusta (1968), 154 f.

51 PIR 2 C 603.

52 PIR 2 C 604; 605.

53 PIR 2 C 606; 612; 614. Ceionia Fabia married Plautius Quintillus (cos. ord. 159), Ceionia Plautia Q. Servilius Pudens (cos. ord. 166).

54 A daughter of Lucius and Lucilla was at least betrothed to Claudius Pompeianus Quintianus (Dio lxxiii (lxxii), 4. 4, p. 285 Boissevain). L. Ti. Claudius Aurelius Quintianus, cos. ord. 235, appears to be a descendant of the pair (PIR 2 C 992, cf. 975).

55 PIR 2 C 610. The consul of 157 (PIR 2 C 602) is now known to have borne the names M. Vettulenus Civica Barbarus (AE 1957, 18).

56 PIR 2 C 601, known only from AE 1910, 33 (Caralis).

57 PIR 2 C 611 (only the Chronographer of the year 354); 609 (from the Fasti Caleni, CIL x, 4631 = Inscr. It. xiii. i, p. 269Google Scholar).

58 On the meaning of ‘nobilis’ in the imperial period, see Phoenix xxviii (1974), 444 fGoogle Scholar.

59 On whom, see Matthews, J. F., ‘Continuity in a Roman Family; the Rufii Festi of Volsinii’, Historia xvi (1967), 484–509Google Scholar.

60 CIL xi, 2698, cf. Pflaum, H. G.Carrières procuratoriennes i (1960), no. 215Google Scholar.

61 CIL xi, 2698; 2997; xv, 7525, cf. Albo, nos. 840–2; 2094.

62 He ought to have held a consulate before becoming corrector Italiae c. 282 (p. 46).

63 Which differs considerably from those offered or assumed by Seeck, O., RE iii (1899), 1861 f.Google Scholar; Groag, E., RE xvii (1937), 1410Google Scholar; Morris, o.c. (n. 46), Beilage; Arnheim, o.c. (n. 46), 248; PLRE i, 1138.

64 From 254 to 287, the Chronographer of 354 records the praefectus urbi in office on each 1 January, cf. G. Barbieri, Akte des IV. Internationalen Kongresses für griechische und lateinische Epigraphik (1964), 48.

65 CIL vi, 2153 (Rome, St. John Lateran), cf. Matthews, o.c. (n. 59), 492 f.

66 CIL vi, 314; AE 1968, 122. Both inscriptions must be dated from nomenclature, rather than the reverse, cf. G. Barbieri, Albo (1952), no. 1675; Cavuoto, P., Epigraphica xxx (1968), 133 fGoogle Scholar.

67 Volusianus was born c. 245, while the postulated marriage to Nummia Albina should be dated c. 295.

68 For possible descendants in the late fifth century, see A. Chastagnol, Le Sénat romain sous le regne d'Odoaere (1966), 79 f.

69 ILS 1213. Volusianus' jurisdiction appears to have embraced most of peninsular Italy, but to have excluded the Po valley, cf. Chastagnol, A., Historia xii (1963), 349 fGoogle Scholar.

70 CIL x, 1655 (Puteoli), cf. A. Chastagnol, Fastes (1962), 53; PLRE i, 977.

71 Victor, Caes. 39, 11; Eutropius, Brev. ix, 20, 2; Epit. de Caes. 38, 8; Zosimus i, 73, 3 = John of Antioch, frag. 163. On the role of the high command in the deaths of earlier emperors, cf. R. Syme, Emperors and Biography (1971), 210 (Gallienus); 242 f. (Aurelian).

72 For his full career, PIR 2 C 806; Chastagnol, o.c. (n. 30), 21 f.

73 ILS 1213. Possibly also Inscr. lat. d'Afrique 365 (Carthage); AE 1949, 59 (Mactar). On the date, cf. Poinssot, L., Mém. soc. nat. ant. France lxxvi (1924). 333 f.Google Scholar

74 Victor, Caes. 40, 18; Zosimus ii, 14, 2 f. The suppression is assigned to 311 by C. H. V. Sutherland RIC vi (1967), 33; 419; 432. In favour of an earlier date, Chastagnol, o.c. (n. 30), 54 f.

75 Mon. Germ. Hist., Auc. Ant. ix, 67; 76; 231.

76 ILS 1213, etc.

77 Mon. Germ. Hist., Auct. Ant. ix, 67.

78 This passage alone suffices to invalidate recent assumptions that the Roman Senate of the fourth century never acted as a court or witnessed the activities of mutually hostile factions (Jones, A. H. M., The Later Roman Empire i (1964), 332Google Scholar; 506 f.; Axnheim, o.c. (n. 46), 17).

79 Phoenix xxxvii (1973), 308Google Scholar.

80 Seeck, O., Regesten der Kaiser und Päpste für die Jahre 311 bis 476 n. Chr. (1919), 163 f.Google Scholar; Barnes, T. D., JRS lxiii (1973), 38Google Scholar.

81 ILS 694.

82 CTh xiii, 3, 1.

83 T. Mommsen considered redating the law to Volusianus' urban prefecture, i.e. 313–15 (Codex Theodosianus i. 1 (1904), ccxvi)Google Scholar.

84 O. Seeck, RE iii (1899), 1859; A. Alföldi, o.c. (n. 30), 73; Chastagnol, o.c. (n. 30), 57. Observe that CJ iv, 35, 21 ‘ad Volusianum pp.’ lacks a date: although Seeck adduced it to support Volusianus' second pretorian prefecture in 321 (Regesten (1919) 61; 124; 171), an error for ‘ad Volusianum pu.’ is equally probable, cf. CJ xii, 1, 2.

85 PLRE i, 979. A separate entry would have been advisable.

86 So Arnheim, o.c. (n. 46), 196, without, however, perceiving the relevance of the horoscope, to which he alludes only when discussing Vettii (ib. 61).

87 Who is normally presumed the son of Ceionius Rufius Albinus, cf. recently Chastagnol, o.c. (n. 30), 293: PLRE i, 1138; Arnheim, o.c. (n. 46), 248. If the arguments presented here are valid, the progeny of Volusianus' two marriages can perhaps be distinguished for several generations.

88 None of the three is on independent attestation.

89 Probably late spring 326, cf. MGH, Auct. Ant. ix, 232. The circumstances remain obscure. A recent writer asserts that ‘the significant fact is that Crispus was illegitimate’ (Guthrie, P., Phoenix xx (1966), 325CrossRefGoogle Scholar). But the earliest allusion to his mother (in 307) uses the word ‘matrimonium’ (Pan. Lat. vii (vi), 4, 1).

90 He was put to death near Pola (Ammianus xiv, 11, 20): therefore while Constantine was travelling to Rome from the East.

91 Guthrie, o.c. (n. 89), 327 f.

92 Philostorgius, , HE ii, 4Google Scholar.

93 Chastagnol, A., La Préfecture urbaine à Rome sous le Bas-Empire (1960), 405 f.Google Scholar, assuming that Albinus became prefect at the age of forty-eight (ib. 413).

94 Professor G. J. Toomer kindly investigated the possibility of an allusion to Albinus, and pronounces against it (letter of 12 April 1974).

95 Jones, A. H. M., The Later Roman Empire i (1964), 481Google Scholar.

96 Phoenix xxviii (1974), 445 fGoogle Scholar.

97 Also Sylloge Poggiana 28 (CIL vi, p. xxxii), from a manuscript closely related to the extant Codex Einsidlensis, cf. ib., pp. ix; xxviii.

98 Seeck, O., Hermes xix (1884), 186 fGoogle Scholar., criticizing the text of W. Henzen (CIL vi, 1708). Seeck's bold restoration (producing an allusion to the reintroduction of senatorial elections) was accepted and printed in CIL vi, 31906 (C. Hülsen), but not by H. Dessau, ILS 1222.

99 Seeck, o.c. 196.

100 Pan. Lat. xii (ix), esp. 20, 4, addressing Rome: ‘gladios ne in eorum quidem sanguinem distringi passus est quos ad supplicia poscebas’, cf. 4, 4: ‘conservati usque homicidarum sanguinis gratulatio.’

101 Lactantius, Mort. Pers. 44, 11.

102 Ghastagnol, A., Fastes (1962), 63Google Scholar. On the identity of Anullinus, cf. Phoenix xxvii (1973), 139Google Scholar.

103 PLRE i, 226.

104 Julian, Ep. ad. Ath. 270 c, etc.

105 viz. Fl. Ursus, cf. Phoenix xxviii (1974), 226 fGoogle Scholar. About his colleague, Fl. Polemius, nothing whatever appears to stand on record before 338 (PLRE i, 710).