Gratian's Repudiation of the Pontifical RobeAuthor(s): Alan CameronSource: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 58, Parts 1 and 2 (1968), pp. 96-102Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/299698Accessed: 21/09/2010 04:54

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GRATIAN'S REPUDIATION OF THE PONTIFICAL ROBE

By ALAN CAMERON

The reign of Gratian marked a turning-point in the conflict between Christianity and Paganism in the Roman Empire. One of the more spectacular manifestations of this change of emphasis which culminated in the anti-pagan legislation of Theodosius was Gratian's ostentatious repudiation of the title of pontifex maximus, held by every Emperor from Augustus down to Gratian's own father, Valentinian. The Christian Emperors had tolerated it hitherto as a purely formal element of their titulature. But Gratian refused the pontifical robe, &8NpiTov EIvai Xpicrriavcj$ TO crXTija vopicras.

Zosimus, our only authority for the event, dates it to the beginning of Gratian's reign. If he means 367, when Gratian was created co-Augustus by Valentinian, then he is certainly wrong, for pontifex maximus is attested among Gratian's titles in an inscription of the year 370 (CIL VI, II75). And even if his accession proper in 375 is meant, when Valentinian died, this is still wrong, for Ausonius addressed him as pontifex in his Gratiarum Actio of January 379.2 Scholars have usually been content to observe that Zosimus' date is wrong and substitute another that accords better with what they believe to have been the develop- ment of Gratian's religious policy. And no one has ever attempted to explain either Gratian's act or Zosimus' error.

Palanque suggested 382, the year of Gratian's withdrawal of state subsidies from the pagan priesthoods at Rome and removal of the Altar of Victory from the Senate house.3 Alfoldi insists on 379, on the ground that ' since Theodosius never used or refused this title, the removal of it must have been before igth January 379 [i.e. the date of Theodosius' accession] '.4 Palanque has had many followers,5 and, as I shall show below, he is not far from the truth. Alfoldi too has won influential support,6 yet it should be obvious that his argument is not cogent: our information may be (indeed, as I believe, is) simply deficient on the matter, as it is on much else concerning the reign of Theodosius.7 A closer analysis first of the relevant chapter of Zosimus and then of Ausonius' Gratiarum Actio may cast a little light on the problem.

If Gratian decided to abandon the title, as he evidently must have, some time between 379 and 383 (when he was murdered), why does Zosimus say he did so at the beginning of his reign ? True, Zosimus is far from being a reliable historian: indeed he is often very careless. And for this reason his errors are more often the result of careless compression of his sources than mere meaningless misstatements. His statement here cannot be just a slip, for it comes at the end of a whole chapter describing how every PoailAEus of Rome from Numa Pompilius to Valentinian had been pontifex maximus, the pontifical robe being offered to each emperor on his accession by the college of Pontiffs. Gratian, he goes on, refused the robe when the Pontiffs offered it to him KaTa TO Cnvivrl's. The peg on which this whole digression is hung is Gratian's refusal at his accession. Thus the connection of Gratian's refusal and his accession is deeply woven into Zosimus' narrative as a whole.

'Zosimus IV, 36. 2 See below, p. 98. 3 'L'empereur Gratien et le grand pontificat

paien', Byzantion VIII, 1933, 41 f. 4A Festival of Isis in Rome under the Christian

Emperors of the fourth Century (1937), 36. 5 Fortina, L'imperatore Graziano (1953), 214 and

247-9; Demougeot, RlL LVI (I954), 5I4; Jones, Later Roman Empire I (i964), i63 (citing only Zosimus as his authority, who of course says no such thing), and many others: it has become canonical.

6E.g. A. Piganiol, L'empire chre'tien (i947), 228, and, notably, even Palanque, ap. Stein, Histoire du Bas-Empire I (I959), 524, n. 52; R. Remondon, La crise de l'empire romain (i964), I95. W. Ensslin did not accept this view so formulated, but suggested (Sitz.-ber. Bay. Akad. Muinchen, Phil.-hist. Ki. 1953,

2, pp. 9-IO) that on his accession the devout Theodosius persuaded Gratian to renounce the title. It is difficult to see why he should have done so, and in any event A. Ehrhardt (Journ. Eccles. History xv, I964, i f.) has now shown that there can be little question of Theodosius influencing Gratian in religious matters in at any rate the first two years or so of his reign. I pass over scholars such as Baynes, Rauschen and Homes Dudden who proposed 375, overlooking the evidence of Ausonius; for earlier discussions refer to the bibliographies given by Palanque and Alfoldi.

I It was doubtless included in Theodosius' titulature on a certain number of inscriptions and documents which do not happen to have come down to us up to Gratian's repudiation of the title, and thereafter quietly dropped.

GRATIAN S REPUDIATION OF THE PONTIFICAL ROBE 97

As we have seen, this must be wrong. And in fact Zosimus proceeds to discredit his own chronology at once himself, for he continues in the very same sentence:

TO!S TE iEpEUCl Tr-S oroflS a&vaco8Eicns cpaci TOV iTpOTOV EV cavTOIS TETaypEVOV E?iTE1V ?i I) PO1J2ETai ITOVTlcpE? O paxiAsiEv ovopa4Ecreai, TaXiaTa yEVfETal 1rOVTl?E

Maxilpos

The allusion to Maximus links the refusal no less clearly with the usurpation of Maximus in 382-3. For it is obviously most unlikely that this is a genuine prophecy made several years before Maximus' revolt. Note too TcrXic-Ta: ' Maximus will soon become Pontifex' (English word order cannot bring out the word-play on M(p)&tlpos properly).

We should not discard the embassy which Gratian rebuffed unless we have to. I suggest that Zosimus has conflated two different embassies to Gratian, one at his accession, and one at the time of Maximus' revolt, the embassy the Senate sent to protest about Gratian's anti-pagan legislation of 382.

These laws have unfortunately not come down to us, and so we do not know when exactly during the year they were issued. Probably, however, not till late in the year. In his Ep. xvii, iO (written in summer 384), Ambrose refers to them as having been issued 'ante biennium ferme ', almost two years ago. And between May and November 382 Gratian was absent from court at Milan. If, with Homes Dudden,8 we place the legislation at the very end of 382, then the senatorial response is not likely to have come till early in the following year.

The revolt of Maximus is usually placed early in 383,9 though V. Grumel has recently advanced grounds for pushing it back into late 382.10 It was not till mid-383 that Gratian's army went over to Maximus, and not till August that Gratian himself was caught and put to death.1" But it is more than likely that when the senatorial embassy arrived at Milan early in 383, the news of Maximus' revolt had already reached Italy, whether or not Maximus himself had yet crossed the channel. If it was on the occasion of this embassy that Gratian refused the title, then it would be the perfect occasion for some wag among the pontiffs to have said, ' If Gratian does not want to be pontifex, Maximus soon will be '.

Fortina, following many other scholars,12 dismisses this witticism as a post-eventum invention, 'una elucubrazione retorica, senza alcun fondamento storico ... un gioco di parole inventato dopo la caduta di Graziano per opera di Massimo '. His principal reason is that Maximus was far from the sort of man pagans could have turned to for support. He was a sincere and scrupulously orthodox Christian, and during his brief reign won the dubious distinction of being the first Christian Emperor to punish a heretic by death.13 Yet surely this is precisely why the witticism cannot have been ' inventato . . . per opera di Massimo'. Maximus did not assume the title of pontifex maximus (after Gratian's ostentatious refusal no Christian Emperor could have accepted it again). Thus neither Maximus after Gratian's death, nor the Senate after Maximus had revealed his true colours, could have had any reason to invent such a story. It would have been entirely pointless.

But in the brief interval before Maximus' attitude became known-and only then-it is perfectly understandable that some senator fuming over Gratian's attitude should have entertained the hope that Maximus' usurpation would succeed, and that he would then revoke Gratian's anti-pagan laws and resume the title of pontifex. Six months later, and he would have known that the hope was vain.

Let us assume then that Zosimus is thinking of the senatorial embassy of early 383. In support of this it might be pointed out that although he professes to be writing of the beginning of Gratian's reign, he places this episode in his narrative not at the point of Gratian's coronation in 367, nor at his elevation to sole Western Augustus on Valentinian's death in 375, but immediately before Gratian's death in 383.

8 The Life and Times of St. Ambrose i (1935), 258 with n. i.

9 E.g. Stein, Bas-Empire i (I959), 201. 10 Rev. Et. Byz. xii (1954), i8 f. Demougeot, Le

moyen age (I962), 23, and Palanque, Les Empereurs romains d'Espagne (I965), 255, both refer to Grumel's view without either accepting or rejecting it. I have no opinion myself.

"After a short captivity: see Homes Dudden, op. cit., 221.

12 L'imperatore Graziano 248 (with bibliography). 13 Homes Dudden, op. Cit., 230 f.: the most

recent study of Maximus is the paper of Palanque cited at n. io.

98 ALAN CAMERON

How then did Zosimus come to confuse this embassy of 383 with the embassy which visited Gratian on his accession ? The answer is very simple. As Zosimus so carefully explains, on the accession of every Emperor an embassy of pontiffs (who would all be senators) 14 called to offer him the pontifical robe. Naturally the same will have happened at Gratian's accession, in 367. On this occasion, however, Gratian must have accepted the title. (Or rather it must have been accepted on his behalf-Gratian was then only eight- by Valentinian.) This is certain, since it is securely attested by the inscription of 370 and by Ausonius in 379. Now it is surely quite comprehensible (if reprehensible) that so careless a historian as Zosimus, who knew (a) that the Emperor was always offered the pontificate by an embassy of senators and (b) that Gratian was the first Emperor to refuse it, should have jumped to the mistaken conclusion, when his source described Gratian refusing the pontificate in connection with an embassy of senators, that it was the embassy which visited him on his accession.

In general Zosimus' narrative of this period closely follows the (mostly lost) con- temporary history of Eunapius. But it may be, as Mendelssohn suggests,15 that the digression on the pontiffs was inserted by Zosimus from some other source, hung on the peg of Gratian's refusal. This is only a conjecture: we cannot rule out the possibility that Eunapius himself inserted the digression. But if Zosimus was combining two sources here, it is even easier to see how he came to make the confusion he did.

Some further light can perhaps be cast on Gratian's original acceptance by a rather closer look at Ausonius' Gratiarum actio, delivered on or soon after ist January, 379. McGuire, indeed, was prepared to dismiss ? 35 as a ' poetical passage' which ' should not be pressed too confidently as evidence '.16 But 35 does not stand alone. There is also 42, and compare too the motif of the chastity of the pontiff (rivalled, of course, by Gratian) at 66. Despite Alfdldi, there does not seem to be any evidence that Gratian had rejected the title by Theodosius' accession on igth January, 379. Hence there is no particular contemporary relevance to what Ausonius is saying. He is not, for example, trying to reassure Gratian that he had done the right thing in originally accepting the title, or to persuade him to resume it now. But what is interesting, in view of the fact that both Ausonius and Gratian were Christians, is both (a) the affectionate way his mind lingers round these old pagan concepts and (b) the way he somehow seems to reconcile Gratian the pontifex and Gratian the Christian. At ? 35 Gratian is 'virtute victor, Augustus sanctitate, pontifex religione '-for all the world as if the title connoted headship of his own, instead of an alien, religion. And at ? 42 Ausonius compares the elections which gave him the consulate with the elections for the supreme pontificate in Republican days : ' sic potius, sic vocentur [i.e. pontifical elections], quae tu pontifex maximus deo participatus habuisti '. By ' deus ' both Gratian and Ausonius must have understood the god of the Christians. If it was in this affectionate and almost neutral light that Gratian was taught to view his traditional title by the teacher who dominated even his early years as Emperor,"7 then it is not surprising that he had no qualms about accepting it when originally offered in 367.

Let us assume then that it was in connection with the embassy of 383 that Gratian eventually did repudiate the title. Why was it that he did so then, rather than, say, at the same time as his anti-pagan legislation of a month or so earlier, the cause of the embassy ? Once more it is possible to suggest a plausible reason that would fit nicely into the context outlined so far. I suggest that it was precisely this senatorial embassy which drew Gratian's attention to the fact that he was pontifex-thereby forcing him to renounce the title. For support we may turn to Symmachus' famous third Relatio, the renewal of the senatorial protest made before Valentinian II in 384.

Gratian had not been the first Emperor to order the removal of the Altar of Victory from the Senate house in Rome. Constantius II had done so during his visit to Rome in

14 For a list of priesthoods held by the late-fourth- century Roman aristocracy (impressive in view of the fragmentary state of our information), see H. Bloch, Harv. Theol. Rev. xxxviii (I945), 244 f.

15 See his edition of Zosimus (I887), p. xxxviii. 16 Catholic Hist. Review xxii (I936), 307. 17 Alfoldi, Conflict of Ideas in the Late Roman

Empire (I952), 87 f.

GRATIAN S REPUDIATION OF THE PONTIFICAL ROBE 99

357.18 In his Rel. (III, 7) Symmachus contrasts the actions of Constantius and Gratian. Constantius had only ordered the removal of the Altar (a short-lived measure: it was soon replaced) ; he had not touched the priesthoods:

' nihil ille decerpsit sacrarum virginum privilegiis, replevit nobilibus sacerdotia. Romanis caerimoniis non negavit impensas '.

In fact not only did he not touch the priesthoods, he filled up the priestly colleges. Now if he did this, he must have done it in his capacity as pontifex maximus.19 Surprising though this might seem, we can hardly doubt Symmachus' word. The matter could easily have been checked, and it would seriously have damaged his credit to have made such a claim if it had been false. Evidently Constantius was unwilling to offend the powerful nobles who traditionally monopolized the priesthoods, and agreed when they requested him to fill up the vacancies in the colleges.

Symmachus' Relatio is the second senatorial protest. It is natural to assume that much the same arguments were put forward in the first protest, addressed to Gratian himself 20

-and the same contrast pointed between the conduct of Gratian and the equally devout Christian, Constantius. In the eyes of the pagan senators it must have seemed an excellent precedent. Like Gratian, Constantius had removed the Altar, but he had not touched the priesthoods and had actually carried out some of his duties as pontifex. If the precedent were pointed out, Gratian might consent to follow it and relax his measures. It must at any rate have seemed a possibility worth following up. For it was not so much the removal of the Altar that really concerned Symmachus and his fellow-senators (though the Altar was naturally very dear to their hearts) as the withdrawal of the state subsidies. Symmachus' attitude was that the state religion (that is the old pagan state religion) was not a private affair. The maintenance of the temples and priesthoods was a public matter and had to be performed at state expense. If they were neglected, the state would suffer.21 This is the central theme of the Relatio. Not, of course, a theme calculated to appeal to a Christian, but Symmachus sincerely believed in it.

Naturally, when it was pointed out to Gratian that he was still technically head of the state religion which he had just disestablished, his only possible course of action was to reject the title at once. The information that Constantius had actually exercised his pontifical duties no doubt horrified the pious youth, and served only to strengthen him in his resolution. This time there was no Ausonius to reassure him and uphold the old traditions. By now Gratian had succumbed instead to the influence of that less compromising Christian, St. Ambrose.

Some elements in this reconstruction are admittedly hypothetical. But it does have at least three advantages over the other solutions so far proposed. (a) It explains Zosimus' strange error in linking the refusal with both Gratian's accession and Maximus' revolt. (b) It provides a context-the only context-for the witticism about Maximus. (c) It provides a motive for Gratian's refusal.22 The solutions of Alfoldi and Palanque have to leave all three details unexplained. They accept the bare fact of Gratian's refusal from Zosimus, and dismiss every single detail of the context in which it is set.

I suggest then that in 367 Gratian accepted the title as a matter of course, no doubt under the influence of Valentinian. It was not till 383 that he repudiated it, as a result of the anomalous situation in which his disestablishment of the pagan priesthoods had placed him.

Bedford College, London

18 Elaborately described by Ammianus, who, however, strangely omits the removal of the Altar of Victory : on the significance of this, cf. my remarks in JRS LIV (1 964), 24-5.

19 For the Emperor's powers to appoint pontiffs, cf. Dio LIII, I7; Tacitus, Hist. I, 77; Pliny, Epp. X, I3.

20 This embassy was in fact denied admittance to the consistory, but obviously a written record will have been submitted as well.

21 Cf. F. Paschoud, Historia XIV (I965), 22I (who was ill-advised to retract this opinion in a ' note complementaire' on p. 234). See my paper in Harvard Studies I968.

22 For example, as McGuire pointed out against Palanque (Cath. Hist. Rev. XXII, I936, 307), there is really no good reason why the dropping of the title should have any direct connection with Gratian's anti-pagan legislation as a whole. There is certainly no evidence that it did.

IOO ALAN CAMERON

APPENDIX A

This is perhaps a suitable place to discuss W. Hartke's interpretation (Rbmische Kinderkaiser, I95I, p. 300) of HA, Elag. VI, 7:

'In penum Vestae, quod solae virgines solique pontifices adeunt, inrupit [sc. Elagabalus] pollutus ipse omni contagione morum cum his qui se polluerant'.

Hartke claims that the author of this passage has forgotten that Elagabalus, being Emperor, was automatically pontifex maximus, and therefore entitled to enter the shrine of Vesta. Accordingly he claims that the passage must have been written after Gratian had refused the title and the Emperor had accordingly ceased to be pontifex maximus, and before 395, when the colleges of pontiffs were abolished. This suggestion has elicited varying reactions. A. Momigliano was of the opinion that 'texts cannot be pressed in this way' (Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XVII, 1954, 41, n. i), while A. Chastagnol regarded it as ' excellent' (Actes du VIIe Congres de l'Assoc. G. Bude, I964, 20I). We are not here concerned with the question of the date-still quite uncertain-of the HA. Its relevance for our present purpose is that if Hartke is correct, and a pagan senator writing within a few years of Gratian's refusal had become so far accustomed to the Emperor not being pontifex maximus that it did not even occur to him that earlier Emperors had ever held the title, then plainly Gratian's refusal cannot have created much of a stir.

A number of objections can be raised to such a view. First, and most generally, it is hardly credible that so soon after Gratian's refusal a pagan writer should simply have forgotten that the Emperor ever had been pontifex. The event surely must have created a stir. Secondly, even granted for the moment Hartke's first terminus of Gratian's refusal, his second is quite groundless. After all, whether or not there were still pontiffs when the passage was written, there certainly were at the time the author was writing of. Is one seriously to suppose that he would have refrained from alluding to pontiffs in Elagabalus' day just because they had ceased to exist in his own ? Thirdly, and more important, the argument for the first terminus is equally groundless. Hartke has mis- represented the whole passage.

In the first place, we are not told simply that Elagabalus ' entered ' the shrine of Vesta, as Hartke implies (Hartke misleadingly does not quote the passage in its entirety). We are told that he ' broke in ', inrupit. ' Broke in ', moreover, ' though himself defiled by every moral stain and in the company of those who had defiled themselves' (Magie's translation). Not even the pontifex maximus was entitled to burst into Vesta's shrine while polluted-and certainly not in the company of others. These others were presumably Elagabalus' disreputable entourage, but even had they been pontiffs, it was forbidden to any but the pontifex maximus himself and the Vestals to enter the holy of holies in the temple of Vesta. And what did Elagabalus do when inside the holy of holies ? He tried to carry away the sacred objects and install them in the temple of Elagabalus! No one, I hope, will suggest that he was within his rights here as well. The author's indignation would surely have been justified even if he had known perfectly well that Elagabalus was pontifex maximus. A pontifex maximus who behaved like this-and who later even went so far as to marry a Vestal virgin-hardly deserved to be counted as such.

There is another strong objection to the suggestion that' Lampridius ', the author of the V. Elag., 'forgot ' that in the third century the Emperor was also pontifex maximus. In his only other contribu- tion to the HA, the Vita of Elagabalus' successor Alexander Severus, ' Lampridius ' records the speech allegedly delivered by Alexander thanking the senate for creating him Emperor, in which he specifically includes among the honours conferred upon him the pontificatus maximus (viii, i).

The authenticity of this speech is, to say the very least, dubious. It is more than likely to have been written by ' Lampridius ' himself: if so, then he knew perfectly well that the Emperor was also pontifex maximus. And at V. Al. Sev., 40, 9, he goes on to record that Alexander wore a toga praetexta when performing sacrifices ' loco pontificis maximi, non imperatoris ', and at 56,I0 the senate are represented (in another probably fictitious document) as addressing Alexander as ' patri patriae, pontifici maximo '. ' Lampridius ' was not only well aware of, but unusually interested in, Alexander's tenure of the supreme pontificate.

Now the question of the identity of the SHA is notoriously a matter of great controversy. But whether or not there were six different authors, or only one using six pseudonyms, there can be no doubt that V. Elag. and V. Al. Sev. were written by the same man (even if he wasn't really called Lampridius). There are obvious similarities between the two lives: they are ascribed to the same author, one immediately follows the other and both are dedicated to Constantine (cf., e.g., H. Stern, Date et destinataire de l'Histoire Auguste, i953, 29). It is almost inevitable to conclude that they were conceived together and written in quick succession one after the other. Thus if ' Lampridius' had 'forgotten' that the Emperor was also pontifex maximus in V. Elag., then he very soon ' remembered ' again.

GRATIAN S REPUDIATION OF THE PONTIFICAL ROBE IOI

APPENDIX B

One further text requires to be taken account of in this context. In his note on Aen. iII, 8o, 'rex idem hominum Phoebique sacerdos', Servius remarks 'unde hodieque imperatores pontifices dicimus '.

I hope to have shown in JRS LVI, I966, 29 f. that Servius cannot have published his com- mnentary before c. 400-more probably a decade or so later still (cf., too, CQ n.s. XVII, I967, 393 f.). How then to explain his apparent assertion that Emperors were still pontiffs in his day, well inside the fifth century ? Is it possible that this chronology for Servius is after all mistaken ? Or are we to suppose that Servius really did wha-t Hartke claims ' Lampridius' did, and simply forgot about Gratian's refusal ?

It is true that there is no way of obtaining a firm date for the commentary, but there can be no doubt that Servius was still only in his 'teens at the dramatic date of Macrobius' Saturnalia-384, a year after Gratian's refusal (IRS, l.c.). What he did, in fact, was copy the sentence in question out of his source without apparently realizing that it was no longer true in his own day.

To many this may seem an unduly cavalier, not to say outrageous, assumption, smacking of the worst excesses of nineteenth-century German Quellenforschung. Was Servius really so unintelligent ? Yet priceless though Servius' commentary is, its value lies in its sources rather than in itself. It has long been recognized that the nature of the overlap between Servius and the so-called ' Servius auctus' or Servius Danielis is such as to require the conclusion that both derive from a common source. This common source, it is now generally (and rightly) agreed, can only have been the commentary of Aelius Donatus, published some time around the middle of the fourth century. Comparison between the two versions reveals that both copied Donatus for the most part verbatim, the main difference being that it is Servius who omits, simplifies and distorts most (cf. recently R. B. Lloyd, Harvard Studies LXV, I96I, 29I-34I). To give but one example: it has often been alleged that the famous Helen episode in Aen. II, absent from our earliest MSS but preserved by Servius, was absent too from Donatus (most recently R. G. Austin, CQ n.s. XI, I96I, i8S). But H. T. Rowell has now conclusively demonstrated not only that it was present in Donatus, but that the Servius passage is a more or less verbatim transcript of Donatus' note (The Classical Tradition: Studies ... H. Caplan, I966, 2I0 f.; cf. also the same author's studies in AJP LXXVIII, I957, I f., and YCS xv, I957, I 13 f.). There can be little doubt, in fact, that Servius himself contributed little to Vergilian scholarship but a pair of scissors and a pot of paste. And one illustration (among many) of this is the way he snipped out his note on the Emperor being pontzfex maximus without even noticing that it was no longer true.

That this note did come direct from Donatus is proved by the fact (made clear now in the new volume of the Harvard Servius) that it appears in both Servius and Servius Danielis-taken from their common source. At Aen. IV, 262 Servius Danielis has the similar notes ' . . . togam duplicem, in qua flamines sacrificant, . . . flamines, flaminicae, virgines, pontificesque ad sacrificia utuntur', and at Aen. III, I2 'ut hodie quoque penus Vestae claudi vel aperiri dicitur'. As it happens Servius himself omits both notes, probably because they did not suit the more elementary purpose of his own commentary rather than because he had noticed that they were no longer true. For (in addition to the note on III, 8o) cf. too his note on II, I48 (shared with Servius Danielis): 'item vigilasne, deum gens (Aen. X, 228) verba sunt quibus pontifex maximus utitur in pulvinaribus'. The present tense is even more inappropriate here. No Emperor can have done this for nearly a century.

One of the main objections to Hartke's suggestion about ' Lampridius' was that he placed the composition of the HA so soon after Gratian's refusal. But Servius did not write his commentary till perhaps 20 or 30 years after the event. By then he might well have forgotten Gratian's pointed rejection of the title, an event of his early 'teens. Indeed this passage might even be used as corroboration of the later date I have suggested for Servius' commentary.

It is a text too to be pondered by those who stress the pagan element in Servius' commentary. So far from taking this opportunity of manifesting his disapproval-or even nostalgia-at Gratian's radical break with tradition, Servius apparently forgot all about it !

In a recent paper, ' Les Saturnales de Macrobe source de Servius Danielis', in RE?L XLI, I963, 336 f., E. Turk has drawn attention to the representation of Vergil as pontifex maximus in Macrobius, arguing that ' l'idee de voir en Virgile un grand pontife doit avoir vu le jour dans le cercle de Symmaque ' as a sort of discreet reply to Gratian's refusal from the 'noblesse romaine, consciente de l'importance du r6le du grand pontificat pour l'ancienne religion '. If I am correct in placing the composition of the Saturnalia c. 430 and after the appearance of Servius' commentary (7RS, I966, p. 37), rather than between 384 and 387 as Turk supposed (l.c.), this view will clearly have to be reconsidered, if not abandoned. Especially in view of the lack of interest shown in the subject by Servius, writing nearer the event than Macrobius. Turk admits that the same motif of Vergil the pontifex is to be found in Servius Danielis (cf. also Rowell, AJP LXXVIII, 1957, 17), but attempts to show that Servius Danielis derived it from Macrobius. In my view his attempt is a failure, and we

I02 GRATIAN S REPUDIATION OF THE PONTIFICAL ROBE

should accordingly return to the orthodox view that such parallels as exist between Macrobius and the Servian corpus are due to use of a common source (cf. Lloyd, Harv. Studies xv, I96I, 292 f., 306, 324). Whether or not this common source (as seems most likely) is Donatus, it must certainly have been written before Gratian's refusal. Nevertheless, in view of the fondness of Vergilian commentators for treating Vergil as an authority for the old religious lore (whenever it may have originated), it may well be that by the late fourth and early fifth centuries the more subtle formulation of Peter Brown (excluding conscious polemical intent) is still acceptable: 'The Christian Emperors had abandoned the title of Pontifex Maximus; but Vergil might replace them in performing this office for religious readers' (referring to Saturnalia i, 24,i6: Augustine of Hippo [I967], 301).