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Rutilius Namatianus, St. Augustine, and the Date of the De Reditu

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Alan Cameron
Alan Cameron
Affiliation:
Bedford College, London.
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Extract

One of St. Augustine's purposes in writing the De Civitate Dei was to counter the view which became current in pagan circles after Alaric's sack of Rome that Christianity was responsible for the disaster. To this end he quoted, introduced with the refrain ‘Ubi ergo erant illi dii ?’, many examples of similar disasters which the old gods had apparently been unable to ward of f in the pre-Christian period (III, 17 f.). In 1905 A. Dufourc pointed out that Rutilius Namatianus devotes a number of eloquent lines in his De Reditu to precisely the opposite claim, that Rome had risen with renewed and increased strength from each of these disasters (the Gauls, Samnites, Pyrrhus, Hannibal). Dufourc suggested that Rutilius had read Civ. Dei I–III, and that the De Red. was a pagan reply to Augustine's thesis. Little attention was paid to this suggestion at the time, but in 1948 P. Courcelle adduced further parallels between the two works, and claimed that Rutilius had read not only Civ. Dei I–III, but IV and V as well.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 1-2 , November 1967 , pp. 31 - 39
Copyright
Copyright ©Alan Cameron 1967. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Rev. d'hist. et de litt. relig. X (1905), 488 fGoogle Scholar.

2 Histoire littéraire des grandes invasions germaniques (1948), 83, with n. 4 on p. 224 (= third edition, 1964, 104 f.).

3 J. Straub has recently much exaggerated the extent to which pagans were not allowed freedom to express their opinions at this periodx: cf. my remarks in JRS LV (1965), 240 f.Google Scholar, and add to the material there collected C. G. Starr, Civilization and the Caesars 2 (1965), 374. While accepting A. Alfoldi's correction of one of my arguments (Jb AC 8/9 (1965/6), 83–4, n. 111), I am afraid I cannot accept his invitation to withdraw the rest.

4 Laudes Romae, Diss. Rostock 1918.

5 Except, that is, for Menander Rhetor, who is, of course, quoted so often for a different reason.

6 See my articles in Hermes XCII (1964), 371 f.Google Scholar, and CQ n.s. XV (1965), 289 fGoogle Scholar.

7 See Reynolds, L. D., The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Letters (1965), 82 f.Google Scholar, and also the useful section at pp. xcvii f. of W. C. Summers' Select Letters of Seneca (1910 and often reprinted). It horrified Augustine to discover that the secular reading of the Manichaean bishop Faustus was confined to ‘paucissimos Senecae libros’ (Conf. v, 6, 11). A fifth century bishop of Picenum was called Seneca (PL XLV, 1766–7) !

8 On this curious forgery see Momigliano, A., Riv. Stor. Ital. 62 (1950), 325 f.Google Scholar (= Contrib. alla storia degli stud. classici [1955], 13 f.), and J. N. Sevenster, Paul and Seneca (1961), 12 f.

9 De Vir. Ill. 12: cf. Reynolds, op. cit. 84, n. 5.

10 Schanz-Hosius-Krüger, , Gesch. d. röm. Litt. IV, 2 (1920), 418Google Scholar for the evidence.

11 Zumpt, Vessereau, Vollmer, Ussani (cf. Carcopino, , REL VI [1928], 181Google Scholar) and C. H. Keene, preface to his edition of 1907, 8. Tillemont alone before this century disputed 416, on the grounds that there is no room for Rufius Volusianus' prefecture of Rome (De Red. 1, 415 f.) in 416. The objection is repeated by Carcopino and Lana (n. 14), but cannot be held decisive on its own. There are several parallels for a tenure of a month or even less: cf. Anullinus (27 Oct.–29 Nov. 312), Porphyrius (7 Sept.–8 Oct. 329 and 7 Apr.–10 May 333), Mnasea (9–26 Sept. 352), and four holders in the course of 395 (for all sources, A. Chastagnol, Fastes de la préf. de Rome au Bas-Empire (1962)).

12 E.g. OCD s.v. Namatianus; the Duffs in the preface to De Red. in their Minor Latin Poets, Loeb edition, 755.

13 For more examples, cf. Carcopino, op. cit.(n.11), 182–3 (this article will henceforth be cited by pagenumber only). The possibilities of error in this matter are well illustrated by the fact that Carcopino himself mistakenly places the start of the Varronian era in 754 instead of 753, and the start of the era of the Fasti in 753 instead of 752 (cf. Lana 104, n. 14).

14 Cf. I. Lana, Rutilio Namaziano (1961), 56 f. (this work will also be cited henceforth by page number alone).

15 The original article has now been reprinted, with a few trifling additions and under a different title (but with no hint of subsequent criticism, especially Lana's) as ch. IV of Rencontres de l' histoire et de la litt. romaines (1963).

16 E.g. Demougeot, E., Latomus XXII (1963), 314–5Google Scholar; Badali, R., Riv. di cult. class. e med. VI (1964), 103 fGoogle Scholar.

17 I gratefully borrow this information from Lana (p. 27), who gives hours and minutes as well. Carcopino did not have such accurate information at his disposal.

18 Lana considered 418 as well right through his investigation (ultimately rejecting it), but since it seems to be certainly too late anyway (in addition it seems Oct. and Nov. new moons are too early and too late respectively) I have left it out of account.

19 Cf. Gundel, PW XIII, s.v. Libra (3) at coll. 116–8 and Semple, W. H., CQ XXXIII (1939), 4Google Scholar. Cf. Rutilius' contemporary Macrobius, ‘Libram, id est Scorpii chelas’ (Comm. Somn. Scip. 1, 18, 13).

20 For references see (more fully than in K. Latte, Röm. Rel. Gesch. [1960], 283, n. 5), Lana 37 f. and 93 f. Cf. also Frazer, J. G., Golden Bough IV (Adonis Attis Osiris)2 (1907), 328Google Scholar, n. 1. Carcopino's attractive suggestion, on the basis of hilares in l. 373, that the festival in question is the Hilaria placed by Philocalus on 3 Nov., aggravates the chronological difficulties, and is probably best abandoned.

21 It may be remarked in passing that Lana's 18 Nov., a whole week after the start of the ‘mare clausum’, is implausibly late a priori for this reason. On the other hand, Carcopino (p. 199) was taking the ‘mare clausum’ too literally when he suggested that the poem ends as abruptly as it does because Rutilius reached the last place named precisely on 11 Nov., and had to abandon his voyage at once. Even less plausible is the conjecture added in Rencontres … 269–70 (n. 15), that the true title of the poem is not De Red., or Itinerarium as in the Romanus, but iter maritimum—because it had to be completed by land! Sailing was not abandoned altogether after 11 Nov.: see Rougé, J., RÉA LIV (1952), 322 fGoogle Scholar. It is far more probable that the abrupt end is to be explained by a defective archetype (cf. Vessereau and Préchac, Budé ed., 1933, pp. xxi–ii).

22 See Thompson, E. A., JRS XLVI (1956), 66Google Scholar f.; Historia XII (1963), 105 f.Google Scholar

23 Leiprecht, A., Der Vorwurf d. german. Treulosigkeit in d. antiken Literatur (Diss. Würzburg 1932)Google Scholar has collected all the evidence.

24 The fact that Rutilius calls the Goths sacrilegae seems to me an important and insufficiently emphasized proof of his paganism—and lends some support to the view that De Red. was designed to counter Augustine's thesis. As is well known, Augustine, followed by Orosius and all later Western writers on the fall of Rome (cf. S. Mazzarino, End of the Ancient World [Engl. tr. 1966], 69 f.) minimized the significance and effects of the Gothic sack over against Rome's earlier disasters, by claiming that the Goths, being Christians, did virtually no damage to the eternal city, and in particular spared all representatives, buildings and property of the church. It was a commonplace that barbarians were perfidious (n. 22), but it seems to me especially noteworthy and pointed that against this background (with which he must have been familiar) Rutilius should have called the Goths sacrilegious.

25 It is hard to believe that Rutilius could have been quite so unrealistic as to write this couplet in 415, while the Goths were making their attempt to cross over to Africa. Had they succeeded, they might well have overwhelmed the feeble African defences and set up a barbarian kingdom there half a century before the Vandals.

26 Op. cit. (n. 2), p. 82 (= third edition, p. 104).

27 So also Demougeot, E., Latomus XXII (1963), 317Google Scholar, and Laugesen, A. T., Class. et med. XXII (1961), 57–8Google Scholar.

28 Op. cit. (n. 2), pp. 85–8 (third edition, pp. 107).

29 The importance of the allusion at 1, 184 to the sun in Chelae (above p. 34) was missed by Carcopino as well as Lana: in fact (at p. 194, n. 1) he seems to have thought it told against his thesis, since (like Lana) he was under the mistaken impression that Chelae stood for Scorpio.