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CLAUDIAN'S LAST PANEGYRIC AND IMPERIAL VISITS TO ROME*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Gavin Kelly
Gavin Kelly*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
[email protected]
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Extract

Claudian of Alexandria's last datable poem, the Panegyric on the Sixth Consulship of Honorius, was delivered in Rome in 404, presumably on 1 January. This performance occurred in the course of the first visit to Rome by an emperor for nearly a decade and a half. Imperial visits to Rome were notoriously rare in the fourth century and, in a well-known passage of that poem, the goddess Roma herself muses on their rarity: she had only seen an Augustus three times in the last hundred years (VI Cos. 392–3). This is not quite true, but the only legitimate emperors known to have paid formal visits to Rome in that period were Constantine in 312–13, 315 and 326, Constantius II in 357, and Theodosius I, accompanied by his four-year-old son Honorius, in 389. In this article I shall begin by making an observation about the court's intentions in moving to Rome in late 403 (Section I), and then deal with two problems bound up with the interpretation of this poem and with the circumstances of imperial visits. The first problem (Section II) concerns the visit of Honorius during which the poem was first performed. In Claudian's narrative the description of Honorius' triumphal entry leads into a description of his assumption of the consulate, and scholars have sometimes asserted that he made a triumphal entry as consul on 1 January 404. This is clearly wrong: Honorius arrived in Rome weeks or months before. But even when this point is recognized, it is often asserted that the poem blends triumphal and consular imagery, and elements of the triumphal entry are confused with the assumption of the consulship (most recently by Michael Dewar in his generally outstanding commentary on the poem). My argument therefore moves from the chronology of Honorius' visit to elucidating the structure and imagery of Claudian's poem, as well as casting light on the patterns of the late antique imperial aduentus more broadly. The second problem (Section III) concerns the description of Honorius' previous visit to Rome with his father in the summer of 389. Here it has sometimes been inferred (including again by Dewar) on the basis of Claudian, and of late chronicles, that Honorius was created Caesar by his father on 13 June, the day of the aduentus. I shall show on the basis of a critical examination of the chronicle tradition, as well as a survey of contemporary numismatic, epigraphic and literary evidence, that this belief is unfounded, and that the relevant passages of Claudian require a different interpretation. However, this evidence also makes clear that signals were being sent in 389 about Honorius' imperial future.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , May 2016 , pp. 336 - 357
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2016 

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Footnotes

*

My warm thanks to colleagues who have answered questions and offered comments, above all Timothy Barnes, Richard Burgess, Michael Kulikowski and Catherine Ware; the editor Bruce Gibson offered characteristically learned and helpful suggestions for improvements.

References

1 For a more detailed list of attested imperial visits to Rome in the fourth and fifth centuries, see A. Demandt, Die Spätantike (Munich, 19891), 376 n. 7 (= [20072], 424 n. 21), superseded for the fifth century by Gillett, A., ‘Rome, Ravenna, and the last Western Emperors’, PBSR 100 (2001), 131–67Google Scholar, at 137–59 (an article which has strongly influenced this study); see also n. 18 below. This list for the fourth century excludes the illegitimate emperors Maxentius (306–12), Maximian (306–8) and Nepotianus (350), and the possible brief visit of Valentinian II in 388 as part of the civil war against Maximus (Zosimus 4.45.4). Some visits listed by Demandt and alleged in scholarship are dubious: Constans' visit in 340/341 is inferred from Passio Artemii 9 (= Philostorgius, HE 3.1a; see T.D. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius [Cambridge, MA, 1993], 225 with n. 47 [p. 315]), but this is from a late and questionable source; Gratian's alleged visit in 376 is eliminated by e.g. Barnes, T.D., ‘Ambrose and Gratian’, Ant. Tard. 7 (1999), 165–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 168–9 n. 17, and Kelly, G.A.J., ‘The political crisis of a.d. 375–376’, Chiron 43 (2013), 357–409 Google Scholar, at 393–7; against Theodosius' supposed second visit in 394, see e.g. S. Döpp, ‘Theodosius I. ein zweites Mal in Rom?’, in A. Patzer (ed.), Apophoreta für Uvo Hölscher zum 60. Geburtstag (Bonn, 1975), 73–83.

2 See n. 22 below.

3 M. Dewar, Panegyricus de sexto consulatu Honorii Augusti (Oxford, 1996).

4 See e.g. Symmachus, Ep. 6.52 (a.d. 397): aduentus domini et principis nostri denuo postulandus est.

5 See Dewar (n. 3), xxix–xliv, for good coverage of Alaric's first invasion of Italy and its vexed chronology.

6 CTh 7.13.15 (6 December 402), 12.6.29 (20 February 403), 7.18.11 (24 February 403), 14.3.21 (8 March 403), 8.5.64 (26 March 403), 13.1.19 (25 July 403).

7 CTh 8.5.65 (27 February 404), 7.5.2 (24 March 404), 16.8.16 (22 April 404), 14.1.4 (8 July 404), 16.8.17 (25 July 404). His presence in Rome is also attested in a letter of Bishop Innocentius from 15 February 404 (Ep. 2.12 = PL 20.478), and with less chronological precision by various passages of Augustine, including Ep. 88.7 (= PL 33.306) and others detailed in n. 15 below.

8 CTh 16.2.35 (4 February 405), and fourteen subsequent laws from that year.

9 Gillett (n. 1), 138, 140.

10 I am not the first to challenge this assumption. My remarks in this section simply expand on the suggestions of F. Gabotto, Storia della Italia occidentale nel medioevo (Turin, 1911), 1.98 that Ravenna was only a provisional residence, and of Gillett (n. 1), 139–40, as well as on my own brief, earlier remarks in G.A.J. Kelly, ‘Claudian and Constantinople’, in L. Grig and G.A.J. Kelly (edd.), Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity (New York, 2012), 241–64, at 263. See also H. Lejdegård, Honorius and the City of Rome. Authority and Legitimacy in Late Antiquity (Rome, 2002), 77–8.

11 On the exaggeration of Ravenna's importance in the fifth century, see Gillett (n. 1).

12 Especially in Stil. 3. See A.D.E. Cameron, Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford, 1970), 349–89 for an eloquent warning against interpreting Claudian's praises of eternal Rome as straightforward and personal outbursts of patriotic emotion.

13 On Alaric see n. 5 above. For the walls see Claudian VI Cos. 529–36; CIL 6.1188–90 (dedicatory inscriptions from 401/2).

14 On Honorius' mausoleum see most recently M.J. Johnson, The Roman Imperial Mausoleum (Cambridge, 2009), 167–74; McEvoy, M., ‘Rome and the transformation of the imperial office in the late-fourth—mid-fifth centuries a.d. ’, PBSR 109 (2010), 151–92Google Scholar, at 175–85, and M. McEvoy, ‘The mausoleum of Honorius', in R. McKitterick et al., Old Saint Peter's, Rome (Cambridge, 2013), 119–36.

15 See above all Sermo Dolbeau 25.26, but also Ep. 232.3 (= PL 33.1028), Enarrationes in Psalmos 65.4 (CCSL, lines 48–51), 86.8 (lines 15–18), 140.21 (lines 36–8). See Liverani, P., ‘Victors and pilgrims in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’, Fragmenta 1 (2007), 82–102 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 For the influence of Constantinople on Honorius' mausoleum, see McEvoy (n. 14 [2010]), 175–85, and McEvoy (n. 14 [2013]). On Constantinopolitan ceremony in this period see B. Croke, ‘Reinventing Constantinople: Theodosius I's imprint on the imperial city’, in S. McGill, C. Sogno and E. Watts (edd.), From the Tetrarchs to the Theodosians: Later Roman History and Culture (Yale Classical Studies 34) (Cambridge, 2010), 237–60; P. Van Nuffelen, ‘Playing the ritual game in Constantinople’, in L. Grig and G.A.J. Kelly (edd.), Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity (New York, 2012), 183–200.

17 On how a succession of child emperors who never fully asserted themselves altered the nature of the imperial office (and of imperial engagement with Rome), see McEvoy (n. 14 [2010]), and in more detail M. McEvoy, Child Emperor Rule in the Late Roman West, AD 367–455 (Oxford, 2013). For fourth-century emperors' difficulties with Rome, see e.g. Lactantius, DMP 17.2 (Diocletian), and Zosimus 2.29.5 with Libanius, Or. 19.19 and 20.20 (Constantine).

18 For a list, see Gillett (n. 1), 138: Honorius was in Rome between 22 February and 22 March 407, and may have been there by the start of the year for his consular celebrations. He is also attested there on 15 November 407 and was still there at the start of May 408; the question is whether one should trust the subscription ‘Rav.’ on CTh 14.1.5 (7 April 407). On his departure in 408, see Cameron (n. 12), 384. On the thoroughly implausible visit attested by Marcellinus comes s.a. 411, see n. 80 below. One law places him in Rome on 30 August 414 (CTh 16.5.11), questionably (see e.g. Lejdegaård [n. 10], 57–9 and 122); his triumph over Attalus in May 416 is well attested (Prosp. Tiro, Chron. 1263 s.a. 417, Philostorgius, HE 12.5; see Lejdegård [n. 10], 122–8).

19 What would be called a ‘trial balloon’ in the US and ‘kite-flying’ in Britain. This theory potentially weakens the argument of J.-L. Charlet, ‘Claudien et son public’, in H. Harich-Schwarzbauer and P. Schierl (edd.), Lateinische Poesie der Spätantike. Internationale Tagung in Castelen bei August 11.–13. Oktober 2007 (Basel, 2009), 1–10, at 9–10 that Claudian in this last poem identified more closely with Roman senatorial views than with his masters at court.

20 M. Beard, The Roman Triumph (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 326; an appropriately qualified statement.

21 As is rightly averred by S. Döpp, Zeitgeschichte in Dichtungen Claudians (Hermes Einzelschriften 43) (Wiesbaden, 1980) in his useful chapter on this poem (229–43). At 229–30 n. 3 he collects past datings, mostly centring around late 403.

22 Among those who have made this small slip are some estimable scholars: see Cameron (n. 12), 382; M. McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge, 1986), 85–90 (alternating between 403–4 and 404); M. Humphries, ‘From emperor to pope? Ceremonial, space, and authority at Rome from Constantine to Gregory the Great’, in K. Cooper and J. Hillner (edd.), Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300–900 (Cambridge, 2007), 31; Beard (n. 20), 326; McEvoy (n. 14 [2013]), 130; J. Wienand, ‘O tandem felix civili, Roma, victoria! Civil war triumphs from Honorius to Constantine and back’, in J. Wienand (ed.), Contested Monarchy: Integrating the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century AD (New York, 2014), 169–97, at 170, 172, 187. Demandt's list (n. 1) of imperial visits to Rome has Honorius' beginning on 1 January 404; this is perhaps a problem of presentation, as Demandt dates imperial residences by the first and the last definitively attested day.

23 W. Ehlers, ‘Triumphus’, in Pauly–Wissowa VII.A1 (Stuttgart, 1939), 493–511, at 500.

24 S. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1981), 51–5 (quotation from 52). She cites Alföldi for this in her n. 186 (p. 297): see A. Alföldi, Die monarchische Repräsentation im römischen Kaiserreiche (Darmstadt, 19702), 96–7 (originally published in Römische Mitteilungen 49–50 [1934–5]. This first edition apparently influenced the error of Ehlers [n. 23]).

25 ‘The consulship was, naturally, inaugurated on 1 Jan. 404, but Honorius and his entourage reached Rome in the middle of either Oct. or Nov. 403 … Whether or not a separate triumph was celebrated is not entirely clear, but the probability is against it. Instead, the consulship and the triumph are fused: consider esp. 647f … Claudian's narrative, at any rate, is seamless. The emperor arrives via the Flaminian Way at 520–2. The descriptions of the people enthusiastically welcoming him contain numerous topoi which are standardly associated in prose panegyrics with aduentus … but which are also appropriate to a triumphal procession (523–77). By 578–80 the emphasis seems to be on the triumphal aspects … And only a few lines later we are unmistakeably witnessing consular ceremonies as the emperor addresses the Senate and People. …’, Dewar (n. 3), xlvi n. 99.

26 Ironically, these are precisely the lines that MacCormack (n. 24) cites to justify her claim that ‘the theme of triumph is combined with consulship in the structure of the poem’; similarly Dewar (n. 3), xlvi n. 99.

27 See e.g. Döpp (n. 21), 230; Amm. 16.10 (Constantius) (and my n. 39 below); Pan. Lat. 2(12).47.3–4 (Theodosius).

28 ‘And though the very air had made foul the night with continual showers, now, showing favour to our prayers and turning fairer than is usual, it wiped away the rainclouds with the beams cast by the emperor and the sun; for the South Wind had muddied all the days that went before with rain, and left the young moon dripping wet only so that Heaven's vault might know that the cloudless skies were kept for you.’ (Trans. Dewar)

29 K. Müller, Claudians Festgedicht auf das sechste Konsulat des Kaisers Honorius (Berlin, 1938), on 541 (p. 109).

30 Rainy weather makes the August new moon less likely. Dewar (n. 3), on 541 makes 2 October a terminus post quem on the grounds that Honorius gave CTh 7.18.13/14 at Ravenna on 2 October 403; but the legislation in fact has no place of issue recorded.

31 E.g. Ammianus 21.10.2; also implied by 21.6.3. Cf. also Pan. Lat. 12(9).19.6.

32 16.10.13–14: … et saepe, cum equestres ederet ludos, | dicacitate plebis oblectabatur | nec superbae nec a libertate coalita desciscentis, | reuerenter modum ipse quoque debitum seruans: | 14. non enim, ut per ciuitates alias, ad arbitrium suum | certamina finiri patiebatur, | sed, ut mos est, uariis casibus permittebat. (Note that both Rolfe's Loeb and Seyfarth's Teubner edition err by not closing the passage immediately preceding, which ends with Constantius' entry to the palace, with a full stop; they are deceived by the established sentence divisions.)

33 ‘Flowing backwards in their separate courses the companies twist into circular foundations, and so Janus, imprisoning wars behind his never-opening doors on their unmoved hinges, lavishes on peace, in the joyful semblance of a battle, the homage of a combat that sheds no blood; and now, with a garland crowning both his brows, he opens for the happy calendar a new year.’ (Trans. Dewar, with minor alterations: I have corrected the Latin punctuation between 639 and 640, where Birt, Platnauer, Hall and Dewar all begin a new paragraph.)

34 For example, one would never guess from reading the poem that about a year passed between Alaric's departure from Italy and Honorius' visit to Rome.

35 I.M. Gesner, Cl. Claudiani quae extant, varietate lectionis et perpetua adnotatione illustrata, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1759; repr. Hildesheim, 1969). See particularly the notes on 531, 588, 594, 646. Müller (n. 29) is less explicit, but he does seem to conceive of triumph and consulship as interwoven (22) and to think of the games as consular games (p. 124 on 621–39).

36 Dewar (n. 3), xlvi; though on the following page he anachronistically calls Honorius ‘a triumphator as well as a new consul’.

37 In what follows I am indebted to McCormick (n. 22), 84–91.

38 Pan. Lat. 12(9).19.1 (Anon.); 4(10).31.1 (Nazarius); Eusebius, HE 9.9.9 (cf. also Lactantius, DMP 44.10); Ammianus 16.10.5.

39 Dewar (n. 3) on 566–8. There are other likely intertexts with Ammianus 16.10 in the poem: Augustus itaque faustis uocibus appellatus | minime uocum lituorumque intonante fragore cohorruit (Amm. 16.10.9) ~ plebis adoratae reboat fragor unaque totis | intonat Augustum septenis arcibus echo (VI Cos. 616–17); Romam … imperii uirtutumque omnium larem (Amm. 16.10.13) ~ non alium certe decuit rectoribus orbis | esse larem (VI Cos. 39–40).

40 On Ammianus' mixed feelings, see e.g. J.F. Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London, 1989; Ann Arbor, 20082), 233–5; Kelly, G.A.J., ‘The New Rome and the Old: Ammianus Marcellinus' silences on Constantinople’, CQ 53 (2003), 588–607 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 598–9.

41 ‘This is that very boy, he who now summons the Romans of Rome to the rostra, and, seated on his sire's throne of ivory reports in due order to the conscript fathers the causes and the outcome of his deeds and, following the precedent set by the men of old, submits to the Senate's judgment a full exposition of the achievements of his rule.’ (Trans. Dewar; I differ from him in punctuating after euocat, following Gesner [n. 35], to indicate the two distinct speeches, to the People and then to the Senate.)

42 See Cameron (n. 12), 384–5; Dewar (n. 3), on 603–10; Lejdegård (n. 10), 82.

43 In 400 the situation was slightly different as Stilicho became consul in Milan but then came to celebrate in Rome in February.

44 See further M. Dewar, ‘Spinning the trabea: consular robes and propaganda in the Panegyrics of Claudian’, in J. Edmondson and A. Keith (edd.), Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture (Toronto, 2008), 217–37.

45 See A. Mau, ‘Cinctus Gabinus', in Pauly–Wissowa III (Stuttgart, 1899), 2558–9.

46 ‘And although the diadem was not bound around your hair, he would take you, still in your tenderest youth, as companion of his honours, cherished in his purple-clad lap, and small though you were, he gave you your first taste of triumphs and taught you to play the prelude to your mighty destiny. And peoples diverse in tongue, and the nobles of Persia sent to sue for peace, once saw you sitting with your father in this very house, and bending their knee they lowered their crowns before you. With you he called forth the tribes to be enriched by bounteous gifts; with you he made his way, clad in the robes of victory, to the radiant shrine where the Senate was assembled, rejoicing to present you while a boy to the favour of the Romans, so that even then the new heir might grow accustomed to imperial rule.’ (Trans. Dewar, slightly altered)

47 Ruf. 2.383 (Rufinus cajoles Arcadius) participem sceptri, socium declaret honorum—a passage that Dewar could have made more of in support of his argument. The words are also chosen, presumably, because they echo Honorius' name.

48 Socrates places it on 10 January, the Fasti Vindobonenses priores on 23 January; the latter date should probably be preferred, although the Fasti are poor on exact dates, since Socrates may well have confused Honorius' dies imperii with that of Theodosius II (see also n. 84 below).

49 Cameron, A.D.E., ‘Theodosius the Great and the regency of Stilicho’, HSPh 73 (1969), 247–80Google Scholar, at 260 n. 25; see also A.D.E. Cameron and J. Long, Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius (Berkeley, 1993), 3.

50 Barnes, T.D., ‘Maxentius and Diocletian’, CPh 105 (2010), 318–22Google Scholar, at 321 and nn. 11–14. He is right that PLRE should have mentioned the possibility of Honorius being made Caesar, even if to reject it.

51 McEvoy (n. 17), 137–8.

52 For a good account of the events described in this paragraph, see e.g. J. Matthews, Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court (Oxford, 1975; 19902), 223–38.

53 McEvoy (n. 17), 138: ‘It is likely the fact that the legitimate western emperor Valentinian II was still alive, and Theodosius' elder son Arcadius was already Augustus, played a role in the decision to advance Honorius more gradually towards the highest rank in imperial college.’

54 Dewar (n. 3) on 65–6.

55 Valentinian promoted Valens to Augustus in 364 and Gratian in 367; a cabal in the army promoted Valentinian II in 375; Gratian (perhaps under duress) promoted Theodosius in 379; Theodosius promoted Arcadius in 383 and Honorius in 393; Arcadius promoted Theodosius II in 402 and Honorius Constantius III in 421. All of these became Augustus; the only certain exception is that the western usurper Constantine III originally made his son Constans Caesar rather than Augustus in 408 (PLRE 2, ‘Constans 1’). According to McEvoy (n. 17), 92 n. 127, the usurper Magnus Maximus, who made his son Victor an Augustus, may have made him a Caesar first. This is presumably an unnecessary attempt to rescue the credit of Zosimus, who claims (4.47.1) that Victor had been left in Gaul as a Caesar in 387–8. But contemporary literary sources, inscriptions and coins all show that at this stage he was clearly an Augustus, and there is no other positive evidence for him ever having been a Caesar (and Epit. de Caes. 46.8, a better and much earlier source than Zosimus, implies that he was made an Augustus from the start).

56 On the Descriptio Consulum, also known as the Consularia Constantinopolitana or Fasti Hydatiani, see R.W. Burgess, The Chronicle of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitana (Oxford, 1993), or more briefly, along with discussion of the Consularia Italica tradition, R.W. Burgess and M. Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time. The Latin Chronicle Tradition from the First Century BC to the Sixth Century AD. Vol. 1. [of 4] A Historical Introduction to the Chronicle Genre from its Origins to the High Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2013), 177–80. I follow Burgess and Kulikowski for titles of chronicles. I mention for completeness that Hydatius s.a. 389 has a less detailed version of the other Latin chronicles cited: Theodosius cum Honorio filio suo Romam ingressus est.

57 A. Bauer and J. Strzygowski, Eine Alexandrinische Weltchronik. Text und Miniaturen eines Griechischen Papyrus der Sammlung W. Goleniščev (Vienna, 1906); Burgess, R.W. and Dijkstra, J.H.F., ‘The “Alexandrian world chronicle”, its Consularia and the date of the destruction of the Serapeum (with an Appendix on the List of Praefecti Augustales)’, Millennium Jahrbuch 10 (2013), 39–113 Google Scholar.

58 Bauer and Strzygowski (n. 57), 61–3, and illustration on Tafel VI (verso); Burgess and Dijkstra (n. 57), 69 change the orthography of line 4 to ἰδ(οῖς) Ὶουν(ίαις); they point out the unorthodox word order of both reconstructions, 85–6.

59 Other explanations are possible: the illustrator may have thought Honorius was an emperor without it being explicit in the text: in recording Honorius' consulship of the year 386, the papyrus unquestionably calls him kaisar! This error, missed in CLRE, is also found in Marcellinus comes and Chronicon Paschale.

60 Bauer and Strzygowski (n. 57), 189–93 (entirely on the basis of palaeography). See now Burgess and Dijkstra (n. 57), 63–6.

61 See Burgess and Kulikowski (n. 56), 46–7 and n. 73, 361.

62 Burgess (n. 56), 204. B. Croke, ‘City chronicles of Late Antiquity’, in G. Clarke et al. (edd.), Reading the Past in Late Antiquity (Rushcutters Bay, 1990), 165–203, at 182–4 puts the break in 389 and by implication sees Theodosius' entry as deriving from the same source. See also B. Croke, The Chronicle of Marcellinus (Sydney, 1995), xxiv–xxv, and Count Marcellinus and his Chronicle (Oxford, 2001), 177.

63 C. Mango and R. Scott, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor (Oxford, 1997), lxxx; L.M. Whitby and M. Whitby, The Chronicon Paschale 284–628 (Liverpool, 1989), xvii–xviii.

64 Burgess's name for the text discourteously called Barbarus Scaligeri.

65 Burgess and Dijkstra (n. 57) argue that this chronicle (which they date to c. 470) is a source of, rather than identical to, the common source of consularia Golenischevensia and Scaligeriana.

66 J. Beaucamp, ‘Rome et Constantinople dans les chroniques universelles Byzantines’, in Politica, retorica, e simbolismo del primato: Roma e Costantinopoli IV–VII sec. d.C. (Catania, 2002), 1–21 is insightful on the coverage of Arcadius and Honorius in Chronicon Paschale and Theophanes.

67 This figure presumably derives from the fourteen years from the death of Theodosius in January 395 to that of Arcadius in May 408: cf. CP s.a. 394.

68 E.g. McEvoy (n. 17), 137 n. 8. See n. 1 above for the fictitious imperial visit of 394.

69 CLRE 306–7 (but see n. 59 above).

70 Valentinian II died on 15 May 392: the news reaching the East is a terminus ante quem only slightly earlier than Tatianus' departure from office in the autumn.

71 L. Robert, Hellenica (Paris, 1948), 4.49–51, with further discussion in C. Roueché, Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity (Electronic Edition, 20042), III.25 (= LSA 167) (see also numbers 26 and 27); see also R.R.R. Smith, ‘Late antique portraits in a public context: honorific statuary at Aphrodisias in Caria, a.d. 300–600’, JRS 89 (1999), 155–89, at 162 and plates.

72 OGIS 723 = Sammelbuch 5.8919 = LSA 876; CIG 4530 = LSA 267.

73 On the phrase see Roueché (n. 71), III.29.

74 See the relevant entries of PLRE for details, as well as Scharf, R., ‘Die Familie des Fl. Eutolmius Tatianus’, ZPE 85 (1991), 223–31Google Scholar.

75 There are no surviving laws from which we can infer the identity of the prefect(s) of Rome in the ten months from Magnus Maximus' defeat to Theodosius' visit: Albinus is first attested on 17 June 389. The prefecture of Sextus Aurelius Victor, the historian, almost certainly belongs in that period, and A.D.E. Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (New York, 2011), 516–23 has recently argued that the first prefecture of the younger Nicomachus Flavianus also belongs in these ten months. But Albinus could well have been appointed prefect some time in advance of the imperial visit.

76 ICUR 2.6076, CIL 5.6278 = ILCV 4394B, AE 1922.42 = ICLV 3791C, CIL 06.1677 = ILS 803, CIL 8.22508 (?), LANX 2 (2009), 211.

77 Cf. Themistius, Or. 16.204b–d.

78 Unfortunately, Nixon (in C.E.V. Nixon and B.S. Rodgers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini [Berkeley, 1993], 516 n. 172, reprised from his earlier translation of Pacatus) identifies the first of the principes as Honorius.

79 It also seems unlikely that Pacatus would have allowed such a passage to remain in the ‘published’ version if Honorius had been appointed Caesar in Rome at some point after the delivery of the speech.

80 Given the political situation in the West in early 411, it seems most unlikely that Honorius celebrated his vicennalia at Rome a year early. The likely conclusion is that Marcellinus is following the eastern court in putting Honorius' twentieth anniversary a year early to coincide with Theodosius II's tenth (this is a very slight variation on the idea as in Burgess, R., ‘The ninth consulship of Honorius, a.d. 411 and 412’, ZPE 65 [1986], 211–21Google Scholar, and ‘Quinquennial uota and the imperial consulship, 337–511’, Numismatic Chronicle 148 [1988], 77–96; Croke [n. 62 (1995)], ad loc.). The vicennalia are most unlikely to have taken place in Rome (n. 18 above).

81 Hydatius under 424 writes Honorius actis tricennalibus suis Rauenna obiit: the tricennalia year in fact ended in 423.

82 I owe this point to Burgess (n. 80 [1988]). Burgess explains that the consulship of 398 was held to coincide with the end rather than with the beginning of the quinquennial year; one might add that Honorius had also been consul in 396 in the year following his takeover of the West: perhaps he delayed his quinquennial consulship in 397 for that reason. Obviously Honorius held other consulships than these, for various reasons (e.g. to mark the anniversaries of imperial colleagues, or, in 404, the fact that he was visiting Rome).

83 The manuscripts and editors are divided. I print the text as in Birt's and Hall's editions; Platnauer prints mutatur and punctuates at the end of line 169, though his translation works for the version above.

84 For the former case, one could even suggest that both attested days for Honorius' elevation are correct, and that he was made Caesar on 10 January and Augustus on 23 January (see n. 48 above).

85 … rector pronuntiatur imperii. | mox principali habitu circumdatus et corona, | Augustusque nuncupatus … (Valentinian I, Amm. 26.2.2–3); imperator legitime declaratus, | Augustus nuncupatur more sollemni (Valentinian II, Amm. 30.10.6); indumentis circumdatus principalibus, | subitoque productus e tabernaculo per agmina iam discurrebat … (Jovian; he is thereafter acclaimed Augustus, but some of the troops think that they are shouting the name of Julian, Amm. 25.5.5–6).

86 … moxque indutum auita purpura Iulianum, | et Caesarem cum exercitus gaudio declaratum (Amm. 15.8.11; i.e. the point of the second stage is acclamation, not the rank of Augustus). Cf. also Amm. 26.4.3 (Valens).

87 IV Cos. 311 (313 caesareae of the imperial family), Gild. 49, Eutr. 1.458, VI Cos. 400, Carm. Min. 40.23.

88 TLL Onomasticon s.v. Caesar V (examples on pp. 37.51–8, 75–83).

89 TLL Onomasticon s.v. Caesar IV. For contemporary verse examples where Caesar is used of an Augustus cf. Ausonius, Ad Theodosium 11, 18; Precatio consulis 38, 50; Prof. Burd. 15.16. In prose Ammianus, who generally uses Caesar in the technical sense of junior emperor, has occasional exceptions (14.6.5, 23.6.9, 31.16.9); and even the Historia Augusta, who fetishizes the different imperial ranks, can ask quid hoc esse dicam, tam paucos bonos extitisse principes, cum iam tot Caesares fuerint? (HA, Aur. 42.3). An emperor himself can illustrate its use as a vocative addressed to a (full) emperor, albeit in Greek: Julian, Caesares 306a.

90 OLD s.v. muto, esp. 3b ‘to give up in exchange (for), to give up (in favour of)’; 4b ‘to change … (one's home or position)’; 11 ‘to change in outward appearance; (esp. in respect of colour)’; 12b ‘to transform (into)’.

91 OLD s.v. muto 2a ‘to take or put (one thing) in place (of another), substitute for’. This occurs twice in Claudian (In Eutr. 1.201, 248), while the senses discussed in the previous note can be found a dozen times: Ruf. 2.419; IV Cos. 16; Gild. 118; Epithalamium Praef. 7; Eutr. 1.5–6; Stil. 1.133; Get. 55, 435; VI Cos. 170, 205, 209; Carm. Min. 30.73.

92 Gesner (n. 35), ad loc.

93 One might draw particular attention to Mart. Spect. 31.11 contigit hoc nullo nisi te sub principe, Caesar, where Caesar is also vocative, as well as Ov. Pont. 2.5.41–2 (which combines iuuenum princeps, a periphrasis for Germanicus, and Caesar). For the construction, cf. Ov. Met. 4.396–7 quae modo fila fuerunt, palmite mutantur; 6.115 te quoque mutatum toruo, Neptune, iuuenco. See also n. 89 above.