Commagene, Crossroads of Empire

Commagene in southern Anatolia was a Roman province from AD79 onwards, something which may have slipped the attention of many, since it occurred at the same moment that Vesuvius was destroying Pompeii.

It had originated as a Hurrian kingdom called Kummukh, speaking a variety of the language which became Armenian. There is a discussion of its early 9^th century BC inscriptions in The Boyepinari Inscription of Panamuwatis of Commagene by Gabriel Soultanian. This was a literate state at least 150 years before Homer enlightened the Greeks.

In the wake of Alexander’s invasion, Commagene rapidly developed a Hellenistic royal culture, and for some time avoided domination by Europeans and Persians alike.

This is best seen at Mount Nemrut (Nemrud Dagi in Turkish), a religious site which illustrates the interplay of Greek and Persian religions. There, colossal statues were carved, which can be seen there to this day. A full description can be read in Herman Brijder’s book Nemrud Dagi: Recent Archaeological Research and Preservation and Restoration Activities in the Tomb Sanctuary on Mount Nemrud (Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2014).

The Nemrut statues syncretise a number of gods from eastern and western traditions. They were erected for King Antiochus I Theos in 62BC. Of course, Theos means ‘god’ and the Commagenean kings were considered living gods, something that was not going to please the Romans. The imperial cult of the Romans never worshipped the living emperor, only dead ones and then only a minority of them.

Antiochus I Theos was in turn following a similar cult centre (called a hierothesion) of his father Mithridates I Callinicus (r. 109BC-70BC). Groups of seated statues of gods and the god king sat in rows; their heads were later removed by Christians and ritually defaced, as can be seen in these photos.

Head of Zeus-Aramazd, Mount Nemrut

Head of Apollo-Mithra-Helios, Mount Nemrud

Head of Vahagn-Herakles, Mount Nemrut; note the nose damaged by Christians

 It is interesting to note in passing that in the Greek world, it is possible for a living person to be a saint, but in the west sainthood is always post mortem; I think this must echo attitudes in prior religions.

In classical Armenian religion, all the gods had once been living people, notably Vahagn, syncretised with Heracles, Aramazd, the Armenian form of the Persian Ahura Mazda, syncretised with Zeus, Astghik with Aphrodite/Ishtar. This relates to Persian cultural conquest of Armenia and neighbouring areas in the 7^th century BC, after the era of Panamuwatis, where Khaldi was the chief god and formed a trinity with his sons Telspas and Shivini.

What we can see from this is an Anatolian culture which readily adopted and modified gods according to the winds of politics; rarely strong enough to assert itself, Commagene defeated its enemies by rolling with the punches. That is why Armenia was the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as its state religion, and why eventually Islam took over the area so easily.

Antiochus’ son, Epiphanes, fought alongside Titus at the Siege of Jerusalem in 70AD, and met Flavius Josephus, who describes him as one of the richest tributary kings. The conversion of Commagene from independent, but neutralised, kingdom to Roman province came about in the 70s AD, when the Roman governor of Syria, Caesennius Paetus, wrote to Vespasian to tell him that the king of Commagene, Antiochus IV and his son Prince Epiphanes planned to revolt against Roman overlordship and ally instead with the Parthians. According to Josephus (Bel Jud 7.7) this was malicious and Antiochus was very loyal. Vespasian allowed Caesennius Paetus to invade the country’s capital Samosata with legio VI Ferrata from Syria and annexe Commagene to that province.

The whole deal turned odd when Antiochus and his sons left for Parthia, but then returned under imperial protection as honoured guests, received imperial honours and enough money to run a royal household (M. Speidel 2000, Early Roman Rule in Commagene). The sons were recognised as legitimate royals, and in AD109, Epiphanes’ son, known to us as Philopappos (literally ‘grandfather lover’) who had earlier been made a senator was elevated to Cos. Suffectus by Trajan.

Note there the subtle difference: not Consul Ordinaris, the ones who gave their names to the year, nor even suffect to the Consul Prior, but suffect to the Consul Posterior, and he didn’t even serve out the whole year, serving only from May to August. Hardly an honour at all. It seems like the former governor of Syria, Aulus Cornelius Palma Frontonianus (a member of the powerful Cornelius clan), who was Consul Prior at the start of AD109 and had the ear of Trajan, felt it would be politically useful to include Philopappos.

So who was Philopappos and how had the former royal family gone from enemies of Rome to the consulship in a generation? Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights notes that Philopappos was always referred to as ‘king’ (basileus) and referred to himself as such. His actual name at birth was Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes. There had to be something in it beyond just money. I suspect it was the ancestry of the Commagenian royal family, who were descended from the Seleucid rulers of Asia Minor and perhaps from the same family as Alexander the Great.

The Philopappos Monument, built in his honour by his sister after his death in AD116, gives him three distinct identities, as a Greek, a Roman and a Commagenian. The monument is on what was once the Mouseion Hill in Athens, close to the Acropolis. Pausanias, in his Guide to Greece (i.25.8), refers to this as ‘monument built for a Syrian man.’ This seems quite snotty, and we can assume Pausanias was looking for a way to denigrate Philopappos, who was not a Syrian, and whose mother was an Alexandrian Greek, Claudia Capitolina.

Philopappos Monument, Athens, detail

As a Roman, he was termed in Latin as ‘Caius Iulius Antiochus, son of Caius, of the Fabian tribe, consul and Arval brother, admitted to the praetorian rank by the emperor Caesar Nerva Trajan Optimus Augustus Germanicus Dacicus’, stressing his voting tribe, his membership of the Arval Brotherhood and his close links to Trajan.

As a citizen of Athens, he is noted on another part of the monument in Greek as ‘Philopappos, son of Epiphanes of the deme of the Besa’. Note how his Roman names are missing and his father has gone from being Caius (or Gaius as we would say) and kept his real name, and his imperial and Roman titles are ignored, with his deme to the fore.

In a third niche, now lost, was a further title ‘King Antiochus Philopappos, son of King Antiochus Epiphanes’, again in Greek.

Philopappos Monument, long view

The sister who dedicated the monument was named Julia Balbilla, who was born in Rome, and unusually she was a writer, and even more curiously, four of her poems have survived:

When the August Hadrian Heard Memnon



Memnon the Egyptian I learnt, when warned by the rays of the sun,
speaks from Theban stone.
When he saw Hadrian, the king of all, before rays of the sun,
he greeted him - as far as he was able.
But when the Titan driving through the heavens with his steeds of white,
brought into shadow the second measure of hours,
like ringing bronze Memnon again sent out his voice.
Sharp-toned, he sent out his greeting and for a third time a mighty roar.
The emperor Hadrian then himself bid welcome to
Memnon and left on stone for generations to come.
This inscription recounting all that he saw and all that he heard.
It was clear to all that the gods love him.

When with the August Sabina I Stood Before Memnon



Memnon, son of Aurors and holy Tithon,
seated before Thebes, city of Zeus,
or Amenoth, Egyptian King, as learned.
Priests recount from ancient stories,
greetings, and singing, welcome her kindly,
the August wife of the emperor Hadrian.
A barbarian man cut off your tongue and ears:
Impious Cambyses; but he paid the penalty,
with a wretched death struck by the same sword point
with which pitiless he slew the divine Apis.
But I do not believe that this statue of yours will perish,
I saved your immortal spirit forever with my mind.
For my parents were noble, and my grandfathers,
the wise Balbillus and Antiochus the king.

Demo



Son of Aurora, I greet you. For you addressed me kindly,
Memnon, for the sake of the Pierides, who care for me,
song-loving Demo. And bearing a pleasant gift,
my lyre will always sing of your strength, holy one.

(Untitled)

For pious were my parents and grandfathers:
Balbillus the Wise and King Antiochus;
Balbillus, the father of my mother of royal blood and King Antiochus, the father of my father. From their line I too draw my noble blood,
and these verses are mine, pious Balbilla.

These show a huge pride in Balbilla’s non-Roman ancestry, descended on her mother’s side from Balbillus, an Egyptian magician, and the ability for non-Romans to interact with the imperial family. Her mythological references marry Classical deities with Egyptian gods like Memnon and Apis, not syncretising them, but running each alongside the other.

Commagene found a way to negotiate a complex cultural identity without being swamped by any of it.

Isaurians – Rome’s homegrown barbarians

At the time Rome’s western empire ‘fell’ in AD476, the emperor in the east was a barbarian. The coins call him Zeno, a Greek name; however his real name was Tarasicodissa Rousoumbladadiotes and he was an Isaurian (reigned 474-91). Although notionally Roman citizens, the Isaurians were fiercely independent and antagonistic to Rome. So why were several emperors drawn from them, a people you might call homegrown barbarians?

The Divine Emperor Zeno

Isauria seems to have been a land that nobody else wanted. It’s located in what is now southern Turkey, next to Cicilia on the coast and Pamphylia to its west. To the north was Lycaonia and to its east was Commagene. These lands changed hands amongst Persians, Medes, Greeks and Romans, later Armenians and Turks. The Tarza (Tarsus) Mountains were their core territory, although at times they extended towards the coast and even onto Cyprus. As everyone knows, St Paul was born Saul of Tarsus, a diaspora Jewish tentmaker in the capital of the Province of Cicilia.

Dangerous Barbarians

Vainly the Romans planted cities in Isauria, or renamed them after famous Romans (Germanopolis, Claudiopolis, and even Zenopolis, the emperor’s birthplace, probably called Rusumblada until then). A fair comparison might be the renaming of places in Ireland by English and Scottish overlords.

The threat from the Isaurians can be seen in the myth of Typhon, a monster killed by Zeus. He seems to have been a local god of fire and earthquakes, portrayed by the Greeks as the father of Cerberus, the Chimera, the Sphinx and every other monster they could think of. Typhon is linked from Hesiod onwards as Cicilian, but the difference between Cicilia and Isauria seems to be political, not ethnic. But the Greeks and Romans, since at least the time of Hesiod, liked to portray the people of that area as not quite human.

A Necropolis in Isauria

Almost Useful Barbarians

Isauria overlaps too with the territory of Pamphylia, a land overrun early by Achaean Greeks c.1200BC, suggesting links with Troy. All the people of this area seem to have been Luwian speaking Hittites. The Isaurians are termed ‘Dorian’ by the Greeks, suggesting that they saw them as being very similar in attitudes to the Dorian Greeks, the ‘Sons of Hercules’, tough and violent upland dwellers, and indeed the Greeks claimed the Pamphylians were Dorians. What we seem to be seeing here is an attempt to impose a Greek identity onto Hittite/Luwian peoples. Lycaonia seems to be relate to the ancient Lukka people, and to names like Lycaeon of Troy, one of the sons of Priam, and to Lycaeon, king of Arcadia, son of Pelasgus in Greek myth and thus brother of Niobe and a dynast of the Pelasgians who at one point ruled Athens. Zeus was termed ‘Lykaios’ in the Arcadian festival of Lykaia.

This mythic muddle seems to point towards fusion and confusion of similar peoples with Greeks. A lot of the Greek myths draw on stories from Asia Minor.

How Roman is a Roman?

Lest anyone think that the emperor personified everything that was Roman, the rulers of the later empire often came from militarised districts. Diocletian was a Croat, Maximian a Serb, Constantius Chlorus was an Illyrian, while Galerius was a Thracian, in the military tradition of the emperor Maximinus Thrax. Most of the emperors succeeding Commodus were not Italians. But they were all Roman citizens, as was Zeno. To consider that certain powerbrokers in the later empire somehow couldn’t be emperor themselves and hid behind tame Roman emperors seems simply wrong, and Chris Wickham holds the same view in his recent book The Inheritance of Rome.

Most of the so-called Gothic commanders involved in the Sack of Rome in AD410 had been born after AD378 and the battle of Adrianople, so they were as Roman as anyone else. By the time Euric rebelled against the emperor Anthemius, a Greek, neither was more Roman than the other. Anthemius was put into office by Ricimer, his son-in-law, a Frank. We have no evidence of any Frankish or Gothic commander speaking anything but Latin.

Isaurians were politically distinct from the peoples around them, but not culturally so. Another comparison with a recent group would be with the Don Cossacks, whose name suggests a link with the Kazakhs of Kazakhstan. Like the Cossacks, there may have been a difference of lifestyle, but the Isaurians are clearly linked to the other states which emerged after the end of the Hittite empire in Asia Minor. We might also compare them with the Basques, who in the western Pyrenees survived the Romans, Goths, Moors and Franks, or the Highlander groups who fought the English as fiercely as they fought the lowland Scots before them.

Just as poverty drew the Scots and Irish into the British forces, it seems to have drawn marginal people into the Roman army, among them the Isaurians.

The House of Theodosius

Zeno spent many years rising in Roman service in the east. It’s worth tracing the dynastics of the eastern empire in the fifth century. Theodosius II, despite having his name on a famous Roman law code, did nothing during his 42 years on the throne, just shy of the reign of Augustus, and his sister Pulcheria ran the empire the whole time until her death in 453. In 450, after the death of Theodosius, she married the Illyrian general Marcian to make him emperor, which in turn ennobled his daughter to marry Anthemius, later western emperor.

Emperor Theodosius II

Pulcheria, emperor in all but name

Marcian, emperor and husband of Pulcheria

Basiliscus

The house of Valentinian and Theodosius ended with the death of Marcian in 457, when another powerful soldier, Leo Marcellus from Dacia, was given the eastern throne. His daughter Ariadne married Zeno; their son Leo II briefly inherited the imperial title in 474 for a matter of months with Zeno as co-emperor; on his son’s death late in 474, Zeno became emperor.

Emperor Leo I

Ariadne

Succession idealised father-to-son transmission, derived in part from biblical models, but in practice emperors married their daughters to rising generals. It was a throw of the dice which put Zeno on the throne at the moment the western succession collapsed. Zeno faced a claim to the throne by Basiliscus, the brother of Verina, Leo’s wife, who was proclaimed emperor in Constantinople on 9 January 475 and tried to reign for 19 months until he in turn was overthrown and Zeno restored in August 476. The beneficiaries of the rout of the Isaurians were Ostrogoths, led by cousins Theodoric Strabo (‘squinty’) and Theodoric ‘the Amal’. Inevitably men of Germanic background dominated the new imperial close protection squad called excubitores.

It matches the English Wars of the Roses for dynastic complexity. So it was only a few days after his restoration to the throne that Zeno received the returned imperial insignia from Odoacer in Ravenna which ended the succession of emperors in Italy.

The Empire Need Not Have Ended

Given the closeness of timing, we should assume that Odoacer intended to surrender the insignia to Basiliscus, not Zeno. Perhaps Odoacer never intended the line of emperors to end with Romulus Augustulus, but to have become western emperor himself and that in formally surrendering the insignia to Basiliscus, he would receive it back with an ennoblement to become emperor in his turn. Given the weeks it would take to get messages even by sea between Ravenna and Constantinople, Odoacer could not have known it would be Zeno and not Basiliscus who would receive it.

We can think beck for a moment to the death of the emperor Valens in the Battle of Adrianople on 9 August 378. On his death, his nephew Gratian was the only Augustus with authority to reign (Valentinian II was a small child). Although he eventually made Theodosius Augustus of the East, initially he only made him Magister Equitum, commander of the imperial army in the east and it was five months later when Gratian elevated him as Augustus on 19 January 379 (see Thomas Burns’ Barbarians within the Gates of Rome, p.43). It is highly likely that Theodosius, son-in-law of Valens, had to hand the imperial regalia of the east to Gratian, and received it back when he was made emperor nearly half a year later.

Moreover, Odoacer is considered by many, including the ‘Byzantine’ historian John Malalas, to have been the nephew of Basiliscus. If that is so, then it looks increasingly likely that, like Theodosius, Odoacer expected to be made emperor. Basiliscus made his own son junior Augustus, so that would not be a surprise. On deposing Zeno. Basiliscus encouraged the mob to murder all Isaurians in Constantinople. He extorted  heavy taxes from the empire and allowed Constantinople to suffer a significant fire, that destroyed the library of Julian, which had existed for 110 years. It is ironic that the years which saw the end of the western empire also destroyed a lot of ‘pagan’ literature in the east.

Usurping Emperor Basiliscus

 Basiliscus also got himself caught up in one of the less interesting Christian controversies, and flip-flopped alarmingly. His sister, Verina, seems to have been involved in an intrigue against him, planning to marry the magister officiorum Patricius and have him made emperor. Patricius was murdered and Basiliscus lived. His two terms as consul and his former high command of imperial forces west and east seem not to have honed his judgement.

His nephews Odoacer, Onoulphus (Hunwulf) and Armatus formed shifting alliances, illustrated by their polyethnic names; their father Edekon had been an officer for Attila the Hun, and had or took a Hunnic name, yet later joined the Roman army as did his sons. Ethnic identity seems to have been malleable to say the least. Basiliscus was therefore a Hun or Hunnic ally too – the three brothers were his side of the family. We may be beginning to see the start of the practice, seen in Frankish Gaul, where names are given in expectation of  career involvement in Church or army, either in childhood or as an adult. Nor should we be surprised by sibling rivalry, which since Romulus has shaped power relations in antiquity. Those of the sons of Clovis and those of Louis the Pious were just as toxic.

Basiliscus sent out Illus and Trocundus, two Isaurian brothers and imperial generals, among the few left in the capital after the emperor had massacred most of them. The two brothers may have been from a rival grouping. They went to kill Zeno, but were suborned by the Senate to restore Zeno instead, which they did.

The complexity of this situation is reflected in the consulship. In 476, the consuls were Basiliscus (the for the second time) and Armatus. There were no consuls picked at all in 477, and in 478 Illus alone and 479 Zeno alone. Between 478 and 500 there are many consuls appointed sine collega (without a colleague). Western consuls ended in 534 and eastern ones in 541. As emperors became kings, there was little need for consuls to confuse things and Justinian simply abolished the position. The Greek title of the Roman emperor basileus always meant king anyway.

So the return of Zeno saw the return of the Isaurians, among whom he had sat out his interregnum, excluding his brother Longinus, who was held a hostage for ten years by Illus.

The best modern history of this I know is by Peter Heather, best known as the expert on the Goths. His book The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes & Imperial Pretenders (Pan 2014) untangles this almighty mess with bravura and wit.

When Zeno died in 491, the mob in Constantinople called for a proper Roman emperor rather than accept Zeno’s brother Longinus (who had been consul in 486), so the dowager empress Ariadne provided them with Anastasius, one of her former silentarii (senatorial rank officials). He led the empire into a war with the Isaurians.

We have been able to see that it was not forbidden for a ‘barbarian’ to become emperor. Most of the emperors after Commodus were from outlandish backgrounds, probably because they were better fighters. Nearly all of the commanders who became kings were culturally Christians and legally Romans.

Neither Useful Nor Honourable: the End of Roman Gaul

In AD475, four men sat in a room in Arles and destroyed the Roman Empire.

It was probably summer, and the four men were probably accompanied by others. They met with a representative of the Visigothic king, Euric, so it was very likely to have been in summer. But despite all the others in the room, they were the ones charged by the western emperor, Julius Nepos, with the negotiations he instructed them to undertake.

The four men were all bishops: Leontius was bishop of Arles, and as a friend of Pope Hilary, had established his see as the leading one of Gaul. Then there was Basilius of Aix, Graecus of Marseille and Faustus of Riez, the Briton considered the foremost Christian writer of his day. The men they met were not Visigoths by background; they were Roman officials who had changed sides to save their own hides. In Euric’s delegation, perhaps leading it, would have been Victorius, who Euric made Duke of Aquitania Prima in 479. He may have been, or been related to, another Victorius of Aquitaine, a contemporary intellectual and mathematician.

A year before, Euric’s troops had occupied Provence. Julius Nepos wanted it back. The negotiation with Euric’s men was to determine what price might be needed. They would have had in their minds the Battle of Arles in 458, in which the Visigothic king Theodoric, elder brother of Euric, had been massively defeated by the Romans under Majorian. Now Euric (who had overthrown his brother) had broken the pact (foedus) which governed de facto Visigothic rule in southern Gaul.

Euric promised the Romans could have Provence back, if he could have the Auvergne (Arvernia). The bishops agreed to this on behalf of the emperor. With Roman connivance, Euric invaded the Auvergne and took it in 475. Then he invaded Provence again and seized that in 476. The loss of Gaul was a catastrophe, and Odoacer used this to depose the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus and seize power.

Arles had become the capital of Gaul in the early fifth century, when Trier, an imperial capital a mere twenty five years earlier, was abruptly abandoned. Leontius would have had in his mind the substantial fees and earnings Arles received because of the Elisii Campi (Elysian Fields), now known as the Alyscamps. This was a highly fashionable burial ground, so popular that people were ferried across the Mediterranean from North Africa to be interred there. Even the guild of Rhone bargemen made a small fortune ferrying the dead of the empire to the must-have funeral they aspired to. They had to be stacked three deep to be accommodated there.

Around the table, next to Leontius no doubt, was Faustus of Riez. He was the leading clergyman of his day for theology. He was aged about 48 and British, and travelled back to Britain from time to time, testing the still widespread belief that his homeland was being devastated by the Anglo-Saxons. Faustus was quite probably the son of the British king we call Vortigern. The Historia Britonnum refers to St Germanus of Auxerre returning from Britain to Gaul with an illegitimate and allegedly incestuous son of Vortigern called Faustus (‘Lucky’) to make the boy a priest, and the ages match. In addition, Faustus of Riez was known as a ‘semi-Pelagian’, one holding  a modified version of the teachings of Pelagius, a Briton condemned as a heretic a generation back. Germanus had travelled to Britain to resolve a dispute between the teachings of the Church and the popular philosophy of Pelagius.

Basilius of Aix must have been a young man, because he was still bishop in AD500, when he caused to be built a spanking new cathedral, on top of the Forum, which survived for centuries until being destroyed in Saracen raids. But we can imagine the young bishop (not so uncommon, as life expectancy was quite low) thinking about how he might be able to remodel his city for the glory of God, and perhaps himself. The baptistery of Aix cathedral was built over a temple to Apollo and survives to this day. His name suggests he might have been of Greek ancestry, but there were other Greek settlements along the coast.

Graecus of Marseille sounds like he ought to be of Greek ancestry, but since Marseille was so Greek, the name holds no distinction. Perhaps it was a nickname which became his church name. He was an older man, and had a reputation as a bit of a maverick. Faustus had rebuked him harshly for espousing Nestorianism, a Christian sect that became a heresy (Ralph Mathiesen Ruricius of Limoges and Friends: A collection of letters from Visigothic Gaul, Liverpool University Press, 1999). So in that room in Arles, there would have been little love lost between Faustus and Graecus.

We should pause for a moment to consider what these four men had done: they had handed fellow Romans, who had managed to hold the Visigoths at bay, over to the enemy. They had in doing so betrayed their friend and fellow bishop, Sidonius Apollinaris. They had failed to see that Euric had already conquered Provence once, and knew how to do it again.

Once he had taken Arvernia and its capital Arvernis (formerly Augustonemetum and from the 9^th century Claremontum (now Clermont-Ferrand)), and taken Sidonius prisoner, transporting him in chains to Liviana, near Carcasso (modern Carcassonne), then to Bordeaux, putting him in prison there for some time, Euric almost surrounded Provence, enabling him to take it anyway.

Sidonius wrote letters, and eventually published nine books of them, in emulation of Pliny the Younger (all translations derived from O.M. Dalton, 1915 Loeb edition). If he imagined there would be a tenth book compiled by his admirers, that never occurred, although several people tried to engage him in writing the history of his times.

But Letter 7.7 to Graecus of Marseille is the bitter gall of a man who has been betrayed by his friends. It came after a siege of the Auvergne for four years (471-5) by the Visigoths. Clermont was his wife’s home town, but he had adopted its defence as his life’s cause.

Letter 7.7 is quietly furious at the betrayal: ‘Our enslavement is the price paid for the safety of others’ he says, adding that he now finds himself ‘amidst an unconquerable, yet alien people’ . Sidonius knew that Vercingetorix had been king of the Arveni facing Caesar and echoes Lucan’s Pharsalia in condemning ‘the servitude of the Arvernians who dared once to call themselves “brothers of Latium” and counted themselves “a people sprung from Trojan blood”’.

The sense of betrayal Sidonius expresses is keen: ‘you are the channel through which embassies come and go; to you first of all, although the emperor is absent, peace is not only reported when negotiated, but entrusted to be negotiated’ , adding later ‘you are surrounded by those most holy pontiffs, Leontius, Faustus, and Graecus; you have a middle place among them in the location of your city and in seniority, and you are the centre of their loving circle; you four are the channels through which the unfortunate treaties flow; through your hands pass the compacts and stipulations of both realms’.

Sidonius sums up his condemnation with these words: ‘You should be ashamed of this peace treaty for it is neither useful nor honourable’.

So who was Sidonius?

Sidonius Apollinaris was born  in Lyon on 5 November 430; he came from a rich family with a long history of public office. His grandfather Apollinaris was praetorian prefect of Gaul  for part of AD408, replacing a certain Limenius, but had quit in protest at the corruption of politics. In one of his letters, Sidonius talks of visiting his grandfather’s grave, which was neglected and overgrown, and mourned this; but his grandfather had been a rebel, prefect for Constantine III, so maybe somebody held a grudge.

The father of Sidonius was also Praetorian Prefect of the Gauls, as was Tonantius Ferreolus, a kinsman, related to Sidonius by blood and marriage. The father in law of Sidonius, Marcus Avitus, was Prefect in 439 and the father of Avitus, Flavius Julius Agricola, had been Prefect in 416 ­– 421. Marcus Avitus, the candidate of the Visigoths, was acclaimed emperor by their king Theodoric in Toulouse, the Visigothic capital, 455 after the assassination of Valentinian III. Sidonius wrote a panegyric to his own father in law on his elevation. He grew up and lived within the nexus of power.

With the coming of Christianity into the power structures of the Roman Empire, a new channel was opened for status and display. Bishops were elected by their parishioners and for life; decurions were expressly forbidden to enter the Church, but several time, so the law must have been quite ineffective. Constantine had given bishops the power to run courts and dispense summary justice. And while bishops were forbidden to marry, there has never been a law preventing a married man becoming a bishop. Sidonius had sons and daughters too. A middle aged bishop with grown up sons to effectively inherit episcopal power was far from unusual.

Had Avitus held the throne for any time, he might well have made Sidonius Prefect of Gaul. However Avitus, once the richest man in Gaul, was deposed as emperor, but then made Bishop of Placentia (modern Piacenza). Although that didn’t stop Avitus being murdered, it does show that becoming a bishop was an alternative route to power.

Forgiven his connection to Avitus, Sidonius rose again to become Urban Prefect of Rome, a position he had to resign from because his friend Arvandus was found guilty of treason for supporting the Visigothic king Euric. The epitaph of Sidonius, discovered recently, stresses his civic roles

noble through his titles, powerful through his office, head of the administration, magistrate at the court, quiet amid the world's billowing waves, then managing the turmoil of lawsuits, he imposed laws on the barbarian fury; for the realms that were involved in an armed conflict he restored peace by his great prudence.

His death is noted at ‘August 22, under the reign of Zeno’, as if the Roman Empire still existed at that time. By that date in AD489, there had been no western emperor for thirteen years. Note it stresses his public role, not his clerical one.

Making ex-leaders into bishops was a kind of exile. Once tonsured as priests, they could not in theory return to civilian life. Julius Nepos, once dethroned, was made Bishop of Salona, the capital of Dalmatia, the former province, which he had ruled for a long time before briefly becoming emperor. All of this can be dated back to St Ambrose, bishop of Milan, who had been the local provincial governor before that.

Sidonius also attacks (Ep.7.6, to Basilius, dated 474) the damage to the Church:

Diocese and parish lie waste without ministers. You may see the rotten roofs of churches fallen in, the doors unhinged and blocked by growing brambles. More grievous still, you may see the cattle not only lying in the half-ruined porticoes, but grazing beside altars green with weeds. And this desolation is not found in country parishes alone; even the congregations of urban churches begin to fall away.

Noting that ‘Bordeaux, Périgueux, Rodez, Limoges, Javols, Eauze, Bazas, Comminges, Auch, and many another city are all like bodies which have lost their heads through the death of their respective bishops. No successors have been appointed to fill their places’ and that ‘for every bishop snatched from our midst, the faith of a population is imperilled. I need not mention your colleagues Crocus and Simplicius, removed alike from their thrones and suffering a common exile’. He ends the letter

To you these miserable treaties are submitted, the pacts and agreements of two kingdoms pass through your hands. Do your best, as far as the royal condescension suffers you, to obtain for our bishops the right of ordination in those parts of Gaul now included within the Gothic boundaries, that if we cannot keep them by treaty for the Roman State, we may at least hold them by religion for the Roman Church.

This shows a change in perception from Rome as state to Roman as the body of the faithful. In Ireland at about the same time, St Patrick was telling the soldiers of the king of Strathclyde ‘you are not Romans but demons’, when they were never politically Romans in the first place.

Sidonius adds a comment about the successes of Euric:

I must confess that formidable as the mighty Goth may be, I dread him less as the assailant of our walls than as the subverter of our Christian laws. They say that the mere mention of the name of Catholic so embitters his countenance and heart that one might take him for the chief priest of his Arian sect rather than for the monarch of his nation. Omnipotent in arms, keen-witted, and in the full vigour of life, he yet makes this single mistake – he attributes his success in his designs and enterprises to the orthodoxy of his belief, whereas the real cause lies in mere earthly fortune.

The thinking behind this comment is that of Orosius: the victories of the enemy cannot be because God favours them, but because of simple numbers and main force. It should be noted that Arians called themselves Catholics; Sidonius is engaging in a little rhetoric here.

In a letter (Ep. 7.1, dated 474) to Mamertus, bishop of Vienne, Sidonius refers to

earthquake, shattering the outer palace walls with frequent shocks; now fire, piling mounds of glowing ash upon proud houses fallen in ruin; now, amazing spectacle! wild deer grown ominously tame, making their lairs in the very forum. You saw the city being emptied of its inhabitants, rich and poor taking to flight.

The earthquake of September 470 is recorded by Gregory of Tours, quoting the now lost Chronicle of Angers (Historiae 2.18,19). Mamertus invented Church Rogations, still practised today; by doing so, he encouraged the panicked people of Vienne to return to the city. The bishop remaining in his city seems to have been crucial to that city’s survival. If a bishop left it and settled his see elsewhere, the former see tended to collapse and the latter to survive. In addition, where no replacement bishop could be appointed after a bishop died or was exiled, there were sometimes too few bishops left to ordain another, something which Sidonius alludes to in his letter (Ep.7.5, dated 472) to Agroeclus, bishop of Sens, a famous grammarian, where he says ‘Clermont is the last of all the cities in Aquitanica Prima which the fortune of war has left to Rome; the number of provincial bishops is therefore inadequate to the election of a new prelate at Bourges, unless we have the support of the metropolitans’.

Sidonius ends Letter 7.7 with unerring bitterness:

I ask your pardon for telling you hard truths; my distress must take all colour of abuse from what I say. You think too little of the general good; when you meet in council, you are less concerned to relieve public perils than to advance private fortunes. By the long repetition of such acts you begin to be regarded as the last instead of the first among your fellow provincials.
But how long are these feats of yours to last? Our ancestors will cease to glory in the name of Rome if they have no longer descendants to bear their memory. Oh, break this infamous peace at any cost; there are pretexts enough to your hand. We are ready, if needs must, to continue the struggle and to undergo more sieges and starvations. But if we are to be betrayed, we whom force failed to conquer, we shall know beyond a doubt that a barbarous and cowardly transaction was inspired by you. … The other conquered regions have only servitude to expect; Auvergne must prepare for punishment. If you can hold out no help in our extremity, seek to obtain of Heaven by your unceasing prayers that though our liberty be doomed, our race at least may live. Provide land for the exile, prepare a ransom for the captive, make provision for the emigrant. If our own walls must offer an open breach to the enemy, let yours be never shut against your friends.

That the Auvergne was singled out for punishment does bring to mind the famous practice of the pharmakos of Marseille, where someone was singled out as a scapegoat for all society’s ills, kept apart and eventually killed. Letter 7.7 was written to Graecus of Marseille, a bishop who must have been aware of the ancient practice, and I think Sidonius is hinting at it to make Graecus squirm.

We are beginning to see a picture of former imperial officials starting to become rulers of new semi-autonomous states: Syagrius in what became Neustria, Julius Nepos in Dalmatia, Theodoric in Acquitaine, Childeric, father of Clovis, in Belgica Secunda, under the guidance of St Remigius (and portrayed in Roman uniform on his seal ring) and Sidonius in the Auvergne. As the former urban prefect of Rome, Sidonius became de facto the ruler of the Auvergne.

We should end as Sidonius ended Book 7 of his letters (Ep.7.18 to Constantius of Lyon, the author of the Vita of St Germanus of Auxerre, dated 479):

while Christ is my defender I will never suffer my judgement to be enslaved; I know as well as any one that with regard to this side of my character there are two opinions: the timid call me rash, the resolute a lover of freedom; I myself strongly feel that the man who has to hide his real opinions cuts a very abject figure.