Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus

Abstract

Abstract Late in 384, a leading pagan senator and priest, Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, died shortly before he was to take up the consulship. Senatorial aristocrats produced epigraphic and literary monuments that reveal the continued vitality of pagan religious discourse after the final separation of the traditional cults from Roman imperial power. As urban prefect, Symmachus negotiated one commemorative campaign between the Senate and Valentinian’s court, upholding Praetextatus as a model of non-sectarian civic virtue. This stance brought Symmachus into disagreement with the Vestals and Praetextatus’ wife, Paulina. As an initiative of an ancient Roman priesthood, the Vestals’ now-lost commemoration likely highlighted Praetextatus’ involvement in the civic cults. For Paulina, religion had indeed been her husband’s most important pursuit, but it aimed, beyond the well-being of Rome, at immortality. Attacking Paulina, Christians such as Jerome promoted an alternative aristocratic devotion focused on ascetical humility, rather than on the religious virtuosity, paralleled by political success, of which both pagan and Christian senators boasted. In his first book of Epistles, which was likely published some years later, Symmachus foregrounded Praetextatus’ expertise as a pontifex but ignored his private religious pursuits. For Symmachus, public religion was vital to Praetextatus’ legacy and to the aristocratic world they had shared.