Symmachus, QUINTUS AURELIUS

Symmachus, QUINTUS AURELIUS, a distinguished Roman orator, who flourished from 340 till 402 A.D., was educated in Gaul, and became prefect of Rome in 384 under Theodosius the Great, consul in 391. He was sincerely devoted to the old religion, but his purity and nobility of character were worthy of the highest Christian type. His extant writings consist of ten books of Letters, three panegyrics on Valentinian I. and Gratian, and fragments of six senatorial orations. The fragments of the orations were first discovered by Cardinal Mai in a palimpsest, part of which is at Milan, part at the Vatican, and were successively published in 1815 and 1825. Many corrections were made in the collation made by O. Seeck, which were followed in the edition included in the Monumenta Germaniæ Historica (vol. vi. Berlin, 1883). See Morin's Étude (Paris, 1847).