The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason by Charles Freeman

Author:Charles Freeman [Freeman, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: History
ISBN: 9781400033805
Publisher: Vintage Books
Published: 2002-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

15

INTERLUDE Quintus Aurelius Symmachus and the Defence of Paganism

Among the thousands of items on display in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, it is easy to miss a small rectangular ivory plaque in a glass case in a gallery near the entrance hall. Carved as a relief, on its surface is a woman dressed as a respectable matron of ancient Greece, wearing a chiton, a long full tunic, covered by a mantle. An ivy garland is entwined in her hair. She is absorbed in some form of religious ritual—scattering incense over a fire set on a square altar— while on the other side of the altar a small girl holds out to her a small vase and a bowl filled with figs. An oak tree shadows them both.

An art historian would recognize the plaque as one leaf of a diptych, a double panel whose leaves fold together. In the ancient world diptychs were a means of communication, and originally they were made of wood with a wax surface set inside each panel. Messages would be inscribed on the wax, the two panels folded and sealed and sent off, secure, by messenger. By the late fourth century A.D. a diptych had acquired a more formal status as the format in which a major official, a consul, for instance, would announce his appointment to office to his friends. A surviving diptych of A.D. 406, in ivory, which had replaced wood as the favoured material, shows one Probus celebrating his appointment as consul in Rome. He is portrayed on one panel, and his emperor, Honorius, is on the other so that the recipients of the diptych could appreciate the glory of Probus’ achievement and the favour he enjoyed within the imperial hierarchy.

Luckily, the other side of the Victoria and Albert panel survives, if in fragments, in the Musée de Cluny in Paris. 1 The Musée de Cluny panel also shows a priestess, although she is much less formally dressed than her sister in London, with one breast overflowing from her chiton and her mantle gathered round her hips. She is turning towards a small circular sacrificial altar on which a fire is burning and is shadowed by a pine tree from which hang a pair of cymbals (now damaged). In each hand she bears a flaming torch held downwards.

Clearly this diptych is not an official announcement. Something more private is being expressed, and fortunately the diptych provides its own clues. Each of the panels has a single word set below the top border: the London panel is inscribed SYMMACHORUM, “of the Symmachi,” and the Parisian NICOMACHO[RU]M, of the Nicomachi.” The Nicomachi and Symmachi were two of the leading Roman senatorial families in the late fourth century, and both heads of the families in these years, Virius Nicomachus (c. 340–94) and Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (340–402), enjoyed distinguished careers. The families were closely connected. Nicomachus’ son married the daughter of Symmachus in the early 390s, and in 400 Symmachus’ son married Nicomachus’ granddaughter.

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