"Thick Clouds and Continuous Cold": The Date and Political Context of Symmachus's Embassy to Trier

Abstract:Early in his career, the Roman senator Q. Aurelius Symmachus was entrusted with a senatorial embassy to the imperial court at Trier, where he addressed a total of three panegyrics to Valentinian I and Gratian. Although recent scholarship has dated the first of these speeches to 368, the traditional date of 369 is supported by both a key textual parallel and external evidence that places Symmachus and Valentinian together on the Rhine frontier in 369. Once this chronology is clarified, Symmachus's embassy can be properly situated within the broader context of relations between the senate and the imperial court in Trier. Symmachus's stay in Trier overlapped with the beginning and quickening of Maximinus's notorious investigations of illicit magical practices in Rome. Although necessarily speculative, one explanation for the extraordinary length of Symmachus's stay in Trier could be that it was related in some way to the increasingly fraught situation in Rome.