Gratian's Repudiation of the Pontifical Robe

Author(s): Alan Cameron

Source: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 58, Parts 1 and 2 (1968), pp. 96-102
Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/299698
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 GRATIAN'S REPUDIATION OF THE PONTIFICAL ROBE

By ALAN CAMERON

The reign of Gratian marked a turning-point in the conflict between Christianity and
Paganism in the Roman Empire. One of the more spectacular manifestations of this change
of emphasis which culminated in the anti-pagan legislation of Theodosius was Gratian's
ostentatious repudiation of the title of pontifex maximus, held by every Emperor from
Augustus down to Gratian's own father, Valentinian. The Christian Emperors had
tolerated it hitherto as a purely formal element of their titulature. But Gratian refused
the pontifical robe, &8NpiTovEIvaiXpicrriavcj$ TO crXTija vopicras.
Zosimus, our only authority for the event, dates it to the beginning of Gratian's reign.
If he means 367, when Gratian was created co-Augustus by Valentinian, then he is certainly
wrong, for pontifex maximus is attested among Gratian's titles in an inscription of the year
370 (CIL VI, II75). And even if his accession proper in 375 is meant, when Valentinian
died, this is still wrong, for Ausonius addressed him as pontifex in his Gratiarum Actio of
January 379.2 Scholars have usually been content to observe that Zosimus' date is wrong
and substitute another that accords better with what they believe to have been the develop-
ment of Gratian's religious policy. And no one has ever attempted to explain either
Gratian's act or Zosimus' error.
Palanque suggested 382, the year of Gratian's withdrawal of state subsidies from the
pagan priesthoods at Rome and removal of the Altar of Victory from the Senate house.3
Alfoldi insists on 379, on the ground that ' since Theodosius never used or refused this
title, the removal of it must have been before igth January 379 [i.e. the date of Theodosius'
accession] '.4 Palanque has had many followers,5 and, as I shall show below, he is not
far from the truth. Alfoldi too has won influential support,6 yet it should be obvious that
his argument is not cogent: our information may be (indeed, as I believe, is) simply
deficient on the matter, as it is on much else concerning the reign of Theodosius.7 A
closer analysis first of the relevant chapter of Zosimus and then of Ausonius' Gratiarum
Actio may cast a little light on the problem.
If Gratian decided to abandon the title, as he evidently must have, some time between
379 and 383 (when he was murdered), why does Zosimus say he did so at the beginning
of his reign ? True, Zosimus is far from being a reliable historian: indeed he is often
very careless. And for this reason his errors are more often the result of careless compression
of his sources than mere meaningless misstatements. His statement here cannot be just a
slip, for it comes at the end of a whole chapter describing how every PoailAEusof Rome
from Numa Pompilius to Valentinian had been pontifex maximus, the pontifical robe being
offered to each emperor on his accession by the college of Pontiffs. Gratian, he goes on,
refused the robe when the Pontiffs offered it to him KaTa TO Cnvivrl's. The peg on which
this whole digression is hung is Gratian's refusal at his accession. Thus the connection of
Gratian's refusal and his accession is deeply woven into Zosimus' narrative as a whole.

'Zosimus IV, 36.
2
See below, p. 98.
3 'L'empereur Gratien et le grand pontificat
paien', Byzantion VIII, 1933, 41 f.
4A Festival of Isis in Rome under the Christian
Emperors of the fourth Century (1937), 36.
5 Fortina, L'imperatore Graziano (1953), 214 and
247-9; Demougeot, RlL LVI (I954), 5I4; Jones,
Later Roman Empire I (i964), i63 (citing only
Zosimus as his authority, who of course says no
such thing), and many others: it has become
canonical.
6E.g. A. Piganiol, L'empire chre'tien (i947), 228,
and, notably, even Palanque, ap. Stein, Histoire du
Bas-Empire I (I959), 524, n. 52; R. Remondon, La
crise de l'empire romain (i964), I95. W. Ensslin did
not accept this view so formulated, but suggested
(Sitz.-ber. Bay. Akad. Muinchen, Phil.-hist. Ki. 1953,
2, pp. 9-IO) that on his accession the devout
Theodosius persuaded Gratian to renounce the title.
It is difficult to see why he should have done so, and
in any event A. Ehrhardt (Journ. Eccles. History xv,
I964, i f.) has now shown that there can be little
question of Theodosius influencing Gratian in
religious matters in at any rate the first two years or
so of his reign. I pass over scholars such as Baynes,
Rauschen and Homes Dudden who proposed 375,
overlooking the evidence of Ausonius; for earlier
discussions refer to the bibliographies given by
Palanque and Alfoldi.
I It was doubtless included in Theodosius'
titulature on a certain number of inscriptions and
documents which do not happen to have come down
to us up to Gratian's repudiation of the title, and
thereafter quietly dropped.
 GRATIAN S REPUDIATION OF THE PONTIFICAL ROBE 97
As we have seen, this must be wrong. And in fact Zosimus proceeds to discredit his own
chronology at once himself, for he continues in the very same sentence:
TO!S TE iEpEUCl Tr-S oroflS a&vaco8Eicns cpaci TOV iTpOTOV EV cavTOIS TETaypEVOV E?iTE1V
?i I) PO1J2ETai ITOVTlcpE? O paxiAsiEv ovopa4Ecreai, TaXiaTa yEVfETal 1rOVTl?E
Maxilpos
The allusion to Maximus links the refusal no less clearly with the usurpation of Maximus
in 382-3. For it is obviously most unlikely that this is a genuine prophecy made several
years before Maximus' revolt. Note too TcrXic-Ta: ' Maximus will soon become Pontifex'
(English word order cannot bring out the word-play on M(p)&tlpos properly).
We should not discard the embassy which Gratian rebuffed unless we have to. I
suggest that Zosimus has conflated two different embassies to Gratian, one at his accession,
and one at the time of Maximus' revolt, the embassy the Senate sent to protest about
Gratian's anti-pagan legislation of 382.
These laws have unfortunately not come down to us, and so we do not know when
exactly during the year they were issued. Probably, however, not till late in the year. In
his Ep. xvii, iO (written in summer 384), Ambrose refers to them as having been issued
'ante biennium ferme ', almost two years ago. And between May and November 382
Gratian was absent from court at Milan. If, with Homes Dudden,8 we place the legislation
at the very end of 382, then the senatorial response is not likely to have come till early in
the following year.
The revolt of Maximus is usually placed early in 383,9 though V. Grumel has recently
advanced grounds for pushing it back into late 382.10 It was not till mid-383 that Gratian's
army went over to Maximus, and not till August that Gratian himself was caught and put
to death.1" But it is more than likely that when the senatorial embassy arrived at Milan
early in 383, the news of Maximus' revolt had already reached Italy, whether or not
Maximus himself had yet crossed the channel. If it was on the occasion of this embassy
that Gratian refused the title, then it would be the perfect occasion for some wag among
the pontiffs to have said, ' If Gratian does not want to be pontifex, Maximus soon will be '.
Fortina, following many other scholars,12 dismisses this witticism as a post-eventum
invention, 'una elucubrazione retorica, senza alcun fondamento storico ... un gioco di
parole inventato dopo la caduta di Graziano per opera di Massimo '. His principal reason
is that Maximus was far from the sort of man pagans could have turned to for support.
He was a sincere and scrupulously orthodox Christian, and during his brief reign won the
dubious distinction of being the first Christian Emperor to punish a heretic by death.13
Yet surely this is precisely why the witticism cannot have been ' inventato . . . per opera
di Massimo'. Maximus did not assume the title of pontifex maximus (after Gratian's
ostentatious refusal no Christian Emperor could have accepted it again). Thus neither
Maximus after Gratian's death, nor the Senate after Maximus had revealed his true colours,
could have had any reason to invent such a story. It would have been entirely pointless.
But in the brief interval before Maximus' attitude became known-and only then-it
is perfectly understandable that some senator fuming over Gratian's attitude should have
entertained the hope that Maximus' usurpation would succeed, and that he would then
revoke Gratian's anti-pagan laws and resume the title of pontifex. Six months later, and
he would have known that the hope was vain.
Let us assume then that Zosimus is thinking of the senatorial embassy of early 383.
In support of this it might be pointed out that although he professes to be writing of the
beginning of Gratian's reign, he places this episode in his narrative not at the point of
Gratian's coronation in 367, nor at his elevation to sole Western Augustus on Valentinian's
death in 375, but immediately before Gratian's death in 383.
8 The Life and Times of St. Ambrose i (1935), 258 "After a short captivity: see Homes Dudden,
with n. i. op. cit., 221.
9 E.g. Stein, Bas-Empirei (I959), 201. 12L'imperatore Graziano 248 (with bibliography).
10 Rev. Et. Byz. xii (1954), i8 f. Demougeot, Le 13Homes Dudden, op. Cit., 230 f.: the most
moyen age (I962), 23, and Palanque, Les Empereurs recent study of Maximus is the paper of Palanque
romains d'Espagne (I965), 255, both refer to Grumel's cited at n. io.
view without either accepting or rejecting it. I have
no opinion myself.
98 ALAN CAMERON

How then did Zosimus come to confuse this embassy of 383 with the embassy which
visited Gratian on his accession ? The answer is very simple. As Zosimus so carefully
explains, on the accession of every Emperor an embassy of pontiffs (who would all be
senators) 14 called to offer him the pontifical robe. Naturally the same will have happened
at Gratian's accession, in 367. On this occasion, however, Gratian must have accepted the
title. (Or rather it must have been accepted on his behalf-Gratian was then only eight-
by Valentinian.) This is certain, since it is securely attested by the inscription of 370 and
by Ausonius in 379. Now it is surely quite comprehensible (if reprehensible) that so careless
a historian as Zosimus, who knew (a) that the Emperor was always offered the pontificate by
an embassy of senators and (b) that Gratian was the first Emperor to refuse it, should have
jumped to the mistaken conclusion, when his source described Gratian refusing the pontificate
in connection with an embassy of senators, that it was the embassy which visited him on
his accession.
In general Zosimus' narrative of this period closely follows the (mostly lost) con-
temporary history of Eunapius. But it may be, as Mendelssohn suggests,15 that the digression
on the pontiffs was inserted by Zosimus from some other source, hung on the peg of
Gratian's refusal. This is only a conjecture: we cannot rule out the possibility that Eunapius
himself inserted the digression. But if Zosimus was combining two sources here, it is even
easier to see how he came to make the confusion he did.
Some further light can perhaps be cast on Gratian's original acceptance by a rather
closer look at Ausonius' Gratiarum actio, delivered on or soon after ist January, 379.
McGuire, indeed, was prepared to dismiss ? 35 as a ' poetical passage' which ' should
not be pressed too confidently as evidence '.16 But 35 does not stand alone. There is also
42, and compare too the motif of the chastity of the pontiff (rivalled, of course, by Gratian)
at 66. Despite Alfdldi, there does not seem to be any evidence that Gratian had rejected
the title by Theodosius' accession on igth January, 379. Hence there is no particular
contemporary relevance to what Ausonius is saying. He is not, for example, trying to
reassure Gratian that he had done the right thing in originally accepting the title, or to
persuade him to resume it now. But what is interesting, in view of the fact that both
Ausonius and Gratian were Christians, is both (a) the affectionate way his mind lingers
round these old pagan concepts and (b) the way he somehow seems to reconcile Gratian
the pontifex and Gratian the Christian. At ? 35 Gratian is 'virtute victor, Augustus
sanctitate, pontifex religione '-for all the world as if the title connoted headship of his own,
instead of an alien, religion. And at ? 42 Ausonius compares the elections which gave him
the consulate with the elections for the supreme pontificate in Republican days : ' sic
potius, sic vocentur [i.e. pontifical elections], quae tu pontifex maximus deo participatus
habuisti '. By ' deus ' both Gratian and Ausonius must have understood the god of the
Christians. If it was in this affectionate and almost neutral light that Gratian was taught
to view his traditional title by the teacher who dominated even his early years as Emperor,"7
then it is not surprising that he had no qualms about accepting it when originally offered
in 367.
Let us assume then that it was in connection with the embassy of 383 that Gratian
eventually did repudiate the title. Why was it that he did so then, rather than, say, at the
same time as his anti-pagan legislation of a month or so earlier, the cause of the embassy ?
Once more it is possible to suggest a plausible reason that would fit nicely into the context
outlined so far. I suggest that it was precisely this senatorial embassy which drew Gratian's
attention to the fact that he was pontifex-thereby forcing him to renounce the title. For
support we may turn to Symmachus' famous third Relatio, the renewal of the senatorial
protest made before Valentinian II in 384.
Gratian had not been the first Emperor to order the removal of the Altar of Victory
from the Senate house in Rome. Constantius II had done so during his visit to Rome in

14
For a list of priesthoods held by the late-fourth-
century Roman aristocracy (impressive in view of the
fragmentary state of our information), see H. Bloch,
Harv. Theol.Rev. xxxviii (I945), 244 f.
15See his edition of Zosimus (I887), p. xxxviii.
16Catholic Hist. Review xxii (I936), 307.
17 Alfoldi, Conflict of Ideas in the Late Roman
Empire (I952), 87 f.
 GRATIAN S REPUDIATION OF THE PONTIFICAL ROBE 99
357.18 In his Rel. (III, 7) Symmachus contrasts the actions of Constantius and Gratian.
Constantius had only ordered the removal of the Altar (a short-lived measure: it was soon
replaced) ; he had not touched the priesthoods:
' nihil ille decerpsit sacrarum virginum privilegiis, replevit nobilibussacerdotia. Romanis
caerimoniis non negavit impensas '.
In fact not only did he not touch the priesthoods, he filled up the priestly colleges. Now if
he did this, he must have done it in his capacity as pontifex maximus.19 Surprising though
this might seem, we can hardly doubt Symmachus' word. The matter could easily have
been checked, and it would seriously have damaged his credit to have made such a claim
if it had been false. Evidently Constantius was unwilling to offend the powerful nobles
who traditionally monopolized the priesthoods, and agreed when they requested him to fill
up the vacancies in the colleges.
Symmachus' Relatio is the second senatorial protest. It is natural to assume that much
the same arguments were put forward in the first protest, addressed to Gratian himself 20
-and the same contrast pointed between the conduct of Gratian and the equally devout
Christian, Constantius. In the eyes of the pagan senators it must have seemed an excellent
precedent. Like Gratian, Constantius had removed the Altar, but he had not touched the
priesthoods and had actually carried out some of his duties as pontifex. If the precedent
were pointed out, Gratian might consent to follow it and relax his measures. It must at any
rate have seemed a possibility worth following up. For it was not so much the removal of
the Altar that really concerned Symmachus and his fellow-senators (though the Altar was
naturally very dear to their hearts) as the withdrawal of the state subsidies. Symmachus'
attitude was that the state religion (that is the old pagan state religion) was not a private
affair. The maintenance of the temples and priesthoods was a public matter and had to be
performed at state expense. If they were neglected, the state would suffer.21 This is the
central theme of the Relatio. Not, of course, a theme calculated to appeal to a Christian,
but Symmachus sincerely believed in it.
Naturally, when it was pointed out to Gratian that he was still technically head of the
state religion which he had just disestablished, his only possible course of action was to
reject the title at once. The information that Constantius had actually exercised his pontifical
duties no doubt horrified the pious youth, and served only to strengthen him in his resolution.
This time there was no Ausonius to reassure him and uphold the old traditions. By now
Gratian had succumbed instead to the influence of that less compromising Christian,
St. Ambrose.
Some elements in this reconstruction are admittedly hypothetical. But it does have
at least three advantages over the other solutions so far proposed. (a) It explains Zosimus'
strange error in linking the refusal with both Gratian's accession and Maximus' revolt.
(b) It provides a context-the only context-for the witticism about Maximus. (c) It
provides a motive for Gratian's refusal.22 The solutions of Alfoldi and Palanque have to
leave all three details unexplained. They accept the bare fact of Gratian's refusal from
Zosimus, and dismiss every single detail of the context in which it is set.
I suggest then that in 367 Gratian accepted the title as a matter of course, no doubt
under the influence of Valentinian. It was not till 383 that he repudiated it, as a result
of the anomalous situation in which his disestablishment of the pagan priesthoods had
placed him.

Bedford College, London

18 Elaborately described by Ammianus, who,
however, strangely omits the removal of the Altar of
Victory : on the significance of this, cf. my remarks
in JRS LIV (1 964), 24-5.
19 For the Emperor's powers to appoint pontiffs,
cf. Dio LIII, I7; Tacitus, Hist. I, 77; Pliny, Epp.
X, I3.
20 This embassy was in fact denied admittance to
the consistory, but obviously a written record will
have been submitted as well.
21 Cf. F. Paschoud, Historia XIV (I965), 22I (who
was ill-advised to retract this opinion in a ' note
complementaire' on p. 234). See my paper in
Harvard Studies I968.
22 For example, as McGuire pointed out against
Palanque (Cath. Hist. Rev. XXII, I936, 307), there is
really no good reason why the dropping of the title
should have any direct connection with Gratian's
anti-pagan legislation as a whole. There is certainly
no evidence that it did.
IOO ALAN CAMERON

APPENDIX A
This is perhaps a suitable place to discuss W. Hartke's interpretation (Rbmische Kinderkaiser,
I95I, p. 300) of HA, Elag.VI, 7:

'In penum Vestae, quod solae virgines solique pontifices adeunt, inrupit [sc. Elagabalus]
pollutus ipse omni contagione morum cum his qui se polluerant'.

Hartke claims that the author of this passage has forgotten that Elagabalus, being Emperor, was
automatically pontifex maximus, and therefore entitled to enter the shrine of Vesta. Accordingly he
claims that the passage must have been written after Gratian had refused the title and the Emperor
had accordingly ceased to be pontifex maximus, and before 395, when the colleges of pontiffs were
abolished. This suggestion has elicited varying reactions. A. Momigliano was of the opinion that
'texts cannot be pressed in this way' (Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XVII, 1954,
41, n. i), while A. Chastagnol regarded it as ' excellent' (Actes du VIIe Congres de l'Assoc. G. Bude,
I964, 20I). We are not here concerned with the question of the date-still quite uncertain-of
the HA. Its relevance for our present purpose is that if Hartke is correct, and a pagan senator
writing within a few years of Gratian's refusal had become so far accustomed to the Emperor not
being pontifex maximus that it did not even occur to him that earlier Emperors had ever held the
title, then plainly Gratian's refusal cannot have created much of a stir.
A number of objections can be raised to such a view. First, and most generally, it is hardly
credible that so soon after Gratian's refusal a pagan writer should simply have forgotten that the
Emperor ever had been pontifex. The event surely must have created a stir. Secondly, even granted
for the moment Hartke's first terminus of Gratian's refusal, his second is quite groundless. After all,
whether or not there were still pontiffs when the passage was written, there certainly were at the
time the author was writing of. Is one seriously to suppose that he would have refrained from
alluding to pontiffs in Elagabalus' day just because they had ceased to exist in his own ? Thirdly,
and more important, the argument for the first terminus is equally groundless. Hartke has mis-
represented the whole passage.
In the first place, we are not told simply that Elagabalus ' entered ' the shrine of Vesta, as
Hartke implies (Hartke misleadingly does not quote the passage in its entirety). We are told that he
' broke in ', inrupit. ' Broke in ', moreover, ' though himself defiled by every moral stain and in the
company of those who had defiled themselves' (Magie's translation). Not even the pontifex maximus
was entitled to burst into Vesta's shrine while polluted-and certainly not in the company of others.
These others were presumably Elagabalus' disreputable entourage, but even had they been pontiffs,
it was forbidden to any but the pontifex maximus himself and the Vestals to enter the holy of holies
in the temple of Vesta. And what did Elagabalus do when inside the holy of holies ? He tried to
carry away the sacred objects and install them in the temple of Elagabalus! No one, I hope, will
suggest that he was within his rights here as well. The author's indignation would surely have
been justified even if he had known perfectly well that Elagabalus was pontifex maximus.
A pontifex maximus who behaved like this-and who later even went so far as to marry a Vestal
virgin-hardly deserved to be counted as such.
There is another strong objection to the suggestion that' Lampridius ', the author of the V. Elag.,
'forgot ' that in the third century the Emperor was also pontifex maximus. In his only other contribu-
tion to the HA, the Vita of Elagabalus' successor Alexander Severus, ' Lampridius ' records the
speech allegedly delivered by Alexander thanking the senate for creating him Emperor, in which he
specifically includes among the honours conferred upon him the pontificatus maximus (viii, i).
The authenticity of this speech is, to say the very least, dubious. It is more than likely to have been
written by ' Lampridius ' himself: if so, then he knew perfectly well that the Emperor was also
pontifex maximus. And at V. Al. Sev., 40, 9, he goes on to record that Alexander wore a toga praetexta
when performing sacrifices ' loco pontificis maximi, non imperatoris ', and at 56,I0 the senate are
represented (in another probably fictitious document) as addressing Alexander as ' patri patriae,
pontifici maximo '. ' Lampridius ' was not only well aware of, but unusually interested in, Alexander's
tenure of the supreme pontificate.
Now the question of the identity of the SHA is notoriously a matter of great controversy.
But whether or not there were six different authors, or only one using six pseudonyms, there can be
no doubt that V. Elag. and V. Al. Sev. were written by the same man (even if he wasn't really called
Lampridius). There are obvious similarities between the two lives: they are ascribed to the same
author, one immediately follows the other and both are dedicated to Constantine (cf., e.g., H. Stern,
Date et destinataire de l'Histoire Auguste, i953, 29). It is almost inevitable to conclude that they
were conceived together and written in quick succession one after the other. Thus if ' Lampridius'
had 'forgotten' that the Emperor was also pontifex maximus in V. Elag., then he very soon
' remembered ' again.
 GRATIAN S REPUDIATION OF THE PONTIFICAL ROBE IOI

APPENDIX B

One further text requires to be taken account of in this context. In his note on Aen. iII, 8o,
'rex idem hominum Phoebique sacerdos', Servius remarks 'unde hodieque imperatores pontifices
dicimus '.
I hope to have shown in JRS LVI, I966, 29 f. that Servius cannot have published his com-
mnentarybefore c. 400-more probably a decade or so later still (cf., too, CQ n.s. XVII, I967, 393 f.).
How then to explain his apparent assertion that Emperors were still pontiffs in his day, well inside
the fifth century ? Is it possible that this chronology for Servius is after all mistaken ? Or are we to
suppose that Servius really did wha-t Hartke claims ' Lampridius' did, and simply forgot about
Gratian's refusal ?
It is true that there is no way of obtaining a firm date for the commentary, but there can be no
doubt that Servius was still only in his 'teens at the dramatic date of Macrobius' Saturnalia-384,
a year after Gratian's refusal (IRS, l.c.). What he did, in fact, was copy the sentence in question
out of his source without apparently realizing that it was no longer true in his own day.
To many this may seem an unduly cavalier, not to say outrageous, assumption, smacking of the
worst excesses of nineteenth-century German Quellenforschung. Was Servius really so unintelligent ?
Yet priceless though Servius' commentary is, its value lies in its sources rather than in itself. It has
long been recognized that the nature of the overlap between Servius and the so-called ' Servius
auctus' or Servius Danielis is such as to require the conclusion that both derive from a common
source. This common source, it is now generally (and rightly) agreed, can only have been the
commentary of Aelius Donatus, published some time around the middle of the fourth century.
Comparison between the two versions reveals that both copied Donatus for the most part verbatim,
the main difference being that it is Servius who omits, simplifies and distorts most (cf. recently
R. B. Lloyd, Harvard Studies LXV, I96I, 29I-34I). To give but one example: it has often been
alleged that the famous Helen episode in Aen. II, absent from our earliest MSS but preserved by
Servius, was absent too from Donatus (most recently R. G. Austin, CQ n.s. XI, I96I, i8S). But
H. T. Rowell has now conclusively demonstrated not only that it was present in Donatus, but that
the Servius passage is a more or less verbatim transcript of Donatus' note (The Classical Tradition:
Studies ... H. Caplan, I966, 2I0 f.; cf. also the same author'sstudies in AJP LXXVIII, I957, I f.,
and YCS xv, I957, I 13 f.). There can be little doubt, in fact, that Servius himself contributed little
to Vergilian scholarship but a pair of scissors and a pot of paste. And one illustration (among many)
of this is the way he snipped out his note on the Emperor being pontzfex maximus without even
noticing that it was no longer true.
That this note did come direct from Donatus is proved by the fact (made clear now in the new
volume of the Harvard Servius) that it appears in both Servius and Servius Danielis-taken from
their common source. At Aen. IV, 262 Servius Danielis has the similar notes ' . . . togam duplicem,
in qua flamines sacrificant, . . . flamines, flaminicae, virgines, pontificesque ad sacrificia utuntur',
and at Aen. III, I2 'ut hodie quoque penus Vestae claudi vel aperiri dicitur'. As it happens Servius
himself omits both notes, probably because they did not suit the more elementary purpose of his
own commentary rather than because he had noticed that they were no longer true. For (in addition
to the note on III, 8o) cf. too his note on II, I48 (shared with Servius Danielis): 'item vigilasne,
deum gens (Aen. X, 228) verba sunt quibus pontifex maximus utitur in pulvinaribus'. The present
tense is even more inappropriate here. No Emperor can have done this for nearly a century.
One of the main objections to Hartke's suggestion about ' Lampridius' was that he placed the
composition of the HA so soon after Gratian's refusal. But Servius did not write his commentary
till perhaps 20 or 30 years after the event. By then he might well have forgotten Gratian's pointed
rejection of the title, an event of his early 'teens. Indeed this passage might even be used as
corroboration of the later date I have suggested for Servius' commentary.
It is a text too to be pondered by those who stress the pagan element in Servius' commentary.
So far from taking this opportunity of manifesting his disapproval-or even nostalgia-at Gratian's
radical break with tradition, Servius apparently forgot all about it !
In a recent paper, ' Les Saturnales de Macrobe source de Servius Danielis', in RE?LXLI, I963,
336 f., E. Turk has drawn attention to the representation of Vergil as pontifex maximus in Macrobius,
arguing that ' l'idee de voir en Virgile un grand pontife doit avoir vu le jour dans le cercle de
Symmaque ' as a sort of discreet reply to Gratian's refusal from the 'noblesse romaine, consciente
de l'importance du r6le du grand pontificat pour l'ancienne religion '. If I am correct in placing the
composition of the Saturnalia c. 430 and after the appearance of Servius' commentary (7RS, I966,
p. 37), rather than between 384 and 387 as Turk supposed (l.c.), this view will clearly have to be
reconsidered, if not abandoned. Especially in view of the lack of interest shown in the subject by
Servius, writing nearer the event than Macrobius. Turk admits that the same motif of Vergil the
pontifex is to be found in Servius Danielis (cf. also Rowell, AJP LXXVIII, 1957, 17), but attempts to
show that Servius Danielis derived it from Macrobius. In my view his attempt is a failure, and we
I02 GRATIAN S REPUDIATION OF THE PONTIFICAL ROBE

should accordinglyreturn to the orthodox view that such parallelsas exist between Macrobius and
the Servian corpus are due to use of a common source (cf. Lloyd, Harv. Studies xv, I96I, 292 f.,
306, 324). Whether or not this common source (as seems most likely) is Donatus, it must certainly
have been written before Gratian's refusal. Nevertheless, in view of the fondness of Vergilian
commentatorsfor treating Vergil as an authority for the old religious lore (whenever it may have
originated),it may well be that by the late fourth and earlyfifth centuriesthe more subtle formulation
of Peter Brown (excluding conscious polemicalintent) is still acceptable: 'The ChristianEmperors
had abandonedthe title of Pontifex Maximus; but Vergil might replace them in performing this
office for religious readers' (referringto Saturnalia i, 24,i6: Augustineof Hippo [I967], 301).