coster charles henry christianity and the invasions synesius of cyrene

7/29/2019 Coster Charles Henry Christianity and the Invasions Synesius of Cyrene

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The fourth article in a special series onIssues and Personalities of Late Antiquity

CHRISTIANITY AND THE INVASIONS: SYNESIUS OF CYRENE

CHARLES HENRY COSTER

4(THE CIVILIZATION which proclaimedthe eternity of Rome could not sur-vive the triumph of the religion whichinspired The City of God; the civiliza-tion which proclaimed the ideal of menssana in corpore sano could not survivethe triumph of the religion which rever-enced St. Simeon Stylites."' Yet whatmore striking proof of the eternity ofRome could there be than the fact thatthe Popes succeeded the Caesars, thatthey assumed the venerable title ofPontifex Maximus, once rejected as

pagan by the Emperor Gratian? Whatgreater triumph of the methods of Aris-totle than the Summa of St. ThomasAquinas? Classical civilization did in-deed die, but not without heirs to inheritvery considerable portions of its estate.The heritage was transmitted to theEurope of the earlier Middle Agesthrough two main channels. First, inthe Mediterranean basin, at a levelbelow that of conscious culture, throughthe continuity of the daily life and

See volume 54 (1959) 145-59, 213-20;volume 55 (1960) 146-50.

habits of the people. The ruler might bea Roman, an Angevin, or a Savoy; thewomen of southern Italy would stillcarry their amphorae to the villagefountains; the shepherds play theirpipes in the hills.2The second channel of transmission -the one with which we are here con-cerned-was the Church. For it wasthe very Church the expansion of whichwas proof that the classical world wasmoribund-it was this very Churchthat was destined to adopt and to handdown much of Roman law, of Greek andLatin literature, the very notions (andthe words themselves) of education,orderly administration, urbanity andcivilization. If classical civilizationcould not survive the triumph of theChristian Church, yet neither could theChurch become the directing forcethroughout Europe without first absorb-ing much of the classical tradition. Ithad to have leaders, and those leaders,however original, were necessarily menbrought up in the classical tradition-what other was there, once the Churchhad ceased to be merely a Jewish sect?These leaders brought with them much


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of the background of the only worldthey knew.The impregnation of the Church byclassical culture began as soon as Chris-tianity sought converts among upperclasses -apart, that is, from the Jews,who, though often very highly educated,generally rejected the classical tradi-tion. The Apologists were cultivatedmen. If Justin Martyr was not an in-spired writer, he was no mean figure;Minutius Felix was one of the most de-lightful authors of his time; Tertullianwas a genius and a scholar second onlyto St. Augustine among the Latin Chris-tian writers; Origen was one of themost prolific writers and greatest schol-ars of all time. He names, by the way,his own teacher, Pantaenus, as an ex-ample of a Christian doctor who availedhimself of pagan learning.3 Yet thescathing contempt of Tertullian for theold myths sung by the poets, St. Augus-tine's severe condemnation of them,4the famous dream of St. Jerome, theharshness with which Gregory the Greatrebuked Desiderius of Vienne for lectur-ing on profane literature5 -there isplenty to prove that the process of ab-sorption was not easy, and of courseit was lamentably far from complete.The barbarian invasions, curiouslyenough, furthered the process to amarked degree. They were unquestion-ably one of the major causes of thedestruction of classical civilization inthe West: the successor-states could notmaintain the roads, the schools, thecommerce of even the later Empire; thecities shrank to fractions of their formersize; law degenerated into custom; his-tory into chronicles; literature, archi-tecture, painting and sculpture dwindleduntil they could no longer be said toexist as living arts. Still, though theseinvasions shared with Christianity theresponsibility for killing classical civil-ization, they also drove many of themembers of the senatorial aristocracy,at that time the chief depository ofclassical culture in the West, into as-suming positions of leadership in theChurch, thereby increasing both the

desire of the Church to assume its newrole and its capacity to do so.At the end of the fourth century thebishop had already become the leadingfigure in the city: head of the Church,most important judicial officer, leaderin all aspects of civic welfare, defenderof his flock against predatory soldiersand officials, and against barbarian in-vaders.6 If this was the position of thebishop under a government still Romanand landlords still indigenous, it is easyto see how much the need for his pro-tection would increase when the Romangovernors and prefects were replacedby barbarian kings, when the landlords,though usually left in possession of mostof their estates, yet often had to giveup parts to Germanic proprietors, and,as to the rest, were freed from the re-straint, such as it was, of the old author-ities.7 It was natural, therefore, that asthe office of bishop became more im-portant from a secular point of view,figures more considerable in the layworld should come to be chosen as bish-ops with increasing frequency, andshould be willing, perhaps under a littlepressure in some cases, to accept theoffice. There arose an unmistakabletendency to select men of such capacity,training and position as to be able totake over the functions that were grad-ually being abandoned by the lay au-thorities and also to hold their ownunder alien rule-to protect the Cath-olic, Latin population from too greatoppression by their new Arian, Ger-manic masters.sIn many cases, such men though sin-cere Christians, had not been induced tobecome bishops so much because of anysudden access of religious zeal as be-cause that seemed to them the best wayto help their communities. There wasno reason, then, for them to developany aversion to the Classics which hadformed their minds; their admission tothe ranks of the higher clergy was un-doubtedly a major factor in promotingthe absorption of large elements ofclassical culture by the Church. Even aPaulinus of Nola (and he, converted toa high degree of asceticism, is as diffi-

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cult an example as one can select),though he might renounce the writingof secular poetry, yet in his Natalicia,composed in honor of St. Felix, main-tained the same standard-high, butscarcely inspired-that had broughthim literary fame as a layman. SidoniusApollinaris also renounced writing po-etry after he became bishop," but hecontinued to write in the euphuisticstyle so much admired in his time. St.Ambrose himself, the brilliant prototypeof the magnate become bishop, wenteven further. Though he practised aus-terity in his way of living, he continuedto believe in the value of classical edu-cation, and to introduce classical allu-sions into his writings.'1 And, as wehave seen, Desiderius of Vienne wasstill teaching classical literature a goodtwo centuries later.We have just referred to St. Ambroseas the prototype of the magnate becomebishop. Synesius of Cyrene,11 thoughone of the leading figures in his prov-ince, was not a magnate on the imperialscale, as were St. Ambrose himself,Paulinus of Nola, Rutilius Namatianusand others whom we have mentioned.Unlike them, he was not a member ofthe immensely rich senatorial class, butwas of curial rank, a member, that is,of the well-to-do provincial nobility.12Nevertheless, the events in which hetook part and his reactions to themmade his life a striking illustration ofour theme. That he came from theGreek half of the Empire, not the Latin,makes him perhaps the exception thatproves the rule. For the barbarian men-ace became acute in the East someyears before it reached the criticalstage in the West; it is significant thathis reactions to that crisis were so sim-ilar to those of the western leaders whenthey later had to face situations similarto his. That his successors should, forthe most part, have been in the Westand not in the East, is surely due to thefact that the imperial government inthe East overcame its crisis, while theimperial government in the West suc-cumbed.

Cyrene had been one of the most pros-

perous of the Grecian colonies, but ithad slowly declined under Roman rule,and had been destroyed and the inhabit-ants decimated by the Jews during theirsavage revolt in 115 A.D. Dio Cassius,speaking, to be sure, not of Cyrenealone, but of Cyrenaica, tells us that220,000 Greeks and Romans were killedat this time.13 Ammianus Marcellinusreferred to it as urbs antiqua sed de-serta.14 Synesius wrote of it: "Cyrene,a Greek city of ancient and holy name,sung in a thousand odes by the wisemen of the past, but now poor and down-cast, a vast ruin, . . ." and in anotherpassage he referred to it as having fall-en lower than any of the cities of Pon-tus.15 Yet we know that Hadrian hadreinvigorated the region with new colo-nists, and that he rebuilt at least theheart of the city-very handsomely,too, as we can still see. Further, Syne-sius himself often refers to shipping andthe sending of goods by sea in a waythat implies considerable trade; his let-ters on local politics reveal an activecivic life and prove that there were con-siderable numbers of well-to-do citizens.The truth would seem to be that thewhole region had declined; that theports, especially Ptolemais and Apollo-nia or Sozousa, had gained at the ex-pense of the older inland cities of Cy-rene and Barca; that the Cyrene of thetime of Synesius was a moderatelysmall but lively town, with a very greattradition, concentrated around the tem-ples and shrines that had been the cen-ter of the ancient metropolis, but, prob-ably, with large areas of what had beenthe old city now stretching, ruined andabandoned, beyond the urban limits ofhis day.'"Synesius was born in or near Cyrene,possibly as early as 360 A.D., perhaps aslate as 375.17 He received his earlyeducation there. We may get some ideaof his school years from a few passagesin which Synesius refers to the bringing-up of younger members of his family.In one letter, we find him expressinghis pleasure at the progress his nephewis making in declaiming verse, and inanother praising the boy's assiduity in

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reading. We find him planning to in-troduce his own son, as yet unborn, tothe great philosophers and other prosewriters. He will advise the youth grad-ually to relax his mind after study ofthese deeper works by turning to lighterones, and finally to comedy, "at onemoment playing with your books, atanother working with them." He refersto the works of Dio Chrysostom as onthe border between "preparatory teach-ing and instruction in the ultimatetruth."18 If we may apply these re-marks to his own education, it seemsthat this must have been about the pointthat he himself reached before leavingCyrene for Alexandria. Interestinglyenough, we have no evidence whateverthat he was familiar with Latin litera-ture.19It would be a serious omission if wewere to treat of the education of Syne-sius without emphasizing further themajor part which physical training andgames and sports of all kinds played init. We know that he bought a slave toact as a physical trainer.20 We are nottold whether this was for himself, hisnephew, or his sons, but it is obviousthat he attached real importance tosuch training and that he himself hadcertainly received it as a boy. Indeed,he writes, "When I look up from mybooks, I like to enter into every sort ofsport." Above all, hunting meant a verygreat deal to him. The earliest of hisworks that we know of (unfortunately,it has not come down to us) was calledCynegetics. Near the end of his life, hewrote:I feel that I have a good deal of inclinationfor amusements. Even as a child, I wascharged with a mania for arms and horses.I shall be grieved, indeed greatly shall Isuffer at seeing my beloved dogs deprivedof their hunting, and my bow eaten up byworms.

All in all,21 we may be sure that Syne-sius as a boy and as a youth had thewell-rounded education, physical andmental, of a Greek, still pagan, of goodfamily, and that it was carried as faras his age and the resources of the

town and of his father's library22 per-mitted.Cyrene, though, however great its his-

tory, was then a comparatively smalltown and probably offered only limitedfacilities for advanced studies. Further,the parents of Synesius seem to havedied before this time,23 and perhapsthe young man wanted to see somethingof the world. At any rate, he went toAlexandria, then one of the great cen-ters of living Greek civilization, andthere sat under the great Hypatia, themost famous pagan teacher of her day.Hypatia was held in esteem as amathematician and astronomer, andabove all as the chief exponent of Neo-Platonism in her time. Dramatic talesof her beauty, her tragic death-thesemust not deceive us into doubting thesolid foundation of her great reputation.Her works have not come down to us,but the very serious respect with whichthe Christian sources speak of her, thepagan teacher assassinated by a Chris-tian mob, is conclusive evidence thather fame was fully deserved.24This remarkable woman was the out-standing influence in the developmentof the mental and spiritual capacitiesof Synesius. He appealed to her forsympathy in his personal sorrows andin his distress at the misfortunes of hisbeloved Cyrene; he submitted his writ-ings to her judgment; sure of her ap-proval, he wrote of his abhorrence offanaticism, of his intention to give im-portance to style even in serious writ-ing, of his wish to mingle the gravewith the playful. He was grateful to herabove all for her philosophical -or per-haps we ought rather to say, religious-instruction, for having introducedhim to the "mystic dogmas," for hav-ing taught him to choose the best, everto strive for the ultimate reunion of hissoul, freed from the trammels of de-basing matter, with the Divine Being ofwhom it was, and always had been, apart. 25It cannot be claimed that there wasanything very original in the philoso-phy of Synesius, nor shall we have

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occasion to analyze it in this paper, be-yond pointing out certain important as-pects in which it differed from Christi-anity. We must always keep in mind,though, that this side of his life wasand ever remained of the highest im-portance to him. We have seen his at-tachment to sports and hunting, weshall see his devotion to civic duties.These interests must not make us for-get that he regarded the one as a nec-essary relaxation from more seriousoccupations, and the other, as an indis-pensable duty to be sure, but also asone that should on no account be al-lowed to become a burdensome distrac-tion from the pursuit of the highestaim: the redemption of the soul fromthe bondage of matter, and its reunionwith the Divinity whence it came. As hehimself expressed it towards the end ofhis life:'2"From childhood, leisure and comfort in lifehave ever appeared to me a divine blessingwhich someone has said befits divine na-tures; and this is naught else but the cultureof the intellect, and its reconciliation withGod on the part of the man who possessesthat leisure and profits by it. ... passingmy days as in a sacred festival, I strovethroughout all my life to preserve a stateof spirit gentle and untroubled by storms.But, nevertheless, God has not made meuseless to men, inasmuch as oftentimes bothcities and private individuals made use ofmy services in time of need. For God gaveme the power to do the utmost and to willthe fairest. None of these services drew meapart from philosophy, nor cut short myhappy leisure. ... I lived with good hopes.. .apportioning my life between prayer,books, and the chase. For, that the soul andbody may be in health, it is necessary to dosome work on the one hand and on theother to make supplication to God.

We have already contrasted the posi-tions of Rutilius Namatianus and Pauli-nus of Nola.27 They were diametricallyopposite: the one a pagan, the other aChristian; the one believing that man'shighest duty was to the state, the otherbelieving that the true Christian shouldconfront even the barbarian invaderwith non-resistance; the one with realand deep reverence for the classical

tradition of moderation and proportionin all things, the other (though he pre-served more of the classical than heperhaps realized) an uncompromisingascetic.It is interesting to find in Synesius,their contemporary, a man who inhimself reconciled their contradictions.Like Rutilius, he was born a pagan; likePaulinus, he died a Christian bishop.Like Rutilius, he was intensely patri-otic; like Paulinus, he felt that thehighest duty of man was the salvationof his soul--but he did not feel thatthis highest duty entailed asceticism,or that it could be properly performedat the expense of his duty to his coun-try and to his fellow-citizens. LikeRutilius, he despised fanaticism; likePaulinus, he was a deeply religiousman. We turn now to the mature life ofSynesius to witness the manifestationof these qualities.Sailing to the Pentapolis in 395,2 sSynesius, for all his professed desire todevote himself entirely to philosophy, 2"soon found himself actively engaged inwar and politics, and yet with leisure towrite his Calvitii Encomium, an ele-gant bit of sophistry in avowed imita-tion of Dio.30Resistance to the barbarian invadersof the Empire was perhaps the domi-nating external factor in the life of Sy-nesius. Let us, then, look more closelyat an aspect of this problem which par-ticularly concerned Cyrenaica and Sy-nesius. Throughout history, the Berbershave constituted the dominant ethnicelement in the population of NorthAfrica west of Egypt. Politically, theyhave almost always been subject toforeign powers, and have adopted thecivilizations of the colonizing peopleswith considerable success. The Greeksin Cyrenaica, the Phoenicians and Ro-mans further west, the Byzantines, theArabs and later the Turks (though theTurks seem to have left the Arabiccivilization undisturbed, merely per-mitting it to sink to a lower stage ofdegradation), and finally the Spaniards,French and Italians have all estab-

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lished themselves along these shores;always, though, in long, narrow strips,wherever highlands near the coast haveattracted sufficient rainfall to supportsettled populations. Inland, the high-lands fall away to the south, the coun-try becoming ever drier until it mergesinto the great desert. This region, toodry for permanent settlement, especial-ly before modern machinery made itpossible to dig deep wells, has yet al-ways supported nomadic tribes. Untilthe coming of the camel, these livedmore or less wretchedly on their flocksand herds, perhaps on tribute leviedfrom the inhabitants of the smalleroases, to a considerable extent by hunt-ing and, when driven by hunger ortempted by the weakness of their pro-spective victims, by raiding the settledareas to the north. The introduction ofthe camel into Africa west of Egyptseems to have taken place as late asthe fourth century A.D. The animal hadalready become common in Cyrenaicain the time of Synesius; the nomadictribes, just beginning to make use ofthem, were gaining greatly in mobilityand in consequence becoming far moredangerous than they ever had been be-fore. 31The writings of Synesius are full ofallusions to wars with these nomadicraiders from the south, but the datesof many of his letters are uncertain.Two incidents, though, seem surely toapply to the time we have now reached,395 A.D. The enemy was said to be ap-proaching Cyrene, and local forces, act-ing on the initiative of Synesius, movedout against them, being joined byothers from the neighboring town ofBalagrae under their own commanderFor five days, Joannes the Phrygian,evidently an officer charged with thedefense of the region, was not to befound. At last, though, he came, ex-plaining that he had been fighting thebarbarians elsewhere. He assumed thetask of whipping the force into shape,but caused nothing but confusion. Pres-ently, the enemy appeared, a sorry-looking lot of ruffians on horseback.

Following their usual custom, they dis-mounted in order to fight on foot. Sy-nesius wished to do likewise since theground did not seem suitable for caval-ry maneuvers. Joannes, though, or-dered a charge and then, instead ofleading it, turned his horse about andgalloped off to the shelter of some dis-tant caves. The two forces separatedwithout actually coming to blows.More heroic was the resistance of theclergy of Axomis. While the profession-al soldiers were hiding from the enemy,the priests called the peasants of thedistrict together and led them outagainst the raiders. They surprised thebarbarians in a narrow defile- but ap-pear to have been surprised themselvestoo. The Deacon Faustus rose to theemergency: he seized a stone, sprangupon the foremost of the enemy, struckhim in the temple with the stone,knocked him down, stripped him of hisarmor and followed this by felling otherbarbarians as they came up, directingthe skirmish and putting the raiders toroute. These priests, Synesius tells us,were the first to encourage the peopleby showing that the barbarians couldactually be wounded and killed. Lateron, though, Synesius seems to havetaken part in actual fighting: he wroteto Hypatia that he saw the enemy andslain men every day, and that sooneror later he expected to be killed too.32If we put this information, scanty asit is, together with what we know ofthe political activities of Synesius, thepieces fit into a consistent whole. Hehad declined the offer of his friend Her-culian to secure for him an introductionto the commander of the forces in Cy-rene. He now accepted the offer afterall, on the ground that his friends, bothcivilians and soldiers, were urging himto take part in local politics. He tookhis place as a member of the curia ofCyrene and there urged that barbarianmercenaries should be excluded fromthe army, and that the Pentapolisshould no longer be a separate militarycommand but return to its former sta-tus of dependence on the Praefectus

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Augustalis, the head of the imperial ad-ministration in Egypt.33 This seems toaccord with his experiences as a leaderof local levies and with his dissatisfac-tion with the Phrygian officer, Joannes.As to the barbarians, we see frommany passages that he felt (though helater somewhat modified his point ofview) that they had no real interest inthe defence of the country but caredonly to make their fortunes. As to theofficers responsible to Constantinople,he felt that the authorities there consid-ered Cyrenaica a remote and unim-portant province, and awarded the com-mand for political reasons or for money.rather than on the ground of merit.Egypt, on the other hand, shared com-mon problems of defence with Cy-renaica and would feel that a threat tothe security of that province was athreat to its own security as well.34He seems, though, to have beensharply opposed, especially by a cer-tain Julius, who was a very powerfulfigure in Cyrene and remained the op-ponent of Synesius for the rest of hislife. Perhaps, too, officers in commandof the imperial troops in the provinceresented his opinion of them. For atime, at least, his enemies had the bestof the argument: Synesius surprisedeven his own brother by embarkingunexpectedly for Athens in obedienceto mysterious warnings sent in dreamsthat many people were bent on doinghim harm if he did not at once leaveCyrene.35 In another letter, he wrotethat he found in Athens nothing but theancient sites, the mere desiccated skinof the city which once had lived. Onemight have expected a more gentlecomment from one so attached to a Cy-rene that was also shorn of its ancientglories.Whatever the cause of this unex-pected trip and however vigorous theopposition of Julius, Synesius soon re-turned to Cyrene and apparently car-ried a vote in the curia in favor of themeasures he desired: in 399, we findhim in Constantinople as envoy fromCyrene and in that capacity advocat-

ing, in a formal address before Arca-dius, that the Emperor should abandonhis life of luxurious and hieratic seclu-sion, that he should assume real controlof his government and real commandof his armies, that the barbariansshould be excluded from the govern-ment and from the armies, that pro-vincial governors should be chosen ona basis of merit only, that the Emperorshould learn to know his dominions bytravel and by listening to the requestsof missions sent to his court, and thathe should enrich the cities and his sub-jects in general by curbing extrava-gance and reducing taxation. 3It will not be possible to discussmany interesting aspects of this famousspeech: we are concerned with Christi-anity and the barbarian invasions, sothat it is the attitude of Synesius to-wards the barbarians that must occupyus. Only a few years before, an earlierorator, Pacatus, had praised Theodo-sius the Great, the father of Arcadiusbefore whom Synesius spoke:37Dicamne ego receptos servitum Gothos cas-tris tuis militem, terris sufficere cultorem?. . .quaecumque natio barbarorum roboreferocia numero gravis umquam nobis fuit,aut boni consulit ut quiescat aut laetaturquasi amica, si serviat ....Synesius painted an entirely differentpicture:38 Gothic generals seated inthe Consistory, large Gothic contin-gents in the Roman armies, Gothicslaves in quantities. The situation wasripe for the wolves - generals, soldiersand slaves together-to fall upon thesheep. Indeed, parts of the Empire (Sy-nesius was referring to Tribigild in AsiaMinor and Alaric in Epirus) were al-ready inflamed by such movements.The Emperor should therefore purgehis council and his armies of the bar-barians while he could still do so.It was not merely that Pacatus andSynesius looked upon public affairsfrom different points of view, but thatthe situation had deteriorated withstartling speed during the decade be-tween the two orations. When Pacatusspoke in 389, all the elements of danger

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which disturbed Synesius were alreadyin existence, but they remained inac-tive, kept down by the firmness of The-odosius. Three years later, though, inJanuary, 395, Theodosius died, and thedam broke in the East. In that verymonth, Alaric led his Goths againstConstantinople. The Pretorian PrefectRufinus, humbling himself by going tothe Gothic camp dressed as a German,persuaded Alaric to withdraw, but hewithdrew only to plunder Macedonia,Thessaly, Greece and Epirus. Savedonce by Rufinus and another time bythe perhaps deliberate laxity of Sti-licho, Alaric had, at the time Synesiusspoke, been bought off temporarily byreceiving the appointment of magistermilitum per Illyricum, a position whichput him in the happy situation of main-taining himself and his people at publicexpense while playing off one half ofthe Empire against the other.To return, however, to 395, the Hunsraided Thrace in January and in thesummer broke through the CaspianGates, crossed Armenia, besieged An-tioch and ravaged Asia Minor. Later inthis same eventful year, Rufinus washewn to pieces in the presence of theEmperor Arcadius by the soldiers ofGainas, a Gothic general who had beeninstigated by Stilicho to commit themurder. The praepositus sacri cubiculi,the eunuch Eutropius, succeeding to thepower of Rufinus though not to his of-fice, undertook a campaign against theHuns and, to vary this series of dis-asters, drove those still formidable ene-mies back across the Caucasus. In thishe was helped by Tribigild, anotherGothic officer. But Tribigild, feelinghimself insufficiently recompensed byEutropius, revolted and campaignedwith varying, but on the whole increas-ing, success in Asia Minor, muchhelped by slaves who fled to him andby Germanic soldiers in the Romanarmies who deserted to him, but seri-ously endangered at times by the re-sistance of the local population. In themeantime, Gainas had been appointedcommander-in-chief of the forces of the

Empire in the East (comes et magisterutriusque militiae). Not only had heused his power to strengthen his posi-tion by bringing many more Goths intothe Empire and by increasing the num-ber of Gothic officers in the imperialarmies, but he had been so conspicu-ously unsuccessful in fighting Tribigildthat he was suspected of being in col-lusion with the rebel.39With the crisis, though, came the re-action. Not only Synesius in Cyrenaica,but a powerful party in the capital,with support throughout the Empire,had come to feel that it was imperativeto expel the barbarian masses from theRoman armies, and the barbarian lead-ers from positions of civil and militarycommand. This party came into powerwith the fall of Eutropius in 399, andAurelian, one of the leaders of themovement, took office as Pretorian Pre-fect of the East. The speech of his sup-porter, Synesius, the envoy from Cy-rene, was evidently the official declara-tion of policy of the new government,the first dramatic step in the reactionthat, for all the immediate difficultiesthat it caused, was to save the Empirein the East and make possible its pres-ervation for a millennium.Aurelian now proceeded to put intoeffect the policies advocated in the ora-tion of Synesius: he reduced taxes, in-cluding those of Cyrene; he encouragededucation and learning; he beautifiedand enlarged the cities of the Empire;he selected capable and upright offi-cials. Synesius, in compensation for hisservices, was relieved of his curial ob-ligations.4 " In view of the policy an-nounced by Synesius, it is entirely pos-sible that Aurelian also took measuresdesigned to increase the Roman levies,to reduce the barbarian forces in theRoman armies and to replace the bar-barian officers by Roman ones. In fact,Synesius tells us that Aurelian was sus-pected by Gainas of doing these things,and it is difficult to suppose that thesuspicion was unjustified.41Gainas, then, was suspicious. Hegave one puff, and the fine new admin-

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istration fell like a house of cards.Whatever his relations with Tribigildmay have been before, he now openlyaccepted the latter's support andmarched upon Constantinople. Arriv-ing at Chalcedon, just across the Bos-porus, he refused to negotiate with any-one except Emperor Arcadius in person.The helpless monarch, anxious to savehis capital, crossed the strait. It wasagreed that Caesarius, the brother ofAurelian but his political rival, shouldbe made pretorian prefect and thatGainas should occupy Constantinoplewith his troops, as magister militumpraesentalis.The bayonet seems not to have comeinto use until the eighteenth century,but, if the reader will pardon the an-achronism, Gainas soon learnt thetruth of Napoleon's saying that the onething one cannot do with bayonets issit on them. He and his army were inConstantinople: there was no resist-ance to them, but he could not thinkof any way to make real use of his po-sition. Nearly a century later, Theo-doric put into practice the ideal ofAtaulf: a state in which a Germanking and army would control andprotect a civilized, Roman administra-tion and society. Gaiseric, midway intime between Gainas and Theodoric,used the magnificent position of Carth-age to found a pirate state. Gainas, inthe even finer position of Constan-tinople and in possession of the heartof the Empire, was probably preventedby that very fact from conceiving theidea of setting up a kingdom hostile tothe Empire, and was incapable of un-derstanding the ideal of Ataulf andTheodoric-to say nothing of realizingit. The closest comparison is perhapswith his contemporary, Alaric, whocould ravage Greece and the Balkans,march up and down Italy, sack Rome,but, lacking Africa, could not even pro-vision his own troops. Gainas, to besure, was better off than that: if Con-stantinople itself was to be provisioned(and Arcadius had no Ravenna in which

to take refuge while leaving Rome tostarve), then Gainas and his Gothswould be fed.What then? They were clumsy bar-barians in a hostile, highly civilizedcity. Hated, tricked, tormented, nodoubt murdered in back alleys when-ever opportunity offered, they probablyunderwent much the experience whichbefell the Germans during their occu-pation of Italy during the last war.More, the situation was envenomed byreligion: the inhabitants of Constanti-nople were fanatically orthodox, the

barbarians were Arians. John Chry-sostom had already assigned them achurch in which to hold services inGothic; he had even preached therehimself, making use of an interpreter.These services, though, were of courseorthodox. The Goths, supported by Cae-sarius, requested the use of a churchwithin the city walls in which theymight hold Arian services. This wouldbe a pollution of the sacred city, andSt. Chrysostom opposed them face toface in the presence of Arcadius.Though the demand was dropped-orat least, not pushed to a conclusion-yet the injection of religion into thealready tense situation stimulated thepublic to the highest pitch of excite-ment. The inevitable comet appearedin the heavens.The Goths became subject to panics,believing that hostile soldiers werebeing secretly introduced into Constan-tinople. At one moment, they wouldthreaten to burn or sack the city; atanother, they would flee from intan-gible but terrifying enemies. Mattersreached such a point that Gainas de-termined to evacuate the capital. Withhis family and a large part of his army,he encamped some miles outside thewalls and attempted to dominate thecity from there.

Shortly afterwards, on July 12, 400,while another contingent of Gothicforces was evacuating the capital, ariot broke out at one of the gates be-tween the soldiers and the townspeople.

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The citizens succeeded in seizing thegates and in holding them against boththe Goths within and those without. In-side the city, they hunted the haplessbarbarians, now in utter panic, throughthe streets. Many of them were slainas they fled, but a great part of themlaid down their arms and took refugein their church. The infuriated mob,apparently encouraged by Arcadius,set the building on fire, and the wretch-ed suppliants were burnt.Gainas and his surviving followers,after an unsuccessful attempt to crossthe Hellespont to Asia Minor, withdrewacross the Danube. Here he was de-feated and killed by Uldin, a chieftainof the Huns, who sent his head to Con-stantinople. It was paraded throughthe streets on a pike on January 3, 401.The Empire in the East had not seenthe last of the barbarians, nor even ofthe Goths. Not so many years later,the great Patrician, Aspar, himself ofmixed Gothic and Alan blood, support-ed by a large Gothic following, occu-pied a position comparable to thatwhich Stilicho had held, even succeed-ing in procuring the elevation of hisson, Patricius, to the rank of Caesar.About the same time, Theodoric theAmal and Theodoric Strabo, bothGothic chieftains, ravaged Thrace andthe Balkans, and more than oncethreatened the capital. Never, though,were these or any other barbarianleaders able fully to restore the posi-tion which Gainas had failed to main-tain. The emperors were always ableto play off their dangerously powerfulsupporters against each other or tobuild up new forces to hold them incheck. The crisis of the East was over;the defeat of Gainas was as decisive asthe Sicilian Vespers.Aurelian was recalled and replacedCaesarius as pretorian prefect, but onlyafter a considerable interval, in 402.Seeck is surely right in supposing thatthe final overthrow of Caesarius wasdue to the weakening of the positionof Stilicho by Alaric's invasion of

Italy;42 it may be, also, that the po-sition of Caesarius was shaken not onlybecause of the lessened influence ofStilicho, but because, with Gainas deadand Alaric definitely committed to anItalian war, there was less need for aconciliatory policy towards the re-maining barbarians.This new reversal of fortune broughtthe long mission of Synesius to a suc-cessful conclusion: the benefits whichAurelian had conferred and Caesariushad revoked were reaffirmed. The en-voy, however, took French leave ofhis benefactors: during the great earth-quake of 402, he fled in terror to a shipbound for Alexandria and sailed with-out seeing his friends, except for one,to whom he shouted and waved from adistance.43It is entirely certain from the DeRegno, the De Providentia and Hymn3 that Synesius grasped the full signifi-cance of these events. We should, per-haps, take special note of two passages,because of their bearing on his future.In De Providentia 18, Synesius tells usthat God revealed to the philosopher(himself) that the tyranny would notlast long and that the giants (the bar-barians) would be cast out whenever"those now in power shall attempt tointroduce innovations in our religiousrites .. ." and that Typho (Caesarius)himself would fall shortly afterwards.The other passage is in Hymn 3 (Ter-zaghi, 1). Synesius tells us that while hewas in Thrace, hevisited as many temples as were builded forThy holy ceremonies. ... I supplicated thegods that labour, even as many as hold thefruitful plain of Thrace, and those who onthe other side rule the Chalcedonianpastures, whom Thou, O King, hast crownedwith Thy annunciating beams, to be Thysacred ministers. The blessed ones have in-deed taken to them my supplications, theyhave engaged in many labours with me.Now, in spite of the references to"gods" and "temples," so typical ofthe hymns of Synesius, this hymn waswritten when Synesius was already a

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Christian bishop.44 The "temples"therefore must have been Christianchurches and the "gods" their patronsaints-to say nothing of the fact thatopen worship in pagan temples in Con-stantinople would have been quite im-possible at that time. What are ourpassages, then, other than clear recog-nition by Synesius that the orthodoxChristian Church had proved the mosteffective force of resistance againstthe barbarians, the necessary support,therefore, of that classicism, that Hel-lenism to which his life was dedicated?

After stopping briefly at Alexandria,Synesius proceeded to Cyrene, presum-ably to give an account of his mis-sion.45 There, too, he remained for ashort time only, returning once moreto Alexandria, this time for a longervisit--an important one, since it wasduring this stay that he married. The-ophilus, the formidable Bishop of Alex-andria, officiated at the ceremony. 4Vasiliev believes that Synesius had al-ready become a Christian at this time,and Fitzgerald envisages this as a pos-sibility.47 It seems much more prob-able that it was his wife who was aChristian, not, as yet, Synesius; thatTheophilus, destroyer of the Serapeumthough he was, would himself marry aChristian woman to a pagan providedthat the pagan was Synesius - Synesius,one of the most prominent citizens ofCyrenaica; Synesius, the friend ofcourtiers, cabinet ministers and gen-erals, of governors and prefects; Sy-nesius, the admired philosopher, sci-entist and writer; above all, Synesius,the favored disciple of Hypatia. Such aconvert justified a little subtlety and alittle time; in a few years we shallmeet the Patriarch angling again.A son was born of Synesius' marriagewhile he was still in Alexandria, butin 405 we find him back in Cyrenaicawith his wife and child. The barbariantribes from the desert were attackingas usual, and he personally led thedefence of his estate against them,scouting at dawn, conducting patrols

at night, thankful for archers from aneighboring town to defend access towells and stream. We find him assem-bling weapons, criticizing inadequateleaders, praising good ones, urging hisbrother to resist.48 The war seems notto have been continuous, but rather aseries of yearly raids at harvest time.Perhaps, as Seeck thinks,49 the bar-barians were encouraged by the inep-titude of the Roman leaders who con-ducted operations after the expulsionof the German officers from the army.Certainly there is much in the lettersof Synesius, anti-German though hewas, to support this view, but we alsofind him praising some of the officersand even praising barbarian troopswhen under capable leaders able tokeep them in hand.5" It may be, also,as we have already suggested, that thenomadic tribes were beginning to ac-quire greater mobility through the useof the camel, being able to attack moreunexpectedly and in greater force thanhad formerly been possible, and to re-treat more rapidly and, if necessary, tomore remote oases. Whatever the ex-planation, the desert tribes seem tohave ravaged the countryside everyyear, reducing the landowners to takerefuge in their fortified villas, captur-ing at least some of these and someof the smaller towns, and at times be-sieging even major cities. On one oc-casion, Synesius speaks not only ofthe desperate state of Cyrenaica, butof danger to Alexandria itself.51The spasmodic nature of the war,though, left Synesius at least some timeto continue his letters and his literarywork. We find him sending three com-pleted compositions, the Dio, the DeInsomniis and the essay addressed toCount Paeonius on the gift of an astro-labe, to Hypatia for her approval, thetwo former being hitherto unpublishedworks and the third having been writ-ten during the stay of Synesius in Con-stantinople. 5 It is to this period, too,that, following Lacombrade, we ascribethe letters to his brother, describing

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the education of the latter's son andtelling of the birth of two more sonsof his own, twins, and also one tellinghis brother of the dismissal of therascally trainer in athletics.53 Never-theless, he complains that the warsinterfere with his writing and evenwith his beloved hunting. 54War and politics, though, were soonto cause him far greater hardshipsthan these. His property near Cyrenewas occupied by the barbarians, andthey used his house-no doubt a greatfortified villa such as we see in themagnificent mosaics at the Bardo inTunis-as "a base whence to menaceCyrene."55 Not only that. His politicalenemies succeeded in driving him awayfrom Cyrene itself: "I mourn over thefamous site of Cyrene, in the past theabode of the Carneadae and of theAristippi, but now of the Joannes andthe Julii. In their society I cannot livewith pleasure, and so I live away fromit with pleasure."56 In another letter,we find him indignantly repelling hisbrother's attempt to reconcile him withJulius.57 We may suppose, with La-combrade, 5 that he withdrew toPtolemais, the capital and the metro-politan see of the province. His with-drawal, though, proved to be no retire-ment: his prestige and his servicesmade it impossible for him to leave thefield to his opponents even if he wishedto--which one may doubt. The nextreasonably certain date in his life ishis election as Bishop of Ptolemais, inthe summer of 410.59)We have already written of the para-mount importance of the bishop to thepeople of his city at the beginning ofthe fourth century, especially as theirdefender against oppressive officialsand against the barbarians. It is evi-dent that Synesius was chosen pre-cisely because he had shown himselfsuch a staunch opponent of the bar-barians, such a courageous defenderof the local interests against oppres-sion by corrupt and grasping officials,both civil and military, such an effec-

tive advocate of Cyrene and of theprovince before the Throne itself. Asfor personal benefactions, Synesiusseems to have been a generous masterto his slaves and a generous friend tohis equals, and above all a liberal andpublic-spirited citizen.6 (These were obvious reasons for se-lecting Synesius as bishop, and thefact that he was known to be generousand public-spirited was a good reasonfor supposing that he would acceptthe position. He must, further, havebeen swayed by his experiences inConstantinople, by the fact that theorthodox Christian Church had provedto be the crystallizing element aroundwhich grew the forces of resistanceto Gainas and his barbarians. Therewere, though, four obstacles. Synesiushad achieved a nice balance of life be-tween public service, literature and phi-losophy, and sports--especially hunt-ing. He very genuinely felt that thechase and outdoor life were indispen-sable to his well-being. In a letter tohis brother-one which he asked hisbrother to make public and especiallyto bring to the attention of Theophilus"'-he wrote of his love of arms, horses,dogs and hunting, but said that hewould resign himself to giving themup "if it is the will of God." Second,though he detested lawsuits and quar-rels, he would nevertheless do his bestto perform the administrative dutiesof bishop so long as strength was givenhim to do so.';2 Third, he was a mar-ried man-indeed, as he points out,he had been married by Theophilushimself - and had no intention of livingapart from his wife: "I will not beseparated from her, nor shall I as-sociate with her surreptitiously likean adulterer; . . . I shall desire andpray to have many virtuous children."Finally, and most serious of all, therewere grave theological difficulties:63I can never persuade myself that the soul isof more recent origin than the body. Neverwould I admit that the world and the partswhich make it up must perish. This resur-

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rection, which is an object of common be-lief, is nothing for me but a sacred andmysterious allegory, and I am far fromsharing the views of the vulgar crowdthereon. . . . Just as the eye would be in-jured by an excess of light, and just asdarkness is more helpful to those of weakeyesight, even so do I consider that the falsemay be beneficial to the populace, and thetruth injurious to those not strong enoughto gaze steadfastly on the radiance of realbeing. If the laws of the priesthood that ob-tain with us permit these views to me, Ican take over the holy office on conditionthat I may prosecute philosophy at homeand spread legends abroad, so that if I teachno doctrine, at all events I undo no teach-ing, and allow men to remain in their al-ready acquired convictions .... No, if Iam called to the priesthood, I declare beforeGod and man that I refuse to preach dog-mas in which I do not believe. Truth is anattribute of God, and I wish in all thingsto be blameless before Him.In short, Synesius was still a Neo-Platonist in many of his convictionsand would not agree to preach anydoctrines inconsistent with them.The struggle was not an easy one.It lasted for more than six months,while Synesius, presumably in Alex-andria, tried to secure some declara-tion that would allow him to reconcileacceptance of the episcopate "with myschool of thought and sect." 4 Herealized that he could not refuse theepiscopate and still return to the Pen-tapolis; he thought of going to Greece.In fact, though, he was consecratedbishop, probably some time during thefirst three months of 411.-5)It has been argued that Synesius didnot give way either in the matter ofseparating from his wife or in his theo-logical position,"6 but this view hasnot been generally accepted, and La-combrade, his most recent biographer,shares the opinion that Synesius yield-ed to Theophilus, "humain, trop hu-main, le coeur gros d'amertume mais6perdu de bonne volonte." He takesEpistle 11, written by Synesius to theelders of the Church of Ptolemais di-rectly after his consecration, to be anexpression of this attitude."7 Epistle

11 is indeed an expression of the newbishop's attitude, but that attitudeseems not one of a man who has eitherbeen converted as to the theologicalpoints at issue or who has sacrificedhis moral position:I was unable, for all my strength, to prevailagainst you and to decline the bishopric, andthis in spite of all my machinations; nor isit to your will that I have now yielded.Rather was it a divine force which broughtabout the delay then, as it has caused myacceptance now. ... If I am not forsakenby God, I shall then know that this office ofPriesthood is not a decline from the realmsof philosophy, but, on the contrary, a stepupwards to them.The delay, in short, has proved useful,and apparently in the sense that Syne-sius had wished: he believed it wouldbe possible to "prosecute philosophyat home and spread legends abroad,"to reconcile the acceptance of theepiscopate "with my school of thoughtand sect." The matter becomes clearerwhen we read Epistle 13. In that letter,Synesius informs Peter, the Elder, thathe has just sent a carrier to Peter"with the Paschal letters, announcingthe date of the holy festival . . . sothat the night which precedes the dayin question may also be consecrated tothe mystery of the Resurrection" (toanastdsimon . . . muste'rion). In thesame letter, he refers to this festivalas "an old ancestral custom of theChurch" (ethos archaion kai pdtrion).He concludes, "If I can say none of thethings you are accustomed to hear,there must be forgiveness for me andblame to yourselves, for instead ofchoosing one deep in the knowledge ofthe scriptures, you have selected onewho is ignorant of them." (His pro-fession of ignorance was of course mere-ly a polite excuse for his refusal todeliver an Easter sermon: he had beendiscussing the theological point withTheophilus for more than six months.)Is not this the very language one mightexpect from a Synesius who had in theend obtained the theological conces-sions which he required of Theophilus?

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And is it not on one of the very pointsconcerning which he had made hisreservations? Synesius was upset bythe material requirements of his office,but there is no passage that we havebeen able to find in his writings that isnot consistent with the theological res-ervations which he made in his letterto his brother.On the other hand, though we haveno proof, there is reason to believethat he did separate from his wife.That, with the possible exception ofHymn 8, he never mentioned her afterhe became bishop is scarcely a convinc-ing argument, because he mentionedher only three times in all the worksand letters that have come down to us.First, when he was about to go intobattle, he wrote to his brother that hewould find it difficult to leave his wifeand child."8 Second, as we have justseen, he wrote that he could not agreeto become bishop if that should entailseparation from his wife. Third, hementioned his wife in Hymn 8. Thequestion, for all practical purposes,turns solely on whether Hymn 8 waswritten before or after Synesius be-came bishop and, if written after,whether it implies that he had sepa-rated from his wife. We have seenthat Synesius had three sons, one bornin Alexandria and the other two, twins,born in Cyrenaica. We shall see thatone of the three died very shortly afterthe consecration of Synesius. In thehymn, Synesius appears to refer tohis two sons. Since he was never in theposition of having two sons only untilafter one of the three had died, thisseems to date the hymn to a time sub-sequent to his consecration. There isa possibility, if one is willing to makea not unplausible emendation of thetext, that Synesius is not referring totwo sons, but to two sisters, but it isnot the traditional reading, and wemust consider the hymn at least aslikely to have been written after theconsecration as before it.!6 The rel-evant passage is:

... the partner of my marriage bed, O King,keep Thou from illness and harm, united tome, of one mind with me; preserve my wifein ignorance of clandestine associates. Mayshe maintain a holy couch, unsullied, pious,inaccessible to unlawful desires.(It will be noted that the word Erie-ronwhich Fitzgerald has translated "unitedto me" can as well mean "faithful"-and even "united to me" does notnecessarily imply physical union.) Thepassage has been interpreted as evi-dence that Synesius was "epoux heu-reux et pere comble" at the time hewrote it. 7 To us, on the contrary, itseems to show a man separated fromhis wife against his will and hopingthat she will remain faithful to themarriage which has been so arbitrarilyand indecently terminated. If thisunderstanding of the hymn be correct,then Synesius did separate from hiswife.However all this may be, the factthat the objections were made andmaintained either for the rest of thegood bishop's life or at the very leastfor more than six months-this showsthat Synesius, though a deeply religiousman, was not moved to accept theoffice because of any burning zeal forthe orthodox theology. Rather, he be-came bishop for reasons of patriotism,out of a sense of duty. As Wilamowitzwell says,71 "Der an Besitz, Ansehenund Mut erste Notable der Provinz,fand in dem Bischofsamt die Stelle,von der aus er seine Heimat verteidigenkonnte."

Synesius was now entering upon thelast years of his life. They were markedby a bitter political struggle; by thevarying, occasionally almost desperate,fortunes of war; by conscientious butoften distasteful performance of theduties of his episcopal office; by deeppersonal sorrows; by ill-health.At the time of his return as bishop,the state of the province appears tohave been more favorable than it hadbeen for many years. Gennadius, thecivil governor, had given the Penta-

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polis a mild yet capable administra-tion; the dux, Anysius, had proved abrilliant officer and had brought thecampaign with the barbarians to a suc-cessful close, at least for the time being.Unfortunately, Gennadius was aboutto be replaced by Andronicus, a manfor whom Synesius had done somefavors, but one of whom he had thepoorest possible opinion, one who,though a Cyrenaican by birth, had beenhostile to the interests of Ptolemaisin the past. Now, even before arrivingin the province, he was instigating anunjustified prosecution of Gennadius,the departing governor, for embezzle-ment of public funds. Synesius wrote tohis friend Troilus at Constantinople,requesting him to intervene with thePretorian Prefect Anthemius to se-cure the revocation of the appoint-ment, partly on the ground that sucha man as Andronicus would make abad governor, partly on the groundthat, as a native of Cyrenaica, hecould not legally administer the prov-ince, since Anthemius himself hadcaused a new law to be promulgatedforbidding that any province shouldbe governed by one of its own natives.More, he had bought his office.72When Andronicus arrived, he fullyjustified the fears of Synesius. He proveda merciless tax-gatherer, scourgingand torturing the curiales, bullyingthem into selling estates to his sup-porters, oppressing his personal ene-mies. He was, in short, just such agovernor as Synesius had inveighedagainst in his address to Arcadius.73Synesius, the curialis and ambas-sador, had denounced such oppressionbefore the emperor; Synesius, thebishop, fought Andronicus both at courtand on the spot. He now tried to se-cure the recall of the Governor throughanother friend, Anastasius, the tutorof the children of Arcadius. In Cyre-naica, he boldly supported the victims,he went to comfort his friend, Leu-cippus, when the latter was subjectedto torture by the Governor in the full

glare of the African noon.74 This actprovoked the Governor to blasphemy,and Synesius was quick to seize hisadvantage and to draw up a formalexcommunication of his enemy. La-combrade points out that in this matterSynesius may have gone rather beyondthe letter of the law.75 However thatmay be, the step checked Andronicus,though not permanently. The Governorat once promised to moderate hisconduct, and Synesius, yielding to theunanimous recommendation of hisclergy, suspended publication of thedecree of excommunication. But theleopard did not change its spots:Magnus, the son of a man of senatorialrank, but himself a curialis, died inconsequence of a scourging inflicted byorder of Andronicus. Synesius now pub-lished his decree of excommunica-tion:76Andronicus of Berenice let no man call aChristian.... Let the precincts of no houseof God be open to Andronicus and his as-sociates. ... Let every sanctuary and en-closure be shut in their faces .... I exhorttherefore every private individual and rulernot to be under the same roof with them,nor to be seated at the same table, par-ticularly priests, for these shall neitherspeak to them while living, nor join in theirfuneral processions when dead. Furthermore,if any one shall flout the authority of thischurch on the ground that it represents asmall town only, and shall receive thosewho have been excommunicated by it, forthat he need not obey that which is withoutwealth, let such a one know that he is creat-ing a schism in the Church which Christwishes to be one. Such a man, whether hebe deacon, presbyter, or bishop, shall sharethe fate of Andronicus at our hands, andneither shall we give him our right hand.nor ever eat at the same table with him.and far be it from us to hold communion inthe holy mysteries with those desiring totake part with Andronicus and Thoas.It will be noted that this formula calledfor the support not only of priests,deacons and bishops, but also of privatepersons and, expressly, rulers.This weapon, destined to become sopowerful, proved effective againstAndronicus. Perhaps, too, the appeals

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of Synesius to his friends in Constanti-nople had something to do with theresult, and maybe Julius, the old ene-my of Synesius, had his share in thematter, since he also was an opponentof the Governor. At any rate, the lastwe hear of Andronicus is in a letterfrom Synesius to Theophilus of Alex-andria.77 He writes that the misfor-tunes of the wretched man have beensuch thatthe Church . . . now . . . pities him forthat his experiences have exceeded themeasure of her malediction. On his accountwe have incurred the displeasure of thosenow in power...So we have snatched him from the felltribunal here, and have in other respectsgreatly mitigated his sufferings. If yoursacred person judges that this man isworthy of any interest, I shall welcome thisas a signal proof that God has not yet en-tirely abandoned him.It is evident that Synesius had actuallyremoved Andronicus from the custodyof the civilian authorities, who weretrying him for his misdeeds, and senthim to Theophilus, leaving it to thelatter, apparently, to release him fromthe excommunication which Synesiushad pronounced against him and to pro-tect him from further prosecution.Perhaps Synesius, who had borne thebrunt of the struggle, did not wishto leave the prestige of success to thelay authorities and especially not tohis old antagonist, Julius, but even ifsuch motives may have entered intohis action, we are, one feels, justifiedin supposing that the mercy of whichhe spoke was the principal reason forit. When we consider some of his otheractions as bishop, we shall see thatmoderation, reasonableness and mercywere characteristic of them.It is unexpected to see a provincialbishop daring at this early date to ex-communicate an imperial governor;interesting to find that the excommuni-cation proved effective; startling tosee the victorious bishop dare to re-move the disgraced governor from thecustody of the lay court. Fascinating,

too, from a slightly different point ofview, to hear this same bishop, in hisdenunciation of the upstart, Andronicus,refer to his own descent from "Eurys-thenes who settled the Dorians inSparta."78 It is, though, no less im-portant to realize that the struggle be-tween the two men really had nothingto do with the Church. Synesius hadbeen compelled to accept the episcopaloffice because the people felt him to betheir natural protector against invasionand oppression. Andronicus represent-ed the tyrannical bureaucracy that wasattempting to enrich its members nodoubt, but also to preserve the Empireat the cost of the curial class. Synesiuswas defending that class (to which hehimself belonged) because he felt itto be the true representative of theclassical tradition, of the old life ofthe polis and the municipium. In thecourse of this basically lay quarrel,Synesius saw an opportunity to useecclesiastical weapons against his op-ponent: he did not hesitate to use them- indeed, we have seen that he wishedto proceed to extremes more quicklythan his clergy would allow - and withdevastating effectiveness.One final period of desperate war-fare darkened the last years of Syne-sius. Anysius, the successful general,had been replaced not long after Syne-sius had returned to Ptolemais as bish-op. He seems to have been followed byInnocentius, a well-intentioned but inef-fective commander. Synesius, bishopthough he was, stood watch upon thewalls of Ptolemais, placed pickets atnight, prepared (so he said) at onemoment to flee across the sea, at an-other to die beside the altar of hischurch. What he did do in fact wasto send an extremely dramatic appealto one of his friends with a requestthat the latter should have the desper-ate situation brought to the attentionof the imperial council. It was quitepossibly in response to the appeal ofSynesius that a new commander, Mar-cellinus, was dispatched to help the be-leaguered provincials. If so, Synesiushad performed a last and very great

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service for the Pentapolis: Marcellinuscompletely routed the enemy and re-stored peace throughout the region.79Through war and peace, political re-verses and political success, Synesiuscontinued to perform his purely ecclesi-astical duties. We have noticed that heforebore from giving theological in-struction in connection with the cele-bration of Easter; when some Eu-nomian missionaries became active inhis see, he appears to have consultedSt. Isidore of Pelusium, probably anold friend from Alexandrian days, be-fore decreeing that they should beexpelled. And even then he insistedthat they were not to be plundered,but should be allowed to take backacross the frontier all property theyhad brought with them. He com-posed disputed episcopal elections; hesettled quarrels between bishops con-cerning property; he healed quarrelsbetween priests-in reporting some ofthese to Theophilus, his ecclesiasticalsuperior, he expressly refrained from

mentioning names and requested The-ophilus, if the latter should guess theidentity of the priests involved, still torefrain from naming them in his reply,since Synesius wished to rebuke themin private only. He encouraged theelection of a worthy candidate as bish-op and requested Theophilus to conse-crate him; he urged that a technicaldefect should not be used as a reasonfor unseating a bishop who had heldhis office for many years, one belovedby his congregation; he treated withpersonal kindness and respect-though not recognizing him as a bishopin church--a bishop who had beenexpelled from his see for having sidedwith St. John Chrysostom against The-ophilus, and referred to Chrysostomwith marked respect even when writingto Theophilus himself; he suggestedthat this bishop and others in similarsituations should return to their sees,now that peace had been restored inthe Church, and that they should notbe accorded episcopal honors if theychose not to return. He founded a mon-astery - Neo-Platonist or Christian, he

was still devoted to the life of con-templation; it may well be that hehoped to be allowed to resign his chargeand to retire there. In short, he wasinclined to avoid theological disputesand in all matters of practical admin-istration to advocate neither unneces-sarily drastic measures nor weaknessnor evasion, but rational, moderate,humane courses of action. He was, webelieve, a highly unorthodox Christian,but an exceptionally good one.s"The last years of his life, then, weresuccessful so far as external matterswere concerned. He performed his ec-clesiastical duties well, at the sacrificeof his affections and his favorite pas-times, but not at the sacrifice of hisprinciples. Politically, he was veryconspicuously successful; he seems tohave had much to do with bringingthe war against the barbarians to asuccessful conclusion. s On the otherhand, this period was a time of suffer-ing and great sorrow for him. Wehave seen that, in all probability, he ac-cepted, though sadly, separation fromhis wife. All three of his sons, of whomhe had such hopes, died during theyears of his episcopate. One of them,indeed, died just before he arrived inPtolemais after his consecration. s2 Helost the friendship of Anastasiuss:3 andthat of Hypatia herself.s4 Further, hewas in ill-health.85 He seems to havesurvived Theophilus, who died on Oc-tober 15, 412, but probably by verylittle, since we have no letters ad-dressed to the new Patriarch, Cyril.s6Let us quote his last, sad letter toHypatia: 7I salute you, and I beg of you to salute yourmost happy comrades for me, august Mis-tress. I have long been reproaching you thatI am not deemed worthy of a letter, butnow I know that I am despised by you allfor no wrongdoing on my part, but becauseI am unfortunate in many things, in asmany as a man can be. If I could only havehad letters from you and learnt how youwere all faring-I am sure you are happyand enjoying good fortune-I should havebeen relieved, in that case, of half my owntrouble, in rejoicing at your happiness. But

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now your silence has been added to the sumof my sorrows. I have lost my children, myfriends, and the goodwill of every one. Thegreatest loss of all, however, is the absenceof your divine spirit. I had hoped that thiswould always remain to me, to conquer boththe caprices of fortune and the evil turns offate.One thing, at least, Synesius was spared:there is no reason whatever to believethat he survived to hear of the horriddeath of Hypatia in 415 at the hands ofthe fanatical Christian mob of Alex-andria.Such was the life of Synesius. Whyhave we coupled him with RutiliusNamatianus and Paulinus of Nola? Whyhave we chosen, to illustrate this arti-cle (see the frontispiece), a gorgon'shead of white marble, once part of anold Doric temple at Cyrene and laterincorporated into a Byzantine fountain?Rutilius, it seems to us, felt clearlythe incompatibility of classical civili-zation and the Christian religion. Wehave tried to support our belief that,fiercely loyal to Rome and the old wayof life, he felt deep within himself thatRome was destined to perish and thenew religion to triumph. But even ifRutilius whole-heartedly believed thatit was Rome that would survive, he cer-tainly did not believe that considerableelements of classicism would surviveprecisely through the Christian Church.Paulinus, also, the favored pupil ofAusonius, felt the two paths to be in-compatible, and, on becoming convert-ed to an active Christianity, chose as-ceticism and renounced his literaryfriends, his political prospects and hiscivic responsibilities. Yet force of cir-cumstances compelled him, like Syne-sius -and at just about the same time-to accept consecration as bishop andto do his best to protect his people--and, in doing so, no doubt to preserveelements of the classical life against thebarbarian tide. But even in this emer-gency, he remained a pacifist, andwhen it became necessary for himactually to face the barbarians in per-son, fulfilled his boast.88

nos crucis invictae signum et confessiomunit,armatique deo mentem non quaerimusarmacorporis; . . .Synesius, the contemporary of themboth, made a different and more pro-phetic choice than either. Even afterhe had become Bishop of Ptolemais, hestill kept watch against the enemy,he still set out pickets at night. Onefeels that he found it difficult not to

take, any longer, a direct part in thefighting. He still praised and encour-aged successful generals, and appealedto the Consistory for help when themilitary situation appeared desperate.Nor did his assumption of the officeof bishop appear to him inconsistentwith political activity: the great eventin local politics after his consecrationas bishop was the overthrow of An-dronicus - it is an extraordinary combi-nation of the old and the new to findSynesius boasting of his descent fromEurysthenes in the very address inwhich he announces the excommunica-tion of the Governor. Both before andafter his conversion, Synesius remainedwithout sympathy for fanaticism; bothbefore and after, he attached real im-portance to style in writing. As a youngman, he wrote to Hypatia to ask wheth-er she thought his writings worthy ofGreek ears.8' As a bishop, he warnedthat God attached no importance to in-spired diction or "literary pettiness":9 0ouden melei t6i the6i theophor6etou lex-eo's. pneuma theion huperordi mikrolo-gian sungraphike.n. But his own dictionis certainly not inelegant in this verypassage. It was as bishop, too, that hewrote to Theophilus, complimentinghim on the style of a Paschal letter.9lOnce more, it was in a report to The-ophilus that Synesius apologized for us-ing a Latinism. 2In short, Synesius, both before andafter his conversion, was not only aclassical figure, but perhaps more trulyso than most of his contemporaries--at least, than those of his contempo-raries that we know about. Though Ru-tilius felt it his duty to return to his

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CHARLESHENRY COSTER

native Gaul, Rome was the unques-tioned center of his interests; Paulinuslived in Gaul, Spain and Italy without,so far as we can see, any sense of beingmore at home in one of these regionsthan another-if he preferred Nola,it was only because the tomb of St.Felix was there. To Synesius, Constan-tinople was exile; 3 Athens indiffer-ent; 4 even Alexandria and Hypatiacould not draw him away, though theytempted him, from Cyrene.") Cyreneand Cyrenaica were his life; he livedfor his polis as truly as any Greek ofthe high classical era, and, as truly asany of them, stood for and representedin himself the classical interest in bal-ance and beauty, in moderation andgood sense.In character and interests, then, Sy-nesius, though he lived as late as thefifth century A.D., was the embodimentof classical Cyrene. And it was hisvery devotion to the classical spiritthat led him, in spite of intellectualand personal difficulties, to grasp atthe Christian Church as the only pos-sible supporter of civilization, classicalor otherwise, in the time in which helived. Rutilius and Paulinus of Nolahad each of them understood that Chris-tianity was incompatible with classi-cal civilization in its pure form, andeach took his stand accordingly, theone rejecting Christianity and the otherhis classical past. Synesius did neither:he deliberately took the old Doricacroterion and, painfully for himself,transformed it into the Byzantine foun-tain, from which the spring of classi-cism continued to refresh the eminentlyChristian State, which, in turn, pro-tected and developed civilization foranother thousand years.Warwick, New York

C. H. Coster, "Christianity and the Invasions:Two Sketches," CJ 54 (1959) 156.2 The peasants of the Abruzzi and Calabria stillplay the zampogna or bag-pipe. This name is saidto be derived from the Greek sumpho-nia; Bat-tisti and Alessio, Dizionario Etimologico Italiano

(Florence, 1957) s.v. "Zampogna." It may be mucholder, but there is no doubt that the instrumentwas known to the Greeks and Romans; The Brit-ish Encyclopaedia, 11th ed. (1910) vol. 3, pp. 205f.; Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians,5th ed. (London and New York, 1954) vol. 1,p. 353.3 Eusebius, H. E. 6. 19.4 Epist. 101. Cf. Epist. 91.5 Epist. 11. 54.

6 Cf. Sergio Mochi Onory, Vescovi e Cittd(Bologna, 1933).7 Most of the civil officers of the new govern-ments were of course Romans and no doubtfollowed, so far as conditions permitted, the oldsystem of administration: a Goth, wishing toacquire some land near Bordeaux that had beenabandoned many years before by Paulinus ofPella, found it necessary to seek him out atMarseilles in order to buy it from him (Paulinus,Eucharisticon 575). For all that, conditions be-came steadily more barbarous. The new mastershad neither the means nor, probably, often thedesire to maintain their administrations at theold level: Alaric II had to simplify the Romancode; Paulinus of Pella could not live nearMarseilles (in Roman territory) and still receiveincome from lands near Bordeaux (in Visigothicterritory), although his son, returning to Bor-deaux, managed to recover part of the property(ibid. 498). Sidonius Apollinaris, writing to hisfriend Arbogast, referred to the latter as oneof the last upholders of the Latin tongue alongthe Rhine (Sidonius, Epist. 4. 17). Gregory ofTours, like Sidonius, belonged to a senatorialfamily from Auvergne, but, writing a centurylater, he used a Latin that would have scandal-ized Sidonius. Gregory's contemporary, VenantiusFortunatus, was a good Latinist, but he had beenborn in northern Italy and educated in Ravenna.8 One suspects that the particularly bad reputa-tion of the Vandals comes less from their havingsacked Rome or from their other raids than fromthe fact that they treated the Church and theRoman landowners far more harshly than theGoths, Franks, Burgundians and other barbarianshad done. Yet even in Vandal Africa, we findsuch a bishop as Fulgentius of Ruspe. We note,too, that harsher though the Vandals were thanthe other barbarians, the father of Fulgentiushad been able to recover part of the familyproperty, and that the young Fulgentius had re-ceived an excellent education in Greek and Latin.See Jtilicher in RE, vol 7 (1912) cols. 214 f. andsources there cited.

" Epist. 9. 12. 1.l0 F. Homes Dudden, The Life and Times ofSt. Ambrose (Oxford, 1935) vol. 1, p. 9.11 See Christian Lacombrade, Synesios de Cy-rene, Hellene et Chretien (Paris, 1951) for a re-cent and most interesting biography, and thevery complete bibliography at the back of thevolume. Also, Lacombrade, Le Discours sur laRoyaute de Synesios de Cyrene d l'empereurArcadios (Paris, 1951). Since we shall have oc-casion to refer to the former very frequently,we shall write merely "Lacombrade," followedby the page number. Of special interest are theintroductions to Augustine Fitzgerald's transla-tions of the works of Synesius, The Letters ofSynesius of Cyrene (Oxford and London, 1926)and The Essays and Hymns of Synesius, 2 vols.(Oxford and London, 1930). In citing Fitzgerald,

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we shall write merely "Fitzgerald, Letters" orFitzgerald, "Essays and Hymns," followed bythe volume and page numbers for the latter andby the page number for the former. When Syne-sius is quoted in English, Fitzgerald's transla-tions are used. When the letters are quoted inthe original, the text of R. Hercher is used(Epistolographi Graeci [Paris, 1873]). When otherworks are quoted in the original, we followTerzaghi (Hymni [Rome, 1939]; Opuscula [Rome,1944]). In citing the hymns and essays, sincealmost all quotations are given in English, theconventional order, used in Fitzgerald, is followed;the order more recently established by Terzaghiis given in parentheses where different. Anotherhelpful work is The Life and Times of Synesiusof Cyrene as Revealed in His Works by the Rev.Jose C. Pando (Washington, D.C., 1940); refer-ences to this also will be abbreviated.

12 At this time the curiales were being de-stroyed by oppressive taxation which, because oftheir responsibility for the collection of the fullamounts demanded, fell with especial heavinessupon their group, but nevertheless Synesius andhis family, and doubtless many other curiales,were still at least very comfortably off. Poorpeople do not send presents of ostriches (Epist.129, 134) or horses (Epist. 40) to their friendsoverseas, nor would he, if he had not been verywell off, have referred to himself, when theenemy seemed about to conquer the province,as once a rich man but now about to be driveninto poverty-stricken exile (Catastasis 1572). Asto family, he mentions with pride that the publicmonuments of Cyrene record his descent fromEurysthenes, the Heraclid who led the Doriansto Sparta (Epist. 57; Catastasis 1572. Cf. Epist.124). For the position of the curiales, see themasterly summary of M. Rostovtzeff, The Socialand Economic History of the Roman Empire,2nd ed. (Oxford, 1957) vol. 1. pp. 502-32. Forthe financial position of Synesius, see Lacom-brade, pp. 14 f.; Pando, pp. 29 ff.; C. H. Coster,"Synesius, a Curialis of the Time of the EmperorArcadius," Byzantion 15 (1940-41) 14-17.1:3 8.32. 1-2. Cf. Eusebius, H. E. 4.2 and Oro-sius, Hist. 7. 12. 6.

14 22. 16. 4.15 De Regno 2; Epist. 103. It should be remem-bered that the object of Synesius' mission to theemperor was to petition for a reduction of taxes,so that in his address he would not be likely to

represent conditions in Cyrene as very prosper-ous.1i Rostovtzeff (above, note 12) vol. 1, pp. 141,308-11; Broholm, RE, vol. 12 (1925) cols. 156-69;Pando, pp. 14-17, 19-25, 29-33, 35-39, 99-120; C. H.Coster, "The Economic Position of Cyrenaica inClassical Times," Studies in Roman Economicand Social History in Honor of Allan ChesterJohnson (ed. P. R. Coleman-Norton [Princeton,1951]) pp. 3-26.17 The dates are purely conjectural. N. Craw-ford (Synesius the Hellene [London, 1901] pp.8-11) argues persuasively for 360. Lacombrade(p. 13) presents the case for 370, but makes noclaim to certainty. As for place, Synesius alludesto Cyrene as his mother, Epist. 4. That, though,can scarcely be taken as precluding the pos-sibility of his having been born in some countryplace near by.1 Epist. 53, 60, 111; Dio 1124-25.1' Synesius used Latin technical expressions

four times, but in one case apologized to hiscorrespondent for doing so, and in the otherthree explained what he understood the expres-sions to mean; Epist. 67, 79, 144, 145. This cer-tainly implies no real understanding of Latin,but rather the contrary.

20 Epist. 32.21 Epist. 101, 105, 154. See also Epist. 40, 134,148; De Insomniis 9. A good historical novel oftenstimulates the imagination more than bits andpieces of learning. If Kingsley, in spite of thequotation in the text, takes something of a libertyin putting a theological justification of huntinginto the mouth of the "squire-bishop," he givesa stirring picture of Synesius on an ostrich huntand in a skirmish with the barbarians (Hypatia,chapter "The Squire-Bishop").22 Synesius tells us that he greatly increasedthe number of books he had inherited; Dio 13.As he was a younger son, it seems unlikely that

the whole of his father's library passed to him.23 None of the letters mentions them as living;he was most closely bound to his elder brother,Euoptius, to whom he addressed forty of the onehundred fifty-nine letters that have come down tous. In Epist. 8, he mentions that they had thesame parents, were brought up together and re-ceived their education together. If their parentshad not died while they were very young, it wouldsurely have been more natural to say that theirparents had brought them up together.24 Socrates, Eccl. Hist. 7. 15; Suidas, under thename Hypatia.25 Epist. 10, 15, 16, 81, 124, 154, 137; Hymns 1,3, 5. Cf. Egyptian Tale 9; Dio 7. See Lacombrade(pp. 38-71) for an interesting and detailed analysisof the teachings of Hypatia and the studies ofSynesius. Lacombrade rightly emphasizes theextent of his scientific knowledge. He also be-lieves him to have been influenced to some ex-tent by Gnostic doctrines and ways of feeling,though Plotinus and Plato himself seem to havebeen his principal masters. I am inclined tominimize the importance of Synesius' referencesto esoteric doctrines and mysteries (see especial-ly Epist. 105, 137, 143; Egyptian Tale 9; Dio 5;the preface of De Insomniis). They seem to melargely due to his very sound belief that some-what abstruse doctrines may easily become falsi-fied and vicious through injudicious populariza-tion, and partly due to the fact that doctrinesand ceremonies not in accord with the legally

established Christian usage were poor matterfor publicity in Alexandria, where the Serapeumhad only recently been destroyed by the verybishop who was before long to consecrate Syne-sius, where Hypatia herself was to be killed bya Christian mob a few years later."> Evist. 57.27 See CJ 54 (1959) 146-59.28 The date is established by Lacombrade, pp.24, 55.21) Epist. 146.36 Lacombrade (pp. 76 f.) argues very persua-sively that letters 104, 113 and 124, describingincidents of a war with the barbarians, belongto this period, and also (pp. 78 f.) that the

Calvitii Encomium was written about the sametime.31 In Epist. 104, which Lacombrade dates as of395, Synesius speaks of the barbarians as ridinghorses to battle but dismounting to fight. But in

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the Catastasis, which Lacombrade dates as of411 (pp. 234 f.), Synesius writes that he mayflee to an island because "I distrust Egypt. Eventhere a camel can cross with an Ausurian hop-lite on its back." In dating the use of the camelin war by the nomadic tribes at precisely thisperiod, I am slightly modifying the view ex-pressed by me in "The Economic Position ofCyrenaica in Classical Times," pp. 3 f. (seeabove, note 16). I had there written that "Notuntil Vandal times do we encounter what Gautiercalls 'les grands nomades chameliers,' tribescapable of dominating the desert routes and ofconquering the settled country--as distinct fromraiding it." (The reference is to E. F. Gautier,Le pass~ de l'Afrique du Nord [Paris, 1937].)I had taken account of the passage in Epist. 104,but the passage in the Catastasis escaped me.It was evidently during the brief lifetime ofSynesius that the transformation began.

32 As we have seen, Lacombrade argues strong-ly in favor of ascribing Epist. 104, 113 and 124to this period; see above, note 30. It seems alsoalmost certain that Epist. 122 was written at theopening of this campaign: the terms of the letterare such that it could not have been writtenafter Synesius and the people of Cyrenaica hadbecome accustomed to warfare and to seeingenemies slain in battle.This is as good an occasion as any to remindthe reader that all we know about the life ofSynesius we know only from his own writings.He was a sincere and admirable character, butwe are all inclined to see ourselves as rightand our opponents as wrong. Further, Synesiushad studied rhetoric and unquestionably used it,partly to present his opponents in an unfavorablelight and partly to make his letters more amus-ing. We need not like him the less for hisvitality and exuberance, but we must take theminto account.33 Epist. 144, 95.34 Epist. 95. Lacombrade (p. 73) assumes fromthis letter that Synesius was a member of aprovincial council, and that these activities tookplace there, but he does not cite any passagesbearing on the matter. In an earlier paper([above, note 12] p. 30) the present writer statedhis belief that they took place in the curia ofCyrene and that still seems probable to him.The texts do not make the matter entirely clear.As ambassador to Arcadius, he says, he is sent

by Cyrene, a Greek city; De Regno 2 (Terzaghi,3). But, writing at a later time, he says thatdreams helped him to manage public affairs "inthe best interests of the cities"; De Insomniis 9(Terzaghi, 14). In Hymn 3 (Terzaghi, 1), hespeaks of bearing his matera pdtran on hisshoulders at the time of his embassy, and praysGod to preserve what he had gained for theLibyans. Synesius seems to have thought of him-self as envoy from Cyrene, but also to have feltthat the benefits which resulted from his missionredounded to the welfare of the province as awhole.335 For the opposition of Julius, see Epist. 50,95. Epist. 54 and 136 inform us of the visit ofSynesius to Athens. The connection between thistrip and the enmity of Julius is suggested byLacombrade, p. 74.36 For the vote in the curia of Cyrene, seeabove, note 34. For the chronology of the stay ofSynesius in Constantinople, for the interpretationof the De Providentia, etc., see Otto Seeck.

"Studien zu Synesios," Philol. 52 (1894) 442-60,a study which remains authoritative on thesepoints, although, with Lacombrade, we do notbelieve that Seeck was always correct in thedates suggested by him for the letters of Syne-sius. We have already referred (above, note 11)to Lacombrade's recent translation of thisspeech, and an excellent English version is in-cluded in Fitzgerald's Essays and Hymns, citedin the same note. In connection with this speech,special reference should be made to J. R. Asmus,"Synesius und Dio Chrysostomus," Byz. Ztschr.9 (1900) 85-151.37 Latinus Pacatus Drepanius, PanegyricusTheodosio Augusto Dictus 22 (Baehrens, XIIPanegyrici Latini [Leipzig, 1874] p. 291). Forthe date of this panegyric (389 A.D.) see Hanslik,RE, vol. 18 (1943) col. 2058.38 De Regno 11, 14, 15.

39 Since Synesius himself is our major author-ity for the later phases of the revolt of Gainas,it is worth mentioning that we have excellent in-dependent authority for the statement that Tribi-gild was much helped by slaves who escaped tojoin his forces (Zosimus 5. 13. 4) and by Teu-tonic soldiers in the Roman armies who

coster charles henry christianity and the invasions synesius of cyrene

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