SOURCE: “The Emperor and His City,” in Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, University of California Press, 1981, pp. 50-61.

[In the following excerpt, MacCormack analyzes Claudian's treatment of the theme of imperial arrival and presence.]

I. ARRIVALS OF THEODOSIUS AND HONORIUS

Julian's reign was incomplete; his own image of the imperial office was idiosyncratic and a little baffling to contemporaries. This makes all the more impressive the certainty of touch with which his adventus was seized upon in so many cities and articulated with such unusual zest and consistency. The element in adventus which made the ceremony a continuous progress and an acknowledgement of sovereignty recurred under Theodosius. But with Theodosius there was the additional feature of adventus in both Rome and Constantinople, the two capital cities of the empire, whereby a relationship between emperor and capital was established, such as has been encountered already with Constantius II. At the same time, Christianity was now sufficiently established as the religion of the empire to put firmly into the past those aspects of adventus which had enabled it to orchestrate the revelation of a praesens deus. Imperial majesty was henceforth to be expressed by different means.

In describing Theodosius' triumphal celebration of his victory over Maximus and Victor, Pacatus in his panegyric refers to Theodosius' arrival in Haemona and later passes on to his arrival in Rome. The arrival in Haemona was a preliminary one, for it anticipated the more important arrival in Rome. Thus the whole of Theodosius' campaign could be rendered as a long triumphal adventus. Pacatus describes how the people of Haemona came to meet Theodosius and their sense of relief at his coming:

Crowds of dancers came to meet you and everywhere resounded songs and applause. One choir sang the triumph for you and the other one sang the funerary chant … for the tyrant. One choir called for the departure of the conquered, the other for the frequent return of the victors. … No one was hindered by consideration of you or themselves; the spontaneity of joy became a friendly violation of decorum. Need I describe how the freed nobility solemnly came to meet you outside the walls, the senators distinguished by their white garments, the venerable priests wearing their purple headdress? Need I mention the gates crowned with blooming branches? … You had not yet completed the war, yet already you celebrated your triumph.¹

The promise in this adventus of a successful outcome of Theodosius' war against Maximus is fulfilled with Theodosius' adventus in Rome:

The events which occurred in Rome, the day on which you entered the city, what you did in the curia and on the rostra, how you followed your procession of triumphal carts sometimes on a chariot, sometimes on foot, and how you were distinguished by this two-fold entry, triumphing on the one hand in war and on the other triumphing over pride; how you showed yourself as emperor to the commonalty, and as senator to individuals … how, having dismissed your military guards, you were in fact more securely guarded by the affection of the people: let these events be praised by the language and voice of those who, in the rejoicing which is common to all, can rightly praise what is most important and can justly praise what concerns them directly.²

This adventus at the same time forms the epilogue to Pacatus' panegyric and represents a high point in his experience of the emperor and of Rome, where he had gone to deliver his oration:

What a blessed pilgrimage have I had! … [On my homecoming,] with how many listeners will I be surrounded when I say: ‘I saw Rome, I saw Theodosius, and I saw both together; I saw him who is an emperor's father, an emperor's avenger, and an emperor's saviour.’³

Here the movement of the ceremony had come to rest in the act of beholding Theodosius and Rome. Triumph, now in effect transformed into adventus, culminated in the relationship that was to be formed between the emperor and his capital. This was a theme which became very prominent in Claudian's descriptions of Honorius' arrival in Rome in 404.

Claudian, as a great poet, with his imagination formed and trained in the Latin poetry of the past and in the rhetorical schooling he received, presents a personal, even an enigmatic picture of imperial adventus in the late fourth and early fifth centuries—personal in that he applies his own vision to contemporary events, enigmatic in that what he says seems so little in accord with the post-Theodosian Christian empire.⁴Adventus to Claudian could be a divine theme which he articulated by means of the imagery of pagan religion, drawing for this imagery on a period in literature and artistic achievement when religion and art, worship and personal culture had been inseparable:

Madness divine has driven earthly perception
From my breast, my heart is inspired by Apollo.
The temple before my eyes shakes in its foundations,
And from its threshold spreads a radiant light
Which gives witness to the advent of the god.(5)

In Claudian's poetry the question of how religion and culture were to be differentiated was not asked, and was therefore not answerable. Claudian could accordingly articulate the propaganda of a Christian court in a pagan idiom. In a sense, he did not commit the court to either paganism or Christianity;⁶ rather, he created an artistic language of his own, related though this was to the language of earlier Latin poets. It is therefore necessary to understand how Claudian viewed adventus in itself, and then how this view can be integrated into a late antique context.

Claudian describes three arrivals of Honorius: Honorius' coming to the West in 392, his consular adventus in Milan in 398, and his consular adventus in Rome in 404. In the two earlier instances,⁷adventus was one theme among several in his writings, while the whole panegyric of 404 was devoted to Honorius' arrival in Rome.

The themes of the adventus of 404 are triumph on the one hand, and the relation between emperor and Rome on the other,⁸ so that here emerge again the strands of adventus that were prominent under Constantine, Constantius and Theodosius. As for the triumph, it is formulated in the Constantinian sense: it is a pompa,⁹ in which the theme of triumph is combined with that of consulship in the structure of the poem.¹⁰ This melding of themes is highlighted by the interspersed narrative of Alaric's defeat, so that the ceremonial climax of victory—adventus formulated as triumph and consulship—is related to an historical setting, to historical fact.

But this is only one strand in the structure of the poem, the other being the mythological setting of victory. In order to create this setting, Claudian incorporated into his narrative the figure of Eridanus, who represented also the river Po, guardian of the borders of Italy, and the father of Phaethon, whose fate could have been a warning example to Alaric before he invaded Italy.¹¹ There is no separation between history and myth, however, for, just as Roma, a figure of myth and imagination, can address Honorius, the visible emperor,¹² so Eridanus, figure of myth, speaks to Alaric,¹³ the only too factual enemy.

In short, we have here a very skilful handling of the theme of adventus on several levels which, as during the Tetrarchy, are capable of interpenetrating each other, thereby enhancing and extending visible and historical reality and giving it universal significance and comprehensibility. Reality becomes comprehensible because it can be set into the framework of Roman history and Graeco-Roman myth. History makes sense because it is continuous, and one of the ways of highlighting such continuity is the use of the ceremony of adventus.

These topics, the interpenetration of different modes of reality, the relating of contemporary history to past experience and myth, and the perception of continuity among them are also disclosed in the other main theme of Claudian's Sixth Consulship, that of the emperor and Roma. …

The actual adventus is brought about initially by Roma's request to see her emperor and by the dialogue between Roma and Honorius.¹⁴ But the adventus of Honorius in Rome is not merely an ad hoc event; it also has a theoretical, doctrinal rightness about it, which Claudian discusses in four introductory themes to the poem as a whole,¹⁵ which point to Honorius' adventus. He opens with the significance of Fortuna Redux. That is, he points to adventus and consulship in their Roman Republican and Augustan context—the emperor and the consul's home are in Rome.

Next, he says the same thing in astrological terms: Honorius is the sidus imperii¹⁶ (we may recall Julian's being welcomed as a star) which, when the emperor is in Rome, is in its own seat, propria sede.¹⁷ Then, the adventus of Honorius is visualised in terms of Apollo's coming to Delphi, when the spring of Castalia speaks again and the laurel is again the tree of prophecy. This theme is then related to Rome and Honorius:

Behold how the sanctity of the Palatine hill is enhanced
And rejoices in the presence of its god, granting oracles
Greater than those of Delphi to suppliant nations,
And it commands its laurels to flourish, ready for the standards of Rome.(18)

Finally Rome is described as though the adventus were already taking place, and this evocation of the topography of Rome is reiterated in the context of the actual ceremony at the end of the poem.¹⁹

The adventus, then, takes place in the contexts of both triumph and the interdependence of Rome and emperor. Claudian's illustrations of these contexts, which have been discussed so far, explain the meaning of the actual ceremony. This consists of the progress of Honorius from Ravenna,²⁰ the preparations in Rome,²¹ and Honorius' entry: a vast crowd receives him,²² and Honorius and his entourage are described.²³ Once within the city, the first stage of adventus having been accomplished, Honorius meets the senators and mounts the Palatine, his home.²⁴ He presides in the circus,²⁵ and performs consular New Year ceremonies.²⁶

How greatly does the presence of the empire's guardian genius enhance the people's majesty; how greatly does the majesty of the one reflect the other.²⁷

These words introduce Claudian's description of Honorius in the circus presiding over the accustomed laetitiae, and performing the consular ceremonies of the New Year. The words sum up the interdependence of emperor and people, emperor and Rome, which the ceremony of adventus could orchestrate. The ceremony culminates in achieving, in visible terms, in the emperor's visible presence, that tightly-knit unity between emperor and subjects which was the goal of so much late antique imperial theory.

Honorius' adventus in Rome of 392 also takes the form of a progress²⁸ and of a welcome in Rome by an eager crowd.²⁹ Both progress and welcome—this time in Milan—again figure in 398,³⁰ when Claudian lays special stress on the splendour of Honorius' jewel-clad figure.³¹ The aspect of the emperor is described in a simile:

Now, what garments, what miracles of spendour
Have we not seen, when, clad in the robe of Italy
You passed through Liguria more exalted than is your custom
And when you were carried amidst the cohorts clad in white,
And picked soldiers bore upon their shoulders
A starry burden. Thus in Memphis are gods brought out
Before the people. The image leaves its shrine.(32)

Here, then, the emperor does not merely stand still and unperturbed by the surrounding tumult of rejoicings, as Constantius had done, but he himself has, as it were, become the image. Claudian's simile, even if interpreted in the most casual way possible, is most significant. The ceremony of adventus in late antiquity had become a stylisation, an expression in literary and visual art, of an originally spontaneous experience. The experience could still be spontaneous, but it was, from a very early stage, capable of formalisation, stylisation, of an interpretation which universalised it in different ways.

In the expression of adventus, rhetoric and visual art worked hand in hand, and Claudian's simile highlights this fact from one particular point of view: the person of the emperor could be compared to the artefact, the work of art, and according to Ammianus, could deliberately behave in such a way as to become like the artefact, the work of art. There is thus a connection between Claudian's Honorius and the statuesque emperors of imperial art on the obelisk base of Theodosius and the column base of Arcadius in Constantinople. …

II. THE ETERNAL PRESENCE

Once the emperor is united with his capital, adventus, the ceremony of movement and arrival, has come to rest. It is in this coming to rest that we can follow the ceremony to its next phase. In so doing, we cross one of the watersheds separating the late antique from the early Byzantine worlds. For, a ceremonial, once perceived as highlighting the momentary and dramatic impingement of the imperial presence on the local community, is transformed into its opposite—a ceremonial that communicates the worldwide dominion of the emperor, exercised from the still centre of the imperial presence. The opening phases of this development are implied in the language of Pacatus; it becomes plain in the art of the Theodosian age. Adventus imagery on the coinage became very rare during the fourth century, and it is necessary to ask why this was so. Partly it was because the repertoire of themes in imperial art during the fourth century decreased drastically,³³ but also, and more importantly, the change reflected the way in which the ceremony of adventus had altered in meaning.

From a military ceremony of movement enacting in particular localities the universal presence of the emperors³⁴—a political and military necessity for the Tetrarchs—the first stage of adventus, which had stressed arrival per se, became less practically conditioned and less military. What came to be emphasised was not so much the movement or the progress of the emperor, but rather his presence. This tendency had been adumbrated on the largitio bowl of Constantius: already the mounted emperor was, as it were, stationary, and the movement turned in on itself. The imperial presence was epitomised in the second stage of the ceremony of adventus, that of the coexistence between emperor and subjects, and in the visual arts in the fourth century a terminology for this imperial presence was formulated: stationary, enthroned emperors.³⁵ This entirely superseded the earlier themes of the emperor in movement.

A major example among depictions of the imperial presence is the obelisk base of Theodosius in Constantinople, showing the imperial family presiding over scenes in the hippodrome, just as, in the panegyrics, once arrival had been effected, the emperor presided in the circus.³⁶ The obelisk base is linked by its Latin inscription to Theodosius' defeat of Maximus:

Once reluctant to obey the exalted lords,
I am commanded to carry the palm over the vanquished tyrants [Maximus and Victor];
All things yield to Theodosius and to his everlasting offspring;
Thus am I conquered and subdued in thirty days,
Am raised under Proclus [Proculus] the judge into the high air.(37)

The scene on the obelisk base that relates most intimately to Theodosius' arrivals of 389 (although not strictly historically, for at this period imperial art almost totally abandoned historical representation) is the submission of barbarians, among whom are Iranians on the north west side.³⁸… Three emperors, Theodosius, Valentinian II, Arcadius and the prince Honorius, sit enthroned in the Kathisma, flanked by senators, courtiers and soldiers, while below from the right approach Northern barbarians and one African, and from the left three Iranians, all bearing gifts. The locale is Constantinople, so that these are not the Iranians who, according to Claudian, came to Rome.³⁹ Rather, neither the Iranians nor their Western counterparts are historical personages at all but stereotypes of imperial ideology which convey the message of the emperor's universal dominion. A theme which, on the arch of Galerius, was still relatively realistically depicted—the reception of a foreign embassy—had here become a stereotype⁴⁰ and would remain one in the art of the fifth to the sixth centuries, just as Claudian visualised it in his mise-en-scène of imperial triumph transformed into adventus: “They laid down their crowns and bowed the knee before you.”⁴¹

The four imperial personages shown in the relief were never in Constantinople together after the outset of the campaign against Maximus, so that from this point of view the relief is not historical either. What is depicted is the imperial presence—the emperors made present through their images—together with a typological imperial event—the arrival of the embassy—which defines, from a theoretical standpoint, the nature of imperial rule. The image makes permanent the second stage of adventus, the presence of the emperor in his city, be it Rome, or, as here, Constantinople.⁴²

The companion panel to the submission scene shows the same four figures in the Kathisma, watching a chariot race, this being another expression of imperial victory. … Victory is depicted non-historically, without reference to a particular occasion; the occasion is only hinted at in the inscription.⁴³ The other two sides of the obelisk base do show an historical event—the erection of the obelisk and its inauguration. Three figures appear in the Kathisma, in the front row, and they are personages who were at that time in Constantinople, one of them being Arcadius.⁴⁴

The obelisk base of Theodosius marks an important moment in imperial art in Constantinople, in that it picked up a method of representation utilised already on the Arch of Constantine in the largitio and adlocutio panels.⁴⁵. … Frontality is the decisive visual feature in these reliefs, and as a result, the emperors are stationary and majestic. The emperor might still participate, as we have seen, in ceremonies of arrival, where he moved, but in visual art movement increasingly disappeared, and with that there disappeared one of the chief links that existed between the expression of adventus in literature and its expression in visual art: insofar as adventus was described in literature as movement, it was no longer represented visually. But on the other hand, imperial art represented the second stage of adventus, the presence of the emperor in a city, all the more convincingly and insistently. For the time being adventus as a military ceremony of arrival, and of arrival at times of emergency and need in the provinces of the empire, had had its day.

Such is also the message of another Constantinopolitan monument, the column base of Arcadius.⁴⁶ The column, following the model of the two triumphal columns of Rome,⁴⁷ depicted the expulsion of the Goths from Constantinople, while on three sides of the base were shown scenes expounding the joint consulship of Arcadius and Honorius in 402 a.d. Drawings made while the monument was still standing reveal that these scenes contained throughout the element of encounter between emperors and subjects, and of emperors and conquered enemies, which was also a feature of adventus. But once again the viewer here faced emperors still and majestic. Each of the three sculpted sides had four bands of relief, one beneath the other. On the east side…, in the band second from the top, the two emperors emerge from a columned porch, each followed by an armiger. The emperors are clothed in togas, and each holds a mappa in his raised right hand, an eagle sceptre in his left. To the right stand two togati and seven lictors, and to the left one togatus, one chlamydatus and another seven lictors. All these figures are seen frontally. The chlamydatus on the left is probably the pretorian prefect who accompanied the emperor when he transacted business with the Senate.⁴⁸ The lictors in the imperial consular procession are mentioned in Claudian's panegyrics.

The register below shows two groups of senators seen frontally, moving towards the centre, each headed by a senator carrying a crown.⁴⁹ At the extreme left and right stand Roma and Constantinopolis, each under an arch. Crowns were a customary gift to the emperor by the Senate, as well as by the cities of the provinces, on the occasions of imperial victories, anniversaries, and consulships. Symmachus brought such aurea manuscula as representative of the Roman Senate to Gratian and Valentinian I for the latter's quinquennalia in 369, and Synesius offered a crown to Arcadius on behalf of his home city, Cyrene.⁵⁰

These two registers show the emperors in the act of meeting the Senate. A consular adventus was an urban senatorial event, “when armour gives way to the toga”;⁵¹ accordingly, the emperors are here togate. The bottom register, divided into three parts by columns, shows weapons and armour, with two barbarian women in an attitude of mourning. To left and right Nikai write on shields. These reliefs show the imperial consuls in the ceremonial setting of their office; the senators, and the Eastern and Western empires in the guise of Roma and Constantinopolis…, make their due offerings. The bottom register sets these scenes into the wider context of victory and of events in the empire, as Claudian does in his poems. The message of these reliefs was, however, essentially different from Claudian's, for in the top register two Nikai in flight hold up a rectangular panel with a cross which is flanked by two attendant figures. Left and right of these Nikai Hesperus and Phosphorus, each with a torch, fly upwards. The sign by which Constantine had been victorious was by this time thought to have been the cross.⁵² The top panel thus transforms the message of the other three, which could, without it, have been pagan, into a Christian one.

Imperial art achieved the transition from paganism to Christianity with a certain ease, by superimposing one concept over another, or, simply, by joining concepts. The new religion was expressed by adding to the old imagery without destroying it. In literature, such a Christianisation of the pagan imperial past came about much more slowly; its first fully articulate exponent was Corippus, in the later sixth century.⁵³

Hesperus and Phosphorus flanking the cross, like Sol and Luna on the arch of Constantine, indicate that the setting of the scene is a cosmic universal one.⁵⁴ This universal imagery is more striking on the west side of the base…, where in the top register the Nikai holding up the cross in a wreath are flanked by Helius and Selene on their chariots, both raising their hands and preceded by Hesperus and Phosphorus. The second register shows the emperors as victors; they wear military dress, and are attended, on the left, by a togatus, a chlamydatus and soldiers, all standing frontally. Below, Germans, left, and Persians, right, emerging from an archway and led by Nikai, each with a kneeling woman, bring gifts, recalling the submission scene of the obelisk base. In the centre stand a trophy and two kneeling Nikai holding up the Chi Rho in a wreath, flanked by armour. In the fourth register, captives, trophies and captured armour emphasise imperial victoriousness.

The south side… shows the homage of the provinces to the emperors in an iconographical scheme parallel to the other two, except that here, for a technical reason, the captured arms appear in the top register. Below this, two flying Nikai flanked by trophies and arms hold up the Chi Rho in a wreath. In the third register stand the two emperors in military dress, each holding a Nike on a globe; between them kneel two bound barbarians; on the right are four chlamydati and soldiers, and on the right, five chlamydati, a togatus and soldiers. Below, female personifications of the provinces or cities of the empire wearing mural crowns are led towards the centre by two Nikai, to offer their homage to the emperors; in the centre kneels a woman.⁵⁵ The cities formulated as women, as personifications, as Menander had suggested, are coming to meet the emperors who, in the register above, arrive triumphant.

We have come a long way, in these reliefs, from the Tetrarchic images of adventus with which we began. This Tetrarchic imagery, both in art and in panegyric, of empire-wide movement, no longer fit the circumstances of the early fifth century, when emperors lived in capitals and delegated military operations to generals. Nor was civilian government by now the face-to-face operation, the direct encounter between ruler and ruled, which the Tetrarchic panegyrists and Julian's advocates had envisaged and praised. There had occurred a deep and long-term change in perspectives of portraying the emperor. Synesius, who took a hostile view of this phenomenon, described it very accurately: the emperor no longer campaigned at the head of his troops, no longer met his subjects directly, no longer legislated from personal knowledge and experience. Instead the emperor remained in his palace, adorned in jewelled robes, “keeping your lairs like lizards, scarcely peeping out at all to enjoy the sun's warmth, lest being men you should be detected as such by men.”⁵⁶ This is the critical counterpart to Claudian's description of the splendour of Honorius' consular processions.

If one seeks to define the change that took place in terms of visual art, it may serve to look back to the Arch of Constantine. Here the imperial procession of a particular adventus is shown in a precise location; similarly, the largitio and adlocutio panels are placed in clearly recognisable Roman localities. … On the column base, on the other hand, precise locality is not depicted at all, while neither the obelisk base nor the column base refers to imperial deeds in as particularised a fashion as does the arch of Constantine. Imperial deeds are represented on the arch as going from the specific to the universal. The adventus of the emperor ties in with the rising of Sol.

On the column base, and to a lesser extent on the obelisk base, on the other hand, the representation begins with the universal, the non-specific and the non-historical, and stops there. The viewer is accordingly left outside the image, and is not, as in earlier imperial art, drawn to participate in it by the gestures and glances of the figures. Instead, the viewer of the column base and the obelisk base is invited to comprehend the image by the familiar symbolism of triumph, consulship and the offering of gifts to the emperor, which all point to imperial qualities, especially victory. He is also invited to comprehend the image by its layout, by the symmetry and frontality of the main figures and the composition in registers, the latter serving to convey the content of the images in a hierarchy descending from God via the emperor to the emperor's subjects.⁵⁷

These images, although anchored in an actual occurrence—the consulship of Arcadius and Honorius in 402—are nonetheless non-historical, for they do not record this event per se so much as a schematisation of it. Arcadius and Honorius did not meet either as consuls or as emperors, and the representation of them together is therefore to be viewed as conveying a certain theory of empire, that is, a theory of imperial unity, but this at a time when unity was factually and politically ineffective.⁵⁸

Thus, the imperial presence, that of Honorius in Constantinople, was not in this instance historically or geographically conditioned.⁵⁹ The representations of the column base take the viewer away from what actually happened so as to show a certain type of event. This type of event was rooted in the adventus ceremonial of the fourth century, in that the reliefs show the outcome or culmination of adventus, the second stage of this ceremony. Each of the three encounters that are depicted—with the senators of Rome and Constantinople, with the provinces, and with the subject nations—has its analogies in depictions of earlier imperial arrivals. But whereas these latter concerned actual events, the events depicted on the column base were not as strictly founded on fact. Instead, the representations of the column base took one ingredient of the earlier imperial adventus ceremonial, the second stage of adventus, and transformed it into a tableau of imperial presence.

The earlier symbolism of adventus was founded on imperial deeds, the deeds of peace and war, as the classification of Menander and others expressed it, whereas the column base alludes to no deeds and instead expounds qualities. The keynote of each set of reliefs is given in a symbol of Christian victory, which served to define and introduce the victory of the emperor, for victory is the leitmotif of all these compositions. These Constantinopolitan representations did not demand of the viewer that he attribute to them a specific time and place. Iuppiter's prophecy in the Aeneid,

his ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono
imperium sine fine dedi

had found concrete if paradoxical expression in late Roman imperial ceremonial and art, in the emperor's eternal presence.⁶⁰

Notes

1. Pan. Lat., 12, 37, 3:

   Ferebant se obviae tripudiantium catervae. Cuncta cantu et crotalis personabant. Hic ubi triumphum chorus, ille contra tyranno … carmen exequiale dicebat. Hic perpetuum victis abitum, ille victoribus crebrum optabat adventum. … Nullus cuiquam sui tuine respectus: blandam tibi faciebat iniuriam contumacia gaudiorum. Quid ego referam pro moenibus suis festum liberae nobilitatis occursum, conspicuous veste nivea senatores, reverendos municipali purpura flamines, insignes apicibus sacerdotes? Quid portas virentibus sertis coronatas? … Nondum omne confeceras bellum, iam agebas triumphum.

   See, on this panegyric, A. Lippold, “Herrscherideal und Traditionsverbundenheit im Panegyricus des Pacatus,” Historia 17 (1968) 228-250; cf. Y.-M. Duval, “L'éloge de Théodose dans la Cité de Dieu (V, 26, 1). Sa place, son sens, et ses sources,” Recherches augustiniennes 4 (1966) 135-179. On Pacatus, see J. F. Matthews, “Gallic Supporters of Theodosius,” Latomus 30 (1971) 1078ff.

2. Pan. Lat., 12, 47, 3-4:

   Ea vero quae Romae gesta sunt, qualem te urbi dies primus invexerit; quis in curia fueris, quis in rostris; ut pompan praeeuntium ferculorum curru modo, modo pedibus subsecutus alterno clarus incessu nunc de bellis, nunc de superbia triumpharis; ut te omnibus principem, singulis exhibueris senatorem; ut … remota custodia militari tutior publici amoris excubiis: horum haec linguis, horum, inquam, voce laudentur qui de communibus gaudiis et dignius utique quae maxima et iustius poterunt praedicare quae propria sunt.

3. Pan. Lat., 12, 47, 5:

   O mea felix peregrinatio! … quam multo circumdabor auditore, cum dixero: ‘Romam vidi, Theodosium vidi, et utrumque simul vidi; vidi illum principis patrem, vidi illum principis vindicem, vidi illum principis restitutorem.’

   Cf. Themistius Or. XIV, to Theodosius, a short address on his accession, where the orator stresses the intimate link between emperors and capitals: Constantinople desires to welcome Theodosius before the other cities of the East—for she excels the other cities as the emperor excels other men, thus making a special relationship between emperor and capital: Themistius 183 ab.

4. For Claudian's poetic techniques, see Alan Cameron, Claudian, Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (1970) and, for a different approach, C. Gnilka, “Dichtung und Geschichte im Werke Claudians,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 10 (1976) 96-104; cf. also C. Gnilka, “Götter und Dämonen in den Gedichten Claudians,” Antike und Abendland 18 (1973) 144-160.

5. Claudian De Raptu Pros. I, 5-9:

   Iam furor humanos nostro de pectore sensus
   expulit et totum spirant praecordia Phoebum;
   iam mihi cernuntur trepidis delubra moveri
   sedibus et claram dispergere limina lucem
   adventum testata dei.

6. It was only in Christian eyes that Claudian, whether baptised or not, could be described as a Christi nomine alienus (Augustine De civ. Dei 5, 26), for only in Christianity could a dichotomy of religion and classical culture arise, with the consequent need for both pagans and Christians to define their position with regard to religion and classical culture.

7. Claudian III. cons., 122ff; IV cons., 365ff.

8. See, e.g., the speech of Roma in Claudian VI cons., 361-425.

9. Claudian VI cons., 374; cf. 383-385; 494ff.

10. E.g., Claudian, VI cons., 640-660; cf. A. Alföldi, Die monarchische Repräsentation im röm. Kaiserreiche (1970) 94-98.

11. Claudian VI cons., 146-147.

12. Claudian VI cons., 361-425.

13. Claudian VI cons., 178-192.

14. Claudian VI cons., 361-493.

15. Claudian VI cons., 1-52.

16. Claudian VI cons., 22-23. There is double meaning here: Honorius is also Latiae sublimis signifer aulae.

17. On the whole passage, Claudian VI cons., 18-25. …

18. Claudian VI cons., 35-38:

    Ecce Palatino crevit reverentia monti
    exultatque habitante deo potioraque Delphis
    supplicibus late populis oracula pandit
    atque suas ad signa iubet revirescere laurus.

19. Claudian VI cons., 579-610.

20. Claudian VI cons., 494-522.

21. Claudian VI cons., 523-528.

22. Claudian VI cons., 543-559.

23. Claudian VI cons., 560-577.

24. Claudian VI cons., 603.

25. Claudian VI cons., 611-639.

26. Claudian VI cons., 640-660. The use of the toga and arma ‘topos’ in this passage serves to heighten the Roman, urban orientation of the panegyric, cf. below at nn. 222ff.

27. Claudian VI cons., 611-613:

    O quantum populo secreti numinis addit
    imperii praesens genius! quantamque rependit
    maiestas alterna vicem. …

28. Claudian III cons., 109ff; note 121-122: oppida adventu sacrata tuo.

29. Claudian III cons., 126ff.

30. Claudian IV cons., 565ff.

31. Claudian IV cons., 584ff.

32. Claudian IV cons., 565-572:

    Nunc quoque quos habitus, quantae miracula pompae
    vidimus, Ausonio cum iam succinctus amictu
    per Ligurum populos solito conspectior ires
    atque inter niveas alte veherere cohortes,
    obnixisque simul pubes electa lacertis
    sidereum gestaret onus. sic numina Memphis
    in vulgus proferre solet; penetralibus exit
    effigies.

    On the pagan context of this passage, see A. Alföldi, A Festival of Isis in Rome under the Christian Emperors of the IVth Century (1937) 42-44; R. Hari, “Une image du culte égyptien à Rome en 354,” Museum Helveticum 33 (1976) 114-121. For a living pagan cult in Claudian's lifetime, see J. Collins-Clinton, A Late Antique Shrine of Liber Pater at Cosa (1977).

33. A. Grabar, L'empéreur dans l'art byzantin, 125-162, esp. 159.

34. Pan. Lat., 3, 14.

35. Cf. “Accession,” at nn. 11ff.

36. Pan. Lat., 9, 19, 6; Claudian VI cons., 613f; cf. Amm., 16, 10, 13-14.

37. Difficilis quondam, dominis parere serenis
    iussus et extinctis palmam portare tyrannis.
    omnia Theodosio cedunt, subolique perenni
    ter denis sic victus ego domitusque diebus
    iudice sub Proclo superas elatus ad auras.

    See G. Bruns, Der Obelisk und seine Basis auf dem Hippodrom zu Konstantinopel, Istanbuler Forschungen, 7 (1935) 30. H. Wrede, “Zur Errichtung des Theodosiusobelisken in Istanbul,” Istanbuler Mitteilungen 16 (1966) 178-198, 182f, discusses competition between Constantinople and Rome in the late fourth century, as expressed in imperial building programmes, for which, see also R. Naumann, “Theodosiusbogen und Forum Tauri in Istanbul,” Istanbuler Mitteilungen 26 (1976) 117-142. On the obelisk base in the context of the hippodrome, see G. Dagron, Naissance d'une capitale, Constantinople et ses institutions de 330 à 451 (1974) 311ff, and Alan Cameron, Porphyrius the Charioteer (1973) 49-64. On the artistic style of the base and its late antique characteristics see H. Kähler, “Der Sockel des Theodosiusobelisken in Konstantinopel,” Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 6 (1975) 45-55. On the inscription, cf. Alan Cameron, “Some Prefects Called Julian,” Byzantion 47 (1977) 42-64, at 60-62. The imagery of the hippodrome lived on in Constantinople and elsewhere: E. Ville-Patlagean, “Une image de Salomon en basileus byzantin,” Revue des études juives, Historica Judaica, 4th series, 1 (121) (1962) 9-33.

38. Bruns, Der Obelisk, 32ff, 36ff.

39. Claudian VI cons., 70-72.

40. H. P. Laubscher, Der Reliefschmuck des Galeriusbogens (1975) 48-52. For the “stereotype of imperial ideology,” cf. submission scenes on Dionysiac sarcophagi, themselves derived from Roman triumphal art, in F. Matz, Die dionysischen Sarkophage 3 (1969) 425-426 with numbers 243, 244, 245. However, here, the god (like, in imperial art of the second century, the emperor, cf. R. Brilliant, Gesture and Rank in Roman Art (1963) 75, 109, 122f, 189ff) by his gesture indicates that he accepts gifts and submission. No such gesture disrupts the imperial tranquillity in late antique art.

41. Claudian VI cons., 71-72.

    Posito que tiaram
    summisere genu. …

42. See also below, section 6 (ii).

43. Wrede, “Zur Errichtung,” 196-197. A clay copy in Vienna of a Tetrarchic silver missorium shows the emperors enthroned, as on the obelisk base, presiding at games. See H. Fuhrmann, “Die Konsulardiptychen und verwandte Denkmäler, II, tönerne Missoria aus der Zeit der Tetrarchie,” Röm. Mitt. 55 (1940) 92-99.

44. These three figures have proved difficult to identify. For a list of views, see Wrede, “Zur Errichtung,” 194. The interpretation of the south-east side, where the emperor (Arcadius) holds a wreath, is disputed: is he giving or receiving the wreath? See Alan Cameron, Porphyrius the Charioteer (1973) 50-51, arguing that he receives it; contra, most recently, H. Kähler, “Der Sockel des Theodosiusobelisken in Konstantinopel,” Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 6, (1975) 45-55, at 52. The contrast between the two historical and the two non-historical reliefs on the obelisk base is made by Wrede, “Zur Errichtung,” 194-197; Cameron, Porphyrius, 50, prefers to see artistic variation, without significant differences in content.

45. These two panels depict the emperor's presence in Rome, as distinct from his arrival, and they do so by means of frontality and symmetry: cf. above at no. 144. A systematic interpretation of these aspects of late antique art is H. P. L'Orange, Art Forms and Civic Life (1965) 89f, on the arch of Constantine.

46. The column base itself does not survive, but can be studied from the Freshfield drawings in Trinity College, Cambridge: E. H. Freshfield, “Notes,” Archaeologia 72 (1921-1922) 87-104, and J. Kollwitz, Oströmische Plastik der theodosianischen Zeit (1941) Beilage 5f. Grabar, L'empéreur dans l'art byzantin (1936) 75, relates the relief to Theodosius-Arcadius and interprets it differently.

47. Kollwitz, Oströmische Plastik, 19-33, and G. Becatti, La colonna coclide istoriata (1960) 151-264.

48. Kollwitz, Oströmische Plastik, 50-51.

49. Grabar, L'empéreur, 76, designates these as togati and relates the gift of a crown to the custom of the ninth century of giving the emperor a crown after a triumphal return. More directly relevant is the interpretation by Kollwitz, who refers to the aurum coronarium of late antiquity: Kollwitz, Oströmische Plastik, 51f. See also F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (1977) 140ff, and T. Klauser, “Aurum Coronarium,” in Gesammelte Arbeiten zur Liturgiegeschichte, Kirchengeschichte und christlichen Archaeologie, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum Ergänzungsband, 3 (1974) 292-309.

50. Synesius De regno, 2; cf. Symmachus Or., 1; cf. O. Seeck's edition 1883, 210. Cf. Gregory Naz. Contra Iul. I, 80, describing imperial images showing cities bringing gifts to the emperors, and barbarians trampled underfoot, indicating that the representations on the column base were not at all unusual.

51. Claudian III cons., 1ff; IV cons., 5f; VI cons., 8-10; and 595f. On the traditional celebrations of January 1st, see M. Meslin, La fête des Kalendes de Janvier dans l'empire romain, Coll. Latomus, 115 (1970).

52. Grabar, L'empéreur, 32-39, 239-243.

53. Corippus In laudem Iustini, IV, 90ff. See Averil Cameron, Corippus, commentary on IV, 198f, 219, 264ff.

54. But the specific point of this symbolism as shown on the arch (also on the Parabiago platter) has been altered. On both these works the sun rises while the moon sets, thus attributing a particular time to the occurrences depicted, i.e., dawn. On the column base (as on other late antique works, e.g., the Ascension miniature in the Rabbula (Gospels, below, “Consecratio,” n. 220), on the other hand, sun and moon both rise or are not shown as personifications. Thus no point in time is referred to. We have rather a cosmic setting tout court.

55. According to C. O. Nordström, Ravennastudien (1953) 45, a parallel to this method of representation in registers occurs in the Baptistery of the Orthodox in Ravenna. The centre, showing the Baptism of Christ, with the surrounding Apostles bearing wreaths—an aurum coronarium—is related to the pairs of registers showing the emperors and various forms of homage: the homage of the Senate, the provinces and the enemies of the empire. The altars and thrones in the Baptistery correspond to the panels of captured armour on the obelisk base. The parallel illustrates how, in the fifth century, art for ecclesiastical purposes and imperial art used a common idiom. See also K. Baus, Der Kranz in Antike und Christentum, Theophaneia, 2 (1940) 201-230, on Roman triumphal imagery in Christian art.

56. Synesius, On Kingship 15, ed. Terzaghi (1944): tr. A. FitzGerald, The Essays and Hymns of Synesius of Cyrene, vol. 1 (1930) 127; cf. On Kingship 13, 25, 21 (FitzGerald 9, 19, 21). A similar criticism was voiced by Sidonius: K. F. Stroheker, Der senatorische Adel im spätantiken Gallien (1948) 43f, on principes clausi; and, in more practical terms, by Vegetius. See W. Goffart, “The Date and Purpose of Vegetius' ‘De re militari’,” Traditio 33 (1977) 65-100, esp. 79f. The lines in question (DRM 3, 26) “can only fit a youthful emperor—not necessarily youthful in years but having the sort of perennial youth one associates with the tranquillity of the imperial palace.” On the occasion of Synesius' speech, see Klauser, “Aurum Coroniarum” (above, n. 225), 301.

57. Cf. J. Kollwitz, Oströmische Plastik, 61f.

58. E. Demougeot, De l'unité à la division de l'empire romain (1951) 395-410.

59. Compare the Tetrarchic panegyric on universal imperial presence: Pan. Lat. III, 14, 2-3:

    Iovis omnia plena … id nunc ego de utroque vestrum audeo praedicare: ubicumque sitis, in unum licet palatium concesseritis, divinitatem vestram ubique versari, omnes terras omniaque maria plena esse vestri.

    But here the point was used to praise a particular imperial adventus.

60. Vergil Aen., I, 278-279; cf. expressions in the law codes such as Cod. Theod., 10, 22, 3: adoraturus aeternitatem nostram.