OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 193 has reduced the world under my laws. These rites have re- pelled Hannibal from the city, and the Gauls from the capitol. Were my grey hairs reserved for such intolerable disgrace ? I am ignorant-^ of the new system that I am required to adopt ; but I am well assured that the correction of old age is always an ungrateful and ignominious office." ^^ The fears of the people supplied what the discretion of the orator had suppressed ; and the calamities which afflicted, or threatened, the declining empire were unanimously imputed, by the Pagans, to the new religion of Christ and of Constantine. But the hopes of Symmachus were repeatedly baffled by the firm and dexterous opposition of the archbishop of Milan ; who fortified the emperors against the fallacious eloquence of the conversion of advocate of Rome. In this controversy, Ambrose condescends a.S sss. *c. to speak the language of a philosopher, and to ask, with some contempt, why it should be thought necessary to introduce an imaginary and invisible power, as the cause of those victories which were sufficiently explained by the valour and discipline of the legions . He justly derides the absurd reverence for antiquity which could only tend to discourage the improve- ments of art and to replunge the human race into their original barbarism. From thence gradually rising to a more lofty and theological tone, he pronounces that Christianity alone is the doctrine of truth and salvation, and that every mode of Polytheism conducts its deluded votaries, through the paths of error, to the abyss of eternal perdition.'-- Arguments like these, when they were suggested by a favourite bishop, had power to prevent the restoration of the altar of Victory ; but the same arguments fell, with much more energy and effect, from the mouth of a conqueror ; and the gods of antiquity ^[Videro.] 21 See the fifty-fourth epistle of the tenth book of Symmachus [=x. iii. ed. Seeck]. In the form and disposition of his ten books of epistles, he imitated the younger Pliny; whose rich and florid style he was supposed, by his friends, to equal or excel (Macrob. Saturnal. 1. v. c. i). But the luxuriancy of Symmachus consists of barren leaves, without fruits, and even without flowers. Few facts, and few sentiments, can be extracted from his verbose correspondence. 22 See Ambrose (tom. ii. epist. xvii. xviii. p. 825-833). The former of these epistles is a short caution ; the latter is a formal reply to the petition or /i3el of Symmachus. The same ideas are more copiously expressed in the poetry, if it may deserve that name, of Prudentius ; who composed his two books against Symmachus (a.d. 404) while that Senator was still alive. It is whimsical enough that Montesquieu (Considerations, &c. c. xix. tom. iii. p. 487) should overlook the two professed antagonists of Symmachus ; and amuse himself with descanting on the more remote and indirect confutations of Orosius, St. Augustin, and Salvian. VOL. III. 13
