In one of the most famous passages from Ammianus Marcellinus' history, the emperor Constantius II is portrayed as dazzled by the awesome magnificence of the Forum of Trajan during his visit to Rome in a.d. 357. The emperor had just visited Rome's most impressive sights, including gigantic baths, the theatre of Pompey, the Pantheon, and the Flavian Amphitheatre:
But when he came to Trajan's Forum, a construction unique under all the heavens, in our opinion, a marvel even by the common consent of the gods, he stopped in his tracks amazed, his mind running over the huge complex, both indescribable and never again to be rivalled by mortals.Footnote 1
The Forum was still accounted one of the seven wonders of Rome in the middle of the fifth century, and its brilliance had apparently not diminished by the early sixth, when Cassiodorus remarked that, even for habitués, the Forum was still a marvel to behold.Footnote 2 Yet these oft-cited passages tell us more about the impact of the Forum on a viewer than about what was actually to be seen there.Footnote 3
In contrast to the relatively spare testimony of the literary sources, the Forum of Trajan has been studied extensively by archaeologists and architectural historians, who, however, have been mainly interested in the earliest phases of the complex under Trajan and Hadrian.Footnote 4 Extensive excavations in the southern part of the Forum, carried out under the direction of R. Meneghini, have altered our understanding of several important features of the complex. Specifically, they have shown that the equus Traiani stood not in the centre of the forum square, but displaced toward the south portico along the major axis; the line of the south portico itself was not curved, but segmented; and the connection between Trajan's Forum and that of Augustus was effected by a small colonnaded courtyard.Footnote 5 Concerning the area north of the Basilica Ulpia, where excavation is constrained by existing buildings, a vigorous debate has erupted over the location of the temple of the deified Trajan mentioned in the Regionary Catalogues.Footnote 6 The ongoing excavations in the Imperial Fora have also added to our understanding of these spaces in the late antique and early medieval periods. At least as regards the Forum of Trajan, however, the principal finding has been a lack of evidence for spoliation or other wholesale changes until the paving of the forum square was removed in the ninth century.Footnote 7 Moreover, the continued use of the Forum for statue dedications in the fifth century, in contrast to their lapse in the other Imperial Fora, is a strong indication of the continued vitality of this space in Late Antiquity.Footnote 8 The absence of indications of destruction or decay fits well with Venantius Fortunatus' mention of poetry readings in the Forum of Trajan in the years after the Gothic wars of the middle of the sixth century.Footnote 9
Since neither archaeology nor the literary sources shed much light on the Forum of Trajan in the late antique period, the best evidence for understanding the functioning of this space within the political topography of the city is provided by the numerous inscriptions recovered from the Forum.Footnote 10 These texts have now been authoritatively described, edited, and supplemented with indispensable commentaries by G. Alföldy et al. in the two most recent fascicles of CIL VI, which include updated notes on previously published inscriptions as well as new texts discovered in recent decades.Footnote 11 The special importance of inscriptions and statue monuments as vehicles for the self-representation of the senatorial élite in Rome was established by W. Eck in his fundamental study of this topic in the Augustan period.Footnote 12 Recently this approach has been extended to the later period, with several important studies appearing in the last decade. Thus H. Niquet, a member of the CIL team, published a careful analysis of senatorial inscriptions with a view to reconstructing the significance of the original statue monuments in their different display contexts.Footnote 13 Because honorific inscriptions were once attached to (now lost) statues, they are a crucial source for reconstructing the statuary environment of specific locations. A recent study by C. Machado has attempted just such a reconstruction for the Roman Forum in Late Antiquity.Footnote 14 As yet, however, there is no comparable study of the inscriptions from the Forum of Trajan. The majority of these inscriptions record dedications to senators, and demonstrate that the Forum was the most important public venue for honorific commemoration of senators in the fourth and fifth centuries a.d. These inscriptions, together with the statues that once stood above them, helped promote an image of a coherent senatorial class defined primarily by the holding of offices in the civil administration. Moreover, the pattern of dedications points to a clear differentiation in the use of the two most important commemorative spaces in the heart of the ancient city: while the Forum of Trajan was increasingly marked as a senatorial and civilian zone, the Roman Forum retained its traditional associations with imperial power and military victory.
I THE EPIGRAPHIC EVIDENCE: AN OVERVIEW
The first indication of the significance of the Forum of Trajan for senatorial commemoration is the sheer number of inscriptions that have been found there.Footnote 15 At least twenty inscriptions have been found that record dedications to men of senatorial (clarissimate) rank in the fourth and fifth centuries (see Appendix, Table A). In addition, nine other highly fragmentary texts have been identified as potentially, though not certainly, honouring senators (see Appendix, Table B), partly on the basis of having been found in this Forum.Footnote 16 The significance of these totals can be appreciated by comparing them to the number of inscriptions honouring emperors in the Forum of Trajan and to those honouring senators in other public spaces. Such a comparison reveals unmistakable patterns. First, only seven inscriptions can securely be traced to statues of emperors in the Forum of Trajan (see Appendix, Table C), suggesting that statues of senators may have outnumbered those of emperors by as much as 3:1 or 4:1. Second, the number of late antique inscriptions honouring senators in the other Imperial Fora is miniscule (one each from the Forum of Augustus and the Forum Transitorium). Finally, the statues of senators in the Forum of Trajan also clearly outnumbered those of senators in the Roman Forum (see Appendix, Table D); this preponderance becomes even greater if the comparison is restricted to senators who held non-military offices.Footnote 17 In short, the Forum of Trajan was unquestionably the primary public venue for the dedication of honorific statues of senators in the fourth and fifth centuries.
The chronological distribution of the senatorial inscriptions from the Forum of Trajan is fairly even; the two earliest come from the last years of Constantine's reign, while the latest appear to come from the middle of the fifth century. Nearly every decade of this span is represented by at least one inscription, with the heaviest cluster in the middle to late fourth century. These statues thus became more common during a period when emperors were least often present in Rome, and can be seen as one facet of a broader trend that saw dedications to senatorial aristocrats in Rome overtake those to emperors beginning in the middle of the fourth century.Footnote 18
The inscriptions from the Forum of Trajan also present a number of difficulties. Most obviously, the statues that once stood atop these inscribed bases are as usual completely lost (some of the inscriptions indicate that they were of gilded bronze). Still, the inscriptions were important in their own right; as J. Ma has aptly written of Hellenistic honorific inscriptions, they ‘contextualized and assigned social meanings to the honorific images, and hence determined the workings of the whole monument’.Footnote 19 A second problem is that it has proved impossible to reconstruct the display context of these statues within the vast Forum complex.Footnote 20 Although some of the inscriptions mention that they were placed in the Forum, few if any were found in situ, and even the findspots themselves are recorded only in the most general way — the vague indications ‘in foro Traiani’ and ‘in area fori Traiani’ are the most common locations given for these inscriptions in CIL. Without the statues or bases in situ, it is impossible to ‘reconstruct their total effect as monuments’ in the way that, for example, R. R. R. Smith has done for the late antique public statuary of Aphrodisias.Footnote 21 Notwithstanding these limitations, the epigraphic evidence from the Forum of Trajan is sufficient to establish that a substantial presence of statues grew up over time in one or more locations in the Forum. More importantly, these inscriptions can form the basis for reconstructing the ideological context in which these honours were awarded, received and viewed.
II PORTRAIT OF A COHERENT GOVERNING CLASS
The inscriptions and the honorific statues they accompanied reflect what has been called a ‘total revolution in the nature of the imperial senatorial order’ in the fourth century.Footnote 22 This policy was set in motion by Constantine, who created a second senate at Constantinople and greatly expanded the number of administrative positions that conferred senatorial rank. The extension of the clarissimate to the holders of positions in the central administration and the army vastly expanded the numbers of clarissimi; the traditional aristocrats of Rome would now be joined by thousands of new men from the curial and provincial élites as well as by high-ranking military officers whose origins might even lie beyond the frontiers altogether. This reform of the senatorial order ‘effectively transformed the aristocracy from one of birth into one of office’, creating a much broader and more diverse governing class; ‘the senatorial order thus became during the course of the fourth century a very mixed body’.Footnote 23
The expanding numbers and increasing diversity of the holders of senatorial rank required the creation of a new corporate identity for this governing class. Emperors played a large rôle in this process by continuing to pass laws defining the rank and privileges of various offices, part of a long tradition reaching back to Augustus in which emperors showed special concern for regulating the senatorial order.Footnote 24 As M. Salzman has suggested, ‘Constantine and his successors evidently hoped to make this disparate set of elites a unified whole, conscious of one another as members of the same status group’.Footnote 25 While the emperors' reforms to the clarissimate may have created the conditions in which a new collective senatorial identity could emerge, we should not underestimate the rôle played by the senators themselves — particularly those who lived at Rome — in determining the content of this identity. Senators at Rome were the heirs of deep-rooted values whose commemoration was itself an ancient tradition and a powerful mechanism by which to assimilate newcomers to the norms of the Roman aristocracy.
An important marker of the senate's increasingly active rôle in shaping the collective identity of the reformed senatorial order is provided by an unusual inscription from the last years of Constantine's reign. The inscription praises Ceionius Rufius Albinus, urban prefect from December 335 to March 337, for securing the restoration of the senate's ancient prerogative of nominating all the quaestors who would serve in a given year (previously it had nominated only a portion of them).Footnote 26 By gaining the right to co-opt adlecti, the senate regained full control over choosing its own members, a significant concession that ‘indicates imperial recognition of senatorial autonomy’.Footnote 27 For this coup, Albinus earned a statue on the Capitol, a rare and exclusive location for such an honour.Footnote 28 The inscription draws attention to the extraordinary nature of Albinus' achievement by explaining that this prerogative was being restored after a lapse of 381 years dating back to the time of Julius Caesar. Equally striking is the emphasis in the text on the senate's initiative in setting up this monument. The text as it survives and in Alföldy's restorations does not mention the emperor at all; this was an honour awarded to a senator by the senate (and carried out by a senatorial official, the curator statuarum).
Although Constantine's decision to relinquish control over the selection of quaestors was a logical extension of earlier policies, the public announcement of this change took place at a time when the emperor's withdrawal from Rome was beginning to look more permanent. Constantine did not return to Rome to celebrate either the beginning of his thirtieth anniversary year in July a.d. 335 or the end of this year in a.d. 336, marking a break with his earlier practice of returning to Rome to mark his tenth year in a.d. 315 and his twentieth in a.d. 326. His non-appearance at Rome for his thirtieth anniversary signalled his new priorities, including the build-up of Constantinople, the ongoing doctrinal disputes within the eastern Church, and a planned invasion of Persia. With Constantine wholly absorbed in eastern affairs, the prefect Albinus' petition was very well timed, for it allowed both emperor and senate to demonstrate a shared interest in confirming the authority of the senate. It also represented a tacit acknowledgement on both sides that the emperor's absence from Rome implied a greater rôle for senators in the administration of the city.
The increasing diversity among holders of senatorial rank and the newly enhanced authority of the senate as an institution would have underscored the necessity of forging a collective identity for this reformed senatorial order. The traditional ‘status culture of the senatorial aristocracy was a significant unifying system’ with which the disparate elements of the new clarissimate might be welded into a coherent governing class.Footnote 29 The statues and inscriptions honouring individual senators in the Forum of Trajan — the earliest of which can be dated to the years between a.d. 334 and 337 — can be seen as a response to the major changes in the nature of the senatorial order under Constantine. These honorific statues helped to promote an image of a coherent governing class by emphasizing the shared elements of this senatorial status culture. These elements were predictably traditional, but they were also sufficiently flexible to be extended to the new élites who were now joined to the old Roman aristocracy in their shared rank as viri clarissimi. The inscriptions emphasize the holding of high office, distinguished achievement in letters, the display of traditional aristocratic virtues, and the approval of peers and emperor as the defining characteristics of senatorial excellence. In reality, of course, senators continued to compete fiercely with one another, and even within the homogenizing language of the inscriptions there are subtle differences that reflect gradations of status. Thus the image of a coherent governing class was always to some degree in tension with the fissures that continued to exist beneath the surface.
The Aristocracy of Office
The most obvious characteristic shared by the men who received statues in the Forum of Trajan is their senatorial (clarissimate) rank. In virtually every case, the attainment of this rank would have followed from holding a qualifying public office. The men commemorated in the Forum of course comprised only a tiny minority of the senatorial order, and as might be expected, it is the holders of the highest offices who predominate. The centrality of office-holding to the identity of the honorand is reinforced by the form of the inscriptions, which invariably list the offices immediately after the name and in apposition to it, literally equating the man with his offices. In the case of men who had not held the highest offices, it is reasonable to suppose that some other compensating merit must explain why they received such a rare honour (see below). Even in the case of such individuals (e.g. the poet Claudian), however, their offices are still listed first, indicating the importance of this criterion in establishing their claim to honour.
The offices and careers represented on the inscriptions in the Forum of Trajan reveal a significant pattern: all the offices held by these men of senatorial rank were civilian magistracies. Not a single military office is named, and no general, i.e. no one holding the office of magister peditum/equitum/utriusque militiae/militum, is known to have received a statue in the Forum of Trajan.Footnote 30 In view of the number of inscriptions recovered from the Forum, the absence of military honorands is significant; it is also surprising in light of Valentinian I's law formalizing the precedence of rank among holders of high offices in a.d. 372. Addressed to the prefect of Rome, this law was designed to draw equivalences across career paths, ‘evidently with the object of securing proper recognition for the military offices, and also those of the comitatus’. According to one provision of this law, there was to be ‘no distinction in rank’ among urban prefects, praetorian prefects, and masters of the infantry or cavalry.Footnote 31 In light of this official policy, the apparent exclusion of military men from the Forum of Trajan reveals an important fault-line within the governing class; the age-old distinction between civil and military authority within the city of Rome was clearly still operative.
The exclusion of military men also runs counter to the impression of unity contrived by the statues in the Forum of Trajan. Although holders of senatorial rank were increasingly diverse in their social and geographical origins, career paths, and religious affiliation, these differences are rarely emphasized. Senators who had served primarily at court were honoured alongside those who had held office mainly in Rome. Only one inscription appears to draw attention to this distinction, with Flavius Eugenius praised for having held ‘all the palatine offices’.Footnote 32 Likewise, it is striking that the inscriptions supply virtually no information about a topic on which scholars have spilled a great deal of ink, namely the spread of Christianity among the Roman aristocracy.Footnote 33 Both pagans and Christians were represented in the Forum, and a senator's religious affiliation was clearly not a consideration in awarding a statue.Footnote 34 To give one example, four magistrates with careers in the imperial service were honoured by Christian emperors between a.d. 355 and 367: two pagans (Sallustius and Secundus) and two Christians (Eugenius and Taurus) (their religion is known from other sources). The sole example of an explicit statement of religious affiliation is found in the inscription for Avianius Symmachus, whose two pagan priesthoods are listed along with his other offices. The listing of such priesthoods in a cursus had been customary in the early empire, and their inclusion here should be seen primarily as a subtle claim to noble status rather than a statement of devotion to the pagan cults.Footnote 35 The near-invisibility of religion in the inscriptions from the Forum of Trajan is a healthy reminder that a senator's religious affiliation was not necessarily considered an essential element of his public profile. It may also reflect a desire to avoid potential sources of conflict or controversy and to focus instead on commonalities.
Men of Letters
While most of the men honoured with statues in the Forum of Trajan belonged to the highest echelon of the senatorial order, there are also several figures who would seem to be ‘under-qualified’ on the basis of the offices they had held. Of the senators listed in Table A, three-quarters had held offices that carried the highest grade (illustris) of senatorial rank, but several honorands had attained only the intermediate grade (spectabilis) at the time the statue was awarded and one individual only the lowest grade (clarissimus).Footnote 36 Thus while senatorial rank must have been at least a de facto requirement, and holders of the highest offices formed the large majority of the honorands, there was also scope for awarding statuary honours in the Forum of Trajan to men of less than the highest rank. In the case of these slightly less exalted personages, some other compelling reason must have motivated the award of a statue in such a prestigious location. The fact that several of these lower-ranking honorands are famous literary figures suggests that outstanding achievement in letters could win for a lesser senator the same public recognition as higher-ranking senators received for holding office in the imperial administration.
It must be emphasized that this dynamic operated only within a very narrow social range restricted to the lower tiers of the senatorial class. Among the nobility, literary polish was taken for granted, conspicuous mainly when absent.Footnote 37 For the same reason, Nicomachus Flavianus is more accurately characterized as a member of the Roman nobility, an imperial quaestor and praetorian prefect, than as the author of a historical work, despite the passing mention of his annales in the dedicatory inscription of his statue in the Forum of Trajan. As Alan Cameron demonstrates, the restoration of his statue was a political gesture to honour Flavianus' powerful descendants (themselves office-holders of the highest rank) by rehabilitating the memory of an illustrious ancestor who had backed the losing side in the civil war of a.d. 392–4.Footnote 38 Nor should the presence of statues for several literary figures be interpreted to mean that all famous writers were eligible for such an honour; no writer could expect a statue simply for producing well-received works of literature, any more than a senior magistrate was entitled to a statue simply for holding a high office.Footnote 39 Recognition appears to have been restricted to writers who were of senatorial rank and had performed some valuable service.Footnote 40 In this regard it is surely significant that nearly all the literary figures honoured with a statue in the Forum of Trajan are known to have composed panegyrics in praise of the imperial regime.
The figure in this category about whom we know the most is the poet Claudian, praised in the inscription set up in the Forum of Trajan as ‘the most famous of poets’. An inscribed epigram in Greek adds that he embodied ‘the mind of Virgil and the muse of Homer’, a fitting tribute for the bilingual poet. Notwithstanding the brilliance of his poetry, Claudian's eligibility for this honour depended at least in part on his rank and office. The inscription identifies him as vir clarissimus and tribunus et notarius; although in the case of Claudian this was presumably an honorary post, the office in fact carried spectabilis rank.Footnote 41 More importantly, Claudian put his singular poetic gifts to work as the mouthpiece for the western imperial regime. It was the fact that Claudian served Stilicho and Honorius with his poetry that made him deserving of this honour. In fact, Claudian's statue was probably awarded in a.d. 400 in recognition of his panegyric on the consulship of Stilicho, the third book of which was performed by the poet in Rome.Footnote 42
Two other poets who received statues in the Forum of Trajan in the fifth century had also delivered panegyrics. In a.d. 435, a statue was set up to Flavius Merobaudes, identified as vir spectabilis and comes in the emperor's privy council. The inscription emphasizes his equal exploits with pen and sword. Although no military office is named, he probably held a lower-ranking military commission at the time of the campaign in the Alps mentioned in the inscription. The inscription culminates in the emperors' praise of Merobaudes for delivering a verse panegyric ‘whose performance magnified the glory of the triumphant regime’, perhaps celebrating the general Aetius' first consulship in a.d. 432.Footnote 43 Merobaudes' statue is mentioned in a poem by the young Gallic aristocrat Sidonius Apollinaris, who might have seen it when he visited Rome in the middle of the fifth century. Sidonius himself delivered a panegyric on the consulship of the emperor Avitus on 1 January 456 (Carm. 7); subsequently he too received a statue in the Forum of Trajan. According to Sidonius, the statue bore his titles and was placed among the authors of the two libraries.Footnote 44 Since the inscription has not been found, it is not clear when the statue was set up or what titles it listed, but the honour surely owed as much to Sidonius' nobility as to his poetry: he was the son of a former praetorian prefect and the son-in-law of the reigning emperor.Footnote 45
Of the literary figures attested in the surviving inscriptions from the Forum of Trajan, only one is not known either to have held office in the imperial administration or to have produced panegyrics of the regime. Jerome's Chronicle records that a statue was dedicated in a.d. 354 to Marius Victorinus, the Neoplatonic philosopher and rhetor urbis Romae.Footnote 46 This statue, like that of Sidonius, is known only from literary sources; without the inscription, it is difficult to know in what terms this honour was justified. Although Victorinus is not known to have held any public office, the statue might have been connected with a grant of clarissimate rank, since the title V(ir) C(larissimus) appears in the manuscripts of some of his later writings.Footnote 47 If so, a parallel of sorts might be found in the case of the philosopher Celsus, who likewise received a grant of senatorial rank. Symmachus stresses that Celsus follows in a long tradition of Athenian philosophers summoned to Rome ‘to teach the nobles’, and recommends that he be made an honorary consul.Footnote 48 According to Augustine, Victorinus owed his honour to the fact that he, like Celsus, had been the ‘teacher of so many noble senators’.Footnote 49 Nevertheless, while there are parallels for the extraordinary grant of senatorial rank to prominent orators, the award of a public statue in such a prestigious location as the Forum of Trajan is most unusual.Footnote 50
In an age in which social status, actual or honorary political office, and cultural achievement were often combined in the same individuals (e.g. Ausonius, Themistius, Libanius, etc.), it would be idle to draw too firm a line in classifying an individual as a ‘political’ as opposed to a ‘literary’ figure. The inscriptions from the Forum of Trajan show that distinguished achievement in letters — usually of the sort that directly served the imperial regime — could be one more proof of excellence in a man of senatorial rank, and might enable a lower-ranking senator to achieve an honour normally reserved for senators of the highest rank.
The Virtues of Senators
Since only a small minority of senators (even restricting our view to those who had held the highest offices of state) ever received a statue in the Forum of Trajan, they must have possessed additional qualifications.Footnote 51 After the listing of offices (cursus), the next element in the inscriptions is often a statement of the virtues that adorned the honorand. There is considerable variation across the inscriptions in this regard; some honorands are praised in detail for their exceptional personal qualities and/or the excellent conduct of their offices; in other cases, the citation is much briefer, almost perfunctory. This linguistic range provided scope for marking subtle distinctions in status, especially between aristocrats from the old nobility and the newer senators of more modest origins; in general, the former are more likely to be credited with personal virtues, while the latter are more often praised for specific achievements.
The rhetoric of personal virtue is developed most fully in the inscriptions honouring men who had been prefects of Rome, an office that tended to be filled by scions of the noble families. The virtues claimed are overwhelmingly traditional.Footnote 52 Anicius Paulinus, for example, possesses ‘nobility, eloquence, justice, and judgement, for which he is distinguished in both his private and public life’.Footnote 53 Avianius Symmachus is praised for his ‘authority, prudence, and eloquence’.Footnote 54 Anicius Auchenius Bassus is commemorated for his ‘foresight, effectiveness, vigour, eloquence, and exceptional moderation’.Footnote 55 Peregrinus Saturninus' statue is a ‘testament to his character, integrity, and singular sense of justice’.Footnote 56 Perhaps the best example of this type of language is found in an inscription not set up in the Forum of Trajan, but probably in the house of another former prefect, Memmius Vitrasius Orfitus, who was ‘of noble family and, after the example of the ancients, always illustrious at home and abroad for his self-restraint, justice, steadfastness, foresight, and all his virtues’.Footnote 57 The inscriptions for these former prefects of Rome may be compared with the literary epigrams on prefects composed by Avianius Symmachus in the 370s.Footnote 58 Avianius' poems have earned the censure of modern critics in part because they are somewhat repetitive, many of the same virtues gracing one prefect after another.Footnote 59 This uniformity, however, is better seen as the result of Avianius' desire to portray a diverse set of individuals as belonging to the same social and political class.Footnote 60 Disparities in family status, geographical origins, and religious affiliation are dissolved in a language of praise that privileges commonalities over differences. Like the statues and inscriptions in the Forum of Trajan, Avianius' elogia held up a mirror to senatorial society, defining a set of exemplars whose virtues rendered them worthy of remembrance and imitation.
In addition to their personal virtues, the inscriptions in the Forum sometimes praise a senator for specific actions he took while holding office. Thus the inscription for Avianius Symmachus is concerned to show the premier position he held within the senate; he was customarily the first member called upon to express his opinion, and he was frequently chosen as an ambassador to the imperial court.Footnote 61 Similarly, the inscription set up for Julius Festus Hymetius commends the former proconsul of Africa both in general for the integrity of his administration and specifically for averting famine from the province and restoring the popularity of the provincial priesthood.Footnote 62 The ‘vigilance and justice’ of another governor, Cronius Eusebius, is explicitly cited as the reason for both an increase in his administrative jurisdiction as consular of Aemilia and his subsequent promotion to vicar of Italy.Footnote 63 These relatively detailed accounts are in marked contrast to the much briefer and vaguer citation for Saturninius Secundus, a member of the emperor's privy council and twice praetorian prefect, who is simply commended ‘for his outstanding services to the state’.Footnote 64 The conspicuous advertisement of achievements in the inscriptions for Hymetius and Eusebius is perhaps to be connected with their lower status; since both were only spectabiles, perhaps additional justification for their honours was felt to be necessary. Thus specific meritorious actions in office might, like outstanding literary achievement, help a lower-ranking senator win a place of honour alongside his more illustrious peers.
The advertisement of individual senators' personal virtues or honourable conduct in office helped to define a set of values for the senatorial order as a whole. It seems likely, therefore, that one of the intended audiences for these statues was other senators. According to Pliny, the award of a public statue to a deserving man served as an exemplum that could inspire other senators to imitate his virtues.Footnote 65 The power of honorific statues to spur other aristocrats to competitive emulation is cited in Symmachus' memorandum urging the award of honorific statues for Praetextatus: ‘imitation is inspired by the ornaments bestowed on good men, and a competition in virtue is fostered by the example of honour paid to another.’ This diffusion of virtue through the power of inspiring exempla is aptly summarized by J. Ma, who writes that the goal of honorific decrees was ‘social reproduction through exemplarity, and hence the spectacularity and visuality of honors (proclamations, statues)’.Footnote 66
Ultimately the recognition of aristocratic virtues was a duty of emperors; three fifth-century inscriptions characterize them as ‘rewarding’ men of virtue by sanctioning the award of a public statue.Footnote 67 In his rôle as arbiter of honours, the emperor could rehabilitate the memory of officials who had fallen from favour by approving the restoration of their statues in the Forum of Trajan. Such restorations, three of which are attested in these inscriptions, in effect allowed emperors to comment on previous regimes by ‘correcting’ the historical record. Thus Constantius and Julian restored the statue of Flavius Eugenius, which he had earned under Constans for his ‘most faithful life and devotion’, after it was probably destroyed in the time of the usurper Magnentius.Footnote 68 The most famous of these restorations is that of Nicomachus Flavianus, whose inscription proclaims the return to public honour of an illustrious senator who had supported the wrong side in a civil war.Footnote 69 The rehabilitation of Julius Festus Hymetius, a proconsul of Africa who had suffered exile under Valentinian I, is especially interesting because the inscription can be compared with the testimony of Ammianus (28.1.17–23). Amid a shortage of grain in Africa, Hymetius had drawn on the supplies intended for Rome, replacing these stores when the harvest came in, but was suspected of profiting from the transaction; subsequently he was ensnared in the investigations of senators for magical practices and was nearly condemned to death. The inscription specifically praises Hymetius for ‘averting the devastation of hunger and dearth from the province by his plans and provisions’. The award of this statue in a.d. 376, the year after Valentinian's death, thus represents a tacit acknowledgement that Hymetius had been treated unjustly, and is part of a series of measures by which the new regime of Gratian sought to repair relations with the senate.Footnote 70
The practice of bestowing public honours on virtuous senators also offered an opportunity to exert a measure of social control on the governing class through the promotion of an image of the ideal public official. Two of the inscriptions found in the Forum of Trajan attribute the initiative in awarding the statue to provinces who wished to express their gratitude to former governors.Footnote 71 The provinces of Spain obtained permission from the emperors for a statue for Flavius Sallustius, a man ‘full of fairness and fides’.Footnote 72 The province of Africa was permitted to honour its former proconsul Hymetius with not one but two public statues, in Carthage and Rome, an honour ‘that it had never requested for any previous governor or ex-governor’.Footnote 73 In an age of occasionally spectacular malfeasance, corrupt officials might cause serious problems for emperors no less than for provincials, since bad governance could inhibit tax collection, disrupt public order, and even provoke revolts.Footnote 74 In short, emperors and provincials shared an interest in judging administrators according to the standards and virtues senators claimed for themselves.
The Rhetoric of Consensus in the Award of Honours
The final element common to most of the inscriptions found in the Forum of Trajan is a statement about the administrative process by which the award of a statue was approved.Footnote 75 The inscriptions display some variation in identifying the agent(s) responsible for the dedication, but the one indispensable element was the affirmative decision of the emperor(s). Still, though the emperor could act alone, the inscriptions usually state that he acted in conjunction with other entities. Either his decision was approved by the senate, or it responded to a request initiated by others — the senate, the senate and people of Rome, or the people of a province. The inclusion of these details was part of a rhetorical strategy emphasizing that the honour was the product of consensus: the organs of the Roman state, above all the senate and emperor, agreed that the individual was indeed of outstanding merit and deserving of a statue. Thus the statues not only presented an image of the ideal senator, but also expressed a message of harmony between senate and emperor.Footnote 76
The inscription for Anicius Paulinus (cos. a.d. 334) provides perhaps the best example of this rhetoric of consensus. Paulinus' statue was granted ‘according to the request of the Roman people, the testimony of the senate, and the decision of our lords the Augustus triumphator and the flourishing Caesars’.Footnote 77 According to the syntax of the inscription — which lacks any dedicator in the nominative case — no single agent was responsible for Paulinus' statue; rather, it was the result of a collaborative process that demonstrated the agreement of the people, senate, and emperor. While the involvement of the populus Romanus at this late date might seem surprising, it is also attested in the inscription for Petronius Maximus (a.d. 420/1).Footnote 78 The people's activity probably took the form of acclamations, as occurred after the death of Praetextatus in a.d. 384, when the people abandoned their usual entertainments in the theatre and ‘testified to his illustrious memory with many acclamations’.Footnote 79 The process of awarding statuary honours to these individuals thus provided an occasion for the demonstration of consensus among senate, people, and emperor.
The most common process mentioned in the inscriptions, however, omits the populus Romanus and states only that the senate either requested (four instances) or approved (two instances) the decision of the emperor. In a notable example of the former, the senate obtained the award of a statue for Avianius Symmachus after passing ‘multiple decrees’. We would like to know what these decrees contained and how they might have differed from one another. After the death of Praetextatus, Aurelius Symmachus as urban prefect sent no fewer than four relationes to the emperors, two announcing his death, one enclosing copies of all his speeches, and one reporting the senate's wish that the emperors award ‘long-lasting statues to pass down to the eyes of posterity a man who was remarkable in our age’.Footnote 80
The emperors' involvement in the granting of honours played a crucial rôle in opening possibilities for the display of status distinctions within the senatorial class. As J. Weisweiler has argued in an important article, in an age when emperors no longer lived at Rome, ‘closeness to imperial power became a more precious commodity’.Footnote 81 We have already seen that the inscription for Avianius Symmachus boasted of his many embassies to the imperial court, an element found in other inscriptions for Roman nobles at this period.Footnote 82 The high favour in which the emperors held Avianius is reflected in a grand inscription commemorating the rebuilding and rededication of one of the Tiber bridges in the name of Valentinian I. The inscription records that the emperor conferred the honour of presiding at the dedication ceremony on Avianius, even though he was no longer in office as urban prefect (one wonders what the current prefect thought of this arrangement).Footnote 83 Avianius' statue in the Forum of Trajan attests the further exceptional honour of a second gilded statue in Constantinople.Footnote 84 Together with the listing of his two priesthoods, these elements marked Avianius as a senator whose prestige surpassed that of his peers.
Another conspicuous mark of the emperor's favour was the inclusion on the statue base of an inscribed copy of the imperial letter sanctioning the award of a statue. As Weisweiler notes, the inscribing of imperial letters had long been characteristic of provincial cities, and the appearance of such letters at Rome in the fourth century is a function of the emperors' absence from the capital.Footnote 85 The inscription for Avianius refers to an ‘attached letter’ containing the ‘sequence and succession of his merits’.Footnote 86 Although this letter is not extant, two surviving examples from the Forum of Trajan indicate that such a letter would be addressed to the magistrates and/or senate of Rome. The first such letter, approving the award of a statue for the urban prefect Valerius Proculus, dates from the last days of Constantine's reign. Much of the surviving inscription is taken up with the imperial titulature and the greeting — so traditional as to be almost archaizing — addressed to the ‘consuls, praetors, tribunes of the plebs, and senate’, complete with the wishes for the good health of the senators and their children and the assurance that the emperors and their armies were likewise safe and sound.Footnote 87 Constantine's letter praises Proculus for the nobility of his family and ‘his own virtues, which are known from the private and public duties he has carried out’. Since the actual dedicatory inscription does not survive, it is not clear in this case whether the initiative belonged to the senate or the emperor.Footnote 88 The other surviving imperial letter, ordering the rehabilitation of Nicomachus Flavianus in a.d. 431, makes a point of declaring that it was issued freely and not in response to a senatorial request; whether true or not, this may allude to the normal practice by which imperial letter confirmed senatorial decree.Footnote 89
Conclusion
The honorific statues of senators in the Forum of Trajan exhibit a tension between the emperors' desire to promote an image of a coherent governing class and aristocrats' continued interest in preserving status distinctions within the senatorial order. On the one hand, emperors legislated equality of rank among the old nobility, new senators who served in the palatine ministries, and high military commanders. The awarding of honorific statues to leading senators of diverse backgrounds and career paths in one prestigious location in Rome can be seen as a reflection of this broader vision for the reformed senatorial order of the fourth century. Yet the statues also reflect the fierce competition among senators for public honour, and subtle hints of status distinctions disrupt any easy image of unity. Most notably, while aristocrats and bureaucrats were honoured side by side, military men were excluded from the Forum of Trajan. Moreover, the language of the inscriptions loosely reflects a difference between the ‘ascribed status’ of the nobles, manifested in their personal virtues, and the ‘achieved status’ of lesser senators who compensated for their lower rank by their outstanding political or literary service to the regime. Although all the senators who received a public statue were over-achievers, there was a still more exclusive élite even within this group, defined by additional marks of imperial favour, such as a second statue in Constantinople or an inscribed imperial testimonial added to the base of their statue. Such distinctions reflect the keen competition for status that was the hallmark of Roman senatorial society. Ammianus could easily be alluding to the gilded statues in the Forum of Trajan when he remarks that some senators ‘ardently pursue statues, thinking that through them they may be commended to eternity, as if they will get a greater reward from bronze effigies devoid of feeling than from the consciousness of deeds performed honourably and righteously, and they make sure to have them covered in gold…’.Footnote 90
III SENATORIAL AND IMPERIAL TRADITIONS IN THE FORUM OF TRAJAN
The inscriptions tell us a great deal about why individuals were considered worthy of an honorific statue, and a few of them even record the emperor's instruction that the statue be placed in the Forum of Trajan, but they do not tell us why these statues were placed in this particular location rather than somewhere else.Footnote 91 While practical considerations might have played a rôle — as the largest of the Imperial Fora, the Forum of Trajan surely had more space available for the display of statues — these do not offer a satisfactory explanation, because space in the other fora could always have been opened up through the clearance of old statues. Consequently, it is more likely that the decision to place the statues here was the result of an ideological preference that both shaped and reflected perceptions of what kind of honours and honorands were appropriate to this monumental space. What additional meanings did these statues assume by virtue of their placement in this particular Forum? And how did their placement here shape perceptions of the Forum and contribute to a redefinition of this space?Footnote 92 The ideological associations of the honorific statues in the Forum of Trajan become clearer when seen in comparison with the statuary environment of neighbouring monumental spaces, especially that of the Roman Forum. First, the high concentration of honorific statues of senators and the relative scarcity of dedications to emperors in the Forum of Trajan suggests that this space was seen as a ‘senatorial zone’ in Late Antiquity. Second, the absence of statues for military men further marked the Forum of Trajan as a civilian centre, in contrast to the Roman Forum, where the wielders of imperial power — emperors and generals — enjoyed a near-monopoly on representation.
Statues of Senators in the Second Century
At first sight Trajan's Forum might seem an unlikely setting for the celebration of senatorial achievement in the civilian sphere. The Forum had been designed as a monument to an emperor's military glory, and the architectural ornamentation conveyed the ideology of military triumph: chariot groups overlooked the entrances to the Forum and Basilica, military standards used as acroteria framed the inscription ex manubiis above the colonnades, and atlantes in the guise of Dacian prisoners supported the cornice.Footnote 93 Amid the overwhelming imagery of imperial military triumph, a number of senatorial generals were probably also represented here in the form of free-standing honorific statues. Dio records that Trajan honoured Q. Sosius Senecio (cos. II ord. a.d. 107), A. Cornelius Palma (cos. II ord. a.d. 109) and L. Publilius Celsus (cos. II ord. a.d. 113) with statues.Footnote 94 Although the location(s) of these statues is not specified, this notice is directly followed by the statement that Trajan built libraries and an enormous column. Fragmentary acephalous inscriptions recording the award of ornamenta triumphalia and public statues have been linked with Senecio and Palma, the latter indicating its presence in the Forum of Augustus.Footnote 95 Since Trajan's Forum was not dedicated until a.d. 112, the statue for Celsus (not attested epigraphically) is the best candidate for placement in the sparkling new complex.Footnote 96 It is unknown whether the statues of Palma and Celsus suffered damage in the wake of their executions in the ‘affair of the four consulars’ that marred the early days of Hadrian's reign.Footnote 97 Dio also records that Hadrian set up numerous statues to his (unnamed) friends ‘in the Forum’, some of them during their lifetimes, others posthumously.Footnote 98 The Forum of Trajan is also the most likely venue for the triumphal statues awarded to the three senatorial generals placed in command of the war against Bar Kokhba, Publicius Marcellus (cos. suff. a.d. 120), Sex. Iulius Severus (cos. suff. a.d. 127) and T. Haterius Nepos (cos. suff. a.d. 134).Footnote 99
It is not until the reign of Marcus Aurelius that we begin to have substantial epigraphic evidence for the honorific statues of senators in the Forum of Trajan.Footnote 100 Like the honorands of the fourth and fifth centuries, those of the second were all formally of senatorial rank; those who had pursued an equestrian career, rising to its highest office of praetorian prefect, invariably are identified in the inscriptions as having been granted ornamenta consularia, as though to justify the presence of their statues in the senatorial gallery. Unlike the late antique honorands, however, those of the second century had extensive military experience. The rhetorical emphasis of the inscriptions is on their military commands and decorations for valour, which are catalogued in exhaustive detail and overshadow the civilian offices they held in their early years. The most fulsome of the inscriptions is that for M. Claudius Fronto (cos. suff. a.d. 165), who ‘after numerous successful battles against the Germans and Iazyges died at last fighting bravely for the state’.Footnote 101 Fronto was represented in cuirass (statua armata), a fitting visual complement to the lengthy inscribed record of his military achievements. Interestingly, however, not all the statues of senators in the Forum of Trajan were in military costume; at least two, those of Larcius Sabinus (cos. suff. a.d. 144) and Aufidius Victorinus (cos. II ord. a.d. 183), were in civilian garb (statua habitu civili).Footnote 102 The careful distinction between military and civilian attire in these inscriptions is entirely missing in the inscriptions of the fourth and fifth centuries, which never refer to the attire of the statues that once stood above them. This self-conscious mixture of military and civilian representations in the Antonine age suggests a ‘carefully planned political communication about the power balance between civilian and military interests’.Footnote 103 The exclusion of military officers from the summi viri honoured in the late antique phase of the Forum indicates both a very different notion of senatorial identity and an important change in the use of the Forum as a space for honorific representation.
The principal element of continuity between the Antonine and late antique inscriptions is the conspicuous advertisement of consensus between emperor and senate.Footnote 104 All the second-century inscriptions use the same formula to describe the process by which the honorand was awarded his statue. In each case the formula is the last sentence of the inscription, and states that the senate decreed the statue on the motion of the emperor. The syntax of the formula represents the senate and emperor as acting together; the senate, in the nominative case, is formally responsible for the dedication — as shown by the stipulation that it be paid for with public funds — but it is always the emperor, in the ablative case, who initiates the honour by proposing the motion.Footnote 105 Notwithstanding these formal proprieties, it is clear that the intent and effect of these honours was to distinguish the emperor's select companions from the mass of ordinary senators.Footnote 106
The honorific statues dedicated in the Forum of Trajan in the second century helped to create a senatorial dimension to the space. Although this meaning was certainly secondary within the monumental programme of the Forum, it is nevertheless true that certain favoured senators were represented as participants in the emperor's glory through their rôle as generals in his wars. The statues dedicated to senators in the second century established a precedent for the commemoration of senatorial achievement in the Forum of Trajan. The decision to set up statues to distinguished senators in the Forum in the fourth century — after a hiatus that saw no such statues dedicated there in the third century — is best understood as a self-conscious resumption of the Antonine practice, and suggests that Roman élites of the fourth century were deliberately situating themselves in this earlier tradition, while adapting it to fit the realities of a time in which aristocrats were now exclusively civilian administrators. Even a Severan senator such as Cassius Dio was already looking back to the Antonine period as a golden age in which senators were entrusted with meaningful responsibilities and rewarded with public honours as the ‘subordinate but autonomous partners of the emperors’.Footnote 107 In the late fourth century, the author of the Historia Augusta wrote of Marcus Aurelius that ‘no emperor showed greater respect to the senate’, and knew that he had set up statues in the Forum of Trajan to high-ranking senators who had died in his Germanic wars.Footnote 108 While it is possible that the unknown author of this text was relying on earlier written sources for this information, it is also conceivable that the statues were in fact still on display in the fourth century; indeed, one of the Antonine statue bases shows evidence of reuse in the later period.Footnote 109
Despite the conspicuous differences between the honorands of the second and fourth centuries — in particular the lack of military achievements among the latter — the senators of the late antique period probably preferred to see continuities between themselves and their illustrious predecessors. In an intriguing coincidence, the Antonine base recarved in Late Antiquity once carried a statue of Vitrasius Pollio (cos. II ord. a.d. 176). Pollio's inscription is unusual in recording among his merits that he was a ‘friend of the emperors’ (sc. Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus) and connected by marriage to the imperial house as the husband of Annia Fundania Faustina, Marcus' cousin.Footnote 110 Vitrasius Pollio may have been an ancestor of the Memmius Vitrasius Orfitus who was twice prefect of Rome in the 350s and was praised for his nobility in several inscriptions set up by the urban collegia in his house on the Caelian Hill. It is possible that Orfitus, too, could claim a connection to the imperial house.Footnote 111
The presence of the honorific statues to senators of the fourth century alongside those of the second suggests an analogy with the reuse of the second-century reliefs on the Arch of Constantine. In each case the juxtaposition of objects from different periods presented an ‘implicit meditation on the nature of history’ that narrowed the distance between past and present.Footnote 112 Moreover, the Trajanic reliefs reused on the Arch almost certainly came originally from the Forum of Trajan. These include four large sculpted panels depicting scenes from the Dacian wars, thought to be taken from a ‘great frieze’ once located in the Forum.Footnote 113 In addition, the eight free-standing statues of Dacian prisoners now standing in the attic level of the Arch were probably taken from the attic façade of the Basilica Ulpia.Footnote 114 The reuse of these elements conveyed the message that Constantine, like Trajan, was victorious over his enemies; moreover, it helped to justify his victory over Maxentius by representing it in terms of a Roman triumph over barbarians.Footnote 115 Further, the heads of the emperors in the reused reliefs were recut, so that the head of Constantine was now fitted to the bodies of Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius — the same three emperors who had dedicated statues to senators in the Forum of Trajan. While these alterations glorified Constantine by presenting him as the worthy successor of these illustrious emperors, they also exerted subtle pressure to emulate exempla selected by the senate.Footnote 116
Statues of Emperors in the Fourth Century
The removal of architectural elements from the Forum to the Arch mirrors Constantine's own evocation of Trajan in other contexts. After Constantine's arrival in Rome in a.d. 312, the mint there issued bronze coins bearing a reverse with a legionary eagle between two standards accompanied by the legend SPQR OPTIMO PRINCIPI, evoking Trajan's famous appellation and imitating one of his most common reverse types.Footnote 117 These coins coincided with the 200th anniversary of the dedication of Trajan's Forum (a.d. 112) and Column (a.d. 113).Footnote 118 Moreover, Constantine's own portrait style in this period may have been influenced by Trajan's.Footnote 119 In all probability, Constantine was shown around Rome in a tour not unlike that given to Constantius in a.d. 357. Perhaps it was during such a tour that Constantine noticed how many buildings bore Trajan's name, prompting him to crack the joke that ‘Trajan’ was as ubiquitous as ‘wall ivy’.Footnote 120
The architectural links between the Forum of Trajan and the Arch of Constantine may also have suggested the Forum as an appropriate venue for the dedication of honorific statues to Constantine. One of these, set up by a Roman senator and magistrate, praises Constantine as the ‘bravest, most merciful, and most glorious princeps’.Footnote 121 Another was set up by Rufius Volusianus, the same man who as prefect of the city in a.d. 313–15 was probably overseeing the construction of the Arch of Constantine.Footnote 122 The inscription on Volusianus' dedication invoked Constantine as the ‘founder of eternal security’, an epithet nearly identical to one of the short inscriptions in the central passageway of the Arch; the epigraphic allusion, in conjunction with the reuse of spolia from the Forum on the Arch, would have drawn attention to the close links between the monuments and, by extension, between Constantine and Trajan.Footnote 123 Both the free-standing statue in the Forum and the Arch itself were prepared in anticipation of Constantine's visit in a.d. 315 to celebrate his decennalia. In addition to the two honorific statues to Constantine in the Forum, a colossal marble head (0.6 m high) of Constantine was discovered in 2005 in the course of excavations beneath the southern perimeter wall of the Forum; while it cannot be proved to be original to the Forum, its immense size and its apparently purposeful reuse in the drainage channel at a much later period suggest that it was found on site. This head, now on display in the museum at the Markets of Trajan, is said to exhibit close similarities with the reworked heads of Constantine on the Arch.Footnote 124
The monuments and representations of Constantine in the Forum of Trajan appear to cluster in the first half of his reign. The early dedications to him by senators (a.d. 312/24) may be indicative of a period before the tradition of dedicating statues to senators in the Forum was apparently revived in his last years (a.d. 334/7).Footnote 125 Subsequent dedications to emperors in the Forum of Trajan are surprisingly rare; in fact, no examples can be definitively identified between Constantine and Theodosius I (see Appendix Table C).Footnote 126 This absence is all the more striking because it contrasts with both the continued vitality of dedications to emperors in the Roman Forum and the surge in dedications to senators in the Forum of Trajan. The only other emperors known to have received honorific statues in the Forum are Theodosius I and his son Honorius.Footnote 127 Like Volusianus' dedication to Constantine, the dedication to Theodosius appears to have been timed to anticipate an imperial visit. Thus Aurelius Victor, prefect of the city in a.d. 388/9, set up a statue to Theodosius in the wake of the emperor's defeat of Magnus Maximus.Footnote 128 When the emperor visited in summer a.d. 389, he could have seen Victor's dedication praising him for having ‘surpassed the clemency, uprightness, and munificence of the ancient emperors’.Footnote 129 This dedication was doubly appropriate. Since Victor was the author of a history of Roman emperors, he was especially qualified to compare Theodosius to his predecessors. Moreover, Theodosius encouraged the comparison with Trajan: not only were both men from Spain, but they had both been chosen for imperial rule. Contemporary authors even hinted at a biological link between the two rulers and looked for physical resemblances in their images.Footnote 130 The link with Trajan naturally continued to be a literary topos under Theodosius' son Honorius, who in a.d. 417/18 received his own statue in the Forum of Trajan.Footnote 131
When compared to the abundance of senatorial statues in the Forum, the paucity of dedications to emperors is striking. The evidence suggests that it was mainly emperors with a special personal interest in Trajan who received dedications in his Forum; after Constantine, the distribution of statues in the Forum indicates that it came to be seen primarily as a venue for senatorial honours.
IV SENATORS AND GENERALS IN THE ROMAN FORUM
If the Forum of Trajan was increasingly populated with statues of senators, the old Roman Forum remained very much an imperial space. Ever since Augustus, emperors had retained control over this uniquely important space rich in political, cultural, and historical meanings.Footnote 132 Late antique emperors continued to use the old Forum on their rare visits to the capital; the ceremony of arrival (adventus) would typically culminate with speeches to the senate in the Curia and the people from the Rostra.Footnote 133 Despite the emperors' physical absence, a virtual imperial presence in the Forum was sustained by the many monuments to emperors that filled this ancient landscape. In the Forum's late antique phase, a nearly continuous series of dedications to emperors begins with the Tetrarchy and runs through the Theodosian dynasty, with every legitimate emperor save Jovian represented by at least one known statue. These dedications were part of a tradition stretching all the way back to the beginning of Rome's rule by emperors and ultimately deep into the Republic.Footnote 134 The fifth century, however, saw a sharp decrease in statue dedications to emperors; indeed not a single one is known from the period between a.d. 410 and 476, despite the fact that emperors actually resided in Rome much more often in the fifth century than in the fourth.Footnote 135
The collapse of the ancient imperial monopoly on public monuments in the Roman Forum mirrors the western emperors' waning political power in the fifth century. In an important study of the Forum's monuments in Late Antiquity, C. Machado has argued that this transformation reflects the greater control of senatorial aristocrats, especially urban prefects, over the dedications in the Forum. Prefects achieved greater visibility for themselves by moving statues to or around the Forum and restoring buildings, for which they took credit in inscriptions. In focusing their attention on sites traditionally important to senators, the prefects might privilege the ‘civic’ memory over the ‘imperial’ one.Footnote 136 Actual dedications to senatorial aristocrats, however, continued to be extremely rare, especially in comparison to the many statues dedicated to senators in the Forum of Trajan (see Appendix, Table D). The only identifiable example of a statue-dedication to an aristocrat in the Roman Forum in this period is the well-known dedication to Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, attested by an inscription found by the Column of Phocas at the western end of the Forum.Footnote 137
While it was extraordinary for an aristocrat to receive a dedication in the Forum, Praetextatus was undoubtedly a senator of the very highest prestige, as can be seen from any number of contemporary sources.Footnote 138 Moreover, special factors may have contributed to the emperor's decision to grant a statue in the Roman Forum.Footnote 139 At the time of his death, Praetextatus was consul designate for a.d. 385, and may thus have been entitled to a public funeral.Footnote 140 We also know from Symmachus' Relationes that the senate requested statues for Praetextatus, yet no inscription for him has ever been found in the Forum of Trajan; thus the fragment found by the Column of Phocas could belong to the monument requested by the senate. It is reasonable to suppose that the rare honour of a statue in the Roman Forum would have been granted by a letter from the emperor, and indeed Symmachus invites just such a testimonial, ‘for the praise that comes from a celestial judgement is all the more illustrious’.Footnote 141 Such a letter would have been inscribed and affixed to the monument, as in the three cases known from the Forum of Trajan. Although no such inscribed letter for Praetextatus has been identified, a recently published, highly fragmentary inscription from the Roman Forum could be a candidate, since it seems to contain an oratio principis praising the merits of an urban (and praetorian?) prefect.Footnote 142
At the end of the fourth century, significant changes appear in the distribution of honorific statues in the Roman Forum. First, there is a sharp decrease in the total number of statues dedicated, especially after the middle of the fifth century.Footnote 143 Second, the all-powerful generals who dominated imperial politics in the fifth century begin to receive a greater share of these dedications.Footnote 144 These statues are usually classified as dedications to senators — and thus as exceptions to the usual practice of restricting honours in the Forum to emperors — but this gives a misleading impression.Footnote 145 While the dedications to senators in the Forum of Trajan usually commemorated an entire career, the dedications to generals in the Roman Forum were set up to ‘express gratitude for the victories gained’ by these commanders.Footnote 146 The generals had little in common, apart from their formal senatorial rank, with the civilian magistrates honoured in the Forum of Trajan. Not only was their power based on their army commands, which turned over much less frequently than the civilian magistracies, but their influence extended far beyond military affairs; they functioned more as chief ministers of state than as mere office-holders. Moreover, the immense power these men wielded is shown by their ability to marry into the imperial house. Their combination of military authority and proximity to the imperial family makes them far more comparable to emperors than to ordinary senators; thus it is not surprising that their statues were placed in the Roman Forum, not in the Forum of Trajan.
The first of these commanders to receive a statue in the Roman Forum was Stilicho, the half-Vandal, half-Roman general who acted as regent for Honorius I. At least two and perhaps as many as four inscribed bases bearing dedications to Stilicho have been found in the Roman Forum. One was undoubtedly placed on the Augustan rostra at the western end of the Forum, a location of the highest symbolic importance and usually reserved for emperors alone.Footnote 147 Another inscription was also found behind the same rostra and celebrated Stilicho's rôle in the defeat of Gildo in a.d. 398.Footnote 148 Two other inscriptions that may belong to monuments dedicated to Stilicho have also been found in the Forum. One found in the Basilica Iulia contains no proper names but a number of epithets that would very aptly describe Stilicho, along with a deliberate erasure.Footnote 149 The other is the reused base of an equestrian statue turned on its side and now standing beside the Via Sacra in front of the Curia and the Arch of Septimius Severus. This well-known inscription was set up to celebrate the defeat of Radagaisus in a.d. 406, but bore an unusual dedication ‘to the fides and virtus of the most devoted soldiers’ of the emperors for a victory secured by the good fortune of Honorius and the ‘plans and bravery’ of Stilicho. The inscription does contain an erasure of Stilicho's name and titles, but since these are in the genitive case (not the expected dative), it is unclear whose image would originally have stood atop the base.Footnote 150
Regardless of the exact number of monuments to Stilicho in the Roman Forum, it is clear that his position depended as much on his marriage ties with the imperial house as his victories in the field. At the time of these dedications in the Forum, Stilicho had forged multiple marriage bonds with the family of Honorius: he himself had married Serena, Theodosius I's niece and adoptive daughter, as early as the mid-380s; his daughter Maria was married to Honorius in a.d. 398 (his younger daughter Thermantia would do the same in a.d. 408); and his son Eucherius was expected to marry Galla Placidia, daughter of Theodosius and half-sister of Honorius.Footnote 151 The inscriptions in the Forum devote more space to these relationships than to his military feats. Indeed, one of the inscriptions actually alludes to his marriage to Serena (adfinitas) in two different places; it also identifies him as the grandson-in-law of Theodosius the Elder, echoing the importance placed by Theodosius I on his father, whom he had deified. The degree to which Stilicho advertised his membership of the imperial house is perhaps best seen in the names of his children: his son Eucherius was evidently named for Theodosius I's paternal uncle, and his daughter Thermantia for the emperor's mother.Footnote 152 Stilicho's extraordinary position within the imperial family gave rise to a new epithet, ‘kinsman’ (parens) of the emperors.Footnote 153 In using dynastic marriages to insert himself into the imperial family, Stilicho was of course imitating Theodosius himself, whose second marriage to Galla linked him to the dynasty of Valentinian (and quite likely to that of Constantine).Footnote 154 Stilicho's membership of the imperial family set him above and beyond not only the senators who received statues in the Forum of Trajan, but also his competitors among the other high-ranking generals and palace officials.Footnote 155
The dedications to Stilicho established a pattern that would be used to honour other military figures in the Roman Forum. Two nearly identical inscriptions dating from a.d. 420 have been found bearing dedications to Flavius Constantius, magister utriusque militiae for nearly a decade in the latter part of Honorius' reign (c. a.d. 411–21).Footnote 156 The more fully preserved of these inscriptions likewise emphasizes Constantius' close ties to the imperial house; since he had married Galla Placidia in a.d. 417, he was now part of the imperial family and could be praised as the ‘parens of the most unconquerable emperors’, the same quasi-official title Stilicho had used.Footnote 157 Moreover, he was the ‘restorer of the state’, a title otherwise used only of emperors.Footnote 158 The findspot of these two inscriptions is unknown, but the similarities between them and the dedications to Stilicho suggest a location in or near the Roman Forum.Footnote 159 Alternatively, they might have been set up in the Forum of Caesar, where inscriptions once belonging to statues of Arcadius and Galla Placidia have also been found.Footnote 160 In particular, they may once have stood in the atrium Libertatis, a toponym that in Late Antiquity probably denoted the southern portico of the Forum of Caesar, which seems to have been remodelled in the early fifth century to function as a monumental vestibule to the Curia. The reorganization of this area resulted in the addition of a prestigious representational space to match the forecourt facing the Roman Forum.Footnote 161
The location of the atrium Libertatis is known from the discovery in situ of an inscription almost certainly belonging to a statue of Flavius Aetius, the most powerful man in the government of Valentinian III from a.d. 433 until his assassination by the emperor himself in a.d. 454.Footnote 162 The dedication by the senate and people of Rome, dating to between a.d. 437 and 445, celebrates Aetius' victories over the Goths and Burgundians, which have made Italy secure, but more unusually extols him as the ‘bitterest foe of informers, champion of liberty, and avenger of modesty’.Footnote 163 These terms appear to refer to recently issued laws and are similar to the acclamations in the senate that greeted the reception of the Theodosian Code in a.d. 438. If in fact Aetius was acting as a ‘prime minister’ and was publicly recognized for his involvement in the issuing of laws — a civil function that formally belonged to emperors alone — it would be a powerful indication that the authority of Aetius was effectively indistinguishable from that of the emperors themselves.Footnote 164 Eventually Aetius, too, like Constantius and Stilicho before him, would form a plan to marry into the imperial family, browbeating Valentinian III into accepting a match between his son Gaudentius and the emperor's daughter Placidia.
As in previous centuries, senatorial aristocrats were rarely honoured with dedications in the Roman Forum. Only one honorific inscription can be linked with a member of the Roman aristocracy in the fifth century.Footnote 165 A fragmentary inscription found in the excavations of the Curia preserves the remains of a cursus that has been plausibly assigned to Petronius Maximus.Footnote 166 Notwithstanding his wealth and precocious advancement, the most likely explanation for the singular honour of a statue in the Curia is his close relationship with the imperial house, for the inscription, dating to between a.d. 433 and 437, reveals that Maximus was praeceptor of the young emperor Valentinian III. It is clear that Maximus enjoyed unique influence and favour at the court; indeed, Maximus himself would later set up a statue to Valentinian acknowledging the emperor as the ‘source of all his honours’ (his gratitude had evidently dissipated by a.d. 455, when he engineered the assassination of Valentinian). Thus although Maximus had a traditional if brilliant senatorial career — for which he was duly honoured with a statue in the Forum of Trajan — he was more than an ordinary magistrate; his proximity to the emperor, like that of the generals, was what gained him a statue in the Curia, a unique honour that almost seems to presage his later rise to imperial power.Footnote 167
V CONCLUSIONS
The study of honorific statues and their inscriptions yields important insights into both the commemoration of Roman élites and the continuities and changes in the use of different urban spaces in late antique Rome. The rich corpus of inscriptions from the Forum of Trajan presents a portrait of a governing class defined by its members' achievements in civil administration and literary culture as well as by their personal virtue and the esteem they enjoyed from their peers and emperor. The assembly of statues helped to create an image of a coherent governing class, although senators themselves continued to compete intensely with one another for status and public honour. The inscriptions also allow us to recover a senatorial dimension to the Forum of Trajan that is largely missing from the literary sources and archaeological remains. The revival of statue dedications to senators in the fourth century after a long interval is a clear reflection of senators' greater visibility in the physical and monumental landscape of late antique Rome. At the same time, the distribution of statues and honorands between the Forum of Trajan and the Roman Forum indicates a basic division in the use of these two most important honorific spaces in the city; the former was marked as a senatorial and civilian zone, while the latter was largely restricted to emperors and military commanders. The weakness of emperors, the resurgence of senators, and the ascendancy of generals are all reflected in the epigraphic record of the fourth and fifth centuries.
APPENDIX: TABLES A–D
In printing the following Tables, I am greatly indebted to the careful work of previous scholars, especially F. A. Bauer, H. Niquet, and G. Alföldy, who are largely responsible for compiling the information they contain. I include them here so that readers may have the data underlying my conclusions conveniently to hand and in the hope that the meticulous work of these excellent scholars might reach a wider audience.
Tables A and B are based on G. Alföldy (ed.), CIL 6.8.3 (2000), 5183, Index Topographicus s.v. <Urbs P 24> in foro Traiani. Data are subject to the following restrictions: (1) Date: only inscriptions from the fourth and fifth centuries a.d. are listed; (2) Location/Findspot: only inscriptions whose original location in the Forum of Trajan can certainly or probably be identified on the basis of internal evidence or findspot are listed; inscriptions that possibly could have been in the Forum of Trajan but were found in neighbouring buildings, e.g. the Markets of Trajan, have been excluded; (3) only honorific inscriptions have been included. Table C is based on G. Alföldy (ed.), CIL 6.8.2 (1996), 4634, Index Topographicus s.v. <Urbs P 24> forum Traiani, with the same restrictions. Table D is based on Niquet, op. cit. (n. 13), 262–4. Names are given according to their numbering in PLRE 1 and 2, and readers are encouraged to consult the corresponding entries for further information on particular individuals. Lest the Tables become unwieldy, systematic cross-references to the inscriptions have been omitted. Instead, inscriptions are listed according to first publication in CIL with selective cross-references; for older inscriptions published first in CIL 6.1, the updated notes and bibliography assembled by Alföldy et al. in the most recent fascicles 6.8.2 and 6.8.3 often contain valuable information.
Table A. Forum Traiani: honorific inscriptions for men of known senatorial rank
Table B. Forum Traiani: honorific inscriptions for men of possible senatorial rank
Table C. Forum Traiani: honorific inscriptions for emperors
Table D. Forum Romanum: honorific inscriptions for men of senatorial rank
