Quintus Fabius Memmius Symmachus (383/384 – after 402) was a politician of the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

, member of the influential family of the

Symmachi The Aurelii Symmachi were an aristocratic senatorial family ''(gens)'' of the late Roman Empire. The family received its first offices at the beginning of the 3rd century under emperor Septimius Severus. It further increased its prestige, reaching ...

Biography

He was son of the orator and politician

Quintus Aurelius Symmachus Quintus Aurelius Symmachus Nickname, signo Eusebius (, ; c. 345 – 402) was a Roman statesman, orator, and intellectual. He held the offices of governor of proconsular Africa (province), Africa in 373, urban prefect of Rome in 384 and 385, and R ...

and of Rusticiana; he was born in 383/384. Memmius had an elder sister, Galla, who married Nicomachus Flavianus, son of

Virius Nicomachus Flavianus Virius Nicomachus Flavianus (334–394 AD) was a grammarian, a historian and a politician of the Roman Empire. A pagan and close friend of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, he was Praetorian prefect of Italy from 390–392. Under the usurper Eugenius ...

. At the age of ten, he became

quaestor A quaestor ( , ; ; "investigator") was a public official in ancient Rome. There were various types of quaestors, with the title used to describe greatly different offices at different times. In the Roman Republic, quaestors were elected officia ...

, celebrating the public games connected with his office in December 393. Memmius was well educated, and studied

Greek language Greek (, ; , ) is an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic languages, Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece, Cyprus, Italy (in Calabria and Salento), south ...

; his father approved his style in writing letters and, in 401, he studied with a Gallic rhetor as his tutor. The year 401 marked several important events in Memmius' life: he married the granddaughter of Virius Nicomachus Flavianus;It was probably in this occasion that the bond between the two aristocratic, pagan families was celebrated with the issue of a

diptych A diptych (, ) is any object with two flat plates which form a pair, often attached by a hinge. For example, the standard notebook and school exercise book of the ancient world was a diptych consisting of a pair of such plates that contained a ...

, whose valves are entitled one ''Nicomachorum'' and the other ''Symmachorum'' (Serena Ensoli, Eugenio La Rocca, ''Aurea Roma. Dalla città pagana alla città cristiana'', L'ERMA di BRETSCHNEIDER, 2000, , p. 467). he also celebrated the games connected with the second step in his ''

cursus honorum The , or more colloquially 'ladder of offices'; ) was the sequential order of public offices held by aspiring politicians in the Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire. It was designed for men of senatorial rank. The comprised a mixture of ...

'', the office of

praetor ''Praetor'' ( , ), also ''pretor'', was the title granted by the government of ancient Rome to a man acting in one of two official capacities: (i) the commander of an army, and (ii) as an elected ''magistratus'' (magistrate), assigned to disch ...

(these games were postponed from 400, in order to allow Aurelius Symmachus to be present, and cost 2000 pounds of gold). It was probably Memmius who, belonging to a family practicing the old Roman religion, built a temple devoted to

Flora Flora (: floras or florae) is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous (ecology), indigenous) native plant, native plants. The corresponding term for animals is ''fauna'', and for f ...

in Rome; he is also the author of a dedicatory inscription in honour of his father-in-law Flavianus ( CIL, VI, 1782). After his father's death ''ca.'' 402, Memmius edited part of his correspondence (which Symmachus himself had likely started to do).

Notes

Bibliography

Arnold Hugh Martin Jones Arnold Hugh Martin Jones Fellow of the British Academy, FBA (9 March 1904 – 9 April 1970), known also as A. H. M. Jones or Hugo Jones, was a prominent 20th-century British historian of classical antiquity, particularly of the later Roman Empire ...

John Robert Martindale John Robert Martindale (born 1935) is a British historian specializing in the later Roman and Byzantine empires. Martindale's major publications are his ''magnum opus'', the ''Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire'', begun by A. H. M. Jones an ...

, John Morris, "Q. Fabius Memmius Symmachus 10", ''

The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire ''Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire'' (abbreviated as ''PLRE'') is a work of Roman prosopography published in a set of three volumes collectively describing many of the people attested to have lived in the Roman Empire from AD 260, the date ...

'', Cambridge University Press, 1971, , pp. 1046–1047. {{DEFAULTSORT:Symmachus, Quintus Fabius Memmius 4th-century Romans 5th-century Romans 380s births 5th-century deaths Year of birth uncertain Year of death unknown Imperial Roman praetors Quintus Fabius Memmius Symmachus, Quintus Fabius Memmius Symmachus, Quintus Fabius Late-Roman-era pagans