III—
The Date of the Embassy
Before we can reach a satisfactory interpretation of either De regno or De providentia , we must identify the three wretched years Synesius spent in Constantinople,[88] the three years during which he wrote both works.
He had come as an ambassador (De regno 1A), seeking alleviation of the taxes imposed on "the cities" (32C), that is to say, the cities of Pentapolis.[89] Our only evidence for the specific occasion of his visit is what he proclaims in De regno: he had come to "crown [the emperor's] head with gold" (2C). That is, he had come to present him with aurum coronarium , "crown gold," on behalf of the Pentapolis.
Emperors were normally presented with crown gold on the occasion of their accession and on the successive quinquennial celebrations of
[88] De insomniis 14; Hymn 1.431f.
[89] Liebeschuetz 1985b, 154–55.
their reign.[90] Additional "presentations" might be required on the occasion of an imperial victory, as, for example, in celebration of the defeat of the usurper Maximus in 388.[91] There being no obvious occasion for an extraordinary presentation during Synesius's years at Constantinople,[92] we are left with one of Arcadius's quinquennial anniversaries.
The truth was seen long ago by Sievers and at once forgotten.[93] Since then no one but T. D. Barnes has made any serious attempt to identify this occasion, the one and only precise clue De regno provides. Seeck tried instead to pin the date down by working backwards from Synesius's departure. In Ep. 61 Synesius describes how he left Constantinople during an earthquake, which Seeck identified with the quake placed in 402 by Marcellinus. Departure in 402 at once became canonical as the one secure date, it was thought, in Synesian chronology. Thus, if Synesius spent three years in Constantinople, he could not have arrived earlier than the autumn of 399, and De regno would have to have been delivered in 399 or even 400. To the question of this earthquake we shall be returning. But if it was in 399 that he arrived, which quinquennial anniversary was the crown gold designed to commemorate?
Lacombrade, taking Seeck's departure date of 402 as axiomatic, was reduced to the desperate expedient of assuming that Cyrene was four years late honoring Arcadius's "accession," by which he meant the beginning of his effective reign on the death of Theodosius in January 395.[94] But as Barnes rightly observed, "a Roman emperor began to rule from his dies imperii , not from the death of one of his imperial colleagues, even if that colleague was his father."[95] Since Arcadius was proclaimed Augustus on 19 January 383,[96] his quinquennial celebrations should on the usual inclusive reckoning have fallen on 19 January 387,
[90] Klauser 1944, 129–53 (= 1974, 292–309); Millar 1977, 140–42; Barnes 1986a, 105–6; R. Delmaire, Largesses sacrées et res privata (Rome 1989), 387–400.
[91] McCormick 1986, 44; cf. Lib. Ep. 846, 878. Another might have been expected in 395 after the victory over Eugenius (McCormick 45–46), though Theodosius's death early in the year may have caused a change of plan. But that would have been too early for Synesius anyway. To judge from several scenes of men bearing crowns on the reliefs of Arcadius's column, there was another in 401 to celebrate the defeat of Gaïnas (T. Klauser, Ges. Arbeiten [1974], 303). That would have been too late.
[92] Barnes (1986a, 105) suggests and rightly rejects the possibility of the birth of Arcadius's daughter Pulcheria on 19-i–399. There is no parallel for requiring crown gold to commemorate imperial births.
[93] Sievers 1870, 378.
[94] Lacombrade 1949, 58.
[95] Barnes 1986a, 105–6.
[96] Chron. Min. I.244.
392, 397, 402, and 407.[97] The only year that would suit Synesius's visit is 397.[98]
The quinquennial year would have begun on 19 January 397 and ended on the same day in 398. The crown gold presumably was expected some time between these two dates. If the city chose to send it in the custody of an ambassador charged with a mission at court, as in Synesius's case, it would not have been tactful for him to arrive late. Given the limitations on sea travel during the winter months, we can exclude the possibility that Synesius arrived as late as January 398. A letter from Cyrene to his old friend Herculian (Ep. 144) lamenting his co-option on the embassy and implying departure in the near future is dated 20 Mesore, that is to say, 13 August. From Cyrene to Alexandria could be done in five days;[99] from Alexandria to Constantinople in nine.[100] So the trip could be done in two weeks, though we do not know whether or how long Synesius stopped over on the way. We may probably assume that he arrived early in September 397.
In ideal circumstances, the ambassador would present the gold crown and his address together shortly after arrival. Synesius's extant De regno , which betrays clear signs of frustration at dealing with an unresponsive emperor and court, cannot, for a variety of reasons, have been the speech Synesius delivered on that occasion. It is the wrong sort of speech—and far too long. But the fact that it begins with a reference to the crown gold (2C) suggests a date not too far removed from his arrival.
Synesius described his departure from Constantinople in Ep. 61, to his friend Pylaemenes:
God shook the earth repeatedly during the day, and most people were on their faces in prayer; for the ground was shaking. At the time, considering the sea to be safer than the land, I rushed to the harbor, speak-
[97] There is a tendency for emperors to take the consulate in quinquennial years (somewhat overstated in Richard Burgess's useful paper, "Quinquennial Vota and Imperial Consulship, 337–511," Numismatic Chronicle 148 (1988): 77–96; cf. Cameron, CLRE 23–24). J. P. C. Kent suggests to us that Arcadius celebrated his third quinquennalia in 396, when he was consul, rather than in 397, when he was not. But this would be impossibly early for Synesius. It is not easy to believe that he arrived a year late when he had a favor to ask.
[98] According to Barnes 1986a, 106, Arcadius "celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of his accession on 19 January 398" (a slip of the pen, as he admits); correctly, Sievers 1870, 378.
[99] Ep. 51, with Casson 1971, 284–85.
[100] Theoph. Simocatta 8.13.14 (Casson 1971, 281–96, cites no examples).
ing no word to anyone except Photius of blessed memory—and I only shouted to him from afar and signaled with my hand that I was about to leave. He who left Aurelian, his dear friend and consul
, without a farewell has given an adequate apology for the same behavior toward Asterius the clerk.[101]
Seeck referred this earthquake to one recorded by Marcellinus under 402, and emended
Though omitted from all four modern lists of earthquakes in Constantinople,[103] one in 400 with exactly the consequences Synesius describes is in fact securely attested by a contemporary source. In his Homily 41 on Acts (PG 60.201) Chrysostom says: "Did not God last year (
[101] This section is abbreviated from Cameron 1987, 332–50.
[102] Barnes 1986a, 104.
[103] W. Capelle, "Erdbebenforschung," RE Suppl. 4 (1924): 347; G. Downey, "Earthquakes at Constantinople and Vicinity, A.D. 342–1454," Speculum 30 (1955): 597; V. Grumel, La Chronologie (Paris 1958), 477; A. Hermann, "Erdbeben," RAC 5 (1962); 1104–12. All but Grumel, who does not cite him at all, cite Synesius without comment for 402. It is time for a new, critical list, by someone familiar with the problems of transmission. For some that do not arise in the present case see Brian Croke, "Two Early Byzantine Earthquakes and Their Liturgical Commemoration," Byzantion 51 (1981): 122–47. On Byzantine attitudes to earthquakes, see G. Dagron, "Quand la terre tremble . . .," Travaux et mémoires 8 (1981): 87–103.
[104] See the summary account in Quasten 1960, 440–41 (though he omits the important work of Bonsdorff discussed below).
thirty years earlier in Antioch (to be precise, in 373).[105] Though his arguments were justly described by his only critic as "light as a feather,"[106] Seeck won a decisive victory: neither Chrysostom passage has ever been discussed since in this connection.[107] Since Max von Bonsdorff's valuable work seems to have had no impact beyond the study of Chrysostom and the point is central to Synesian chronology, the main points must be briefly recapitulated.
First, a number of passages unmistakably describe the preacher as a bishop. For example, the last four columns of Hom. 3 (PG 60.39–42) are entirely devoted to an account of the responsibilities of a bishop, and at one point Chrysostom insists that he is "simply speaking as I find it in my own actual experience" (col. 39). Hom. 8 (PG 60.74) refers emphatically to the power of excommunication he enjoyed as bishop, even over the emperor ("as long as I sit on this throne," col. 60). At the end of Hom. 9 an imaginary interlocutor is represented as saying to Chrysostom: "Yes, but you are the leader and bishop" (col. 84). Many other passages refer to the power and responsibility he enjoyed to legislate for his flock.[108] None of this suits Chrysostom's status in Antioch. While already celebrated for the brilliance of his preaching, he was no more than a simple priest in rank and had always behaved with the utmost tact toward his bishop, the patriarch Flavian.[109]
Second, another series of passages alludes to the emperor and his palace as conspicuous fixtures in the world of his listeners. For example, Hom. 21 (PG 60.168) alludes to the possibility of an invitation to the palace from the emperor himself; Hom. 3 (col. 39) refers to both the palace and the bishop's throne; Hom. 8 (col. 99) and Hom. 11 (col. 170) refer to the emperor's adventus and victories; the last passage also to the need for petitioners to approach the emperor while seated, since when he rises the audience is at an end; Hom. 32 (col. 170) refers to the emperor and his council deliberating on military and domestic issues, in particular (appropriately enough for 400/1) "overcoming those who make war on them." It is hardly worth discussing Seeck's positive arguments in favor
[105] Seeck 1894, 460 n. 44.
[106] Max von Bonsdorff, Zur Predigttätigkeit des Johannes Chrysostomus (Helsinki 1922), 90.
[107] Grützmacher referred to Seeck's treatment of the homilies in a footnote (1913, 72 n. 3); Lacombrade in passing (1951a, 100–101); after that, silence.
[108] Collected by Bonsdorff 1922, 87–88.
[109] Baur 1959, 1:390–95. With the passages quoted above, contrast the beginning of Hom. 3 De statuis: "When I look on that throne, deserted and bereft of our teacher" (alluding to the absence of Flavian).
of Antioch. The account of Theodorus's conspiracy there in 372 to which he attributed so much importance (Hom. 38, cols. 274–75) is recounted as a reminiscence of Chrysostom's distant youth in another city.
It was undoubtedly at Constantinople that Chrysostom preached his homilies on Acts. Therefore the following passage in Hom. 44 (PG 60.66) becomes vital: "By the grace of God I too have now spent three years (
) can mean "twelve months ago," but also no more than "last year," that is to say, 400 if spoken in early 401.When did Chrysostom begin the series? He is known to have thought that Pentecost was an appropriate time to study Acts (cf. his homily Cur in Pentecoste Acta legantur ),[111] and early editors inferred from a passage in Hom. 1 (PG 60.22) that he began at or near Easter. But he goes on in the same homily to ask his listeners whether they are waiting for Lent to be baptized, telling them that this is wrong; any time of the year will do. Obviously he cannot have been speaking at Easter. Hom. 4 on the account of Pentecost in Acts 2.1 does not at all suggest that the festival was at hand when he spoke. And a passage in Hom. 29 clearly states that Easter has come and gone (col. 218); indeed it continues "summer is past, winter is here" (col. 219). There is nothing in the context to suggest a metaphorical winter rather than the real thing. The end of Hom. 26 (col. 204) vividly evokes cold weather.
There is also one fairly clear allusion at the end of Hom. 37 (PG 60.267) to the expulsion and massacre of the Goths of 12 July 400. After denouncing the war between the soul and the body, virtue and vice, anger and gentleness (and so forth), Chrysostom continues:
[111] For a full collection of references to this practice see Joseph Bingham, Antiquities of the Christian Church (1708–22; reprint, London 1875), bk. 14, chap. 3, and bk. 20, chap. 6.
Let us make an end of this war, let us overthrow these enemies, let us set up these trophies, let us establish peace in our own city. We have within us a city and a civil polity, with citizens and many aliens (
); but let us drive out the aliens (), that our own people may not be ruined. Let no foreign or spurious doctrine enter in, nor carnal desire. Do we not see that if an enemy is caught in a city, he is judged as a spy? Then let us drive out the aliens. Indeed let us not merely drive out aliens; let us send our enemies packing too. If we catch sight of a wicked thought,[112] let us hand it over to the ruler, our mind, the thought that is a barbarian tricked out in the garb of a citizen. For there are within us many thoughts of this kind, by nature enemies, though clad in sheep's skins. Just like Persians when they take off the tiara and trousers and barbarian shoes and put on the clothing that is usual with us, and shave themselves close and converse in our own tongue, but still conceal war under their outer garb; just apply the tests and you bring to light what is hidden.
Bonsdorff seems to have taken the second sentence literally.[113] Chrysostomus Baur justly objected that Chrysostom "spoke of the expulsion of moral enemies (vices), which dwell side by side with the citizens (virtues) in the city of the soul."[114] No careful reader could doubt that Chrysostom's language is indeed metaphorical. But why did he choose these metaphors? The idea of a battle between virtues and vices for man's soul is a commonplace, but there seems to be no other example of the virtues and vices being represented as citizens and aliens. On the other hand there is a striking parallel here with a passage from the antibarbarian tirade in De regno: "Many parts of the empire are aflame, as though it were a human body in which alien elements are incapable of mingling in a healthy state of harmony. Then in the case of cities as in that of the body, we must remove the alien elements" (22B-C). Synesius speaks of the body and Chrysostom of the soul, but both compare barbarians in the state to alien elements in man.
The xenelasia Chrysostom recommends was hardly the traditional way of dealing with racial conflicts in Greco-Roman society. A number of classical texts explicitly repudiate it as a harsh Spartan practice, altogether out of keeping with Athenian ways.[115] Yet this is just what Syne-
[113] "Es gibt der Fremdlinge und der Bürger in der Stadt viele, sagt Chrysostom, und er ermahnt seine Zuhörer, den Frieden wieder herzustellen und die Vertreibung der Fremdlinge zu veranstalten, damit die eigene Landsleute nicht verdorben werden" (Bonsdorff 1922, 94).
[114] Chrysostom , vol. 2 (1960), 96 n. 31.
[115] H. Volkmann, Kleine Pauly 5 (1975): 1406.
sius urges in De regno (21, 26A; 24C-D, "purge the army"; cf. De providentia 108D). Did Chrysostom share these extremist views? Could he, like Synesius, have uttered these words before the violent expulsion of the Goths in July 400? Surely not.
For Chrysostom had till then pursued an entirely different policy concerning the Gothic presence in Constantinople, one aiming at assimilation rather than expulsion.[116] It is best described in the words of Theodoret:
Appointing presbyters and deacons and readers of the holy scriptures who spoke the Scythian tongue, he assigned a church to them and with their help won many from their error [i.e., Arianism]. He used frequently to go there and preach himself, using an interpreter who was skilled in both languages, and he got other good speakers to do the same. This was his constant practice in the city.[117]
One of the sermons he preached in this Gothic church survives (PG 63.499–510): were not Abraham and Moses barbarians? he asked them; who were the baby Jesus' first visitors but barbarians? He also sent missionaries to Goths still living on the Danube. Theodoret quotes a letter from Chrysostom to Leontius, bishop of Ancyra, asking him to recommend suitably qualified men (HE 5.31). It is true that he opposed allowing the Goths an Arian church inside the city, but that was a religious, not a racial, question. His goal was to draw the Goths away from Arianism into the true faith. Nor did he stand alone in the attempt: there survive eight letters from the ascetic writer Nilus of Ancyra purporting to be addressed to Gaïnas himself, attacking Arianism and urging him to convert.[118] It is hard to believe that Chrysostom would have uttered such words even in metaphor before July 400. After then, of course, it was a different matter. Not only would such liberal views have been unpopular in the immediate aftermath of Gaïnas's defeat; the mere fact of his coup may have disillusioned many who had till then favored a policy of assimilation.
Granted that Chrysostom was speaking at some time in late 400 or early 401, the fate of the Goths of Constantinople is bound to have been on his mind. Despite the fact that the only aliens he names are Persians
[116] It was thus an oversimplification when A. Momigliano claimed that "St. John Chrysostom supported the anti-German party in Constantinople" (Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century [Oxford 1963], 14); so too S. Mazzarino, End of the Ancient World (London 1966), 63.
[117] HE 5.30.
[118] Ep . 1.70, 79, 114–16, 205–6, 286 in PG 79.
and (later) Jews,[119] the allusion to "sheep's clothing" was hardly less transparent. There is a close, though more explicit, parallel in the homily on the exile of Saturninus and Aurelian, delivered some time in the early summer of 400, apparently before the massacre.[120] Chrysostom is here talking about the "civil" war of 400, a war that is concealed, not open: "On every side there are a thousand disguises. There are many sheep's skins and countless wolves everywhere concealed in them" (PG 52.415). He goes on to denounce those who "flattered and kissed your hand yesterday, but now reveal themselves openly as enemies and cast off their disguises." While these allusions might seem to suggest nothing more than the ill-fated wolf who so disguised himself in the fable,[121] the Goths were notorious for dressing in skins, a fashion that caught on in the capital and was widely denounced by conservatives. In De regno 22A the Goths in Constantinople are compared to wolves among dogs, the guardian dogs of Plato's Republic.[122] In De regno 23C Synesius waxed indignant at the shame of
a man in skins leading warriors who wear the chlamys, exchanging his sheepskins for the toga to debate with Roman magistrates and perhaps even sit next to a consul, while law-abiding men sit behind. Then these same men, once they have gone a little way from the senate house, put on their sheepskins again, and when they have rejoined their fellows they mock the toga, saying that they cannot comfortably draw their swords in it.
Here we have the same idea of barbarians hypocritically and temporarily exchanging their skins for Roman dress. The word
"Foreign doctrine" in Hom. 37 was no less clear an allusion to the ancestral Arianism of the Goths. Synesius, too, refers to "Scythianizing"
[119] It will be remembered that there was a short-lived threat of war with Persia in mid-399: Demougeot 1951, 225.
[120] See below, p. 174.
[121] B. Perry, Aesopica (Urbana, Ill. 1952), 500, no. 451.
[122] Pl. Rep. 375Ef.
[123] Cod.Theod. 14.10.2 (399?; cf. Seeck 1919, 77); 3 (399); 4 (416).
[124] In Ruf. 2.79f.
[125] Claud. IV Cons. Hon. 466, Bell. Get. 481; Rut. Namat. Red. 2.49.
in religion (De providentia 121B). There can be no question that this passage was written when the memory of the Gothic massacre was still fresh in the minds of all, no earlier than the autumn of 400.
How frequently did Chrysostom preach? During Lent and the festival days of Easter, often every day: for example, Hom. 5, 7, 12, 13, and 14 De statuis open with the word "yesterday."[126] In Hom. 32 on Acts (PG 60.238) there is one "yesterday" referring to Hom. 31, but other evidence suggests a more relaxed tempo for this series, which as we have seen was not preached during Lent or Easter. In the passage already cited from Hom. 44, he says that he has been preaching "not every day and night, but often every third or seventh day": either once or twice a week. A passage in Hom. 29 (PG 60.217) refers to "so many prophets twice in every week discoursing to you, so many apostles and evangelists." This implies that twice a week was the norm. If so, it must have taken at least six and perhaps as many as eight or nine months to deliver all fifty-five homilies. If he began later in the year than Easter/Pentecost 400 and had reached winter by Hom. 29, he could not have finished before 401. And we have already seen that there are grounds for placing Hom. 44, at any rate, later than 26 February 401.
There is no way of guessing when Chrysostom began, but he cannot have preached continuously through the summer of 400. Already in April or May he was persuaded to postpone a trip to Asia Minor because of the "expectation of trouble," and our informant goes on to explain that "it was the barbarian Gaïnas who was the expected trouble."[127] Before long, Chrysostom became very involved in the political crisis. In his homily on the exile of Saturninus and Aurelian he begins by apologizing for not addressing his flock for so long.[128] Theodoret describes how he went to Thrace on an embassy to Gaïnas (HE 5.33), and in his lost Life of Chrysostom , summarized by Photius (cod. 273, p. 507b Bekker), he evidently gave more details about these negotiations. The trip to Thrace fell after the massacre (12 July), when Gaïnas retreated from Constantinople to Thrace in late July or August.
The homilies on Acts could have been delivered in unbroken sequence starting in the late summer or early autumn of 400. That scarcely
[126] For other examples, see J. Bingham, Antiquities of the Christian Church , bk. 14, chap. 4; Baur 1959, 1:222.
[127] Palladius, Dialogus de vita S. Iohannis Chrysostomi 49, ed. P. R. Coleman-Norton (Cambridge 1928), 87.2; cf. Albert 1980, 506–8.
[128] PG 52.413f.
leaves long enough for all fifty-five before the end of 400. We can either divide them between 400 and 401 with Bonsdorff or put them all in 401. For our present purposes, all that matters is that a substantial number of the homilies must in any case be assigned to 401. If so, then the earthquake referred to in Hom. 41 as having taken place "last year" must have fallen in 400.
It is one of the curiosities of scholarship that, having so ably countered Seeck's attempt to transfer the homilies on Acts to Antioch in the 370s, Bonsdorff accepted Seeck's transference of Synesius's departure to 402. He therefore knew of no evidence for an earthquake in 400 and weakly concluded that Chrysostom, who was very vague ("ungenau") about chronology, was referring to a supposed earthquake of 398.
Yet would even the vaguest of writers say "last year" when he meant "three years ago," especially when it was only three years since he had arrived in Constantinople himself? It is only three homilies later in the series (Hom. 44) that Chrysostom stressed those three years he had now spent in Constantinople.
More important, there was no quake in 398. A careful analysis of the sources has shown that all of them refer to 396—before Synesius even arrived in Constantinople.[129] In the light of the true chronology of Chrysostom's homilies, his reference to "last year" and the fact that Synesius's letter refers to Aurelian as consul, we can no longer doubt that both writers are describing one and the same earthquake, in 400.[130] It should be noted that Synesius's "repeatedly during the day" clearly implies a one-day quake, whereas the earthquake of 396 continued for a week.[131] Chrysostom is less precise, but his remark that three days later his quake was forgotten hardly suggests a series lasting seven days.
There may well have been another earthquake in 402. But in the absence of other documentation, can we have any confidence that Marcellinus did not simply misdate the quake of 400? Alternatively, Theodoret records a providential quake that is said to have changed the empress Eudoxia's mind about the first banishment of Chrysostom in
[129] Cameron 1987, 340–44.
[130] As taken for granted by scholars before Seeck: e.g., Clausen 1831, 16 n. 2; Montfaucon's preface to Chrysostom reprinted in PG 60.9–10. Oddly enough Sievers (1870, 378) also argued for a visit lasting from 397/8 to the autumn of 400, though without discussing the earthquake at all.
[131] Marcellinus, s.a. 396 = Chron.Min. II.64 ("per dies plurimos"); Glycas, p.478.20 Bonn = PG 158.484C (seven days).
September 403.[132] If this quake happened at all,[133] it happened in 403. No one can exclude the possibility that there were quakes at Constantinople in 400, 402, and 403,[134] but we should at least consider the possibility that Marcellinus's quake is in fact the same as Theodoret's, in which case it would have to be transferred to 403.[135] If so, that would remove any possibility of linking it to Synesius's departure, since he cannot possibly still have been in Constantinople as late as September 403. In all probability only one earthquake took place during Synesius's three years at Constantinople, in the autumn of 400. This fits perfectly with our earlier calculation that he must have arrived with the crown gold in the autumn of 397.
Since Synesius returned home by sea, he is not likely to have found a passenger boat ready to leave after the end of the sailing season, 10 November at the latest.[136] His three-year embassy will have kept him in Constantinople from some time in the autumn of 397 to late autumn of 400.
[132] HE 5.34; Theodoret's quake is repeated with further embellishments in two worthless later Lives of Chrysostom: see Baur 1960, 2:271 n. 11.
[133] The better-informed Palladius (p. 51.17 Coleman-Norton) says that there was a "calamity in the bedchamber," which has usually been taken to imply a miscarriage. Of course an earthquake might bring on a miscarriage; the emperor Leo VI describes an earthquake in the imperial bedchamber (Baur 1960, 2:271 n. 11.)!
[134] Ep. 2.265 of Nilus of Ancyra (PG 79.265) purports to reply to a letter of Arcadius asking why the city is being so troubled with earthquakes. Nilus replies that it is a judgment for exiling Chrysostom, which implies that he is writing after the quake of 407 (cf. Cameron 1976b, 187). However they are counted, there were a lot of earthquakes during the reign of Arcadius.
[135] Marcellinus is in general one of the more reliable chroniclers, but he does misdate the earthquake of 478 to 480: Stein 1949, 787, with B. Croke, Byzantion 51 (1981): 131. Nearer in time he misdates the destruction of the Serapeum (391; see p. 53 n. 191) to 389.
[136] See Cameron 1987, 344f.; J. Rougé, "La navigation hivernale sous lempire[*] romain," REA 54 (1952): 316–25.