The Letters of Symmachus: Book 1 by Michele Renee Salzman, Michael Roberts (review)

This volume gives us the first book of the letters of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, eloquent and energetic facilitator of gentlemanly colloquy and preferment in the last three decades of the fourth century. The first book is of especial interest because it is arguably—indeed, here argued to be—the only one of the ten surviving books of correspondence that Symmachus himself prepared for publication. Michele Salzman provides an introduction of some sixty pages dedicated largely to Symmachus’ biography, followed by briefer sections on the themes, publication history, and dating of individual letters in book 1. Further biographical material introduces each of the eight correspondents in their places; and almost every one of the 107 letters here has its own introduction and notes. The letters themselves are published in both the Latin text (from Seeck’s MGHedition, with corrections from Callu, unfortunately nowhere itemized) and a felicitous English translation that profits from the collaboration and oversight of Michael Roberts.

Thus far, the volume itself. Its presentation, price, and readability make it eminently suitable for classroom use. But how, exactly, would one use it? Put another way, why would one read a set of elegant, erudite, resolutely periphrastic letters en bloc? For all Salzman’s work setting these letters and their correspondents into as precise as possible a historical context, there is a nagging sense of incompleteness: that the letters qua letters remain largely unglossed and unappreciated. In (Late) Antiquity the primary purpose of publishing letter collections was not to provide a set of biographical or autobiographical data, or to substitute for a history of the period, despite the ongoing efforts of modern editors and commentators to make them do so (as Roy Gibson cogently reminds us in JRS102 [2012]). The tension between the biographical urge and the actual nature of the letters is readily seen in Salzman’s introduction, where on one page she says that book 1 “can be read not only as a life of Symmachus but as a series of personalized depictionsof some of the key figures of his age” (lxvi) and on the next that Symmachus’ “stylish, elegant correspondence, with its lack of specific detail, easily served as an exemplar” (lxvii: my emphases). In the end, Salzman concludes that her work is aimed at those “who are willing to learn the rules of epistolary etiquette in Late Antiquity and hence . . . to appreciate Symmachus and his letters as I, grudgingly, have” (lxviii).

Various observations can be made about how this well-polished epistolary display might function—and I should make clear that thinking about such things is richly facilitated by the clear and methodical presentation of this volume. First, one has to take into account that the point of the letter is not to impart information. No one has put it better than Philippe Bruggisser: “le message n’est pas contenu dans la lettre, il est la lettre elle-même.” Each letter is an exquisitely accomplished textual trace of a more complex and messy chain of human communication (as I argued ad nauseam in Paulinus Noster[2000]). Thus 1.68 refers for details (“singula”) to “itemization in a memorandum” or to the account of Rufus, the bearer; 1.32 deflects personal questions to the bearer and has the mysterious final injunction, “I urge you, when you understand the reason for his [the bearer’s] coming, to aid him in a pursuit that you have partially encouraged.” At the same time, the ostensible purpose of the letter may simply be the act of communication itself; there are plenty of examples, but perhaps it is most clearly expressed in the request for a letter of 1.91: “If you have nothing to write, it will be enough for me to rejoice in your well-being.”

Second, the arrangement of the letters in the book is deeply considered and serves to show Symmachus in cordial conversation with a...