Vettius Agorius Praetextatus - Sources

Sources

His life is primarily known through the works by Quintus Aurelius Symmachus and Ammianus Marcellinus, supplemented by some epigraphical records.

Symmachus (320 c. – 402 c.) was a leading member of the senatorial aristocracy of his time and the best orator of his age. Symmachus' letters, speeches and relations have been preserved and testify a sincere friendship between Symmachus and Praetextatus: according to Symmachus, Praetextatus was a good magistrate and a virtuous man.

Ammianus Marcellinus (330 c. – 390 c.) tells about Praetextatus in three passages of his Res Gestae: in all of them Ammianus shows appreciation of Praetextatus' actions, while the same author is usually critical about the members of the Senate; for this reason some historians think Ammianus and Praetextatus knew each other.

Several inscriptions referring to Praetextatus has been preserved, and among them the most important is the one on the funerary monument to Praetextatus and his wife Aconia Fabia Paulina; other informations are provided in some law addressed to Praetextatus as praefectus urbi and praetorian prefect, and preserved in the Theodosian Code, in some letters addressed to him by Emperor Valentinian III about a religious dispute and preserved in the Collectio Avellana.

Jerome (347–420), a Christian writer and theologian, knew the Roman aristocracy through his acquaintances among the Roman matrons. He wrote about Praetextatus in two letters and in his polemic Contra Ioannem Hierosolymitanum (397); the sorrow caused by the death of Praetextatus was so diffused among his acquaintances that Jerome wrote a letter to a matron in which he wrote that Praetextatus was in hell.

A different kind of source is represented by the philosopher and writer Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, who made Praetextatus the main character of his Saturnalia, a book describing the Pagan renaissance of the late 4th century. However the Saturnalia was written half a century after Praetextatus' death, so his description is highly idealised.

Finally, two later historians wrote about Praetextatus. The first is Zosimus, a Pagan historian who lived in the first half of the 6th century and author of the Historia Nova, who described Praetextatus as a defender of the Hellenic cults in Greece; the second historian is Joannes Laurentius Lydus, who lived in the second half of the 6th century, and who talks about a hierophant named Praetextatus, but this identification is uncertain.