Virius Nicomachus Flavianus - Flavianus' Role in Literature

Flavianus' Role in Literature

In the inscription on the base of the statue he dedicated to his father-in-law, Quintus Fabius Memmius Symmachus calls Flavianus historicus disertissimus. In fact, Flavianus wrote a history of Rome entitled Annales ("Annals"), now lost; it was dedicated to Theodosius (probably when Flavianus was quaestor sacri palatii in the 380s) and written in annalist form. As the title suggests, it might have been a continuation of the Annals by Tacitus: in fact, in the often unreliable Historia Augusta, inside the book devoted to the life of the Roman emperor Aurelian (270–275), it is included a letter from Aurelian to queen Zenobia that the author claims reported by a Nicomachus; it is therefore possible that Nicomachus' work was a continuation of Tacitus' until, at least, Aurelian. Flavianus' Annals was maybe used by Ammianus Marcellinus as a source.

Flavianus translated also from Greek language Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana, a man whose life was seen as very close to that of Jesus and whose biography therefore was considered akin to a pagan Gospel in the 4th century.

Flavianus has been identified with the object of the Christian work Carmen contra Flavianum. He is one of the main characters, together with other members of his pagan club, of Macrobius' Saturnalia, a work written in the 430s, where he is depicted as a man of huge erudition. In his Ecclesiastical History, Tyrannius Rufinus tells the clash between Eugenius and Theodosius I actually depicting the pagan Flavianus, rather than the Christian Eugenius, as the true opponent defeated by the Christian Theodosius at the battle of the Frigidus; according to Rufinus, Flavianus committed suicide because he realized his own religion was false. Scholars are unanimous in the belief that Rufinus invented this claim to advance the cause of the religion he so zealously apologised for.