Origins Rutilius was a native of southern
Gaul (
Toulouse or perhaps
Poitiers), and belonged, like
Sidonius Apollinaris, to one of the great governing families of the Gallic provinces. His father, whom he calls Lachanius, had held high offices in Italy and at the imperial court, had been governor of
Tuscia (
Etruria and
Umbria), vicar of Britain, then imperial treasurer (
comes sacrarum largitionum), imperial recorder (
quaestor), and governor of Rome (
praefectus urbi) in 414. The voyage recorded in
De reditu suo has been variously dated to 415, 416, or 417, but the publication in 1973 of a fragment of the missing portion of the poem, which contains a reference to the second consulship of
Constantius III, confirms the date of 417, which had already been argued independently on other grounds by earlier scholars.
Career Rutilius boasts his career to have been no less distinguished than his father's, and particularly indicates that he had been secretary of state (
magister officiorum) and governor of the capital (
praefectus urbi). His poem was written the tempestuous period between the death of
Theodosius I (395), and the fall of the usurper
Priscus Attalus. During this period he was witness to the career of
Stilicho as
de facto emperor of the West; the hosts of
Radagaisus rolled back from Italy, only to sweep over Gaul and Spain; the defeats and triumphs of
Alaric I; the three sieges and final
sack of Rome; the dissipation of
Heraclianus's vast armament; and the fall of seven pretenders to the Western throne.
Religious issues It is clear that the sympathies of Rutilius were with those who, during this period, dissented from, and when they could, opposed the general tendencies of imperial policy. He himself indicates that he was intimately acquainted with the circle of the great orator
Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, who scouted Stilicho's compact with the Goths, and who led the
Roman Senate to support the pretenders
Eugenius and Attalus, in the hope of reinstating the gods whom Emperor
Julian had failed to save. While making few direct assertions about historical characters or events, Rutilius' poem compels some important conclusions about the politics and religion of the time. The attitude of the writer towards
Paganism is remarkable: the whole poem is intensely Pagan, and is penetrated by the feeling that the world of literature and culture is, and must remain, pagan; that outside of Paganism lies a realm of barbarism. The poet wears an air of exalted superiority over the religious innovators of his day, and entertains a buoyant confidence that the future of the ancient gods of Rome will not belie their glorious past. He scorns invective and apology, and does not hesitate to reveal, with
Claudian, a suppressed grief at the indignities put upon the old religion by the new. As a statesman, he is at pains to avoid offending those politic
Christian senators over whom pride in their country had at least as great a power as attachment to their new religion. Only once or twice does Rutilius speak directly of
Christianity, and then only to attack the
monks, whom the secular authorities had hardly as yet recognized, and whom, indeed, only a short time before, a Christian emperor had conscripted by the thousands into the ranks of his army.
Judaism could be assailed by Rutilius without wounding either pagans or Christians, but he clearly intimates that he hates it chiefly as the evil root from which the rank plant of Christianity had sprung. However the first Christian missionary in Ireland was a relative and personal friend of Rutilius,
Palladius (bishop of Ireland).
Edward Gibbon writes that Honorius rigorously excluded all dissenters to the Catholic Church from holding any office in the state. But Rutilius paints a different picture of political life. His poem portrays a senate at Rome composed of past office-holders (the majority of whom were certainly still pagans), a Christian party whose Christianity was more political than religious, and a prevalent spirit of traditional Roman religious toleration. The atmosphere of the capital, perhaps even of all Italy, was still charged with paganism. The court was far in advance of the people, and the persecuting laws were in large part incapable of execution. Some ecclesiastical historians have fondly imagined that after the sack of
Rome the bishop
Innocent returned to a position of predominance, but no one who accepts Rutilius' observations can entertain this idea. Perhaps the most interesting lines in the whole poem are those where Rutilius assails the memory of "dire Stilicho", as he names him. In Rutilius' view, Stilicho, fearing to suffer all that had caused himself to be feared, removed the defences of the
Alps and
Apennines that the provident gods had interposed between the barbarians and the Eternal City, and planted the cruel
Goths, his skinclad minions, in the very sanctuary of the empire: "he plunged an armed foe in the naked vitals of the land, his craft being freer from risk than that of openly inflicted disaster... May
Nero rest from all the torments of the damned, that they may seize on Stilicho; for Nero smote his own mother, but Stilicho the mother of the world!" This appears to be a uniquely authentic expression of the feelings of perhaps a majority of the Roman senate against Stilicho. He had merely imitated the policy of Theodosius with regard to the barbarians; but even that powerful emperor had met with a passive opposition from the old Roman families. Those who had seen Stilicho surrounded by his Goth bodyguards naturally looked on the Goths who assailed Rome as Stilicho's avengers. Historians of the later empire such as
Paulus Orosius believed that Stilicho called in the Goths to increase his sway and was plotting to make his son emperor. Rutilius' poem, however, holds that it was merely to save himself from impending ruin. Although some Christian historians even asserted that Stilicho (a staunch
Arian) intended to restore paganism, Rutilius depicts him as its most uncompromising foe, as evidenced by his destruction of the
Sibylline books. This alone is sufficient, in the eyes of Rutilius, to account for the disasters that afterwards befell the city, just as
Flavius Merobaudes, a generation or two later, traced the miseries of his own day to the overthrow of the ancient rites of
Vesta (for a sharply different view of Stilicho, see
Claudian.) == Style ==