Salutius
Template:Short description Script error: No such module "infobox".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Script error: No such module "Check for clobbered parameters".Template:Wikidata image Saturninius Secundus Salutius (fl. 355–367) was a Roman official and Neoplatonist author. A native of Gaul, he had a successful career as a provincial governor and officer at the imperial court, becoming a close friend and adviser of the Emperor Julian.[1] Salutius was well versed in Greek philosophy and rhetoric, and had a reputation for competence and incorruptibility in office.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". He authored a Neoplatonic religious treatise titled On the Gods and the Cosmos, in support of Julian's pagan reaction against Christianity.[2]
Life
Salutius's official name was Saturninius Secundus, as he is called in inscriptions and official documents. The Script error: No such module "Lang"., or informal name, 'Salutius', sometimes 'Salustius', was otherwise the main way to refer to him.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". He was born to a non-senatorial family in Roman Gaul, and was a pagan.[1] His career included governorships of Gallia Aquitania and Africa, as well as the position of magister memoriae at the imperial court. He probably held these offices under the emperor Constans, as he was already an old man by the time he was assigned to the staff of Julian Caesar in Gaul.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". It was probably through his counsel that Julian developed the skills of administration he displayed in Gaul. In 359 AD, Constantius II removed him from Gaul.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
When Julian became sole emperor, he raised Salutius to praetorian prefect of the Orient late in 361. One of Salutius' early tasks was to oversee the Chalcedon tribunal.[3] Salutius accompanied his emperor on the Persian campaign, during which Julian was killed. As a sign of their great respect for him, the military command first nominated him to become their emperor, but Salutius refused the honor, pleading illness and old age, and the purple then fell to Jovian.[4][5] After the return from Persia, Salutius continued in the office of praetorian prefect during the reign of Valentinian until he was replaced by Nebridius.[6]
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Salutius, and not his contemporary Flavius Sallustius, is almost certainly to be identified as the Script error: No such module "Lang". (Template:Langx) who, according to Photios, wrote the theological pamphlet On the Gods and the Cosmos (Script error: No such module "Lang". Peri theōn kai kosmou).Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".[7][8]
The work, a kind of catechism of 4th-century Hellenic paganism, owes much to that of Iamblichus of Chalcis, who synthesized Platonism with Pythagoreanism and theurgy, and also to Julian's own philosophical writings.[9] The treatise is quite concise, and generally free of the lengthy metaphysical theorizing of the more detailed Neoplatonic texts. Its aim is in part "to parry the usual onslaughts of Christian polemic" in the face of Christianity's growing preeminence, and "me[e]t theology with theology".[10]
Editions
- Gilbert Murray. 1925 "On the Gods and the World," appended to Murray's Five Stages of Greek Religion, first published in 1912 as Four Stages of Greek Religion.
- Arthur Darby Nock (ed/trans.). 1926. Sallustius concerning the gods and the universe. Edited with prolegomena and translation. Available in various reprints, for example Template:ISBN and Template:ISBN.
- Gabriel Rochefort. 1960. Des dieux et du monde. Edition of the Greek text, with French translation and notes, in the Collection Budé.
- Thomas Taylor (ed/trans.). 1793. Sallust, On the gods and the world; and the Pythagoric sentences of Demophilus, translated from the Greek; and five hymns by Proclus, in the original Greek, with a poetical version. To which are added five hymns by the translator. Reprinted many times, for example Template:ISBN.
Citations
<templatestyles src="Reflist/styles.css" />
- ↑ a b Brill's New Pauly, "Secundus"
- ↑ Oxford Classical Dictionary, "Sallustius, author"
- ↑ Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae, 22.3.1.
- ↑ Bowersock, p. 118.
- ↑ Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae, 25.5.3.
- ↑ Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae, 26.7.4.
- ↑ R.B.E. Smith, Julian's Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (Routledge, 1995), pp. 33, 236
- ↑ Döbler, Religious Education in Pre-Modern Europe (Brill, 2012), p. 118 (and note 84)
- ↑ Nock 1926:xcvii
- ↑ Nock 1926:cii
Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
References
- Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- Script error: No such module "Citation/CS1".
- Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- <templatestyles src="Citation/styles.css"/>Seeck, Otto, "Salutius", Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, volume 1 A.2, columns 2072–2075 (Stuttgart, 1920).