Augustine of Hippo: Patron Saint of Political Criticism

“In a brilliant stroke of irony, Augustine’s reading of Roman history not only reveals the many falsities of the Roman imperial mythology but also points the way to Christ and the Heavenly Jerusalem.”

“How greatly and how often can I count those blest who have deserved birth in that happy soil! Those high-born scions of Roman nobility crown their honorable birth with the luster of Rome!” Rutilius Namatianus was the last great pagan imperial Roman poet. His masterpiece, De reditu suo (“A Voyage Home”), was published a few years after the Visigoth sack. The poem eulogizes the glory of Rome in an age of rapidly approaching darkness. This memorializing of the grandeur of Rome, especially in the aftermath of the psychologically traumatic sack by Alaric, was commonplace among the landowning pagan elite, some of whom—like Rutilius—had served Honorius. Despite the sacking of Rome, these ideologues of Romanitas looked fondly back on the city of their dreams and youth.

What makes Rutilius’ poem interesting and engaging is, despite the sack of Rome, it still teems with the spirit of Romanitas and the Virgilian optimism of altae moenia Romae (the high and mighty walls of Rome). He even opines, “Thy gifts thou spread wide as the sun’s rays, as far as earth-encircling ocean heaves.” Rome, according to Rutilius—as it was for Virgil—was still destined to bring civilization and progress to the whole of the world despite the sack.

Alaric’s Sack of Rome was one of the most civilized sacks in human history. Betrayed by the emperor and his cronies, Alaric entered Rome to seek payment for his services (we must not forget that the Romans often employed the so-called “barbarians” for their political and military goals in the fifth century). Alaric was, after all, a Roman general—and his men paid soldiers of the Roman state. In sacking Rome, they mostly stripped the jewels, gold, and treasures of the Capitoline Hill and then made off with their plunder. True, many innocents were caught up in the orgy—but it was a modest pillage by ancient standards (the Vandal sack was far more destructive). The greatest legacy of the Sack of Rome in 410, however, was not the hastening of the collapse of the Roman Empire but the writing of the City of God by Saint Augustine.