the Curia Julia by Caesar, and decorated by Augustus with the spoils
of Egypt.]

[Footnote 8: Prudentius (l. ii. in initio) has drawn a very awkward
portrait of Victory; but the curious reader will obtain more
satisfaction from Montfaucon's Antiquities, (tom. i. p. 341.)]

[Footnote 9: See Suetonius (in August. c. 35) and the Exordium of
Pliny's Panegyric.]

[Footnote 10: These facts are mutually allowed by the two advocates,
Symmachus and Ambrose.]

[Footnote 11: The Notitia Urbis, more recent than Constantine, does not
find one Christian church worthy to be named among the edifices of
the city. Ambrose (tom. ii. Epist. xvii. p. 825) deplores the public
scandals of Rome, which continually offended the eyes, the ears, and the
nostrils of the faithful.]

But the Christians formed the least numerous party in the senate of
Rome: [12] and it was only by their absence, that they could express
their dissent from the legal, though profane, acts of a Pagan majority.
In that assembly, the dying embers of freedom were, for a moment,
revived and inflamed by the breath of fanaticism. Four respectable
deputations were successively voted to the Imperial court, [13] to
represent the grievances of the priesthood and the senate, and to
solicit the restoration of the altar of Victory. The conduct of this
important business was intrusted to the eloquent Symmachus, [14] a
wealthy and noble senator, who united the sacred characters of pontiff
and augur with the civil dignities of proconsul of Africa and praefect
of the city. The breast of Symmachus was animated by the warmest zeal
for the cause of expiring Paganism; and his religious antagonists
lamented the abuse of his genius, and the inefficacy of his moral
virtues. [15] The orator, whose petition is extant to the emperor
Valentinian, was conscious of the difficulty and danger of the office
which he had assumed. He cautiously avoids every topic which might
appear to reflect on the religion of his sovereign; humbly declares,
that prayers and entreaties are his only arms; and artfully draws
his arguments from the schools of rhetoric, rather than from those of
philosophy. Symmachus endeavors to seduce the imagination of a young
prince, by displaying the attributes of the goddess of victory;
he insinuates, that the confiscation of the revenues, which were
consecrated to the service of the gods, was a measure unworthy of his
liberal and disinterested character; and he maintains, that th