Aconia Fabia PaulinaShe is called Aconia Fabia Paulina in , Fabia Aconia Paulina in , Fabia Paulina in or Paulina in and in Symmachus' letter I.48. (died c. 384) was a late Roman aristocrat and priestess. Her father was Aconius Catullinus Philomatius, who was suffect consul in 349. In 344 Paulina married Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, and was through him initiated into various mystery cults.
Paulina and her husband owned property on the Esquiline and Aventine hills in Rome, close to which inscriptions about them have been found. Most knowledge about the couple comes from four inscriptions on a funerary monument to them (), with Paulina often considered to be the author of the poem about Praetextatus on it. They were also well known in their time for their paganism, being mentioned to that effect in two letters by Jerome and other contemporary Christian sources.
Biography
Paulina's father Aconius Catullinus Philomatius was a prominent aristocrat who held the office of Praefectus urbi of Rome from 342 to 344 and served as ordinary consul in 349. In 344, Paulina married Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, who held numerous posts in the provinces of the Roman Empire and was ultimately appointed praetorian prefect of Italy in 384 before dying in the same year.; Praetextatus was a member of various mystery cults, into which he initiated Paulina. Through the Eleusian mysteries she entered the cult of Iacchus and of Persephone and Ceres, goddesses whose cults (in addition to that of Liber) she also encountered through the Lernian mysteries. A consacranea in the cult of Ceres, Paulina was also a hierophant in the cult of Hecate, which had its base in Aegina. Paulina may have completed her initiation in these three Greek mystery cults from 362 to 364, during her husband's tenure as governor of the province of Achaia. Through baptism with bull's blood Paulina was also initiated into the cult of Isis, where she held the rank of Isiaca, and she was also a devotee of the Magna Mater and Attis.: tu Dindymenes (Magna Mater) Atteosq(ue) antistitem/ teletis honoras taureis consors pius/ Hecates ministram trina secreta edoces/ Cererisque Graiae tu sacris dignam paras; Jörg Rüpke: Fasti sacerdotum. Prosopographie der stadtrömischen Priesterschaften römischer, griechischer, orientalischer und jüdisch-christlicher Kulte bis 499 n. Chr. (= Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge. Band 12). Teilband 2, Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2005, , S. 966; 20. Inscription of Fabia Aconia Paulina auf der Website Les Préfets du Prétoire de l'Empire Tardif, retrieved 16 July 2024.Niquet, Heike. Monumenta virtutum titulique. Senatorische Selbstdarstellung im spätantiken Rom im Spiegel der epigraphischen Denkmäler. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2000, p. 244.
Information about Paulina's contact with these mystery cults is derived from the funerary monument to her and Praetextatus, as well as on an inscription on a plinth that likely supported a statue of her (). To the former, religion takes greater prominence than in comparable ancient inscriptions.Camilla Campedelli, "Der Grabaltar von Praetextatus und Paulina. Eine aristokratische Liebeserklärung über den Tod hinaus," Gymnasium 129:3 (2022): 215-233. She and Praetextatus may then have sought to highlight their devotion to the pagan gods in the face of the growing popularity of Christianity. 384 was indeed a highpoint in the influence of the pagan aristocracy, which however decreased in the same year due to Praetextatus's death and the failure of his friend Quintus Aurelius Symmachus's attempt to return the altar of Victory to the Senate.Alan Cameron: The Last Pagans of Rome. Oxford University Press, New York u. a. 2011, , especially chpt. 8.
The date of Paulina's own death is disputed. Maijastina Kahlos has argued that she died in 384 shortly after her husband, while Heike Niquet and Jörg Rüpke have proposed that she died in 387, suggesting that her death prompted the creation of an inscription to Praetextatus that is dated to that year ().; Jörg Rüpke: Fasti sacerdotum. Prosopographie der stadtrömischen Priesterschaften römischer, griechischer, orientalischer und jüdisch-christlicher Kulte bis 499 n. Chr. (= Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge. Band 12). Part 2, Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2005, , p. 966 n.4. She and Praetextatus were survived by at least one child, who dedicated a monument in their house to them.: parenti publice privatim(que) reverendo ut etiam statuae ipsius domus honoraret insignia constituti locari curavit;
Sources
Inscriptions on the Esquiline and Aventine Paulina and Praetextatus likely owned at least two houses in Rome. The first was on the Esquiline Hill, probably situated between via Merulana and viale del Monte Oppio in Rome, where the modern Palazzo Brancaccio stands (). In 1591, archaeological investigations in this area uncovered two inscriptions about Paulina and Praetextatus.Rodolfo Lanciani: The Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome. A Companion Book for Students and Travelers. Houghton, Mifflin, Boston (NY) / Macmillan, London 1897, S. 232. The first () records Praetextatus' gardens, the so-called Horti Vettiani,Musei Capitolini which extended to the modern Roma Termini railway station. The second of them () was the base of a statue dedicated to Coelia Concordia, one of the last Vestal Virgins, who had erected a statue in honour of Praetextatus after his death (384); in exchange for this honour Paulina dedicated a statue to Concordia. Subsequently, lead pipes have been found in this area with the names of Paulina and Praetextatus upon them (), which probably record private plumbing to the couple's house on the Esquiline.Fedrico Guidobaldi, "Domus: Vettius Agorius Praetextatus," in Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, edited by Eva Margareta Steinby (Rome: Quasar, 1995), vol. 2 p. 164.
The couple may also have had a house on the Aventine, since in the sixteenth century an inscription () was found in the church of Saints Boniface and Alessio on the hill which refers to a statue of Praetextatus in the latter's house.Kahlos
The funerary monument to Paulina and Praetextatus The most important source for Paulina's life are however the inscriptions on the funerary monument to her and Praetextatus (). This monument was found in 1750 in an unknown location in Rome, and is now kept in the Capitoline Museums.Anne Kolb and Joachim Fugmann, Tod in Rom. Grabinschriften als Spiegel römischen Lebens (Mainz: Philipp von Yabern, 2008), p. 68. In contrast to the majority of other fourth-century Roman monuments in stone, that to Paulina and Praetextatus is not composed of spolia, but rather a previously unused block of Parian marble. The monument is 126 cm high, 76 cm wide and 56 cm deep, and its decoration indicates that it was used as an altar, perhaps inside a mausoleum.Capitoline Museums, S 208; Alberto Danti, "Altare funerario di Vettius Agorius Praetextatus e della moglie Aconia Fabia Paulina," in Musei Capitolini. Le sculture del Palazzo Nuovo, edited by Eugenio La Rocca and Claudio Parisi Presicce (Rome: Electa, 2010), vol. 1 pp. 344–347 Nr. 2 (Digitalisat).
Four sides of this monument are inscribed. One of the inscriptions lists Praetextatus' cursus honorum and the religious roles possessed by him and Paulina. The other three inscriptions are in iambic hexameter. Two are poems from Praetextatus in praise of Paulina, and the last is a poem of 41 lines in which Paulina praises her husband and their marriage.La Rocca, Eugenio, and Serena Ensoli (eds.), Aurea Roma. Dalla città pagana alla città cristiana (Rome: Bretschneider, 2000), p. 507 nr. 130; see too Lorito, Rosa, "Latin Epigraphy and Literary Texts in Fourth-Century AD Rome. The Case of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus," in On the Track of the Books. Scribes, Libraries and Textual Transmission, edited by Roberta Berardi, Nicoletta Bruno, and Luisa Fizzarotti (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019), pp. 189-199.
Although written from Paulina's perspective, it is debated whether she composed this poem. Giovanni Polara has argued that the similarity in style between this inscription and the other three on the monument point to an anonymous poet who composed these pieces at Paulina and Praetextatus' behest.Polara, Giovanni, "Le iscrizioni sul cippo tombale di Vezzio Agorio Pretestato," Vichiana 4:3 (1967): 40-65. By contrast, Pierre Lambrechts and Maijastina Kahlos have proposed that Paulina held an oration at her husband's funeral, which then formed the basis of this poem,Lambrechts, Pierre, Op de grens van Heidendom en Christendom. Het grafschrift von Vettius Agorius Praetextatus en Fabia Aconia Paulina (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1955), pp. 10-14. and Jane Stevenson has also identified it as one of the few extant funeral orations to have been composed by a late Roman woman.Stevenson, Jane, Women Latin Poets. Language, Gender, and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 71f. While not doubting Paulina's authorship, Alan Cameron has questioned whether the poem was composed for Praetextatus' funeral. Since the first 37 lines are written in the present tense and the last four only in the past tense, he suggests instead that Paulina may have written the majority of the poem while Praetextatus was still alive, perhaps to mark their 40th anniversary, only adding the last lines after her husband's death. Cameron argued moreover that this may explain why contemporary writers like Jerome and Symmachus appear to have known about Paulina's poem in works that appear to have been written prior to the erection of the monument to her and Praetextatus.Cameron, Alan, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 301-305. In a 2022 article, Camilla Campedelli defended anew the argument that the poem had been written to mark Praetextatus's death, observing that a Roman viewer would have probably read the four inscriptions in a circle, thereby bringing them into a dialogue which is reflected in lines that suggest the couple communicating across the different poems of the monument.
References to Paulina in Jerome's letters At the time of Praetextatus's death, the Church Father Jerome was serving as secretary to Pope Damasus and mentor to a group of aristocratic Roman women, which included Paula and Marcella. Jerome was therefore likely aware of the political context of Rome and Praetextatus's influence upon it, as well as Paulina's status as a prominent pagan.
In a letter to Marcella written shortly after Praetextatus' death, Jerome indeed mocks the latter, claiming that he was not in paradise but in hell.Jerome, letter 23. According to Kahlos, this letter shows that Jerome knew Paulina's poem to Praetextatus, in that he twice mentions her hope to join her husband in heaven. In another letter, Jerome also lambasts Paula for doubting that her daughter Blaesilla was in heaven, when a pagan like Paulina believed that her husband was in paradise.Jerome, letter 39 This has sometimes been taken to show that Jerome knew the exact text of Paulina's poem to Praetextatus, or else simply as a more general product of the couple's fame as convinced pagans.
Camilla Campedelli has argued that Jerome's harsh response to Paula was due to the fact that he considered Paulina and Praetextatus' paganism to be a threat, since the mystery cults to which they belonged promised eternal life without the asceticism that he sought to promote among the Roman aristocracy. In funerary verse drafted for Paula and included in a letter to her daughter, Jerome deliberately contrasts the Christian Paula with the pagan Paulina. Whereas Rome stands in the centre of Paulina's inscription, Jerome argues that Paula had migrated from there to Bethlehem. He moreover contrasts the constriction of the grave with the expansiveness of eternal life, likely a commentary on the rich funerary monument dedicated to Paulina and Praetextatus.