other · 382 · Rome
The altar had stood in the senate house since Augustus, and senators had sworn on it for four hundred years. Constantius had removed it once; Julian restored it; Gratian took it out again in 382 and at the same time declined the title of pontifex maximus, which every emperor since Augustus had held, and cut the public funding of the Vestals. In 384 the senate sent Symmachus, prefect of the city and the finest orator of his generation, to petition Valentinian II for its return, and Ambrose answered him. What makes the exchange remarkable is its tone. Symmachus does not argue that the gods exist; he argues from custom, from the empire's record, and from a plea for tolerance that is the most quoted sentence of late pagan Rome — that so great a mystery cannot be reached by one road only. Ambrose answers on the state's obligation to truth, and on the fact that the empire had done rather well since the altar left. The petition failed, and was refused twice more. This dataset keeps the episode because it is the moment the two religions argued as equals in a public forum, and the last such moment.
What did the last argument between the old religion and the new sound like?
Polite, and about tradition rather than about gods.