ABSTRACT
His policy towards paganism was accentuated in the most rigorous sense by his sons Constans and Constantius. But strange contradictions retarded its effects. Though he forbade sacrifices and pagan worship, Constantius gave proof, on more than one occasion, of a want of logic of which the pagan Symmachus, in the face of arbitrary measures of quite another kind, was later on to take advantage. In his famous Relatio addressed in 38'1, to Valentinian II,2 he recalled that " Constantius had taken away none of the privileges of the consecrated virgins; he had filled the priestly offices with nobles; he had not reCused financial support to the Roman ceremonies; he had followed the Senat.e with much complacency along the strcds of the Eternal City; he had viewed the temples without emotion; he had read the names of the gods inscribed on their frontals; he had enquired as to the origin of those sanctuaries, he had expressed admiration for the architects. . . ."
