ABSTRACT
The final decades of the fourth century saw the room for manoeuvre allowed to pagans increasingly restricted by the imperial government. As late as 382, a law was issued which sought to maintain a balanced approach to the status of temples (6.1), but this soon proved to be a misleading guide to the future. Probably in the same year, Valentinian’s son and successor Gratian (375-83) rejected the traditional imperial office of chief priest ( pontifex maximus) that Constantine and his successors had continued to hold, apparently untroubled by its anomalous implications. This important symbolic gesture was accompanied by other measures with greater practical import – the termination of public subsidies for the maintenance of the ceremonies and priesthoods associated with the official pagan cults in Rome and of the stipends paid to the Vestal Virgins (Cameron 1968; Matthews 1990: 203-4).
