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.