Note 017 See Ambrose (tom. ii. Epist. xvii. xviii. p. 825-833). The former of these epistles is a short caution; the latter is a formal reply to the petition or libel of Symmachus. The same ideas are more copiously expressed in the poetry, if it may deserve that name, of Prudentius, who composed his two books against Symmachus (A.D. 404) while that senator was still alive. It is whimsical enough that Montesquieu (Considerations, etc., c. xix. tom. iii. p. 487) should overlook the two professed antagonists of Symmachus, and amuse himself with descanting on the more remote and indirect confutations of Orosius, St. Augustin, and Salvian.

---

The History Of The Decline and Fall Of The Roman Empire— Chapter 28