Ambrogio, Agostino e la Roma repubblicana

Ambrose’s attitude toward the history of Republican Rome and its uiri exemplares is deeply different from Augustine’s one. They get their information from a common cultural heritage, which was by then accepted without any critical approach, but Ambrose agrees with Cicero upon admiring the Republic prior to its last century (from the Gracchi to Augustus), upon its military glory, upon the libertas dicendi of the senators, whose he as a bishop was the heir, on the contrary Augustine agrees with Sallust upon his severe, pessimistic opinion of such an iniquitous and corrupted society that the rare attempts in amending it failed and its best men suffered its ingratitude. Consequently also Augustus’ place is different: both refuse the Augustustheologie, but Ambrose only acknowledges that the Augustan peace fostered the mission of the Apostles, while Augustine ascribes the princeps the merit in getting rid of an unfair socio-political system. To sum up, it seems to me that for the Roman Ambrose the whole history of Rome in all its stages (Roman, Latin, Italian) is of great value, for the African Augustine it becomes valuable only since the Constitutio Antoniniana, issued by an Afro-Syrian dynasty, when its Italian features were vanishing in a melting pot embracing all the provinces of its immense empire.