Symmachus(340-402) was a wealthy landowner and senator in the Late Roman era, but he is best known now as a prolific author and one of the greatest of pagans. Represented primarily by his official correspondence and reports, his political work has never been fully appreciated due to the lack of translation of the whole into any modern language. Sogno (classics, Cornell U.) includes the panegyrics at the beginning of the career of Symmachus, the Relationes and their significance in his career as prefect, and the Epistulae from after his retirement from active public life and into his second career as a master of networking and the promotion of his family. As a result, Symmachus emerges as a political adept rather than merely a participant in the pagan revival movement, in a milieu in which senators, Christian or pagan, were as competitive as their republican progenitors. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)