Quintus Valerius Soranus
This androgynous, unitarian conception of deity,[5] possibly an attempt to integrate Stoic and Orphic doctrine, has made the fragment of interest in religious studies.
[6] Valerius Soranus is also credited with a little-recognized literary innovation: Pliny the Elder says he was the first writer to provide a table of contents to help readers navigate a long work.
[16] This attitude of social exclusivity may account for why Valerius Soranus, whose scholarly interests and friendships might otherwise suggest a conservative temperament, would have found his place in the civil wars of the 80s on the side of the popularist Marius rather than that of the patrician Sulla.
[18] In 82 BC, the year of his death, Valerius Soranus was or had been a tribune of the people (tribunus plebis), a political office open only to those of plebeian rather than patrician birth.
[31] In 1906, Conrad Cichorius published an article[32] that organized the available evidence for the life of Valerius Soranus and argued that his execution was a result of the Sullan proscription in 82.
Although Varro was the friend of Valerius Soranus, in the civil war of the 40s he was on the side of the Pompeians; Caesar, however, not only pardoned him, but gave him significant appointments.
[34] The biases of the contemporary sources were not lost on Plutarch in his account of the killing:[35] Furthermore, Caius Oppius, the friend of Caesar, says that Pompey treated Quintus Valerius also with unnatural cruelty.
[37] This belief rests on the power of utterance to "call forth" the deity (evocatio), so that enemies in possession of the true and secret name could divert the divine protection to themselves.
"[39] More vigorous is the view of Luigi Alfonsi, who argued that Soranus revealed the name deliberately so that the Italian municipalities could appropriate it and break Rome's monopoly of power.
[40] Another interpretation of these events, worth noting despite its fictional context, is that of historical novelist Colleen McCullough, who melds political and religious motives in a psychological characterization.
[41]The single couplet that survives from Valerius Soranus's vast work as a poet, grammarian, and antiquarian is quoted by St. Augustine in the De civitate Dei (7.9) to support his view that the tutelary deity of Rome was the Capitoline Jupiter:[42] Iuppiter omnipotens regum rerumque deumque progenitor genitrixque deum, deus unus et omnes … The syntax poses difficulties in attempts at translation, and there may be some corruption of the text.
The view of Varro, and presumably of Soranus, was that Jupiter represents the whole universe which emits and receives seeds (semina), encompassing the generative powers of Earth the Mother as well as Sky the Father.
[46] Soranus's innovation in providing a table of contents[47] — most likely a list of capita rerum ("subject headings") at the beginning — suggests that the Epoptides was an encyclopedic or compendious prose work.
[55] Köves-Zulauf maintains that the epoptides of the title represent the Stoic conception of female daimones who are guardians of humanity, such as the Hours (Horae) and the Graces (Charites).
