Vettius Agorius Praetextatus

Vettius Agorius Praetextatus (c. 315 – 384) was a wealthy pagan aristocrat in the 4th-century Roman Empire, and a high priest in the cults of numerous gods.

[5] A different kind of source is represented by the philosopher and writer Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, who made Praetextatus the main character of his Saturnalia, a book describing the pagan renaissance of the late 4th century.

[9] According to Joannes Lydus, however, a "Praetextatus the hierophant" and the Neo-platonic philosopher Sopater of Apamea participated to the polismós ceremony during the foundation of Constantinople, around 330.

[13] They had at least one son, recalled in the funeral eulogy and the author of an inscription in honour of his father, dated to shortly after his death and found in their home on the Aventine.

[16] Praetextatus held several religious positions: pontifex of Vesta and Sol, augur, tauroboliatus, curialis of Hercules, neocorus, hierophant, priest of Liber and of the Eleusinian mysteries.

He also held several political and administrative positions: he was quaestor, corrector Tusciae et Umbriae, Governor of Lusitania, Proconsul of Achaea, praefectus urbi in 384[17] and was praetorian prefect of Italy and Illyricum,[18] as well as consul designated for the year 385, an honour he did not achieve because he died in late 384.

[23] His justice was celebrated; he had removed those private structures that were built against pagan temples (the so-called maeniana) and distributed within the whole city uniform and verified weights and measures.

[31] In 367, during his tenure as praefectus urbi, he oversaw the restoration of the Porticus Deorum Consentium in the Roman Forum (41°53′33.2″N 12°29′1.27″E / 41.892556°N 12.4836861°E / 41.892556; 12.4836861 (Porticus_Deorum_Consentium)), the last great monument devoted to a pagan cult in Rome.

[33] It has been also proposed that the restoration of the cult of the Di Consentes appealed to Praetextatus as a propagation of "his ideology of the numen multiplex" cited in his funerary poem.

[33][34] In 384, during his tenure as praetorian prefect, he obtained from Valentinian II an edict about the persecution of the crimes of demolition of pagan temples and the attribution of the related investigations to the praefectus urbi of Rome (who, at that time, was his friend Symmachus).