• General Notes

  [SUSANNA KEENE.FTW]
  
  Gallo-Roman Consul.
  Buried beneath an imposing monument at the city gate of Lyons.
  Gallo-Roman Senator at Lyons, i.e. of paternal Roman descent.
  Proconsul Africae, Magister Officiorium.
  Praetorium Prefect of the West.
  Praefectus Urbis Romae
  Selected by the emperor Gratian as  Consul (serving with
  Antonius).
  Praefectus Praetorio Italiae
  A poet. A statue of him was erected in Lyons.
  Buried "not quite a full bowshot" from the church at Lyons.
  REF: Don Stone (a contributor to soc.genealogy.medieval):
  Settipani (1989) is the principal authority for this chart
  (from Flavius Afranius Syagrius to Charlemagne).  A number of
  years ago Kelley (1947) investigated the connection with
  Syagrius in detail, utilizing a ninth-century pedigree of
  Charlemagne (but rejecting its clearly incorrect claim that St.
  Arnulf, Bishop of Metz, was the son of Arnoald, Bishop of Metz)
  and also drawing on various saints' lives.  (Kelley now concurs
  with Settipani's revised version of this pedigree.)  Jarnut
  (1986, pp. 14-22) has also explored this connection. Flavius
  was the given name, Afranius was the family name, and Syagrius
  was a cognomen meaning "wild boar" (Moriarty, 1956). See,
  however, Bagnall, et al. (1987, pp. 36, ff.), on the use
  of the name Flavius as a courtesy title.  There were two
  different consuls named Syagrius in two successive years,
  381and 382.  The consul of 381 was a friend and correspondent
  of Symmachus, the noted orator and vigorous defender of the
  pagan religion.  The consul of 382 was probably the one who was
  the maternal grandfather of Tonantius Ferreolus; he may also
  have been the Syagrius who was a pupil and friend of the poet
  Ausonius.  Ausonius was the head of a famous school at
  Bordeaux, was selected by emperor Valentinian as tutor for his
  son (the future emperor) Gratian, and was prefect of the Gauls
  in 378 and consul in 379 under Gratian; a number of his
  relatives and friends held various high imperial offices (Van
  Dam, 1985, p. 304).  Each of these two Syagrii held a number of
  offices besides consul, and determining which office goes
  with which Syagrius is somewhat difficult.  A relatively
  plausible scenario is given in Jones, et al. (1971), following
  Martindale (1967).  Demandt (1971) proposes a somewhat
  different assignment of offices to the Syagrii, but later
  reviews (e. g., Bagnall, et al., 1987, p. 649, and Errington,
  1992, note 109) point out that Demandt probably misinterpreted
  a comment of Mitteis, an earlier researcher. The office of
  consul had great prestige and was eagerly sought by Roman
  citizens.  In the second half of the fourth century it was
  usually attained as the culmination of a distinguished career
  (Bagnall, et al., 1987, p. 3); at this
  time it was largely an honorary office with minimal political
  responsibilities.

Details of Flavius Afrianus' family