Praetextatus was friend with another major figure of the pagan aristocracy, Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, with whom he exchanged letters partially conserved. According to Jerome, in reference to Bishop Damasus' luxurious lifestyle, he joked to him "Make me bishop of Rome and I will become a Christian". During his office as Proconsul of Achaea he appealed against an edict by Emperor Valentinian I (issued in 364) that forbade night sacrifices during the Mysteries: Praetextatus maintained that this edict made it impossible for pagans to keep their faith, and Valentinian nullified his own edict. In 367, during his tenure as praefectus urbi, he oversaw the restoration of the Porticus Deorum Consentium in the Roman Forum (), the last great monument devoted to a pagan cult in Rome. Even if this was a simple restoration of the damaged statues and a renovation of the worship, it was a symbolic choice, as the Di Consentes were the protectors of the Senate, and therefore used to balance the power of the Emperor (it is significant that the inscription does not mention the Emperor). 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. A few years before his death, while his friend Symmachus was praefectus urbi, Praetextatus held an important ceremony, a pagan ascent to the Capitolium, an event that is recorded by Jerome: Praetextatus ascended, preceded by the highest magistrates, in a ceremony that was not a triumph, but which was really close to a pagan triumphal ceremony. 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). Praetextatus' policy of restoration of the ancient Roman religion hit the Christian members of the imperial court (at Milan) and possibly it was for this reason that Symmachus, as friend and ally of Praetextatus, was falsely accused of torturing Christian priests: Symmachus responded that he was authorised by Praetextatus on the basis of the imperial edict and even Damasus supported him. Praetextatus and Paulina had a palace located at the corner of via Merulana and viale del Monte Oppio () in Rome, on the place of