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had respectfully saluted the Roman purple. The nations of the West esteemed and dreaded the personal virtues of Julian, both and war. in peace He despised the trophies of a Gothic victory and was satisfied that the rapacious Barbarians of the Danube would be restrained from any future violation of the faith of treaties by the terror of his name and the additional fortifications with which he strengthened the Thracian and Illyrian frontiers. The successor of Cyrus and Artaxerxes was the only rival whom he deemed worthy of his arms; and he resolved, by the final conquest of Persia, to chastise the haughty nation which had so long resisted and insulted the majesty of Rome.9 As soon as the Persian monarch was informed that the throne of Constantius was filled by a prince of a very different character, he condescended to make some artful, or perhaps sincere, overtures towards a negotiation of peace. But the pride of Sapor was astonished by the firmness of Julian; who sternly declared that he would never consent to hold a peaceful conference among the flames and ruins of the cities of Mesopotamia; and who added, with a smile of contempt, that it was needless to treat by ambassadors, as he himself had determined to visit speedily the court of Persia. The impatience of the emperor urged the diligence of the military preparations. The generals were named; a formidable army was destined for this important service; and Julian, marching from Constantinople through the provinces of Asia Minor, arrived at Antioch about eight months after the death of his predecessor. His ardent desire to march into the heart of Persia was checked by the indispensable duty of regulating the state of the empire; by his zeal to revive the worship of the gods; and by the advice of his wisest friends, who represented the necessity of allowing the salutary interval of winter quarters, to restore the exhausted strength of the legions Julian pro

ceeds from Constanti

Antioch,

to send an embassy to the emperor (Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 24). 2. The geographers nople to (and even Ptolemy) have magnified, above fifteen times, the real size of this new August world, which they extended as far as the equator and the neighbourhood of [June-July] China.

7 These embassies had been sent to Constantius. Ammianus, who unwarily deviates into gross flattery, must have forgotten the length of the way, and the short duration of the reign of Julian.

8 Gothos sæpe fallaces et perfidos; hostes quærere se meliores aiebat: illis enim sufficere mercatores Galatas per quos ubique sine conditionis discrimine venundantur [Amm. loc. cit.]. Within less than fifteen years, these Gothic slaves threatened and subdued their masters.

9 Alexander reminds his rival Cæsar, who deprecated the fame and merit of an Asiatic victory, that Crassus and Antony had felt the Persian arrows; and that the Romans, in a war of three hundred years, had not yet subdued the single province of Mesopotamia or Assyria (Cæsares, p. 324 [p. 417, ed. Hertl.]). 31

VOL. II.

Licentious manners of

the people of Antioch

of Gaul and the discipline and spirit of the Eastern troops. Julian was persuaded to fix, till the ensuing spring, his residence at Antioch, among a people maliciously disposed to deride the haste, and to censure the delays, of their sovereign.10

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If Julian had flattered himself that his personal connexion with the capital of the East would be productive of mutual satisfaction to the prince and people, he made a very false estimate of his own character, and of the manners of Antioch.11 The warmth of the climate disposed the natives to the most intemperate enjoyment of tranquillity and opulence; and the lively licentiousness of the Greeks was blended with the hereditary softness of the Syrians. Fashion was the only law, pleasure the only pursuit, and the splendour of dress and furniture was the only distinction of the citizens of Antioch. The arts of luxury were honoured; the serious and manly virtues were the subject of ridicule; and the contempt for female modesty and reverent age announced the universal corruption of the capital of the East. The love of spectacles was the taste, or rather passion, of the * Syrians: the most skilful artists were procured from the adjacent cities; 12 a considerable share of the revenue was devoted to the public amusements; and the magnificence of the games of the theatre and circus was considered as the happiness, and as the glory, of Antioch. The rustic manners of a prince who disdained such glory, and was insensible of such happiness, soon disgusted the delicacy of his subjects; and the effeminate Orientals could neither imitate nor admire the severe simplicity which Julian always maintained and sometimes affected. The days of festivity, a consecrated by ancient custom to the honour of the gods, were the only occasions in which Julian relaxed his philosophic severity; and those festivals were the only days in which the Syrians of Antioch could reject the allurements of pleasure. The majority of the people supported the glory of the Christian

10 The design of the Persian war is declared by Ammianus (xxii. 7, 12), Libanius (Orat. Parent. c. 79, 80, p. 305, 306), Zosimus (1. iii. p. 158 [c. 11]), and Socrates (1. iii. c. 19).

11 The satire of Julian and the Homilies of St. Chrysostom exhibit the same picture of Antioch. The miniature which the Abbé de la Bléterie has copied from thence (Vie de Julien, p. 332) is elegant, and correct. [The date of Julian's arrival at Antioch has been contested. The first half of July seems most probable (cp. Sievers, Das Leben des Libanius, p. 247, and Gwatkin, Arianism, p. 222). Mücke (Flavius Claudius Julianus, 2, 106) puts it in September.]

11a [Sic quarto; should be corrected to reverend.]

12 Laodicea furnished charioteers; Tyre and Berytus, comedians; Cæsarea, pantomimes; Heliopolis, singers; Gaza, gladiators; Ascalon, wrestlers; and Castabala, rope-dancers. See the Expositio totius Mundi, p. 6, in the third tome of Hudson's Minor Geographers.

name, which had been first invented by their ancestors; 13 they contented themselves with disobeying the moral precepts, but they were scrupulously attached to the speculative doctrines, of their religion. The church of Antioch was distracted by heresy and schism; but the Arians and the Athanasians, the followers of Meletius and those of Paulinus,14 were actuated by the same pious hatred of their common adversary.

sion to

corn and

content

The strongest prejudice was entertained against the character Their aver of an apostate, the enemy and successor of a prince who had Julian engaged the affections of a very numerous sect; and the removal of St. Babylas excited an implacable opposition to the person of Julian. His subjects complained, with superstitious indignation, that famine had pursued the emperor's steps from Constantinople to Antioch; and the discontent of a hungry people was ex- Scarcity of asperated by the injudicious attempt to relieve their distress. public dis The inclemency of the season had affected the harvests of Syria ; and the price of bread,15 in the markets of Antioch, had naturally risen in proportion to the scarcity of corn. But the fair and reasonable proportion was soon violated by the rapacious arts of monopoly. In this unequal contest, in which the produce of the land is claimed by one party as his exclusive property; is used by another as a lucrative object of trade; and is required by a third for the daily and necessary support of life; all the profits of the intermediate agents are accumulated on the head of the defenceless consumers. The hardships of their situation were exaggerated and increased by their own impatience and anxiety; and the apprehension of a scarcity gradually produced the appearances of a famine. When the luxurious citizens of Antioch complained of the high price of poultry and fish, Julian

13 Χριστὸν δὲ ἀγαπῶντες, ἔχετε πολιοῦχον ἀντι τοῦ Διός. The people of Antioch ingeniously professed their attachment to the Chi (Christ), and the Kappa (Constantius). Julian. in Misopogon. p. 357 [460, ed. Hertl.].

14 The schism of Antioch, which lasted eighty-five years (A.D. 330-415), was inflamed, while Julian resided in that city, by the indiscreet ordination of Paulinus. See Tillemont, Mém. Ecclés. tom. vii. p. 803, of the quarto edition (Paris, 1701, &c. [same page in earlier ed.]), which henceforward I shall quote.

15 Julian states three different proportions of five, ten, or fifteen modii of wheat, for one piece of gold, according to the degrees of plenty and scarcity (in Misopogon. p. 369 [477]). From this fact, and from some collateral examples, I conclude that under the successors of Constantine the moderate price of wheat was about thirty-two shillings the English quarter, which is equal to the average price of the sixty-four first years of the present century. See Arbuthnot's Tables of Coins, Weights, and Measures, p. 88, 89; Plin. Hist. Natur. xviii. 12; Mém. de l'Académie des Inscriptions, t. xxviii. p. 718-721; Smith's Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i. p. 246. This last I am proud to quote, as the work of a sage and a friend.

publicly declared that a frugal city ought to be satisfied with a regular supply of wine, oil, and bread; but he acknowledged that it was the duty of a sovereign to provide for the subsistence of his people. With this salutary view, the emperor ventured on a very dangerous and doubtful step, of fixing, by legall authority, the value of corn. He enacted that, in a time of scarcity, it should be sold at a price which had seldom been known in the most plentiful years; and, that his own example might strengthen his laws, he sent into the market four hundred and twenty-two thousand modii, or measures, which were drawn by his order from the granaries of Hierapolis, of Chalcis, and even of Egypt. The consequences might have been foreseen, and were soon felt. The Imperial wheat was purchased by the rich merchants; the proprietors of land, or of corn, withheld from the city the accustomed supply; and the small quantities that appeared in the market were secretly sold at an advanced and illegal price. Julian still continued to applaud his own. policy, treated the complaints of the people as a vain and ungrateful murmur, and convinced Antioch that he had inherited the obstinacy, though not the cruelty, of his brother Gallus.16 The remonstrances of the municipal senate served only to exasperate his inflexible mind. He was persuaded, perhaps with truth, that the senators of Antioch who possessed lands, or were concerned in trade, had themselves contributed to the calamities of their country; and he imputed the disrespectful boldness which they assumed to the sense, not of public duty, but of private interest. The whole body, consisting of two hundred of the most noble and wealthy citizens, were sent under a guard from the palace to the prison; and, though they were permitted, before the close of evening, to return to their respective houses,17 the emperor himself could not obtain the forgiveness which he. had so easily granted. The same grievances were still the subject of the same complaints, which were industriously circulated by the wit and levity of the Syrian Greeks. During the licentious days of the Saturnalia, the streets of the city resounded

16 Nunquam a proposito declinabat, Galli similis fratris, licet incruentus, Ammian. xxii. 14. The ignorance of the most enlightened princes may claim some excuse: but we cannot be satisfied with Julian's own defence (in Misopogon. p. 368, 369 [p. 475-8, ed. H.]), or the elaborate apology of Libanius (Orat. Parental. c. xcvii. p. 321 [i. 587, ed. Reiske]).

17 Their short and easy confinement is gently touched by Libanius, Orat. Parental. c. xcviii. p. 322, 323. [Schiller, Gesch. der röm. Kaiserzeit, ii. p. 325, says they were released on the following day. But Libanius, p. 322 (ap. Fabric.), says ἀλλ ̓ οὐδὲ νὺξ ἐπεγένετο τῷ βραχεῖ τούτῳ καὶ κούφῳ κ.τ.λ.)

th insolent songs, which derided the laws, the religion, the
rsonal conduct, and even the beard, of the emperor; and the
irit of Antioch was manifested by the connivance of the magis-
ates and the applause of the multitude.18 The disciple of
crates was too deeply affected by these popular insults; but
e monarch, endowed with quick sensibility, and possessed of ab-
lute power, refused his passions the gratification of revenge. A
rant might have proscribed, without distinction, the lives and
rtunes of the citizens of Antioch; and the unwarlike Syrians
ust have patiently submitted to the lust, the rapaciousness, and
e cruelty of the faithful legions of Gaul. A milder sentence
ight have deprived the capital of the East of its honours and privi-
ges; and the courtiers, perhaps the subjects, of Julian would
ve applauded an act of justice which asserted the dignity of the
preme magistrate of the republic.19 But, instead of abusing,
exerting, the authority of the state to revenge his personal
juries, Julian contented himself with an inoffensive mode of Julian com
taliation, which it would be in the power of few princes to tire against
mploy. He had been insulted by satires and libels; in his
rn he composed, under the title of the Enemy of the Beard, an
oniɔal confession of his own faults, and a severe satire of the
cetnious and effeminate manners of Antioch. This Imperial
eply was publicly exposed before the gates of the palace; and
e MISOPOGON 20 still remains a singular monument of the re-
entment, the wit, the humanity, and the indiscretion, of Julian.
hough he affected to laugh, he could not forgive.21
His con-
empt was expressed, and his revenge might be gratified, by the
omination of a governor 22 worthy only of such subjects: and

18 Libanius (ad Antiochenos de Imperatoris irâ, c. 17, 18, 19, in Fabricius
bliot. Græc. tom. vii. p. 221-223), like a skilful advocate, severely censures the folly
I the people, who suffered for the crime of a few obscure and drunken wretches.
19 Libanius (ad Antiochen. c. vii. p. 213) reminds Antioch of the recent chastise-
ent of Cæsarea: and even Julian (in Misopogon. p. 355 [p. 459, ed. H.]) insinuates
ow severely Tarentum had expiated the insult to the Roman ambassadors.

20 On the subject of the Misopogon, see Ammianus (xxii. 14), Libanius (Orat.
arentalis, c. xcix. p. 323), Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. iv. p. 133 [v., c. 41]), and the
Chronicle of Antioch, by John Malala (tom. ii. p. 15, 16 [p. 328, ed. Bonn]). I have
ssential obligations to the translation and notes of the Abbé de la Bléterie (Vie de
ovien, tom. ii. p. 1-138).

21 Ammianus very justly remarks, Coactus dissimulare pro tempore irâ sufflabaur internâ. The elaborate irony of Julian at length bursts forth into serious and lirect invective.

22 Ipse autem Antiochiam egressurus, Heliopoliten quendam Alexandrum yriacæ jurisdictioni præfecit, turbulentum et sævum; dicebatque non illum neruisse, sed Antiochensibus avaris et contumeliosis hujusmodi judicem convenire. Ammian. xxiii. 2. Libanius (Epist. 722, p. 346, 347), who confesses to Julian imself that he had shared the general discontent, pretends that Alexander was an seful, though harsh, reformer of the manners and religion of Antioch,

poses a sa

Antioch

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