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,* were actuated by the same pious hatred of their common adversary.

The strongest prejudice was entertained against the character of an apostate, the enemy and successor of a prince who had 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 exasperated by the injudicious attempt to relieve their distress. The inclemency of the season had affected the harvests of Syria; and the price of bread,† 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

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 4to. edition, (Paris, 1701, &c.) which henceforward I shall quote.

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.) 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. 18. 12. Mém. de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. 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.

1

A.D. 362.]

PUBLIC DISCONTENT.

7

complained of the high price of poultry and fish, Julian 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 legal 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.* 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,† 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,

*

Nunquam a proposito declinabat, Galli similis fratris, licet incruentus. Ammian. 22, 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), or the elaborate apology of Libanius (Orat. Parental. c. 97, p. 321). Their short and easy confinement is gently touched by Libanius. (Orat. Parent.

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 with insolent songs, which derided the laws, the religion, the personal conduct, and even the beard, of the emperor; and the spirit of Antioch was manifested by the connivance of the magistrates, and the applause of the multitude. The disciple of Socrates was too deeply affected by these popular insults; but the monarch, endowed with quick sensibility, and possessed of absolute power, refused his passions the gratification of revenge. A tyrant might have proscribed, without distinction, the lives and fortunes of the citizens of Antioch; and the unwarlike Syrians must have patiently submitted to the lust, the rapaciousness, and the cruelty, of the faithful legions of Gaul. A milder sentence might have deprived the capital of the east of its honours and privileges; and the courtiers, perhaps the subjects of Julian, would have applauded an act of justice, which asserted the dignity of the supreme magistrate of the republic. But instead of abusing, or exerting, the authority of the state, to revenge his personal injuries, Julian contented himself with an inoffensive mode of retaliation, which it would be in the power of few princes to employ. He had been insulted by satires and libels; in his turn he composed, under the title of the Enemy of the Beard, an ironical confession of his own faults, and a severe satire of the licentious and effeminate manners of Antioch. This imperial reply was publicly exposed before the gates of the palace; and the MISOPOGON still remains a singular monument of the resentment, the wit, the humanity, and the indiscretion, of Julian.‡ Though he affected to laugh, he could not forgive.§ His contempt c. 98, p. 322, 323.) * Libanius (ad Antiochenos de Imperatoris ira, c. 17-19, in Fabricius, Bibl. Græc. tom. vii, p. 221-223) like a skilful advocate, severely censures the folly of the people, who suffered for the crime of a few obscure and drunken wretches. + Libanius (ad Antiochen. c. 7, p. 213) reminds Antioch of the recent chastisement of Cæsarea and even Julian (in Misopogon, p. 355) insinuates how severely Tarentum had expiated the insult to the Roman ambassadors.

On the subject of the Misopogon, see Ammianus (22, 14), Libanius (Orat. Parentalis, c. 99, p. 323), Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. 4, p. 133), and the Chronicle of Antioch, by John Malala (tom. ii, p. 15, 16). I have essential obligations to the translation and notes of the Abbé de la Bleterie. (Vie de Jovien, tom. ii, p. 1-138,.) § Ammianus very justly remarks, Coactus dissimulare pro tempore irâ sufflabatur interna.

A.D. 314-390.]

LIBANIUS.

9

was expressed, and his revenge might be gratified, by the nomination of a governor worthy only of such subjects: and the emperor, for ever renouncing the ungrateful city, proclaimed his resolution to pass the ensuing winter at Tarsus in Cilicia.t

Yet Antioch possessed one citizen, whose genius and virtues might atone, in the opinion of Julian, for the vice and folly of his country. The sophist Libanius was born in the capital of the east; he publicly professed the arts of rhetoric and declamation at Nice, Nicomedia, Constantinople, Athens, and, during the remainder of his life, at Antioch. His school was assiduously frequented by the Grecian youth; his disciples, who sometimes exceeded the number of eighty, celebrated their incomparable master; and the jealousy of his rivals, who persecuted him from one city to another, confirmed the favourable opinion which Libanius ostentatiously displayed of his superior merit. The preceptors of Julian had extorted a rash but solemn assurance, that he would never attend the lectures of their adversary: the curiosity of the royal youth was checked and inflamed: he secrectly procured the writings of this dangerous sophist, and gradually surpassed, in the perfect imitation of his style, the most laborious of his domestic pupils. When Julian ascended the throne, he declared his impatience to embrace and reward the Syrian sophist, who had preserved, in a degenerate age, the Grecian purity of taste, of manners, and of religion. The emperor's prepossession was increased and justified by the discreet pride of his favourite. Instead of pressing, with the foremost of the crowd, into the palace of Constantinople, Libanius calmly expected his arrival at Antioch; withdrew from court on the first symptoms of coldness and indifference; required a formal invitation for each visit; and taught his sovereign an important

The elaborate irony of Julian at length bursts forth into serious and direct invective. * Ipse autem Antiochiam egressurus, Heliopoliten quendam Alexandrum Syriacæ jurisdictioni præfecit, turbulentum et sævum; dicebatque non illum meruisse, sed Antiochensibus avaris et contumeliosis hujusmodi judicem convenire. (Ammian. 23, 2.) Libanius (epist. 722, p. 346, 347), who confesses to Julian himself, that he had shared the general discontent, pretends that Alexander was a useful, though harsh, reformer of the manners and religion of Antioch. Julian, in Misopogon, p. 364, Ammian. 23, 2, and Valesius ad loc. Libanius, in a professed oration, invites him to return to his loyal and penitent city of Antioch. Libanius, Orat. Parent. c. 7, p. 230, 231.

lesson, that he might command the obedience of a subject, but that he must deserve the attachment of a friend. The sophists of every age, despising, or affecting to despise, the accidental distinctions of birth and fortune,* reserve their esteem for the superior qualities of the mind, with which they themselves are so plentifully endowed. Julian might disdain the acclamations of a venal court, who adored the imperial purple; but he was deeply flattered by the praise, the admonition, the freedom, and the envy of an independent philosopher, who refused his favours, loved his person, celebrated his fame, and protected his memory. The voluminous writings of Libanius still exist: for the most part, they are the vain and idle compositions of an orator, who cultivated the science of words; the productions of a recluse student, whose mind, regardless of his contemporaries, was incessantly fixed on the Trojan war, and the Athenian commonwealth. Yet the sophist of Antioch sometimes descended from this imaginary elevation; he entertained a various and elaborate correspondence;† he praised the virtues of his own times; he boldly arraigned the abuses of public and private life; and he eloquently pleaded the cause of Antioch against the just resentment of Julian and Theodosius. It is the common calamity of old age,‡ to lose whatever might have rendered it desirable; but Libanius experienced the peculiar misfortune of surviving the religion and the sciences, to which he had consecrated his genius. The friend of Julian was an indignant spectator of the triumph of Christianity; and his bigotry, which darkened the prospect of the visible world, did not inspire Libanius with any lively hopes of celestial glory and happiness.§

*Eunapius reports, that Libanius refused the honorary rank of prætorian prefect, as less illustrious than the title of Sophist (in Vit. Sophist. p. 135). The critics have observed a similar sentiment in one of the epistles (18th edit. Wolf) of Libanius himself. + Near two thousand of his letters, a mode of composition in which Libanius was thought to excel, are still extant, and already published. The critics may praise their subtle and elegant brevity; yet Dr. Bentley (Dissertation upon Phalaris, p. 487) might justly, though quaintly, observe, that "you feel, by the emptiness and deadness of them, that you converse with some dreaming pedant, with his elbow on his desk."

His birth is assigned to the year 314. He mentions the seventysixth year of his age (A.D. 390), and seems to allude to some events of a still later date. [The latest ascertained date in the life of Libanius, is that of his Ep. 941, addressed "Tatiano Consuli." Tatianus and Symmachus were consuls, A.D. 391.-ED.] § Libanius has composed