manners of the people 12 If Julian had flattered himself that his personal connection with the capital of the East would be productive of mutual satisfaction to the Licentious prince and people, he made a very false estimate of his own character and of the manners of Antioch,11 11 The warmth of of Antioch, 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; 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, 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 name, which had been first invented by their ancestors: 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. 13 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. 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. 13 Χριστὸν δὲ ἀγαπῶντες ἔχετε πολιοῦχον ἀντὶ τοῦ Διός. The people of Antioch ingeniously professed their attachment to the Chi (Christ), and the Kappa (Constantius). Julian in Misopogon, p. 357. 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.), which henceforward I shall quote. sion to corn, and The strongest prejudice was entertained against the character of an apostate, the enemy and successor of a prince who had Their averengaged the affections of a very numerous sect, and the Julian. 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 15 in the markets of Antioch had naturally risen in proportion Scarcity of to the scarcity of corn. But the fair and reasonable pro- public disportion was soon violated by the rapacious arts of monopoly. content. 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 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 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). 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, 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. 17 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, 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 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.18 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. 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.19 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 A 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), or the elaborate apology of Libanius (Orat. Parental. c. xcvii. p. 321). 17 Their short and easy confinement is gently touched by Libanius (Orat. Parental. c. xcviii. p. 322, 323). 18 Libanius (ad Antiochenos de Imperatoris ira, c. 17, 18, 19, in Fabricius, Biblioth. 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. 19 Libanius (ad Antiochen. c. vii. 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. a satire Antioch. had been insulted by satires and libels; in his turn he composed, under the title of the Enemy of the Beard, an ironical con- Julian fession of his own faults, and a severe satire of the licentious composes and effeminate manners of Antioch. This Imperial reply was against publicly exposed before the gates of the palace; and the MISOPOGON 20 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 was expressed, and his revenge might be gratified, by the nomination of a governor 22 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.2 23 21 A.D. 314-390. &c. Yet Antioch possessed one citizen whose genius and virtues might atone, in the opinion of Julian, for the vice and folly of his The sophist country. The sophist Libanius was born in the capital of Libanius, 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 secretly procured the writings of this dangerous sophist, and gradually surpassed, in the perfect imitation of his style, the most laborious of his domestic pupils.24 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 20 On the subject of the Misopogon, see Ammianus (xxii. 14), Libanius (Orat. Parentalis, c. xcix. p. 323), Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. iv. p. 133 [ed. Paris, 1609]), and the Chronicle of Antioch, by John Malala (tom. ii. p. 15, 16 [ed. Ox.; p. 328, ed. Bonn]). I have essential obligations to the translation and notes of the Abbé de la Bléterie (Vie de Jovien, tom. ii. p. 1-138). 21 Ammianus [1. c.] very justly remarks, Coactus dissimulare pro tempore irâ sufflabatur internâ. The elaborate irony of Julian at length bursts forth into serious and direct invective. Ammian. 22 Ipse autem Antiochiam egressurus, Heliopoliten quendam Alexandrum Syriaca jurisdictioni præfecit, turbulentum et sævum; dicebatque non illum meruisse, sed Antiochensibus avaris et contumeliosis hujusmodi judicem convenire. xxiii. 2. Libanius (Epist. 722, p. 346, 347 [ed. Wolf. Amst. 1738]), who confesses to Julian himself that he had shared the general discontent, pretends that Alexander was an useful, though harsh, reformer of the manners and religion of Antioch. 23 Julian, in Misopogon, p. 364. Ammian. xxiii. 2, and Valesius ad loc. Libanius, in a professed oration, invites him to return to his loyal and penitent city of Antioch. 24 Libanius, Orat. Parent. c. vii. p. 230, 231. 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 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,25 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; 26 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 27 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. 28 25 Eunapius reports that Libanius refused the honorary rank of Prætorian præfect, as less illustrious than the title of Sophist (in Vit. Sophist. p. 135 [p. 175, ed. Comm.]). The critics have observed a similar sentiment in one of the epistles (xviii. [p. 7] ed. Wolf.) of Libanius himself. 26 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." 27 His birth is assigned to the year 314. He mentions [Ep. 866] the seventy-sixth year of his age (A.D. 390), and seems to allude to some events of a still later date. 28 Libanius has composed the vain, prolix, but curious narrative of his own life (tom. ii. p. 1-84, edit. Morell.), of which Eunapius (p. 130-135) has left a concise and unfavourable account. Among the moderns, Tillemont (Hist. des Empereurs, |