Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| The Emperor preparing an Expedition against the Persians, arrives at Antioch, and being ridiculed by the Inhabitants, he retorts on them by a Satirical Publication entitled 'Misopogon, or the Beard-Hater.'
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XVII.—The
Emperor preparing an Expedition against the Persians, arrives at
Antioch, and being ridiculed by the Inhabitants, he retorts on them by
a Satirical Publication entitled ‘Misopogon, or the
Beard-Hater.’
The emperor having extorted
immense sums of money from the Christians, hastening his expedition
against the Persians, arrived at Antioch in Syria. There, desiring to
show the citizens how much he affected glory, he unduly depressed
the prices of commodities; neither taking into account the
circumstances of that time, nor reflecting how much the presence of an
army inconveniences the population of the provinces, and of necessity
lessens the supply of provisions to the cities. The merchants and
retailers536
| 536μεταβολεῖς
. Cf. μεταβολή, used to
designate all merchandising, Julius Pollux, III. 25; hence μεταβολεύς
, a ‘retailer,’ ‘small merchant.’
|
therefore left off trading, being unable to sustain the losses which
the imperial edict entailed upon them; consequently the necessaries
failed. The Antiochians not bearing the insult,—for they are a
people naturally impatient with insult,—instantly broke forth
into invectives against Julian; caricaturing his beard also, which was
a very long one, and saying that it ought to be cut off and
manufactured into ropes. They added that the bull which was impressed
upon his coin, was a symbol of his having desolated the world. For the
emperor, being excessively superstitious, was continually sacrificing
bulls537
| 537Hence Gregory of Nazianus calls him καυσίταυρος
, ‘a burner of bulls.’
|
on the altars of his idols; and had ordered the impression of a bull
and altar to be made on his coin. Irritated by these scoffs, he
threatened to punish the city of Antioch, and returned to Tarsus in
Cilicia, giving orders that preparations should be made for his speedy
departure thence. Whence Libanius the sophist took occasion to compose
two orations, one addressed to the emperor in behalf of the
Antiochians, the other to the inhabitants of Antioch on the
emperor’s displeasure. It is however affirmed that these
compositions were merely written, and never recited in public. Julian
abandoning his former purpose of revenging himself on his satirists by
injurious deeds, expended his wrath in reciprocating their abusive
taunts; for he wrote a pamphlet against them which he entitled
Antiochicus, or Misopogon, thus leaving an indelible stigma upon
that city and its inhabitants. But we must now speak of the evils which
he brought upon the Christians at Antioch.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
