42. Here is a pillar³⁴ for thee, raised by our hands, more lofty and more conspicuous than the "Pillars of Hercules;" for they were set up to commemorate one Labour, and are only visible to such as visit that part of the world; but this cannot fail as it moves about to be known to all men in all places; and which the time to come, I well know, will receive, holding up, as it does, to infamy thee and thy actions, and warning all that remain never to venture upon any such rebellion against God, lest if they do the same things, they may meet with the same retribution!

[Footnotes have been renumbered and placed at the end]

1. ¹ Probably an allusion to the mysterious death (perhaps the result of slow poisoning) of the Prefect of Egypt, Julian's uncle, of the same name.

2. ¹ It is to be remarked that the preacher never once mentions Julian by name. Was this meant for an expression of contempt?

3. ¹ Βρασμῷ. Gregory knows nothing of the "metuendi flammarum globi," with which Ammian adorns the story. It is plain from this account, written but a few months after the occurrence, that a sudden storm of wind sufficed to frighten the superstitious Jews, who saw in it a sign of the displeasure of Heaven with the work they were about.

4. ² This must be Helena's Church: Gregory terms the Temple νεὼς.

5. ¹ The keepers of the church, who naturally shut the doors in the face of a mad crowd of Jews running towards it (for only one purpose as they would imagine), and then proceeded to disperse those attempting to force an entrance by the usual expedient of throwing fire upon them through the windows. Ammian confounds the fire thrown from the Christian church with "flames spontaneously issuing out of the ruins" of the ancient Temple, which completely alters the case. He also states that Julian was rebuilding the Temple at his own cost, whereas it appears from Gregory he left it entirely to the fanaticism of the Jews, doubtless (i.e., the moneyed part of them), very glad of a sign from Heaven to stop so expensive a project. But to give Ammian's words, "Templum instaurare sumptibus cogitabat immodicis: negotiumque maturandum Alypio dederat Antiochensi, qui olim Britannias curaverat propraefectis. Cum itaque rei idem fortiter instaret Alypius, juvaretque provincial rector, metuendi globi flammarum prope fundamenta crebris assultibus erumpentes, fecere locum exustis aliquantis operantibus inaccessum, hoc que modo, elemento destinatius repellente, cessavit inceptum," xxiii. 1, A.D. 363. The story had got embellished with these terrible globes of flame, in the interval of twenty years between the event and the time of Ammian's writing. The pious Gregory was much too fond of miracles to have omitted so splendid a manifestation had the report of it been contemporary.

6. ¹ The success of the invasion depended entirely upon the celerity with which it was executed, which gave Sapor no time to collect a force to oppose it. The event fully proved the sagacity of the plan of the campaign. Julian reached the capital without ever seeing a defender, and was only forced to retreat through the treachery or stupidity of Procopius and Sebastian, who failed to carry out their instructions of joining him before that city.

7. ² A maxim fully carried out by his hero Constantius, who took the field after immense preparations, against the Persians, year after year, and on their approach as regularly withdrew, without striking a blow, into some place of security.

8. ¹ An example not to the point, for Carus was killed by lightning in the midst of a most successful campaign; and, as it was, his army after losing him, returned home without any opposition.

9. ¹ This first, and true account, the preacher tells in order to save his own conscience----the following string of ridiculous and contradictory fabrications he retails for the benefit of his congregation, of whose credulity and ignorance he was well assured.

10. ² A wretched play upon the double sense of καίριος. The preacher evidently wishes his flock to infer that the blow was the vengeance of a Christian----as Sozomen later actually boasts.

11. ¹ Piety, perhaps----certainly not morality, for Jovian's love of good cheer and other pleasures are gently alluded to by his old comrade Ammian, with the kind remark that respect for his new dignity would have produced reform had his life been spared.

12. ¹ An admission damaging to the preacher's argument to allow that all hope vanished with the loss of Julian, instead of reviving upon the election of the every way perfect Jovian.

13. ² An attempt to shield his new Christian hero from the universal outcry raised against him for submitting to the disgraceful and ruinous terms of peace offered him by Sapor.

14. ³ Gregory had the moment before called these terms "reasonable," but now spying an opportunity of laying the blame on Julian, he calls them "disgraceful." Whoever reads Ammian's dispassionate account of the transaction will be convinced that Jovian actually reduced himself to the necessity of accepting Sapor's terms, by allowing himself to be cajoled by the wily Persian into wasting a precious week in idle negotiation, instead of boldly escaping by the passage of the Tigris, the feasibility of which had already been demonstrated by his German legion. By so doing he would have protected himself from the Persian cavalry, and the days wasted in delay were more than sufficient to have carried them into the friendly land of Corduene.

15. ¹ Constantius died at Mopsuestia, and was thence conveyed to the imperial tomb at Constantinople.

16. ¹ A compliment to the Arian bishops, now falling into the background, Jovian being a Catholic, with Athanasius for his adviser.

17. ¹ This compulsion is entirely an invention of the preacher's. It was common sense that constrained Julian to show every respect to the memory of the last of his line, who had nominated him finally his heir. By so doing he proved the legitimacy of his succession. During his whole reign Julian continued to speak of his cousin as his friend and benefactor, ascribing all enmity between them to the machinations of evil counsellors, which was indeed the truth.

18. ² A revival of the ancient ceremonial at an emperor's funeral, where he was personated by a mime, who spoke in his character, and received the satire of the mob upon his past doings----a rough and primitive method of inflicting posthumous justice upon unpopular sovereigns, and teaching their successors to take heed to their ways.

19. ³ A charitable hint that Julian's body ought to have been thrown to the dogs. Tarsus was the burial-place of his family.

20. ¹ Gregory forgets that in the previous oration he had lauded Julian for his judicious appointments of magistrates and other officials. His extravagant gifts (of which Ammian and Libanius complain) were confined to a few of the "philosophers" about his person.

21. ¹ In the procession of Astarte, as Chrysostom describes it, some forty years later. Ammian alludes, with ill-repressed disgust, at the pattern of chastity consorting with "stupratis mulierculis" on the occasion. Julian, with all the zeal of a new convert, thought himself bound to maintain old rites of the ancient religion, which the enlightened Pagans always had viewed with disgust; just as our Protestant "perverts" revive practices and ideas at which the hereditary Catholic smiles with pity and contempt, as the fungi of mediaeval ignorance.

22. ² τὸ περιττὸν τῆς ἐκοτάσεως.

23. ¹ Of his distinguishing emblem, the erect genital member.

24. ² Some indecent ceremony not mentioned by other authors; unless, perhaps, Gregory has vaguely in his recollection what Herodotus tells of the boat procession with the women that exposed their persons and uttered scurrile jests as they sailed by the villages on the banks.

25. ¹ Alluding to the Golden Candlestick of the Temple, greatly reverenced by Jews and Christians of that age.

26. ² Used in its double sense of ordinary perfumes, that great essential to ancient festivities, and which were merely scented oils, and the anointing oil of the Temple used in the consecration of high-priests and kings.

27. ¹ A curious confusion between David and Uzziah.

28. ¹ "A kiss for a blow."

29. ² That of being the last devoured----a most ingenious defence of Gregory's against the spiteful insinuations of zealots, doubtless now assailing him, based upon the friendship Julian had constantly shown him and his family, which even went so far as to appoint the bishop's brother his own physician. For their college life at Athens, see his funeral sermon on Basil, Orat. XX., Bailey's edition.

30. ¹ The first, and most preposterous alternative, is intended to suit the capacity of his congregation; the second, to appease his own conscience that smote him for thus wantonly insulting his former benefactor.

31. ² Used in calculation, and which, as Polybius remarks in narrating the fate of Achaeus stand for thousands of gold pieces, or for a single copper, at the will of him that uses them. The intolerant bigotry and insolence of this Confessor, so much admired by Gregory, plainly shows that the "persecution" he complains of ought rather to be called well-merited punishment inflicted on disturbers of the public peace----the first to violate the rights of conscience.

32. ³ Answering to the "ungula" of the Roman tribunals; Prudentius has of it: ----

"Cessit his lacerans fortiter ungula, 
Nec carpsit penetralia."

33. ¹ It is very remarkable that Gregory should confound the earlier-written treatise "Against the Christians and their God" with the "Misopogon" not finished till after Julian's departure from Antioch. The quotations following prove that Gregory had read the "Misopogon," and that in its original state it contained no attack on Christianity, as some have suspected. The book "Against the Christians, &c.," appears not to have come in his way, or perhaps, he might think it prudent to ignore its existence.

34. ² The στήλη was erected to proclaim the infamy of offenders, as well as to denounce curses against transgressors of certain rules therein specified. Thus στηλιτεὐω came to its later sense of "libelling," "exposing to ridicule." Our word "pillory" presents a curious analogy in derivation.

ΜΒʹ. Αὕτη σοι παρ' ἡμῶν στήλη, τῶν Ἡρακλείων στηλῶν ὑψηλοτέρα τε καὶ περιφανεστέρα: αἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐφ' ἑνὸς τόπου πεπήγασι, καὶ μόνοις εἰσὶ θεαταὶ τοῖς ἐκεῖσε ἀφικνουμένοις: τὴν δὲ οὐκ ἔστι μὴ πανταχοῦ καὶ πᾶσι γνωρίζεσθαι κινουμένην, ἣν καὶ ὁ μέλλων ὑπολήψεται χρόνος, εὖ οἶδα, σέ τε καὶ τὰ σὰ στηλιτεύουσαν, καὶ τοὺς λοιποὺς πάντας παιδεύουσαν, μή τινα τοιαύτην κατὰ Θεοῦ τολμᾷν ἐπανάστασιν, ἵνα μὴ, τὰ ὅμοια δράσαντες, τῶν ἴσων καὶ ἀντιτύχωσιν.