I THE MISOPOGON, A ‘NORMAL’ TEXT?

In Julian's brief but chequered reign (a.d. 361–363), his residence in Antioch from July 362 to March 363 is usually seen as a defining moment: the lack of enthusiasm for his religious reforms and the strain put on the resources of the city by the army led to an open conflict. The city in which Julian had put so much hope defied the emperor and his policies. The conflict is unusually well documented: it led to the publication of the Misopogon, in which the emperor replied to the insults which the Antiochenes had directed at him and vowed never to return to the city again. The Misopogon in turn spurred the publication of several orations and letters by Libanius. In the following century, historians would draw on these sources to reconstruct the events. This relative wealth of information has naturally attracted modern historians, who have greatly clarified the political and economic context of the events.

This paper argues, however, that two important issues have not yet been fully appreciated. First, rather than seeing the crisis in Antioch as not much more than an economic crisis, it should be seen primarily as a crisis of communication: when the events are situated in the normal pattern of ritualized communication between an emperor and his subjects, it can be shown that Julian failed to communicate with the people of Antioch and largely ignored them. This spurred the insults, and in turn Julian's Misopogon as a reply to these. Second, the Misopogon and Libanius’ orations are rhetorically crafted texts designed to manipulate the reader's interpretation of events and his view of their authors. Whilst recent scholarship has taken these texts as distorting mirrors of reality, the degree to which this is the case deserves further attention, especially the conscious attempts by their authors to steer the interpretation of events. Both issues closely interlock: as the failure to communicate created a bad impression of the emperor, the Misopogon was an attempt to overturn that negative image. Libanius, in turn, closely engages with the image created of both Antioch and Julian himself in the Misopogon. Self-presentation and re-presentation are for them more important than factual reporting. This paper, therefore, proposes a re-appraisal both of the events themselves and of our main sources for them.

Julian's Misopogon is a long, satirical, self-deprecating literary document written by an emperor, and was supposedly displayed on one of Antioch's main monuments.Footnote ¹ Many scholars have emphasized, and tried to explain, the extraordinary and almost aberrant nature of this text. Julian's omnipresent self-ridicule, for example, has invited psychological readings, which have detected the emperor's frustrations, or, as some have concluded, his labile mental state.Footnote ² Others have read the events in Antioch as the result of an inevitable clash of ideological oppositions between a largely Christian city and the advocate of pagan restoration.Footnote ³

More recently, such psychological explanations have mostly been abandoned in favour of more contextualized readings of the text. Hans-Ulrich Wiemer, for example, reads the Misopogon within the economic context of the food shortage in Antioch in a.d. 362/3, which troubled the relationship between Julian and the city.Footnote ⁴ Maud Gleason, on the other hand, focuses on the text's socio-cultural context: with reference to Libanius’ Oration 16.35,Footnote ⁵ she reads the Misopogon as a ‘festive satire’, a good-humoured text written in response to Antiochene insults during the New Year festival, and, she claims, originally interpreted as such: if the Antiochenes may have overstepped the festive licence a bit, Julian's response was itself part of that festive atmosphere and fits, moreover, into a pattern of imperial ‘edicts of chastisement’, with which emperors reacted to popular attacks. There is, therefore, nothing extraordinary about the Misopogon. In the words of a leading historian of Late Antiquity: ‘Far from revealing the tortured psyche of Julian, it should be read as testimony to the skill with which late Roman rulers displayed, on occasion, the civilized good humour that contemporaries liked to associate with a gentle, because secure, style of rule.’Footnote ⁶

Gleason's article has been of critical importance in helping scholarship situate the Misopogon in the context of public ceremonial. It provides the starting point for the present article, although our interpretation differs from hers. Gleason concluded that the Misopogon was a ‘“normal” or traditional’ (107) example of either a ‘festive satire’ or an ‘edict of chastisement’. There is, indeed, an unresolved tension in the article between the first half, which sees the Misopogon as a festive satire, a good-humoured reply that was part of the New Year festivities as much as the insults, and the second half, which reads it as an edict of chastisement and thus not linked to the carnivalesque atmosphere of the New Year festival. The first half of Gleason's argument, the suggestion of an (exclusive) link with the New Year festival, cannot be maintained. As far as the insults of the Antiochenes are concerned, there is clear evidence that they were not punctual but continuous and circulating long before New Year a.d. 363: all our sources agree that the insults went on during the entire period of Julian's residence in Antioch.Footnote ⁷ Neither can the Misopogon be fruitfully seen as part of the New Year licence: it was published after 18 January at the very earliest, i.e. more than two weeks after the end of the festival, and, as will be demonstrated below, probably considerably later, which makes it hard to see why its original readers would have understood it as a festive satire within the context of the festival.

The link with edicts of chastisement, proposed in the second part of Gleason's article, is a much more fruitful suggestion in our view, in that it singles out public communication between ruler and subject as the key context in which to understand the Misopogon. We shall pursue this avenue of thought, but in a different direction: whilst it is true that the Misopogon shares many characteristics with edicts of chastisement, we do not think that this turns the text into a normal response by a late antique emperor. Gleason suggests that the Misopogon ‘seems not to have shocked Julian's contemporaries as it shocks us’ (107), as it was just one amongst many imperial edicts of chastisement, which, moreover, ‘preserved his own reputation for clemency’ (118–19). This interpretation does not, in our view, fully take into account contemporary receptions of the text: pagan and Christian authors alike were struck by the Misopogon so much as to discuss it, and many of them pointed out that anger shimmers through.Footnote ⁸ Indeed, as Gleason herself shows, edicts of chastisement were not always good-humoured (116–17). Moreover, seeing the Misopogon as just one more example of such an edict does not do justice to the peculiar nature of the text. As we shall argue, the Misopogon is actually a massive reply after a long period of silence, not just a brief edict of chastisement but a conscious attempt to impose Julian's interpretation of events after a long failure to communicate as the people of Antioch expected. As such it stands out among the known instances of edicts of chastisement.

Whilst taking its initial cue from Gleason's 1986 article, the present contribution thus focuses more centrally on ritualized communication and its possible failure, and includes the earliest reception of the Misopogon. Both elements contribute to a new interpretation of the text. Section ii sets out how ritualized communication usually functioned in Late Antiquity and Section iii how the events of a.d. 362/3 led to a short-circuit in the communication between emperor and subjects. This sets the scene for a reading of the Misopogon which, in contrast to Gleason's emphasis on Julian's success and the normality of his actions, sees failure of communication at the core of the matter and Julian's response as extraordinary. The Misopogon is Julian's conscious attempt to redirect and reshape the interpretation of what was a failure of ritualized communication on his part: his rhetoric invites the reader to see the events as an inevitable clash of ideological oppositions, and the Misopogon itself as a good-humoured text (Section iv). The suggestion of good humour must hence also be seen as part of the rhetorical strategy of the text, and not as its actual nature. As the fifth and final section shows, indeed, this was not how the Misopogon was initially read. In particular, the various works in which Libanius discusses the events of a.d. 362/3 allow one to see how the initial shock caused by the Misopogon was gradually replaced, through engagement with that text, by a version of the facts that absolved Julian of any fault. If the Misopogon was read by later ancient authors and, in their wake, by many modern scholars, as a good-humoured text, this shows not so much a direct insight into what happened in Antioch in a.d. 362/3, but rather demonstrates the overarching power of rhetoric.

II RITUALIZED COMMUNICATION AND PERFORMANCE

Since the work of Andreas Alföldy, scholars have agreed on the importance of public ceremonial in Late Antiquity.Footnote ⁹ The seminal studies of Sabine MacCormack, Michael McCormick and Alan Cameron have set out the origins and development of adventus ceremonies, victory celebrations, and imperial ceremony in the circus.Footnote ¹⁰ These ground-breaking works have been important, for example, in mapping the slow Christianization of public ceremonial. Under the influence of the intense discussion of ritual among anthropologists and medievalists,Footnote ¹¹ late antique scholarship has now moved from a representational view of public ritual as a staged expression of power to more dynamic interpretations that see ritualized communication as a vital element in the creation and exercise of power.Footnote ¹²

The limits of a ‘representational’ view and the insights of a dynamic interpretation can be well illustrated by a discussion of the category of late antique rituals that has received most attention in past decades, acclamations.Footnote ¹³ As these play a key rôle in the events of a.d. 362/3 in Antioch, they provide a good starting point for the present discussion of the rôle of ritualized communication in public life. Literary as well as epigraphic evidence suggests that public shouts of approval became much more frequent in the later EmpireFootnote ¹⁴ — or at least that they were much more frequently recorded, which suggests that an increased importance was attached to them. In a recent paper that sums up earlier research, H.-U. Wiemer argues that acclamations must be understood as public shouts of loyalty for the emperor. He suggests that the emperor staged the performance of acclamations throughout the Empire so as to be assured of the continuous support of his subjects.Footnote ¹⁵ Such an interpretation, focused on mere expressions of loyalty voiced by a claque, reduces acclamations to staged and static phenomena.

Yet public appearances, however well staged they may be, are always prone to unexpected interruptions by petitioners or public outcry, or, conversely, by a lack of enthusiasm and approval.Footnote ¹⁶ In many cases, acclamations, therefore, appear as improvised and dynamic phenomena that are part of wider events. A clear example can be found in the Church History of Sozomen (fl. c. a.d. 439–450), who records how a popular riot persuaded the emperor Arcadius to recall John Chrysostom after his first exile in a.d. 403. Notwithstanding strong popular support in the streets, John had obeyed the order to leave for exile so as to avoid the accusation of stirring up the masses. When the people got vent of this, they ‘rioted and insulted the emperor, the synod, Theophilus, and Severian’. When the latter, a sworn enemy of John, preached a sermon that approved of John's exile, ‘the people turned mad, renewed their anger and rioted in the extreme’: they went to the imperial palace and requested the return of John. ‘Yielding to the demands of the people, the empress persuaded her husband to agree’ and John was recalled. The people received him with chants and acclamations; after a sermon in which John praised the imperial couple, the people also addressed acclamations to them (8.18). Far from being staged shouts of loyalty, acclamations appear from this episode as improvised expressions of popular approval as well as dissent.Footnote ¹⁷ They are, moreover, not static, unidirectional statements, but highly dynamic events: whilst the people persuade the empress to recall John, John persuades the people to change their opinion about the emperor. As such, they are not limited to one particular occasion, but play a key rôle throughout the sequence of events described by Sozomen. Acclamations, both positive and negative, can thus be seen as a form of ritualized communication between a large audience and an individual who is hierarchically superior to that audience: they allow subjects to express their views and demands directly, by-passing bureaucratic or procedural forms of mediation between subject and state such as formal petitions and legal procedures.Footnote ¹⁸

The unexpected and improvised interruptions of staged ceremonial were occasions when public figures were put to the test: as opposed to what the traditional, ‘representational’ view of acclamations may suggest, a static and impassive attitude such as Constantius’ when visiting Rome in a.d. 357Footnote ¹⁹ did not always do the job. Some officials, in fact, saw themselves forced to grant favours they would later repent. Justinian's general Belisarius, for example, was forced to grant a petition, made in public by a nobleman, which ultimately lead to the execution of one of his trusted collaborators.Footnote ²⁰ Others were better prepared. Sozomen, again, notes how Pulcheria educated her brother, the emperor Theodosius II: ‘For public appearances, he was taught by his sister to be well-behaved and imperial. He learned how to put on a mantle, how to sit, walk, and be master of his laugh, and to be gentle or menacing depending on the occasion (ἐν καιρῷ), and listen properly to petitioners’ (9.1.7). This quotation derives from a panegyrical passage for an empress who has been supposed to be Sozomen's patron.Footnote ²¹ It hence does not demonstrate that Theodosius II actually knew how to behave, but it does illustrate what the ideal imperial behaviour in public was supposed to be:Footnote ²² a well-trained emperor was able to express the right emotion on the right occasion, to play his audience well, and, if need be, to deflect tension by a joke.Footnote ²³

Especially when popular demands could not be met and acclamations turned sour, the emperor needed to be able to defuse tension, deflect criticism, and redirect the mood of the crowd. Given that acclamations and insults were often expressed in the public eye, the emperor's public reaction and performance was of key importance, as it determined how he would be perceived by the audience. Thus in a.d. 512, Anastasius famously managed to quell an insurrection by putting down his diadem in the circus in front of the riotous people.Footnote ²⁴ Likewise about two centuries before, Constantine the Great regained the favour of Rome by responding to popular insults with an edict stating that such insults only made him laugh, rather than with violence.Footnote ²⁵ As told by Libanius in a speech for Theodosius I at the occasion of the riot of the statues in Antioch (a.d. 387), this anecdote sets out a moral code of how emperors ought to deal with insults: they should bear them lightly, and unless they wish to appear as a tyrant, they should not punish them.Footnote ²⁶

Just as modern monarchs cannot afford to seem detached from the concerns of their subjects, ancient emperors had to find the right way of responding to a demand without seeming a tyrant by rejecting it but also without imperilling the state's interests by granting it. This was often a difficult balance to strike, yet the only way for the emperor to win — that is, to settle the situation and restore his popularity — was by engaging and communicating with the populace. It is here that things went wrong for Julian in Antioch.

III THE CRISIS OF A.D. 362/3 AS A CRISIS OF COMMUNICATION

The events of a.d. 362/3 in Antioch have often been reduced to a Versorgungskrise: an economic crisis which can stand model for many other such crises in the Later Roman Empire.Footnote ²⁷ The main grievance of the population may indeed have been that Julian had not taken sufficient measures to alleviate two successive bad harvests. But such an emphasis on the economic background risks over-estimating the extent of the crisis. The sources state explicitly that Julian's interventions regarding market prices were unnecessary.Footnote ²⁸ What Antioch faced in a.d. 362/3 was not a famine but a food shortage: not a critical shortage leading to widespread starvation but a short-term scarcity.Footnote ²⁹ Moreover, as far as Julian's dealings with the Antiochenes are concerned, contemporary sources pay more attention to another aspect of the crisis: communication. Indeed, the food shortage is not the main issue in the Misopogon: only towards its end (368c) does Julian come to talk about his handling of market shortages as one of the causes of the conflict with the Antiochenes, and even there the emphasis is on how he and the Antiochenes communicated. Likewise, in Oration 16 Libanius spends more effort discussing the Antiochene insults of Julian (16.28–38) than the market shortage (16.21–7), and even when the latter is discussed, the emphasis is explicitly not on the actions but on the attitude and communication (ταῦτα ἔδει φρονεῖν καὶ γενέσθαι φανερούς, 16.24) of the Antiochene councillors. Equally, Ammianus writes that Julian's measures seemed ‘superfluous’ (superfluum) and ill-timed, and focuses much more on the conflict between the emperor's personality and the inhabitants of Antioch than on the scarcity.Footnote ³⁰

What, then, happened, and where did the communication between Julian and Antioch go wrong? On Julian's first arrival in the city, the people, gathered in the theatre for the adventus ceremony, shouted ‘everything plentiful; everything dear’.Footnote ³¹ Given what was said above about ritualized communication, we should read these shouts not as an incrimination of Julian (as he had not yet been present in the city), but rather as an attempt to draw his attention to the shortage: the people were hoping that the presence of the emperor would trigger a solution for the scarcity. Yet instead of responding directly to the people in the theatre as they probably expected, Julian decided to meet in private with the city's leading citizens on the next day.Footnote ³² After having initially not responded at all in public, Julian did not follow up the issue over the next three months, and the scarcity got worse. As the people did not get out of their acclamations what they hoped for, the popular mood may have started turning sour. Only in October 362 did Julian finally take measures with an edict setting maximum prices: Ammianus (popularitatis amore) and the fifth-century church historians Socrates (τὸ προσόν τε αὐτῷ φιλότιμον) and Sozomen (ὑπὸ φιλοτιμίας) suggest that the emperor's measures were a response to the public mood.Footnote ³³ These measures were not a success, as they aggravated the crisis by causing the merchants to hoard.Footnote ³⁴

By this time, Julian had shown his unwillingness to participate in public communication in other areas too. Indeed, a similar crisis of communication between Julian and the Antiochenes can be discerned in matters of religion. Whereas scholars have often focused on those passages of the Misopogon that talk about Antiochene opposition to Julian's religious policies and presented the ensuing confrontation as inevitable,Footnote ³⁵ other passages demonstrate that it was not at all written in the stars that Julian should have to celebrate the festival of Apollo in Daphne alone with an old priest and a single goose.Footnote ³⁶ A neglected passage of the Misopogon puts the following criticism in the mouth of the Antiochenes:

Julian uses the excuse of the Antiochenes as a springboard for his general point that they do not know how to behave: in this particular case, presence at religious rites should be accompanied by silence and not by shouts. Whilst the passage is thus part of a rhetorical argument, Julian does allow us a glimpse of the initial interest the Antiochenes had in his religious actions, and also of their enthusiasm vented through public acclamations.Footnote ³⁸ Yet instead of gracefully accepting the crowd's acclamations and using its enthusiasm for his person to garnish support for his religious policies, he rebuked the audience for being present with misguided motives. Such a reply was unlikely to attract the crowds a second time, and incited them to less positive acclamations and, possibly, actions.Footnote ³⁹

Whether the people petitioned Julian on the food shortage or applauded him in a sanctuary, then, they never got a ‘proper’ response. The Antiochenes seem to have had an acute sense of this crisis of communication and complained about it. Indeed, the Misopogon mentions criticisms of ‘my awkwardness and ignorance and ill-temper, and my inability to be influenced, or to mind my own business when people beg me to do so or try to deceive me and that I cannot yield to their clamour’ (349b). Elsewhere again, the people of Antioch are suggested to have said to Julian: ‘you do not imitate the polypus which takes on the colours of the rocks. Nay rather you behave to all men with the proverbial Myconian boorishness and ignorance and stupidity’ (349d).Footnote ⁴⁰ Julian thus repeatedly refused to behave as Pulcheria would later instruct Theodosius II and to give responses suited for each occasion. As a consequence, anapests or famosi started to circulate both in public and in private settings:Footnote ⁴¹ far from being confined to the period of institutionalized licence of the New Year festival, these abusive verses served to vent the population's anger at the emperor before and after New Year. As we have seen above, outbursts of popular discontent were a common phenomenon in Late Antiquity.Footnote ⁴² In contrast to what was expected in such circumstances, however, Julian does not seem to have reacted publicly as long as he was in Antioch. What is more, he seems to have closed himself off from the Antiochenes by staying away from the theatre, which was one of the main fora for ritualized communication.Footnote ⁴³ As a result, it became even harder for the people to voice grievances to an emperor who in all likelihood came to be seen as a princeps clausus.Footnote ⁴⁴

IV THE MISOPOGON: SELF-PRESENTATION AND THE CONTROL OF INTERPRETATION

Julian's reaction to the crisis of communication came in the form of a text that was, in all probability, widely circulated. Taking the insults of the Antiochenes as its starting point, the Mισοπώγων ὁ καὶ ’Αντιοχικός presents itself, at first sight, as a dialogue between emperor and city.Footnote ⁴⁵ In view of the preceding crisis of communication, this format is highly significant, as it shows Julian finally able, and willing, to engage in dialogue. In reality, however, the Misopogon offers but an illusion of a dialogue.

On the one hand, a real dialogue was impossible because Julian left Antioch soon after he published the Misopogon. Traditionally, the Misopogon is dated through a reference in the text, where Julian has the Antiochenes complain that this is the seventh month (μῆνα ἕβδομον τουτονί, 344a) that they have to put up with his harshness. On a literal interpretation, this allows one to calculate seven months from Julian's arrival on 18 July 362 (Amm. 22.9.14), which would mean that the Misopogon was written between the 18 January and 18 February 363.Footnote ⁴⁶ If this has, since Gleason, been taken as a reference to the New Year festival, it should be noted that even the former of those dates is sixteen days after the festival (1–3 January). With equal right, one could say that 18 February is only sixteen days before Julian's departure from Antioch on 5 March.Footnote ⁴⁷ It is unlikely, however, that Julian's time indication should be taken so precisely: not only is the statement rather general, it is also included in a complaint by the Antiochenes, and therefore refers to the moment of the complaint rather than that of the redaction of the text. In addition, there are strong indications that the Misopogon was actually Julian's word of goodbye to Antioch: Julian says explicitly not only that he himself has decided to leave the city (364d), but also that his court has already done so (370b), and we know from various sources that, in response to the Misopogon, an Antiochene delegation went to plead with Julian at the post-station in Litarba, i.e. outside Antioch.Footnote ⁴⁸ It is difficult to imagine the council waiting more than a month and a half after the publication of the satire before seeking contact with Julian to clear things up, or Julian lagging forty days behind his court. The Misopogon must therefore date from shortly before Julian's departure: rather than a true dialogue, it is Julian's attempt to have the last word.

On the other hand, the Misopogon is no real dialogue in that the literary framework allows Julian to remain in control by selecting and presenting insults as he pleases: whilst neglecting several elements of criticism that have come to us through other sources,Footnote ⁴⁹ Julian re-interprets a selection of Antiochene insults so as to present an image of the events in Antioch that is to his own credit. The insult that one should make ropes out of Julian's beard, for example, is used not only to highlight the Antiochenes’ fixation on outward appearance rather than inner virtue, but also to draw attention to Julian's beard as symbol of his frugal and philosophical lifestyle (349c–351d, 357d), in strong contrast with the shaven cheeks of the Antiochenes. Again, the claim that ‘the Chi (Christ) never harmed the city in any way, nor did the Kappa (Constantius II)’ (357a–d) allows Julian to set himself apart from Christianity, which he associates with pleasure and lower class, as well as to display family affection and insert himself in the Constantinian dynasty, against the implicit contention that he might be a usurper.Footnote ⁵⁰ And if, as we have seen in the previous section, Julian mentions Antiochene criticisms regarding his inaccessibility, he presents this not as a failure to engage in ritualized communication, but as the conscious refusal to engage in the acting expected of an emperor but deemed hypocritical in his own eyes: rather than responding appropriately to the occasion, and thus maybe having to feign from time to time, he presents himself as a man of principle who proudly rejects accepted and expected social praxis (349d).

The Misopogon, then, is Julian's massive, one-sided, post-factum interpretation of what happened during the seven and a half months he spent in Antioch: it compensates his earlier silence by the length of the satire, his refusal to communicate properly by the insertion of dialogues between himself and the Antiochenes, their insults by his self-ridicule. More specifically, it is designed to create the impression of a strong ideological antithesis between Julian and the Antiochenes: the emperor opposes Antioch's desire for unlimited liberty to his (self)-control, the luxuriousness of the city to imperial frugality, the city's Christianity and lacklustre paganism to his Hellenism.Footnote ⁵¹ Through ironic references to the Antiochene interpretation of his own, simple life-style as barbarian, Julian attacks the idea of Hellenism as defined by descentFootnote ⁵² or characterized by luxurious refinement,Footnote ⁵³ and instead associates it first and foremost with a philosophical life-style.Footnote ⁵⁴ This is made clear through repeated Platonic references, in which Julian presents himself as the example of a virtuous philosopher-king: imperial virtues such as dikaiosyne, sophrosyne, and philanthropia are emphasized throughout the oration.Footnote ⁵⁵ Antioch, in turn, is presented as an example of the disordered state, lacking the good leadership that keeps the lower elements of society (and of the soul) under control.Footnote ⁵⁶ What Julian does, then, in the Misopogon, is to construct an unbridgeable gulf between himself and Antioch and represent the events in Antioch in a.d. 362/3 as the inevitable clash between a morally, religiously and ideologically different emperor and city.Footnote ⁵⁷ In the satirical environment of the text, the Antiochenes are shown to have grasped where the essential differences lie between themselves and the emperor. Their mistake was, Julian suggests, to think that it would not be to his credit. Yet whilst there obviously were ideological differences between Julian and the Antiochenes, it was, as argued above, in no way necessary that they should lead to the falling out of Julian and Antioch: Christian emperors had visited largely pagan cities before without apparent problems, and Julian's stay in Constantinople does not seem to have been problematic. Initially, the people of Antioch were favourably disposed towards Julian, and if, progressively, relations did break down, this may have been less because of Julian's policies than because he was perceived as not responding to the people. It is, then, Julian who consciously constructs a moral and ideological contrast to absolve himself of all blame for the crisis of communication that ensued and to counteract the character assassination of the lampoons.

The result of all this is a highly satirical text: ostensibly engaged in self-criticism and praise of Antioch, Julian manages to do exactly the opposite. Indeed, as opposed to what the title Misopogon suggests, the text, whilst drawing on satire and comedy,Footnote ⁵⁸ in fact contains a dense network of references to topoi of imperial panegyric, such as soberness in food and drink (338c, 340b–342a), the remittal of taxes (365b), and the desire for truth and rejection of praise (349b, 354b–d, 359c, 363d).Footnote ⁵⁹ Conversely, the subtitle Antiochicus seems to indicate a panegyric of the city, yet Julian actually inverts many of the traditional topoi associated with that genre. He refers, for example, to the origin of the city, but uses the well-known story of Antiochus Theos’ love for his step-mother to illustrate Antioch's dissolute morals (347a–348b).Footnote ⁶⁰ Two elements can be added to what earlier scholars have highlighted in this respect. First, Misopogon 340d–341b is a mini-panegyric of Paris which stresses the rôle of water in the city. This is, in fact, something on which Antioch prided itself,Footnote ⁶¹ and the passage can thus be interpreted as a conscious transferral of qualities of Antioch to a ‘barbarian’ city. And second, a topos of city panegyrics is the promise by the orator to return,Footnote ⁶² whereas Julian vows never to set a foot in Antioch again. Here one senses well how the Misopogon consciously inverts the traditional expectations generated by the title of Antiochicus.

Far from being the dialogue or speech of reconciliation it may seem at first sight, the Misopogon thus emphasizes the differences between Julian and the Antiochenes in order to promote the former at the expense of the latter. Yet if not reconciliation, what, then, was Julian's aim in writing the Misopogon? We would like to suggest that the text is Julian's subtle attempt to control the interpretation of his stay in Antioch for a much wider audience:Footnote ⁶³ at a point of time when news of the crisis during Julian's stay in Antioch had probably reached many cities across the Empire, Julian thought it useful, just before embarking on his Persian campaign, to divulge his own interpretation of the Antiochene crisis. This interpretation not only turned character assassination into character confirmation, but also offered élites across the Empire Julian's view on ritualized communication and good leadership more generally. This wider aim accounts for the possible public posting of the text in Antioch,Footnote ⁶⁴ and may even suggest that the text was meant to be sent to élites all over the Empire.Footnote ⁶⁵ Such a wider distribution may, in fact, also account for the very survival of the Misopogon, for, as Gleason rightly observes (117), ‘provincials did not always go to the expense of making permanent copies of edicts addressed to them, particularly if the edict did not work to their direct advantage or was downright unflattering’. In contrast to such — therefore largely lost — edicts of chastisement, the Misopogon was not only conserved, but also soon became a point of reference for authors as diverse as Ammianus, Gregory of Nazianzus (Or. 5.41), Eunapius,Footnote ⁶⁶ and, in the following century, Socrates and Sozomen.

Rather than reconcile himself with the Antiochenes in order to end the crisis, then, Julian, just before leaving Antioch, wrote a text that presented his interpretation of the events, in which he acquitted and extolled himself at the expense of the Antiochenes. Nevertheless, he took care not to present his reaction as an act of vengeance: he opted for a satirical dialogue that pretends to take lightly the insults directed against him, and emphasized, moreover, that he forewent punishing the Antiochenes as it was his right and power to do.Footnote ⁶⁷ Compared to the possible punishments enumerated by Julian, which were sometimes put into practice by other emperors in reaction to popular attacks, Julian's choice to limit himself to writing a text may seem clement indeed.Footnote ⁶⁸ But abstention from punishment was itself a panegyrical topos, and is thus part of the implicit self-panegyric of Julian.Footnote ⁶⁹ In reality, the devastating impact of the text, in which Julian moreover vows not to return to Antioch in the future, can hardly be over-estimated:Footnote ⁷⁰ apart from the huge economic losses which the staying away of the emperor, his court, and their visitors would no doubt generate, it entailed a loss of status that would be acutely felt in an age when civic competition was still very much alive.Footnote ⁷¹ This real threat to Antioch's prestige makes it rather unlikely that the Misopogon was just a good-humoured satire. Those who wish to read it in that way, however, do not only refer to Julian's own explicit statements in the text, but also to other late antique texts, especially the Church Histories of Socrates and Sozomen, and Libanius’ Epitaphios for Julian. We shall come back to these later, but it should not be forgotten that there is evidence of a quite different view on Julian's response to Antioch before any of these texts was written. Rather than follow later sources in buying into Julian's own rhetoric, we therefore now turn to the earliest reactions to Julian's Misopogon.

V LIBANIUS: SAVING ANTIOCH AND JULIAN

The Misopogon was published by Julian shortly before he left Antioch. What were the reactions on the ground? Whilst Julian was still in Antioch, Libanius claims to have already addressed him in favour of the city.Footnote ⁷² When the emperor left Antioch, the city council is reported to have escorted him and asked for the city to be forgiven.Footnote ⁷³ Soon after the emperor's departure, the Antiochenes sent a delegation of councillors to Litarba in order to try and assuage the emperor.Footnote ⁷⁴ Far from reading it as a good-humoured satire, then, the Antiochenes were struck by the Misopogon as an expression of imperial anger,Footnote ⁷⁵ which they did every effort to dispel. One of our main sources, Ammianus Marcellinus, explicitly suggests that Julian wrote the Misopogon in anger (infensa mente, 22.14.2). Although it is likely that Ammianus based himself on Antiochene eye-witnesses, his account is not without a major problem. He situates the Misopogon before the insults, and actually has its publication precipitate the pasquinades.Footnote ⁷⁶ This suggests that Ammianus was not very well-informed on the precise course of events in Antioch. If one could be tempted to discount Ammianus’ evidence for these reasons, our best evidence for the earliest response to the Misopogon as a work of anger comes from a series of orations and letters by Libanius. But, obviously, Libanius too had his rhetorical aims and strategies that need to be understood.

In a speech the dramatic date of which falls within about a month after Julian's departure and which is entitled To the Antiochenes on the Emperor's Anger,Footnote ⁷⁷ Libanius stresses how bad the consequences will be for Antioch if they do not manage to assuage the emperor. In an ultimate attempt to do so, he therefore not only enumerates a number of — rejected, but nevertheless possible — excuses,Footnote ⁷⁸ but also encourages the Antiochenes to what Ellen Oliensis has called, in a different context, a ‘strategy of deference and voluntary submission to power’:Footnote ⁷⁹ ‘let us pass sentence on ourselves, lest the emperor do it for us’ (16.41). Drawing inspiration from the Misopogon, Libanius suggests closing the theatre and improving the city's leadership (16.41–4): the élite should stop following the masses and curb excessive luxury. In doing this, inspiration can be found in Homer, Hesiod, Plato, and other luminaries of Hellenism (16.46–7, 50–1). He also counsels a large-scale symbolic act of repentance by the city: the entire city should be in sackcloth, to signal strongly to Julian the regret they feel. Whilst the Antiochenes did not follow Libanius’ advice, the decisions he suggested they take were taken for them by the harsh governor Alexander, appointed by Julian on leaving the city. In what was to be his last letter to Julian, Libanius picks up on the ideological antithesis evoked by Julian in the Misopogon, and describes how the Antiochenes have given up on excessive bathing rituals and how the audiences are now well-behaved in the theatre. He also states that ‘the applause rings loud (λαμπρὰ βοή) and the gods are invoked in that applause; and the governor, by showing his pleasure at cries of this kind, invites more of them from more people’.Footnote ⁸⁰ Leaving aside that this image of restored order may be over-optimistic,Footnote ⁸¹ good acclamations are here presented as the audiovisual sign that the relationship between ruler and ruled has been smoothed out. In both texts, then, Libanius took the Misopogon as his starting point in order to re-configure Antioch in a way so as to induce Julian to forgive and return to the city.

In the months following upon Julian's departure, Libanius also started work on another speech. Oration 15, entitled Presbeutikos, purports to be an embassy speech delivered to a victorious Julian on his way back from the Persian campaign (15.2, 3, 82). Its explicit aim is to convince Julian to return to Antioch rather than to move his headquarters elsewhere, as the emperor had threatened in the Misopogon (364d, 370b). In order to do so, Libanius explicitly addresses Julian's presentation of his stay in Antioch in the Misopogon.Footnote ⁸² As far as the conflict itself is concerned, whilst Julian had represented his failure to communicate as a refusal to communicate, driven by his philosophical principles, Libanius tries to minimize its importance. Indeed, he silences over Julian's part in the communicative crisis, repeatedly stresses the initial public voicing of Antiochene enthusiasm for Julian (15.48, 76), and limits the crisis to the public disapproval of some people (εἰσὶν οἵ) at some of the emperor's policies (τι τῶν σῶν):

In this passage, Libanius drives home two crucial points. First, by blaming lower-class individuals he dissociates the élite from the populace and thus claims that what constitutes the essence of the city (the bearers of its culture) are not to be confused with the rabble that vents its discontent through acclamations.Footnote ⁸⁴ And second, insults and acclamations are presented as a normal part of public life in cities: wherever Julian goes, he cannot escape these.Footnote ⁸⁵ Notwithstanding these and other excuses, however, Libanius pleads guilty: ‘If you condemn anyone, Sire, I must find him guilty too. If you state that a person has committed an offence, that is my verdict also’ (15.21).

Nevertheless, Libanius does not agree with Julian's interpretation of the conflict in terms of an ideological opposition. On the one hand, he refuses to locate Antioch on the wrong side of the dividing line of Hellenism: Antioch's Hellenic origins and credentials are emphasized in the Presbeutikos (15.79). On the other hand, he tries to cash in on Julian's own Hellenic ambitions by suggesting that the emperor's threat not to return to Antioch effectively undercuts his self-presentation as a Hellenic philosopher-king in the Misopogon. In order to do so, Libanius unmasks Julian's satirical rhetoric — ‘you will ask “Why, what are you afraid of? Confiscations? Exile? Executions?” You are making fun of men in their misfortune, Sire’ (16.55) — by proving the devastating impact of Julian's apparent mildness in the Misopogon and his decision not to return.Footnote ⁸⁶ Punishment, Libanius suggests, is typical for barbarians: ‘The barbarian, in his pride, rages and ravens like a wild beast (…) supplication is either fruitless or spurs him on to worse frenzy still.’Footnote ⁸⁷ The core of the oration (15.22–43) connects true forgiveness with the Homeric gods (15.22–3, 28, 70–1) and historical exempla, such as Philip II, Alexander the Great, and Athens (15.41–2, 59). As a Greek and a philosopher, Julian, therefore, should control his anger (15.3). He is challenged not to show himself ‘base, despicable, brutal, and uncivilized’ (15.13), to practise forgiveness, to show himself gentle and philanthropic, and to have mercy.Footnote ⁸⁸ This good attitude is also depicted as the way Julian normally is (15.13) or has been in the past (15.22, 43, 70–1). Whilst the Misopogon constructed an ideal image of Julian against the distorted one of the Antiochenes, the Presbeutikos thus constructs an ideal image of Julian against himself, of the true Julian against the current one distorted by anger: ‘The request I make, and which I hope to obtain, is that you follow your own lead, Sire, and make your residence here a second time, as you did your first’ (15.14).Footnote ⁸⁹

As far as its setting and dramatic date are concerned, the Presbeutikos is clearly fictitious: Libanius never went to deliver a speech for Julian on his way back from a successful campaign in Persia (15.2, 59, 76, 82). Thus far, scholars have assumed that the speech as we have it was written whilst Julian was alive. Referring to paragraph 73, where Libanius states that ‘this is the fifth month of the punishment’ of Antioch,Footnote ⁹⁰ Wiemer favours a date of composition between the end of May and the end of June, that is, five months after the earliest possible date of composition of the Misopogon, on 18 January. But even on a traditional dating the Misopogon may well date from 18 February, and as we demonstrated above, it may in fact have been written even more shortly before Julian's departure from Antioch on 5 March. This would generate a date in July a.d. 363. The conclusion must be, then, that Libanius in all probability at least finalized his Presbeutikos after Julian had died on 26 June and news of his death had reached Antioch. There are, in fact, strong indications in this direction. In Oration 17.37, the Monody on Julian, Libanius notes that his speech of reconciliation was unfinished (ἐδημιούργουν, imperfect!) when Julian died, and that the speech had not yet been spoken at the time the Monody was delivered (σεσίγηται). This is, in all likelihood, the Presbeutikos. As we have it, however, the Presbeutikos is finished: not only are there no indications that the text would be incomplete, it also seems to have been adapted — as one would expect — to the altered circumstances after Julian's death. Indeed, this is the opening of the speech:

In keeping with the dramatic setting of the Presbeutikos upon Julian's glorious return, Libanius has left out the negation from Eumaeus’ second sentence. By choosing to open his speech in this way, however, Libanius as it were draws attention to the regretful recognition that whilst Telemachus did return unexpectedly, Julian unexpectedly did not come back: it would have escaped but few readers that the original words suited the actual situation much better. Likewise, the frequent references to Achilles (15.8, 31, 33, 35) acquire additional meaning in the light of the fact that the oration was written after Julian's death: how could one not think of the obvious parallel between Julian's death and Achilles’ sudden demise, after such immense glory, in the fray of the battlefield. The same goes for the reference to Alexander the Great (42): after Julian's death, one realizes that the emperor shared not only in the glory of Alexander, but also in his sudden departure from life at a young age on campaign in the East.Footnote ⁹²

Everything suggests, then, that the Presbeutikos was finalized after the death of its apparent addressee. As a result, the oration cannot be merely read as what Libanius wished to say but had no chance of doing, as scholars have done so far:Footnote ⁹³ if he decided to finish the oration of reconciliation he was preparing when he learnt of Julian's death — an oration that could no longer, therefore, reach its original aim and addressee — he must have believed that the speech, with some adaptations, could serve a different purpose for a different audience. The church historian Socrates, who was rather well-informed about Libanius’ orations,Footnote ⁹⁴ reports that Oration 15 (like Oration 16) was, at some point, ‘delivered for only a few people’.Footnote ⁹⁵ We wish to suggest that the Presbeutikos is part of Libanius’ conscious attempt, for a small public of friends, to mould the memory of Julian's reign. As set out above, the Presbeutikos answers Julian's depiction of his stay in Antioch in the Misopogon: it argues that only a few Antiochenes misbehaved, presents Antioch as a Hellenic city, and suggests that Julian, as a Hellene, would forgive and return to Antioch. Libanius thus redeems the city from the negative image of the Misopogon. But the Presbeutikos does more than that: it also presents a very positive image of both Libanius himself and Julian. Indeed, Libanius appears from the text not only as a close friend and advisor of Julian's, but also as a free-speaking defender of Antioch.Footnote ⁹⁶ The former is shown to have useful results, in that Libanius has Julian say that it was actually the orator who solved the food shortage (15.8). The latter is demonstrated by Libanius’ readiness, towards the end of the text (15.83), to link his fate as a sophist to his success in convincing Julian with the Presbeutikos. Spoken after Julian's death, these words did not entail any real risk for Libanius, but they did show commitment to his city and confidence in his oratory. Especially at a time when Julian's religious reforms were being turned back and Julian's followers were being removed from positions of power, stressing his independence from Julian as well as the usefulness of his oratory may have been a wise step — especially for someone who was widely seen as too much the deceased emperor's man in Antioch.Footnote ⁹⁷ At the same time, however, this presentation was also to Julian's credit: in one of the tropes of panegyric, it was acceptable for emperors to be carried away by anger as long as they were willing to listen to free-spoken council and come back on decisions taken under the spur of anger.Footnote ⁹⁸ Nobody knew, of course, what Julian's response to the Presbeutikos would have been, but the suggestion in the speech that Julian was willing to listen to Libanius boded well. The Presbeutikos therefore comes as close as was still possible after Julian's death to removing the single blot on Julian's career in Libanius’ eyes. In a more subtle and implicit, but not less well-targeted way than the explicitly commemorative Orations 17 and 18, Libanius’ performance of the Presbeutikos after Julian's death thus tries to mould the audience's interpretation of Julian's stay in Antioch.

More than five years after the composition of the Presbeutikos,Footnote ⁹⁹ Libanius would go even further in absolving Julian in his Epitaphios (18.195–9). The reason for this was that, while the wound inflicted on Antioch by Julian's Misopogon had already had some time to heal, in the new political climate under Valens, it might now have been Julian rather than Antioch who risked being seen in a negative light because of the Misopogon. In a speech designed explicitly to shape the memory of Julian's reign as a whole, Libanius therefore absolves Julian of any wrong-doing by saying that Julian applied the punishment not of a tyrant, but of an orator. According to the Epitaphios, then, the Misopogon shows not so much the emperor's anger, but his control of it. Like Orations 16 and 15, the Epitaphios was originally delivered for a small publicFootnote ¹⁰⁰ and may therefore not have had a great impact initially. In due course, however, the Epitaphios would become a key document for historians of the following decades, offering, as it did, a full account of Julian's life.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Combined with Julian's very similar presentation of events in the Misopogon, Libanius’ Epitaphios proved irresistible to most of them. Socrates, for example, reads the Misopogon not so much as Julian's punishment of the Antiochenes, but rather as a way of quenching his anger (τὴν ὀργὴν διελύσατο, 3.17.9). Shortly afterwards, Sozomen goes even further: he not only repeats Libanius’ and Socrates’ positive view on Julian's punishment, but also explicitly terms the Misopogon a ‘most beautiful and very polite discourse’ (κάλλιστον καὶ μάλα ἀστεῖον λόγον, 5.19.3). Relying on Julian's apologist Eunapius, Zosimus goes furthest: he succeeds in imputing anger only to the Antiochenes and having both sides reconcile before Julian's departure (3.11.4–5).Footnote ¹⁰² It should not cause surprise, then, if modern scholars too, looking at the Misopogon through the lens of Libanius and his followers, have been induced to read it as a good-humoured text. Against this view, however, Ammianus stands as a warning: for all the defects of his presentation, Ammianus denies the philosophical self-image of the emperor in Julian's Misopogon and Libanius’ Epitaphios and stresses, instead, that the Misopogon shows the emperor's anger (infensa mente, 22.14.2).