s 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; 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 a 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 honors 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 on 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 n