ot forgive. His contempt was expressed, and his revenge
might be gratified, by the nomination of a governor worthy only of
such subjects; and the emperor, forever renouncing the ungrateful
city, proclaimed his resolution to pass the ensuing winter at Tarsus in
Cilicia.

Yet Antioch possessed one citizen, whose genius and virtues might atone,
in the opinion of Julian, for the vice and folly of his country. The
sophist Libanius was born in the capital of 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 favorable 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. 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 emperor's
prepossession was increased and justified by the discreet pride of his
favorite. 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, 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 favors, lov