An unbearable comparison…
ggreig drew my attention to this piece by Andrew Selkirk on the Current Archæology blog. While it's sympathetic to Jules, the comparison is most off-putting. I have responded.
Well, how to insult my favourite Emperor… And rather revealing of the author’s politics.
It’s still Christianity and its spin-offs: the authoritarian Middle-Eastern monotheist religions.
Julian still represents hope - a better future that might have been. Imagine a world without the long history of Christian anti-Semitism (he was planning to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple, and gave the contract to Alypius, former Sub-Prefect of Britannia); with Christianity put back in the box as just another oddball Eastern cult; and the parts of the Middle East beyond the Empire remaining Zoroastrian.
Thatcher destroyed hope for whole communities, and, for some of us, the hope of any kind of economically and professionally secure life. I also can’t help but think she’d have been personally horrified by this loveable, witty Greek geek, who teased the Antiochenes about being a hairy hippie (“And I’ll tell you a secret,” he writes in the Misopogon, as if the beard wasn’t bad enough, “I’ve a hairy chest like a lion’s, too!”), and once dealt with a military unit that performed badly in the field, not by decimating them (the traditional punishment of killing one in ten after drawing lots), but by making them parade through the camp in drag, before disbanding them.
I’m also tad perplexed that the article this links to deplores his animal sacrifices. Although a vegetarian himself, Julian understood that, besides being an impressive ritual, bull sacrifices gave the troops and poor civilians a boost to their rations. People tend to be happier when they are not hungry: something Thatcher and her disciples never cared about.
And for up-to-date reading material, I recommend my old friend Shaun Tougher’s books on him, and Rowland Smith’s Julian’s Gods. (Bowersock seems to write as if Julian had done something to him personally: I really don’t understand his animus against him!) There is also a touching tribute in John Gaskin’s Traveller’s Guide to Classical Philosophy. Best of all, his own works are available in the bilingual Loeb Classics edition (3 vols). Theodoretos was wrong to invent Julian’s ‘last words’ as: “You’ve won, Galilaean!” Because through preserving his works to try to refute them (even the odious Cyril of Alexandria played his part in that!), the Galilaeans left a time-bomb for freer times. We can choose to live as if they didn’t win, and so deny them power over us.
Well, how to insult my favourite Emperor… And rather revealing of the author’s politics.
It’s still Christianity and its spin-offs: the authoritarian Middle-Eastern monotheist religions.
Julian still represents hope - a better future that might have been. Imagine a world without the long history of Christian anti-Semitism (he was planning to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple, and gave the contract to Alypius, former Sub-Prefect of Britannia); with Christianity put back in the box as just another oddball Eastern cult; and the parts of the Middle East beyond the Empire remaining Zoroastrian.
Thatcher destroyed hope for whole communities, and, for some of us, the hope of any kind of economically and professionally secure life. I also can’t help but think she’d have been personally horrified by this loveable, witty Greek geek, who teased the Antiochenes about being a hairy hippie (“And I’ll tell you a secret,” he writes in the Misopogon, as if the beard wasn’t bad enough, “I’ve a hairy chest like a lion’s, too!”), and once dealt with a military unit that performed badly in the field, not by decimating them (the traditional punishment of killing one in ten after drawing lots), but by making them parade through the camp in drag, before disbanding them.
I’m also tad perplexed that the article this links to deplores his animal sacrifices. Although a vegetarian himself, Julian understood that, besides being an impressive ritual, bull sacrifices gave the troops and poor civilians a boost to their rations. People tend to be happier when they are not hungry: something Thatcher and her disciples never cared about.
And for up-to-date reading material, I recommend my old friend Shaun Tougher’s books on him, and Rowland Smith’s Julian’s Gods. (Bowersock seems to write as if Julian had done something to him personally: I really don’t understand his animus against him!) There is also a touching tribute in John Gaskin’s Traveller’s Guide to Classical Philosophy. Best of all, his own works are available in the bilingual Loeb Classics edition (3 vols). Theodoretos was wrong to invent Julian’s ‘last words’ as: “You’ve won, Galilaean!” Because through preserving his works to try to refute them (even the odious Cyril of Alexandria played his part in that!), the Galilaeans left a time-bomb for freer times. We can choose to live as if they didn’t win, and so deny them power over us.