45. Labarum, quasi laborum levamen! A curious illustration of the prevailing pronunciation by accent.
46. Or, "against the Testifier, the want of testimony," a miserable play upon the general and special senses of martu_j .
47. Implying a pious wish that he had so ended his life.
48. Which best deserves the name of idolatry and asebei=a , this disgusting relic-worship, thus distinctly attributing divine power to dead bones, or Julian's adoration of natural agencies regarded as the visible ministers of the invisible and supreme God?
49. By rendering themselves incorporeal----alluding to the ascetics in the congregation. His audience were too obtuse to perceive the difference between Julian's contempt for luxury practised for the real good of the empire and the asceticism of monks and hermits, tending solely to their own glorification and uselessness----true fakirs, whose chief merit was their dirtiness, as the quotation from Homer shows.
50. The caves in the desert haunted by these solitaries.
51. "Strangers must give place to kings as household bread does to cheese-cakes."----A quotation from some old play.
52. A good hit, for once, at the rapacity of the Greek sophists (ridiculed by Libanius himself), who had beset the too liberal Julian.
53. The riddle of the fishermen (louse-catchers), "What we caught we threw away; what we caught not, we carry with us."
54. Who supported himself by watering gardens at night in order to go to school by day.
55. By putting a stop to their mutual squabbles, and restoring the exiled Catholic bishops to their sees.
56. Who, in reality, upon the news of Julian's accession, used every effort to obtain terms of peace from so formidable an adversary.
57. This looks like an allusion to the joke of the Antiochenes upon his Bull Apis, "which tossed over the whole empire."
58. metri/wj "carried on within the limits prescribed by law and usage, without any arbitrary exercise of power;" all this seems implied in the word. This unwilling confession of an enemy of the existence of all the essential parts of good government in Julian's system, is worth more than all the eulogies of Libanius.
59. All these evils being in truth less virulent than those caused by the sectarian quarrels which had raged under Constantius. In the new reign whatever annoyances the Christians endured were entirely of their own seeking, as all the examples quoted by Gregory prove to demonstration.
60. This argument tells against the pleader; the Christians being as yet a small minority in the empire their discontent was less dangerous than that of the Pagans. Gregory has confessed that the whole army conformed without difficulty to Julian's change of the state religion.
61. A clever hit of Gregory's, the sharpest in the whole invective.
62. An allusion to the absurd fable that Pan was the fruit of Penelope's amours with all her suitors.
63. To_ de\ Bia&zesqai turannikw~j a)isxuno&menoj ---- by this unguarded admission the preacher refutes his whole invective.
64. The celebrated "Sapphire of Constantius," which represents him spearing a wild boar before Caesarea personified, may with good reason be supposed a copy of some similar group.
65. Their fewness proves there was nothing in these representations calculated to scandalize any but those bent upon discovering pretext for disaffection.
66. One of the regular insignia of imperial rank was the thuribulum carried before the Augustas, and the putting incense thereon by all petitioners. Thus Dion notes that Marcia enjoyed all the honours of an Augusta, except that of the thuribulum (as being the highest of all, and therefore which even Commodus dared not allow a concubine). The idolatry in the scene was the invention of mischief-making bigots, who actually, later, got up a plot for Julian's assassination.
67. A sufficient proof that the honour was paid to the emperor alone, in accordance with the ancient ceremonial.
68. The burning incense to Jupiter had been the appointed test of conformity to paganism in Diocletian's persecution. The instigators to rebellion availed themselves of this fact, keeping out of sight the essential difference of the two ceremonies.
69. 'e0zori/a| parado&nta . No stronger proof is needed of Julian's tolerance than this so inadequate punishment for their mutinous and insolent behaviour.