70. These horrible displays of popular fury prove the cruelty with which the party using such retaliation had been treated during the preceding reign. La Bléterie cannot deny this, but ingeniously shifts the blame upon the Arians, whom he calls a sanguinary and persecuting sect. But Gregory's tone throughout shows that he only lacked the power, not the will, to follow their mode of dealing with the pagans.
71. On the point of renouncing Christianity through their alarm.
72. A sufficient evidence of the tyrannical manner in which he had exercised the authority granted to him by the "excellent Constantius." The "habitation of devils" demolished by him, was a time-honoured temple, dear to the whole population----nevertheless, he would have been allowed to compound for his former bigotry by the payment of a nominal fine----moderation hardly to be expected in the case of mob-law.
73. This, therefore, must have formed part of the "Twelve Tortures" ----a curious revelation.
74. The preacher is incorrect in his entomology in his zeal to heighten the picture; bees and wasps neither bite, nor would be attracted by such bait----the flesh-flies were quite sufficient for the occasion.
75. Who was perfectly innocent of this treatment of Marcus, which was the spontaneous act of his fellow-citizens.
76. Curious morality----to make a person responsible for all the future consequences of a virtuous action!
77. Probably Sallustius Secundus.
78. The savage tyrant to whom the Suitors threaten to ship off Ulysses.
79. "Wells, cisterns, conduits"----the very last places for the concealment of murdered persons. And all these scenes passing under the eyes of Julian's body-guard, many of whom in high command, as Jovian Valentinian, and were steady Christians. But it was a common trick of the monks to hide human bones in temples, and then point them out as evidences of human sacrifice. A notorious example is that of the Mithraeum at Alexandria. Nothing is more likely than that the same stratagem was practised in Julian's palace at Antioch by some zealot. A single bone would suffice to build all Gregory's declamation on.
80. a)na&rpastoj , "arrested and brought up before Julian," seems all implied in the word.
81. Not, however, on account of the execution of these pagans, but for remissness in not checking the sedition before it broke out into civil war.
82. ellehn had now got the double sense of "Grecian" and "pagan."
83. These expressions indicate that Maximin's statues were not destroyed upon his downfall (according to the regular custom of the times, "descendunt statuae restemque sequuntur"), but were left mutilated, as objects of public scorn.
84. "Of the Christian's non-resistance to injury, contempt of the world," &c. Gregory, clearly unable to meet the unanswerable logic of Julian's quotations, takes refuge in a cloud of involved quibbles, the purport of which can hardly be discerned.
85. The penal laws of Constantius and Constans are sufficient answer to this boasting of a tolerance that sprung out of want of power, not want of will to persecute. Take for example those enacted a few years previously: "Poena capitis subjugari praecipimus eos quos operam sacrificiis dare, et colere simulacra constiterit."----Dat. XI. Kal. Mart. Med. Constantio A. VII., et Juliano Caes. Coss. (A.IX 356.) " Cesset superstitio, sacrificiorum aboleatur insania; nam quicunque contra legem Divi Principio, parentis Nostri, et hanc Nostrae Mansuetuinis jussiorum ausus fuerit sacrificia celebrare, competens in eum vindicta, et praesens sententia exseratur."----Acc. Marcellino et Probiano Coss. (A.D. 341.)
86. The doctrine of "Commandments" and "Counsels of Perfection," a most convenient subterfuge for evading all inconvenient rules in a religious system.
87. lo&goi in the sense of "literature," or in modern phrase "books." Now follows a string of miserable puns upon the various meanings of lo&goj , as "Reason," "Speech," &c., impossible to preserve in the translation.
88. a)logi/a , implying also want of reason, want of education, &c.
89. Words said by Homer to belong to the language of the gods.
90. Literally, "stretched or slackened."
91. sou_j , which makes a very weak sense, looks much like a corruption of Skuqinou_j , in allusion to the mode in which the Scythians put down the slaves' revolt by the application of the horsewhip, according to Herodotus. Nazianzen politely suggests that such would have been the best cure for Julian at the hands of his cousin.
92. Probably taken out of one of Julian's numerous regulations for the better ordering of public worship.
93. A curious allusion to the Egyptian symbolism of the scarabeus.
94. Julian might justly retort, that these old Greek myths were fully as susceptible of interpretation in a higher sense, as were the Jewish Canticles with their infinitely grosser images, out of which the preacher extracted so much spiritual grace and prophecy. He might have also replied with good show of reason, that lessons of morality were to be as easily extracted from him