Julian at Antioch, and the Beard-Hater

Having extorted immense sums of money from the Christians, the emperor pressed on with his expedition against the Persians and arrived at Antioch in Syria. There, wanting to show the citizens how much he cared for glory, he forced the prices of goods down unreasonably low. He took no account of the circumstances of the time, and gave no thought to how much the presence of an army burdens the people of the provinces and necessarily cuts down the supply of food to the cities. So the merchants and shopkeepers stopped trading, since they could not bear the losses the imperial edict brought on them, and as a result necessities ran short. [a]

The people of Antioch would not put up with this insult, for they are by nature a people impatient of insult, and they immediately broke out in abuse of Julian. They mocked his beard too, which was very long, and said it ought to be cut off and made into ropes. They added that the bull stamped on his coins was a sign that he had laid the world waste. For the emperor, being excessively superstitious, was constantly sacrificing bulls on the altars of his idols, and he had ordered a bull and an altar to be stamped on his coins.

Angered by these jeers, he threatened to punish the city of Antioch and went back to Tarsus in Cilicia, giving orders that preparations be made for his speedy departure from there. This led Libanius the sophist to compose two speeches, one addressed to the emperor on behalf of the people of Antioch, the other to the people of Antioch about the emperor’s displeasure. It is said, however, that these speeches were only written and never delivered in public. Julian gave up his earlier plan of taking revenge on those who mocked him by harmful deeds, and spent his anger in paying back their taunts in kind. He wrote a pamphlet against them, which he titled Antiochicus, or Misopogon, and so left a lasting mark of disgrace on that city and its people. But we must now speak of the evils he brought on the Christians at Antioch.