Julian’s Letter Rebuking the Alexandrians

The emperor was highly indignant at the murder of George, and wrote to the citizens of Alexandria rebuking their violence in the strongest terms. A report went around that those who hated George because of Athanasius had committed this outrage against him. For my part, I think it is certainly true that people who nurse hostile feelings against particular individuals are often found mixed up in popular riots. Yet the emperor’s letter plainly lays the blame on the populace rather than on any of the Christians. George, however, was at that time, and had been for some time before, extremely hateful to all classes, which is enough to account for the burning anger of the crowd against him. That the emperor charges the people with the crime can be seen from his letter, which read as follows.

The Emperor Caesar Julian Maximus Augustus, to the citizens of Alexandria. [a]

Even if you have no respect for Alexander, the founder of your city, nor, what is more, for that great and most holy god Serapis, how is it that you have taken no account of the common claims of humanity and public order, nor of what is due to us, to whom all the gods, and especially the mighty Serapis, have given the rule of the world? It was to us, then, that you should have left the judgment of all public wrongs. But perhaps the impulse of rage and indignation, which takes hold of the mind and too often drives it to the most atrocious acts, has led you astray. It seems, however, that when your fury had cooled somewhat, you added to your guilt by joining a most heinous offense to the one committed in the heat of the moment. Nor were you ashamed, though you are only the common people, to commit the very acts for which you rightly hated them. [b]

By Serapis, I beg you to tell me: for what wrong were you so angry with George? You will perhaps answer that it was because he turned Constantius, of blessed memory, against you; because he brought an army into the sacred city; because, as a result, the governor of Egypt stripped the god’s most holy temple of its images, its votive offerings, and the other consecrated furnishings it held. And when you could not bear to see such a foul desecration, and tried to defend the god from sacrilegious hands, or rather to prevent the plunder of what had been consecrated to his service, that governor, against all justice, law and piety, dared to send armed bands against you. He probably did this because he feared George more than Constantius. But he would have looked after his own safety better if he had not been guilty of this tyrannical conduct, but had kept to his former moderation toward you. Being angry with George on all these grounds, as the enemy of the gods, you have once again polluted your sacred city, when you ought to have brought charges against him before the judges. Had you done that, neither murder nor any other unlawful deed would have been committed. Justice, fairly administered, would have kept you innocent of these disgraceful excesses, while bringing on him the punishment his impious crimes deserved. In this way too, in short, the insolence of those would have been checked who despise the gods, and who respect neither cities of such size nor so flourishing a population, but make the cruelties they practice against them the opening act, as it were, of their exercise of power.

Compare, then, this present letter of mine with the one I wrote you some time ago. With what high praise I greeted you then! But now, by the immortal gods, though I am just as willing to praise you, I cannot do it, because of your heinous misdeeds. The people have dared to tear a man to pieces, like dogs. Nor have they been ashamed afterward of this inhuman act, nor wished to purify their hands of such pollution, so that they might stretch them out before the gods unstained by blood. You will no doubt be ready to say that George deserved this punishment; and we might perhaps be willing to grant that he deserved even sharper tortures. If you go on to say that he deserved these sufferings on your account, even this might also be granted. But if you add that it was your place to take the vengeance due for his offenses, that I can by no means accept. For you have laws, to which each one of you is bound to submit, and which you must show respect for both in public and in private. If some individual breaks those wise and beneficial regulations that were first set up for the good of the community, does that release the rest from obeying them?

It is fortunate for you, people of Alexandria, that such an atrocity was committed in our reign. For because of our reverence for the gods, and for the sake of our grandfather and uncle, whose name we bear, and who governed Egypt and your city, we still keep a brotherly affection for you. Certainly a power that will not allow itself to be disrespected, and a government with a vigorous and healthy constitution, could not overlook such unbridled lawlessness in its subjects without unsparingly purging out the dangerous disease by applying strong enough remedies. In your case, however, for the reasons already given, we will limit ourselves to the milder and gentler medicine of reproof and exhortation. We are convinced that you will submit to this treatment all the more readily, since we understand that you are Greeks by descent, and still keep in your memory and character the traces of your ancestors’ glory. Let this be published to our citizens of Alexandria.

Such was the emperor’s letter.