駁尤利安（第4講） 第 1 章 第 4/5 段

At this point it is said — for this too deserves to be recorded — that that old man, yet young in his contests (for he did not abandon his cheerfulness even amid the horrors, but rather reveled in his torments), uttered that memorable and celebrated saying:

how he praised the symbol of it, seeing himself lifted on high, while they lay low and abased beneath him;

so far did he surpass those who had power over him, and so far was he removed from his sufferings, that he seemed to be present as a bystander at another's peril, treating the affair as a festal procession rather than a calamity.

And yet, who among even those but moderately fair-minded and humane would not have felt shame at these things? But neither the occasion nor the emperor's own impulse allowed it — an impulse that demanded inhumanity even of populaces, cities, and magistrates, even though this was not apparent to the many who did not know the depth of that man's malice.

Such was the affair of the steadfast old man, as we have received it.

And for what was this? That he might not surrender a single gold piece to his torturers.

By which it is also clear that he held out for the sake of piety.

For as long as they, having set the assessed cost of the temple at its heaviest, demanded either the whole sum in gold or ordered him to rebuild the shrine himself, it seemed that it was the impossibility of the demand, rather than the piety of his soul, that occasioned his resistance;

but when, by his endurance, he gradually wore them down, and they kept lowering the assessment, until at last it came to this, that what was demanded was quite trifling, and as easy as could be to pay;

and it was an even match: for them, victory lay in getting anything at all; for him, in not being overcome, that is, in paying nothing whatever — although many were eager to contribute even more themselves, not only out of piety, but also on account of the man's being unconquered and unconquerable;

then it was plainly shown that his struggle was waged not over money, but over piety.

Are these, then, marks of equity and gentleness, or, on the contrary, of insolence and inhumanity? Let those who admire the 'philosopher king' tell us.

For my part, I think that not one of them is at a loss for the just and true answer.

And I have not yet added that this man was one of those who had saved the accursed one himself, when his whole family stood in danger, and who spirited him away by stealth;

for which reason alone, perhaps, he justly suffered these things — indeed he deserved to suffer even more — because in saving him he was unwittingly preserving so great an evil for the whole world.

They say, indeed, that on account of this the prefect of that time — for he was a man pagan in religion, but beyond a pagan in character, comparable to the best men praised both of old and now — spoke frankly to the emperor about this, unable to bear the manifold cruelty and endurance shown toward the man:

"...tortures? And when there is no great glory in overcoming him, how can it be anything but the depth of misfortune to come away defeated in this?" And so it seems that the same deeds which put prefects to shame were the emperor's boast.

Of these things, which would prove more wretched — for those who did them, or for those who suffered them? Such, then, and in such a state were the affairs of the people of Arethusa, that the inhumanity of Echetus and Phalaris seems slight beside their cruelty — or rather, beside the cruelty of him who persuaded and contrived it.

if indeed the shoots answer to the seed, and shipwrecks to the wind that drives them.

But the rest — what and how many things were there? Who would grant me the leisure and the tongue of Herodotus and Thucydides, that I might hand down to future time this man's wickedness, and that the narratives of this age might be inscribed as on a pillar for those who come after? I will say nothing of the Orontes, and the corpses of the night, which this man — hemmed in, as it were, by the slain, and killing men where none could see — kept hidden even from the king;

for here it is more fitting to use the language of epic verse.

I will likewise pass over the innermost and remotest recesses of the palace, and all that lay hidden in pits and wells and trenches, teeming with wicked treasures and mysteries —

not only the bodies of boys and virgins cut open for necromancy and divination and unlawful sacrifices, but also those of men who were put in peril for the sake of piety.

Let us, if you will, pass over these matters, seeing that even he himself was ashamed of them — in this alone showing some measure of restraint;

and this is clear from his attempt to conceal them — evidently he judged it unseemly for the pollution to be made public;

as for the treatment our own Caesareans received — men magnanimous and ardent for piety — driven about and outraged by him as they were, perhaps there is nothing here worth reproaching him for;

for it seemed that he, justly indignant on Fortune's behalf, because at a season of good fortune Fortune herself had suffered misfortune, had proceeded to this act of retribution;

since some allowance, after all, must be made even for injustice when it holds the upper hand.

But who does not know that, when a certain populace had run mad against the Christians, committing much slaughter and threatening still more, the governor of the province — steering a middle course between the pressure of the moment and the laws, since he felt bound to serve the one while retaining some modest shame before the other — on this account led many Christians away to death, yet reprimanded only a few of the pagans; and that afterward, summoned before the emperor and formally accused, he was tried on this very charge, in disgrace and under arrest?

He pleaded the laws by which he had been entrusted with the office of judging, and yet he came within a hair's breadth of being led away to death;

and in the end, having obtained "clemency," he was sentenced to exile? And how marvelous and humane a verdict that was!

"For what great matter is it," says the just judge — the one who does not persecute Christians — "if a single pagan hand has made away with ten Galileans?" Is this not manifest savagery? Is this not itself an edict of persecution, and indeed far plainer and more terrifying than those publicly posted? For what difference is there between posting up a public threat against Christians, and openly showing delight in the persecutors of Christians while treating moderation as a grave offense? For a king's mere wish is an unwritten law, championed by his power, and far mightier than written laws, which have no such authority to back them.

"No," say those who venerate his memory, and who fashion for us this new god of theirs — the gentle, humane one;

but that he never publicly proclaimed, "Let Christians be persecuted, and let them suffer whatever their persecutors think fit" — and so they absolve him of the charge of persecution.

But no one has ever called the Hydra gentle merely because it put forth nine heads instead of one — if the myth is to be believed at all;

nor the Chimaera of Patara, because it had three different and dissimilar forms, so as to be the more terrible;

or Cerberus in Hades, because his heads, though so many, were alike;

or that scourge of the sea, Scylla, because her six heads, ranged in a circle, were most to be shunned;

and yet, they say, her upper parts were fair and gentle, and not unpleasing to behold;

for she was, after all, a maiden, sharing something of our own kind;

differing thus from her counterpart Charybdis.

Or will you blame the arrows of archers and the stones of slingers, but not the slingers and archers themselves? Or, further, the dogs of hunters, and the poisons of poisoners, and the horns of goring oxen and the claws of savaging beasts?

while those who wield these instruments stand clear of blame, and have no share in the guilt of what they dare to do? Such reasoning is full of gross absurdity, and truly needs a sophist — one who pleads the cause of his own crimes, and by the power of rhetoric conceals the truth —

as for how he might hide himself — not even by twisting and turning every way and becoming all things by his devices; not even if, putting on the cap of Hades, as they call it, or making use of the ring of Gyges and the turn of its bezel, he should steal himself out of sight;

on the contrary, the more he tries to flee and escape, the more surely he is caught — before Truth as judge, and before judges more discerning than such contrivances — as one who does and dares deeds which he himself could not defend as justly done;

so easily is wickedness caught, stumbling over itself from every side.

Nor was it only that what he was already doing was of this sort, and so far removed from royal nobility and magnificence;

but rather what he intended to do was — so it might seem — gentler still, and more befitting a king!

It would indeed have been a great thing, had it not been far more inhuman than what has already been told.

For just as, when a serpent stirs, of its scales some are already bristling, others bristle in turn, others are about to bristle, while the rest cannot but move as well, even though for the moment they remain still;

or, if you will, just as with a lightning-stroke — some things are already struck down, while others darken in advance, waiting until the ruling evil overtakes them too — so also with him: some transgressions were already being committed, while others were being sketched out in his hopes and in his threats against us;

and these plans were so outlandish, so far beyond all precedent, that it took a mind such as his alone to conceive them and to wish to carry them into effect — even though many persecutors and enemies of the Christians had arisen before him.

But he was checked by the loving-kindness of God, and by the tears of the Christians — tears shed in abundance by many, who possessed no other remedy against their persecutor;

and these plans were: that Christians should be stripped of all right to frank speech, and shut out from every assembly, market-place, public festival, and even the law-courts themselves — for no one was to be allowed to make use of these unless he first burned incense at the altars set up before them, paying so heavy a price for so vital a matter.

O laws, and lawgivers, and kings — you who, like the beauty of heaven, the light of the sun, and the expanse of the air, lie open to all in a benevolence common and unstinted, and who have likewise set forth for all free men a share in the laws, equal and equally honored!

It was of this very thing that he intended to deprive the Christians —

so that when they were tyrannized over they might not obtain redress at law, nor when mulcted of money, nor, suffering any other wrong, small or great, among the things forbidden, might they be helped by the laws;

but that they should be liable to exile, to summary execution, and were all but denied the very breath they drew;

things which, for those who suffered them, brought all the greater honor and boldness before God, but for those who inflicted them, all the greater lawlessness and disgrace.

And how supremely wise, forsooth, was the reasoning of this murderer who posed as patron, this breaker of law who posed as lawgiver — or, to put it more fittingly, this enemy who posed as avenger, avenging, as he saw it, our own principles against us!

For, he reasoned, it is a principle of our law neither to defend oneself, nor to go to law, nor to possess anything at all, nor to reckon anything as one's own;

to despise the things present as though they did not exist;

and not to repay evil for evil — indeed it is not even permitted;

nor, when struck on one cheek, to spare the other, but to offer that one too to the striker, and to add the tunic to the cloak already surrendered.

And perhaps he will add that we are also to pray for those who wrong us, and to wish the very best for our persecutors.

And why would he not know these things exactly, he who was once a reader of the divine oracles, and had been deemed worthy of the honor of standing at the great sanctuary, and who used to honor the martyrs with shrines and sacred precincts? 8.

Here is the first thing I marvel at in him: how he could have grown so thoroughly familiar with these texts, and yet failed to read the following passage — or willingly passed over it;

that "the wicked shall be destroyed in wickedness" — everyone, that is, who has denied the Godhead, and, what is worse still, who thrusts aside those who persevere in their confession and surrounds them with such evils as he himself deserved to suffer.

If, then, just as our law prescribes for us to be of this character and to abide by what has been laid down, he can likewise show that the very worst has been enjoined upon him, or that such conduct is accounted a virtue among his own gods —

and that, of the two dispositions thus divided — virtue, I mean, and vice — the better portion has been allotted to us, while the worse has fallen to their lot —

let him say so, and we shall count ourselves victorious, with our very enemies as witnesses, and our own persecutors bearing witness to our cause;

but if they too lay claim to some measure of nobility and gentleness — in word at least, if not in deed — and are not so utterly shameless, however wicked they may be and however much they delight in wicked gods, as to assert that vice belongs to them as though it were some allotted portion —

let them show how, or on what ground, it is just that we should patiently endure even while suffering wrong, while they will not even spare those who spare them.

While times of power have indeed come to us, and yours have run their variable course, shifting now this way, now that — what such thing has ever befallen your own people at the hands of Christians, as has so often befallen Christians at your hands? Of what frank speech have we deprived you? Against whom have we roused seething mobs? What magistrates have we made serve beyond their orders? On whom have we brought peril of life? Or rather, whom have we driven from office, and from the other honors owed to the best of men? In a word, on whom have we inflicted anything such as has often been dared by you, and often threatened by you? No — not even you yourselves could say so, you who charge us with being too gentle and too humane!

Then how do you not consider this, O wisest and most sagacious of all — you who confine Christians to the very summit of virtue — that of our legislation some precepts are binding upon those commanded, so that it is dangerous even not to keep them;

while others are not a matter of necessity, but of choice;

which, if kept, bring honour and recompense, but if not kept, bring no danger whatsoever? For if it were possible for all to be best, and to attain the very summit of virtue, this would indeed be most excellent and most perfect;

but since things divine are distinct from things human, and while some lack nothing of what is good, others attain much even if they only reach the middling measure — what do you mean by legislating things that are not meant for all, or by pronouncing condemned those who do not keep them? For just as he who does not deserve punishment is not thereby worthy of proclamation (i.e. of public honour),

so he who is not worthy of proclamation is not thereby worthy of punishment;

but one must remain within the bounds of our philosophy and of human capacity, and require right conduct accordingly.

But I must bring my discourse back again to the subject of letters;

for I cannot bear not to turn over this matter again and again, and I must try, as far as I am able, to plead the cause of letters;

for though there are many terrible things for which that man deservedly incurs hatred, in nothing does he appear to have transgressed the law more than in this.

And let everyone who delights in letters and is devoted to this pursuit share my indignation — of whom I too will not deny that I am one.

The rest belongs to the lower orbit and to dream-like delight;

but I am possessed by discourse alone;

and I do not begrudge the toils on land and sea that procured these things for me.

Let then the mastery of letters be mine, and whoever is dear to me;

which I first embraced, and still embrace, next after the First — I mean divine things, and the hopes that lie beyond what is seen.

So if, as Pindar says, every man is pressed hard by what is his own, my discourse on this subject is necessary for me;

and it is above all just — more so, I think, than in almost any other case — to render to letters, by means of discourse, the gratitude owed for letters.

Whence then did this occur to you, O most frivolous and most insatiable of all men, to deprive Christians of letters? For this was not among the things merely threatened, but among those already made law.

Whence, and from what cause? What eloquent Hermes, as you yourself might put it, brought this to your mind? What wicked Telchines, what envious demons? If you wish, we ourselves will set forth the cause of this too.

For it was necessary that you, who had undertaken many lawless evils, should at last be led on to this, and manifestly fall foul of yourself;

so that in the very thing wherein you supposed you ought most to pride yourself, in that very thing you might unwittingly disgrace yourself most, and be condemned of irrationality.

What does your decree mean? And what is the reasoning behind this innovation regarding letters? Even should you seem to say something just, we shall be grieved, but we shall not find fault;

for just as we have learned to conquer by reason, so too we have learned to be nobly defeated by it.

"Ours," he says, "are letters, and Hellenizing — to which also belongs the worship of the gods;"

"but yours is irrationality and rusticity;"

"and nothing beyond 'Believe!' belongs to your wisdom."

Now I do not suppose that those among you who philosophize after Pythagoras would laugh at this — for whom "He himself said it" is the first and greatest of doctrines, and more to be chosen than the Golden Verses — or rather, I should say, the Leaden Verses.

For after the first, much-celebrated philosophy of silence, among those initiated into his rites — so that by silence they might be trained in the due measure of speech — he says it was then lawful, when asked concerning some doctrine and then giving an opinion, if a further reason were demanded, to answer nothing else than that this had been so decreed by Pythagoras;

and that the proof of the doctrine was simply whatever had occurred to him, unaccountable and untested;

"He himself said it" amounting to the very same thing as our "Believe!" — in different syllables and words — even though you will not cease mocking and deriding this saying of ours.

For our doctrine means that it is not permitted to us to disbelieve what has been spoken by God-bearing men, but that their trustworthiness is itself the proof of the doctrine, stronger than any power of logical argument or counter-argument.

But let even this too be reckoned among the things of ours that are easily open to slander;

yet how will you show that letters belong especially to you? And even if they are indeed yours, how is it that we have no share in them, according to your legislation and your want of reason? For to what does "Hellenizing," as applied to letters, belong, and in what sense is the word said and understood? Let me distinguish for you the force of the term, O you who are so skilled in matters of ambiguous names — the things signified, whether different things under one appellation, or the same things under different appellations, or different things under different appellations;

for you will say it belongs either to religion, or plainly to the nation, and to those who first devised the power of the dialect.

If then it belongs to religion, show where, and among which of the priests, Hellenizing is prescribed by law, just as it is prescribed that certain sacrifices be offered to certain of the demons;

for not the same things are prescribed for all, nor all things for one, nor in the same manner, as seems fitting to your hierophants and to your technical experts in sacrifices.

Show that Hellenizing was set apart in common as belonging to some one of your gods or demons, just as many other common things have also been legislated to be sacrificed to particular deities.

But if you will not say this, and instead claim the language as your own, and on this account will banish us far from it, as from a paternal inheritance in which we have no share, then in the first place I do not see what the reasoning is, or how you will attribute this to the demons.

For it does not follow that, because it happens that the same people both speak Greek in tongue and hold the pagan religion, letters therefore also belong to religion, and that on this account we should reasonably be excluded from them;

but this indeed seems even to your own logicians to be an invalid inference;

for it does not follow that, if both pertain to the same subject, both are therefore the same as each other;

otherwise, if we were to suppose the same man to be both a goldsmith and a painter, goldsmithing would turn into painting, or painting into goldsmithing;

these are among the many absurdities of your position.

Next I will ask you, O great lover of Greeks and lover of letters that you are: will you exclude us from Hellenizing altogether — from these plain, ordinary words in common use — or only from what is elegant and elevated, as attainable by none but those distinguished in education? For if the latter, what is the ground for this apportionment — that words such as "dreadful" (σμερδαλέον), "to clang" (κοναβίζειν), "surely...?" (μῶν), "doubtless" (δήπουθεν), "certain things" (ἅττα), and "somehow or other" (ἀμωσγέπως) belong solely to that special dialect, while the rest are cast out to Cynosarges, as bastards once were of old? But if the plain and unadorned kind of speech likewise belongs to Hellenizing, why do you not deprive us of this too, and simply of every Greek utterance whatsoever, however it may happen to be composed? That would be more humane of you, and thoroughly in keeping with your own lack of culture.

For the matter stands thus — let me philosophize with you on this at a loftier and more perfect level:

Whether there are indeed certain divine voices, issuing from vocal organs, poured out through the air and flowing into the ears, superior to ours and more significant (for I laugh at your solemn "Moly," and "Xanthus," and "Chalcis") — or whether the gods communicate with one another through bare concepts and impressions, without speech at all — it is not for us to say;

but at any rate ours is of this sort:

Speech is not the possession of those who invented it alone, but of all who share in it;

nor is any art or pursuit that you might care to think of an exception;

but just as, in artistic and musical harmony, one sound comes from one string drawn taut, another from one left slack, yet all belong to the one tuner and craftsman, all together tending toward a single beauty of harmony;

so too in these matters, the Craftsman and Maker, the Logos, appointed one man to be the inventor of one pursuit or art, another of another, but set forth all things in common before all who desired to share them, binding our life together by fellowship and love of mankind, and making it gentler.

Is Hellenizing yours? Tell me:

what then? Are not the letters of the alphabet Phoenician? Or, as some say, Egyptian? Or the invention of the Hebrews, who are wiser still than these, and who believe that the Law was inscribed for them by God on tablets engraved by God's own hand? Is Atticizing yours? And playing at draughts, and counting, and reckoning on the fingers, and measures and weights, and, even before these, tactics and the arts of war — whose are they? Are they not the Euboeans', if indeed Palamedes — the inventor of many things, and for this reason envied, and moreover called to account for his wisdom, and condemned by those who campaigned against Ilium — was a Euboean? What then? If the Egyptians and Phoenicians and Hebrews, whose discoveries we make use of for our own education, and if those who possess the island of Euboea, should reclaim these things as belonging to them — following your own premises — what shall we do? Or what defense shall we offer against them, having been caught using laws not our own? Or is it altogether necessary that we be stripped of all these, and suffer the fate of the jackdaw — to be left naked and disgraced, stripped of another's borrowed feathers?

(The text is defective at this point in the manuscript tradition.) ...while he pressed on swiftly in pursuit, as the story goes; then she, mocking the vehemence of his onrush, uttered a saying;

and this pleased the young man greatly, and being measured out with more elaborate craft, produced this marvelous poem of yours? What of the rest? But if you pride yourself greatly on your weapons, from whom, O most noble one, did you get your weapons? Not from the Cyclopes, from whom comes the art of forging bronze? And if the purple robe seems to you a great thing, indeed the greatest of existing things — that from which you derive your wisdom, and your lawgiving in such matters —

it would indeed have been worth much, if this wicked contrivance of yours had been dissolved, according to your own boundaries and laws, so that we might have been rid of our troubles, and it would have been possible to see the Roman empire once more in its ancient prosperity, freed from all civil strife;

which civil strife is far more to be shunned and more terrible than war from without, by just so much as it is more abhorrent to consume one's own flesh than that of strangers.

But if these things seem to you to be mere villainy dressed in smoothness, and far removed from royal magnificence, come, I will set before you things still more advantageous than these.

For seeing that our doctrine is great in its teachings and in the testimonies from above, being the very same doctrine, both old and new;

old in its prophecies, and in the movements of the Godhead that flashed forth within them;

new in its final act of divine manifestation, and in the wonders arising from it and surrounding it;

and greater still, and more manifest, in the forms of the Church that have been handed down and preserved to this day —

so that not even this should be left untouched by his malice, what does he contrive, and what does he do? He imitates Rabshakeh the Assyrian;

who indeed served as general to Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians.

This man, having marched against Judea, and besieging Jerusalem with a great force and army, and encamping against the city —

since he was unable to take the city by force, and nothing within it was being betrayed to him by traitors, he attempted to win over the city by gentle words spoken in its own tongue.

And it is said that the besieged, perceiving this, first refused this on the ground that they should be addressed in Syriac and not in Hebrew, having so ordered, lest perhaps, beguiled by the gentleness of his speech, they should be led into slavery.

This same plan Julian too conceived: he was ready to establish schools in every city — platforms, chief seats, and lesser seats — readings and expositions of Greek (pagan) doctrines, both those that regulate character, and those pertaining to esoteric mysteries;

of preliminary initiations and of full initiation, and whatever else clearly belongs to our own good order;

and further, to establish lodging-houses and hospices, houses of purification and houses for virgins, and houses of study, and philanthropy toward those in need — both every other kind of it, and that shown through letters of introduction, by which we send those in need from one nation to another.

which indeed he had come especially to admire among the things that are ours.

Such were the schemes that the new dogmatist and sophist devised;

but whether the man's undertaking, in not reaching fulfillment nor being carried into effect, was a gain for us — who were thereby the sooner rid of him and his affairs — or a gain for him, who had gotten no further than a mere dream, I do not know.

For it would have been shown which were the motions of a man, and which the mimicries of apes.

since these too are said to imitate certain human lures, when craftily set before them;

yet by these very things they are also caught, since the imitation of our 'wise man' was unable to attain the reality it aped.

For a Thessalian mare, and a Spartan woman, and the men who drink of Arethusa's spring — I mean the Sicilians, as the oracle concerning them declares — do not possess the pick of their kind any more than such customs and ordinances are most fitting for Christians;

and such as would be emulated by none other than those wishing to follow us;

since such things have prevailed not so much by human devices as by divine power and the steadfastness of time.

But there is nothing like beholding and studying, as though upon a stage, this wondrous refashioning or remolding of theirs, to see what manner of teaching they would have had, and what would have been the outcome of their assemblies —

so that, as Plato says concerning the city set forth in speech, we may see their design set in motion.

For since all philosophy is divided into these two parts, I mean contemplation and action;

and the one being loftier, yet harder to discern;

while the other is humbler, yet more useful;

for us, both commend themselves through one another;

for we make contemplation a companion on the journey toward the things above, and action a stepping-stone to contemplation;

for it is not possible to partake of wisdom without having conducted oneself wisely.

But for them — I do not know which will seem more ridiculous or more feeble — since they do not derive the capability of their system from divine inspiration, it is like roots that float upon the water, having no fixed anchorage.

Come then, let us cast ourselves into their 'blessed' company, that we too may briefly join them in their play and myth-making, taking part in the game as in many of their dramas;

and let there be added, to rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep, also the enduring to trifle along with those who trifle;

for poets too know how to produce laughter amid tears.

Let the theater be made ready;

or I do not know what else they will bid us call their house of assembly;

let the seats of honor be held either by those who excel in gray hairs, in age, and in the office chosen for them in the commonwealth, or by those conspicuous for birth and reputation, and for a wisdom entangled with earthly things, possessing more of pleasure than of true piety;

for this concession we shall make on their behalf.

What shall follow next? Let them themselves enroll their own presiding officers.

Purple robes shall adorn them, and headbands, and the bloom and beauty of garlands;