Likewise in the second book, chapter 58, the words of Julian: 'Or if perhaps—since your dogma cannot otherwise stand unless you answer that Adam conceived and brought forth of himself—it will be in doubt to no one that the Apostle did not mean this. But you have shown what you would wish to befall your own sex.' 1. To these things. Blush, most unhappy man, in such obscenity of a scurrilous, or rather mimic, tongue. You are worthy to hear the common acclamations: You alone, you alone a Philistion, you alone a Lentulus of the Latins, a Marullus to be compared to you; for you alone have surpassed the talents of Martial and Petronius. 2.
You, most truly, the most foul stench of the Ampsanctine spring of your own region inflated; you, the most noxious exhalation of the lake of Avernus; you, finally, the pestilent breath of the Atabulus, the wind of your own province, inflated—by which, swollen with so many diseases and made unhealthy, nay made insane, you might belch out, vomit out, breathe out these things; and would that—since this would have been more useful to you—you had breathed out your vital breath, before you uttered with full mouth things so obscene and so full of disgrace. 3. What stage-buffoon, what fool, or what mime, by the licensed turpitude of professed shamelessness, would utter these things in public? Should chaste matrons, should honorable and refined men read you?
but if they are mindful of honor and modesty, they will shudder, and like a monstrous viper—as the hydra is said to have been—they will flee away. 4. Are you then the son of the bishop Memor, of holy and blessed memory? Are you issued from the womb of Juliana, a woman of the first rank, than whom you could find nothing more honorable among the most reverend matrons? Far be it, far be it, that I should dare to believe that of you. I would rather believe you the son of their household slaves, and substituted for them—as has often been said and done, and as you yourself rather prove by such petulance and obscenity of your mouth; or if that be not so, it will be in doubt to no one that they have degenerated in you—to no one who knows the holy manners of those men, their holy life and discipline, and has prudently inspected your discourse in these writings.
5. After the death of those holy persons, you indeed deservedly instructed your two sisters in such disciplines of your mouth. We know, we know what one of them objected to you, or reproached you with, when you, too severe, rose up to the ruin of her modesty; and you, suddenly struck mute, did not dare further to inflict any vexations of your censure upon her grief.