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 wiping off the sweat of his agony and comforting him all the time (Rufin. i. 35, 36, referred to by Soc. iii. 19, and given in Ruinart, Acta Martyrum, p. 604, ed. Rabisbon. 1859). The anger of Julian was also braved by a widow named Publia, the head of a small community of Christian virgins, who sang in his hearing the Psalms against idols and against the enemies of God. She was brought before a court and buffeted on the face with severity, but dismissed (Theod. iii. i9).

Shortly after the translation of the relics of St. Babylas to Antioch, on the night of Oct. 22, the temple of Daphne itself was burnt to the ground. The heathens accused the Christians of maliciously setting it on fire; they attributed it to fire from heaven and the prayers of St. Babylas. A story also got about that Asclepiades the cynic had left a number of lighted candles burning in the shrine (Amm. xxii. 13; Soz. v. 20; Chrys. de S. Bab. § 17, p. 674). Julian's wrath was intense. He accused the Christians of the deed, and suspected the priests of knowing about it (Misop. pp. 346, 361 ). As a punishment he ordered the cathedral church of Antioch to be closed, and confiscated its goods (Amm. xxii. 13, Soz. v. 8). The order was executed by his uncle Julianus, now count of the East, with all the zeal of a new convert and with circumstances of disgusting profanity. Theodoret, a presbyter, who still collected a congregation of the faithful, was tortured and beheaded (Ruinart, Acta Mart. p. 605). The Christian account tells us that Julian reproved his uncle as having brought him into disgrace, but in the Misopogon he gives him nothing but praise (ib. p. 607, Misop. p. 365 ). The count's miserable death, which followed soon after, was naturally treated as a judgment from heaven (Soz. v. 8; Theod. iii. 12, etc.). That of Felix, another renegade, had, a little earlier, been equally remarkable for its suddenness. The two were regarded as a presage of the emperor's own doom, for now that Julianus and Felix were gone, Augustus would soon follow, a play upon the imperial title Julianus Felix Augustus (Amm. xxiii. 1, 5). This was a trivial saying, but calculated to disquiet and irritate a mind like Julian's.

Antioch meanwhile was afflicted by a dearth, which almost became a famine, and the emperor's efforts to alleviate it failed. He imported a large quantity of grain from Egypt, and fixed the market price at a low figure. Speculators bought up his importations, and would not sell their own stores, and soon there was nothing in the markets. Julian declared that the fault was in the magistrates, and tried in vain to infuse some of his own public spirit into the farmers and merchants (Liban. Epit. p. 587). The town council were sent to prison (Amm. xxii. 14, 2; Liban. Epit. p. 588). Their confinement, however, did not last a day, and they were released by the intercession of Libanius, who tells us that he was not deterred from his petition by the sarcastic hint that the Orontes was not far off (de Vita Sua, vol. i. p. 85). The whole winter, indeed, was clouded with misfortunes. On Dec. 2 the rest of Nicomedia was destroyed by earthquake, and a large part of Nicaea suffered with it (Amm. xxii. 13, 5). News was brought that Constantinople was in danger from the same cause, and some suggested that the wrath of the earth-shaker Poseidon must be appeased. This gave Julian, who had a real affection for the city, an opportunity of showing his enthusiasm. He stood all day long in the open air, under rain and storm, in a fixed and rigid attitude, like an Indian yogi, while his courtiers looked on in amazement from under cover. It was calculated afterwards that the earthquake stopped on the very day of the imperial intercession, and Julian, it is said, took no harm from his exposure (Liban. Epit. p. 581). But this partial success did not make him feel secure of the favour of the gods. He was convinced that Apollo had deserted Daphne and the other deities were not propitious. Even the day of his entering the consulship, Jan. 1, 363, graced with an oration of Libanius (ad Jul. imp. consulem), was disfigured by a bad omen: a priest fell dead on the steps of the temple of the Genius. This was the more annoying, as he had no doubt intended to make his fourth consulship mark a new era by taking as his colleague his old friend Sallustius prefect of the Gauls, an honour paid to no one outside the imperial family since the days of Diocletian (Amm. xxiii. 1, 1). At the same time too he received news of the failure of the attempt (see (c), infra) to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem (Amm. xxiii. 1, 3)

Meanwhile his designs for involving the city in heathen rites caused considerable excitement and odium. He profaned the fountains of the city of Daphne according to Christian ideas, and consecrated them according to his own, by throwing into them a portion of his sacrifices, so that all who used them might be partakers with the gods, and for a similar reason ordered all things sold in the market, such as bread, meat, and vegetables, to be sprinkled with lustral water. The Christians complained but followed the precept of the apostle in eating, freely all things sold in public, without inquiry (Theod. iii. 15). Two young officers, Juventinus and Maximinus, were one day lamenting this state of things, and quoted the words from the Greek Daniel, c. iii. 32, "Thou hast delivered us to a lawless king, to an apostate beyond all the heathen that are in the earth." Their words were repeated by an informer, and they were ordered to appear before the emperor. They declared the cause of their complaint, the only one (as they said) which they had to bring against his government. They were thrown into prison, and friends were sent to promise them large rewards if they would change their religion; but they stood firm, and were beheaded in the middle of the night, on the charge of having spoken evil of the emperor (Chrys. in Juvent. et Max. 3 ; cf. Theod. iii. 15). The date of this "martyrdom" may have been Jan. 25, as it appears in Latin calendars (Boll. Jan. p. 618).

Julian discharged his spleen upon the Antiochenes by writing one of the most remarkable satires ever published—the Misopogon. "He had been insulted," says Gibbon, "by satires and libels; in his turn he composed, under the title of The Enemy of the Beard, an ironical confession of his own faults and a