The Shorter Fragments of Julian

1.
Then who does not know the saying of the Ethiopians about the food that with us is held to be most nutritious? For when they first handled bread they said they wondered how we manage to live on a diet of dung, that is if one may believe the Thurian chronicler. And those who write descriptions of the world relate that there are races of men who live on fish and flesh and have never even dreamed of our kind of diet. But if anyone in our country tries to adopt their diet, he will be no better off than those who take a dose of hemlock or aconite or hellebore.

2.
We hastened to the Hercynian forest and it was a strange and monstrous thing that I beheld. At any rate I do not hesitate to engage that nothing of the sort has ever been seen in the Roman Empire, at least as far as we know. But if anyone considers Thessalian Tempe or Thermopylae or the great and far-flung Taurus to be impassable, let me tell him that for difficulty of approach they are trivial indeed compared with the Hercynian forest.

3. To the Corinthians
. . . My friendship with you dates from my father's time. For indeed my father lived in your city, and embarking thence, like Odysseus from the land of the Phaeacians, had respite from his long-protracted wanderings. . . there my father found repose.

4.
. . . and the famous hierophant Iamblichus showed it to us. . . and we, since we believed the account of Empedotimus and Pythagoras, as well as that of Heracleides of Pontus who derived it from them. . ..

5.
They only knew how to pray

6.
. . . that they may not, by sharpening their tongues, be prepared to meet their Hellenic opponents in debate.

7.
. . . for in the words of the proverb, we are stricken by our own arrows. For from our own writings they take the weapons wherewith they engage in the war against us.

8.
Not to see beforehand what is possible and what impossible in practical affairs is a sign of the utmost foolishness.

9.
Accordingly he says in a letter: At present the Scythians are not restless, but perhaps they will become restless.

10. To Euthymeles the Tribune.
A king delights in war.

11.
For I am rebuilding with all zeal the temple of the Most High God.

===12. To the citizens who acclaimed him in the temple of Fortune === When I enter the theatre unannounced, acclaim me, but when I enter the temples be silent and transfer your acclamations to the gods; or rather the gods do not need acclamations.

===13. To a Painter === If I did not possess it and you had bestowed it on me, you would have deserved to be forgiven; but if I possessed it and did not use it, I carried the gods, or rather was carried by them. Why, my friend, did you give me a form other than my own? Paint me exactly as you saw me.

14. To the Bishops.
I recognised, I read, I condemned.