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Julian's Cynics 2 Julian’s Cynics Remembering for future purposes Philip Bosman The emperor Julian managed to generate an abundance of memories like very few other figures from antiquity, as recent scholarly biographies reveal (Bringmann 2004 ; Rosen 2006 ; Teitler 2017 ). This was certainly not due to prolonged power or longevity: he ruled the Roman world for barely twenty months and died aged thirty-two. Furthermore, his vision of re-Hellenising1 the empire failed and not only because of the brevity of his reign: the cracks started to show soon after he came to rule, but in particular during his stay in Antioch.2 It is thus not so much his accomplishments as his position at the crossroads of history that deter- mined Julian’s singular stature. The intensity of emotions surrounding his person and what he signified gave rise to a profusion of literature written during and after his reign, by partisans like Libanius and Ammianus, as well as by detractors like Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom. 3 We should also not forget that Julian was a prolific author in his own right ( Baker-Brian and Tougher 2012b : 17), a fact that in equal measures facilitates and complicates our understanding of the man and his motivations. Even in the best of scholarship to this day, neutrality towards the apostate has always been hard to attain, due to both his personality and his ideology.4 In the current chapter, however, I am less concerned with memories about Julian than with Julian’s own memory of Cynic philosophy. What might other- wise be considered as the reinterpretation or the misrepresentation of a tradition may for the purposes of this volume be termed an adjustment or a realignment of memory with a view to employing that memory for future use. Julian stood in a centuries-old tradition of idealising the classical Greek past, but as emperor he acquired the power to harness this legacy (cultural, religious, and philosophical) to forge the future he had in mind, among other things by curbing the growing influence of Christianity. My argument will be restricted to two orations (Or . 6 and 7 in the LCL order- ing) in which the emperor confronts contemporary Cynics. Contrary to what is often assumed, in neither of these does Julian argue against the Cynic philosophy itself, but rather against some specific exponents of Cynicism he has recently come across. In both instances he accuses these Cynics of misrepresenting or mis- understanding the true ancient version of the philosophy. In the process he makes himself guilty of selective memory by relying on previous attempts to render Cyn- icism more palatable to the educated levels of society. More peculiarly, he sets his Julian’s Cynics 21 recollection of the Cynics in a Neoplatonist synthesis of classical Greek thought, with Cynicism representing the practical side of a religio-ethical construct which included all the ancient philosophical schools (the Epicureans excepted), and which he traced back to the Delphic Apollo. The two Cynic orations are controversial in scholarship on two scores: whether they are philosophically motivated or mere incidental ad hominem displays, and how they relate to Julian’s politics and his restoration of traditional Greek cult. The two poles of the controversy seem irreconcilable. Athanassiadi (1992 : 130–41) argues for the Cynic orations’ integration into Julian’s programme (a close-knit triad of λόγοι, ἱερά, and πόλις). Julian recognised the ἀπαιδευσία of the Cyn- ics contemporary to himself and grabbed the opportunity to educate them on the ‘deep unity of Hellenic thought’ ( Athanassiadi 1992 : 137). At the other pole, Smith (1995: 49–90) finds little that would suggest they were crucial to such a vision. In Smith’s view, the two orations are essentially performance pieces in which the emperor voiced, to an intimate audience at the imperial court, his irritation with the Cynics he recently encountered. These Cynics posed no threat to either his ideological or his cultic reforms, nor was Julian novel in his dealing with false philosophers and false Cynics. The two discourses, therefore, do little more than express Julian’s scepticism towards the Cynic challenge to social hier- archies in the empire: ‘the philosophical pretentions of the uneducated poor were not to be taken seriously’ (Smith 1995: 61). While scholarship rightly questioned Athanassiadi’s over-sympathetic read- ing of these texts as the coherent development of an educational ideal (see the rather scathing reviews by Bowersock 1983 and Van der Horst 1985 ), it would be a mistake to let Julian the rhetor completely overshadow Julian the philosophi- cally minded emperor. Though no great intellectual innovator, his dealings with Cynic tradition amount to more than a ‘familiar repertoire of literary invective’ (Smith 1995: 90; see also Tanaseanu-Döbler 2008 : 127–8). His self-identification as a serious scholar and a new Marcus Aurelius, even dressing the part, renders unlikely a mere pretence of researches into the long and complex Cynic tradition. It is generally assumed that in the pieces Julian wrote while in Constantinople, the newly crowned augustus was concerned with impressing religio-philosophical convictions onto the socio-political realm for which he assumed responsibility.5 In consequence, it seems likely that the two orations were about more than display and personal honour. But even if it may be conceded that Julian is serious about philosophy, the question remains why he gives such attention to a single school of thought, and an atypical one at that. Fourth-century Cynicism At the time of Julian, the figure of the Cynic founder Diogenes exerted consider- able influence on the intellectual imaginations of pagans and Christians alike, but the sources do not mention significant contemporary exponents of the phi- losophy ( Krueger 1993 : 34). Apart from Julian’s adversary Heraclius, only a slightly younger contemporary by the name of Maximus Hero gets mentioned by Gregory of Nazianzus ( Or . 25, De vita sua ). Late sources such as the Suda and 22 Philip Bosman Photius refer to a certain Sallustius of Emesa who flourished some 50 years later. Smith (1995: 87) regards Sallustius as little more than ‘a picturesque Christian,’ and indeed the philosophical purity (if that ever existed) of these figures can be doubted: Photius Bibl . 242.342b mentions Sallustius as mingling authentic Cynic features with doubtlessly inauthentic ones such as prophecy (cf. Döring 2006 : 98–9; Dudley 1937/2003: 202–8). With this Sallustius, Döring claims, ancient Cynicism came to an end, still a century before Justinian’s closure of the philo- sophical schools in 529 CE. Justinian’s edicts to block pagan teaching were the inverse of what Julian attempted 170 years earlier when he blocked Christians from public teaching positions:6 as Julian thought the Christians could not teach what they did not believe in, so Justinian thought the philosophical schools were contending faith systems that could not be given the chance to gain influence or dignity. While Justinian’s edict did not mean that all philosophy and ancient learn- ing came to an abrupt end, it did drive the final nail into the coffin of Julian’s ideas on merging traditional cult and Hellenic learning (cf. Constantelos 1964: 374–6 on paganism under Justinian). In general, scholarship does not give Cynicism much prominence in the philo- sophical firmament of the later Roman Empire. It is therefore remarkable that Julian mentions only Homer and Plato with greater frequency than he does Dio- genes the Cynic (Smith 1995: 49). Whence, we need to ask, this unexpected atten- tion? Of those who do not misread the orations as an attack against Cynicism, some regard it as merely the result of a chance occurrence, others as the starting point, insignificant in itself, for Julian to move to the important task of developing a philosophical synthesis with which to counter Christianity ( Athanassiadi 1992 : 128). It may also be possible, however, that our written sources give an inac- curate impression of the school’s attraction for a broad cross-section of society in Julian’s time; after all, according to a remark by Augustine, it outlived all the other philosophical schools apart from the Platonists and the Peripatetics (August. C. Acad . 3.19.42; cf. Smith 1995: 245 n.30). It may, furthermore, be that the very nature of the movement fitted well with Julian’s vision for his future empire, pro- vided that he could make it more acceptable by separating the philosophy from its vulgar associations. For its sanitation, he ‘remembered’ selectively from a tra- dition that by his time already had a history of almost 700 years and had passed through various stages. Orations 6 and 7: redeeming Cynicism The two orations in which Julian engages with Cynics are set by scholars during Julian’s brief stint as augustus in Constantinople (late 361–mid 363), with the speech Against Heraclius ( Or . 7) during the spring of 362 CE, and the shorter but more considered Against the uneducated Cynics ( Or . 6) shortly after the summer solstice of that year.7 Julian claims to have written both speeches in double-quick time, Against Heraclius in a single day, and the second speech over a mere two days. 8 The speeches have had ample scholarly attention, so I will only refer to three examples in order to illustrate how he deals with Cynic tradition.9 Julian’s Cynics 23 The respectable Cynic In both speeches Julian accepts the traditional high regard for the early Cynics (Diogenes of Sinope in particular) but goes beyond the usual practice of referring to them by way of anecdotes and as moral exempla. The Cynics appear to have used anecdotes as a textual strategy since the late fourth century BCE.
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