Rewriting Julian’s Legacy: John Chrysostom’s On Babylas and Libanius’ Oration 24
Libanius’ Oration 24 and John Chrysostom’s On Babylas represent contemporaneous and competing efforts to reshape narrations of the emperor Julian and thus influence local and imperial politics fifteen years after his death. Following the emperor Valens’ death at the battle of Adrianople in 378, which echoed Julian’s death in battle in 363, Libanius and Chrysostom revived the memory of Julian in order to address the strength of the gods and define ideal imperial behavior as Theodosius I came to power. Reading these two texts in light of each other highlights the renewed importance that Julian’s legacy carried immediately following Valens’ death, and the late fourth-century implications of that legacy for Antiochene and imperial politics.
The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch
PREFACE ix A NOTE ON REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS xi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: Libanius and Rhetoric in Antioch 13 CHAPTER TWO: Schools and Sophists in the Roman East 42 CHAPTER THREE: The Network 83 CHAPTER FOUR: Admission and Evaluation 111 CHAPTER FIVE: Teaching the Logoi 137 CHAPTER SIX: The Long and Short Paths to Rhetoric 174 CHAPTER SEVEN: After Rhetoric 197 CONCLUSION: Words and Silence 229 APPENDIX ONE: Dossiers of Students 233 APPENDIX TWO: Length of Students' Attendance 323 APPENDIX THREE: Concordance of Letters in Appendix One Translated INTO ENGLISH 329 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 331 INDEX LOCORUM 347 GENERAL INDEX 355
Approaching late antiquity : the transformation from early to late empire
1. Introduction 2. Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity 3. A New Golden Age? The Northern Praefactura Urbi from the Severans to Diocletian 4. Transition and Change in Diocletian's Egypt: Province and Empire in the Late Third Century 5. Roman Law 200 to 400 AD: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat? 6. Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire 7. Emperors and Armies, AD 235-395 8. Romanitas and the Church of Rome 9. Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine 10. The Transformations of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century 11. Late Antique Art: the Problem of the Concept and the Cumulative Aesthetic 12. Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt 13. Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity 14. Sophists and Emperors: the Case of Libanius 15. Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity