my; he continued his march toward the
confines of Persia, and thought it sufficient to signify the conditions
which might entitle Julian and his guilty followers to the clemency of
their offended sovereign. He required that the presumptuous caesar should
expressly renounce the appellation and rank of augustus, which he had
accepted from the rebels; that he should descend to his former station
of a limited and dependent minister; that he should vest the powers of
the State and army in the hands of those officers who were appointed by
the imperial court; and that he should trust his safety to the
assurances of pardon, which were announced by Epictetus, a Gallic
bishop, and one of the Arian favorites of Constantius. Several months
were ineffectually consumed in a treaty which was negotiated at the
distance of three thousand miles between Paris and Antioch; and, as soon
as Julian perceived that his modest and respectful behavior served only
to irritate the pride of an implacable adversary, he boldly resolved to
commit his life and fortune to the chance of a civil war.

He gave a public and military audience to the quaestor Leonas; the
haughty epistle of Constantius was read to the attentive multitude; and
Julian protested, with the most flattering deference, that he was ready
to resign the title of augustus, if he could obtain the consent of those
whom he acknowledged as the authors of his elevation. The faint proposal
was impetuously silenced; and the acclamations of "Julian Augustus,
continue to reign, by the authority of the army, of the people, of the
republic which you have saved," thundered at once from every part of the
field, and terrified the pale ambassador of Constantius. A part of the
letter was afterward read, in which the Emperor arraigned the
ingratitude of Julian, whom he had invested with the honors of the
purple; whom he had educated with so much care and tenderness; whom he
had preserved in his infancy, when he was left a helpless orphan.

"An orphan!" interrupted Julian, who justified his cause by indulging
his passions: "does the assassin of my family reproach me that I was
left an orphan? He urges me to revenge those injuries which I have long
studied to forget." The assembly was dismissed; and Leonas, who, with
some difficulty, had been protected from the popular fury, was sent back
to his master with an epistle, in which Julian expressed, in a strain of
the most vehement eloquence, the sentiments of