e consequences might have been foreseen, and were soon felt. The
Imperial wheat was purchased by the rich merchants; the proprietors of
land, or of corn, withheld from the city the accustomed supply; and the
small quantities that appeared in the market were secretly sold at an
advanced and illegal price. Julian still continued to applaud his own
policy, treated the complaints of the people as a vain and ungrateful
murmur, and convinced Antioch that he had inherited the obstinacy,
though not the cruelty, of his brother Gallus. [16] The remonstrances of
the municipal senate served only to exasperate his inflexible mind.
He was persuaded, perhaps with truth, that the senators of Antioch who
possessed lands, or were concerned in trade, had themselves contributed
to the calamities of their country; and he imputed the disrespectful
boldness which they assumed, to the sense, not of public duty, but of
private interest. The whole body, consisting of two hundred of the most
noble and wealthy citizens, were sent, under a guard, from the palace to
the prison; and though they were permitted, before the close of evening,
to return to their respective houses, [17] the emperor himself could
not obtain the forgiveness which he had so easily granted. The same
grievances were still the subject of the same complaints, which were
industriously circulated by the wit and levity of the Syrian Greeks.
During the licentious days of the Saturnalia, the streets of the city
resounded with insolent songs, which derided the laws, the religion,
the personal conduct, and even the beard, of the emperor; the spirit
of Antioch was manifested by the connivance of the magistrates, and the
applause of the multitude. [18] The disciple of Socrates was too deeply
affected by these popular insults; but the monarch, endowed with a quick
sensibility, and possessed of absolute power, refused his passions
the gratification of revenge. A tyrant might have proscribed, without
distinction, the lives and fortunes of the citizens of Antioch; and
the unwarlike Syrians must have patiently submitted to the lust, the
rapaciousness and the cruelty, of the faithful legions of Gaul. A milder
sentence might have deprived the capital of the East of its honors and
privileges; and the courtiers, perhaps the subjects, of Julian, would
have applauded an act of justice, which asserted the dignity of the
supreme magistrate of the republic. [19] But instead of abusing, or
exerting, the a