n
ascended the throne, he declared his impatience to embrace and reward
the Syrian sophist, who had preserved, in a degenerate age, the
Grecian purity of taste, of manners, and of religion. The emperor's
prepossession was increased and justified by the discreet pride of his
favorite. Instead of pressing, with the foremost of the crowd, into
the palace of Constantinople, Libanius calmly expected his arrival
at Antioch; withdrew from court on the first symptoms of coldness and
indifference; required a formal invitation for each visit; and taught
his sovereign an important lesson, that he might command the obedience
of a subject, but that he must deserve the attachment of a friend.
The sophists of every age, despising, or affecting to despise, the
accidental distinctions of birth and fortune, [25] reserve their esteem
for the superior qualities of the mind, with which they themselves are
so plentifully endowed. Julian might disdain the acclamations of a venal
court, who adored the Imperial purple; but he was deeply flattered by
the praise, the admonition, the freedom, and the envy of an independent
philosopher, who refused his favors, loved his person, celebrated his
fame, and protected his memory. The voluminous writings of Libanius
still exist; for the most part, they are the vain and idle compositions
of an orator, who cultivated the science of words; the productions of
a recluse student, whose mind, regardless of his contemporaries, was
incessantly fixed on the Trojan war and the Athenian commonwealth.
Yet the sophist of Antioch sometimes descended from this imaginary
elevation; he entertained a various and elaborate correspondence; [26]
he praised the virtues of his own times; he boldly arraigned the abuse
of public and private life; and he eloquently pleaded the cause of
Antioch against the just resentment of Julian and Theodosius. It is the
common calamity of old age, [27] to lose whatever might have rendered it
desirable; but Libanius experienced the peculiar misfortune of surviving
the religion and the sciences, to which he had consecrated his genius.
The friend of Julian was an indignant spectator of the triumph of
Christianity; and his bigotry, which darkened the prospect of the
visible world, did not inspire Libanius with any lively hopes of
celestial glory and happiness. [28]

[Footnote 24: Libanius, Orat. Parent. c. vii. p. 230, 231.]

[Footnote 25: Eunapius reports, that Libanius refused the honorary rank