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10 Gregory’s Second Strike, Oration 5 Here is our stele for you, higher and more visible than the Stelae of Hercules. Those are merely planted in one place and are visible only for those who go there. This stele, instead, cannot but move about and make itself known to all; it will be read even in the future, of that I am certain, to shame you and your works [sa stēliteuousan], and to teach everyone not to attempt such a rebellion against God, lest they may be punished in like manner for having committed similar crimes.1 —Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 5.42 “‘The first of my declamatory strikes is completed and brought to an end.’ . . . ‘Now [on to] another target I do not know anyone else has already hit.’”2 Gregory begins his second oration against Julian innocuously enough, seamlessly interweaving a quotation from Homer’s Odyssey (22.5–6) with one from Proverbs (3:11–12) to alert his audience to what is to come. But in fact Gregory’s opening sentence encapsulateseverythingherepresents .ThecontextoftheseeminglyinnocuousremarkGregory quotes from Homer—my first strike is complete—is the brief pause before Odysseus’s second and final attack on the suitors who were still alive.3 Having already demonstrated his superior fighting skill in his first strike, Gregory as Odysseus will now kill all who have usurped his house: Julian and his followers. Gregory’s second strike will have such force because the “artful Logos and administrator of 433 1. Gr. Naz. Or. 5.42: Αὕτη σοι παρ’ ἡμῶν στήλη, τῶν Ἡρακλείων στηλῶν ὑψηλοτέρα τε καὶ περιφανεστέρα, . . . ἣν καὶ ὁ μέλλων ὑπολήψεται χρόνος, εὖ οἶδα, σέ τε καὶ τὰ σὰ στηλιτεύουσαν καὶ τοὺς λοιποὺς πάντας παιδεύουσαν μή τινα τοιαύτην κατὰ θεοῦ τολμᾶν ἐπανάστασιν, ἵνα μὴ τὰ ὅμοια δράσαντες τῶν ἴσων καὶ ἀντιτύχωσιν. 2. Gr. Naz. Or. 5.1: Οὗτος μὲν δὴ τῶν ἐμῶν λόγων ὁ πρῶτος ἄεθλος ἐκτετέλεσται καὶ διήνυσται. . . . νῦν αὖτε σκοπὸν ἄλλον, ὃν οὐκ οἶδ’ εἴ τις βέβληκεν, ἤδη τοῦ λόγου προστησόμεθα. 3. Gregory returned to the same Homeric episode in Or. 5.39, quoting the words of Odysseus’s chief cowherd while attacking Ctesippus (Od. 22.290). The editions used are Bernardi, ed. and trans., Grégoire de Nazianze: Discours 4–5 contre Julien; and Gregory of Nazianzus, La morte di Giuliano l’Apostata : Orazione 5, trans. and comm. Lugaresi (see 88–89, 173–74). our destiny” has already righted God’s balance (Prov. 16:11), according to which the punishment for evil, “those scourges he knows to use to educate” (Prov. 3:11– 12), is meted out sooner or later, without fail. The persecutor and Apostate had received his just punishment and was dead. Gregory’s first strike had, however, not been sufficient to eliminate all suitors who had so insidiously invaded his home— Odysseus’s house (if Gregory’s claim to own Greek logoi has not become obvious, here it is in a nutshell)—or there would have been no reason for him to pursue a discussion of Julian’s divine visions, his Persian campaign, the circumstances of his death, and his apotheosis. At the time of Oration 5 Julian and what he represented was as urgent a topic of debate as it had been immediately after his demise, if not more. This was so because Gregory composed Oration 5 during the troublesome period of Procopius’s usurpation . Procopius was Julian’s cousin and, as comes, had been in Persia in charge of a small army that was to divert Shapur’s attention away from the main force while Julian advanced to Ctesiphon. He had been among those considered as Julian’s successor , had accompanied his bier to Tarsus, and, as last scion of the Flavian dynasty, had a stronger claim to legitimacy than either Jovian or the Pannonian Valens— and rumor had it that Julian on his deathbed had appointed Procopius as successor . On September 28, 365, Procopius declared himself Augustus in Constantinople . He found significant support in the city’s Christian and non-Christian elite circles and quickly gained control over Thrace and Bithynia (where Caesarius was then one of the highest financial officials).4 Procopius’s usurpation brought several issues into sharp focus. How had Julian (and Procopius) comported themselves in Persia, and what did the Persian campaign and the peace treaty ending it signify? How had Julian died, who was his legitimate successor, and how much legitimating force should Julian’s (purported) endorsement of Procopius assume? How relevant was a dynastic connection to Constantine and Constantius? Whom should the true Christian public official support as emperor? The Arian Pannonian Valens, or the Christian scion of Constantine and Constantius’s dynasty who, like Julian, presented himself with a beard and was Julian’s cousin? In sum, how should Julian be remembered and memorialized?5 Oration 5 engaged these questions head on, becoming in effect the most political of the first six orations (and the last in...

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