Dr. Jeremy Swist

I hope he apologized for having the nerve to say those things in the first place.

78. One example of a letter of Julian that's very likely a fake is addressed to "the community of the Jews," which promises to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Its concessions to the Jews are over the top: for instance, he says any officials who have mistreated them will be punished with execution.

77. Julian also surely wrote far more letters than the collection of over 100 that we currently possess. That collection as we've received it from antiquity & Byzantium is also full of forgeries & misattributed letters, like those of some other Julian to the philosopher Iamblichus.

76. Of the few major literary works of Julian that don't survive intact, the most notable is "Against the Galileans," too anti-Christian to justify copying & re-copying. However, the 5th-century bishop Cyril of Alexandria quotes several substantial fragments of it in his "Against Julian."

75. Beyond religion, Julian's reputation in Byzantium was moderately positive: he was seen as a patriotic & competent ruler, while his best qualities were literary. His writings remained popular enough as stylistic models that much of them survive to this day.

74. Julian's reception in Byzantium was only negative when it came to religion. His "apostasy" & opposition to Xtianity were obviously condemned. But he also became an exemplum of an emperor who opposed the church in any way. Many an emperor thought to oppose orthodoxy was called a "new Julian."

73. Some of Julian's pagan contemporaries believed the emperor's body should have been entombed elsewhere. Libanius wanted him buried in the Academy of Athens next to Plato, while Ammianus Marcellinus wanted his mausoleum by the Tiber river in Rome, just like that of Augustus & Hadrian.

72. Julian's body was eventually transferred from Antioch to Constantinople, to be interred in his dynastic tomb at the church of the Holy Apostles. The porphyry sarcophagus now outside the Istanbul Archaeological Museum is thought to be his, due to its lack of Christian iconography.

71. After Julian died from a battle wound in June 363, his body was intially interred in a tomb in Tarsus in Cilicia. This is possibly in accordance with his threat not to return to Antioch after the Persian campaign, & that he would use Tarsus for winter quarters instead.

70. Julian considered Diogenes the Cynic a philosophical & religious exemplar, despite him never sacrificing or entering temples. This was because he was what we'd now call a "pagan holy man," capable of giving exclusively "intellectual gift," i.e. exchaning his whole life for that of the gods.

71. After dying from a battle wound in June 363, Julian's body was intially interred in a tomb in Tarsus in Cilicia. This is possibly in accordance with his threat not to return to Antioch after the Persian campaign, & that he would use Tarsus for winter quarters instead.

Early-career precarious academics in August be like:

69. Like most Neoplatonists of his day, Julian saw the mutual compatibility of formerly competing sects of Hellenistic philosophy - Pythagoreanism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Cynicism - with the exception of Epicureanism, whose quasi-atheistic theology & ethics, to him, resemble Xtianity

68. Julian similarly describes the emperor Augustus in the "Caesars" as "changing colors like a chameleon" to describe his lack of moral integrity; but then Apollo sent Zeno the Stoic to transmute him into "pure gold" & "a man of intelligence & self-control." Like Julian, he was saved by philosophy.

I don't care if a band has antifascist or leftist themes. I want more bands to BE openly antifascist.

NON SIE! SED OMNIBUS 山 Never ever ever write a song about Sibi? HA HA Bad advice "Not for oneself but for all" Or "not for oneself but for everyone" This rock wants you to sell out

The face of an orange cat with green eyes watching a xenomorph brutally kill someone.

Just finished watching a movie where everyone is doomed by the fictional equivalent of Chat-GPT and by not listening to any women or people of color.

67. Julian singles out Paul as representative of Xtianity's moral baselessness, given that he preaches, as he sees it, contradictory messages to the Jews & the Gentiles. Using a commonplace from the poet Theognis, he compares Paul to an octopus, changing his colors to appeal to different audiences.

66. Julian's "Against the Galileans" includes a systematic takedown of Genesis as an inferior creation story to that of Plato's Timaeus. He takes issue with the association of knowledge of good & evil with humanity's downfall. Rather, he would consider the serpent to be the "benefactor of humankind"

good thread!

The Temple of Tyche is the only named temple in the sources that he presumably refurbished.

65. Julian considered all traditional pagan religions as equally legitimate because they originate through divine revelation through oracles & prophets (i.e. theurgists) in deepest antiquity. Therefore Judaism, as it was practiced when the Temple still stood, was just as legitimate in his eyes.

64. The Neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus supplies Julian the rationale for the preservation of traditional religion. All pagan rituals, inclduing & especially sacrifices, are a form of theurgy, i.e. means of enacting the gods' presence & activity on earth.

63. Like a good Roman, Julian attributes the fundamentals of Roman religion to king Numa Pompilius. He would've read allegorically the legend that the king received all his knowledge from his girlfriend, the nymph Egeria - to mean that Numa united his soul with the divine intellect through theurgy.

62. Julian interprets the tending of the eternal flame in the temple of Vesta in Rome as a form of solar cult, because whenever it goes out they must relight it using pure sunlight by means of focusing mirrors - the same principle behind Archimedes' so-called death ray.

61. Julian cites the Romans' solar calendar as proof of their natural piety, since they don't begin the year at any point related to agricultural practicality like others do, but just after the winter solstice, i.e. the symbolic rebirth of the sun god Helios.

60. Julian had deep respect for Egyptian antiquity like any Platonist of his day, especially for their emphasis on solar worship. He singles out the Romans and Egyptians for this quality by noting that while everyone else tended to use a lunar calendar, only the Romans & Egyptians used a solar one.

59. Much of what Julian did on behalf of Constantinople was what any emperor resident in a city for several months would have done to maintain good relations with the populace. This included forwarding the city's request to erect an Egyptian obelisk in the city. Theodosius got it there eventually.