The aim of this third chapter is to consider Julian's Letter to Themistius and the lost letter from Ihemistius to which it was replying. I shall argue that the Letter to Ihemistius is to be dated to the early period of Julian's Caesarship and that the serious tension and misunderstanding between the two men that is evident in it reflects Julian's reaction to Themistius' misjudged congratulations on his appointment. At the end of the chapter I shall revisit Themistius' Letter to Julian and shall suggest speculatively that, while this was not a reply to Julian's onslaught, we might see it as a response which constituted a rethink on Themistius' part of what an imperial advisor was supposed to say to a ruler who was not appreciative of conventional praise. Before coming to this, I shall be moving from Julian's Letter to Themistius' general attitude towards Julian. On the evidence available to us it seems that their relationship did not recover from the assault in the Letter, and there are deliberately strong criticisms of the late emperor in some of Themistius' speeches to Jovian and Valens. I shall be examining the specific question of whether Themistius did nevertheless hold office under Julian, as the Suda records he did. It is possible that Themistius did serve, but perhaps briefly and unhappily. If that is right, the experience will have added to his later denigration of Julian.

The text presented here is essentially a corrected version of that printed by Bielawski and Plezia in their 1970 edition. I retain their section divisions. Heir text is based on two late medieval MSS, Aya Sofya 4260 and Fatih 5323, which were done by the same copyist. It also takes account of the readings of an early modern MS, Köprülü 1608. Bielawski and Plezia is available in a number of libraries for those readers who wish to consult their apparatus and their introduction on the manuscripts they used. He edition is unfortunately marred by poor typesetting, typographical errors, and omissions (occasionally even of whole sentences). For the most part these mistakes have been corrected silently. My text has been checked against that of Miklós Maróth in his recent (but not commonly available) edition of the whole of the ‘Epistolary Novel’, which presents a transcription of Aya Sofya 4260 and Fatih 5323 (Maróth 2006: 88–101). As Maróth notes, his text of the Letter is practically identical to that of Bielawski and Plezia. Maróth includes no section divisions or foliation. For §§9–10 I have consulted the ‘eclectic’ text constructed by Stern (1968) 8–10.

This volume presents texts, translations, and studies of four works of Greek political theory from the time of the Roman Empire. It is built around Themistius' Letter to Julian, a work of political advice and praise dating to the middle of the fourth century, which survives in a complete form only in Arabic translation. Themistius' Letter to Julian cannot be studied aside from Julian's own Letter to Themistius on the responsibilities of power, and this is the second major text treated here. To set the scene for these works I shall discuss a more standard political letter of the 340s or 350s, Sopater's Letter to Himerius, on his brother Himerius' responsibilities as a new governor. Finally, in the Appendix I shall complement the Letter to Julian by examining the only other genuine Greek treatise of political thought and advice to have been translated into Arabic, the Letter of Aristotle to Alexander, which appears to date to the period of the High Roman Empire and is wholly lost in Greek. Te studies around these four works touch on politics and political thinking in general but are not in any way designed to constitute a history of Greek political literature in the Roman period. Te focus is rather on the texts at hand and particularly on aspects of the career of Temistius and his relationship with Julian.

The main objective of this volume has been to present a new edition and first English translation of Themistius' Letter to Julian together with an interpretation of his purposes in writing, the extent to which he was reacting to Julian's Letter to Themistius, and aspects of his wider relations with Julian and other emperors. As I have remarked in the Introduction, it has not been my intention to offer a history of Greek political thought in the fourth century or in the wider Roman period on the basis of the Themistius or the other texts I have considered. In this epilogue I shall, however, briefly examine some characteristics and key additional examples of political writing from the third century to the end of the fourth century in order to provide further observations and background for the political letters and kingship literature I have been considering.

When Augustine remarks to his Lord at Confessions 6. 6. 9, ‘How you made me feel my wretchedness on that day when I was preparing to recite an encomium to the emperor, in which I was to tell numerous lies while the audience knowingly applauded me for lying’, the point of interest to us is the open understanding of the fiction integral to such speeches and the audience's approval of an orator who could skilfully deploy the backlist of themes for the current occasion and honorand. The job of this orator was selection and emphasis.

In this Appendix I introduce the fourth text and translation presented in this volume, the anonymous Letter of Aristotle to Alexander. This is the only genuine Greek political tract to have been translated into Arabic apart from Themistius' Letter to Julian. The date of it, however, is earlier than the texts relating to Themistius and Julian and is probably not later than the Principate. It is of considerable interest not simply for being another poorly known example of Greek political theory under Rome but also on account of its use of an historical fiction to convey its advice on statecraft.

Introduction

The Letter of Aristotle to Alexander, On the Government of the Cities (henceforth Letter on Government) is a short treatise of political advice in the guise of a letter from Aristotle to Alexander. The title is not original but is that given in one of its Arabic manuscripts and used in the published text, translation into French, and commentary of Bielawski and Plezia. The work survives only in Arabic. If there are parallels in classical literature, it is best to see them as part of the common property of writing on the good king rather than as actual citations, as some have wanted. The Letter as preserved forms part of a collection of fictitious letters from Aristotle to Alexander, almost certainly of Greek origin for the most part, which is commonly called the ‘Epistolary Novel’.

Sopater's Letter to Himerius is a letter of political advice to his brother Himerius following his appointment to a governorship somewhere in the eastern part of the empire. It is preserved in Stobaeus' Anthology (4. 5. 51-60). It constitutes an excellent but less well known example of the political writing which flourished in the fourth century and offers a convenient introduction to some of the issues that confronted Themistius and Julian. Its rather traditional contents build on the themes of earlier rulership literature, like the Letter of Aristotle to Alexander, but in background it is firmly rooted in the intellectual life of its age.

By late antiquity the letter format of advice on the best type of rulership was long established on the model of the real or fictitious letters of Aristotle, Plato, and others. The range of work from which an author could draw inspiration can be seen in the extracts (including Sopater's Letter) that are preserved in Chapters 4 to 8 of Book IV of Stobaeus' Anthology on the topics of elites, rulers, and kings. Stobaeus does not simply offer a convenient selection. His excerpts shed much light on the reading of the Neoplatonists, especially Iamblichus, in the later third and fourth century, for it is clear that their libraries (or anthologies made from them) were somehow available to him. It is a fair bet that the books from which he made or took over selections indicate some of the main intellectual reading of this period.

Editions of the Letter of Themistius

Cheikho, L. (1920) ‘Risāla fī l-siyāsa li-Dāmistīyūs. Naqalahā min al-lugha l-suryānīya Isḥāq b. Zurʿa’, al-Machriq 18: 881–9. Repr. in Anciens traités arabes (Beirut 1923) 1–11

Sālim, M. S. (1970) Risālat Thāmisīyūs ilā Yūliyān al-malik fī-l-siyāsa wa-tadbār al-mamlaka. [Letter of Themistius to King Julian on Government and the Management of the Kingdom]. Cairo

Shahid, I. (1974) ‘Epistula De re publica gerenda, arabice servata’, in H. Schenkl, G. Downey, A. F. Norman (eds.), Themistii orationes quae supersunt. vol. III (Leipzig). 73–119

Nemesius

The text of Nemesius Arabus is taken from the unpublished typescript thesis of Haji-Athanasiou (1985), with the correction of some minor slips. The edition is based principally on D = Damascus, Ẓahiriyya, MS ʿAmm 4871 (fols. 36a–37b, 4oa–62a; dated 1155). Haji-Athanasiou also used: A = Aleppo, Fondation George et Mathilde Salem, Salem Ar. 208 (formerly MS. Paul Sbath 1010) (fols. 1a–207b; originally Egyptian; fourteenth century; first 16 fols. end eighteenth century); B = Cairo, Coptic Patriachate, Theology 224 (fols. 1b–102a; dated 1744); C = Cairo, Coptic Patriachate, Theology 225 (fols. 2b–105a; seventeenth century). I refer to these occasionally on the basis of his apparatus. Note: a new edition and translation is being prepared by Samir, Starr, and Swain.

The Greek text of Nemesius is drawn from Morani's Teubner edition (1987), to which I refer by page and line number.

Sharples–van der Eijk = Sharples and van der Eijk (2008). I quote their English for Nemesius Graecus.

This second chapter studies Themistius' Letter to Julian, I have placed in the Annex to the chapter discussion of the transmission history of Themistius' Letter from its Greek original to the Arabic in which it survives, including details of the important evidence from Nemesius for its composition in the fourth century and for the reliability of the Arabic translation, and details of the evidence provided by the Arabic tradition for Julian as the addressee. At the end of Chapter 3, after examining Julian's Letter to Themistius, I shall return to the Themistius and offer some necessarily speculative thoughts on its relationship with Julian's Letter and on the relative dating of the two. In this chapter I shall be focussing on Themistius' selection of his material and his handling of the question of the ruler's relationship to the law.

Introduction

Anyone who glances at the Letter of Themistius will notice straightaway that its style is different from that of Themistius' orations. Tis has undoubtedly been a major factor in the several doubts that have been expressed about its authenticity, from the magisterial repudiation by Bidez to the understandable comments of Errington about the impossibility of taking the Letter as a translation of Themistius' speech on Julian's fourth consulship. As Errington has observed, we need to approach the Letter as a different kind of work and perhaps see it as deriving from an educational context: ‘We might even then stick with the attribution to Themistius'; but, he added, ‘preferable, however, is perhaps the assumption that a later theoretician of small abilities and little practical experience used the dramatic situation of Julian's accession … to imaginatively reconstruct e.g. Themistius’ lost Protreptikos . . . and had the insensitivity to envisage that the educator of an imperial prince might well have used such banal ideas’.