Letters of Julian/Letter 59

by Julian

59. To Maximus the Philosopher^[1]

We are told in the myth that the eagle,^[2] when he would test which of his brood are genuine, carries them still unfledged into the upper air and exposes them to the rays of the sun, to the end that he may become, by the testimony of the god, the sire of a true nursling and disown any spurious offspring. Even so I submit my speeches^[3] to you as though to Hermes the god of eloquence; and, if they can bear the test of being heard by you, it rests with you to decide concerning them whether they are fit to take flight to other men also. But if they are not, then fling them away as though disowned by the Muses, or plunge them in a river as bastards. Certainly the Rhine does not mislead the Celts,^[4] for it sinks deep in its eddies their bastard infants, like a fitting avenger of an adulterous bed; but all those that it recognises to be of pure descent it supports on the surface of the water and gives them back to the arms of the trembling mother, thus rewarding her with the safety of her child as incorruptible evidence that her marriage is pure and without reproach.

Footnotes

1. Letters 59-73 cannot be dated, even approximately, from their contents. Cumont and Geffcken reject, without good grounds, Schwarz defends, the authenticity of this sophistic letter, which was probably written from Gaul.
2. A rhetorical commonplace; cf. To Iamblichus, p. 259, note; Lucian, The Fisherman 46.
3. The allusion to Julian's writings is too vague to be used to date this letter.
4. A commonplace of rhetoric; cf. Julian, Vol. 1, Oration 2. 81d; Claudian, In Rufinum 2. 112, et quos nascentes explorat gurgite Rhenus; Galen 6. 51 Kuhn, says that the ordeal was to strengthen their bodies as well as to test their legitimacy; cf. Voltaire, Essai sur les moeurs 146.