Orations 1–64 by Libanius of Antioch

Contents

1. Βίος ἢ περὶ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ Τύχης Oration 1 (Autobiography)

   Libanius tells his own life to show that the gods made him neither the happiest nor the most wretched of men. The account begins with Antioch and his family and follows his career as a sophist; in one episode he defends the council before an angry Julian, who then asks him to honour the consular festival with a speech. It ends in his old age, with a four-month famine read as the gods' punishment, as Apollo once punished the Achaeans for Chryses.

2. Πρὸς τοὺς Βαρὺν αὐτὸν καλέσαντας Oration 2 (To Those Who Called Him Burdensome)

   Told through his friend Andromachus that some call him burdensome and overbearing, Libanius answers that the charge has waited until his sixty-seventh year. His defence is a record of his complaints: the ruin of the city councils, soldiers left hungry, cold and unshod by the officers who pocket their pay, and a prefect who would not listen. He ends with a petition that the gods help the temples, the farmers, the councils and the Greek language.

3. Πρὸς τοὺς Νέους περὶ τοῦ Λόγου Oration 3 (To the Young Men on Oratory)

   Asked by his students for the customary speech, Libanius explains why he has kept silent. The cause is their own conduct: their indifference to the wrongs done to him, and their failure to show the support that a sophist's pupils owe him, while older men and former pupils still praise his work. He says he held back from expelling an offender, sparing the family a disgrace that would last a lifetime, and promises his speeches again if they mend their ways.

4. Περὶ τοῦ μὴ ληρεῖν Oration 4 (On Not Talking Nonsense)

   A governor who often called Libanius a babbler in his own court is answered here before another. Old age, Libanius argues, does not rob a man of sense, citing Plato, Isocrates, Sophocles, Gorgias, Apollonius of Tyana and Homer's Nestor. He then turns on the governor's record: extortion from the cities, with Chalcis and Apamea as witnesses, and his present fear as he looks for a refuge outside Syria. It closes on the day the governor drove off rather than hear him.

5. Ἄρτεμις Oration 5 (Artemis)

   A thank-offering to Artemis in prose, given for Libanius's escape from death when heavy stones fell in a temple of Zeus. The hymn tells of her birth on Delos and her help at Apollo's birth, her care for women in childbirth, the Athenian month named for her and the girls brought to her before marriage, the deer on the coins of Ephesus, and her ending of human sacrifice. He likens his rescue to the Dioscuri's saving of Simonides.

6. Περὶ Ἀπληστίας Oration 6 (On Greed)

   Hardly anyone fails to blame Fortune, and greed is why: the man with one field wants two, and a thousand talents seem small beside two thousand. Examples include Hector wishing to be honoured like Apollo and Athena, an Egyptian legacy-hunter who befriended childless men and a victorious general who still feels cheated. The speech ends with a friend at the baths who learns that health and a free evening are cause enough for thanks.

7. Ὅτι τὸ πλουτεῖν ἀδίκως τοῦ πένεσθαι Ἀθλιώτερον Oration 7 (That Wealth Gained Unjustly Is More Wretched than Poverty)

   The evening before, a companion who had lamented the beggars of Antioch, maimed and half naked in the cold, called the rich men passing on their way to dinner happy. Libanius argues that wealth gained unjustly is the worse lot. Such men face the courts in this life and Minos in the next, some of them having seized shrines and built houses from the stones of temples, and the penalty falls on their children too.

8. Περὶ Πενίας Oration 8 (On Poverty)

   People count wealth in gold, land, slaves and ships, and grieve when Fortune unravels it; Libanius proposes another wealth and another poverty. Taking Alexander's saying that his friends were his treasure, he argues that a man who buries his friends grows poorer with each death, and that the rich can be poor in eloquence. He counts himself impoverished by the friends he has lost, and closes with Achilles, made poorer by the death of Patroclus.

9. Εἰς τὰς Καλάνδας Oration 9 (On the Calends)

   The feast of the Calends of January, kept across the whole Roman empire, receives its first praise from Libanius here. He describes the spending and banqueting, the gifts given and received, the respite from teachers and tutors for the young, the slave spared a beating, the courts closed and prisoners cheered, and quarrels made up. The new consuls take office at the festival, and he recalls that before a law forbade it the altars smoked with sacrifice on this new moon.

10. Περὶ τοῦ Πλέθρου Oration 10 (On the Plethron)

    The governor Proclus had enlarged the Plethron, the building where the athletes of Antioch's Olympic festival competed in the afternoons, and many thanked him for it. Libanius blames the councillors who flattered the plan rather than oppose it, and argues that a larger building would draw a crowd unfit to watch, drown the herald's call for silence and spoil the games. He foresees the uproar and partisan fighting in the bigger hall, with blame passing from Proclus to his father.

11. Ἀντιοχικός Oration 11 (Antiochikos (In Praise of Antioch))

    Libanius's praise of Antioch, his native city, which he says he had owed it for too long. It covers the city's site, climate and waters, its founding and history, its council, which is honoured by prefects and emperors and gives governors to the provinces, and a people worthy of that council. It ends by placing Antioch above its rivals for its mild winter, its people's wit and its Greek learning, a city that makes visitors forget their homes.

12. Εἰς Ἰουλιανὸν Αὐτοκράτορα Ὕπατον Oration 12 (To the Emperor Julian, Consul)

    Delivered at Antioch when Julian entered his consulship in 363, this panegyric opens with Libanius seeing a consul in his robes for the first time, and that consul the emperor. It recounts Julian's victories on the Rhine, his rebuilding of ruined cities and his care for the gods, with a comparison drawn from the battle at Potidaea. It closes with a wish that the army may dine in Susa with Persians pouring the wine, and with the slaves freed at the ceremony.

13. Προσφωνητικὸς Ἰουλιανῷ Oration 13 (Address to Julian (Prosphonetikos))

    On Julian's arrival at Antioch, Libanius greets him with the claim that honour for oratory has come back with the temples, since speeches first turned the emperor to the gods. After a line from Alcaeus, he praises Julian's descent and his campaigns in Gaul, where he fought in the front rank and made the defeated barbarians rebuild the cities they had destroyed. The address ends with a petition that the gods give the emperor the old age of Nestor.

14. Πρὸς Ἰουλιανὸν ὑπὲρ Ἀριστοφάνους Oration 14 (To Julian on Behalf of Aristophanes)

    Aristophanes of Corinth, ruined while the eunuchs held power under the previous reign, is Libanius's friend, and here he pleads with Julian on his behalf. He admits the man's bad name, sets out his misfortunes and calls on friends such as Dorion to vouch for him, recalling that Aristophanes was once stoned in the Lyceum for reading Libanius's speeches. He asks that Aristophanes be sent to Greece to report the sacrifices at Antioch and Daphne, and leaves the vote to the emperor.

15. Πρεσβευτικὸς πρὸς Ἰουλιανόν Oration 15 (Embassy to Julian)

    Opening with Eumaeus's welcome to Telemachus from the Odyssey, Libanius speaks as Antioch's envoy, asking Julian to lay aside his anger at the city. He admits its fault but recalls the euchai offered to the gods for Julian's victory and the joy at his accession, and pleads for mercy as a second victory. If he fails, he says, he means to change his name and dress and live among the charcoal-burners of the mountains.

16. Πρὸς Ἀντιοχέας περὶ τῆς τοῦ Βασιλέως Ὀργῆς Oration 16 (To the Antiochenes on the Emperor's Anger)

    Having pleaded Antioch's case with the emperor, Libanius now tells its citizens what they must hear about Julian's anger. Citing Demosthenes, he blames them for the abusive songs spread through the city against a just ruler, which no one stopped. He urges them to leave the races, go to the temples, win back the gods and send word to the Choaspes that Antioch has made its defence, before the emperor's displeasure becomes lasting.

17. Μονῳδία ἐπὶ Ἰουλιανῷ Oration 17 (Monody on Julian)

    A lament for Julian, which begins with a Homeric cry of grief and the claim that the whole Roman world has lost its pillar, as Troy lost Hector. Libanius asks which god to blame and recalls the campaign in Persia, the plundering of the Assyrian land and the battle by night, while Antioch, knowing nothing, danced for the nymphs at Daphne. He ends with his double grief for emperor and friend, and the speech of reconciliation he had been writing.

18. Ἐπιτάφιος ἐπὶ Ἰουλιανῷ Oration 18 (Funeral Oration for Julian)

    Libanius's funeral speech for Julian, whose body had been brought back from the borders of Babylon. It follows the emperor's life from his youth and studies through Gaul and the march east, his restoration of the temples and of honour for learning, his appointment of educated governors, and two speeches, each written in a single night, one against a Cynic and one on the Mother of the Gods. It ends with an address to Julian as the gods' pupil and companion.

19. Πρὸς Θεοδόσιον τὸν Βασιλέα περὶ τῆς Στάσεως Oration 19 (To Theodosius on the Riot)

    After the riot at Antioch in 387, in which the imperial statues were attacked, Libanius presents himself at court as the city's self-appointed envoy, ignoring the warnings of age and friends. He sets out how the trouble began, how a commander with archers held back until he had to save a house, and how the arsonists and those who attacked the statues were caught. He asks Theodosius to pardon the city and let the fugitives come home.

20. Πρὸς Θεοδόσιον τὸν Βασιλέα ἐπὶ ταῖς Διαλλαγαῖς Oration 20 (To Theodosius on the Reconciliation)

    Theodosius has pardoned Antioch for the riot of 387, and Libanius thanks him in the city's name, in the only coin it has, words. He does not spare the city: the reading of the emperor's letter, the gang that formed in the court and attacked the governor's doors, the assault on the statues. He sets the riot against the festival mockery of images at Edessa, which was play rather than outrage, and closes by imagining the Muses, Hermes and Apollo praising the emperor's mercy.

21. Εἰς Καισάριον Μάγιστρον Oration 21 (To Caesarius, Master of Offices)

    Addressed to Caesarius, the master of offices sent to Antioch after the riot of 387, and given before an audience. Libanius keeps a promise to record in a speech what Caesarius did for the city: his haste to free the council from prison and the city from disgrace, and his swift journey to court with good fortune behind him. He closes by asking Caesarius to buy land at Antioch and become a citizen, and by mentioning his own approaching death.

22. Εἰς Ἑλλέβιχον Oration 22 (On Hellebichus)

    Unasked, Libanius praises the general Hellebichus for his part in the inquiry at Antioch after the riot of 387. He recalls the levy of gold for Theodosius's tenth year and his son's fifth that set off the trouble, the trials that followed, and the general's mercy when the mother of a young man on trial loosed her grey hair and wept at his feet. He ends with the city's grief at Hellebichus's recall to court and asks for him back.

23. Κατὰ τῶν πεφευγότων Oration 23 (Against Those Who Fled)

    Bandits fell on the Antiochenes who fled the city in fear of punishment after the riot of 387, and Libanius, telling of their dead in the fields and mountains, rebukes the fugitives and the rich men who carried off their silver. The city, he admits, has lost its rank and its theatre and hippodrome, but his teaching goes on, and those who fled, he says, must face its gates and its school of rhetoric with shame.

24. Περὶ τῆς Τιμωρίας Ἰουλιανοῦ Oration 24 (On the Avenging of Julian)

    The defeats in Thrace, Macedonia and the Illyrian lands, Libanius tells Theodosius, are the gods' punishment for leaving Julian's murder unavenged. He urges an inquiry into who planned the killing, who struck the blow, for what reward and with whose knowledge, and blames the indifference that has let the guilty go free. Vengeance for Julian, he promises, would bring Thrace back under the plough and reopen the pass at Thermopylae.

25. Περὶ Δουλείας Oration 25 (On Slavery)

    Slave and free, Libanius argues, differ only in name, since everyone serves some master. He starts from Hecuba's words to Agamemnon in Euripides' Hecuba and asks whether even the gods are free. The farmer is slave to wind and rain, the sailor and merchant to the sea, to poverty and to pirates, and whole cities change owners in war. Whether the philosopher alone is free he leaves for another occasion.

26. Πρὸς Ἰκάριον Oration 26 (To Icarius)

    Written as a friend's advice to Icarius, the new count of the East, this speech tells him that only a few men enriched under his predecessor Proclus long for Proclus's return, not the city as a whole. Libanius warns him against soldiers who still owe Proclus favours, against flattering the people, and against the booths set up between the columns to raise money. He ends by hoping that Icarius may prove a friend in return.

27. Κατὰ Ἰκαρίου Αʹ Oration 27 (Against Icarius I)

    Having praised what was good in Icarius's conduct, Libanius now sets out what was bad, as he says other writers fail to do. Icarius distrusts sound advice: he ignored Libanius when a broken bridge cut off the city's supplies and shut his door on the physician Thallus, while he listened to a drunken adviser who had squandered his estate. The speech ends with the governor's declaration that he hates everyone in Antioch.

28. Κατὰ Ἰκαρίου Βʹ Oration 28 (Against Icarius II)

    In a second attack on Icarius, made before Theodosius, Libanius asks that Icarius's verses on the emperor's deeds should not count in his favour. The charge is his treatment of the city councils: the young Lamachus, who had paid the gold he owed, beaten almost to death before the eyes of Cyriacus, a brigand slave in Icarius's favour, and the abuse of Lampadius, Philodemus and other councillors of Arados. Libanius asks the emperor to enforce the laws protecting the councils.

29. Ὑπὲρ ἑαυτοῦ διὰ τὴν πρὸς Ἀντίοχον Συνηγορίαν Oration 29 (In Defence of His Advocacy for Antiochus)

    In a bread shortage at Antioch, when buyers fought over loaves, the soldier Candidus beat the baker Antiochus, and Libanius took the baker's part. He answers critics who called his help wicked: had he not protested, Candidus would have gone on to beat every baker, the bakers would have fled to the mountains again and the city would have starved. He let the soldier go unpunished for the sake of Augarus, the soldier's brother and his own friend.

30. Πρὸς Θεοδόσιον τὸν Βασιλέα ὑπὲρ τῶν Ἱερῶν Oration 30 (To Theodosius on Behalf of the Temples)

    The temples, above all the shrines of the countryside, which monks were attacking and stripping without the emperor's order, are the subject of this appeal to Theodosius. Libanius argues that worship must be won by persuasion, not force, that those who claim converts have won only pretence, and that the temples do the empire no harm. If the attacks go on without the emperor's consent, he warns, the owners of the land are ready to defend themselves and the law.

31. Πρὸς τοὺς Ἀντιοχέας ὑπὲρ τῶν Ῥητόρων Oration 31 (To the Antiochenes on Behalf of the Rhetors)

    Libanius's assistant teachers are poor, and here he asks the people of Antioch to relieve them. He points out that the four of them now share the stipend one man once drew, proposes that they be granted farmland as an earlier holder had been, and answers the talk in the workshops that pupils' fees make teachers rich. He closes by calling on councillors by name, among them Eubulus, Hilarius, Letoius and Arsenius, to vote for the grant.

32. Πρὸς Νικοκλέα περὶ Θρασυδαίου Oration 32 (To Nicocles on Thrasydaeus)

    Charged by some with wronging Thrasydaeus, Libanius thanks Nicocles for not believing it and tells him the story. In the baths of Trajan councillors told him of a dinner at which the general urged an embassy to the emperor after the city's unrest; they had agreed to go and wanted the sophist Eusebius as a fourth envoy. Thrasydaeus, who later pleaded illness, turned on Libanius in the belief that he had got Menedemus released from the embassy.

33. Πρὸς Θεοδόσιον τὸν Βασιλέα κατὰ Τισαμενοῦ Oration 33 (To Theodosius against Tisamenus)

    An indictment of Tisamenus, governor of Syria, laid before Theodosius. Libanius portrays a man of good family who left his studies to write songs for the stage dancers, and who in office humiliated Antioch by setting the council of Beroea above its own and denying it the rank of metropolis. He ends on prisons so crowded that men die in them before trial, and asks for a governor able to persuade rather than compel.

34. Πρὸς τὰς τοῦ Παιδαγωγοῦ Βλασφημίας Oration 34 (Against the Slanders of the Paedagogus)

    Speaking to his pupils, Libanius answers a boy's attendant who had insulted him and rebukes the students for bearing it so calmly. The quarrel began over a display speech by a fifteen-year-old orphan of good family; to the charge of neglect Libanius replies that the trouble in his joints is the work of Fortune, not his fault. He closes with a portrait of the overbearing attendant, set against the modest one who once served the boy's father.

35. Πρὸς τοὺς οὐ λέγοντας Oration 35 (To Those Who Do Not Speak)

    Young councillors who stay mute in the courts and before governors are the target here, and Libanius, their teacher, reproaches them for it. A councillor's task, he argues, is to speak, advise and oppose, not to pay for timber, baths, horses, athletes and beast-hunts; he reminds them how they hated Demosthenes and resented his own corrections of their wording. He urges them to win a better name than the hares they are now called, so that the city might send them on embassies.

36. Περὶ τῶν Φαρμάκων Oration 36 (On the Drugs)

    The sorcery worked against Libanius's psychē and body, with its drugs and chameleons, is his greatest grief, and he complains to his students that friends would not even discuss it. To show the attack was no revenge for any wrong of his, he goes through his conduct towards each group in the city, including the teachers, whom the man from Ascalon once threatened and beat. He ends bitterly: a bewitched charioteer stirs the whole city, his own suffering nobody.

37. Πρὸς Πολυκλέα Oration 37 (To Polycles)

    Polycles had stopped calling on Libanius each afternoon, and Libanius makes public why. In a talk about Julian's reign Polycles had sneered at the emperor's gifts of villages to eunuchs and repeated, on Elpidius's oath, a tale that the jewels of Julian's mother paid a doctor for the death of Julian's wife; Libanius's retort ended the friendship. He reminds Polycles of the governorship of Phoenicia he owed to Julian, and mocks his taste for the company of sorcerers.

38. Κατὰ Σιλβανοῦ Oration 38 (Against Silvanus)

    An attack on Silvanus, son of the teacher Gaudentius and once Libanius's pupil, who had made money pleading cases beyond the Euphrates. Libanius recalls that Silvanus alone rejoiced at the injury to his foot, and charges him with tyrannising his aged father, locking the doors and leaving the old man to sit hungry by the stairs. He ends by urging the council to hold Silvanus to his liturgies and so humble him.

39. Ἀντιόχῳ Παραμυθητικός Oration 39 (Consolation to Antiochus)

    A consolation of an unusual kind: Antiochus is grieved that Mixidemus has sided with a rival teacher against him, and Libanius argues that such an ally is a loss to the side he joins. The rest is a portrait of Mixidemus as a courtroom intriguer who wins judges and generals with game, wine and gifts, ending in a charge of incest worse than that of Thyestes. Antiochus is urged to answer with his own gift for verse, as Archilochus would.

40. Πρὸς Εὐμόλπιον Oration 40 (To Eumolpius)

    Honest blame, Libanius tells his friend Eumolpius, is the mark of friendship, and he cites Diomedes, Odysseus and Patroclus to prove it. He then sets out the slights he has suffered from Eumolpius and his brother: an affair concerning one Alexander, and an encomium they begged him to compose. The speech closes asking Eumolpius to mind the time to come and to keep his friends as admirers rather than critics.

41. Πρὸς Τιμοκράτην Oration 41 (To Timocrates)

    Timocrates, governor at Antioch, has come back from the theatre downcast because the claque withheld its usual acclamations. Libanius explains that these hired shouters sell their applause to officials and silence the rest of the audience by threats, and argues that a city's love lies with councillors, teachers, farmers and traders, not with them. He holds up Philagrius, who watched the shows in silence, and urges Timocrates to show that he scorns their praise.

42. Ὑπὲρ Θαλασσίου Oration 42 (On Behalf of Thalassius)

    Libanius pleads before the emperor for his friend Thalassius, whom the senate at Constantinople had refused to admit to its ranks. He explains how Thalassius became his friend and turns on the opponents, above all Optatus, exposing him through the procurer Sabinianus, who had once tried to prey on Libanius's students. He asks the emperor to console Thalassius and to trust him with a governorship.

43. Περὶ τῶν Συνθηκῶν Oration 43 (On the Treaties)

    Students at Antioch moved freely from one teacher to another, and Libanius argues here for a compact among the teachers to stop it. He answers the fathers who claim the right to place their sons wherever they like, holding that once a teacher is chosen the boy should stay with him, and calls desertions the worst of the schools' troubles. He ends by proposing that the agreements be examined and kept.

44. Εἰς Εὐστάθιον τὸν Κᾶρα Oration 44 (In Praise of Eustathius the Carian)

    A promise is kept in this short speech: Libanius had undertaken to praise the man who applauded him the day before, not yet knowing that it was Eustathius of Caria, a grown man in Athenian dress. He tells of Eustathius's voyage to Athens to study, his refusal to join the students' brawls there, and his displays in the cities of Phoenicia and Palestine, and ends on his gentle voice and manner.

45. Πρὸς τὸν Βασιλέα περὶ τῶν Δεσμωτῶν Oration 45 (To the Emperor on the Prisoners)

    Men held in prison without trial are the subject of this appeal to the emperor. Libanius argues that to die before conviction is to be wronged, complains that governors give their days to hearing tax cases while the cases of prisoners wait, and asks that officials who ignore the laws on prisoners be treated as rebels. He closes urging governors who adorn the cities to give the prisons room as well.

46. Κατὰ Φλωρεντίου Oration 46 (Against Florentius)

    Libanius explains to the emperor why he no longer calls on Florentius, a young governor he had once praised for his mildness. Florentius, he charges, presses the poor for taxes down to the cobblers, so that parents sell their children into slavery. The speech ends on his building of colonnades, for which graves have been opened and the bones of the city's dead scattered, and asks the emperor to stop it.

47. Περὶ τῶν Προστασιῶν Oration 47 (On Patronage)

    On the patronage that soldiers and their commanders extended to villages, which let peasants defy their landlords and the tax collectors. Libanius describes the practice, his own tenants included, and compares it to a frontier city that calls in barbarians against a neighbour. He asks the emperor to give his own law against such patronage force by punishing those who disobey it, or else to repeal it.

48. Πρὸς τὴν Βουλήν Oration 48 (To the Council)

    Speaking to the council of Antioch, Libanius tells its members that they themselves are to blame for its decline. They let councillors' sons sail to Berytus for law and to Rome for Latin, a training for escaping the council, and keep silent before the governors; none of them faces the generals on a colleague's behalf, as Letoius did. He bids them bring new members onto the council, whatever purse it pains, and make it flourish again.

49. Πρὸς τὸν Βασιλέα ὑπὲρ τῶν Βουλῶν Oration 49 (To the Emperor on Behalf of the Councils)

    The emperor and his prefect have restored the city councils to their number in law, but the councillors themselves, Libanius charges, keep it from taking effect. He traces the councils' decline from prosperity under an emperor who weakened them and favoured the city he had founded, and denies those who betray the council the excuse of fear. He closes by tying the fall of the councils to that of rhetoric, asking for both council-chambers and schools to be restored.

50. Ὑπὲρ τῶν Γεωργῶν περὶ τῶν Ἀγγαρειῶν Oration 50 (On Behalf of the Farmers on the Angareia)

    Peasants coming into Antioch with their beasts were made to carry out the rubble of the city's building works, and Libanius asks the emperor to end the practice. He argues that the cost belongs to the public building fund, that no official may make himself master of another man's animals, and that the emperor's revenue comes from the farmers. He proposes that the architects declare the loads moved and that both the granters and the takers of the favour pay.

51. Πρὸς τὸν Βασιλέα κατὰ τῶν προσεδρευόντων τοῖς Ἄρχουσιν Oration 51 (To the Emperor against Those Who Attend Upon Officials)

    Laws need judges, and Libanius argues before the emperor that judges are corrupted by the men who throng governors' residences. Among the callers he counts teachers who neglect their pupils to be there, and he shows how favours promised at governors' dinners bring trouble on the innocent. He asks for a law to shut officials' doors to such visitors and to put a stop to the drinking parties.

52. Πρὸς τὸν Βασιλέα Εἰσφορὰ Νόμου κατὰ τῶν εἰσιόντων εἰς τὰς τῶν Ἀρχόντων Καταγωγάς Oration 52 (To the Emperor: Proposed Law against Those Entering Offices)

    Libanius proposes to the emperor a law barring visitors from the residences of governors. He sets the war waged with arms beside the war fought through the courts and, citing Theognis, argues that bad company corrupts and is the more numerous; teachers too are to be shut out. A governor, he says, can talk with his cook, his wife or his assessor; the emperor should fortify the offices against commands from men who hold none.

53. Περὶ τῶν ἐν ταῖς Ἑορταῖς Κλήσεων Oration 53 (On Invitations at Festivals)

    At Antioch's Olympic games the president's banquets in honour of Zeus once had their own guests, and Libanius protests at the new custom of inviting the young. He recalls that gifts to the diners were once added and later abolished, so a novelty can be undone, and describes fathers who send their sons off with advice to eat their fill, so that they come home ill. He notes that he kept his own son from such dinners.

54. Πρὸς Εὐστάθιον περὶ τῶν Τιμῶν Oration 54 (To Eustathius on Honours)

    Eustathius had courted Libanius before his governorship, kissing his knees and promising him honours; here Libanius sets out, before friends who serve as his advocates, how he was treated once Eustathius held office. He tells of a councillor threatened with the torturers when Libanius came to help him, of a mime taken for an adviser, and of his own lawsuit that the governor never brought to trial. He ends on Eustathius's anger that Libanius did not weep at his fall.

55. Πρὸς Ἀναξέντιον Oration 55 (To Anaxentius)

    Anaxentius, a student at Antioch, has been unsettled by letters from his father calling him home, and Libanius advises him to stay. He insists on the honour owed to a father, but recalls that the Greeks stayed at Troy though their homes suffered, quoting Thucydides on the troubles of their late return; leaving early, the young man would be a sophist without a school or victories. He tells Anaxentius to treat those who advise otherwise as enemies of him and his father.

56. Κατὰ Λουκιανοῦ Oration 56 (Against Lucianus)

    Few of Antioch went out to meet Lucianus, and Libanius, though he went himself, argues that the slight was deserved. He lists the insults Lucianus heaped on the council: audiences cut to four days a month, latecomers shut out, orders unfit for its members, and a claque raised above it that reviled even the prefects from Lycia, father and son. He ends faulting the council for failing to defend itself when it could.

57. Κατὰ Σευήρου Oration 57 (Against Severus)

    Before judges, Libanius defends his break with Severus, entrusted to him as a pupil by his father and now in high office, against the reproaches of their friend Antiochus. He charges Severus with harshness to debtors, contrasting the patience of creditors and the law that lets a judge grant time. The close mocks a man raised from the mills to power who forgets where he came from, and asks the gods to show him for the jackdaw of the fable.

58. Πρὸς τοὺς Νέους περὶ τοῦ Τάπητος Oration 58 (To the Young on the Tapestry)

    Tossing their attendants in a rug is the new sickness among Libanius's students, worse than an earlier one that he cured by advice alone. He describes the humiliation of the victims, rejects the excuse that one attendant had wronged a teacher of Latin, and prefers rebuke to the whip. Even those who only stood by, he says, share the guilt.

59. Βασιλικὸς εἰς Κωνστάντιον καὶ Κώνσταντα Oration 59 (Imperial Oration for Constantius and Constans)

    A panegyric of the brothers Constantius and Constans, headed by a note on its design: shared praise at the start and end, with each brother's wars treated apart in between. Libanius praises the emperors' family and upbringing, the Scythians beyond the Danube brought to keep the peace, and the war against Persia. The close pictures an empire open to travel and trade, its peoples singing as one chorus led by two.

60. Μονῳδία εἰς τὸν ἐν τῇ Δάφνῃ Νεὼν τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος Oration 60 (Monody on the Temple of Apollo at Daphne)

    Mourning the temple of Apollo at Daphne, outside Antioch, burnt in 362, Libanius recalls the Persian king who took the city yet spared the shrine when the god appeared to him. He asks how a small spark did what no army had, and pictures the statue's head, libation bowl, lyre and long robe consumed. He ends with a petition that Apollo rage as he did at Chryses' curse on the Achaeans.

61. Μονῳδία ἐπὶ Νικομηδείᾳ Oration 61 (Monody on Nicomedia)

    Nicomedia, where Libanius had made his name as a teacher, lies in ruins after the earthquake of 358, and this monody mourns it. He calls Poseidon to account, recalls the eagle and serpent that marked the city's founding, and describes walls, columns and roofs collapsing on a crowded morning. The lament ends with the empty harbour that ships now avoid, and with his wish for wings to carry him to the site.

62. Πρὸς τοὺς εἰς τὴν Παιδείαν αὐτὸν ἀποσκώψαντας Oration 62 (To Those Who Mocked His Education)

    Men who mocked his teaching in the market-place, saying he could write speeches but not teach, are answered here by Libanius in his own defence. He points to pupils active in public life, among them the sons of Agesilaus at Ancyra, a Cappadocian and speakers in Cilicia, and closes by turning on a young detractor who thinks himself no worse than Zeus, calling his childlessness a mercy of Fortune to the cities.

63. Ὑπὲρ Ὀλυμπίου Oration 63 (On Behalf of Olympius)

    Slanderers have attacked his friend Olympius now that he is dead, and Libanius speaks to defend him, owing him a debt of gratitude. He recalls the visits paid during Olympius's last illness, takes up charges of bribery and of dealings with corrupt governors, and ends with a warning that the dead hear what is said of them and avenge it, foretelling ruin for the slanderers' children, wives and daughters.

64. Πρὸς Ἀριστείδην ὑπὲρ τῶν Ὀρχηστῶν Oration 64 (To Aristides on Behalf of the Dancers)

    Aelius Aristides had attacked the pantomime dancers two centuries before, and in this long speech Libanius answers him and takes their part, aware that friends would think the cause beneath him. He argues that if imitated gestures corrupted the watcher, the real gestures of mothers, sisters and servants would do worse, and closes on the dancer of Priene, who refused to dance Freedom in an enslaved city until Antiochus set Priene free.