Eutropius would launch forth into accusations of heresy against the philosophers. Was it not a scandal to imagine that mankind—created after the image of God—could walk about upside down, and so bring Heaven into contempt? And when Julian, insulted by insults to his favourite philosophers, argued that the earth was shaped like a globe, Eutropius became serious and lost his temper, purple with fury and stamping his feet—
"It's that heathen, Mardonius, who teaches you these godless lies!"
When he got angry he would splutter and shower the hearer with his spittle, which Julian believed must be venomous. Exasperated, the monk would savagely attack all the Greek sages. Wounded to the quick by the suggestions of Julian, forgetting that his pupil was a mere child, he burst into serious harangues, accusing Pythagoras of being mad, impudent, audacious, affirming that the atrocious "Utopias" of Plato were not fit to read, and that the instruction of Socrates was clean against reason.
"Read what Diogenes Lærtius says of Socrates! You will see that not only was he a money-lender, but that he practised vices which no decent man can name."
Epicurus, above all, excited the whole of his rancour; the beastliness with which he plunged into pleasures of all kinds, the brutality with which he used to satisfy his sensual desires, were proof enough that he was less than human.
Resuming something of his habitual calm, Eutropius on this particular day betook himself to explaining some hair-splitting scholastic distinction of the Arian dogma, and waxed wroth with the same heat against the orthodox œcumenical Church, which he considered heretical.
From the splendid and desolate garden a warm breeze came in through the open window. Julian feigned to listen to Eutropius. Really he was dreaming of a very different person, his well-loved teacher Mardonius. He recollected his wise lectures; his readings of Homer and Hesiod—how different from these monkish lessons!
Mardonius did not read Homer; following the custom of the ancient rhapsodists, he used to chant the poems, to the great amusement of Labda, who was wont to say that he bayed like a dog at the moon. And in fact he did appear absurd to folk who heard him for the first time. The eunuch would punctiliously scan each foot of the hexameter, beating time with his hand. And while his yellow and wrinkled visage remained intensely rapt, his shrill feminine voice streamed on from strophe to strophe. Julian never remarked the ugliness of the old man, seeing only the throbbing passion of a soul thrilled by grandeur and beauty.
His listener trembled, while the divine hexameters rose and shouted like waves. He saw the farewells of Andromache and Hector; the wanderings of Ulysses, weeping for Ithaca on the melancholy and sterile beach of Calypso's island. Delicious sorrow seized the heart of Julian; pains of yearning for Hellas, the country of the gods, eternally beautiful, land of all beauty-worshippers. Tears shook in the voice of the teacher, and rolled down his withered cheeks.
Sometimes Mardonius would talk with the boy of goodness, of the austerity of virtue, of the death of heroes for freedom's sake. Little indeed, oh! how little, did these lessons resemble those given by Eutropius.