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Oration VI

Introduction to Oration VI

The Sixth Oration is a sermon or rather a scolding addressed to the New Cynics, and especially to one of their number who had ventured to defame the memory of Diogenes. In the fourth Christian century the Cynic mode of life was adopted by many, but the vast majority were illiterate men who imitated the Cynic shamelessness of manners but not the genuine discipline, the self-sufficiency (αὐτάρκεια) which had ennobled the lives of Antisthenes, Diogenes and Crates. To the virtues of these great men Julian endeavours to recall the worthless Cynics of his day. In the two centuries that had elapsed since Lucian wrote, for the edification of degenerate Cynics,[1] the Life of the Cynic Demonax, the dignified and witty friend of Epictetus, the followers of that sect had still further deteriorated. The New Cynics may be compared with the worst type of mendicant friar of the Middle Ages; and Julian saw in their assumption of the outward signs of Cynicism, the coarse cloak, the staff and wallet, and long hair, the same hypocrisy and greed that characterised certain of the Christian monks of his day.[2] The resemblances [pg 003] between the Christians and the Cynics had already been pointed out by Aristides,[3] and while in Julian's eyes they were equally impious, he has an additional grievance against the Cynics in that they brought discredit on philosophy. Like the Christians they were unlettered, they were disrespectful to the gods whom Julian was trying to restore, they had flattered and fawned on Constantius, and far from practising the austerities of Diogenes they were no better than parasites on society.

In this as in the Seventh Oration Julian's aim is to reform the New Cynics, but still more to demonstrate the essential unity of philosophy. He sympathised profoundly with the tenets of Cynicism, and ranked Diogenes with Socrates as a moral teacher. He reminds the Cynics whom he satirises that the famous admonition of Diogenes to “countermark”[4] or “forge” a new coinage is not to be taken as an excuse for license and impudence, but like the Delphic precept “Know Thyself” warns all philosophers to accept no traditional authority, no convention that has not been examined and approved by the reason of the individual. His conviction that all philosophical tenets are in harmony if rightly understood, gives a peculiar earnestness to his Apologia for Diogenes. The reference in the first paragraph to the summer solstice seems to indicate that the Oration was written before Julian left Constantinople in order to prepare for the Persian campaign.