Letter 80

To the most illustrious Sarapion. People celebrate public festivals in various ways. I am sending you a hundred long-stalked, dried, homegrown figs as a sweet token of this pleasant season. If you measure the gift by its size, the pleasure I offer is trifling. But if measured by its quality, it may suffice. Aristophanes [the comic playwright] held that figs are sweeter than anything except honey — and on second thought, he was not sure even honey surpassed them. [This long, playful, learned letter is characteristic of Julian at his most charming. He riffs on the cultural significance of figs in Greek literature, quotes extensively from the poets, discusses the philosophical meaning of gift-giving, and manages to weave in reflections on friendship, generosity, and the proper relationship between the simple pleasures of life and the life of the mind. It is a reminder that Julian, for all his intensity about religion and politics, could also be witty, warm, and genuinely delightful company.]

To the most illustrious Sarapion 3 People observe the public festivals in various ways. But I am sending you a hundred long-stalked, dried, homegrown figs as a sweet token of this pleasant festal season. If you measure the gift by its size, the pleasure I offer you is trifling, but if measured by its beauty it will perhaps suffice. It is the opinion of Aristophanes1 that figs are sweeter than anything else except honey, and on second thoughts he does not allow that even honey is sweeter than figs. Herodotus2 the historian also, in order to describe a really barren desert thought it enough to say: "They have no figs or anything else that is good"; as though to say that among the fruits of the earth there is none to be ranked above figs, and that where men had figs they did not wholly lack something good. Again, the wise Homer praises other fruits for their size or colour or beauty, but to the fig alone he allows the epithet "sweet." 3 And he calls honey "yellow,"4 for fear he should inadvertently call "sweet" what is in fact often bitter; accordingly, to the fig alone 5 he assigns this epithet for its own, just as he does to nectar, because alone of all things it is sweet. Indeed Hippocrates6 says that honey, though it is sweet to the taste, is quite bitter to the digestion, and I can believe his statement; for all agree that it produces bile and turns the juices to the very opposite of its original flavour, which fact even more surely convicts it of being in its origin naturally bitter.7 For it would not change to this bitterness if in the beginning this quality had not belonged to it, from which it changed to the reverse. But the fig is not only sweet to taste but it is still better for digestion. And it is so beneficial to mankind that Aristotle1 even says that it is an antidote for every deadly poison, and that for no other reason than this is it served before other food as a first course at meals and then at the end for dessert, as though we embraced it in preference to any other sacred means of averting the injury caused by the things we eat. Moreover, that the fig is offered to the gods also, and is set on the altar in every sacrifice, and that it is better than any frankincense for making fragrant fumes, this is a statement not made by me alone,2 but whoever is acquainted with its use knows that it is the statement of a wise man, a hierophant. Again, the admirable Theophrastus3 in his precepts of agriculture, when he is describing the kinds of grafted trees and what sorts admit of being grafted on one another, commends the fig tree above all other plants, if I am not mistaken, as being able to receive various and different kinds, and as the only one of them all that easily bears a growth of any other sort, if you cut out every one of its boughs and then break off and insert a different engrafted stock into each of the cleft stumps; hence to look at it is often equivalent to a complete garden, since it returns you the variegated and manifold splendours of other fruits, as happens in the loveliest orchard. And whereas the fruits of other fruit-bearing trees are short-lived and cannot last for any time, the fig alone can survive beyond the year, and is present at the birth of the fruit that is to follow it. Hence Homer 1 also says that in the garden of Alcinous the fruits "wax old on" one another. Now in the case of other fruits this might perhaps seem to be a poetic fiction, but for the fig alone it would be consistent with the plain fact, because alone of all fruits it lasts for some time. Such, I think, is the nature of the fig in general, but the kind that grows with us is much better than others; so that in proportion as the fig is more valuable than other plants, our fig is more admirable than the fig in general; and while the latter in its kind surpasses all other fruits, it is in its turn excelled by ours, and again holds its own by comparison in both respects, first in being plainly superior, and secondly, in points where it seems to be inferior it wins on the general count. And it is quite natural that this should be so in our country alone. For it was fitting, I think, that the city which in very truth belongs to Zeus and is the eye of the whole East,—I mean sacred and most mighty Damascus,—2 which in all other respects bears the palm, for instance, for the beauty of its shrines and the size of its temples and for its exquisitely tempered climate and the splendour of its fountains, the number of its rivers and the fertility of its soil— I say it is fitting that she alone should keep up her reputation by the possession of a plant of this excellence and thus excite an excess of admiration. Accordingly our tree does not brook transplanting, nor does it overstep the natural boundaries of its growth, but as though by a law that governs the indigenous plant refuses to grow in colonies abroad. The same sorts of gold and silver are, I believe, produced in many places, but our country alone gives birth to a plant that cannot be grown anywhere else. And just like the wares of India, or Persian silks, or all that is produced and collected in the country of the Ethiopians but travels everywhere by the law of commerce, so, too, our native fig does not grow anywhere else on earth, but is exported by us to all parts, and there is no city or island to which it does not travel, because it is so much admired for its sweet flavour. Moreover it even adorns the imperial table and is the boast and ornament of every feast; and there is no cake or roll or pastry 1 or any kind of confectionery to match it as a sweetmeat wherever it comes; so far does it surpass in admirable qualities all other dainties, and moreover all figs from any other place. Again, other figs are either eaten in autumn, or are dried and go to the store-room, but the fig of our country alone can be used in both ways, and though it is good while on the tree it is far better when it has been dried. And should you see with your own eyes their beauty while they are still on the trees, and how from each one of the bi'anches they hang by long stalks like flower-buds, so to speak, or again, how with their fruit they completely encircle the tree, then you would say that by this circular series one above another they compose a splendid and varied picture even as a neck in its necklace. Then again, the manner in which they are taken from the tree and the means employed for preserving them for a long time involve quite as much outlay as the pleasure derived from their use. For they are not, like other kinds of figs, thrown together in one place, nor are they dried in the sun in heaps or promiscuously; but first they are gathered carefully by hand from the trees, then they are hung-on walls by means of sticks or thorny twigs, so that they may be bleached by exposure to the direct rays of the sun while they are also safe from the attacks of animals and small birds, since the protection of the prickles furnishes them with a sort of bodyguard. So far my letter to you deals with their origin, sweetness, beauty, confection, and use, and is in lighter vein. Now to consider the number one hundred,1 which is more honourable than any other and contains in itself the perfection of all numbers, as one may learn from the following considerations. I am indeed well aware that there is a saying of wise men of old that an odd number is to be preferred to an even, and they declare that the source of increase is that which does not couple. For in a pair the one term being equal to the other remains of the same quality, but when there are two numbers the third produces oddness. But for my part, even though the statement is somewhat bold, I would nevertheless say this: Numbers surely depend on a generative principle, and can carry on consecutive increase through the whole series. But I hold that it is far more just to assign the cause of that increase to the even than to the odd number. For the number one is not odd, when it has no number in respect to which it were odd. But its coupling with two produces twofold oddness,1 and the number three, coming from the two, naturally proceeds as increase. Then again when we add two to two, the result is the higher stage of the number four, and, in a word, their conjunction, while making oddness clear in each of their two elements, is constituted in the number two. This being granted, I should say, of course, that when the first decad is revolving on itself in a circle,2 the whole series progresses to the number one hundred, so that by the number one the increase amounts to ten, and the decad in turn is added each time to itself, and the total is reached in the number one hundred. And starting again from this point, with the hundreds, the whole series of numbers derive their power, by the activity of the number one, except that it is the number two 3 when combined with it that ever produces the odd and again recalls it to itself, until again it concludes with a second hundred the sum of all the numbers, and, making it complete, proceeds again from it to another and under the denomination of hundreds continually carries forward the sum to the conception of infinity. So I think that Homer too in his poems does not lightly or idly assign to Zeus the hundred-tasselled aegis,4 but in a lofty and obscure saying he hinted at this that to the most perfect god he attached the most perfect number, that number by which alone beyond all the others he would most fittingly be adorned, or because the whole universe which he has comprehended in the shape of an aegis, by reason of the roundness of that image, no other number than the hundred describes, and so with the round number one hundred he harmonises the conception of the intelligible world as a whole. Again, on the same principle he makes Briareus with his hundred hands the assessor of Zeus and allows him to rival his father's might, as though he expressed the perfection of his strength by means of the perfect number. Again, Pindar1 the Theban, when he celebrates the destruction of Typhoeus in his odes of victory, and ascribes to the most mighty ruler of the gods power over this most mighty giant, rises to the highest pitch of praise simply because with one blow he was able to lay low the hundred-headed giant, as though no other giant was held worthy to fight hand to hand with Zeus than he whom, alone of all the rest, his mother had armed with a hundred heads; and as though no other of the gods save Zeus only were worthy to win a victory by the destruction of so great a giant. Simonides2 also, the lyric poet, thinks it enough for his praise of Apollo that he should call the god "Hekatos" 3 and adorn him with this title rather than with any other sacred symbol; for this reason, that he overcame the Python, the serpent, with a hundred shafts, as he says, and the god himself took more pleasure in being addressed as "Hekatos" than as "the Pythian," as if he were thus invoked by the symbolic expression of his complete title. Then again, the island Crete which nurtured Zeus, has received as her reward, as though it were her fee for sheltering Zeus, the honour of cities to the number of one hundred. Homer1 too praises Thebes the hundred-gated for no other reason than this that there was a marvellous beauty in her hundred gates. I say nothing of the hecatombs of the gods and temples a hundred feet long, altars with a hundred steps, rooms that hold a hundred men, fields of a hundred acres and other things divine and human which are classed together because they have this number for their epithet. It is a number, moreover, that has the power to adorn official rank both for war and peace, and while it lends brilliance to a company of a hundred soldiers it also confers distinction on the title of judges 2 when their number is one hundred. And I could say more than this, but the etiquette of letter-writing deters me. But do you be indulgent to my discourse, for what I have said already is more than enough. And if my essay has in your judgement even a mediocre elegance it shall surely go forth for others to read, after receiving the testimonial of your vote; but if it need another hand to make it fulfil its aim, who better than you should know how to polish the manuscript to the point of elegance and make it smooth so as to give pleasure to the eye? 3 Sarapion is otherwise unknown. 1 Quoted in Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 652f; Fragg. Incert. Fab. 7. 2 1. 71.  3 Odyssey 7. 116.  4 Odyssey 10. 234. 5 Homer does however call honey " sweet" in Odyssey 20. 69. 6 De internis affectionibus 84A; Hippocrates is speaking of honey that has been cooked. 7 Oration 8. 241a, Julian says that honey is made from the bitterest herbs. 1 Aristotle, Frag. 105, Rose. 2 A Julianic commonplace, cf. note on Vol. 2 Fragment of a Letter 299c, and above, p. 222. 3 Enquiry into Plants 2. 5. 6. 1 Odyssey 7. 120. 2 Julian, as far as we know, never visited Damascus. 1 An echo of Demosthenes, On the Crown 260. 1 He was sending one hundred figs. 1 i.e. 1 is now odd in relation to 2, and their combination results in 3, an odd number. 2 i.e. when ten is multiplied by ten. 3 The writer, who probably could not have explained his cryptic language, insists on the superiority of the dyad, even and feminine, to the odd number 1, regarded as the male principle. 4 The epithet is not used in our Homer of the aegis of Zeus, but of the aegis of Athene and the girdle of Hera. 1 Pindar, Olympian Ode 4. 1; Pythian 1. 16. 2 Simonides, frag. 26, Bergk. 3 This epithet means "Far-Darter" and is misinterpreted by the writer of this letter to mean "Hundredth." 1 Iliad 9. 383; Aeneid 3. 106. 2 The centumviri.