ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two very unusual texts: Julian's Misopogon and Heliodorus' Aethiopica. The Misopogon has recently been interpreted as 'a conscious attempt to impose Julian's interpretation of events after a long failure to communicate as the people of Antioch expected' and as 'Julian's conscious attempt to redirect and reshape the interpretation of what was a failure of ritualized communication on his part'. This view of the work depends on an analysis of the interaction between crowds and emperors in late antiquity, especially the shouts of approval uttered at public rituals. Both Julian in the Misopogon and Heliodorus in the Aethiopica repeatedly emphasise the subordination of the ruler to justice and the law. Julian's Misopogon, like the impassioned speeches of Hydaspes in the Aethiopica, in which the monarch lays bare his soul before the crowd, provides an insight into the emotional effort required from a ruler caught up in this intense ideological struggle in the middle.
